This is exactly the problem. Loads of people who are probably statistically in the bottom half of earners identify themselves as wealthy. I used to meet them all the time when I ran a garage. They would turn up and want a fancy car, usually a German prestige model or a 4x4. They would ask what the minimum deposit was and when you had to do the financial due diligence for the HP they were clearly mortgaged up to the eyeballs too. Loads of them had tiny amounts of equity and had withdrawn extra mortgage to fund a Champagne lifestyle on Vin de Table incomes. They would proudly tell you that they were Tories. On the allegation of my Islamophobia. well yes I do think Islam is a bad thing. But then I think all religion is a bad idea. It's just that Islam is particularly aggressive. You don't get Quakers putting fatwas on people do you? This woman on R2 the other week was asked about Salman Rusdie. She claimed to be a moderate but when asked to condemn the person who called for the fatwa she refused. Could you imagine a politician when asked about say the Brighton Bomb saying "Well yes it's not good ,but Paddy McGee must have had his reasons"?
Hi JK, I may have got the wrong end of the stick here and if so i am going to get my apology in first. I thought you were accusing me of Sexism and homophobia in relation to my joshing of Fleet's avatar. My comments were not meant nastily to the asylum seekers, it is a problem that is unimaginable in its sadness, my suggestion of building better homes for them in their lands was a serious one, particularly in context of using some of the aid budget that suely neither India or China actually need now. I hope this goes some way to qualifying my earlier remarks.
The problem is that immigration isn't the only problem. It gets held up as this major issue, which in some ways it is, but it's never put into the bigger context. One of the main issues is them getting jobs ahead of British people. But this is often because they are willing to work any hour for pretty much any pay because they'll be earning so much more than in their native countries. This means that employers (not all of course, but a lot and I'd suggest a majority) can pay far less for their work. English people can't live on those wages as prices in this country are pretty high. You just have to look at the NHS! There's a lot of foreign people working there because the pay is pretty terrible for what is a very demanding job. I have to say I agree with Thurnby's point about improving conditions in the places these immigrant are coming from. If you don't want immigration then help build houses, hospitals and schools in these 3rd work countries! Rather than just bombing these places and then erecting a load of McDonald's and trying to flog them coke. This approach brought about events like 9/11 and fuels groups like ISIS. If you improve their conditions and their education, these people won't resent you! It might well stamp out extremism.
Who would have thunk it ?. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...demands-4bn-EU-prevent-immigration-Libya.html
While I agree with most of what you say Colk, how is it then that those from abroad CAN afford to live and work here? Could it be that their wages are topped up with benefits (probably), or do they cut their cloth accordingly ? And how is it we here stories of Eastern Europeans sending money back 'home' to their families? And FFS don't get me started on them making benefit claims for their families back home
No worries, Thurnby. My comments regarding your assessment of Fleet's avatar are largely in jest, as I'm sure you've now realised. I don't think an apology was required on your part, but I appreciate it anyway. As for our contributions to international aid, your point is an interesting one. Not one that I would necessarily entirely agree with mind you, but still. A conversation for another day maybe.
A large part of it is that they will live 10 deep in what we would deem undesirable conditions, this allows them to work for less, this in turn does contribute to erosion of wages, resources and living standards in general. Only those who can take advantage of this cheaper labour market tend to benefit. This clearly doesn't apply in all cases but is common enough to cause social and economic problems Bah!
I obviously couldn't say for sure, but I imagine most don't need a lot to live on. And the sending money back is the reason they do it. I have no doubt some immigrants are abusing our system but so are many more British people. I really do think our welfare needs a reform but the Tories are the wrong people to do it. Here's a thought. Why not have labour be in charge of everything welfare and the Tories be in charge of the economy? Or better yet, independent people with specific skills, who can in no way benefit from their position, over see government. These are all outlandish ideas, im fully aware. Just throwing thoughts around.
