h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was in town this morning working. Short day: home early. I passed an Italian restaurant (not on my round) which was being repainted. The sign in the window read "Wet Paint. Peínt Úr." It took me a moment to realise that the second language wasn't, as I'd automatically assumed, Polish!

TRiG.

It's nice to see the old cúpla focail being used.

Over 2,000,000 Poles have left Poland for work since EU membership day. 600,000 of them are in the UK. And a good few in Ireland too.

Something like one tenth of the entire workforce in Ireland is now Polish.

Úr, to be pedantic, means 'fresh', not 'wet'. You see it sometimes on cartons of milk.

TRiG.

Have you noticed that building sites often have signs in Polish? And there are bilingual stickers in shop windows all over town to advertise that the county library now has a Polish fiction section.

TRiG.

A man came over to England from Poland a few years ago. He married my mum's sister. He became a fighter-pilot in the Battle of Britain. Helped save us all.

After the war he stayed on and became a tax collector.

He wasn't responsible for that unpopular Pole Tax, was he?

I've seen in Tesco that they have a Polish section here. From what I understand there are lots of eastern Europeans and esp Polish people working in chicken factories in Northern Ireland. Some people complain that they're taking our jobs, but no-one here wants to do them and it's a great way to earn for them. I heard of one guy who was a trained vet at home, but was woring here earning more as a brickie.

Since there's no unemployment in Ireland, they can't really be taking our jobs, can they?

Pole tax

Well surely there can't literally be *no* unemployment? I believe it's very low, but there are some unemployed I'm sure. But you have a good point. It's not like there are hundreds of people wanting and needing the jobs the Polish people are doing.