UKIP second in Eastleigh...anyone from Eastleigh care to comment?

[SequinsOfEvents]

Bit tongue in cheek but wowsers! 11,000 votes! Crikey!

I am living abroad at the moment and am pleased to be! Can't come home with current political situation....how depressing

[indahouse]

There were hardly any benefits in the past, HillBilly76, that's why people worked, but there's no going back to that.

Taking into account WTC and CTC the minimum wage for people with children is around £26000 if I remember correctly. How much do you want it to be - £30000, £40000? And what would be the point in studying and working hard if you could get £40000 in a supermarket? If employers were to rise wages, the prices would have to rise accordingly. Would you be happy to pay double for your weekly grocery shop to have everyone working in supermarkets and their suppliers on £15 an hour?

Hearing different languages on the street is great because it's what humanity and Christianity is all about - everyone is equal and the more people mix and match, the less division there will be between races, religions, nations. Hopefully we'll be less likely to repeat the horrible things that happened in the past (and are happening now to some extent), because some groups of people thought less of other groups of people.

[vesela]

and before anyone starts banging on about preserving British culture - there's a fair amount of it about, but if traditional culture is going down the pan it's not the fault of immigrants. Focus on preserving it in your own families.

[BIWI]

There really is no such thing as a British culture that is defined by one nationality.


We have always had immigration (and emigration, actually)

[Talkinpeace]

As an immigrant I find it hysterically funny that the British
who merrily invaded and took over much of the world
imposing their culture, language and rules
now object to a few people coming here for work

And why do companies hire Poles?
Because they work hard - they get few benefits so they either work or go hungry.
Companies I do accounts for switched to using Poles because their hourly rate was a tad higher (yes really) but the amount they got done in a shift was double the lazy arsed English people.

[BIWI]

We also, Talkinpeace, never consider the fact that we think it our right to go anywhere in the world that we want - look at all the expats in Spain. Or all those who line up to go to Australia or New Zealand.

Thus making the Brits the immigrants.

[Talkinpeace]

BIWI
My Brother and his family went to Spain at Half Term.
They got heckled at the airport by out of work Spaniards shouting "English Go Home"

[BIWI]

How very dare they. Do they not know that we have an Empire. Oh wait ...

[MisForMumNotMaid]

Many moons ago I lived near Eastleigh and went to Barton Peveril 6th Form, swam and went to holiday club at Fleming Park, oh the memories.

Something that doesn't ring true to me is this bit about Polish immigrants. Eastleigh and Southampton, from my understanding as a teenager, had a post WW2 influx of Polish people when the concentration camps were emptied because they were dispersed people. For many their families had become separated and their communities decimated by war. The war destroyed their homes and communities there wasn't a home to go back to. We're talking going on 70 years ago now aren't we?

I haven't been to Eastleigh for 15 years now though so it could have changed a fair bit since my day.

There was certainly a big Polish community centre with Polish food shop on the way to Southampton and a lot of Polish spoken in the area in the 80's.

[vesela]

MisForMum - see the third comment at the end of this article for one guy's reminiscences...

[alemci]

All well and good about the Polish people working hard etc and I don't dispute that but where does that leave the English/British people who do work hard and want jobs. Isn't that stereotyping the British people implying that they are lazy etc.

I take your point about the empire etc but that wasn't the fault of my generation and other European countries did the same.

Also Indahouse as long as in 50 years' time we are still in a position to be able to practice christianity. Are you sure everything who arrives is so tolerant as we are of this freedom

[Abitwobblynow]

"I would like to live in a world where people are blind to race and nationality and just see human beings. I'm overjoyed that my own country is becoming more attractive to migrants and streets are full of people talking in different languages. "

It is this [I am a superior person because I Care So Much] wishful thinking which I was talking about. The West is sleepwalking to disaster and you don't even notice! The use of immigration to solve a declining birthrate and an ageing population is a terrible solution! The skating over of what kinds of immigrants are being let in and 'The Poles' as the usual safe substitute of discussion. I am not talking about The Poles. I am talking about the badly educated, completely different culture etc. immigrants that we have been so successfully persuaded we are going to use to 'change the world for ever'. No, it won't. It is ensuring your eventual cultural and economic destruction. It won't happen soon, but in 100 years...

'A destructive aspect of unconscious functioning is also postulated. Thoughtout the ages, humans have attempted to harness their instinctual levels of consciousness and civilisation. This process seems to have been bought at a price. While governments advance humanitarian principles and notions of civilised, rational interactions between races and nations, never before has humankind had such capacities for worldwide destruction and mass exploitation. What we see is that the more conscious and moral certain nations become, the more their aggressive and greedy needs become hidden from consciousness.... [A Basic Introduction to Psychoanalytic Thought ed J Watts].

What happens when the WRONG kind of person you are being oh so nice to, gets into a position of power, and has a weight of numbers that you can't do anything about? Tower Hamlets comes to mind.

You all might think that you have gotten rid of your aggressive and greedy impulses for ever and ever (because Labour votes are GOOD people, of course and Tories are Evil especially That Woman who is Super Evil] - but they haven't.

You kid yourselves at your peril.

[vesela]

Oh look. "Influx of Polish children into UK schools 'has helped improve British pupils' grades.'"
article here.

"Prof McNally said this [the research results]] could be due to better education standards in countries like Poland, as well as the work ethic of their parents, who had left their homeland to seek employment in Britain.
She said: 'It may be the fact that immigrants from East European countries are better educated and more attached to the labour market than the native population.
'The children of such immigrants may be a welcome influence in the schools they attend.'

