to think we're all being manipulated

[newbluesofa]

I'm going to get flamed by reform voters here, and I think it'll come off as thinking I'm smarter than everyone but I genuinely don't, which is why I'm so confused by this.

To me, it is incredibly obvious that we are being completely manipulated by politicians and the media. They want us to blame immigrants and people who claim benefits for their failing to run the country properly. And it's worked.

I don't think we should have unregulated immigration, there are issues that need to be addressed. But there's a difference between sensibly discussing immigration from an economic point, and the nasty hate and vitriol that's everywhere now. It is what they WANT. As long as we're fighting amongst ourselves, no one is looking up at the people with the real power and money.

One example, newspapers describing immigrants as 'fighting age men'. 'Fighting' is not an age. Young men could also be fit, healthy, and able to work and contribute. They say 'fighting age' to scaremonger and promote anti immigrant rhetoric, and it works as people parrot the line.

It's always been the way that the ruling class look for ways to keep the masses infighting. Honestly I lose respect at anyone that falls for it. I don't get how it isn't so obvious to others, how can you not see you're being played?

This comes from all sides though rather than your op which just mentions one angle.

You said everyone has the right to leave their country.
You said this in support of men arriving in the country without passports, visas, criminal background checks etc.

It’s really not that much of a stretch

Even then, and I don't disagree what what he's saying, I feel similar.

I suddenly got his clips on my algorithm out of nowhere and I couldn't help but think why. From these clips, I've not seen longer form, he's very good at saying what the problem is and being extremely angry about it but offers no solution over then to also get really angry about it

Couldn't help but wonder if this is what gets aimed at you to get you angry if the anti-immigration stuff doesn't work but to what end?

The lack of self awareness here is WILD

I’ve been singing “hips don’t lie” all day after this.

I was trying to be balanced. I didn't specify a particular viewpoint this corresponded to and specifically said it wasn't about class.

On wages, interestingly, the lower 10% of earners have actually faired better in terms of (inflation adjusted) wage growth than the 80% above them. It probably wouldn't feel.like it though because of cuts to public services -leisure centres, public transport, libraries, children's spaces, dentists which, because they have the least disposable income available, the least well paid have the least alternatives to. So their quality of life will be noticeably worse.
It's the people in the region above the bottom 10% and below the top 10% who have seen a real hit in their wages adjusted to inflation. The money has flowed up- to the top 10%. There is a very very clear point at which that started: 2008. 2008 is also when the UK (who in comparison to other developed countries had seen employee wages as a percentage of GDP growing steadily every.year since the 90s) stopped seeing wages growing as a percentage of GDP.

2008 is a significant year. Not because that's when all the migrants arrived. But because that's when the global financial crash happened and we bailed out the banks... Here's an article from those left wing firebrands at the Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2025/09/20/uk-wage-growth-financial-crisis-lost-decades-millennials/

On wages alone, in 2025 the UK has seen an increase this year on wages adjusted for inflation: https://www.statista.com/statistics/933075/wage-growth-in-the-uk/
The trades did well above average https://www.hudsoncontract.co.uk/news/freelance-builder-pay-trends-february-2025/ they tended to do better over the last 20 years because, despite migration, demand has continued to outstrip supply. It's why we can't just build more houses.

For the lowest paid, increases in the national living wage will have the biggest impact on how much they take home rather than cutting immigration. Which TBF Labour did.

I'm not saying people shouldn't want lower immigration or that it's stupid to think that. But it's inaccurate to say that immigration has lowered the wages of the lowest paid or of tradespeople. Not stupid. Just inaccurate.

Exactly this! Gary’s video breaks it down for everyone. Unless you’re a raging racist and then there is no hope for you.

I will always say wanting to curb immigration isn’t a bad thing but voting for a party who is anti women and stirs up hatred isn’t the way to do it.

They said men should stay in their countries. I said men have as much right to leave as anyone else.

Some of the hardships or disadvantages that some people are experiencing are caused directly by immigration. They just are. And I have outlined some real world examples in my post.

But sure, as I said upthread, those people with fewer resources will be more protective of those resources and are less able to move to alternative resources, such as private health care. So of course they are more concerned about higher numbers of people accessing those resources. That is human nature, and quite rational. In a real world example, one of my friends who was furious after brexit and called the people who voted for it ignorant and racist people who should not have been allowed to vote. A few months later she casually told me that she was thinking of sending her daughter to private school as she had heard her local primary had high numbers of children who cannot speak English. Because she could afford to buy her family out of the disadvantage of high immigration. And poorer people could not. Didn't change her views on immigration though, or people who were concerned by immigration ( they were still thick racists in her view), because immigration still had not negatively affected her as she had bought her way out of the negative effects.

I'd recommend watching his longer form stuff, he's very clear on what he thinks the solution is - essentially tax wealth, but he's very clear about the specific ways he would and wouldn't do this

So don't vote Labour then. They didn't know what a woman was until the Suprene Court told them and have been pretty successful at stirring up hatred of the MC/aspirational.

I understand that.
What I don’t understand is the purpose you think passports, visas and criminal background checks have.

