Posts Tagged ‘immigration

17
Mar
13

We happy few

Terry Thomas

Terry Thomas and Benjamin ZephaniahShopkeepers?

How I Killed Pluto is a book which tells the story of how the planet Pluto was demoted from a planet to a planetoid. The logic seems to have been that since the Kuiper Belt is belt of planetoids and Pluto is part of the Kuiper Belt then Pluto must be an planetoid. – QED.

Only no. Not QED. The book tells how, some years ago astronomers thought that the universe consisted of stars which moved across the heavens together and planets which moved with reference to the background of stars. Planets could also be seen as discs whereas stars could only be made out as points of light.

Then, in 1801, Giuseppe Piazzi discovered Ceres.

I’ll let Wikipedia take up the story from here:

“Ceres was originally considered to be a new planet. This was followed by the discovery of other similar bodies, which, with the equipment of the time, appeared to be points of light, like stars, showing little or no planetary disc, though readily distinguishable from stars due to their apparent motions. This prompted the astronomer Sir William Herschel to propose the term “asteroid”, coined in Greek as ἀστεροειδής asteroeidēs ‘star-like, star-shaped’, from Ancient Greek ἀστήρ astēr ‘star, planet’. In the early second half of the nineteenth century, the terms “asteroid” and “planet” (not always qualified as “minor”) were still used interchangeably.”

Later, some pompous oaf decided that the star like planets were not planets at all – Ooh, no Mrs. how foolish to refer to them as planets when a planet has a discernible disc – The trouble with this argument is that, as telescopes improved it became possible to discern the discs of many objects including stars. So, should Alpha Centauri now be demoted to a planet?

For me, the whole wahala points up the obsession men have with categorising things. The average American supermarket carries 47,000 categories of product. Like an American supermarket, the universe is big and diverse but it is not full of different categories of identical objects. It is not full of things that are either Marmite or asteroids. In nature, at the super-atomic level, objects may be similar but they’re unique – like people.

It’s ridiculous but men get into heated arguments about such stuff. In 1799 a preserved platypus reached England and was regarded as a hoax because it didn’t fit an existing category but the platypus was rummaging around Australia long before men invented the categories of mammal, reptile and bird so the categories had to be amended. Categories, such as planets and mammals and Englishman, are artificial. They’re invented by humanity and imposed on the universe.

Identifying seems important to us especially when it comes to our own identity. Recently I read a definition of Englishman which stated: a man who lives in England. Broadly I agree. I say broadly because setting foot on English soil does not make you English anymore than emigrating strips you of that distinction.

A century ago Englishmen had a similar understanding of identify. An Englishman meant a man from England but, in those days, this overwhelmingly translated to white, Christian, English speaking and superior to everyone else. Today white and Christian is not a true representation of people living in England. As with astronomy and zoology so with cultural identity. We must redefine our definition to include the people who do live in England rather than trying to reject those who do not fit our old definition.

Not fitting the definition

neither a planet nor an asteroid

On Sunday, at an airport, I overheard a tall gentlemen with a turban and that accent that Englishmen develop after spending a long time in America. He raved about the English breakfast but, to me, his tone seemed false which wasn’t helped by his American pronunciation of the word “Tomato”. As with many Anglo/American expats he seemed  keen to prove his Englishness by his choice of breakfast.

Do we possess our identity or is it in the eye of the beholder? In a world of global travel, global brands and online “virtual communities” cultural identity is not as simple as geography. Englishmen of West Indian ancestry are no less English for embracing their cultural heritage but Englishman whose ancestry lies  in England are not bigots for taking pride in their roots.

The term English has different meanings in different contexts. Obviously English can mean a person from England but equally it can relate to cultural ephemera. A penchant for bland food, a style of curries, a certain humor, smugness. politeness. a propensity for getting drunk – Take your pick. This is not a problem and we don’t need politicians or pundits to define Englishness for us. Over time various traits die off, rub off on or are accentuated by new arrivals just as the traits of newer arrivals die off, rub off on or are accentuated by the general population. This should not be controversial. It  is only to state the bleeding obvious.

