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Brexit

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

Xenophobia: Brexit official discourse

525 replies

jaws5 · 04/10/2016 21:23

Hearing one minister after another at the Tory conference today has made me feel ill: So foreign doctors are welcome UNTIL more British doctors have been trained in a hurry, foreigners will be treated as second class citizens when applying for a job, and EU nationals are one of the "main cards" in Brexit negotiations. I cannot imagine any other country in the world where the official discourse of the governing party would include these statements without it being condemned as xenophobic. Shame on them.

OP posts:
MargoReadbetter · 06/10/2016 08:01

£350 million a week

ScaredFuture99 · 06/10/2016 08:55

I have to say, I'm wondering why there hasn't beeing new places at Uiversity open to train more doctors knowing there has been a shortage for years and years. Same with nurses.

And then I remember. Programs from what 10~15years ago about how the UK is going to recruit nurses in South Africa and other African/Asian countries. How they were doing so because they were cheaper than British nurses and that the UK was happy to do so even though it was clear they were taking away an extremely valuable thing from poor countries and knowing that out also meant these countries had paid for the training for these nurses (and doctors), countries that couldn't really afford to loose that sort of money. But that didn't matter. It was cheaper and better for the NHS. Better for the UK so...

So here we go. The U.K. Has been happy to use foreign doctors because it was cheaper to do so. No cost of training at Uni and then in hosp. Lower wages and people who were trained at a higher level because they were happy to take on 'lower skilled jobs'.

And now we suddenly realised it's awful to be the 5th or 6th economic country in the world but not to be self sufficient in doctors HmmHmm. And it has absolutely nothing to do with immigration and the current climate HmmHmm

Red once again, this link was absolutely fantastic.

ScaredFuture99 · 06/10/2016 08:59

Btw, there is no way that the UK will be self sufficient by the end of the next parliamentary election.
How long do you think it takes to train doctors and then consultants? Much more than 5 years. Think 10 or 15yo and that's when they start with no 'experience'.

Of course you can hope for that. But are you also really happy to also get rid of all the accumulated knowledge from those 'immigrants' that are trying to save your life?

Once again, these are words. Words to make you think that the Great Great Britain is still well and alive. That it can do without anyone to support and can be completely self sufficient.
In a world of globalisation, it will be hard....

GreenandWhite · 06/10/2016 09:00

"I want us to be a country where it doesn't matter where you were born, who your parents are, where you went to school, what your accent sounds like, what god you worship, wither you are a man or a woman, gay or straight, black or white. All that should matter is the talent you have and how hard you're prepared to work.'"

Lol what tosh.

"what your accent sounds like"

  • we all know about the Brexit accent haters
" it doesn't matter where you were born" As long as it's the UK "gay or straight"
  • May didn't vote for ss marriage

It's hilarious how May positions herself as some sort of benevolent grammar school head girl.

GreenandWhite · 06/10/2016 09:01

pretty thanks for your posts about Scotland, I am going to visit at half-term.

Peregrina · 06/10/2016 09:08

SacredFuture Exactly. We weren't bothered about stealing staff from 'developing' countries. It was cheaper. End of.

Now Hunt has decided he will develop a conscience. Sadly for him, May, and Rudd, some of us went and made a connection that they hoped we'd miss. This is all about curbing immigrants, bollocks to any higher moral purpose.

GreenandWhite · 06/10/2016 09:12

Red

I like what Akala says at the end of that video:

"Which of the traditions of the people of this island will you be drawing on and identifying with?

The one that promotes and reinforces race and class oppression and explains away the genocide of empire as a civilising mission, or the one of relentless activism that secured for us the fragile freedoms that we have today."

Figmentofmyimagination · 06/10/2016 09:18

"What your accent sounds like (as long as the intolerant among us can recognise it as a traditional regional accent of the British isles)".

I went to see Nish Kumar last night, recording for the BBC (metropolitan liberal elite - go me - it's free though - you just sign up).

