raymundo:
Horse an carts bit …
I was driving for Eagle Freight of Gt Blakenham nr Ipswich, cant remember the year but long time ago, my old Volvo was rebuilt from two or three donor trucks and never had a speed limiter (clue?). I did runs from there to Balystock where we did a trailer change with their Russian drivers or sometimes further but cant remember many details now. The thing that stuck in my mind was being told prior to first run, be careful of the state of the roads, the police and their corruption, hookers in the laybyes with black curly wigs, drunken poles staggering all over the road late at night and allow for the horse and carts (plenty off). I fell foul to all the things I was told to watch out for. The only decent bit of road was the 28 or so km of motorway near Poznan where the truck would steer it’self in the ruts. Normal roads were ordinary two lanes with the suicide lane in the middle sometimes and where ‘he who dares’ or ‘chicken’ were played out.
So when it was? 1960s?
turnip:
Exactly why do you stay here orys ?
Because things that are important for me are still better here then back in Poland.
GBPub:
Because this is the land of milk and honey compared to Poland. I would send them all home as we certainly don’t need them or benefit from any of them as a society. Unfortunately the EU won’t allow that though.
No, it is not the land of milk and honey. You have to work hard as everywhere else. It is true, though, that relation between your income and prices is much more benefitial here than in Poland.
You don’t benefit from influx of Eastern European because you are not interested in what they have to offer. There is completely no interest in Polish culture, Polish cuisine etc, there is next to none coverage of Polish issues in British media etc… The Jewish, Pakistani or Jamaican communities have much more public interest.
But according to the British voices there is a lot of things you could benefit from if you wanted. For example work ethics… British employers are not idiot and if they value Eastern European workers there has to be something in this…
You know what is the most fascinated for me in that discussion? Is exactly this hard refusal to accept any new info on Eastern Europe from your part. Sometimes I simply feel like I am talking to the wall.
Ok, I am Polish so I might be not the most objective source, but even if you divide per two everything I say, I am still the person who knows Eastern Europe best on that forum: not only I am fluent in two Eastern European languages, but I also lived there for 25 years and I am on senior honours year of Central and East European Studies… So maybe it would be worth to listen to what I have to say?
For years of my activity on that forum here I am providing you with facts, links, graphs, pictures, concrete data from reliable sources… Yet you still refuse to accept anything I say and choose to listen to people like raymundo who tells you stories about horses and carts (that, judging from what he says that on the way to BiaÅ‚ystok is just the one silly strech of battered dual carriage road near PoznaÅ„, are in the best case from about 15 years ago - nowadays the motorway is all the way from Berlin to Warsaw and everyone who has google maps can check it, even with street view). He cannot even spell properly the name of the place he was going to, yet you trust him more as an expert of that country than me…
You still nurse myth like this one that Poles are coming here not to work, but only to claim benefits since day one, despite I proved several times that this is impossible (in Scotland you have to work here 24 months to be able to claim any benefit) and despite the English sources I provided several times showing that 30% of British people claim benefits compared to just 7% of Polish people in Britain (which proves, that Poles here actually put more to the jar than they take away).
You still maintain that myth about Polish lorries did not needed MOT while actually Polish MOT are much more restrictive than British ones, which I also proved on many occasions.
The myth about Poles doing their lorry driving licences on donkey and carts and other crap are also popular despite that I on several occasions showed you how the driving test looks like, with movies and everything…
Moreover, you still try to put into my words things I never said - like Harry, who still tries to ridicule me showing me as someone who claims that influx of Eastern European hauliers has nothing to do with downturn of British haulage industry. I always said that it was very important factor, but not the only one, and that the things has changed over last 10 years and now the competition with them is possible (what I am trying to say in this thread, at least when it comes to “2004 ten”).
Often I am under attack that i always defending Poland claiming that everything there is best, which is off course also not true. Only in this thread I told you, that drivers there lack culture and respect to others, that roads are still poor (altough that changes enourmusly over recent years thanks to enourmous infrastructural grants from EU), that bearocracy there is a nightmare, that taxes are (relatively) higher etc etc etc… Yet everytime I say that something there is worse than here, its completely ignored and when I say that something there is better than here I am instantly under attack…
When my points become uncomfortable, there is always someone who asks turnips question “if so, why you are here?”
Guys, you are not a bunch of idiots, you are intelligent, grown up men. Why can’t you accept that countries of Eastern Europe and people there are just like you? That this countries have their flaws and their advantages, that people there work hard to meet ends just like you do (but they still need to work harder than you!), and thst your land is also not a promised land because it also has some things that makes it not perfect? Is it so difficult to accept such a basic and obvious truths?