Men commit 98% of sex crimes. Why do you think we need to know the identities and criminal backgrounds of some men entering the country but it is unnecessary for others?

What on earth are you on about? Can't tell if you're serious or trolling as you keep making up things and pretending I've said them?

All I said is if people from X country are allowed to emigrate, then men are just as entitled to do that as women are. Legally. They are not obligated to stay and fight while women should be allowed to leave.

I'm not going to go into my opinions about which people from which places we should allow to emigrate here as you're clearly not here for an actual discussion. The ONLY thing I've stated is what I said above in 2nd paragraph.

The poster to whom I replied wasn't asking about solutions. They said OP had no problem with mass immigration and OP had made it clear that wasn't the case.

OP also said, "I think it'll come off as thinking I'm smarter than everyone but I genuinely don't" which sort of makes me wonder why you think she believes she's superior.

It's this kind of nit picking and misinterpretation that causes division and stops a proper conversation.

@persephonia I am disputed your claim re trades, it may be there is difference in local areas to national and I know from my own experience that rates are far lower in my area than 20 years ago for the work I was seeking, but the link you give to support your claim over the last twenty years does not have that information. It appears to only have information from two years?

As far as I can see there are only two politicians who are all over the BBC news and other media outlets all the bloody time. Trump and Farage. Theirs are the only opinions we hear day in day out, and they are being given far too much airtime.

Not that I'm a fan of politics, but where's the ACTUAL Prime Minister? When do we get to hear what he thinks, or the opinions of the leaders of the other political parties in the UK? The assorted European heads of state?

It's all 'Trump says this' and 'Farage says that' and I'm entirely sick of the pair of them.

It is your view that people are being ‘manipulated’ because you put a different weight on social and political issues we are facing.

People who disagree with you and OP aren’t ‘thick’ or being manipulated because they disagree with you. That sort of dismissal doesn’t help anyone.

So you think we’re all being conned rather than understanding that none of these things will be improved by letting large numbers of people in who also want the scarce resources and in many cases they will be made worse.

In some areas people are being badly affected in their day to day life by these men. Some women and girls have had their lives changed forever by being raped or sexually assaulted by some of these men. At least one woman has been murdered by one of these men.

It feels like a bit of a luxury belief to dismiss the real effects of the current situation as just us all being ‘conned’

We are being manipulated constantly by all sorts of people. From family and friends to work colleagues and management all the way up to governments and social media, press and television.

I guess part of aging is seeing so much of it that you see through the bullshit. None of these political parties tell the truth. I don’t think it’s possible as then they’d have to lower the smoke screen and it’s the smoke screen that keeps everyone going to work and being civilised. If we really knew how bad things are we would all start running about looting, so everyone keeps on lying.

And you've just realised that's how politics work 🙄
You aren't saying anything new here

Uh nope, I'm saying it's so obvious that I wonder why it isn't obvious to others

Because you’ve only put one side? And it’s not just that.

Because you’re saying only one side is stupid.

I'm not saying anyone is stupid. I specifically said that there are issues around immigration that needs to be discussed. I'm saying that the hatefulness and nasty infighting is a deliberate manipulation. I feel like I made this quite obvious but many people have read it and become incredibly defensive and/or completely misunderstood

Nestingbirds
Denying the statistical fact that tens of millions have indeed arrived here in the last decade or two, as being completely irrelevant sounds like insanity to me.

"Tens of millions" means at least twenty million. That's a million a year for the last two decades.

I would very much like to see the evidence for this figure; I can find no year since 2000 in which over a million people immigrated into the UK. Net immigration in most of those years has been in the lower half of the hundred thousands. As a result, "tens of millions" sounds decidedly hyperbolic rather than statistically factual or simply factual.

Are you perhaps counting arrivals such students, and failing to notice their departure when they go home again after their three-year degree courses? Tourists "arrive", but they also leave. And so on.

Just so you know where I went for my figures, Statistica, using UKGov figures, gives the following figures for net immigration, rounded up to the nearest thousand:
year ending June 2000: 158,000
year ending June 2001: 171,000
year ending June 2002: 153,000
year ending June 2003: 148,000
year ending June 2004: 245,000
year ending June 2005: 206,000
year ending June 2006: 198,000
year ending June 2007: 233,000
year ending June 2008: 163,000
year ending June 2009: 229,000
year ending June 2010: 256,000
year ending June 2011: 249,000
year ending June 2012: 161,000
year ending June 2013: 208,000
year ending June 2014: 309,000
year ending June 2015: 329,000
year ending June 2016: 252,000
year ending June 2017: 249,000
year ending June 2018: 276,000
year ending June 2019: 184,000
year ending June 2020: 93,000
year ending June 2021: 484,000
year ending June 2022: 872,000
year ending June 2023: 906,000
year ending June 2024: 431,000

Net total immigrants between June 1999 and June 2024: (fewer than) 7,063,000.

Statistica estimate a figure of 431,000 for net migration in the year from June 2024 to June 2025, but that figure is certain to have to be adjusted a bit. That will bring the net total migration this century up to somewhere in the region of seven and a half million, not tens of millions.

(By the way, the two highest years for net immigration so far were under the most recent Conservative government, and the numbers have fallen again now.)