Monday 25/4/2005
Back to noshblog site (click here)
Diary and Notes
During this election period I've noticed a tendency for certain political parties to focus the majority of their campaigning on the subject of immigration. They claim that this is nothing to do with being racist but is simply protecting the British economy and way of life from a massive influx of economic migrants and spongers on our national health system and social security. Some commentators have pointed out that the majority of their ire has not been directed at the thousands of backpacking Australians, American students, Rich Canadian Businessmen and nice white New Zealanders who stay longer than may have originally been expected, but mainly at economic migrants from Eastern Europe, and thus may have a tinge of racism associated with it, but I'm sure they would disagree and cite numerous reasons why.
I notice also that they aren't (this time) targetting people from the Indian subcontinent. This may seem to back up their argument that they are not being racists - but when you consider it's an election and the people of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian descent will decide perhaps sixty or seventy of the marginal seats and could possibly decide the outcome of the election, this is not surprising, but let's for argument's sake not be at all cynical and assume that the protectionist view is correct and the politicians are only looking out for the interests of the country - let's pretend that some proud British lion decides to make a stand and to protect the British way of life by only buying things and using services provided by British people - let's call this fictional character Nick Griffin - a name that by entire coincidence is the same as the leader of the British National Party here in proud Britain.
Nick gets out of bed and decides to make himself a cup of tea - but oh no, although tea is our national drink the tea is grown in India. Nick has no problem with trading with foreign countries so this isn't a problem, but all the people who work on the British registered ship which brought the tea here were actually Filipino's and technically economic migrants to Britain and thus he can't drink the tea - never mind, a nice cup of clean, British, tap water should suffice.
Nick then tootles off to work. Normally he would get the bus, but today he's walking as all the bus drivers were brought in from Poland because the local bus company couldn't recruit anybody locally. (This is really common). It's only a few miles and the driving rain doesn't bother him - he's British and full of British pride and power. Gggrrr, hear the lion roar.
Nick arrives at work (he's a paint sprayer for a car company - a good skilled profession - though his job's looking a little dodgy at the moment because some British businessmen scammed his company for millions and ran off with the profits - the only hope for Nick's job is for a foreign company to save the day and buy out the factory, but then Nick would have to resign as he can't work for foreigners). Nick is feeling a little hungry by mid morning but can't have a snack as some of the canteen workers are from the West Indies, came over on the Windrush and never went back, now even have British grandchildren, but are still economic migrants so it's no elevenses today.
Poor Nick can't read the newspaper because the man who owns the shop that sold it was from Bangladesh. He can't have any lunch either because the people who picked the potatoes for his chips were Albanian.
It's not long before Nick is feeling quite unwell and decides to go to see the doctor. But the doctor is from India and has just recruited two nurses from Thailand so even this service is closed off to him. (20% of the nurses in the NSH are from abroad and over 15% of doctors.)
Even Nick's son is forced to come home from university as some of his lecturers are from Russia, Germany, Hungary and China (this is true for the department I work in) and his future life and career options are ruined.
Poor Nick Griffin. They couldn't even build him a tombstone as the quarrymen were from Chile and the undertaker's apprentice was Bulgarian.
It's not a question of being swamped by immigrants it's a question of being saved by immigrants. We should be thanking these people for coming here and doing these things for us for meagre pay and conditions we would never tolerate. Who wants to get up at five every morning and run a shop all day until midnight - constantly being abused and insulted by drunks and idiots? Who wants to bend over for hours on end picking vegetables on a freezing cold morning for minimum wage? Who's going to fill the vacancies in our schools and health service? Not Nick the paint sprayer that's certain.
If it's not racism that's driving this debate then it's utter stupidity, without these people our country would grind to a halt - I don't care which it is, I wont be voting for them either way.
*****************************************************
I was in a bit of a hurry so did something quick for dinner today. Fortunately, when I made the domlades two days ago, I made too much filling and kept this in the fridge. I fried this in some spiced oil (thyme, sage and black pepper) with a bit of celery and red pepper. I also had some tsatsiki left over from the same meal (don't think this counts as repetition because I'm using up some left-overs in this way, check out the Greek style chops meal and compare it with today's, it's nowhere near the same thing). The chops were really simple but I have to say they were bloomin' marvellous (also as I was feeling quite peckish I had two).
Cake Blog
Super Scones: Today I decided to make scones with just about everything in them: Sultanas, cherries, some of that fruit stuff I was griping on about (see 20/4/2005), some chopped hazelnuts and some chopped pecan nuts. A sort of health bar in a scone type thing. As they were super scones I also used the really big pastry cutter from my set of three so they are about 3 times the volume of the previous efforts. Damn fine scones I have to say - though all in all my favourite scones of the week were the cherry.
Menu
Ingredients*
| Pork Chops with Mango Chutney and Cheddar Cheese 2 Pork Chops 2 Tbsp Mango Chutney 100g Grated (Mature) Cheddar Cheese |
Preparation
*****************************************************
*All quantities are very approximate and for a single person
JCBorresen@GMail.com