Reading the past few pages I think that there has been some conflation of immigrant and illegal immigrant. The guys in Calais are the latter and have no right to come to the UK unless they are genuine asylum seekers. The vast, vast majority of our immigrants are people coming in legally either by virtue of being an EU citizen or come over here with specialist skills on a work permit. These are the people who are currently staffing our hospitals and care homes and taking the jobs that UK nationals deem to be beneath them. Surely I can't be the only poster on here to have Spanish, Polish or Portuguese friends or colleagues who have come over to the UK and wanted nothing more than to work and bring up a family in the UK? I don't pretend to know the stats about asylum seekers but the few thousand sitting in Calais will make not a jot of a difference to our overall population. Frankly the French could solve the problem simply by offering them all citizenship and then they could disperse and settle wherever they chose in Europe. Tongue somewhat in cheek here! As for the fear of Islamic radicals coming in illegally via Calais I reckon that the sort of people and organisations we need to be really scared about probably have the resources to get their people over the channel in a small boat with virtually no chance of being caught if that is their wish. The poor sods who have trekked across Africa, crossed the Med and got their way through Italy and France are going to an awful lot of effort if their only plan is to come here and cause havoc and either die or spend the rest of their lives in prison. As for a Sousse like incident the one advantage we have over here is the lack of readily available AK47's. It's not quite so easy as walking ordnance across an unguarded desert border. I do not have the answer for as long as there is such a glaring disparity in wealth between parts of the globe people will be tempted to move from one to the other in search of a better life. Throw in a couple of regional wars with some crazy bastards who appear to want to return the region to the middle ages gaining territory them I can totally appreciate why people would wish to flee the area. Surely most Islamic radicals who want to live in a Caliphate would prefer to erm... live in IS territory where they can live out their fantasy rather than come here and for some reason not be allowed to behead people or stone them to death if throwing them off a tall building fails (which I believe is their answer to the "problem" of homosexuality). If we are concerned with the population density in the UK (and let's be honest specifically England as Scotland, Wales and NI are not very densely populated (ironically due to large amounts of their populations becoming economic migrants to the South-East of England)) then the only real solution is to make the gain from coming here so small as to not be worth the efforts involved. This can be done either with carrot - improve conditions locally by getting rid of IS and generally sorting out the Middle East (piece of cake I know) or the stick by making life worse here for people than there by us going back to the 14th century as well. I honestly don't see the second option happening so maybe the politicians and the Daily Mail may want to concentrate on solving the problem rather than scaring the weak minded with stories about how all immigrants are illegal and that almost all of them terrorists and they are costing the country billions of pounds and that they also like to eat babies.
A good and reasonably diplomatic post, NBhoy, and I agree with most of it. However, I'd like to address the initial point you make here: I'm not sure if you were making a specific point here or just mentioning their 'status' as another factor to consider. I will however, ask this: How many of those in Calais can seriously be in any sort of position to apply for, and go through the administrative rigmarole of, formal asylum? I'm actually relatively pro-bureaucracy by the way, I just empathise with the people in Calais in terms of their inability to jump through the correct hoops. I'm willing to bet that a great deal of them have no feasible way of adhering to the bureaucratic process.
I'm not an immigration lawyer, but from what I've heard the majority have some sort of grounds for asylum. The problem is that many of them think that it is "easier" to qualify for asylum in the UK than in France. Ironically, that is because of scare stories coming from the likes of the Daily Mail! The reality is that it is significantly harder to qualify for asylum in the UK than other parts of Europe and most of them would be better off claiming asylum elsewhere Very definition of the DM hoisting itself by its own petard...
I think that you need to differentiate between people who are immigrants and legally here who the Daily Mail etc seem to want to hound out and those people in Calais who are trying to get in illegally as they are economic migrants without the right to come here. The word immigrant is imprecisely used and people are not specific about which if any group of immigrants they are referring to but tend to talk in sweeping statements. As I said in my post I genuinely don't have the answer - as long as the opportunity of a better life exists over here people will want to come in and this situation in my opinion is exacerbated hugely by the conflicts raging across North Africa and the proximity of this area to Southern Europe. To solve the problem in Calais we would have to solve the much larger problems in the Middle East and maybe the price of taking a few immigrants on board or having some issues on the border at Calais is worth paying for the powers that be across Europe not to get involved in the conflicts over there. Realpolitik at work - far easier to keep your boots off the ground in the middle east and have a small group of people you can concentrate xenophobia on to stop people worrying about other things. All politicians do it - every economic crisis in Argentina is met with their president making all sort of noises about the Falklands, Spain have a crisis and its all about Gibraltar.
On the topic of migrants: "Earlier this year, Britain had taken in only 143 Syrian refugees: since the civil war began, Germany has taken in around 100,000. Britain had 31,745 applications for asylum in 2014; but in Sweden there were 81,180 such applications. France had more than twice as many, and Germany – with 202,245 applications – had more than six times the British rate. And Britain accepts substantially fewer than other countries: just 10,050 positive decisions last year, compared to 30,650 in Sweden, 12,550 in the Netherlands, 14,815 in France, 40,560 in Germany, 20,580 in crisis-ridden Italy and 15,410 in Switzerland." What was someone saying recently about European countries pulling their weight?
What bothers me is that they are still Islamic. It's only a matter of time before they start fighting each other and/or us You cannot take a medieval philosophy and transplant it into a modern,largely secular Western European culture. They need to get over the God Delusion.
I totally agree The Westboro church is to-hotally crackers. But if you add together all the crackpot sects they only account for a few thousand followers, whereas Islam amounts to billions. We surely have now had enough warnings of their intent. The radical preachers like Choudary don't make the slightest attempt to hide their agends of evil. How many more Islamic inspired atrocities does it take for us to realise that this religion is part of the problem,not the solution? And now a Bangla Deshi blogger descibed as "A voice of reason" has been hacked to death by these savages. Those are the people I would prefer us to give asylum to.
