An own goal

THE  Trade Union Congress in Britain caused a storm last week in Spain  when it published a report which slammed British expatriates in Spain as being “a wave of migrants, costing local health services a fortune, refusing to learn the language and not prepared to integrate.”  Now, the idea of the report, which was entitled Truth, Lies and Migrants was to counter all the negative press about Bulgarian and Romanian migrants heading to Britain when the two countries fully joined the European Union. But unfortunately the report fell into the same category as many of the newspaper reports about Bulgarian and Romanian migrants;the key word  here is generalisation. The TUCwas picking on British expats in the same way as some sections of the  British media have  been picking on would-be migrants from eastern Europe. Now, as Ipointed out in this space last week the majority of British expats are hardworking people or are enjoying a well deserved retirement in the sun. There  are some who do not speak Spanish and who refuse to integrate.  But we are talking small numbers not all the 800,000 British expats who live in Spain as the report appeared to suggest.  So in the end the TUCscored an own goal. They are the first to criticise the anti-immigrant section of the British media but they fell into the same trap and effectively scored an own goal.  You can´t generalise about people.  It is a big mistake and really the TUCshould know better.