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Immigration minister - a very sinister fellow
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
Says the Beeb: "Immigration Minister Phil Woolas has accused the Office for National Statistics of 'playing politics' with population figures. He said he was 'appalled' at the release of figures showing one in nine British residents was born abroad. In a letter, Mr Woolas describes the decision to release the data as 'at best naive or, at worst, sinister'. Tories have accused the government of 'bullying' the ONS and trying to 'suppress' embarrassing information."
Phil Woolas, you are a devious cocktrumpet. What right do you have to tell us that we have no right to read this information? If one in nine British residents is born outside the country, we're entitled to know that. Why should such information be suppressed - because it reveals how much immigration has really happened in the UK? I wonder why he doesn't want us to know about it - is Woolas scared there will be more protests about his boss' dog-whistle call for "British jobs for British workers"? I do wonder...
Over to you...
Phil Woolas, you are a devious cocktrumpet. What right do you have to tell us that we have no right to read this information? If one in nine British residents is born outside the country, we're entitled to know that. Why should such information be suppressed - because it reveals how much immigration has really happened in the UK? I wonder why he doesn't want us to know about it - is Woolas scared there will be more protests about his boss' dog-whistle call for "British jobs for British workers"? I do wonder...
Over to you...
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
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Comments
I think it does matter.
You can't apply the policies and norms of yesteryear to today as the situation our country is in is so radically different. Policies must be applied to suit the needs of the moment and not to preserve historical continuation.
Hell, three of my four grandparents were immigrants who came over from Ireland to work in the war effort as there was a mass labour shortage. However, the same cannot be true today, thus saying that everyone is from immigrant stock one way or another and so we should just let everyone in is a rather stupid argument as the situation today is completely different to that of when some / most of us' ancestors came here.
If every other country out there suddenly had a problem with the number of foreigners living in their country, nearly 6 million Britons who currently live abroad would have to come back to Britain.
It's the way things go. And in fact, I bet my hairy arse that Britain have far fewer proportion of them than many other countries.
Yup - Migration has to be managed, because it is of such potentially rich benefit to the country, not neccesarily because of fears of being swamped.
Under globalisation, the flow of human and economic capital speeds up and becomes more complex, harder to control and pervasive. Previous waves of post-colonial migration took place in completely different geo-political circumstances - there is also the consideration that (with the Irish and South Asian diaspora) a large part of their settlement in the UK was due to UK government policy 'shutting the door' and forcing them to choose to leave early or stay, where alot of evidence suggests many pioneer migrants from both generations only intended to be short term economic migrants, akin to the recent Eastern european groups.
So are you agreeing that the present policy is not effective? Not being sarcy, just not sure where you're coming from.
The way to strip the poisonous layer of racism and nationalism from the debate is to think of things in terms of human needs and capacities - how many people can be provided for in a certain area, to what level, and is to what degree are these arrangements equitable?
Present policy is reactionary - successive governments were too slow to grasp Britain's place as a major reception area for migrants for three key reasons;
1) Globalisation
2) It's status as a post-colonial power, and how this enduring relationship will change its face through relations with its former colonies
3) The relationship between economy and language - a good standard of pay and living plus access to the English language, which itself broadens global job market prospects
The problem, I would argue, is not that there are too many migrants 'taking our jobs' but quite the reverse - because of a dithering between BNP-baiting tough-talk and sloth, we've not adequately managed the transition of migrant groups into British society (rather, we've put people in camps or ignored them).
I think examples from the Somali community provide some good examples - here you have groups who've developed something of a popular reputation for having elements capable of wanton lawlessness and horrendous violence for trivial reasons.
Had this been managed properly, we'd (in my view) have looked more closely at the mental and physical health of people coming from that part of the world, looked at their needs more carefully and perhaps tried to mediate some of the damage that years of war have wrought... and that's not a stereotype - I spoke to school teacher recently whose pupil was glad because he was eating every two days now, as opposed to three.
I'm not a demographer, but if there are too many people beyond what can be supported coming to Britain then this needs to be managed, and in partnership with other EU member states. But we need to do a lot better with those we do let in as well, in my view.
