David Maddox: The Italian Job

The dispute over foreign workers coming in to work at the Total-owned Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire has been handled with kit-gloves by the media generally in this country. But it has had an altogether different portrayal abroad.

As my wife is Italian, we have Italian satelite TV broadcast to our house and watch the news on RAI (their version of the BBC) most days. Over there the dispute, which of course is about Italian workers coming into Britain, has put the UK as a whole in a very poor light.

It has made the British look like a xenophobic, racist nation, for which even Scotland is not exempt, not least because of the sympathy strike at Longannet. And Gordon Brown's now infamous "British jobs for British workers" line has not exactly done wonders for Britain's image either.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the dispute, the Italians think they have won the contract fair and square and take exception to the fact that their countrymen are forced to live under the protection of armed guards for doing no crime except trying to earn an honest crust for their families.

They also have not been short of examples of Brits working in Italy, not just David Beckham (pictured) at AC Milan, but in jobs that ordinary Italians might realistically think they could do. It is worth noting that in Italy unemployment is running at 6.7 per cent compared to 5.5 per cent in the UK.

Memories here are short. Have we forgotten how angry we in Britain felt when our lorry drivers were attacked by French farmers not so long ago?