I teach English to foreign language speakers at a South Yorkshire college and meet a lot of Polish people who come to the college for lessons (although many have pretty good English already). These hard-working folk come to evening classes because they're grafting all day in factories and service industries. Regarding wages, one of my students, a young lady of about 23 years worked as a primary teacher in Poland after graduating. She tells me that her wage for this was about £150 per month. She gets more than this per week for her current job in KFC and still teaches kids Polish at a local Polish ex-servicemens club on Saturday mornings. The Poles, I find are good mannered, intelligent, value education and hard work and have decent moral and social standards. The are shocked (and amused) by UK levels of illegitimacy amongst young teenagers and some of the behaviours they witness on our streets and via the media. Although not a religious person myself, I can believe that this may be to do with the social influence that religion still has in Poland and the Poles' respect for traditional family values. As Shimrod says, it would be nice to think that these new citizens will bring a hint of civilisation to this country! We can but hope!

Regards
Andy