To insist that Englishness means no more than resident of England is as insulting as asking an Englishman of West Indian heritage to take the “cricket test” and as redundant as trying to fix Englishness to an outdated set of traits. England, like the rest of the world, is a miasma of waxing and waning cultural phenomena or memes. Bollywood, Cricket, Lamb Madras, Punk Rock, Henry VIII, Mini, The Turbine Hall, Mr. Shake Hands Man, The Green Man, Brit Art, Banter, Spag Bol, suet puddings, Morris Men, Fleur-de-lis, Sunday joint, Ping pong, Routemasters, Nah mean, The Angel of the North, Spitfires, Ska, Cool, Pub grub, Hip Hop, the NHS, Football, the weather, Top Gear, The Queen Mother, Coca Cola and Titter Ye Not. All are bubbling away and, thank God, we somehow resist politicians of all stripes who attempt to steal the moral high ground by defining Englishness. Perhaps the best guidance for a definition of Englishness comes from Frank Howard: Please yourselves!

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14
Dec
12

Stoned, Gay or foreign – When it comes to SPIN, politicians don’t discriminate

can't see the truth for the spin

Can’t see the truth for the spin

A funny old week but great for the talking of bollocks in the media. With the economy still in the doldrums it’s clear what the lead stories in the press should be. So what were the three main parties pontificating about? Gay marriage, immigrants speaking English and legalising cannabis.

Tories? Legalising gay marriage? With their reputation? Yes, David Cameron is apparently trying to push through a policy which could almost be perfectly built to wind up his back-benchers but appeal to Labour supporters. Meanwhile Ed Balls has been banging on about how immigrants should learn English and this has to be tailor made to wind up the racism paranoids in the Labour party. Not to be outdone Nick Clegg wants to legalise Cannabis! What in blue blazes is going on? Why are they all meandering off in weird directions? Perhaps they’re all stoned and next week we will see Ed Milliband munching cookies during PMQs?

From the Tory perspective they probably just want to distract attention away from the economy and consider  promoting gay marriage  will soften their image though this may be backfiring as the backbenchers mobilise. Nick Clegg is also engaged in distraction tactics though his party may be more sympathetic to his cause. Ed Milliband comes off worse. He may be trying to toughen up Labour’s reputation on immigration to counter revelations about their open door policies when in power. However it demonstrates fantastic ineptness and c an only aid the Tories in knocking the economy off the front page.

I heard this week of a book entitled Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini which outlines “6 key principles of persuasion”. It’s a marketing book which, I heard, was selected by David Cameron for the Conservative party reading list. This is the key to what they’re up to: SPIN. I’m sure we’re all got opinions on Gay Marriage, Immigration and drugs but, as Bill Clinton quite rightly said, “It’s the economy stupid!”

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30
Nov
11

overcrowded Britain

What passes for a kitchen in Hackney

What passes for a kitchen in Hackney

A front page article in the Financial Times (FT) on the 21st November reported that a bunch of “leading economists” had written a letter to the British Chancellor, George Osbourne, urging him to rethink his plans to curb immigration. Mr. Osbourne is planning to limit economic migrants entering the UK from outside the EU and the economists believe that this would be “deeply damaging to the competitiveness of our science and research sectors and the wider economy”.

The UK had 13 years of New Labour during which immigration was used to provide cheap skilled workers to business mitigating the need to properly educate the indigenous workforce. This is obviously not a sustainable policy and will merely store up trouble for the future as British people sit on their arses and let Johnny Foreigner do all the work.

The restrictions to be brought in are for non-EU citizens so British business would still have the entire population of the EU from which to draw its workers. That means the economists believe that the educated percentage of a total population of around 500 million people is not sufficient for the British economy!

What utter tosh!

