Well, I wanted to add something, but actually most of the pictures I consider “iconic” have been already posted. My personal choice would be:
– naked girl running out after the American napalm bombing
– the guy in front of the tank on the Tinanmen place
– breaking The Wall (but that one is probably less objective, as I’m Polish)

Thanks for that Muflon. I agree with everything you say, except for the fact that the Polish influx in my town tend to keep together and make little or no attempt to ‘meet the natives’.

They maybe don’t. But I assure you that their soon-to-be children will form the part of ‘the murder capital of Scotland’ hand in hand with yours 🙂 In fact the Polish immigrants most often have the opposite problem: their children don’t want to consider themselves as Poles, learn the language etc. It’s not uncommon that the children can hardly speak with their grandparents in Poland.

I see that Ryanair are offering some attractive deals from Prestwick to Poland. I think I’ll embark upon a cross-cultural mission soon.

Wellllll, should I start another topic about the British “cross-cultural missions” behaving on Polish streets? 😀

Which bars do you recommend Muflon ?

That’s changing rapidly… when I visit Poland from time to time I have to ask my friends the same question 😉

Well.. first of all, I’m Polish :D, but I live in Switzerland (for a bit longer than the recent Polish migration wave started). Actually, I’m rather conservative when it comes to the immigration laws. In particular, I think that the Swiss tough immigration policy is correct, I hate to see it violated from time to time and finally, I don’t quite like what you’ve described as “walking in the street and not knowing the language of every second person”. Hovewer, I’ll try to defend my fellow countrymen a bit 😉

Consider one thing: contrary to the people that you call “the travellers” or the Muslims (nothing against them either), the Polish people that will stay in the UK for good, after one (or at most two) generations will just melt into the society. Indeed, we keep some relations among the immigrants of similar age, but we don’t create the “Chinatowns”, “Turkish Districts” etc. (well, OK, let’s forget Chicago for a moment :D). We don’t bring all-the-brothers-and-uncles to the new place as soon as we get the residence permit, like many others do. We don’t force our girls to marry (or even just meet) only the guys from the same ethnic group… etc., the list could be quite long.

Just the contrary, the typical Polish long-term migrant will just work hard and try to assimilate into the local environment as fast as possible. Even if just to be able to go back to Poland from time to time and pretend to be better than the others – look you poor guys, I’m British now! ;).

Most of the immigrants are relatively young. Soon, they will have children – probably more than they would in Poland, just because they will be able to afford it. Couple this with the demographic problems that practically all of the developed countries experience – and you’ll get my point. In the long term you might really win on what’s going on now. I won’t even mention the draining of Polish engineers, doctors and nurses 🙁 Did you know that already now there are some hospitals in Poland that are struggling to exist, lacking the qualified workforce? Guess where they all went?

For the short-term workers, I fully agree with BuffPuff. Yes, you can call it stealing the jobs (assuming that the are some English that would pick these), but no less that all the other globalization-related things like the call-centers, manufacturing electronics (…hey, manufacturing just about damned everything!) in China etc.