"People in this country are already struggling"

[iamaboveandBeyond]

Can i just ask, am i alone in this (and therefore IABU)?

But as a person who is 'struggling' in the UK, i am sick of people who are not in a similar position using "us" as a reason why the country cannot afford to help refugees?

I have said this on many threads already, but wondered what others thought outside of the specific Syria/Calais threads

(Note - I'm not the thread police of course, but if this didnt morph into an identikit refugee thread, that'd be fab :) )

[iamaboveandBeyond]

Daily mail as a source of fact versus UN figures!! Rofl!!!

[iamaboveandBeyond]

IKnow, i respect that a hell of a lot more than 'excuses what make us sound good'!

[Glasgoow]

Just as at Calais, 99 per cent of them are young men, aged between 15 and 25. Where are all the women and girls?
If you were truly fleeing tyranny and certain death, wouldn’t you bring your wives, sisters, mothers and daughters with you, instead of abandoning them to their fate?
The first thing any decent man would do, as per Neil Diamond in Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show, is ‘pack up the babies and grab the old ladies’.


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[KanyeWestPresidentForLife]

The thing is, if someone says 'but people here are already struggling' then the best answer would to respond 'Yes, well here is how we plan to make sure that people who are struggling aren't impacted by doing x to provide adequate housing and y to support schools and the NHS.

But that's never going to happen because the right don't want to spend the money and the left just dismiss it as racism so they can ignore it.

[AlphabetStew]

For some people 'struggling' is 'we might not be able to afford a holiday this year because we're finding it a bit difficult to keep up the running costs on our second car'. For others 'struggling' is 'lets get a extra can or two of spaghetti hoops this week because we can't afford enough portions of meat for all of us so if the two parents have spaghetti hoops for dinner two nights this week it'll mean the kids can have a good dinner. No! Not those spaghetti hoops, get the cheap ones.'

[ArmySal]

Are you on a mission to throw out as many 'huns' as you can, Glasgoow?

This isn't the first thread I've seen it on. [yawn]

[Hamiltoes]

Glasgow, you made me read that whole mind-numbingly boring and long article just to get to the fact that 99% of a crowd seen outside a station in Budapest were men.

In other news, 100% of people in photo taken outside girls school are female. Reports coming in that this must equate to all children at all schools are now infact girls

[UnderTheGreenwoodTree]

What with the 'hun'-ning and linking to Richard Littlejohn? Richard Littlejohn?!

Wtf is going on? Has MN been taken over by the Daily Mail?

[W00t]

What happens if all the people that regularly donate to food banks (I include myself here) decide to donate to refugee causes instead for the next three or four months?
There are over one million Britons using food banks. What will happen to those people? I doubt the govt is planning to increase tax credits/ benefits etc to cover food and winter fuel.
I already said I wouldn't take in a refugee family on another thread, and was pounced upon, but at least I'm honest about it. And not opening up my (miniscule ) home to others does not mean I am empathy free, and would not support in other ways. Regardless of rehoming situation, winter in Europe in a camp is NOT going to be fun for anyone. There will be lots of death/illness if this isn't resolved quickly.

[SaucyJack]

YANBU.

20,000 refugees ain't gonna make my shitty council flat any shittier than it already is.

Life has been, and will remain, crap in financial/material terms for The Poor for a long time. Nothing was going to be done anyway, so stop using it as an excuse.

[shovetheholly]

What this entire opposition (our poor/refugee poor) misses is that it's not an either/or.

We can easily do both with a fairer and more redistributive tax & housing system.

[W00t]

[Hard stare] at glasgoow.

I believe aid agencies say 90% at Calais are male. Those in Hungary are different in demographics anyway.

[123Jump]

It has already been discussed repeatedly on TV and news that most of the men travel first,because it is so dangerous and they can often only afford for 1 person to go. Watching the news reports there seem to be plenty of families.
So the man goes, gets settled hopefully with job etc, then sends for his family.
People are escaping from Isis and war. Shit as life is for far too many people in this country, they don't get beheaded or bombed.
It seems to me that the world as we know it is changing. No longer are people prepared to have a shit life living in a tent,in a camp, with no hope on the horizon. They want a future,a job,a decent standard of living.
And they are prepared to do whatever it takes to get it.
Where should they go?

[TrueBlueYorkshire]

It is just a matter of resource allocation. I actually thought taking in refugees could be used as a good excuse to use the foreign aid budget to make short term investments in the UK in Infrastructure that aid refugees, but in the long term could be returned to British people eventually e.g. build loads of council houses for refugees and associated improvements in local parks and school facilities.

[IKnowIAmButWhatAreYou]

But where is the money going to come from to provide for these "refugees"??

Again, it's not going to make a blind bit of difference to me unless they increase the amount of tax I pay - not likely at all.

It's going to come out of the government coffers - not the MOD, or farming subsidies or windfarm subsidies because they're ringfenced.

It'll come out of the Social Welfare pot - and that will affect those that are in receipt of assistance from that pot as there will be less to go around.

It may affect the NHS budget and waiting times. again, that won't affect me, but there are people in the UK that have no other option than to use the NHS who may well see a degradation in their services and treatment.

I think that's where some of it is coming from...

[Hamiltoes]

While I can see where you are coming from IKnow, I can't help but still feel ashamed of that attitude. A quick google tells me there are 43,000 towns in the UK, so it would literally be 1 family in every 3 or 4 towns, or 1 per 2 towns. I just can't see how this will have any real effect on anything.

I also shudder to think what would have happened it we'd had that attitude during and after the second world war. Many British people then woke up to their homes and livelihoods bombed, even the richest had realitively little with rationing and yet people still felt they should stand up and help fellow humans. Thats what made Great Britain imo.

[beaucoupdemojo]

Local councils have been saying that they have put aside housing and money for healthcare etc for refugees. If they had that housing/money available why haven't they spent it already on the people in their area who needed housing etc?

I don't get where the money is supposed to come from. Dave has spent the last few years telling us the country is too skint to pay for decent public services.

My parents are both having to wait very long times for operations. They live every day in pain, despite paying for the nhs all their lives. If the money exists to pay for keeping refugees, why are my parents still on waiting lists?

[MsTargaryen]

On an anonymous forum you can still be attacked and harassed. Have you not had the pleasure of someone trawling your past posts or following you around the site yet? Always fun

[W00t]

Hamiltoes- if you divide them up that way, they will become isolated and unhappy. They will need to be near people also rehoused from Syria for their emotional and mental well-being. So some areas will take many families, others none.

[iamaboveandBeyond]

True mstarg, but i've seen worse views shared than "i need a food bank to feed my children, therefore the country clearly cant afford it". So it seems weird that i havent even seen one person say that, iyswim?

.

[iamaboveandBeyond]

Oh balls, why is there a random full stop in my post?!

[MsTargaryen]

Those worse views might have been shared by people who don't care about the avalanche of angry mumsnetters turning on them

[IKnowIAmButWhatAreYou]

so it would literally be 1 family in every 3 or 4 towns, or 1 per 2 towns.

To do what though? Survive? Is that it? What are they actually going to do long term?

Plus - how often are we going to be adding "just 1 family" per town for? This is going to keep going on for years...

It's all short term thinking, where will we be in 20 years time?