to think if the country is already 'too full up' we should probably stop having so many children?

[IceBeing]

After listening to a discussion on a bus between two women, it would seem that the country is far to stretched to take in any refugees at the moment! We are full to busting and not enough money for services for those already here.

AIBU to wonder where the concerns of these people were when they had the (apparently) six kids that were along with them?

The refugees are already alive and in need of shelter, food, medical aid etc. Our unborn need not come and add to the problem....

So, maybe a China style policy...although we could probably afford to do 2 kids per family....unless we really are full to busting as indicated.

We just got born in the right place at the right time. We don't deserve the NHS more than people fleeing Syria.

You really need to get your head round the fact that where you're born does make a difference.

And I'm afraid that I do consider that I "deserve" (to benefit from) the NHS because I and my predecessors paid into it and my dependents will too. I don't think I should be paying into a system that treats anyone around the world.

If I thought that I'd donate to the Red Cross, Medecins sans Frontieres or other such organisations.

And as for "voting Green", so you're saying that you basically ducked out of voting for a party that had a chance of winning and thus affecting anything. By becoming a Green MP you'd be taking the easy option - always able to criticise, but never responsible for, policies....

Great Post Werk.

I remember coming back from traveling and saying to everyone " I am a citizen of the world" and spouting stuff like you op.

I always find these sorts of posts like ops come in at priorities.

Who is more of a priority in your eyes. There are finite resources here who deserves them most?

I would also like know what other world nations are doing for these people esp those with closer cultures.

Why do people think that as long as we don't have more than 2 kids per couple the world won't continue to become more and more overpopulated until we wipe ourselves out?
Well, that's what 'replacement' is all about isn't it? Obviously, if life expectancy suddenly rocketed and everyone lived to 120, and all couples had two children, the population would rise massively (essentially, this is what is happening in a lot of third world countries at the moment: although the birth rate has fallen to at or just above replacement, people are living much longer so that, combined with there being a lot of young adults - from the days when almost every woman had four of five children - means that populations are still rising.)

But, in the UK, life expectancy is only inching up. If life expectancy held steady, and there was no immigration and no emigration, and every couple had two children, the population would start to drop - because not all of those children will couple up, and some will die before they have the chance to have children of their own.

I think all of that is pretty basic demographics.

Thats an interesting post werk

I guess I really don't have much bias towards treating my own more favourably than others. I would definitely do more for my DD than other random child I encountered but beyond immediate family...Im not sure I give people much priority.

It is interesting to think that this level of priority afforded to those most similar to oneself is a variable across cultures.

Of course it is also essentially racism. But you can't actually care about 7 billion people so we are always going to be ruling some people out of our concern and probably on the basis of race and ancestry.

andrew lolling here at the idea of writing to your MP on actual paper...

Iknow voting for things you don't believe in is stupid. People managed to use their vote for UKIP to great effect even though that effect wasn't getting MPs. They dragged the whole debate over to be massively more anti-immigration than it was.

Voting Green is saying you think socialist ideas should be in the mix. Which now they are (especially while the Corbyn surge is news). That's the effect I wanted when I voted Green and I am happy to be getting it.

I would definitely do more for my DD than other random child I encountered but beyond immediate family...Im not sure I give people much priority

So your child is sick, needs life saving cancer drugs but money leaching out to health tourists means cut backs elsewhere meaning NO to your child's drugs.

There is health tourism there is a rife corruption of abuse of the NHS system.

You either raise the money and go to America or your child dies.

Your child needs to go into care, however there is no actual care because the system is swamped and massively under funded

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/kent-social-services-overwhelmed-by-unprecedented-number-of-child-migrants-trying-to-flee-calais-10429231.html

Your child ends up abandoned pretty much moving through a system like an anonymous in cared for ghost and will probably end up with a serious drug problem on the streets?

Unfortunately Tony Blairs freedom of movement ideas in his regime have meant, those from Eastern Europe have been given a higher priority in the UK than refugees from places like Syria.

I remember at the time, Mugabe and Zimbawe was always in the news. It was madness that people were being sent back to Zim( under labour) and a huge fanfare made of it like " Look, we are tough on immigration, look we are sending people back to torture and death" and yet millions of Poles were allowed to come here

It was his Government who did not put work breaks on like Germany when the doors opened from Poland.

It was his government who turned immigration, services and all the rest into this huge mess of an issue.

I have no doubt, the general public would be more welcoming of the refugees had they not been hit with the biggest wave of immigration since when.

I bet the general public would have rather had less of an influx from EU and then felt we were more able to take those in from places of strife and war.

But we didn't get it by any superior effort on our own part. We just got born in the right place at the right time. We don't deserve the NHS more than people fleeing Syria.

This shows such a misunderstanding of British political history, popular movements, the history of the welfare state, and the socio-cultural upheaval that followed the two world wars that I despair.

It also shows a massive naivety about the nature of the sovereign state. And to be blunt, I doubt anyone on this board was born at the right place and at the right time because none of us were born in Switzerland to billionaire parents in the early 1950s.

And yes we do "deserve" the NHS more than people fleeing Syria because we created it, supported it, advocated for it, and we swap an average of 76 hours+ of our labour a year for the ability to use it.

Yes, every year, the average Brit works for more than two weeks unpaid in order to fund the NHS. Some people do even more depending on their wage levels.

But you seem to be under the impression that this means nothing, which is bizarre from any theoretical angle.

OK Ice you email your MP and at both ends the letter appears on a computer powered by fossil fuel. And all to make you feel better about yourself.

