Breaking news: Major gaffe from Gordon

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 29 Apr 2010, 12:18

goslow wrote:
UndercoverElephant wrote: Why are people worried about immigration? Perhaps it is because England is the most heavily-populated country in Europe and nobody except the BNP is willing to talk seriously about it.
actually all 3 main parties are now proposing some pretty serious immigration controls. UKIP and BNP go further of course, each in their own way. The 3 main parties are not proposing to leave the EU, so under current free movement rules can't stop EU immigration, but the EU migrants come and go with the available work anyway.

in my view, immigration is far down the list of things to worry about.

For me, the #1 problem is population.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 29 Apr 2010, 13:31

goslow wrote: actually all 3 main parties are now proposing some pretty serious immigration controls.

So all three parties will have to pander to the bigots. At least Brown can recognise a bigot when he meets one.

caspian · Post by **caspian** » 29 Apr 2010, 13:57

UndercoverElephant wrote:For me, the #1 problem is population.

I second that. I don't really give a toss about whether my neighbours are Pakistanis, Poles or white working-class folk. What I DO care about is how many of us there are. Without cheap energy to grow our food, I can't imagine this country being able to support more than 40 million of us (disclaimer: this is a wild guess completely made up by me out of thin air). And I'd love it if we could solve climate change by letting the whole of Bangladesh decamp to Britain, but it ain't gonna happen.

caspian · Post by **caspian** » 29 Apr 2010, 14:01

biffvernon wrote:At least Brown can recognise a bigot when he meets one.

Biff, please explain what it was that this lady said that warrants such a strong term of abuse? As far as I can tell, she said (in a fairly measured way) that the jobs in her area are being taken by Poles? Maybe she's correct, in which case it's harsh in the extreme to call her a bigot. It's as pointlessly abusive as calling all Tories "Nazis" or Labour voters "commies".

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 29 Apr 2010, 15:34

I don't see that the division between English people and Polish people should be any greater than the division between Lancastrians and Yorkists. She didn't ask Brown what the government was going to do about all these people from Leeds with their funny accents moving into Rochdale. We gave up that fight after the Wars of the Roses. We seem to have expanded our horizons just a few hundred miles since Mediaeval times but have not changed much in principle. We should move on and treat all folk equally. So I'd certainly call anyone who muttered stuff about too many immigrants a bigot (but perhaps not if I was standing for Prime Minister - the electorate don't allow truth).

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 29 Apr 2010, 15:42

caspian wrote:What I DO care about is how many of us there are.

Now I like open and wild spaces as much as anyone, and looking at our green and pleasant land there still seem to be quite a few.

Of course if there were no restrictions on movement anywhere the folk who liked crowds could live in Singapore or Bangla Desh or the Netherlands and the folk who liked emptiness could go to Siberia and Australia and Canada and those that liked the best of all worlds could live in Britain. Everybody could be happy.

contadino · Post by **contadino** » 29 Apr 2010, 15:45

biffvernon wrote:I don't see that the division between English people and Polish people should be any greater than the division between Lancastrians and Yorkists. She didn't ask Brown what the government was going to do about all these people from Leeds with their funny accents moving into Rochdale. We gave up that fight after the Wars of the Roses. We seem to have expanded our horizons just a few hundred miles since Mediaeval times but have not changed much in principle. We should move on and treat all folk equally. So I'd certainly call anyone who muttered stuff about too many immigrants a bigot (but perhaps not if I was standing for Prime Minister - the electorate don't allow truth).

+1, although to my mind she's a narrow-minded bigot.

caspian · Post by **caspian** » 29 Apr 2010, 15:57

biffvernon wrote:Now I like open and wild spaces as much as anyone, and looking at our green and pleasant land there still seem to be quite a few.

What are they going to eat - grass?

I notice that you failed to answer my main point, which is that there will be too many mouths to feed when energy shortages become acute (irrespective of immigration, which is a red herring as far as I'm concerned).

