to think we're all being manipulated

I agree. The distrust of msm, of which ever political bent and I absolutely include the guardian in this, has lead to an erosion in public confidence on an unprecedented scale. People are seeking " the truth" for themselves, aided by independent media sources. I didn't believe asylum seekers were being housed in 4* accommodation until I watched some undercover reporters showing me I was very wrong. So, yes Op you ARE right in that we have been manipulated, but I do believe the majority have now woken up; where that will take us is anyone's guess.

You are also being manipulated to be believe the social experiment being conducted in the west is actually going to work. Actually no one knows what the outcome of mass migration will be. It’s never happened on this magnitude.

If you consider the country back in 1970 and you look at it now, it’s barely recognisable. Back then most people went to church. We knew all of our neighbours well enough to call them friends. We cooked everything from scratch with everything grown here. Shared values were a given and life had a simplicity about it that is hard to recreate, I am personally horrified by the loss of so much. This subject is far bigger and broader - with such depth.

The politicians appear to be manipulating at both ends of the spectrum. I doubt they will be able to keep a lid on the truth for much longer. The dam is already about to burst - but not for the reasons you state.

I totally agree with you and have done for years. The government's have been manipulating it's hard to trust any of them. Well said glad someone else can see, but we are not alone in thinking this.

There are thousands of women whose lives are changed by rapes, sexual and physical assaults by men who aren’t ‘illegal’ immigrants. In the majority of cases, they aren’t even strangers. The line of argument that says the only assault we should be shouting about is the threat posed by immigrants in asylum seeker hotels does not stack up.
plus you are also making the assumption that no immigrant contributes to the system. Evidence shows that those who are permitted to work put in more in tax and NI than they take out.
It’s not a luxury to believe the data over the rhetoric.

I think my experience of covid and lockdowns eroded any blind trust I had in media and politicians and that sent me off to start looking to see how the world really works and asking questions. It suppose it was easier to spot the patterns when literally nothing else was happening.

Then all this pointing at people on benefits ramped up and I wondered how we got to this point of blaming the weakest. I ended up looking into the history of work and social class from the beginning of human time and made my way through it to now (gradually and going off on many tangents) and that’s what made everything make sense.

You don’t know what you don’t know, right up until you do know. It’s not like we’re taught this stuff - that’s the point.

The OP didn't accuse anyone of being stupid. She pointed out that we're all being manipulated.

I might be wrong, but I don't think she was intending to counteract the propaganda merely start a discussion about it existing and how damaging it is to our society.

Most people, including OP, agree that unlimited immigration isn't going to work for this country (or any country). We are agreeing so why are we arguing rather than uniting and finding sensible solutions?

They just want to keep everyone fighting and promote hatefulness and arguing in place of actual discussion.

If that were true I'd say you were helping them by implying that everyone anti immigration is gullible.

I know you are not keen but it does seem skewed.

A proper conversation would surely be to provide facts and figures to give the correct information to counteract the propaganda.
Surely starting a thread aren’t people stupid to believe the media just gets people’s back up?

Yes you said ‘fighting age males’. Is there something else that you think the left use to manipulate around immigration?

Oh the irony. You start a thread about how stupid people are to fall for the propaganda and I’m the nasty one.

Define "immigrant", and define "ethnically British". Because if none of your ancestors was either Saxon or Norman you may be right to state categorically that you don't have at least one immigrant in your ancestry, but I'd say the chances of that being the case are so close to nil as to make no nevermind. And if you're right and none of them were either of that lot, what odds on a Dane or two somewhere in there? Possibly a Roman – or somebody from one of the many other nations whom they scooped up into their legions and stationed in Britain?

One of the great points about the British has always been their mongrel nature.

What’s an example of manipulation from the other side to your op in your view?

Nestingbirds
Denying the statistical fact that tens of millions have indeed arrived here in the last decade or two, as being completely irrelevant sounds like insanity to me.

"Tens of millions" means at least twenty million. That's a million a year for the last two decades.

I would very much like to see the evidence for this figure; I can find no year since 2000 in which over a million people immigrated into the UK. Net immigration in most of those years has been in the lower half of the hundred thousands. As a result, "tens of millions" sounds decidedly hyperbolic rather than statistically factual or simply factual.

Are you perhaps counting arrivals such students, and failing to notice their departure when they go home again after their three-year degree courses? Tourists "arrive", but they also leave. And so on.

Just so you know where I went for my figures, Statistica, using UKGov figures, gives the following figures for net immigration, rounded up to the nearest thousand:
year ending June 2000: 158,000
year ending June 2001: 171,000
year ending June 2002: 153,000
year ending June 2003: 148,000
year ending June 2004: 245,000
year ending June 2005: 206,000
year ending June 2006: 198,000
year ending June 2007: 233,000
year ending June 2008: 163,000
year ending June 2009: 229,000
year ending June 2010: 256,000
year ending June 2011: 249,000
year ending June 2012: 161,000
year ending June 2013: 208,000
year ending June 2014: 309,000
year ending June 2015: 329,000
year ending June 2016: 252,000
year ending June 2017: 249,000
year ending June 2018: 276,000
year ending June 2019: 184,000
year ending June 2020: 93,000
year ending June 2021: 484,000
year ending June 2022: 872,000
year ending June 2023: 906,000
year ending June 2024: 431,000

Net total immigrants between June 1999 and June 2024: (fewer than) 7,063,000.

Statistica estimate a figure of 431,000 for net migration in the year from June 2024 to June 2025, but that figure is certain to have to be adjusted a bit. That will bring the net total migration this century up to somewhere in the region of seven and a half million, not tens of millions.

(By the way, the two highest years for net immigration so far were under the most recent Conservative government, and the numbers have fallen again now.)

Because you’re saying only one side is stupid.

Because you’ve only put one side? And it’s not just that.

And you've just realised that's how politics work 🙄
You aren't saying anything new here