Migrant watch (merged topic)

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 04 Sep 2015, 18:56

kenneal - lagger wrote:The Green Party, like their representative here, are idealists and as such lack a certain understanding of the realities of life.

I wouldn't mind if the idealism was environmentalist idealism, but this is nothing of the sort. This is some sort of "global socialist utopianism" idealism, which has absolutely nothing to do with ecology.

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 04 Sep 2015, 18:57

biffvernon wrote:
AutomaticEarth wrote: there is no room in the inn
Not sure which inn you have in mind but there's a field across the road from my house that contains two elderly horses, quite a lot of grass and some thistles. It is not full.

I have no words to express my contempt for you.

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 04 Sep 2015, 18:59

There is a concerted media campaign to push this through. It has already been decided at the top of the EU for whatever reasons. The so-called "pubic desire" for this is just media bullshit. Though, of course, if this line is pushed hard enough and long enough, it will drag a lot of the non-thinkers in the population with it. And, frankly, there are a lot of non-thinkers about.

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 04 Sep 2015, 19:03

UndercoverElephant wrote:
kenneal - lagger wrote:The Green Party, like their representative here, are idealists and as such lack a certain understanding of the realities of life.
I wouldn't mind if the idealism was environmentalist idealism, but this is nothing of the sort. This is some sort of "global socialist utopianism" idealism, which has absolutely nothing to do with ecology.

It has nothing to do with any kind of reality. There is an unholy alliance in play between a self-loathing, culturally-suicidal, Western liberalism and corporate capitalism. It's a kind of cultural insanity. I wonder if this kind of madness is what always precedes civilisational collapse?

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 04 Sep 2015, 19:08

mr brightside wrote:Not that there's any need to point out the obvious around here, but this thing is getting worse at a rate that is starting to get frightening.

Yes. For me the most frightening thing is the variety of different places these people are coming from. It would be bad enough if it was just Syria, but it isn't. It's also Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Albania, Pakistan, Eritrea, Somalia, Libya, Sudan.............

It is blindingly obvious that this problem has no end, because the whole world is descending into chaos. There is no historical precedent, and, as you point out, almost nobody is talking about the real issues.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 04 Sep 2015, 20:19

mr brightside wrote:Today i tried to get to grips with the drivers that are leading people to decide that taking in refugees is a good idea.

The thing is, Mr Brightside, quite a lot of folk think that taking in refugees is a good idea. Nothing very new there; my mother was welcomed to Britain when she decided that the Third Reich was not for her. For many of us our way of life is threatened by the knowledge that there are others whose lives are threatened. Now man is an island, as John Donne pointed out in the poem I posted a day or two ago.

What do you mean by 'some kind of saturation point has been reached'?

Meanwhile here's a picture whose sentiment appears to be supported by the 387,229 people who signed the petition on the Government website over the last two days.

picture edited

mr brightside · Post by **mr brightside** » 04 Sep 2015, 21:05

biffvernon wrote:
mr brightside wrote:Today i tried to get to grips with the drivers that are leading people to decide that taking in refugees is a good idea.
The thing is, Mr Brightside, quite a lot of folk think that taking in refugees is a good idea. Nothing very new there; my mother was welcomed to Britain when she decided that the Third Reich was not for her. For many of us our way of life is threatened by the knowledge that there are others whose lives are threatened. Now man is an island, as John Donne pointed out in the poem I posted a day or two ago.

What do you mean by 'some kind of saturation point has been reached'?

Meanwhile here's a picture whose sentiment appears to be supported by the 387,229 people who signed the petition on the Government website over the last two days.

Just to clear the air, Biff, i have nothing against you or your stance on this. Your opinion is beyond my comprehension, but you have your reasons i'd guess and i accept that. I do, though, wish you'd stop rattling stevecook's cage with stuff like that poster.

When i say 'saturation point' i'm referring to the point at which the shit hit the fan and this population/migration/asylum probelm became everyone's problem and not just something read about in the news. When they started to move in these numbers, i'm registering that as a shift in the intensity of the global population problem.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 04 Sep 2015, 21:41

mr brightside wrote: When i say 'saturation point' i'm referring to the point at which the shit hit the fan and this population/migration/asylum probelm became everyone's problem and not just something read about in the news. When they started to move in these numbers, i'm registering that as a shift in the intensity of the global population problem.