Your heart may be in the right place, Biff, but I think you're guilty of wishful thinking. Pretending that people can live just anywhere and that somehow, magically, they're all going to be fed, isn't going to make it happen.

caspian · Post by **caspian** » 29 Apr 2010, 16:04

biffvernon wrote:Of course if there were no restrictions on movement anywhere the folk who liked crowds could live in Singapore or Bangla Desh or the Netherlands and the folk who liked emptiness could go to Siberia and Australia and Canada and those that liked the best of all worlds could live in Britain. Everybody could be happy.

It's a nice dream Biff, but that's all it is. Being pragmatic, it's never going to happen. Don't you think that being the only country in the world with absolutely no border restrictions might be a little reckless?

2 As and a B · Post by **2 As and a B** » 29 Apr 2010, 16:19

Strange how all animals are territorial... There must be a natural law there.

Still, why let a natural law or two - like young females having offspring as soon as they are sexually mature, for instance - get in the way of a bit of liberal rights' dogma?

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 29 Apr 2010, 16:59

biffvernon wrote:I don't see that the division between English people and Polish people should be any greater than the division between Lancastrians and Yorkists. She didn't ask Brown what the government was going to do about all these people from Leeds with their funny accents moving into Rochdale. We gave up that fight after the Wars of the Roses. We seem to have expanded our horizons just a few hundred miles since Mediaeval times but have not changed much in principle. We should move on and treat all folk equally. So I'd certainly call anyone who muttered stuff about too many immigrants a bigot (but perhaps not if I was standing for Prime Minister - the electorate don't allow truth).

Biff,

You and I have a fundamental ideological conflict, and it's a weird one because I usually only have this particular ideological conflict with religious idealists and you are declared to be an atheist.

That the whole of humanity can work together as one...that we should treat starving people in Africa as if they were members of our own families...these things are the dreams of religious revolutionaries, not realists. That was all well and good whilst we were on the peak-everything upslope, because the richer people are free to help the poorer people without seriously compromising their own future security. On the downslope that all changes. We cannot save the whole of human civilisation. We have to accept that system is going to crash and we must work to try to get our individual communites operating as independently as they can from the rest of the system. This will become both a survival imperative and a morally-justifiable action.

Geoff

JohnB · Post by **JohnB** » 29 Apr 2010, 17:07

Getting back to the original subject
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSIBnDptJvE

Andy Hunt · Post by **Andy Hunt** » 29 Apr 2010, 17:55

biffvernon wrote:I don't see that the division between English people and Polish people should be any greater than the division between Lancastrians and Yorkists. She didn't ask Brown what the government was going to do about all these people from Leeds with their funny accents moving into Rochdale. We gave up that fight after the Wars of the Roses. We seem to have expanded our horizons just a few hundred miles since Mediaeval times but have not changed much in principle. We should move on and treat all folk equally. So I'd certainly call anyone who muttered stuff about too many immigrants a bigot (but perhaps not if I was standing for Prime Minister - the electorate don't allow truth).

Do you also support the right of "travellers" to camp on (and often trash) any piece of land they fancy, irrespective of who owns that land?

And if not, why not?

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 29 Apr 2010, 19:58

caspian wrote:Don't you think that being the only country in the world with absolutely no border restrictions might be a little reckless?

Who said anything about being the only country? That doesn't make sense. An open border has to be open in both directions. Doh!

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 29 Apr 2010, 20:10

Andy Hunt wrote: Do you also support the right of "travellers" to camp on (and often trash) any piece of land they fancy, irrespective of who owns that land?

And if not, why not?

No! That would be theft and vandalism. Travellers ought to be accorded rights and responsibilities that allow them to live their chosen lifestyle where it does not conflict with that of others. That's got nothing to do with open borders. And of course Polish people should have no more right to live in my street than Yorkshire people. And no less.

Of course I'm a dreamer and do a lot of wishful thinking. Realism just leads to peak oil, global warming, mass die-off and Hell in a handcart.

But dreams could be made to come true if we all got together and make them happen. Join the dream or watch the planet get wrecked. When you do the sums carefully the population and food arguments really are very weak. Population, in particular, is just a scapegoat because it is always other people that are alive and having babies not the person speaking, who rarely offers suicide as a solution. Both population and food are about the way we live not absolute numbers. Many folk are frightened of the transition to a different way of life and so deny the possibility.