If 500 million are not enough then why should we believe that a world of 7 billion people is? Perhaps, if we looked hard, we could find an even dafter set of economists who believe that UK business needs the educated population of 10 Earth size planets.

The truth is that large corporations are driven by the need for profit and this means limiting costs. Land and labour are major costs and so it is most efficient for corporations to build mega office complexes and have the entire planet as a pool of potential employees. It’s even more profitable if the workforce are educated at someone else’s expense.

I’m sure the economists are all clever gentlemen but my experience is that bean counters only count beans. By this I mean they only count that which can be counted. However, some resources cannot be quantified and the top of my list is housing. House prices in London have more than tripled in 14 years and are still way over priced as discussed in an article in The Economist in 26th November.

Since a basic tenet of capitalism is that increased demand and fixed supply drives up the price of an asset. The deliberate importing of people into the UK may support corporate profits but it will also provide upward pressure on housing.

Corporations push the idea that capitalism creates wealth for the population and this can sometimes be true. At the moment, in China, capitalism is helping raise many people out of poverty. But read a book like The People Of The Abyss by Jack London and you realise that, at the height of the British Empire, which was powered by capitalism, the lives of the people living in the east end of London were worse than Australian aboriginals on the other side of the world living as hunter-gatherers.

The People Of The Abys shows capitalism at its rawest, un-tempered by socialism or the fears of socialism. It shows that the welfare of a population is not directly related to the profits of business.

Over the past decade or so, while businesses earned fat profits, ordinary people had to endure costs which did not appear on the balance sheets of any businessmen or politician. Unaffordable housing is just one example but the ordinary worker must also endure standing like tinned sardines on Bakerloo Line trains from London Bridge on a Saturday evening. We must sit in traffic jams. We must stand in rush hour queues, not to get on the train, not to get on the platform, not to get on to the escalator but to get into the bloody station!

All this boils down to supply of land and it is possible to argue that the UK should release more land for building to ease congestion and prices. This would be fine were the UK the size of the United States. It isn’t. Open up Google Earth and have a fly over the UK. Most of the land is either farm land or already built upon. There are very few patches of wilderness. Scotland is more thinly populated  and we could just shrug and decide that we will give over the entire UK to human needs. The UK could become the first concrete country.

In 1951 Isaac Asimov published the first of his Foundation series of Science Fiction novels which portrayed a world known as Trantor which was completely covered in metal. The whole planet had been taken up by humans for homes or factories or offices. Food and raw materials were shipped in from other worlds.

I don’t want to live in a country without wilderness. I do not want to live on Trantor!

The pro-immigration lobby scoff and say that it will be centuries before we even approach a situation resembling the planet Trantor. True but then can they give us an indication of when we are going to stop building?

A couple of hundred years ago England was covered in forest and someone argued that we should chop down just this little bit more wilderness and give it over to some landowner to farm. They probably said “…but England is covered in forest, it will be centuries before it is all chopped down….”. They were right; it did take centuries.

But HELLO! here we are centuries later and the forests are gone.

On the 24 November 2011 the BBC reported that annual net migration to the UK hit a record high in 2010 at 252,000 though the figure may have now fallen to something more like 245,000. Growth is often expressed as a percentage but a more enlightening indicator of growth is “doubling period”. i.e. The time it takes for a population to double in size? The UK’s current population stands at about 62 million. If the current population carried on at replacement level and if the population only grew by the current immigration rate then the population would double in about 255 years.

That’s about nine generations if we take a generation as 28 years. By 2265 the UK would have a population of 124,500,000 and our descendants (that’s the grandchildren of our grandchildren’s grandchildren) will look back and wonder what the hell we thought we were doing.

One by one the trees are cut down. Little by little our forests were destroyed. Little by little forest becomes farm. Little by little farms become houses and offices. Little by little we accept smaller seats on buses and no leg room on trains. Little by little we trade space for gadgets. Little by little we are squeezed into chickens runs and little by little the UK becomes grossly overpopulated.

