Daily Mail inciting hate again.

[vivizone]

I don't know how they get away with this - they dodge backlash all the time.

There will be an ethnic war soon in this country. DM will be 98 per cent responsible.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2252675/Were-way-Britain-In-year-29-million-Romanians-Bulgarians-right-settle-Britain-claim-benefits-And-gipsy-community-hardly-wait-here.html

it's not a 'race' issue at all kim. it's a behaviour issue and some populations are just known to bring certain behaviours with them as they are their cultural norms.

Also if you actually analyse the meaning of 'Platonic ideal' in this way...it is saying that she is divorcing the fact from reality and creating an abstract ideal of a husband, rather than the reality, in which he washes cars and behaves in all manner of antisocial ways. Surely the woman knows her own DH? It couldn't have been any more insulting.

OhDearNigel Just so you know, the more commonly used definition of "platonic" also references Plato, so - strictly speaking, really ought to be capitalised too. Your superior sounding snark is misplaced.

I think the Daily Mail is absolutely correct on this issue. This country is already drastically overcrowded, why do we need to add Bulgarians and Romanians to the problem? Sooner or later people are going to have had enough.

Speaking as someone whose parents were not born here I agree with Holly. I have been harassed by Roma people at traffic lights many times. I was in a very well known supermarket a few months ago a group of gyspies came in as a large group. The women were busy dropping cosmetics and bottles of anything they could find down their very large skirts. The supermarket in question (Waitrose) were clearly outraged at their boldness. As they realised that the staff and half the public were going to stop them they just sauntered out (as the women were walking the goods were dropping out!).

Surely uncontrolled immigration is not the way forward. It is fine that the EU opens up its boarders but I dont see many people from the UK moving to Romania or other Eastern Eurpoean countries. Some populations as Swallowed says have different behaviours and views of what is right and wrong. With our welfare bill being so high surely we cannot continue like this.

I also think it depends where you live. In the centre of Slough is completely different from living in in the middle of the Cotswolds where people might think 'what immigration issue'....

Interesting that the DM thinks 29 million may come to the UK when the population for those two countries combined is about that - scare mongering headline to the highest order.

I don't think the EU go far enough to sort this out at source. There is so much money poured into the EU and it should be directed more at issues in these countries like addressing crime, housing and even benefits to people in poverty. IMO, the money is misappropriated.

Interesting that the DM thinks 29 million may come to the UK when the population for those two countries combined is about that - scare mongering headline to the highest order.

It didn't say that at all.

We need a referendum on the EU, and fast.

The DM print these articles to get a reaction and to get people talking and clicking on their site. I don't think they even believe half the stuff themselves. It's written for a purpose. Cash.

Do the daily mail create attitudes or reflect them?

Much as I would love to believe that the crap they spout is just coming from them, in my heart of hearts I know that they are peddling and reflecting back (validating? ) what too many people in this country think.

That is so much more depressing than yet another daily mail AHHH IMMIGRANTS! GERREM OFF GERREM OFF story.

ohdearnigel

'I do believe that Moondog was referring to the philosopher Plato when she made the comment "Platonic ideal of a DH". The capitalisation gave it away.

A Platonic ideal is perfected ideas of an object or being. A manifestation of absolute perfection.

Before you say that people "sound ridiculous" best to check your own comprehension eh ?'

I've read Plato in Greek, thanks. I am perfectly well aware she was referring to him. A Platonic ideal is not a 'manifestation' of anything. It's ideal, not real.

Maybe you should go back to school too, eh?

it is perfectly rational really to say hang on, we're being told we can't afford for people with terminal cancer to get incapacity benefits and they should get a job yet somehow we can afford to take on the long term unemployed, unskilled and totally coming for benefits of other countries - how does that work then?

that is a pretty legitimate concern to feel. they're talking about lobbing oaps with health problems out of their council houses because they have a spare bedroom because we are so short of housing stock.

of course that combined with the prospect of immigration of totally unskilled, never worked populations will cause social tension. much as i hate the daily mail it is those social conditions that are the recipe for disaster not an article.

Fair points, swallowed. The last decade has seen unprecedented immigration, in numbers bigger (total and as a proportion of the existing population) than any time since the Norman Conquest. It is hardly surprising if that causes some raised eyebrows and has some effects on those who already live here. What is surprising is that there has been so little unrest - it's a bit of a tribute to the UK, tbh.

