Frighteningly Close to the Truth

[Tez3]

Good question - I would hope that they have more sense than follow that eejut Salmond whose only interest in Scottish 'independance' is petty power for himself.

I am surprised to find that even Sir Alex Ferguson feels the same way

http://www.scotsman.com/news/alex-salmond-silencing-scots-says-sir-alex-ferguson-1-2694386

That's the thing though we have an awful lot of Scots, Welsh and Irish ( some of the Southern Irish have rights to vote in elections here btw even if they don't live here!) here. There's a lot of Southern Irish who do as well. We have a huge influx of 'white' immigrants from South Africa and Zimbabwe escaping life in those countries. When people talk about immigrants they automatically think poor Asians though these are the immigrants working hardest not to be poor. The greatest numbers of immigrants to here are from Eastern Europe not Asia. As they join the EU they are entitled to come here to work, this is a problem caused by the EU rules.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7737490.stm

"WHO IS COMING TO THE UK?
This is the element that has seen the most dramatic changes since 2004 with the opening of our jobs market to Eastern European nations when they joined the EU.
The largest single group of people who came to the UK were from within the European Union - a net arrival of 128,000. The graph below shows figures for the old "EU15" member states, the eight Eastern nations who joined in 2004 and all current 27 members together"

 

[arnisador]

As I have said on many occasions, immigration and cultural mixing is vital for a countries health - 12% of the population being immigrants, half of whom came here in the past decade, is too many, too fast. Societies take generations to adapt and merge

...assuming them merging into a single culture, near to the original one, is the goal?

 

[Sukerkin]

That would be the outcome I would hope for, yes, Arni. There is a lot to be proud of in what we finally got to achieve in the British culture - we got there with a lot of pain, a lot of mistakes and a lot of cruelty and it would be a shame for it to all slide back down again as it is doing right now.

 

[arnisador]

I follow you, but "for it to all slide back down again" is quite a statement. Surely other cultures can and do bring something to your shores? (Do you people even know what good food tastes like, for example?) Surely British culture has changed before and could again--and evolution need not be regression? Violence is an outcome of culture clash and is not necessarily due to the specific culture with which one is clashing. African-Americans are responsible for disproportionately much violence here but have also made major contributions to modern music, to civil rights (for all), etc. I find your comments slightly xenophobic. It's like you live on an island or something!

 

[Sukerkin]

That's the thing though we have an awful lot of Scots, Welsh and Irish ( some of the Southern Irish have rights to vote in elections here btw even if they don't live here!) here. There's a lot of Southern Irish who do as well. We have a huge influx of 'white' immigrants from South Africa and Zimbabwe escaping life in those countries. When people talk about immigrants they automatically think poor Asians though these are the immigrants working hardest not to be poor. The greatest numbers of immigrants to here are from Eastern Europe not Asia. As they join the EU they are entitled to come here to work, this is a problem caused by the EU rules.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7737490.stm

"WHO IS COMING TO THE UK?
This is the element that has seen the most dramatic changes since 2004 with the opening of our jobs market to Eastern European nations when they joined the EU.
The largest single group of people who came to the UK were from within the European Union - a net arrival of 128,000. The graph below shows figures for the old "EU15" member states, the eight Eastern nations who joined in 2004 and all current 27 members together"

Please shake this idea that I only have a problem with those that settle here that happen to be 'brown'. I am concerned for the long-term welfare of my country and it's culture - migrants who do not want to be British, where-so-ever they come from, are not conducive to cohesion when the numbers get large enough.

Polish migrants from the Second World War or first and second generation migrants from Jamaica, India and Pakistan took a lot of stick and put up with a lot of prejudice but they were about as patriotic for their adopted home as you could wish for. That has changed in recent times sad to say.

 

[Sukerkin]

I find your comments slightly xenophobic. It's like you live on an island or something!

:Gives up: - one of those subjects where it's not possible to posit anything bad about a very real risk. I'll see how things are in sixty years ... oh wait, I'll be dead so it doesn't really matter does it?