Going by the Czech educational system, at least, then the combination of parents who put a lot of emphasis on getting things right, together with the more creative approaches of UK schools, could well, I imagine, produce some good educational results.

[MotherSouperior]

Interesting to see this thread in discussions of the day. I seem to remember that UKIP didn't exactly cover themselves in glory when they came on MN for a webchat at the last election. Didn't Farage make some awful remarks about keeping women in the home? And excused one of his party quoting the Third Reich by saying he was 'a bit of a character'

I remember my jaw was on the ground when I was read it. It think it showed their true colours and I can't believe they've changed much since. And because they are the one party successfully managing to exploit Conservative Party divisions and public dissatisfaction and disillusionment with the main parties, they are getting all this attention. But they are a very unpleasant bunch. They've just tidied up their shop front.

[vesela]

oh dear, I mentioned Poles when I should have been talking about those naughty people with a completely different culture.

Still, if you want to make sure that Sharia law doesn't become law in the UK then 1) keeping the Human Rights Act and 2) staying in the EU seem like good ways to go about it.

[Talkinpeace]

The proponents of Sharia Law in some of the Muslim ghettoes around the UK are often British Born ....

Misformum
1950's poles were northern. 2000's poles are southern. the first batch are on record as voting UKIP cos they do not like the latter!

and yes, UKIP are arses who will fade away soon.

[vesela]

I know, Talkinpeace - it (the popularity of Sharia law) seems to me to be a general cultural issue rather than one of immigration. A lot of it seems to be a reaction to high levels of public drunkenness etc., some of it coming from men who feel threatened by women, some from women who feel unsafe...

[Xenia]

We need the right for women in as few clothes as they choose to wear to walk on any street even Muslim in the UK. Perhaps we are going to have to arrange bikini walks through Muslim areas and become like those awful fat ugly Irish men and their stupid marches in Northern Ireland who take themselves so seriously. There should be no no go areas, no areas with notices up saying you cannot buy alcohol etc. Mind you Scottish islands can be a bit like that too - no playing in playgrounds at the weekends. Plus ca change.

We are one of the most tolerant countries in the world and must fight hard to keep our free speech.

Most immigrants have benefited the UK. However those relying on benefits are the ones we don't want as indeed we don't want our own citizens on benefits either.

[MisForMumNotMaid]

Are you talking aboutSouthern Poland in saying thats where the latest migrants are from?

I had the fortune in my teens to travel with a Southampton family to Southern Poland (almost as far South as you can get ) to stay with their relatives whose paths had sent them in a different direction. The father of the group I travelled with had been born in a concentration camp, I believe it was in Germany. His parents were definitely from Southern Poland though.

[Talkinpeace]

Xenia
its not just Muslims who are deeply intolerant - parts of North London are ribboned off by the Hasidim each week ..... and some of them have been here for 300 years.

Actually, its interesting to have you on this thread because many of the benefit claimants among the immigrants are non working uneducated women and their children - after the men have wandered on to the next relationship -
and religious bigotry has stopped those women being able to work.

Many Pakistani Muslim women who arrived in the UK as child brides barely speak English - and their husbands like it that way ...

IMHO the answer to the vast majority of indigence is education (of the taxpayer funded variety) - which of course UKIP would merrily cut if they came anywhere near power

[vesela]

(by "general cultural issue" I don't mean "an issue of Muslim culture").

[Talkinpeace]

Mis
yup, the vast majority round here come from small pockets : when I was doing work papers for a batch, 15 came from the same village
AND
all of them saved every penny they earned and have now gone back to Poland rich men and set up businesses there

Poles from London comment that the ones round here all have the Southern (their equivalent of scouse) accent.

[alemci]

I agree Vesela that the people being drunk isn't a good thing but it is their choice and don't want people telling them they cannot and it is a no go area for them.

Don't the men have to pay maintenance for their children if they are married to the mother. I agree they like the women to be powerless and be limited by not speaking English which is a real shame and limits their choices but I think more should be done to make the men cough up. Afterall they brought the women to the GB and should support them. Does need clamping down on.

[vesela]

alemci - I agree (on reaction to drunkenness etc). I wasn't suggesting that it was a reasonable reaction. It's basically vigilantism.

[Talkinpeace]

alemci
Don't the men have to pay maintenance for their children if they are married to the mother

Only if the mother goes through the CSA system,
is willing to have the court appearances to prove they are separated
realises that the CSA exists
knows where her husband is and what he calls himself
knows that she was actually married
the shame of the women and their lack on understanding (due to not speaking English) is shocking

[bochead]

Oh stop it - the CSA can't get the funds from anyone not willing to pay maintenance for their children. That's when the mother is British born, & Uni educated, & the father has a fixed abode, straightforward job and isn't trying to avoid the authorities. The CSA is not fit for purpose and has't been for decades now.

A woman whose English is substandard, with not much information to hand about how to negotiate the system doesn't stand a chance of getting a penny via the CSA. (Assuming of course she has the funds to pay for the fees and phonecalls needed to apply to the CSA in the first place!)

Parents generally shouldn't be allowed to just abandon their children and with it any sense of financial obligation towards them but it happens in every community within Britain, not just specific ethnicities. There is not the will power to rectify this situation within any of the mostly male dominated political parties.