Wow, I knew it was a lot, didn't know that. How does it stack up, panto?

yes a tribute panto - i do think though that the stifling of discussion and battering of anyone who discuss it (and lumping them in with racist, bnp, eugenicist type nutters simply for asking questions) is problematic and possibly radicalises people who needn't itms?

the difficulty is that not only are they the highest numbers since the norman conquest overall they're also concentrated in pockets of the country rather than evenly distributed so some will be feeling the strain more than others.

i moved out of town when ds was a baby into a village and we're buffered from a lot of modern social problems for now. he's at a village primary school where the 1950's attitudes can drive me mad at times but it is safe, untroubled and not over taxed with difficulties such as large numbers of non english speaking children or children from cultures such as the roma who present some seriously challenging behaviour. i don't have to go far to see totally different social realities.

i think, realistically, no one can really say that yes they'd love a significantly large population of roma moving in to their catchment area. it presents massive challenges. no point pretending otherwise.

i can also say that even for a pretty evolved, determined not to respond to racist/xenophobic instincts, well travelled etc person there is something that kicks off in your head when you are spat at by a man muttering in arabic that you are a whore walking through your local town or when you can't find a packet of tampons in your local shop but you can find 17 different varieties of sausages in string.

xenophobia to some degree is a pretty natural instinct and when people feel swamped it is experienced as threatening. i don't think we can berate people for feeling threatened. especially in a climate like todays with the rhetoric of cuts and constant taking away of what they had.

I don't believe xenophobia is natural or an instinct. Babies are fascinated by new languages and new experiences and will listen for longer or concentrate harder to understand them. We are naturally inclined to be interested in things that are strange and new - that's how we learn.

It's only when we get an overlay of prejudice we stop.

they're all foreign languages to a baby.

i'm talking about the natural instinct of a group, with a territory to feel threatened by another group coming in and changing that territory.

it happens even here on mumsnet let alone in the real world.

i think it is natural and universal and timeless.

and add to that that it is a limited territory with limited space, limited resources etc. then add a rhetoric of we don't have enough space/resources etc and it's not rocket science is it?

Not true. Babies learn the sound of the language in the womb - it's known they will recognize their mother tongue. If you then play them something foreign, they listen with more attention because it's new.

It's very simple: we're designed to listen to the new and be interested.

There's no argument about changing territory here - that's warfare and I agree that is inherently scary.

But being xenophobic is, IMO, a result of prejudice and not a natural state.

The world has limited space, but the UK isn't crowded relative to, say, Japan. It's simply we're reacting to things because we've been pushed to believe it's all bad.

I agree with Swallowed... My DM teaches in a West London primary school with many languages and particular issues with certain cultures who just dont have the same behaviours, of course some EU residents are going to see the UK as a soft touch. I dont see many people leaving the UK to live in Romania or Poland. its nothing to do with being racist or a member of the BNP.

I live on the fringes of a very multi cultured area West of London. There are tons of issues here. People living in very segerated areas and refusing to learn the language. Some Romanians (since found out to be illegal) burgled our house. They literally rampaged through it. And before the liberals say they were looking for food - they werent. They trashed it and were looking for jewellery. I asked the police if they would be deported and they said not - their view is that it is a very political issue and no judge would be brave enough to send them back for something as minor as breaking into a house!

Just don't read it if you don't like it ffs, it's not that difficult is it?

It is a fact that Bulgarians and Romanians will have access to the UK job market and welfare/NHS from 2014. Even The Guardian has reported this fact.

Of course it will create problems if hundreds of thousands of people turn up in the UK. The UK is already extremely crowded, there are no jobs (which is constantly mentioned on every thread about benefit cuts on MN), the infrastructure is creaking, there aren't enough schools for the children already here, the NHS is severely strained and the welfare bill costs more than income tax receipts. Call me a racist if you want, I really don't give two shits. I would rather be a realist who realises that a small island can only hold so many people and that there is only so much money that can spent before the whole system collapses, than be an puritanical idealist who screams "racist" at anyone vaguely worried that the UK population cannot cope as it is already, without adding another 500,000 or whatever to the population when there are apparently no jobs.

I've seen plenty of wanky articles from that DM that have been linked to on here that could be said to incite hatred, and this isn't one of them.

I don't like the DM at all, but the article is reasonable. It is not inciting hate to talk about a valid issue which has every reason to concern British taxpayers.