Responding to Rudd's comments on the Today programme about how people need to be free to have a conversation about immigration, kumar pointed out that in the first six months of this year, one in five front pages of the express, sun and mail headlined with 'immigration' - that's one a week for six months - and how many do you think said anything positive ... So some people have been having a (somewhat one sided) conversation amongst themselves about nothing but immigration for months and months. The difference is that now, they feel emboldened by the brexit vote and the stance of the current government (don't apologise for them corcory) to foist it on the rest of us.

ScaredFuture99 · 06/10/2016 10:00

I don't think there has ever been ANY free conversation about immigration.
A conversation implies two people and exchange of ideas, usually different point of view too.
And free means that it is OK to defend the idea that immigration is a positive thing, in effect to defend the opposite idea. This is not the case. Each time this idea is raised it's dismissed as being 'lefty liberal academic' aka it's silenced.

jaws5 · 06/10/2016 11:22

Just seen that video red, wonderful, and it clearly defines the great division that the referendum made visible, but that was already there. The anti-intellectualism displayed by TM's camp and people like Vile Melanie Philips is very worrying but I have seen in before, for years, in the the "type" who voted Brexit. We have seen it in this thread too. I suspect that within that suspicion and disdain for "experts", for people who migrate for a better life or simply to explore the world, for people who aspire to education and culture for their children, hides old-fashioned envy and insecurity. That is what is being exploited by TM when she throws around terms like "individualist internationalism" and "cosmopolitan intelligentsia" around. Hurrah for mediocrity!

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RedToothBrush · 06/10/2016 11:54

Fox: We will leave the customs union / Hammond: We will stay in the single market

Rudd: We will list foreign workers / May: We will have a country for everyone regardless of where you are born

May: Being a educated ‘Liberal Elite’ is bad / May: We must promote a meritocracy

May: Foreign doctors will be allowed to stay until we can train more British ones / May: We will take the time to say how much we value doctors and nurses and thank them

Johnson: We will be part of Europe, we think they are great / Johnson: Insert insult towards EU of your choice here

Fallon: We will block EU efforts to enhance security capabilities / Fallon: We want an enhanced security relationship with the EU.

May: We must consider how the state responds to disasters like Hillsborough to make sure the suffering of families is better taken into account / But we will never again – in any future conflict – let those activist, left-wing human rights lawyers harangue and harass the bravest of the brave – the men and women of Britain’s Armed Forces.

May: We will protect and enhance workers rights / Rudd: Unless you are foreign

May: If you are a tax-dodger we’re coming after you / Rudd & Leadsom: Tumbleweed

May: Using the legal system to challenge a50 is undemocratic / May: I have a mandate

Doublethink
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink

The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a warning. Not an instruction manual though you would be forgiven for wondering at the moment. This shit is propaganda. People are buying it. Its a technic that allows people to pick and choose the bit they are hearing and want to believe whilst the state can act in an alternative fashion. Often against their best interests.

^Orwell considered doublethink to be a feature of Soviet-style totalitarianism, as reflected in this statement from a speech by Joseph Stalin: "We are for the withering away of the state, and at the same time we stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which represents the most powerful and mighty of all forms of the state which have existed up to the present day."

This is Brexit all over. We want to get rid of those unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats whilst introducing unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats.

In Nineteen Eighty Four, any form of thought alternative to the party’s construct is classified as "thoughtcrime". So what has May said about the legal challenge to a50? They are "subverting democracy". This is not true. This goes against the rule of law in this country.

Yesterday a columnist for the Times, wrote an article which would define me as a militant.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/30/theresa-may-extremism-disruption-orders
The difference is spelled out in the detail of the policy, where it says that it is intended to catch not just those who “spread or incite hatred” on grounds of gender, race or religion but also those who undertake “harmful activities” for the “purpose of overthrowing democracy”.

This is an area fraught with difficulties that could see non-violent political activists in all sorts of areas deemed to be “anti-democratic”. The Conservatives already say that the policy would catch neo-Nazis, raising questions about whether the EDL or the BNP would be banned under the measure. But the official definition of non-violent extremism is already wide-ranging and, as Big Brother Watch has pointed out, the national extremism database already includes the names of people who have done little more than organise meetings on environmental issues.

