For while there can be no doubt that many Poles are going, they are not taking everything with them. A little Polish attitude, for one thing, will endure.

"Culture is a thing that always stays behind," says Joerg Tittel from the Polish Cultural Institute. "Polish culture means hard work. Also, family and personal relationships are very important. It's a far less cynical society than here. We [Poles] are importing old-school notions that history has proven work rather well."

Indeed, one can argue that Poles have brought with them something far more important than just a way with the towel-rail: a no-nonsense ethic that mines a deep nostalgia in Britain for an age of hard-working, Hovis-delivering simplicity. In an age of financial products so complex that even the bankers don't understand them, that outlook is sure to grow more popular still.

"The Polish influx was like importing our parents' generation into today's UK," says Paul Statham, professor of sociology at Bristol University. "It has been about values - a mass arrival of people with traditional values that have been eroded here."

Allied with "a Catholic way of viewing the world, with family and community values at its centre", Prof Statham argues that Poles have effected a "basic cultural trend".

"Simple things like being treated politely in bars and restaurants had all but disappeared before Poles arrived in large numbers to work here. Now that has changed and will remain changed. Britain is changing itself."

So farewell, fair Poles. Thank you for the economy (while we still had one) and the healthcare, and the farmwork. But most of all, thank you for a reminder of the good old days.

thanks for reminding us what human relations felt like before we contracted.... (timpani rolls).... the dreaded....ANGLO disease....

~Government budget deficits are not nearly as dangerous as the deficits we have created in vital and complex natural systems.~ Naomi Klein.