Sorry, OLM - It's Too Important

I'm sure ISIS are smart enough to be using the current crisis to try and bring terror cells into the west. These are people that are currently fighting there. They are not fleeing, merely using the confusion of the crisis and the exodus as a tool to ease the process.

 

All I know is that if I was currently living in Syria/Iraq, I'd be running away too.

 

I am all for helping people in distress, but you are spot on. Make no mistake, Syria, Libya and sub-Saharan Africa are awful places. There really is persecution going on there and nobody can blame people for fleeing. But they reach safety long before they arrive in northwest Europe, and that makes them migrants as well as refugees.

With the world's population set to reach 11 billion later this century, this is only the beginning.

 

This picture sums it up for me, I find it astonishing how many people feel they're entitled to a better life because they were lucky enough to be born on one side of an imaginary line.

Fact is, the majority of us on here hit the genetic jackpot being born as white males in the UK, we'll never, ever have to suffer the hardship these people are going through or even know what it feels like.

"Britain can't cope" just won't cut it when it's blatantly obvious we can and should be doing more.

 

Don't worry assume everyone is as thick and ill informed as you, Mr Hat.
Some of us studied, or to be more accurate endured, Latin at school. Some of us have also read some books since we left school.
Having studied Latin some of us know where the word trivia comes from. You can google it and pretend you knew.

 

The biggest lesson learnt is that we have failed to differentiate between genuine asylum seekers/refugees(whole families) and bogus asylum seekers/economic migrants(young males only) for too long. Seperate rules need to apply and only then can we react to genuine humanitarian crisis effectively.

 

Maybe some people should learn there is a difference between a refuge, an asylum seeker, migrants,illegal immigrants and economic migrants. Some deserve and should receive our help others don't and shouldn't.

 

Absolutely bang on the money!

 

Latin hasn't been taught in schools for decades, I guess that makes anyone born in the last 30 or so years "thick and ill informed" by your ridiculous logic.

Even so, you still googled it and you know it.

 

No I didn't. Don't assume everyone is as lacking in general knowledge as yourself.

 

Even though I like to see England's football and Rugby teams do well I find high levels of nationalism quite disturbing. The "keep Britain British" brigade just promote the idea that because somebody is born on one piece of rock rather than another that they have the right to a better quality of life. The idea of borders and separate countries is quite a strange one when you think about it, and I don't see why I have any more right to live in this particular place than anyone else does, particularly when we in the West have contributed hugely to the destabilisation of the country they called their home.

 

People migrating around the globe is not the issue. The problem in the modern world is that transit is somewhat rapid.

Think of it as a game of youth football. There's no shape and everyone just runs after the ball. If you imagine 1bn people being content with their birthplace and 6bn chasing the highest wages or quality of life index then that country is going to turn to **** quite quickly. Once it does, most of those people will rush off to the next country on the list and repeat the process. Eventually the whole world is fecked.

Slow migration and integration is not necessarily a bad thing. Fast migration, ghettoisation and demands to changes in current laws means you will quickly turn a country into the state of the country they are running away from.

You are right that you can't choose where you are born (or even if you are born) but tolerance is a two way street. The ridiculous PC culture that exists today means that some hard topics are decried as "racist" or taboo. If you or I went to Calais and pulled apart some fences and attacked some coppers, we'd be banged up.

 

Nationalism is disgusting. It sets one group of people above another, and before you know it it becomes north - south divide, and then urban against rural, and then it's "piss off and play in your own street".

But I just want to say that we Brits can easily be on the receiving end of racism when we are abroad. I have felt it in Sri Lanka, and dare I say, here in Denmark where I have lived for donkey's years. It isn't just us who can be nasty to foreigners. I wonder what treatment an Irishman fleeing from sectarian persecution would get in Sudan or Afghanistan? My guess is they'd call him an infidel and tell him to sod off back to the nearest safe country to Ulster.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_and_population_of_European_countries

this is worth a look - shows all European countries by density of population - the UK is almost at the top, followed by Germany - so when people claim that we should do our bit, you should note where countries like France are and that they have less than half the population density that we do - fair is fair and once they reach safety, ie Turkey then they should apply through the proper channels rather than pay criminals to get them here illegally - sense of perspective needed

 

To be honest politicians are too lilly-livered to do anything with a hot potato like this. They want others to apply the pressure so they can use them as a disclaimer if opinion changes later on.

 

My daughter was doing Latin (compulsory) 4 years ago.

 

Wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a world where everyone was united, no imaginary boundaries, no wars, no killing, where everyone was free to go where they like or live as they please, where everyone was tolerated and each corner of the globe could offer a healthy, prosperous life.

 

Guide her well. She is one of a very select few on this planet with intelligence. She is the future of the world.

 

I'd add to our lottery win by adding, "at this point in time". In the UK, we must be in one of the safest periods of our history.

For what it's worth my view is that we prioritise. The primary need is to help vulnerable people that are in immediate risk of harm. After that, it needs focus on the root cause of the situation(s). Instead of supporting people here, I would argue we use the funding to make their original home more attractive, and try to address the imbalance in the quality of life between the regions. If people still choose to come to this damp soggy island, then the support should mean they should arrive better equipped to contribute.

That can only really happen with support from the international community.

One thing is for sure, we can't just turn our backs and deny responsibility.