27.06.08
Poles angry at Star slur
The hard-working Polish immigrant is nothing but a myth, according to the newspaper Daily Star.
“Half of the Poles in the UK don’t work”, the tabloid headlined yesterday basing its claims on flawed statistics. The Daily Star asserted that half a million Poles in Britain were dependants “often kept on state handouts”.
The paper contrasted 300,000 Poles listed on the British Worker Registration Scheme with a Polish embassy estimate of 800,000 Poles living in the UK.
However, the scheme is not strictly enforced and does not include self-employed migrants, and those who fail to register are not even entitled to basic benefits.
Spokesman for the Federation of Poles in Great Britain Wyktor Moszczynski dismissed the Daily Star’s coverage, saying: “If you start counting children you obviously can’t expect them to work.”
The federation had lodged a formal complaint about anti-Polish headlines in the Daily Mail earlier this year.
Mr Moszczynski said there was a connection between the rising number of hate crimes against Poles in the UK and tabloid coverage. He said: “This is a sustained campaign to show Polish people in a bad light.”
London correspondent for Polish national newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza Magdalena Gignal said: “I don’t think the Polish image in the media is worse than that of any other nationality."
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