To think Starmer is utterly reprehensible

[Thegreyhound]

I know everyone will disagree, that’s ok- But I just have to say that Starmer today seems to have sunk lower than I ever believed he would with his incendiary ‘island of strangers’ and ‘incalculable damage’ rhetoric.
I find it particularly shocking because he has calculated this and decided it’s worth it to throw immigrants under the bus and essentially give all the ground in the debate to Farage, Tommy Robinson and Enoch Powell types.
Policy can be altered without making statements that are designed to impact race relations and make life even more difficult for people who are just trying to get along and make a living here.
Starmer is vile. This country does indeed feel like an island of strangers these days but the strangers are not the immigrants :(

That's a pretty daft thing to say though given that as of the 2021 census only 17.8% of Welsh people actually speak Welsh. Why would visitors know a language that 80% of the residents don't speak.

I was on jury service for a trail in 2019 and the judge ordered the defendant to have an interpreter despite working a public facing role since 1984.

❤ I reckon many people will have a story like this. Hope you and your daughter are OK.

Wakefield and Huddersfield too..!

I'm in the South east and we have infant schools closing too! The birthrate is well below average where we live, it's not exactly a secret, it is happening in many parts of the country and the world!

No @Thegreyhound I'm not and you expressing it in that way is entirely on you.

I’m sorry you are wrong

He didn’t actually work it out.

A Court had to tell him.

Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up.

Yep this. ^ @TheOriginalEmu was reaching so far there that she knocked her head on the moon! 🌕

For all his manifold faults, I still hold to the view that Jeremy Corbyn is a much better person than Starmer. The Labour Party should be better than this.

Absolutely agree. One of my employees can't let her 13yr old daughter out to the local shopping area as she has to walk past numerous illegal immigrants who have been mollycoddled in the local hotel. it beggars belief that some people simply can't imagine what it must be like for other people to be living in this situation. As long as it's not on THEIR doorstep.

Do we NEED legal immigration though... ? 🤔

checks notes.

Not really.

I'm not saying I have a problem with legal immigration, but we don't need it.

What do you expect him to do?

The trouble with "the immigration we obviously need" is first that we shouldn't need it in such great numbers, if skills and training were properly invested in. But like so many things the misguided markets-will-deliver experiment of the 2010s didn't actually deliver the broad public goods on which to build a balanced economy - and then Brexit blew the bottom out of the labour system by cutting off the supply immigrants who were less likely to stay long-term.

So instead we're trapped in a cycle of short-termism where we will be filling the gaps with cheap importer labour in perpetuity and building ourselves a beautiful demographic Ponzi scheme.

Twenty years ago I worked in Sparkbrook for a time. It was a poorer part of the city, high Pakistani-heritage population which has been there a long time. What I’m getting from some of these posts is that the issue is that some (probably) white British people don’t like it when there are large numbers of ethnic minorities concentrated in one area. Posters are saying Bradford, Luton, Sparkhill, Sparkbrook are problems without detailing their actual concerns.

As a long term Labour supporter, I am glad to see the government actually getting to grips with a difficult issue which has been allowed to get out of control over the past Tory governments. No, its not reprehensible. Not pleasant, but echoing sentiments I have heard from my born and bred London family for years - that there are places which they have been around for decades which now feel hostile to them.

@JassyRadlett put it far better - and more articulately than I could have! ^

We don't NEED legal immigration if we invest time and money into training and nurturing people who already live here. Like we used to - 25-30+ years ago.

Genuinely interested - what about this is Islamophobic to you @Thegreyhound ?

Or visit Ilkley-the only nice part of Bradford...for the moment anyway, as it's being used as a cash cow to pay for the "City of Culture, Kindness and Different Peoples." Whatever the fuck that is.

There are men who are part of cultures that treat women as second class citizens, and they are here and continuing to practice this in the U.K. did you not know this?

Personally given this post and posts on other thread you’re absolutely deluded when it comes to how many religions - and yes Islam is one of them - that oppress women in the most horrific ways. I think you’re swallowed the “most peaceful religion on earth” Kool aid and shout down accusations and punch inflammatory statements at anyone who disagrees with you.

Absolutely and in a time where the world is fucked and skint, it’s absolutely appropriate to take care of our own first.

💯

Yes! 👏

Many other countries do this, but when the UK does it - specifically England - we are not being 'kind,' and we are being 'racist.' 🙄

If this thread, and a couple of others today, are anything to go by, Labour have just increased their odds of getting in next time massively.
They have an overwhelming majority to do what ever the fuck they like. They should just do it.
Drop immigration to near net zero and let’s see what happens.

You getting people coming into the country you get people leaving the country, more people means more spending and actually helps the economy.