Before that, I think we need to acknowledge that there is a massive difference between being racist / xenophobic and arguing for putting the interests of British people (from whatever extraction they come) first. Sadly, trying to initiate any debate on those lines seem to either be met with sympathy from people who you wouldn't perhaps want sympathy from (e.g. the BNP) or you're met with allegations of being a racist bigot. This is the first bar to the issue.
Especially given the current climate when people are losing their jobs (not in favour of migrants), the Government needs put the interests of the people whom it swore to serve first and those of non-nationals second.
But not everyone wants to integrate into British society. You can't help people unless they want to be helped. Just like this absolutely absurd talk of adapting parts of English law to suit the Sharia system, this can go too far where you end up discriminating against the majority to appease the minority.
The EU is a noble idea in theory but a shambolic one in practice. This was always going to happen when you set up an economic union that allows free trade whose member states have such a broad spectrum of economic performance. People will always flock to the more prosperous countries.
What I do have an issue with is a government minister telling me that I have no right to know that 1 in 9 Brits were born abroad.
it's kind of a non point really
being born overseas doesnt stop someone being british in my eyes
Only 1-in-4 people who live in London were born in this country, and in the main we seem to get on alright.
Its not where people were born its how they behave, and that is largely to do with the conditions we put them in.
And can you blame it? 12 years of Labour-brand socialism has created the cushiest welfare state in the world, an immigration policy that grants sanctuary to both domestic and foreign terrorists and sets them up with a council house and trail of benefits to boot, thousands of new laws allowing even councils to snoop on the contents of your bins, two costly and unnecessary foreign wars, a chancellor and now PM who has been raiding the pension funds like there's no tomorrow, ensuring people who have worked hard and paid taxes all their lives are now far worse off than people who hijack a plane and land it in Britain, MPs who appear above reproach for fraud and perjury, the crappiest transport system in Western Europe, the highest teen pregnancy and drug abuse figures in Europe, falling literacy... the list goes on.
Given this small extract from the Encyclopaedia of Labour incompetence, I for one am not at all surprised that the right (not just the Tories) are gaining a lot of ground very quickly.
In reference to the wars I'm right with you. But do you really think our benefits system is all that generous? Most of the EU give out more benefits than we do, and compared to Norway or Sweden we are miserly gits.
And aside from all that Labour arent anywhere near socialist, if they are anywhere near the left its because they are Third Way, but in terms of criminal justice they are most definitely right wing.
New Labour basically takes the worst elements of socialism (victimhood culture, the benefits culture, obsession with controlling every element of people's lives, using other people's money in order to create a voter base for themselves) and conservatism (excessive greed, the "I'm all right Jack" attitudes, desperation to appear "tough" on things like crime and terrorism) to make something even more putrid. People have been blind to Zanu Labour's faults for a long time - exactly the same can be said of most of the media. Presumably this is because New Labour were, in the words of one Peter "Green Custard" Mandelson, "intensely relaxed about the prospect of people getting filthy rich". Whilst people had a decent job, a nice house, financial security and the like, they couldn't care less about the fact the people running the country were a shower of shit.
It all started to fall apart when Labour replaced Tony Blair - a gifted politician with a considerable instinct for knowing the public mood - with Gordon Brown, a socially autistic, mentally unhinged man who's constantly making himself look like an utter twat. The recession simply exacerbated it. Gordon Brown is a man who has got plenty to say about the recession he helped create, and absolutely nothing to say about any other big issues of the day. When Labour were having a leadership crisis in summer 2008, Brown could have responded with new ideas to excite the party faithful, to persuade them that they'd chosen the right man to lead them. Instead, Macavity retreated into his bunker, trotting out meaningless messages such as "I am getting on with the job" like a robot. You're not fooling anybody, Gordon.
People want someone to blame for their problems, and first port of call is the Government. New Labour, who desperately want to stay in power at all costs, want to deflect blame from them - hence why we've had a hate campaign from the Government recently towards Sir Fred Goodwin, an effort that bears disturbing similarities to the smear campaign against Dr David Kelly in 2004. This is a government which condemns xenophobia yet is perfectly willing to resort to that when it's convenient for them. This is why they constantly leak anti-immigration stories to papers like The Sun - it makes the government look bad in one way, but it also helps deflect the blame for our problems. And, of course, the downright nasty Daily Express can always be trusted to run the occasional scare story on its front page - "British Muslims rubbish our culture" was one they ran recently.