Who does plumbing in Eastern Europe?

Or scaffolding? Road works? Restaurant service? Shop assistance? And God only knows how many other things?

All those Poles, Romanians and Bulgarians seem to practise such skills in Britain, where the supply of native talent must be running dry. How do those back home manage, with all those lads leaving for England’s green and pleasant land (without knowing this phrase or its provenance)?

Unless East European countries have made giant strides in cloning, their own countries must seem denuded. Like in the good if not so old days, they must be forcing professors of classical philosophy to dig ditches rather than poisoning young minds with all that Protagorian sophistry.

When in January last year the EU ordered us to extend a warm welcome to Bulgarians and Romanians, those who weren’t overjoyed were branded with the usual names: Little Englanders, xenophobes, reactionaries, scaremongers – and I haven’t yet got to the good stuff.

Any fears of a deluge were described as paranoia, although few paranoiacs of my acquaintance display such sound common sense. After all, if practically any UK job or, failing that, benefit package pays better than practically any job in Romania, it takes little suspension of disbelief to predict large numbers of immigrants.

So it has proved, as figures released yesterday show. Three out of four new jobs in Britain go to EU migrants, and there are 219,000 Romanians and Bulgarians working here – those we know about. (All told, there are 982,000 East Europeans employed in Britain, a number growing by 15 per cent a year.)

Since we know that at least as many of them live off benefits, and suspect that at least as many work for cash, bypassing the clutches of our statisticians and tax collectors, we’re probably looking at the better part of a million Romanians and Bulgarians gracing us with their presence.

This adds a whole new meaning to the notion of Balkanisation, which, as a lifelong lexicography junkie, I welcome. However, in my other incarnations, such as that of customer, I note with dismay that I can’t recall the last time I was served in a London shop or restaurant by a native, or at least fluent, speaker of English.

Judging by the fact that everyone plying similar trades in France seems to speak perfect French, East Europeans favour London over Paris. This is particularly odd considering that some East European countries, especially Poland and Romania, have always had strong cultural ties with France.

France gets Romanian playwrights (at least three major ones), we get Romanian waiters. That’s grossly unfair – even though both of us get an equal share of Romanian pickpockets.

That this situation puts unbearable pressure on our medicine, education and social services is a well documented fact. Few realise though that the pressure is exerted in two ways, one direct, the other vicarious.

First, new arrivals themselves use such services, costing the Exchequer billions every year. The second, and more subtle, way is that they push the lower end of wages way down.

Coming from a country with an average monthly income of €345, anything Romanians can get in Britain must seem like a fortune, and our employers aren’t above exploiting this situation.

Hence it no longer pays for the locals to take such jobs; they can do better going to the social once a week than to a building site every morning. It would take an exaggerated belief in human goodness to expect them to opt for the dignity of honest labour under such circumstances.

Our government officials continue to claim that immigrants, even those from perverse political and social backgrounds, make a valuable contribution to British life. When ‘immigrants’ is left unqualified with a cautious ‘some’, this claim is a bold-faced lie.

The net economic effect of mass immigration from the EU is hugely negative. Yet it’s negligible compared to the damage being done to our social, cultural and demographic fabric that, in London, is already lying in tatters.

London is, and has been since time immemorial, a cosmopolitan city, the financial hub of the world. But in the recent past it was still a cosmopolitan English city, which it no longer is. The native element currently stands at 44.9 per cent – and dropping fast.

Considering that London attracts about a third of Britain’s labour force, such multi-culti crosspollination can have devastating consequences for the whole country, similar to those suffered by the Roman Empire, whose demise was largely caused by mass immigration diluting national identity.

It takes more than central government to turn a country into a nation. However, our government is eminently capable of turning our nation into a rootless, piebald hybrid, reducing the world’s greatest language to an illiterate patois, the world’s greatest parliament to a rubber-stamping stooge to the EU, and the world’s greatest city to an oversized refugee camp.

On the plus side, our spivocrats can count on many new, grateful voters. Muslims have provided this service for Labour, East Europeans will do the same for the Tories.

Everyone goes home happy – only to find that the home is no longer there.

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