The Rogarians are coming!
Romania and Bulgaria packs up…
THE Rogarians are coming! The Rogarians are coming…to Spain.
“Ten of thousands of Romanians will flee their homeland tomorrow – but they won’t be coming here,” reports the Sunday Mirror.
This is some shock. Over the past few months some sections of the Press may have inadvertently created the impression that tens of thousands of toothless, mud-encrusted Rogarians travelling in caravans pulled by heavy-set women were massed at the border.
On January 1 2007, the signal would be given and the Rogarians would bare their fangs and with the lusty cry “Would you like fries with that?” descend on Blighty like so many Poles.
Alongside pictures of mobs of people dressed in manmade fibres, the paper sensed a “stampede for passports to a new life in Britain”.
The Sun’s front page warned: “EU’VE HAD IT.” “We’re leaving Borat’s village for a dream life in Britain,” came another headline. “600,000 heading to Britain,” said the Express earlier in the week. The Rogarians were coming and they knew our pin numbers.
But now the Sunday Mirror tells us that the movement from Romania to Britain will be a “trickle not a flood”. Seats on planes from Bucarest to Luton remain available on Budget airline Wizz-Air. The paper says tickets cost as little as £5.
Says Romanian travel agent Ionna Niculescu: “There are no lines of buses filled with Romanians waiting to cross the border at midnight.” And: “People who plan to leave Romania to work abroad usually head to the Mediterranean, to Spain and Italy.”
Have they read taken heed of the advertising campaign, those advertising billboards in Bucarest warning: "Don’t come to Britain without a work permit"?
Have they listened to the television advert in Bulgaria that shows a man arriving at Sofia airport for a flight to Britain? He dreams of life in this gilded land. And then he reads the sign that says: "Even after January 1 you will need a permit to work in the UK. There are strict rules about which skills you need to have and which industries you can work in. Do not travel to the UK in the hope of finding work if you do not meet these requirements. Make sure you have a work permit."
And, as the Mail reports, the Bulgarian Government’s Ministry of Labour has distributed leaflets telling migrants: "Bad employers in Britain will pay you very low wages, put you in poor or dangerous working environments and offer you work at anti-social hours. People who try to work illegally often enter a twilight world of exploitation and misery and can become targets and victims of criminal gangs."
Whether these gangs are Romanian or Bulgarian is not stated. But, of course, they are surely not British…
Posted: 31st, December 2006 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
