The Political Thread

[Dark Jimbo]

We got our meters here in Hampshire upgraded with no right to refuse. We were told in some glowingly written copy that are bills would likely fall with average usage. Immediately, our direct debit almost doubled. The meters are only checked twice yearly. Classy.

Huh. Conversely, our water bill plummeted to only half of what it had been before the metering, and only recently started increasing. I just wish they'd put the meter in sooner!

[Professor Bear]

Looking at the coverage of the burning of the refugee camp by riot police at Calais, I was thinking... well, I was thinking what any rational human being would be thinking when viewing something that would later lead them to type the words "the burning of the refugee camp by riot police".
When I said I couldn't believe I lived in times where people would vote for a Tory government such as ours, I probably devalued the currency of that sentiment, but I genuinely can't believe I live in times like these where people cheer as those who live in homes made from garbage - who literally live in trash on our doorstep - are turfed out of their hovels with less compassion than is shown in a badger cull.

[TordelBack]

Two preppy young engineers from my work went over to Calais for a fortnight to build prefab housing, bringing over bedding and teaching a bit of English in the process. To say they returned changed men is no exaggeration. To reduce human suffering and desperation on this scale to talk of vermin and 'economic migrants', as if none of us could only hope to do the same in the same situation, and to actually celebrate the current brutality, is the saddest reflection of the idea of a nation.

[Jim_Campbell]

Caught a snippet of a report from the Calais camp on the BBC news this morning, where they were reporting that the vast majority of the 'migrants' they'd spoken to were from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Oh, you mean they're refugees from countries effectively destroyed by the policies of western nations, then? No reason at all for us to feel in any way responsible for these people's plight.

We should be feeding them, housing them, and begging their fucking forgiveness for ruining their countries to the point where they have to gather up their families, make arduous, dangerous journeys of many hundreds of miles, only to end up sheltering under plastic sheets in a muddy field.

Instead, we complain when they pile up on our borders, and turn our faces away when their corpses wash up on our beaches.

I'm ashamed.

Jim

[IndigoPrime]

The BBC gets a lot of stick of late, but its explanation regarding usage of 'migrants' is appalling.

[The Legendary Shark]

What solutions are available?

Would people with back gardens be willing to allow a family of refugees to camp there until more permanent arrangements can be devised and implemented? I'm sure many people would be willing to do this but I'm just as sure local "authorities" would forbid it.

Should we start viewing people who work for arms manufacturers as "bad people" on a par with child molesters, using social pressure to curtail the arms trade from the ground up?

Give over waste ground to refuge areas?

Leave it to politicians to sort out?

How are we to help our fellow human beings?

[IndigoPrime]

What solutions are available?

Some basic humanity. I remember someone recently crunched numbers on this. In the end, something like one family taken in to every medium-sized British town or larger would be enough to deal with everything, which would hardly put a major strain on resources of any one region, or even local council.

Right now, though, immigration is too convenient a stick for conservatives to beat people with, and it's winning in the PR war. Too many people see the UK as being about the size of Slough, and at least as built up.

[TordelBack]

RoI, which accepts about 200 applications for asylum per year (into a population of 4.6 million) and prevents asylum seekers from working, preferring to dole them out 19 euro a week to live on (or about 10% of what we pay Irish job seekers), and 'enjoys' a 92% Christian population, is apparently overwhelmed and about to have its 'culture' subsumed by the arab hordes. Good, I say, because a culture that generates the kind of thinking I see daily doesn't deserve to survive.

As I've said before, what really terrifies me is that this is the tip of the iceberg. If people can't be persuaded to accommodate these tiny numbers of their fellows, what is going to happen when the real climate-driven migrations start? It's going to be billions on the move by the end of the century, by anyone's reckoning. Good luck with your fences and teargass then.

[IndigoPrime]

I'm sure plenty of people merrily berate immigrants, while wolfing down a curry and texting a Polish builder to start on their house extension. It does my head in. It's also horrifying to see the descendants of previous immigrants pull up the ladder. My MP is one such person. He's basically anti-immigration and anti-EU, despite his parents settling here some decades ago.

The Irish situation sounds like around here, too. People complain about immigrants, despite there being hardly any. I hear the odd Polish voice when walking the dog, and there are some Asians in the community. But at a rough estimate, I'd say 99% of the locals are white British. Plus it's not like immigrants don't benefit the community. In a rather crass example, local restaurants would be rather rubbish if removing immigrants and/or descendants of immigrants from the equation. Our town's full of Indian and Chinese restaurants, and I imagine the same's true in a lot of 'white' towns horrified at the prospect of a few thousand people who've been through hell trying to find a better life. (And you can bet the vast, vast majority want to immediately immerse themselves in work, pay taxes, and 'pay back' to the country that takes them in. 'Freeloading' seems to be astonishingly rare among immigrants, despite what the tabloids scream.)

[The Legendary Shark]

There are lots of immigrants around here. When I was a kid the majority were Spanish and Italian, now mostly Eastern European. They work on the farms and drive the lorries. The firm where I work has about six Polish and Romanian drivers and a Polish lass working in the office. They're just normal people and nothing either angelic or demonic. The only people I ever hear whining about them are the people on benefits who can't be arsed getting jobs themselves or lazy jobsworths who don't want to work as hard as they do.

[Professor Bear]

About the only observable effect of migration locally is that the next town over is jokingly referred to as "Poland" because of its huge Portugese population, and recently it also emerged that nearly three quarters of kids in the town's primary school didn't speak any English.  Mind you, that's why we send them to school.

[Dark Jimbo]

...what really terrifies me is that this is the tip of the iceberg. If people can't be persuaded to accommodate these tiny numbers of their fellows, what is going to happen when the real climate-driven migrations start? It's going to be billions on the move by the end of the century, by anyone's reckoning. Good luck with your fences and teargass then.

Children of Men, that's what.

[The Legendary Shark]

...what really terrifies me is that this is the tip of the iceberg. If people can't be persuaded to accommodate these tiny numbers of their fellows, what is going to happen when the real climate-driven migrations start? It's going to be billions on the move by the end of the century, by anyone's reckoning. Good luck with your fences and teargass then.

Children of Men, that's what.

or the greatest opportunity in the history of mankind. It's up to us.

[Satanist]

Well the office I work in is about 75% filthy sexy foreigners who were hired specifically for their language skills that us filthy not-sexy weegies don't speak. On the other hand I cant walk down the street without  tripping over east-european beggers every other block. So just like us some are great and some are not. It's almost as if they're real humans.

I even hear there are filthy not-sexy Scots moving about Europe taking the jobs off law abiding Swiss folk so fairs-fair.

[The Legendary Shark]

The JetBlue Democracy Experiment.