I’m sure that it’s true that adding 10% more workers to London and letting them live like factory hens would make London’s corporations more profitable. Londoners may even acquire more tablet computers and smart phones. Yet our lives would be worse! Already the definition of a kitchen in a flat in Hackney is a line of cupboards down the side of the living room. Just how many times can they divide up these beautiful old houses into smaller and smaller boxes?

The mistake that these economists make is to become totally business centric. Their analysis stops at the profits of business and they fail to follow the process through to ensure that it benefits the population as a whole.

It is notable that the venerable economists who wrote the letter to Mr. Osbourne uttered not a squeak about the corporate profits which are being filched away overseas to avoid paying tax as was reported in the same edition of the FT. Surely that too is “deeply damaging to the competitiveness of our science and research sectors and the wider economy”.

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05
Aug
10

Million year old baby

Babies are millions of years old

Babies are millions of years old

While in America a few weeks ago I listened to the talk radio stations. Without exception the shows I listened to were hosted by fanatics who condemned their opponents as not only wrong but intentionally evil. On one side the U.S. Government were conniving with BP to enrich themselves while deliberately destroying the environment. Another side blamed the liberals for deliberately lying about climate change in order to destroy the American way and allow other countries to impinge on America sovereignty. The abortion debate is one of the most acrimonious. Fiendish liberals murder babies while tyrannical misogynists seek to inflict back street abortions on young women.

Over the years British politics seems to be becoming similar to that of America. (All this dull witted talk of “progressive politics” is an American import). Listening to LBC radio this morning one guy was claiming that the Tories are a party obsessed with making the rich richer while Labour are portrayed as wanting to destroy industry.

When one tries to argue (as reasonably as one can) against one of the extreme views one is immediately cast as representing the opposite extreme view. When I blogged about the gross incompetence of the New Labour government I was branded as a racist an a fascist. If I complain about the corruption of the corporate world I am branded a communist.

Let me explain something to all extremists: You are all TALKING BOLLOCKS!

Most argument are not straight black and white and most people are capable of understanding that both sides in most debates have valid arguments and that decisions must be taken which attempt to ameliorate the downside of both arguments while accentuating the good. So why do the politicians insist on playing these idiotic games of simplifying arguments to a level that only an imbecile would agree with?

Take the abortion debate for example. One side believes that life begins at conception and that it is always wrong to take life. The other side believes that a woman’s body is her own to do with as she wishes so if she wants an abortion she should have one.

Both are Talking Bollocks!

Firstly it is ridiculous to say that life begins at conception. A sperm is alive and an egg is alive. Life is a continuum. One unappreciated fact about the human race is that we are all one continuous stream of life going back thousands, if not, millions of years. Its amazing! It fantastic! Its a far bigger idea than a man with a beard who did everything and it means that a new born baby is a million years old! – Cool!

Listen to Unbroken Chain by the Grateful Dead which, I’m told, is inspired by this idea.

Secondly yes, a woman’s body is her own to do with as she wishes but at some point one has to realise that she is carrying a child. What are you going to do, allow abortion up to 1 minute before delivery? At this point the accusation is usually this is unfair as I am a man and therefore will never be put in this position. Sorry, I know it’s unfair but it’s  still true.

As I said, these are the two extremes but anyone with any intelligence can see that there is validity in both arguments and this is what I find so annoying: That the bellicose  imbeciles who insist on inflicting their bigoted opinions upon us refuse to even acknowledge the obvious truth in their opponents arguments. Yes life should be treated as sacred but yes a woman should have control of her own body so the law should probably be something like that which we have at the moment: Not “abortion on demand” but limited according to strict criteria.

