Romanians and Bulgarians Invade the UK – By the Dozen

Ok, so finally the feared numbers are here, in the open, for everybody to see and be scared by. How many desperate Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians etc snatched British jobs in the first quarter?

Enough to make one go to the pub and down a quick pint, wondering what all the fuss is about.

The latest statistics on immigration from Eastern Europe have been published by the Home Office on May 20 but went largely unreported by the media. How can this be, when these people with their strange accents are, after all, to blame for the sorry state of the British job market?

Well, I am sure the fair, balanced and open-minded media kept silent on these numbers so as not to spark unnecessary panic in the country.

But I will reveal them here, without fear, since very few people are likely to stumble upon this blog anyway.

Applications from workers in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia and the Czech Republic dropped to 23,000 in the first three months of 2009, compared to 48,755 during the same period in 2008, the Home Office says on its website.

In what regards Bulgarians and Romanians, 4,615 applications for registration certificates have been decided from January to March 2009, of which 3,055 have been submitted by Romanian nationals, according to the Home Office.

Read more on these truly horrifying statistics on the Home Office website.

Democracy? What Democracy?

Apparently, one Danish MEP believes Bulgarians and Romanians aren't as intelligent, being in the south-east of the continent, as their Nordic colleagues in the European Union. Therefore, they should automatically have less votes in the European Parliament – presumably, calculated taking into account the size of their brains, their ability to solve complex mathematical problems or their capacity to learn very difficult languages.

"When I look at the voting rules, I see that countries like Romania and Bulgaria have many more votes than Denmark and Sweden and Finland, and I think - honestly speaking - that we are more clever than they are," Mogens Camre, deputy leader of the Europe of the Nations group in the European Parliament, whose People's Party is part of Denmark's ruling coalition, told RFI.

"We (in western and northern Europe) have much more transparency, democracy, and social welfare. And we don't think that people who did not create healthy societies should decide for us. Countries which we consider old-fashioned, anti-reform, in many cases directly reactionary, have so much influence in Europe."

Honestly speaking, Mr. Camre, when I look at what you just said, I see that given the right circumstances you could become much more of a dictator than Stalin was. Luckily for the Nordic state you represent, the democracy still at work within the EU prevents you from reaching your full potential.

Regarding the creation of healthy societies in these countries – you seem to conveniently forget who allowed communism there in the first place. Here's a hint: read Churchill's Memoirs.