I'm still not clear. 'Saturation point;' has a precise meaning in chemistry, but in this context is seems down to perception, and mine may be very different to yours. For example, in a nearby town, Boston, I expect some UKIP-minded folk think that 'saturation point' has been reached with respect to east European immigrants, whereas I see an improvement in the range of fruit and veg offered in the street market. (Boston's non-British born residents is actually quite low, much lower than, say, Kensington and Chelsea or Westminster.)

I think you mentioned a figure of 25000 proposed by Blunkett. I'm thinking of two cities I know well. Lincoln, population 130000 and York, 200000. If Lincoln were to grow to the size of York would it be the end of the world? Nah.

As I've said many times before, I don't actually want Britain's population to grow at all. But neither do I want to see pictures of drowned children or know that some parts of the world are very much poorer than my part. We don't always get what we want and have to compromise to minimise the bads.

As for Steve Cook, I don't read his posts on this discussion so I don't know if his cage is rattled or not. If he doesn't like my posts he needn't read them.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 04 Sep 2015, 21:48

Jeremy Corbyn, talking about his socialism:

There was no sudden conversion to socialism. It’s an obvious way of living. You care for each other, you care for everybody, and everybody cares for everybody else. It’s obvious, isn’t it?

'Everybody' means just that, not 'Every Britisher'; that would be national socialism, a very different beast.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 04 Sep 2015, 21:54

We need to welcome many more refugees than Cameron suggests
Caroline Lucas

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... templating

johnhemming2 · Post by **johnhemming2** » 04 Sep 2015, 21:56

The question, of course, is one of priorities between family and others. Does one allow one's children to starve in order to protect others.

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 04 Sep 2015, 22:01

johnhemming2 wrote:The question, of course, is one of priorities between family and others. Does one allow one's children to starve in order to protect others.

Biff Vernon would, apparently. Which would not be a problem (assuming his own family did not have something to say on the matter) except for the fact that if people like him have their way, this would be enforcedly true for the rest of us as well.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 04 Sep 2015, 22:49

johnhemming2 wrote:Does one allow one's children to starve in order to protect others.

Fortunately that is not a question that need concern us since we live in such a wealthy part of the world starvation need not be on any family's agenda. In a fairer world that would apply everywhere. There is enough food on the planet to feed everybody's need, if not some people's greed.

Post by **clv101** » 04 Sep 2015, 23:14

Talk about the UK population density, whether these islands are full up or whatever is tediously dull.

If anyone is asking whether the UK is 'self sufficient' then the answer is no, we're way over populated already and highly dependent on trade for our very survival. We don't grow enough food, generate enough energy or manufacture enough mobile phones - haven't for many decades.

However if anyone is asking whether we can accommodate a few hundred thousand more people, even a few million more, then of course we can. There's no reason why Lincoln couldn't be a city of 1 million people rather than the ~100,000 it is now. Sure, we'd have to import a little more food, more clothes, more iPhones etc - but so what, we're already totally dependent on imports a bit more isn't going to matter much.

I don't think there's much objectivity to any argument based around population density.

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 04 Sep 2015, 23:18

clv101 wrote:Talk about the UK population density, whether these islands are full up or whatever is tediously dull.

If anyone is asking whether the UK is 'self sufficient' then the answer is no, we're way over populated already and highly dependent on trade for our very survival. We don't grow enough food, generate enough energy or manufacture enough mobile phones - haven't for many decades.

However if anyone is asking whether we can accommodate a few hundred thousand more people, even a few million more, then of course we can. There's no reason why Lincoln couldn't be a city of 1 million people rather than the ~100,000 it is now. Sure, we'd have to import a little more food, more clothes, more iPhones etc - but so what, we're already totally dependent on imports a bit more isn't going to matter much.

I don't think there's much objectivity to any argument based around population density.

Of course this is about sustainability and self sufficiency. However, population density is obviously a part of that no matter how difficult that is to talk about. If we are incapable of self sufficiently providing, at the very least, our own energy and food, then our population density is, by definition, too high. What you basically appear to be arguing is that because we are already so unsustainably f***ed, we might as well elect to be a bit more unsuistainably f***ed than we already are.

Seriously?

Furthermore, this is not just about a few hundred or, even, a few thousand migrants on the move right now. It is about an ocean of humanity that is going to be on the move in the rapidly approaching future. At what point are you prepared to face having to answer the question of when you would reach a point where you would say no more and, if that point exists for you, then what is the practical purpose of letting in any now, since it alleviates the overall suffering not one jot (or, even, exacerbates it) but does reduce the long term viability of this country?