Migrant watch (merged topic)

[Little John]

That's the problem though, I don't think our world views are that necessarily aligned and it takes a crisis such as this to expose that fact. The kind of movements of which this forum is a part, are largely, in this country at last, populated by right-on libertarian-left, liberal guardian-reader types whose green credentials are as much, if not more, a class badge of honour than they are representative of an underlying acknowledgement of the real crises facing us. Instead, they are content to play pretend with things like "sustainable villages", solar panels on their roofs (courtesy, of course, of the large subsidies paid our of poor people's energy bill) and smugly pontificate to the rest of us how we should all live like them and the world would be such a much more beautiful place. Meanwhile, the rest of us must just get on with getting by in the real world.

And then, a crisis such as this hits. And then we learn, as if we did not already know, that these middle class guardian reading green types hold the rest of us, in particular, the lower working class, in utter contempt such that they are quite content to allow migrants into a country to complete for jobs that are already like rocking horse shit, with councils unable to house the existing indigenous working class and where we have sections of that same working class now reliant of food banks to feed their families.

There'll be a reckoning coming from this.

[Little John]

Foreign trained medical staff did not cost the nhs or taxpayer to train. That's why they are employed and it is also why there are insufficiently trained UK medical staff to do the same job.

It is a problem created by the "solution"

Although I don't agree with you on this I would make the point that one of the most interesting illegal immigrant cases I dealt with (and resolved getting lawful status) was one where the immigrant was working as a consultant in my local hospital.

Migration policy is really quite complicated.

Over the last several years, if I remember my reading on it correctly, the number of applications from the indigenous population for medical courses, of a variety of type and levels, far outstripped the supply of places available.

Check for yourself the numbers

[johnhemming2]

Not something I know enough about.

[biffvernon]

I have no idea what it is like to have lived in a city which in now just rubble covering the bodies of one's neighbours.

That, of course, is an exaggeration.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=homs+ ... 2wodS0MKCg

[johnhemming2]

Exactly - not just rubble. I don't think even the atom bombs did that to the whole city.

[UndercoverElephant]

If this issue can cause such divisions in a forum full of people with broadly similar outlook, imagine what it is going to do the the UK.

Yes.

Although I agree with LJ that this forum isn't really full of people with a broadly similar outlook. Rather, we have one fundamental thing in common: the belief that civilisation as we know it is heading for an almighty crash due to a combination of overpopulation, resource depletion and climate change. There is no great consensus on how to respond; that is precisely what this board is for and why people come here - to debate those issues.

[Little John]

If this issue can cause such divisions in a forum full of people with broadly similar outlook, imagine what it is going to do the the UK.

Yes.

Although I agree with LJ that this forum isn't really full of people with a broadly similar outlook. Rather, we have one fundamental thing in common: the belief that civilisation as we know it is heading for an almighty crash due to a combination of overpopulation, resource depletion and climate change. There is no great consensus on how to respond; that is precisely what this board is for and why people come here - to debate those issues.

Actually, i don't even think the outlook is the same. Of those three variables, arguably overpopulation is the central one since is provides much of the basis for the other two. and yet a number of poster on here do not accept or acknowledge the inevitable logic that flows form this. Which means they do not accept or acknowledge the problem in the first place. Or, at least, not really. Not when push comes to shove.

[UndercoverElephant]

If this issue can cause such divisions in a forum full of people with broadly similar outlook, imagine what it is going to do the the UK.

Yes.

Although I agree with LJ that this forum isn't really full of people with a broadly similar outlook. Rather, we have one fundamental thing in common: the belief that civilisation as we know it is heading for an almighty crash due to a combination of overpopulation, resource depletion and climate change. There is no great consensus on how to respond; that is precisely what this board is for and why people come here - to debate those issues.

Actually, i don't even think the outlook is the same. Of those three variables, arguably overpopulation is the central one since is provides much of the basis for the other two. and yet a number of poster on here do not accept or acknowledge the inevitable logic that flows form this. Which means they do not accept or acknowledge the problem in the first place. Or, at least, not really. Not when push comes to shove.

Most of them do. It is just that the contributor with the most posts of all does not. And his pig-headed refusal to acknowledge it in the context of other arguments, even though he surely does also in reality understand it, is the single biggest factor driving the worst of the disagreements.

