THE Trade Union Congress in Britain caused a storm last week in Spain when it published a report which slammed British expatriates in Spain as being “a wave of migrants, costing local health services a fortune, refusing to learn the language and not prepared to integrate.” Now, the idea of the report, which was entitled Truth, Lies and Migrants was to counter all the negative press about Bulgarian and Romanian migrants heading to Britain when the two countries fully joined the European Union. But unfortunately the report fell into the same category as many of the newspaper reports about Bulgarian and Romanian migrants;the key word here is generalisation. The TUCwas picking on British expats in the same way as some sections of the British media have been picking on would-be migrants from eastern Europe. Now, as Ipointed out in this space last week the majority of British expats are hardworking people or are enjoying a well deserved retirement in the sun. There are some who do not speak Spanish and who refuse to integrate. But we are talking small numbers not all the 800,000 British expats who live in Spain as the report appeared to suggest. So in the end the TUCscored an own goal. They are the first to criticise the anti-immigrant section of the British media but they fell into the same trap and effectively scored an own goal. You can´t generalise about people. It is a big mistake and really the TUCshould know better.
An own goal
04/01/2014 00:00
Also in Holiday
- Important information for British travellers arriving at Palma airport from April
- Passengers advised to head to Mallorca airport three hours before flights
- Former England, Newcastle and Liverpool star a winner in Mallorca
- Rafa Nadal expands his property empire
- Mallorca restaurant concerns about lack of Easter bookings
No comments
To be able to write a comment, you have to be registered and logged in
Currently there are no comments.