To think the anti-immigrations have BEEN "heard"?

[dropoutin]

I posted something like this on one of the riot threads but it ws locked soon after.

Is anyone else getting really bored of people justifying racism, terror, violence and destruction by insisting how important it is that those who imagine asylum seekers are responsible for the country's problem are "heard".

Little reminder: It's exactly that particular obsession that led to the Brexit referendum in 2016, and the most radical - and destructive - political change of recent times.

There were several years in which the country barely discussed anything else. Farage and Johnson got to tell you in great detail how the reason you're poor is because of the black family down the road. And you got the choice of believing them, or not. You even got to make Johnson PM so he could "get Brexit done" and "level up" your community.

You've been taken for a ride. Asylum seekers rriving irregularly (via small boats etc) make up less than 5% of total immigration, which is coming down after peaking in 2022 (partly due to the Ukraine war, and other factors). Neither Tories nor Labour are going to radically reduce immigration because anyone having to ACTUALLY run the country can see that doing so will exacerbate the demographic time-bomb, reduce economic activity and decimate the NHS. You're poor because of 14 years of Conservative economic policy, not because of anyone's skin colour or passport.

Meanwhile: How many of us get to have a national referendum tailored around our favourite policy hobbyhorse? When is my referendum on industrial relations? On housing and land ownership? On the House of Lords? When do I get to be "heard"? Being heard doesn't mean everyone has to agree with you, or that you get to go out and beat up brown people because things aren't working out the way you imagined they would.

It's not that you haven't been heard. It's just that you were wrong.

My question was actually about uk culture which i do think is different to uk values.

Uk culture must be respected by immigrants, has been said a few times. But what is uk culture?

Fish and chips? Castles? Pubs?

VashtaNerada you say "we desperately need a large number of foreigners."

So you support relying on stealing trained people from developing countries to save the cost of teaching our own?

Do you not feel any guilt for what that means to the countries we get them from?

Values are part of culture. Freedom of the press, right of association, tolerance etc. I think you're asking the wrong question there.

What will their fellow countrymen already settled here make of the reason they fled? That could be quite awkward.

Go and live in Saudi Arabia for a bit and you'll soon realise what British culture is.

Yes good point. Very sad.

Well, they’re certainly being heard on this thread OP …

And these are all valid points which require comprehensive long-term policy, not banning of immigration and hoping that things will even out by themselves on day 1.
Most of all, it needs investment and we were told repeatedly that there was no magic money tree. Immigration is cheaper because it still has net benefit to the economy.

It is colour though! And only colour! Haven't you seen posts on here, on social media from people who believe you can't be black or brown and British??
People getting beaten up just because of their skin colour?!

Zet1, I'm struggling to understand your argument. Is it because the UK still has work to do on racism and misogyny (despite being far better than many other countries) we can't say that anyone seeking to move here needs to believe in equality? That seems a bit barmy tbh.

FYI - British values are: respect and tolerance, democracy, rule of law, individual liberty. These are taught to all school children in the UK so it seems reasonable to insist that anyone moving here should be prepared to live by them. Obviously not all people born here do, but we can't exactly refuse entry for them!

Have you actually got a proper answer for the question or not?

Absolutely this. I think the vast majority accepts we need skilled immigrants, we don't have enough doctors, teachers, nurses. We also have a moral responsibility to accept a number of law abiding vunerable asylum seekers who are coming here for safety for their family and wish to integrate, learn English, contribute. Unfortunately the face of immigrants seems to have become groups of young men hanging round on streets smoking and hurling abuse at white females, and that is unhelpful for the law abiding respectful immigrants as they are all lumped in together.

And I absolutely agree, Labours headline actions so far are adding vat to school fees and removing winter fuel payment from many pensioners. Both spiteful mean divisive policies.
As NHS workers both our pay has gone up, but they have done this in a way which benefits already higher earners the most, with minimal benefit to those on lower wages
They seem intent on widening divides rather than closing them. Not what I expected when voting for them, and rapidly regretting my vote already

Sorry I can only think you’re responding to someone else as your post has nothing to do with what I’ve said.

I’m not claiming to have all the answers, merely saying people’s views have been heard ad nauseam by those people who are in charge of putting in place the system for years.

We have a new government . They are going to change the way immigration is approached. Everyone’s views have literally just been heard at the general election. Let’s give them a chance before rioting.

Luckily people are waking up a bit about the threat from the far right, eg in France, where the racists thought they were in there and then had their hopes dashed.
It was thwarted by parties going into alliance with the Far Left. Not a good way to go.
And the problem is, whether you like it or not, support for the Right has steadily been growing and, probably next time around, will be unstoppable.
Perhaps more effort should be put into dealing with people's concerns, rather than thinking of more and more desperate ways of stopping them

The rioting is absolutely indefensible and needs to stop, with all those involved in violence and disruption being appropriately punished.

But the wider picture is way more complex than a few thugs on the streets and, no, I still don’t think the ‘powers that be’ are fully listening. The pace of demographic change in many areas of the U.K., particularly in cities, is unsustainable and has given rise to community tensions for years. This has been brushed over the carpet because the educated, mobile middle classes have been largely immune to its effects, but I think increasingly people are having to sit up and take notice of what less privileged communities have been having to deal with.

I’m a middle class professional too, but have a bit more of a hold on what’s going on elsewhere than most of my circle for two reasons: both I and my ‘left behind’ white working class extended family live in areas that have transformed beyond all recognition over the past twenty years, and as a teacher I’ve worked in many schools across several London boroughs where, contrary to the utopian concept of multiculturalism that’s often sold to us by the progressive middle classes, different communities - some of which are only minimally integrated into British society - are living parallel lives, with tensions frequently flaring up between different groups (including within some of the primary schools I’ve worked in).