And if you stand as a Green candidate you will have to use paper to communicate with the voters.

andrew I am confused. Are you suggesting that standing as a green candidate is net environmentally unfriendly?

I am not doing any of this to feel better about myself. I am doing it to try and change things for the better.

It makes a real difference if the BBC uniformly refer to refugees as people first rather than dehumanising them as 'immigrants'. If I didn't think it made a difference I wouldn't have bothered to complain.

It makes a real difference if we start to properly realise that our lifestyles are unsustainably selfish too....

werks The average Brit doesn't work at all...let alone for 2 weeks to fund the NHS.

I wouldn't deny someone who has never worked in the UK who did happen to have been born here...and I wouldn't deny someone who has never worked in the UK and didn't happen to have been born here. Because I can't see the difference in their contributions (both zero in this case).

I genuinely don't see how my ancestors doings imply I am more deserving as a human being than people who had different ancestors.

Thats an interesting post werk

I would definitely do more for my DD than other random child I encountered but beyond immediate family...Im not sure I give people much priority

But that's what what everyone is doing! And the impact of that on a national scale is what you are annoyed about. I don't really care if someone from another country gets life saving treatment (from limited resources) or another random UK child. But if that's the way it works in general then it could happen to my child and they could miss out.

Don't get me wrong - I think we should take some refugees. But you're arguing essentially for evening everything up between everyone. Do you give away everything you have beyond what allows you to subsist? It's similar logic isn't it?

Sorry - I didn't mean to copy the bit about werk too!

I say only that standing as any candidate has environment-unfriendly effects - unless you don't campaign at all, like some of the types who stand for parliament in the Prime Minister's constituency - £500 for a deposit buys you a few minutes with him on the platform at the count with the TV cameras coming on.

What determines how unfriendly is, I suppose, what sort of paper you use and how far you can and do avoid using cars in the campaign - for a council seat in a built-up area you can probably hardly use them at all. It's got nothing to do with which party you stand for. Obviously the right to stand for councils or for Parliament trumps any damage done to the environment by doing so - again regardless of party.

Would you be satisfied if the BBC said "people trying to enter a country where they have no right of abode"? That would be accurate; it would start with the P-word; and it would be more hostile to them than "immigrants".

Considering immigrant family size is larger than the average British family, it seems a bit unfair for us to limit family size in order to accommodate others.

The average Brit doesn't work at all...let alone for 2 weeks to fund the NHS.

You are going to have to explain this statement because it's very bizarre, unless you have some obscure definition of the word "work". We have around 40 million people of working age in Britain and 28 million of them are employed. So the average adult Brit does, indeed, work.

I don't think reality counts for anything tbh werk

I think you would fit in just great in parliament op

werk - There is a huge difference between benefit tourism and migrancy that is just lost in your posts about the NHS. Migrants and successful applicants who are asylum seekers DO pay taxes, they DO pay into the country that gives them a place to live.

This "resources" thing is bizarre, too. Do people really, genuinely feel that we have a RIGHT as Britains to a higher standard of living than people from the rest of the world, even if that higher standard actually causes famine, drought, infectious disease in other places, and is bought at a cost of resource-conflicts that largely affect other nations? I mean, morally, I'd love to know how you stack that up? Because I don't know any ethics that would cover it, other than the ethics of being a total bastard.

werk oh that is simple - you didn't say 'adult' the first time. 28 million is less than half the UK population - hence my statement that the average brit isn't working at all.

This doesn't constitute nit picking because this whole discussion is weighing the relative entitlement to NHS services of two groups NEITHER of whom have contributed to the system (refugees and newborns).

Andrew no I would not be happy with that. My belief is that the world would be a better place if people thought of each other as human beings first. You statement incites the opposite.

Queen I presume you will take back your assertion of my departure from reality now that you see what I said was both relevant and factually accurate.

gin it seems a bit unfair? Is that more or less unfair than some people having access to free cancer treatment while others have no access to clean water to drink?

queen and andrew I have a question for you two too. What pleasure or profit are you deriving from trying to humiliate and belittle me for attempting, in the ways I am able to, to improve equality and preserve the planet in a useable form for future generations?

I mean I can see that it isn't high up your priority list but why do you object to it even being on mine?

The average Brit doesn't work at all...let alone for 2 weeks to fund the NHS.
Yer wot?

Do people really, genuinely feel that we have a RIGHT as Britains to a higher standard of living than people from the rest of the world, even if that higher standard actually causes famine, drought, infectious disease in other places
I don't think most posters are saying Brits have the 'right', per se, to a higher standard of living than other people: it is just luck. Also, I'm really not sure that the fact that we live in an advanced economy 'actually causes' things like infectious diseases elsewhere. On the contrary: it's the advanced economies that have produced the vaccines and the antibiotics and the water purification systems that have brought down infant mortality in less developed countries. I wasn't aware that anything we did caused the Ethiopian famine; I am aware that that a lot people donated money to famine relief.

Perhaps if developed countries hadn't done those things, population pressure would be lower and there wouldn't be a migrant problem, and instead we'd be criticising ourselves for being selfish bastards and leaving all those African and Asian children to die of smallpox, TB, measles and gastro-enteritis.

shove I wish I had managed to put it that well.

The answer is there is no ethical defence of our treatment of anyone not born in the UK as lesser.

Ice If the very reason people are the subject of a news broadcast is that they are - as I suggest - trying to enter a country where they have no right of abode that fact is relevant and it would be absurd - not to say self-censorship - to omit it. How do you suggest it should be expressed?