The People demand that the Boats are Stopped.

[noblegiraffe]

I keep reading about the Tory government working hard to deliver the people's priorities:

"Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Government are focused on five immediate priorities. We will halve inflation, grow the economy, reduce debt, cut NHS waiting lists and stop the boats."

Halve inflation (will happen anyway), grow the economy (vague), reduce debt (vague), cut NHS waiting lists (maybe by paying nurses and doctors more?), stop the boats (what?).

Maybe it's just where I live, but I'm not seeing this immediate urgent need to "stop the boats". It's certainly nowhere near my top 5 priorities for the government to be immediately tackling. If it was, I'd probably look at creating legal routes for genuine asylum seekers as a first step rather than shipping them to Rwanda.

Is it in your top 5 urgent government priorities? Are they speaking to the people and I've just completely missed it?

YABU: Stopping the boats is in my top 5 government priorities.
YANBU: I'm more concerned about something else and would bump Stop the Boats down the list.

Him and the foreign secretary sound like Enoch powel. You are not being unreasonable at all.

Visit Maidstone in Kent if you want to see why people put the boats high up on their list of priorities. Huge gangs of men hanging around. Speak to Kent County Council to see how much unaccompanied children are costing the tax payers of Kent. No extra doctors or dentists have been provided for this huge increase in population. I suppose if you live in a quaint Cotswold village it’s easy to say it isn’t a problem for you.

My top 5:

Pay doctors and nurses what they are worth (a shed load more than they are paid now)
Fund the NHS better in general
Pay social workers/family support workers more
Pay carers more
Pay education staff more

I don't believe any bullshit about 'no money for this'. There is money when they 'need' to find it to pay for coronations or their mates companies.

(I live in the SE, boats are not even on my long list of issues)

"The good folk of Islington should shut up with their righteous indignation because they aren't going to be living alongside these newcomers . It won't be them battling to a doctors appointment, fighting for quality rental property, etc etc"

You've never been to Islington have you? 😂

Islington is the 5th most deprived local authority in London.

Nearly 40% of children living in Islington are living in poverty.

BTW - I live in a very poor area as well. There's a migrant hostel 200 yards from my front door. There's pretty much no complaining about migrants on our local community facebook groups.

Is that how migrants, legal or otherwise, are being housed in Kent? Compulsory purchase of middle class houses to allow accommodation of immigrants? Interesting.. hadn't heard about that.

"I suppose if you live in a quaint Cotswold village it’s easy to say it isn’t a problem for you."

I think you'll find that the 'quaint Cotswold villages' have no migrant hostels, and also no affordable housing, no NHS dentists and no care workers.

I worked in Islington for 5 yrs , yes there's deprivation they aren't the ones shouting ,there's an awful lot more wealthy left wingers determined to undermine anything the government tries to do to sort this immigration issue .

"there's an awful lot more wealthy left wingers determined to undermine anything the government tries to do to sort this immigration issue ."

Have you not noticed that Conservatives have been in power for 13 years, and have had an enormous majority for the last 4?

There is no such thing as a 'wealthy left winger' living in Islington or anywhere else who can stop the government legislating on immigration.

Has the Rwanda thing stopped the boats yet? I mean, it's been a few months now so they should have stopped?

Honestly - the stupidity of the culture wars in the UK, so beautifully illustrated by the utter idiocy of Hattie43's post about 'Islington lefties'.

Love that there are people who genuinely believe that Labour voters in Islington have more power over the legislative agenda in the UK than the Conservative government. 😂

I have friends and family in some of these Cotswold villages.
They are vehemently against the "boat people" and fairly insistent that this why they can't get an NHS Dentist, a doctor's appointment and why their children are missing out on grammar places.
It's certainly in their top 5 priorities, if not their number 1.
I totally appreciate that some areas are actually seeing the affects of these boats more than others, but the idea that they are causing the whole problem (and not saying that you are saying it is) is madness.
It would be so much better if the government could try and solve some of these other problems and then maybe the boat people would become less important.

