Captain Haddock
- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,075
What seriously surprises me about our European partners is that they put up with us interfering and protesting about their internal affairs.
If we had hordes of French hanging out outside our foodbanks (for example) with weekly influxes of press cameras/journalists/MPs and even the leader of the opposition hopefully we would tell them to bugger off and put their own house in order.
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Reginald Barrington
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 17 Dec 2014
- Posts: 3,257
We would say that, but not a thing we could do about it, their reply would be bugger off
Arte et Marte
Jan Higgins
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,876
Captain, admittedly we might not like the interference but do you think we would have allowed such a chaotic and unpoliced situation like the Jungle over in France to have arisen in the first place.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,075
No. But there is an awful lot we too should have not allowed to happen in the first place.
I've just spent the morning reading from various journalists and hearing on the radio how mush we owe to our immigrants without whom apparently the whole country would collapse.
Again I look to Japan (which is also supposedly suffering from an aging population!!)
Higher GDP than us.
Lowest crime in industrialised nations.
meanwhile
<2% foreign nationals resident
Last year admitted 11 of 5000 asylum applicants (co-signatory of same convention as us!)
Any connection? Go figure!
Japan is still gloriously Japanese - and long may it continue.
I however don't recognise the country I was born in.
As for Syrian migrants. Do you really think it would have been better if we'd let in hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Biafran conflict years ago, or the orphans from Rwanda, of the starving children from Somalia that the sainted Geldof got wound up about?
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Jan Higgins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,876
Just for the record I am against letting in the vast majority of those in Calais, especially those cowardly but healthy young men who should be fighting against the regimes from which they fled.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Reginald Barrington- Location: Dover
- Registered: 17 Dec 2014
- Posts: 3,257
We may not have let in hundreds of thousands but we did let in thousands. Nothing new in Great Britain about taking in refugees from conflicts and crisis around the world.
Arte et Marte
Jan Higgins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,876
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,075
The 1951 convention for asylum was written to assuage post war guilt. It was not written and would not have been written for a world where mass transit has become commonplace.
It is no longer fit for purpose, you only have to look at the co-signatories,
http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/505187992.pdf
many of whom are the countries people are fleeing from!
The whole of the mode and scale of international migration has changed post war. It's a bit like the fact that any Commonwealth citizen had the right to come to the UK in the fifties which was quickly changed with the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962 as soon as numbers started exercising their 'right'.
As Hobbes wrote in Leviathan, for many on this planet life is 'continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'.
Through UN intervention and Overseas Aid we ought to and do try to improve matters but it's a bit like rough sleepers who often have chaotic lifestyles and in many cases drink and/or drug problems. I try to do my bit to alleviate their problem but would be somewhat foolish to invite them all to live in my house with all the problems they would bring with them.
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Reginald Barrington- Location: Dover
- Registered: 17 Dec 2014
- Posts: 3,257
Your last paragraph hits the nail on the head we all have to do our bit to alleviate the problems, but because some don't play their part doesnt mean we should stop doing our bit.
We all know there is no easy solution as much as many will suggest there is, if something doesn't work we don't give up we try something different.
Imagine how bad the crisis would be if we withdrew all international aid and support withdrew our international advisors and our military support. We would have more refugees knocking on the door, have no international say and personally I would be ashamed to turn my back on the worlds problems.
Arte et Marte
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
I was listening to Mr Corbyn earlier spouting his usual simplistic stuff. He was saying that his party had not made clear the benefits of migration and that all in the camps near Calais and Dunkirk should be allowed in. Leaving aside the ones we need like Doctors and other qualified health professionals the rest will be dumped in areas of high deprivation to make access to health, education and social services even harder than it is already.
Great for businesses looking for cheap labour who won't answer back but not for the rest of us.
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,075
What benefits of immigration???? Are we so stupid we can't be trained as health care professionals and so lazy we can't pick our own vegetables in East Anglia? Japan survives quite well with a cohesive society, functioning health service and pubic transport without the obvious benefits of goat-curry, FGM and tube-train bombers.
Japan is also a lovely place to visit, partially though not solely because it is still Japanese.
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Reginald Barrington- Location: Dover
- Registered: 17 Dec 2014
- Posts: 3,257
Your 1st five lines are the primary reason to continue our centuries old tradition of immigration, comparing us to Japan is an irrelevant and pointless exercise.
Maybe you haven't noticed but we are one of the worlds most popular tourist destinations, that is for a reason. Your finally comments are just plain ignorant.
Arte et Marte
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,075
Reg,
Really can't be bothered answering your last comments somehow conflating tourism with immigration!! Total non sequitur. The reason for what? They like visiting Stonehenge so much they decide to get a job as a mini cab driver?
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
The captain makes a couple of points, firstly about doctors. Only someone with parents able to help financially could afford to last the long course. other countries mostly try to encourage young people to become doctors. Regarding farm labouring jobs, many farmers employ agencies abroad to bring in labour that will get paid the minimum wage for their country of origin. After all fruit and veg got picked or dug up before people were imported to do it.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/bulgaria/minimum-wagesReginald Barrington- Location: Dover
- Registered: 17 Dec 2014
- Posts: 3,257
just refering to your comment Japan being japanese the same reason for our popularity as a destination because were British, are you not aware of the problems Japan has? You suggest its some sort of utopia.
Arte et Marte
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,075
Hardly a Utopia (where does not have 'problems'?) BUT I would have little problem waking up in a small island state with low crime, high GDP and where most of my neighbours shared my culture, heritage and language. I used to do this when younger!
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Reginald Barrington- Location: Dover
- Registered: 17 Dec 2014
- Posts: 3,257
Japan: aging population, falling birthrates, falling GDP, collapsing economy, increasing unemployment, collapsing community cohesion, cultural dillution, decreasing marriage rate, increasing poverty.
Not to mention the staggering increases in paedophilia.
Japan is an extremely sexist society, has little welfare protection for it's young, increasing emigration of it brightest talents.
Dissolution with it's government, the country is currently heading for one of it greatest ever periods of austerity.
It is however a stunningly beautiful country but then so is ours. The grass isn't always greener, just a different shade.
You enjoy yourself over there captain I'm going to stay and support my own country and help where I can with our own problems.
Arte et Marte
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Our country has a proud and enviable record of taking genuine refugees and we haven't come up short this time with 25, 000 vulnerable people in vile refugee camps bordering Syria being relocated here over the next 5 years. I don't see other countries doing anything, Germany and Sweden were letting in anyone that happened to turn up at their border posts and are now trying to get rid of them whilst others have erected fences and walls to keep everyone out.
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,075
Yeah right. I'm really worried about sexism (not)!
As for paedophilia you'll be telling me next that Okinawa is twinned with Rochdale!!
On the economy front the Japanese have a phrase for your analysis. It's 'So bakage' which is roughly translated as 'total bollocks'.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/19/dont-believe-the-headlines-about-japans-economy/
Keep up that virtue signalling! We're all born equal! No culture is better than any other! Islam is a Religion of 'Peace'! Immigration has totally enriched our country! etc. etc.
It's about as much use as getting a petition up to ask Parliament to reduce the acceleration due to gravity so that those amongst us who are 'suffering' from obesity can enjoy easier mobility rather than facing up to the facts that the greedy salad-dodgers are overeating!
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Reginald Barrington- Location: Dover
- Registered: 17 Dec 2014
- Posts: 3,257
There's a petition worth signing thanks for making me smile csptain
Arte et Marte
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