 

[Tez3]

As I said though it's not the Asians or West Indians who aren't assimilating, it's Europeans plus the South Africans and Zimbabweans who don't see why they should. They've come here because the EU says Europeans are allowed to and the white Africans come here with quite colonial attitudes and expect the Mother country to be something it's not.
A good many of the European immigrants don't intend to stay permanently, a few years until they have enough money to go back but in the meantime after all if it doesn't work out back home they can always come back.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pol...migrants-claim-benefits-insists-Brussels.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...ing-new-eastern-Europe-immigration-surge.html

"Twenty nine million Bulgarians and Romanians will gain the right to live and work unrestricted in Britain in 2014 under European “freedom of movement” rules.

Last night forecasters said it could lead to a significant number of new arrivals, in the same way as when Poland and other Eastern European countries gained the same rights in 2004, with the scale likely to be increased by the economic crisis gripping the rest of Europe.

And a Government report was disclosed to show concern among official advisers that the British labour market will suffer “adverse effects” as a result.

Both the countries’ citizens currently have restricted rights to come to Britain since they joined the European Union in 2007, but those limits end on 31 December 2013, opening the way for them to move freely.

The restrictions will be lifted at a time when there is increasing political tension over Britain’s relationship with Europe and questions over whether European “freedom of movement” rules have harmed the job prospects of British people. "

 

[arnisador]

I suppose you're more attached to the specifics of your current culture than we are to ours, having always been immigrant-heavy. From here it seems somewhat reactionary. If you're going to allow immigration and free movement between countries, people will come in with their own histories and attachments. Expecting them to align more-or-less fully with what was seems paternalistic. Violence, if that's the issue, should be addressed--but I don't know that "Be more like us" is a very forward-looking approach.

Didn't the EU involve giving up on some of this singularity of national identity?

 

[GrandmasterP]

Aye, gypsies are always fair game.
We'd be stuffed in England without the Poles and other immigrants who do the jobs that aren't worth our own taking as they get more money on state benefits than they would doing work for the minimum wage. Can't blame them for not taking work that would lose them income and make them worse off than they are on benefits; no sense in that at all, but where's the sense in a system that permits this happen in the first place?

 

[Tez3]

Aye, gypsies are always fair game.
We'd be stuffed in England without the Poles and other immigrants who do the jobs that aren't worth our own taking as they get more money on state benefits than they would doing work for the minimum wage. Can't blame them for not taking work that would lose them income and make them worse off than they are on benefits; no sense in that at all, but where's the sense in a system that permits this happen in the first place?

Gypsies, now that a whole new game isn't it. Still they put a lot of money into the wedding industry!

We have traveller lads training MMA with us, no trouble at all. Huge prejudice against them though.

 

[GrandmasterP]

You got that right.
That Big Fat Gypsy Wedding series was a travesty from start to finish, talk about selective editing.
They could have made the same sort of show about Cheshire suburbanites, well maybe not the bare knuckle fighting clip, but you get my drift.

 

[Tez3]

You got that right.
That Big Fat Gypsy Wedding series was a travesty from start to finish, talk about selective editing.
They could have made the same sort of show about Cheshire suburbanites, well maybe not the bare knuckle fighting clip, but you get my drift.

Yup it's all about the editing and they do that with things like immigration as well, they'd have us in a panic thinking the UK is about to be swamped under a tide of brown and running with rivers of blood a la Enoch Powell. The Right and the Far Right have always had a thing about immigration, even one immigrant is too much for them. Same as the crime figures. I'm not saying there isn't problems but maybe they aren't the ones that people want us to think about. The government should be getting us out of the EU stuff and also of paying the £44 million pound a day we are paying into it.

Nothing wrong with a bit of gypsy bareknuckle, my instructor has been known to partake. There's rules and even rounds.

 

[GrandmasterP]

George Osborne v Fred Butcher, bare knuckle.
That I'd pay to see.