Gary Lineker

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I think it’s not easy to integrate successfully, but on the whole I disagree that it’s a pipe dream. 5000 years ago our ancestors entered the uk and mingled with the neolithic inhabitants. Then maybe a couple of thousand years later the celts swept in and mingled to become our ancestors. 1000 years after that, the Romans came and some of those mingled to become our ancestors. 500 years later the Angles and Saxons arrived, and further intermingled to become our most important ancestors. A couple of hundred years later the Vikings came and some of them intermingled over the course of a few hundred years. Then we had the Normans, who were originally Vikings, but they also came and intermingled, though mainly amongst the aristocracy.

Then immigration perhaps slowed for a time, but didn’t completely disappear - we had Dutch settlers coming to East Anglia and they settled and intermingled (giving us gables and canaries). It reared its head in ugly ways in the 16th and 17th Centuries when there was forced immigration in the form of slavery, they intermingled. We have had further waves of Jewish immigration when we stopped banning them from the country. Occasionally we had religious immigrants such as Huguenots fleeing persecution. In the 20th Century we have had even more variety of immigration - Eastern Europeans in the early 1900s, Irish throughout, Caribbean immigrants are well known from the 60s and 70s. All of these immigrants have come in and settled, and intermingled successfully. We are a nation of immigrants.

But if anything, for me, your post and it’s careful arguments prove why the comments made by our Government were wrong. They were offensive, short-hand, mindless dog whistles. That’s what makes Lineker completely right.

And I know that because you, Dunc, are perfectly capable of putting together a full length argument against immigration or against the idea that successful integration is achievable. And that’s fine, that’s your opinion and it’s not you emulating the Nazis, it’s you making a careful, thought-through decision. I might disagree, but that’s just my opposing opinion - what it just demonstrates is how pathetic the Government have been in putting forward any legitimate argument.

And that’s because they don’t believe this stuff. They don’t agree with you. They have just realised it’s easier to beat the drum and make loud and offensive pronouncements because it distracts from their other failures. And frankly to my mind all they do is devalue your valid concerns, by co-opting those concerns, oversimplifying them and then manipulating them for their own selfish ends.
5000 years ago to the 1960s my friend not now


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Just watched BBC FA Cup coverage.
Jug ears is back, and sounds like he is dieing.
What's he doing at work. Stay at home and not spread your germs
 
Simple, despite all rhetoric to the contrary, there is no political will to do it.
To what extent does the Australian policy have the approval of the Australian people? Is there a concensus in favour of it? Are a majority in favour? Are a large majority in favour? Is there a significant opposition to it?
 
To what extent does the Australian policy have the approval of the Australian people? Is there a concensus in favour of it? Are a majority in favour? Are a large majority in favour? Is there a significant opposition to it?

I would say that the vast majority are for the current immigration policy, though as expected there are a few exceptions as you would imagine on the more left wing end of the spectrum, but the two main parties are pretty much aligned now on the policies.

Where there is difference and contention is that some feel that the Coalition should not have dropped the numbers of people Australia agreed to take via international agreement. Labor reverted to the previous number, but might raise it a bit over the next term, people are generally fine with it. The other major bone of contention is the processing facilities off-shore in places like Nauru. The facilities are good, but long periods of isolation on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere, probably not good for your mental health. However the policy has done what was intended in so far as boats have mostly stopped down to a handful a year which those in favour of the policy show as a success. The general public and government want people to apply via official channels not chance their arm on some 50 year old boat (the traffickers were deliberately using old boats so they would sink and the navy tow them to the mainland).

Occasionally there is a case where someone was on a visa for 10 years and for whatever reason they have to return to their country and then there can be a campaign for the government to grant an exemption, however this might be a couple of cases a year. There was an English lady early this year and a Sir Lankan family late last year who the communities themselves appealed on their behalf to grant them leave to stay in the country.
 
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Thanks for that Zog. I don't think there is any lack of political will on the UK government's part. The problem is that, unlike what you have in Australia, there is no broad consensus here across the mainstream political parties.
 
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