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Please don't go

News that Poles are abandoning the UK in favour of their homeland fills me with a sense of dread. It's only since the arrival of Eastern European migrants that any actual work has been done in this country.

I'd rather do a trawl of Battersea Dogs Home than look up a British plumber in the Yellow Pages. At least the canine residents would be loyal. And they'd have just as many qualifications to unblock your pipes.

In the future, I'll be flying tradesmen in from Bratislava and Warsaw. Given that their British counterparts would charge three times as much and do half-as-good a job, it would be money well spent. In fact, you could probably afford to put them up in a Travelodge.

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