A Foreigner Criticises The Scottish Work Ethic - Whilst Taking Scottish Money

Apparently, Scottish girls are amongst the most violent in the world.

They are also probably amongst the most lumpen, brazen, aggressive and masculinised.

I wouldn't want to be a secondary school teacher in Scotland for all the money in the world.

A lot of them are that way because they want to be. But there are other reasons as well.

There's no denying that many of these girls are poorer than their mothers might have been at the same age. Consistent exposure to poverty, through no fault of your own, certainly must have some kind of negative psychological impact.

And perhaps unlike the citizens of other nations, they also suffer the indignity of having foreigners such as Anthony Miranda, who have been granted the privilege of operating businesses in their country, and who seem perfectly happy to take their money, turning round and criticising their work ethic.

Miranda is the American-born manager of 'Frankie & Benny’s' a restaurant at the Springfield Quay complex in Glasgow. He has told the Sunday Times that his staff turnover is high, but says,

"It might seem strange to get someone walking through the door from Warsaw and not from Paisley Road West...But I have never had anyone walk through the door from this area. Most of our kitchen staff are Polish. They have no problems with the nature of the work and they work well and happily...It is not a problem you find among Americans and Europeans. We regard service jobs as honourable work"

If his Poles have so little problem with the work he offers them, then if he still has a staff retention problem he must be doing something wrong.

Maybe he's the problem.

If Americans have no problem with service work, as he says, then presumably Miranda would endorse any restrictionist who opposes the canard that mass immigration is required in order 'to fill the jobs Americans won't do'. However one can only assume he pays his staff at least minimum wage, and would also seem to be in no position to comment on how well or happily Glaswegians work, if only because none of them ever seem to come through his door other than to give him money.

Hey, he never mentioned the last time he gave his staff a raise!

Hopefully, he differentiates himself from other employers in his sector by providing opportunities for staff to advance themselves.

However, neither Miranda nor the Sunday Times bother to mention two critical facts.

The first is that the population in the part of Glasgow where his restaurant is situated has a greater ethnic mix than possibly anywhere else in the city apart from Woodlands and St. George's Cross. The locals around Frankie & Benny's are not reflective of the city as a whole.

The second is that the Springfield Quay complex contains a cinema and at least two other restaurants. At the entrance to the Quay is a Harry Ramsden's restaurant, and an Italian restaurant called 'La Fiorentina' is a short walk further down Paisley Road West. Miranda's restaurant is in a part of the city packed with eateries. There are plenty of other opportunities for hospitality work within a stone's throw of his premises, and that's most certainly not the locals' fault - and when I was in his premises last month, his barman most certainly did not have a Polish accent.

Politicians laud foreigners like Miranda because they create 'jobs'; it doesn't matter to the politician what the job is, or its prospects, or its likely duration, or how it pays - if it's filled, it makes them look good. However, when foreign business owners and managers turn round and criticise the people from whom they make their livelihood, they forget that, although they might have jobs to fill, the hospitality sector is brutal in its natural selection; and that if they want to stay in business, maintaining local goodwill is far more important than being able to hire cheap waiters.

And I for one will never step inside Anthony Miranda's restaurant ever again.