[Catweazle]

Exactly - not just rubble. I don't think even the atom bombs did that to the whole city.

Looks like rubble to me, even though some of it is in building-shaped piles.

You certainly wouldn't want to live there.

[Catweazle]

That's the problem though, I don't think our world views are that necessarily aligned and it takes a crisis such as this to expose that fact. The kind of movements of which this forum is a part, are largely, in this country at last, populated by right-on libertarian-left, liberal guardian-reader types whose green credentials are as much, if not more, a class badge of honour than they are representative of an underlying acknowledgement of the real crises facing us. Instead, they are content to play pretend with things like "sustainable villages", solar panels on their roofs (courtesy, of course, of the large subsidies paid our of poor people's energy bill) and smugly pontificate to the rest of us how we should all live like them and the world would be such a much more beautiful place. Meanwhile, the rest of us must just get on with getting by in the real world.

And then, a crisis such as this hits. And then we learn, as if we did not already know, that these middle class guardian reading green types hold the rest of us, in particular, the lower working class, in utter contempt such that they are quite content to allow migrants into a country to complete for jobs that are already like rocking horse shit, with councils unable to house the existing indigenous working class and where we have sections of that same working class now reliant of food banks to feed their families.

There'll be a reckoning coming from this.

This is a view I can see spreading.

[biffvernon]

I have no idea what it is like to have lived in a city which in now just rubble covering the bodies of one's neighbours.

That, of course, is an exaggeration.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=homs+ ... 2wodS0MKCg

Exactly - not just rubble. I don't think even the atom bombs did that to the whole city.

If you don't think those pictures show a city of rubble then we are speaking in different languages.

[kenneal - lagger]

What surprises me is how the two Vernons can agree with the rest of us one minute that we have a world in crisis, or at least potential crisis, because of peak resources and climate change and then, because a slightly different crisis rears its ugly head, completely forget the original crisis and deny its existence! Beggars belief!!

[kenneal - lagger]

None of which, Ken, is relevant to my response to John's perhaps flippant, comment about choosing which family starves.

That we have a food surplus today and that we may face a catastrophic food shortage later this century if climate change is not mitigated, can both be true. We can all agree that BAU is not forever.

Sorry to be late with comments but I've been away.

I see no flippancy there in John's comments. Is it concise? Yes. Flippant? No!

That food shortage is not later this century it is in a few years time. It is well within the lifetime of my children, indeed it could be within my lifetime! Collapse of the world economy is being predicted within 25 years so the effects of that could be felt even now. This current catastrophe, and catastrophe it is, could be the beginnings of that collapse.

The fact that Europe, or at least a part of it, is encouraging the migration of hundreds of millions of people here is the start of the collapse of our economy. The pictures of Germans welcoming migrants will be flashed around the world and every person who is not satisfied with their current living conditions will think that they can come to Europe and share that welcome. Anyone with a television, or whose neighbour has a television, in the third world will potentially become a migrant!

We are nominally rich but that wealth entirely rests on debt. We don't have any cash only assets whose value rests on inflated property prices. The costs of that property are a fraction of the "value". We are living in a bubble economy which could crash at any time. We have no cash money only debt to the banks. That is not wealth. the asset values on which our debt lie relies on *ankers bonuses providing them with enough spare money to buy into the stock and property markets and cause a price increase based on a shortage of assets and a surfeit of electronic money. That is not wealth.

To counter that in the UK we have an army of unemployable people, failed by our education system, who do not have the training to do any jobs apart from the most menial and the education system has told them that these jobs are beneath them. These people are increasingly relying on foodbanks because our government is running the country to suit the *ankers and their illusory electronic wealth. What we have is increasing poverty and illusory wealth.

[johnhemming2]

Exactly - not just rubble. I don't think even the atom bombs did that to the whole city.

Looks like rubble to me, even though some of it is in building-shaped piles.

You certainly wouldn't want to live there.

It depends where in Homs. If you look at photos from the last week it is clear that not all of Homs is rubble.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=image ... &tbs=qdr:w

[UndercoverElephant]

What surprises me is how the two Vernons can agree with the rest of us one minute that we have a world in crisis, or at least potential crisis, because of peak resources and climate change and then, because a slightly different crisis rears its ugly head, completely forget the original crisis and deny its existence! Beggars belief!!

IMO this problem is largely the specialism of Vernon Senior rather than Vernon Junior.