May wanted in 2014 to bring in laws which would silence political opposition as much as tackle terrorism. Anti-terror laws have a long history of being applied to non-terrorist situations and people. This is not an unwarranted fear. Will she try and do it?

So the question is, would this make me an enemy of the state? Would I fall foul of an extreme disruption order for my postings on MN?

The answer is a simple yes.

May does not like, nor want debate.

Corcory · 06/10/2016 12:28

I am not suggesting that these actions suggested by Jeremy Hunt to help the shortage of Doctors isn't entirely instigated by Brexit. They have been quite happy to trundle along with docs. from all over the world working in the NHS. Only now are they having to rethink this! It has always been such that they should have trained more docs. but hay ho successive governments of any hue, haven't bothered, they haven't needed to. Until now!
Of course all of this has been instigated by Brexit and the idea that we might not have freedom of movement with the EU in the future. That's why they are talking about it. AR stated she was having a consultation on all the things she was suggesting so it's not as if they are all going to come to pass.
Green - dismissing what I quoted about TM's speech as a load of tosh is a very intellectual argument I must say. I really seem to have hit a nerve with a lot of you by stating what was actually said. But obviously most of you have a massive bias towards the conservatives and will listen to nothing they say at all. You have decided long ago that what ever they say or do has to have an anterior motive and that they all have fascist leanings or sum such thing! Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story will you.

RedToothBrush · 06/10/2016 12:39

I have voted Tory before Corcory.

May ACTUALLY said that those making legal challenges to a50 were "subverting democracy".

Would you like the full quote on that?

This challenges the rule of law in this country. Something she as an MP in a democract society should be sworn to protect. This alone is a massive issue and worry.

If she wasn't saying and doing things like that, perhaps people would see the ideas about British workers differently. But its not in isolation. Its also in a climate of heightened fears and anti-foreign sentiment when the government more than anyone should be being sensitive about how they handle policies, not just what the policies are. Views abut foreigners are also diplomatically sensitive now too.

We WOULD be having the debate about foreign born doctors simply because we have a shortage full stop and a crisis about that.

Don't let your own bias cloud your judgement either. You are as guilty as the next man on that score.

TheElementsSong · 06/10/2016 12:42

having a consultation on all the things she was suggesting so it's not as if they are all going to come to pass.

You do realise that what has been said cannot be unsaid? The party of government has gone far beyond what was required to deliver Brexit and declared an overwhelming mandate to incite even greater hatred of foreigners and anyone labelled as "other". That's not just EU citizens, or people with funny accents, or exotic folk with swarthy skins - it's open season also on the "liberal elite", on the excessively educated, on "citizens of the world".

It doesn't matter if the mendacious cowards are now back-pedalling furiously - they have put those ideas out there, in the resentful minds of (as we have seen) the angry useful idiots, who will now feel ever more emboldened. And the rest of the world have seen it too and will draw their own conclusions. That genie is not getting back in the bottle. Aren't you proud? Is this what you voted for?

ScaredFuture99 · 06/10/2016 12:44

Red you are again scarily true.
I think I find even scarier because have been thinking too we were right in the middle of 1984 fur a while now.

Actually her politic is the continuation of a lot if things and ideas that have been branded around fur a few years now.
All about the fact that human right activities were just a pain, the European human right court being even worse. His dare they telling us we are acting in a way that is not respecting human rights??

Surveillance of people, DNA testing etc have been put in place fur a long Time with very little protection of the individual or protection from mis use. The reluctance to see and talk of the ways all these laws and list could be used in 'inappropriate ways' reducing the freedom of the populations as always been there.
As if British people were immune to excessive behaviours or as decisions.

WrongTrouser · 06/10/2016 13:14

I think there is a massive amount of doublespeak going on from the government, but in my view we have had little else from politicians (Tory and Labour) for decades.

Apologies if this post doesn't seem relevant to this thread - it is in my mind as my fear is that a lurch to the right and an increase in bigotry and racism is much more likely if people can't move passed the anger and division caused by the referendum.