Utterly bonkers

There’s just too much immigration, full stop.

Native birth rates have been falling for decades but in the last few the population of the UK has risen by 20 million. The ONS predicts there will be 12 million more immigrants in the next 20 years. I think that’s a vast underestimate.

Supermarkets and water companies know they’re catering to about 90 million currently, not the “official” 67 million.

Combined with little investment in public services, this overpopulation has brought us to our current state.

People coming in from war-torn, destitute states with little to no education and a flimsy grasp of English probably aren’t going to be paying into the system in a way that breaks even, let alone exceeds their costs.

Exactly

According to Douglas Murray 500,000 migrants entered the UK last year.

Why does everybody assume that this is a SE problem? The North East takes far more asylum seekers compared to other regions.
www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/teesside-north-east-region-takes-26551433.amp

Some of the towns in our area are now unrecognisable, Teesside has one of the highest knife crime rates, worse than greater Manchester and London. There is a reason so many here switched to Conservatives from Labour. In the latest elections, Conservatives have gained even more seats from Labour in some areas. I would suggest that "stop the boats" is pretty important to many up here.

See that's the trouble with left wingers , always shouting down by insults because someone has an opinion different to yours . Come back with an educated response and people may listen to you .
Here's for starters .
Where will these hundreds of thousands of extra people live , we built 150,000 new homes last year but 500k boat people are expected this year . Multiply that by every year we don't tackle this .where will these people live .
We don't have enough doctors nurses dentists teachers , and don't tell me all these young men arriving can fill the void .
Would you be prepared to pay extra tax to support their costs .
Our roads / transport systems are falling apart .
Huge numbers of Existing nationals can't get their basic needs met so on a practical note how can we possibly offer this volume of people a decent quality of life .

Yes, I think this was worked out by the amount of toilet roll purchased, of all things.

I didn't say they could change government policy I said they are shouting , shouting to change the narrative and vilify anyone who has concerns over huge numbers of people arriving who we have nothing to offer and changing the face of local communities.

If there were safe legal routes to claim asylum and if asylum claims were processed quickly and efficiently, these problems would recede.

It doesn’t form part of my top 5 issues. The small boats issue is relatively easy to solve, but the political will to tackle it fairly and appropriately isn’t there.

What are you using to measure whether a huge group of people have something to offer?

Where will these hundreds of thousands of extra people live , we built 150,000 new homes last year but 500k boat people are expected this year

Are you sure its 500k boat people ? I know the figures have increased but that seems a massive jump and a huge failure on the part of Rishi Sunaks government if true ! Could you be mixing it with the general immigration figures which are 500k a year, the majority of which are legal ?
You are of course correct that the Conservatives seem quite happy to allow housebuilding rates to be a tiny drop in the ocean of what is really needed, so very little true low cost or social housing and don't seem to be doing anything about the issue of land banking.

But people wanting to live in the UK because they have relatives here or know the language is not the same as people desperately needing help because they’re fleeing war.

My family are immigrants, they left our home country for political reasons. They wanted to go to a particular country because they already had friends there and also some basic knowledge of the local language.
It didn’t work out though, around the time they emigrated that country stopped accepting new applications.
So they went somewhere else, not a place they would have chosen at first and where they didn’t know the language at all, but that was the country that was accepting new arrivals at the time.

What I’m saying is that while on a personal, individual level it’s fully understandable why someone might want to move somewhere where they have some family/ friends, it’s just not always possible.

we built 150,000 new homes last year but 500k boat people are expected this year

Between 1 January and 31 March 2023, 3,793 people were detected arriving in small boats, 70% fewer than the number of arrivals in the previous quarter (12,726 arrivals between 1 October and 31 December 2022). It is also 17% lower than the number of small boat arrivals in the same quarter the previous year (4,548 arrivals between 1 January and 31 March 2022)

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/statistics-relating-to-the-illegal-migration-bill/statistics-relating-to-the-illegal-migration-bill

Who is expecting 500k boat people? Where did you get that figure?