The London suburb I live in was 85% White British when I was born in the ‘80s. Since then it’s fallen to 1 in 3, with the school-aged population having fallen to 17% (10% for primary). Services are highly strained and ethnicities and social classes are effectively living in bubbles (e.g. different groups choosing schools based on critical mass of ‘people like them’). We need immigration, but it needs to be targeted and the pace of it needs to slow down dramatically so we can properly integrate new atribals and build the infrastructure we need to cope with them. Newly arrived immigrants should also be allowed to work IMO, as the vacuum caused by worklessness and ridiculously long processing times is feeding into these tensions.

In 2010, while campaigning to be re-elected as PM, Gordon Brown was confronted by a pensioner who complained that immigration was too high. As he walked away, his microphone was still active and he referred to the woman as "bigoted". He lost the election to David Cameron who promised to reduce immigration to below 100k per annum (when it was running at approx 250k).

Cameron didn't. One reason given was that while a member of the EU, the UK had to allow any migrant from an EU country to stay. Farage and UKIP pressured the Conservatives on this issue and Cameron's response was to declare a referendum on leaving the EU. He had no desire to do so, he just thought that the majority wouldn't vote for it thus settling the argument. Meanwhile the voters made the following calculation: We want less immigration + you said that being in the EU prevents us from reducing immigration = let's vote Leave.

They voted Leave. We left. Then the Tory government, which didn't really want to reduce immigration, was painted into a corner and cycled through four more prime ministers in increasing desperation.

No political party has ever levelled with the public. Every year, we lose 150,000 workers because we have an ageing population and the number of people retiring is 150,000 greater than the number finishing school, university, or apprenticeships. So, unless you make some very rapid changes to the structure of the economy, UK plc. needs to recruit 150k workers every year. These people are not Kraft cheese slices, they don't come individually wrapped in units of one, but have families who they want to bring with them. So to get 150k workers, you need to make room for 300k+ people.

That means more houses, more services, more road-building and associated disruption, more money raised through tax to pay for it all. Or, we make people work until 75, or 80, whatever.

You can ponder on that, considering you have all the answers. While you're there, consider healthcare and education inequalities. I'll stay over here being thankful it's not the 1970s

Fwiw, I personally know an asylum seekers who was granted a right to stay. Within a year, he had gone to India (he is Pakistani) and married a woman he didn't know (provided by his family) and brought her back to live here.
This was4 years ago.
So this does happen.

I was against the Tory Rwanda scheme personally, but I do think Sir Keir made a mistake cancelling it straight away as a gotcha to the Tories. Because the tax payer had already spent hundreds of millions on it. It was stupid to do this when Labour knew Reform had just actually got some seats. So Day 1 or 2 in power they send that message to those on the right and it need not have been so soon without a proper plan.

The EDL large rally was in London before Stockport happened and it seems to me they were already gearing up for a summer of unrest. Then Tommy Robinson got in trouble for the video and Stockport happened very shortly after that.

I think we need to put this all in a historic context.

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are also being naive trying to jack a whole lot of rich elite migrants and private schools (which by the way in London, at least, are full to the brim with hardworking Asians in IT/banking/medicine type jobs and eg successful Nigerians all communities who value education massively). Also the university sector is massively struggling now and these riots will put even more international students off!

I agree the political rhetoric needs to distinguish between hardworking, honest contributing migrants who are good people vs the rest, how much they contribute to our NHS/economy etc. And religious radicalisation is never ok but that is best dealt with by working with Muslim leaders in a collaborative way. Many honest Muslim families live in fear of their own children being radicalised just like many poor white families live in fear of county lines recruitment. The police need to have a proper constructive working relationships with young communities.

There are good contributing people and there are bad system scroungers across the board and criminals in gangs etc.

Teresa May decimated the police and we need more of them, for example. I think that is really urgent.
I think the only way forward is for the Labour Party to ditch some of the far leftie ideals. And ignore those in their own party who are not happy with that.

Yes that's what needs sorted. A proper route not traffickers

Absolutely, that's a huge issue.
I was part of a team who started up the first Physiotherapy degree programme in a developing country, with the aim of providing a sustainable healthcare professional group, who could then go on and train the next generation and so on. Of the first cohort of around 50 we trained, a survey found that at least half had gone on to work in first world countries where they could earn much more. The training was done mainly in English as that was the language of most of the volunteers, so by the end of the course they all had excellent English which meant they could then work abroad. Not exactly what we imagined, but you can't blame them for seeking a better life for their families

Culture isn't just a checklist of things like food or landmarks. It's in the way people interact, the unspoken rules, the shared understanding of how to behave and treat each other. If you're expecting a list of examples and clichés, you're missing the bigger picture.

Have you ever lived abroad?

All this does not stop us facing increasing destabilisation

If we don’t get it together and pretty much do as Aus does I expect instability will increase and all the huge damage to the country that goes with it

I think people are being head in the sand whereas I would prefer calm over this

All it takes is policy but people are ignoring where this could go and won’t choose it, I think that’s madness

I don't think I have all the answers. I was just seeing if you had any ideas as to what specifically could be done to improve the employment rights of black and brown people. I didn't point out the problem as I am neither so have no idea what type of issues they are suffering and what the solution might be. But you obvious do know what issues they are suffering so what specific change(s) to the law do you think would be helpful? I'm not trying to trick you!

You don't get by argument because you are too busy comparing this country to elsewhere to make it seem not too bad.

How do you preach equality but don't live by it? It's not just about people coming here and being respectful, it's about mutual respect. The people of this country should respect and treat others equally, just as they expect to be treated. It's a simple concept, but one that's often overlooked.

Also, being taught in schools and being a reality are two different things. That's why we saw small children racially abusing a shopkeeper.