Immigration is another debate where our politicians behave like hooligans. Yes, the United Kingdom is crowded and our resources are over stretched but no, it’s not true that we should  judge people by their race or religion. (Whatever race is supposed to mean – I thought there was only one race, the human race – I thought that most of your also worshipped the same God so I don’t know why you bicker about minor implementation differences). So when one politicians argues against immigration he is not necessarily a fascists and another argues in favour of immigration they are not necessarily hell bent on destroying British culture. My personal view is that the racists debate has become so stylised and dangerous that prejudice is rampant on both sides of the debate.

One reason I support the current coalition government (so far) is that it is trying to run more heterogeneous politics. It is OK to have opposing views on some issues while agreeing and proceeding on others. In the end every member of the House of Commons is allowed to vote on a bill so if enough MPs (Tory, Liberal or Labour) oppose the bill it wont get through.

What we require from politicians is an end to the mindless demonising of their opponents and reasoned, intelligent debate culminating in a vote where the decision is accepted by all.

Democracy, I think it’s called.

28
Apr
10

Is Gillian Duffy a bigot?

During one of Gordon brown’s pre-election walkabout today a woman was dragged before him so that they could get a bit of footage of Mr. Brown talking to ordinary people. The woman was a 65 year old from Rochdale named Gillian Duffy. During the exchange she said: “You can’t say anything about the immigrants because you saying that you’re ….but all these eastern europeans that are coming in, where are they flocking from?”. Mr. Brown was all smiles and waffle but when he got back in his car he neglected to remove his radio microphone and was overheard saying that Ms. Duffy was a “bigoted woman”.

Wikipedia defines a bigot as follows:

A bigot is a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices.

The correct use of the term requires the elements of obstinacy, irrationality, and animosity toward those of differing devotion.

The origin of the word bigot and bigoterie in English dates back to at least 1598, via Middle French, and started with the sense of “religious hypocrite”. Forms of bigotry may have a related ideology or world views.”

So, is it true that one can be termed a bigot for uttering the words:

“You can’t say anything about the immigrants because you saying that you’re ….but all these eastern europeans that are coming in, where are they flocking from?”

Or was Mr. brown TALKING BOLLOCKS. Perhaps he is a bigot? Certainly, to my mind, he is “a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices”. Perhaps Mr. Brown is prejudice against discussing immigration?

Please vote in the poll below and feel free to leave comments on why you voted as you did.

22
Oct
09

Show courage, trust our ideals, people and democracy – Let Nick Griffin speak

He doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me

He doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me

Tonight the leader of the racist British National Party is to appear on the BBC TV program Question Time. This is a program which has run for many years and involves a group of the great and the good sitting on a panel, currently chaired by David Dimbleby and answering questions from a studio audience.

Having followed Question Time for many years I can attest that the subject to get the British people most riled was not Iraq or the credit crunch but fox hunting.

The news media have been full of controversy regarding whether the leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, should appear on Question time and the response from the majority of political pundits is that he should not.

From what I can gather The British National Party believe in stopping immigration to the UK and “encouraging” (my emphasis) people of non-Celtic or Anglo-Saxon origin to emigrate to where their ancestors came from immediately before they came to the UK. I hear that their manifesto specifically prohibits people not of these “races” from joining the party.

I’ll state my position clearly up front. I believe that there is only one race of people, the human race. Individuals should not be picked off because of their supposed membership of some fictional race or indeed because of their religion or sexual orientation. I’m a bog standard ant-racist.

Having said that I am against further immigration to The United Kingdom for a couple of reasons: Firstly it’s too bloody crowded here already – Just look up the population density stats for the UK and compare them against other countries.

Secondly I believe that Tory and New Labour politicians in collusion with the controllers of large capitalist corporations are using immigration for cheap labour which, while it may make Gordon Brown’s spreadsheet glow with tax from profits, degrades the living environment of each individual in The United Kingdom. Bigger airports, more buildings, greater living density; all this contributes to making The UK a worse place to live.

By now, any of the people who regularly boast about their anti-racism will be condemning me as a closet racist.

