Is anyone else getting quite tired of being called a racist?

[Peppatina]

I know it can't just be me.

It doesn't matter what carefully thought out reasons a brexiter has for wanting to leave (I've seen some very articulate and reasoned ones on mn itself) we are still all getting lumped into a stereotypical group of closet racist idiots.

And Lord forbid any of those reasons might just involve any concern over levels of eu migration!

I've been told that I'm essentially imagining the three week waiting list for my GP or that this is nothing to do with eu migration. If I say I know it is because of the names being called out I become the equivalent of Enoch Powell.

The same goes for a certain local estate very much being a no go area, especially for young girls. After braving this street once with my children and being spat on and shouted at by a group of very hostile Romanian men/boys I've been told I imagined it.

When I had my son a few week ago my I was the only English speaking person in my ward. A polish man was shouting and being very aggressive to staff as they were struggling to find an interpreter.

I absolutely know that not every migrant is aggressive and that they should build more schools and go surgeries but I believe I'm right to be concerned about a high number of migrants who are not intergrating with their local community and the unsustainable strain on services.

I'm sick of being told that my experiences don't matter. That to even mention that this is what life is like in our town means I am a racist or little englander.

Many of my closest friends work protecting our rarest species and habitats and they are TERRIFIED of the leave campaign for what it will do to the natural world in Britain that they love.

So they support unlimited population increases and all that that brings?

who don't warrant

In my experience, of those haranguing me to rethink my 'leave' vote, very few speak a second language and hardly any have lived in another country. Yet they sneer 'little Englander' with no trace of irony at all.

People with closed minds don't get irony.

So they support unlimited population increases and all that that brings?

Lol so goady and so much straw needed here.

No one supports that, the numbers show immigrants contribute more in taxes, economic immigrants move to where the work is, remember 'auf wiedersen pet'??

We need those numbers of people nationals/immigrants to generate the amount of tax etc.

Im getting sick of trying to get people to see last ten yrs of government have cut back services out of line with tax receipts while giving people tax breaks, but is completely lost on them so is getting very tiring indeed. Its all immigrants fault supposedly.

So they support unlimited population increases and all that that brings?

As I said, you don't have to support "unlimited population increase" to vote in.

And actually "unlimited population increase" means jack shit. If your timescale is "forever and ever until eternity" every single population in the world faces limitless increase.

Many would take the actual expected population increase figure - perhaps some would even like to see some limiting as part of ongoing EU membership - but they certainly see the other benefits of EU membership vastly outweighing the hardships of the associated free movement of people.

Actually it gets my goat no-end when people "where shall we put all these immigrant? How about we build on the Yorkshire Dales?" because if you actually spoke to the people responsible for maintaining the SSSIs on the Yorkshire Dales they would tell you the threats those sites face are far greater were we EU migrant free but also "out" than were we to have all the expected EU migrants but remain "in".

Most of us speak from our experiences. IMO Polish are reliable builders, the Chinese are hard workers, Japanese are super polite, Scots are hospitable and so on. Am I being racist?

You forgot to precede every word with lovely

Anybody else noticed that? That people who claim not to be racist all the stay people always describe it as

I know a lovely pole, I met a lovely Japanese person, I work with a lovely Chinese man.
They don't realistethat their patronizing, all nationalities are lovely attitude is in itself highly racist.

People are individual. They are not all lovely.

That people who claim not to be racist all the stay people always describe it as...

These people are all individual too agirl. Not all outers are raciit and not all inners describe everyone as "lovely"!

Jeez Louise, this is turning into quite the farce isn't it?

They don't realistethat their patronizing, all nationalities are lovely attitude is in itself highly racist

True.

They're so busy saying how lovely all their non-UK acquaintances are, then they can do the 'pale, stale, male' sneer or the 'racist white British' smirk and look round for a cheap but guaranteed cheer from all the bandwagon cronies.

Because if you call British white people lazy, il-educated, racists that's perfectly OK. It merely highlights the sophisticated and erudite global citizen you are.

And not actually racist twat with an irony bypass.

perhaps some would even like to see some limiting as part of ongoing EU membership

I think the great majority of Leave & Remain privately agree on this (discounting the rabid extremists on both sides). Wouldn't surprise me if this was first on the table for discussion following a narrow victory for either side.

