Only foreigners need apply ...

I HAVE an uneasy relationship with my neighbourhood in Chiswick. I sneak past the café and avoid the shop, pub and the garden centre. I even dread meeting the manager of the local care home. Over the past year they have all turned me down for jobs and employed a foreigner instead.

I love this city for its multiculturalism but I was interested to hear government minister Phil Woolas proposing a cap on immigration because unemployment is rising, and even more intrigued to hear equality watchdog Trevor Phillips say this week that white people may "find themselves rejected for job after job".

It is generous of him to notice at last what we all know that it is normal for people to give jobs to relations, friends and even their own language group if they can.

When I applied to the café, the Polish manageress told me she had "a pile of CVs this high". Since then she has had a high turnover of staff, all very young Poles. In the shop all the shelf-stackers I have seen have been swarthy young men. I applied for a job there the day after an advert went in the window but the Sri Lankan owner told me he already had two people trying out for the position, both from his homeland.

I'm 50 and I wanted a "small job" to keep me while I was writing a book. Menial jobs have been the staple of writers and artists as well as housewives over time but no more. The only people interested in me were Cats Protection, who asked if I could "socialise kittens". My ideal job but sadly unpaid.

At the care home the boss told me straight: "We only employ people from the Third World, who send the money back to feed their families."

A few days later the Government stated its intention to introduce a points-based system which will favour employing EU residents in some areas from November. But I fear that the culture in London is now against me getting a job.

I recently applied to be a guide at the Museum of London. The application form was peppered with the word "diversity". They even preferred a second language in "Punjabi or Polish". I have some Polish after living there for a year and a history degree (an interest in history wasn't actually mentioned) but I didn't get an interview. When I rang up to ask why, an Asian lad put me through to an Asian woman in HR who couldn't give an answer as her English was so poor. I emailed them to ask whether age or my race went against me. Perhaps it was just as well that as usual I received no reply.