Peterborough famous - for all the wrong reasons

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robert.saunders

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7288430.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cambridgeshire/7283582.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cambridgeshire/7282348.stm

Apart from some recent great news about POSH, this city is making headlines for all the wrong reasons lately. I've only lived here since 1998, worked for the city council since 2000 and actually moved to Lincolnshire last Easter. It's a fair decline I've noticed over the years :(
 
simple if they are fed up with the poles, then do the farm jobs period.
instead of going on the dole and giving rubbish excuses.
and as for civvys moaning about uniforms, when they are out and about try challenging the soldiers physically and see who wins.
Pc rubbish.
if the schools emphasize english as the only language then others will be forced to learn english or move out.
 
We came very close to moving to the March/Wisbech/Kings Lynn area three or four years ago because of my Mrs E300D's job.

I'm glad we didn't, because the area has changed beyond recognition in that time, and not for the better.
 
Couldnt watch it. It was winding me up too much.
 
as well as the whole 9.00pm slot on BBC this week called white project or something like that.
how someone can say i rather sign on than earn £7/hr is beyond me.
another saying i do not want to work with foreigners, forgetting that if all the dolites go work there in the first place, there will be no foreigners.
the other one saying the poles work for £2/hr that is why i cannot get a job was disproved instantly.

Just hold up your hands and say i am lazy and cannot be A**sed looking for a job.

two sides to every story
 
how someone can say i rather sign on than earn £7/hr is beyond me.


If you sign on, you get unemployment benefit, plus income support for your dependents, plus housing benefit that pays 100% of your rent, or mortgage, and 80% of your council tax. You also get milk/juice tokens and all sorts of help is available from the Social Fund. You get discounted travel and other advantages.

If you work for the quoted £7 an hour, you can apparently gross £25,000 per year, but you have to pay your own rent/mortage/council tax, tplus the cost of getting to and from work, and there's no income support for your wife and kids. I think £25,000 is possibly too high for family tax credit but I am not sure.

So taking a job can be quite an expensive proposition when the housing benefit in particular is so generous.
 
Good then say i am a lazy bas***d instead of blaming foreigners for their dole decision and blame the social security for the refusal of people to work in the country and not the crap i am sick and tired of hearing
"the foreigners are taking all our jobs"
 
If you work for the quoted £7 an hour, you can apparently gross £25,000 per year

To do that means working 3570 hours / year.

Assuming 5 weeks off a year.

That means 75 hour weeks.

Changing this and allowing for time and a half over 40 hours/week means working a 57.5 hour week for 47 weeks of the year.

Some factors to consider.

1) The European directive on Working Hours

2) Agricultural work is seasonal.

3) If hard bitten employers pay time and a half at this level they cut the overtime and employ more staff.

So my guess is the 25K number is an extrapolation of what can be earned at certain busy times of the year which has then been turned into an annual number. The media and politicians do this kind of maths rather well. So do unions when making a compative pay claim.
 
I moved to Peterborough in 1983 and left in 1999, both work-related moves.

In 1983 much of the place was still run by the Peterborough Development Corporation (PDC) and verges were cut, trees planted and tended, roads swept and all the things you would expect in a decent city that took pride in itself. What was eye-opening was the very rapid downward change in the quality of care and maintenance that the infrastructure received as the PDC wound down and areas of the city reverted to local council control. Now it's fair to say that the PDC had funds available that the local council perhaps didn't but it always struck me that if the latter had spent their (sorry, the rate-payer's) money on the things that mattered rather than frittering it away on projects like declaring Peterborough a Nuclear Free Zone - which entailed changing all council stationery, erecting new signs all over the place and other such nonsense at massive cost - then perhaps the deterioration wouldn't have occured. But it's not all the fault of local politicians.

By 1999 when I was leaving the city it was clear that what had been a really nice place to live was fast turning into a place in rapid decline. Back in 1983 when I arrived there, the city had a strong manufacturing economy with Perkins Engines, Baker Perkins, Peter Brotherhood and Molins (just to list the bigger employers) providing employment for at least 10,000 between them. Pearl Assurance, Thomas Cook and TSB all had UK headquarters in the city. By the time I left, Perkins Engines employed a fraction of the number it did 15 years earlier, Baker Perkins had been bought out and shrunk by Rockwell Corp, Peter Brotherhood was employing a fraction of its earlier workforce, Molins had closed its facility in the city, and the "service industry" sector was similarly declining or moving out.

A sad decline indeed, and absolutely nothing to do with imigration in a place that has had large Italian and Polish communities since the early 1950's who helped it grow to be the success that it was.
 
:D How ironic this thread is.

In the sixties :rolleyes: :devil: :D :D I used to visit my fiancée every week-end that I could sneak off. My train used to arrive in Peterborough just before mid-night on a Friday evening and then I would walk\run IN UNIFORM some fifteen miles to Thurlby. Sometimes I would be lucky and get a lift, other times I would be unlucky and get soaked in the pouring rain, but at no time did I feel intimidated, or was I harassed, or did anyone attempt to insult me. We are steering well clear of one problem that is perhaps not isolated to Peterborough, but sadly there were or are areas of Peterborough that are no go areas and that is something I find objectionable. It would appear that all inner cities have issues but the only way these will be resolved is for the residents themselves to resolve them. I doubt Peterborough is any worse or better than any other city, it has just been unfortunate to have hit the headlines for the wrong reasons. No doubt Bristol, Derby or Nottingham will soon be today's Peterborough.

Happy days (The 60's)
Regards
John
 
same problem in poland and germany with british registered cars. it is an european problem, not related only to peterbrough
same with LHD /RHD trucks in Uk /europe.
 

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