The rantings of the clinically cheesed off

The Commission on Integration and Cohesion has today announced that the biggest barrier to relations is non english speaking workers and spouses. It has proposed that all non speaking migrant workers and people entering this country by marriage should be made to learn english. The report already has come under fire from barristers claiming that it is ‘impractical’ and a ‘posible infringement of an individuals human rights’. I have also heard the argument that we live in a multi cultural society and we should accept that some people do not wish to learn english.

Now i would be the first to agree that we do live in a multicultural society. I, however, fail to see how learning english would change that. I personally do not find it acceptable that people work in this country and do not have even a basic command of english. Learning english would surely help individuals to integrate into society and be able to interact with people. Not to mention that there are unscrupulous people that can and do take advantage.

I used to work as a personal injury lawyer and had a case where 4 polish workers were injured in an accident. Not one could speak english and trusted their boss to handle the claim for them. At the successful conclusion of the claim the boss demanded a 50% handling fee. I received a letter clearly written by this individual and unfortunately signed by the four workers. The upshot was that i had to pay the ‘helpful’ person a little over £ 5000 for his ‘help’. If the workers had spoken english this situation could have been avoided and would not have been ripped off.

As for the proposals being ‘impractical’ at the moment it would seem that this is the case. The current government is in fact cutting places for free english lesson for migrant workers who cannot speak english. It is also the case that one of the suggestions put forward that english should be learnt before coming to this country. This is impractical as english lessons will probably not be so freely available in their home country. This would mean ,of course, increasing the lessons available to incoming non english speaking people.

The ‘Human rights’ argument is frankly the most laughable of all of them. Nobody has forced people to come to this country to work and i therefore see no reason why english lessons should not be made compulsory. It seems simple that someone choosing to come to this county should also choose to learn english. I do not know of any cultural or religious restriction that would prevent this being the case. There may be one and if there is please enlighten me.

No one is asking for them to speak english all the time or to give up there own language. It is simply a case of learning our national language to have the ability of communication. It would be unreasonable of me to go and live in Spain, for example , without learning spanish.

We do live in a multicultural sociaty that has brought us meny benifits and additions to our culture.

So how do we pay for the english lessons ? Is it fair for the ‘tax payer’ to fund the lessons ?

Frankly i say yes it is right for the ‘tax payer’ to fund the lessons. After all legally working immigrants are ‘tax payers’. By the same token, however, I also believe that free language lessons should be available for the english speaking public.

I have no doubt that there are some people that would find this unfair. There are, however, meny situations that are with regards to taxation. That, however, is another subject.