But to the subject in hand. Should Nick Griffin be allowed to speak on Question Time?

I’m a liberal and I believe that free speech is fundamental to a free society and therefore I believe that anyone should be allowed to speak on Question Time. Over the past few days I have watched and listen as Mr. Griffin has appeared on many news programs alongside “regular” politicians to try to make his point. From memory, without exception, the regular politicians and interviewers have shouted him down and shouted abuse at him. These are the people who are supposed to represent the main stream of our free society.

It is easy to believe in freedom of speech when everyone is saying things that your either agree with or do not see as threatening but then we need no laws to allow this. The point of freedom of speech in a democracy is that you allow people to speak who hold opinions with which you strongly disagree and so Mr. Griffin is the test of our tradition of free speech. If we shut him down merely because we hate what he says then we are no better than the racists dictatorial regimes from the past.

Ken Livingstone was on BBC Radio 4 this morning arguing that Mr. Griffin should not be allowed on Question Time firstly because there is a court case which may find against the BNP and secondly because Mr. Livingstone claims that each time Mr. Griffin appears on TV there is a rise in racist violence.

Firstly nobody, including Mr. Griffin, is guilty until they are found guilty and secondly if we prevented all speech (other than incitement to violence) which might lead random individuals to commit violence then we would do better starting with football matches and New Labour Prime Ministers.

The interviewer asked Mr. Livingstone to explain how his view accorded with his views on Jerry Adams being allowed to speak when the last Conservative government had a ban on him appearing on TV. Without a qualm, Mr. Livingstone then amended his rule about banning anyone who may cause an increase in violence and instated a clause allowing them to speak if this would assist in helping the Northern Ireland peace process.

This off the cuff invention of rules was most instructive as it revealed the unprincipled and fascistic tendency of many Labour politicians. They like to draw up rules which people must adhere to even though the rules have not been passed into law but when they want to contravene their own rules they will change them in a moment.

Having said that freedom of speech should be available top everyone this is not the same as saying that every lunatic should be given space on Question Time. The BBC claim that they give space to all UK political parties who have elected representatives and site the Greens and Plaid Cymru. This seems like a reasonable policy.

The British National Party have two European MPs and therefore the support of a small percentage of the UK population. In a democracy their voice should be heard and I think the question time audience are educated enough to see through Mr. Griffin’s fallacious views on race and dismiss them as they deserve.

Did you see what I did there?

I used the standard attack the messenger tactic beloved of the Tories. I refrained from speaking against the idea while denigrating the messenger. I encouraged everyone to feel very pompously that we are all much more intelligent than Mr. Griffin and need not stop him from talking because of that. I was TALKING BOLLOCKS. I have seen no evidence that Mr. Griffin is any stupider than the bunch of incompetents who currently control number 10. His intelligence is not the point, his policies are.

To be fair there is an argument for why we should deny certain individuals from promulgating their views even when they have broken no laws and are not inciting violence. BBC Radio 4 carried a report this morning with a university boffin who had tracked the rise of the French right wing. He claimed that this gained considerable support after it’s leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, appeared on television.

And here we come to the nub of the matter. How strongly do we believe in freedom of speech and democracy? It could be argued that M. Le Pen appearing on television and the consequent rise in support was a natural part of the democratic process. However unedifying the conclusion is that a proportion of the electorate are racists – and they are, we know this.

So the question is: do we argue against racism; do we allow freedom of speech and democracy to work, or do we shut down the BNP and betray our principles?

I tend to feel that the majority of supporters of parties like the BNP are not all out fascists or even racists. They are people who have the shitty end of the stick and whose concerns have not been addressed by the main parties. I believe that the mistake of most supposed anti-racists is to release their own pent up venom on these people rather than trying to understand their perspective. By ignoring their issues and condemning them all as fascists we merely alienate them from conventional politics. You don’t have to be a fascist to be a racist. The soviets were institutionally ant-Semitic yet are rarely condemned as fascists.