Isn't one of the problems here that the referendum has caused a massive divide between people who would ordinarily be on the same side? And aren't the right wing of the Tory party going to exploit this to the nth degree to push forward their agenda?

I think this is the case, and if it is, what is the answer?

Is it to say (and I am exaggerating here to make my point, I know this is not how everyone thinks but it is the view expressed by some, even on this thread), well I disdain you for voting leave, I think I understand all about your life, and experiences even though I don't know you and I will henceforth call you a racist, ignorant, resentful, jealous, uncultured bigot with whom I have nothing in common and I will insult every time you try to speak about your views?

Or to say I will accept that other people may have different experiences, beliefs and values to me, and so may have decided that they do not see membership of the EU as beneficial for themselves, their families and communities, and so I will try to understand their motivations but not right them off as the devil's spawn.

Because if our society can't move past this, then unfortunately this division will be exploited by the right. There are a lot of people who voted leave who are not racist (+ usual list) and many on the left. It will be far harder to halt any move towards the right in this country if people can't see this.

I sometimes feel I have woken up in a 1950s science fiction novel where we are all now the "R"s and the "L" s and the fact that a few months ago we probably could have had a reasonable discussion about any political issue under the sun, might even have been campaigning on the same issues and in the same party, is all now vanished.

WrongTrouser · 06/10/2016 13:22

past not passed
write not right

GreenandWhite · 06/10/2016 13:33

I totally feel that people who are not very educated have been empowered by Brexit and the Tori/UKIP discourse. They can now flaunt their regional English accents as they have been told that any 'native' accent is superior to non-native accents, no matter how uneducated or disinterested the former is. What happens to a country where people who are highly driven to succeed, work in research, medicine, architecture, finance are no longer welcome? Because I cannot see the 'type' (sorry) who voted UKIP and who TM is courting to step up and become architect, doctors, interpreters, designers or conduct international business. Why? Well if you want to succeeded in a global economy you simply have to be aspirational, educated, open minded and able to work together with people with different nationalities and funny accents. Narrow mindedness will always be limiting no matter which industry.

Corcory · 06/10/2016 13:35

I quite agree Wrongtrousers. I feel I am being portrayed as some far right wing racist because I voted leave but I am far from that and have very liberal views in many ways. In fact I have voted LibDem on many occasions.
I feel that the two 'sides' have become so polarised that there is just no discussion at all any more.

GreenandWhite · 06/10/2016 13:43

Gosh what are UKIP up to? UKIP's Steven Woolfe in hospital 'after altercation

Helmetbymidnight · 06/10/2016 13:43

You didn't in any way realise or anticipate that a vote for Brexit was a right wing vote, or would pave the way for more right wing policies??

jaws5 · 06/10/2016 13:44

Exactly greenandwhite, I cannot see the many young people I know who aspire to be scientists, film makers, musicians and have big dreams, feeling that they can achieve that here, that this is a place for them. This is an attack on intelligence and culture in order to appease mean, mediocre people with no imagination.

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Helmetbymidnight · 06/10/2016 13:44

I know, he sounds very poorly - Someone punched him it seems...

GreenandWhite · 06/10/2016 13:46

Steven Woolfe, a leading member of the European Parliament (MEP) from the UK Independence Party, was in a serious condition in a Strasbourg hospital on Thursday after an "altercation" during a meeting of UKIP MEPs, party leader Nigel Farage said.

"I deeply regret that following an altercation that took place at a meeting of UKIP MEPs this morning that Steven Woolfe subsequently collapsed and was taken to hospital. His condition is serious," Farage said in a statement emailed by a spokesman.

Farage, who leads UKIP in the EU legislature, resumed his overall leadership of the party on Wednesday after his elected successor stood down after less than three weeks in the job amid factional struggles following the referendum which delivered UKIP's key goal of taking Britain out of the European Union.

Charming bunch eh? Very civilised indeed.

GreenandWhite · 06/10/2016 13:47

Sorry I copied that from Reuters btw.