papering over the cracks

New figure of derision and score is Keith Best. Anyone who listened to BBC Radio 5 Live last night will know why. Spaz-head of monumental proportions that he is.

Tory MP from 1979 to 1987, he is now Chief Executive of the Immigration Advisory Service. This means he refuses to listen to any point of view which states that mass migration from poor countries to rich countries may not be such a good idea, and could be, in actual fact, wholly irresponsible.

Last night, apart from being terribly rude and unable to shut up for 10 seconds to let someone else speak, he said such crazy things as 'if we didn't have migrant workers then vegetables would be rotting in the fields.' Right. He told a woman who called up saying that she found the gangs of Poles in Ramsgate 'intimidating' that she was wrong. How dare he tell someone he doesn't know that she is wrong for feeling something. That's like telling someone they're wrong because they prefer strawberry to chocolate ice cream - they can't help it.

He should know all about crime, mind, seeing as he was found guilty of share cheating and served time at HM's pleasure.

Businesses might very well need extra people to come work in the UK, but Work Permits would work nicely, as it does in the USA, Australia and other successful countries all over the world. Best decided that if Britain had a system of work permits then British workers would never be able to get jobs overseas. He was told that there were hundreds of thousands of people working in the USA for example, where we don't have a right of movement or residence, but that appeared to be too complicated to get in his head, bless the thick chap.

But the issue which that point of view for pro-immigration should bring up is about British unemployed.

Lots of people say they'd rather employ a polish worker than some British chav, but that's just papering over the cracks. Because what we need to do in this country is change this mentality where it is acceptable to live off the state, to get knocked up and get a council house at the age of 16 and to leave school without qualifications. I suspect if we didn't have a social security system which rewarded people for being lazy bastards then we wouldn't need hundreds of thousands of migrants to pick fruit, because people who currently can't be bothered to work would have to, or go hungry and get wet when it rained.

Maybe if we had some discipline in schools and people were not so concerned about 'their rights' but rather 'their responsibilities' then we wouldn't have such a prevalent underclass.

By letting them off with not working, and instead burdening the system even more with hundreds of thousands of migrant workers we are being unfair and irresponsible to our whole society, and especially those people who work hard and play fair. Young people who have a job but can't afford a house - shouldn't they be given some thought?

The attention is wrong, and until it changes it won't get any better.