Agnieszka's empire.

Every Pole is eligible for grants from the billions that Poland is receiving from the EU, and they are taking as much as they can.

The most common scam is to claim money which is supposedly for maintenance of land or forest. One student I know receives 5000 pounds every year which should go towards the upkeep of the forest he inherited from his father, he is in the pub every night and has already bought a new car.

Why the European Union (and the UK in particular) had to contribute so much to the ex-eastern bloc when they became member states I still can not figure out. Of course it was inevitable that Britain would go into recession while Poland continues to boom. Much of British manufacturing has relocated here while a massive chunk of the Polish workforce has moved west to work for less money than Brits can afford to because the Poles are living six to a room in Zone 5. And they don't spend their earnings but send it home to further boost the Polish economy.

I have a friend called Agnieszka who courts all the important people and has become expert at receiving money from the European Union. At a recent bash of hers (champagne all round) I got chatting with the ex-minister of sport and other various high-rankers. Agnieszka owns a large university in which she claims to have 8000 students (many of them receiving EU grants) although every time I've visited it's been sparcely populated with endless corridors of empty classrooms. Agnieszka owns several other buildings which she 'rents' to her own university. Crafty. She even has a company which she has set up (renting her offices of course) in order to organise financing from the EU, her university 'pays' this company for it's services. And on it goes. Agnieszka has just bought her daughter a new top-of-the-range BMW for her birthday.

The British taxpayer pays more into the EU than anyone else in Europe. On top of that the British government (unlike it's neighbours) has had an open door policy to all immigrants from Eastern Europe since their accession in 2004. Where is the sense in it?