The country needs some immigration, so let's introduce some controls and stop the situations such as the infamous jobless Romanian family and their five children getting the 4-bed house.

...actually while were at it, let's talk infrastructure.

Where will we get all the infrastructure required to handle all these EU migrants?

Good question, but if you use that argument to vote out where will we get all the infrastructure required to do all the work the EU currently does for us? Where will we build the offices? Where will the money come from to fund that? Where will we get all the engineers, the surveyors, the researchers, the administrators to assess rare species/green spaces/habitat declines/struggling industries/emerging markets/green innovations etc? Where will we get all the experienced professionals needed to make the decisions about allocating funding or giving grants?

Yes, we'll save money on EU "entry" fees, but the fee they skim off the top for running this whole shibang, that won't cover the capital expenditure to set this whole thing up here, and where will the trained staff come from? Bring them in from Europe perhaps, who knows.

There may be queues in the doctors' surgery right now (government could do better - let's be honest), but there will be queues for every grant/funding/subsidy if we are out. There are bottlenecks in services. There will be bottle necks in other services. I don't mind for one minute if someone wants to vote in, but to think reducing immigration is going to be some holy fucking grail is ill-informed. There are compromises to be made with either outcome, it just depends which compromises you think are worth making.

Should we stop inmigration to London, which is definitely 'full'?

Is it though? Less than 10% of the UK is built on. And even in London, there are criminally high numbers of empty homes - bought by investors as assets and left empty.

In Surrey there's more land used for golf courses than housing. We have plenty of room - we just use it badly with some appalling house building policies designed to keep people who already own their homes feeling rich as house prices keep going up.

agirlhSnomoney I was being ironic!
Sorry it was too subtle for you.

I don't mind for one minute if someone wants to vote in

I meant if someone wants to vote OUT, obviously - doh!

I think it's seen as racist as you're focussing on your own experiences of other nationalities which just isn't the case for the majority of foreigners bring aggressive and swamping resources. Majority of immigrants pay more in taxes and work hard compared to what they take out. I'm a remain vote, I live in Portugal my children ( one about to be born) have dual nationality. If we go out either myself or oh will have to get visas and residency stuff will get complicated. I don't speak Portuguese but I work as an English teacher. Many of my cousins married others from Eu countries and live in uk working hard. But it is typical that immigrants tend to live in certain areas, these areas will seem to have more issues related to immigrants purely because of a high concentration of them. Your experience in the hospital in a high stress place like a hospital I've seen plenty of Brits lose their cool there. Brexit is unlikely to actually change immigration levels I feel anyway

No Oriano it isnt a brilliant ploy at all. All it does is creat hostility and division. If people are accused of being racist what are they meant to say? It should be possible to have a debate without one side flinging insults at the other. Lets not have a repeat of theScottish referendum

I wanted my anecdotes to stand for themselves as I don't believe having these concerns deserves to be labelled as racist or small minded.

Anecdotes by their very nature do NOT stand for themselves, not in any meaningful sense that can be applied to a country or an issue as a whole. You may not be small-minded, but your anecdotes are small. They just are.

And, I know other posters have said this, but blame underfunding for the strain on the NHS. Oh, and an ageing population. NOT immigrants.

Sorry OrianA, I misunderstood

Saphire, why not blame uncontrolled immigration as well?

mountain, because it's largely untrue. There are studies indicating that waiting times etc are improved by immigration rather than made worse.

Mrs Blackthorn whereabouts in London do you live? Its definitely full where I am.

I love the clever people using big words

Oh your xenophobic

Personally I think there is a massive problem
It has nothing to do with nationality it has something to do with mass migration of people from one country to another

We have a housing shortage, school shortage, NHS in demise. All the people coming here funnily enough need housing, schools and medical.

My sister lives in a beautiful Cotswolds village and apart from a handful of different nationalities it is predominantly British

I live in Dagenham its predominantly not British!

Sister thinks everything is fine and dandy

I think country is in real shit affecting real people

Saphire can you give me some facts.

you are [[http://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/working-paper-series/working-paper-005]]

I note it does say that 'internal migration' can cause strain on the NHS. I'd still say that a) this is in some and quite small areas and b) underfunding caused by government's ideologically driven policies is a much bigger problem than migration/immigration.