There is a subtext in banning Mr. Griffin which is the idea that other people are not quite as sharp as us and might actually believe him and this subtext is condescending to the general population.

We should show courage and trust our ideals and people. We should trust freedom and trust democracy. Let Nick Griffin speak. The case against racism is obvious and his arguments are not difficult to refute.

If Mr. Griffin has any legitimate concerns then let him air them and keep the regular politicians on their toes.

Sadly, though I have faith in people I have very little faith in politicians of all hues and I doubt that many “regular” politicians will contain their hypocritical self riotousness long enough to espouse many coherent arguments. But that’s nothing new.

Tonight I fully expect all the regular politicians to talk absolute bollocks in a desperate effort to distance themselves from the BNP and I expect that a lone member of the audience will get out of hand and need to be removed by officials.

I shall be watching because I expect a bloody good bun fight that, if we’re lucky, will be more fun than the fox hunting debate.

 

Read Review of the program in The Independent

26
Apr
08

Is The UK a “country of immigration”?

World population density map

Population density per square kilometre – Source: Wikipedia

It’s fashionable for British politicians to side with the argument that immigration to The UK should be on some kind of points system according to the potential immigrant’s skills. Along with this usually goes the argument that Britain is a “country of immigration”. I heard this argument just today on The Week in Westminster on BBC Radio 4.

A country of immigration. What does that mean? Well, let’s consider what other countries are COIs. There’s The United States of course and Australia. I’m not aware of any other country that deems itself a country of immigration.

I don’t expect the native Americans or Australian aboriginals consider their land a country of immigration but as modern countries both The USA and Australia were both initially Anglos Saxon so that is one thing that they have in common with the UK. All three countries are democracies and all have English as the predominant language.

However, I’d argue that what makes Australia and The USA countries of immigration is their low population density. In short they have loads of space. The USA has 25 to 49 people per square kilometre and Australia only 0 to 9 people per square kilometre. By contrast, the UK has 150 to 299. Figures according to Wikipedia.

The house prices in the UK are astronomical, the traffic is heading toward gridlock, getting a seat on a train is a miracle. The UK is full yet Keith Vaz, MP thinks that The UK is a Country of Immigration so none of this matters. He is of course…….

TALKING BOLLOCKS!

All countries accept some degree of immigration and immigration has made a huge and positive contribution to The UK but The UK has no special designation as a Country of Immigration. The term is put about by the pro-immigration lobby to somehow establish immigration as an ongoing part of British culture.

Let me make it clear that I have no preference which races or religions do not come to The UK. We should accept asylum seekers and EU citizens of course but the idea of opening up The UK to immigration by ability is merely part of New Labour’s project to turn a sovereign country into the first corporate state. It may increases GDP and make Gordon Brown’s spreadsheet look good but individually, black, white, Christian, Moslem or atheist, we all lose out to overcrowding.

My little poll seems to be slighlty weighted one way but almost even.

If you voted in the poll please also leave a comment and explain why you hold your opinion.

01
Mar
08

Immigration restriction based on skills should be regarded equally skeptically as restrictions according to race.

Grey DayGrey DayThe acceptable argument for immigration seems to be that immigrants should only be allowed into the UK if our economy requires their skills.Grey Day

Immigration restriction based on skills should be regarded equally sceptically as restrictions according to race.

Restrictions based on skills assume that The UK is no more than a large company importing skills and exporting goods and services. This triumph of unrestricted capitalism objectifies us all and values nothing but profit.

I have several friends who lose out to new immigrants when looking for work due to their age.

Capital and labour markets are now global but laws to protect workers and provide basic healthcare operate only at national level. This is why our governments constantly snip away at pensions and healthcare to reduce the UK government’s operational expenditure to that of our “competitors”.

While this keeps industry in the UK and value on Gordon Brown’s spreadsheet it gradually erodes our standards to those of undemocratic dictatorships like China.Grey DayGrey Day




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