Car Cleaning

I have my car washed about once per week. I say have it washed because I pay for the service while I am shopping in Asda. The charge is £5.00 and it is a very convenient service. One of the team of cleaners in the car park now recognises my car and comes across to offer his services whenever I go to the shop. Many people doing this sort of work are East Europeans - mainly from Poland - and I assumed that he was as well. The last time he cleaned my car I came back before he had quite finished and I started to talk to him. He was not in fact from East Europe. He was from Iran. In our simple way we do tend to think of Iranians as Arabs which is not the case. They are a very diverse nation and only about 3% are actually Arabs. Thus my car cleaner did not look even slightly Arabian.

His car cleaning is not exactly lucrative work. On a good day he can clean 9 or 10 cars - ie £50. But often it is only 7 or 8 cars and if it is raining no-one wants their car cleaned at all. He works seven days per week and pays £400 per month for rent of a one bedroom flat. He takes almost no holiday but next month he is going to Doncaster for a few weeks. He has been here for four years and has been cleaning cars all that time. He owns no car and needs £30.00 per day [net] for his rent, food [and household bits] and cigarettes. It is not a life of excess. He has a girl-friend, Polish, who also cleans cars and they would like to get married. I assume that they live together - which will dramatically improve the rent situation - but, as he rightly points out, they have no money. "Is this better than living in Iran?" I asked him. He told me it was because conditions were more rational and stable. Cleaning cars might not be much but it was continuous work. My car cleaner wants to apply for British citizenship but he seemed to think that would take a few years. He is probably right.

I am no great enthusiast for immigration and I wonder why we need to employ a man from Iran to clean cars when we have more than 2 million people unemployed and collecting job seekers allowance - which is a lot less money than can be earned cleaning cars. But the reality is probably that a man from Iran will come here and work seven days per week to make a living and many of our long-term unemployed will not.

I have to wish my Iranian friend the very best of luck. He works hard and makes a good job of cleaning my car. Compare his efforts with a trader in an investment bank who has to get by on £1,000 per day and who, if he cocks up, will be bailed out by the state so that he can get back to earning his £1,000 per day as soon as possible.

The split between the super-haves and the have-nots is rather wide in this post-Thatcher society.