A Recipe for Disaster.
Last year, 626,000 individuals sought ‘refuge’ in Europe, and that is just the number who registered their arrival in one manner or another.
We are told, and I believe, that they are fleeing from the horrors of war, starvation, famine, disease, and persecution of giddying varieties. Whilst many would argue that these people deserve our sympathy, there are those who would cheerfully send them back to meet their fate. I am taking neither stance in this piece – I would like you to look at a different side of the equation.
I would like to look at what they are leaving behind. It cannot have escaped your attention that as you look at yet another boat full of ‘terrified refugees’, or watch ‘desperate men’ attempt to board trucks at Calais, that what you are looking at is principally fit, agile, young men. The official EU figures bear that out – over 75% of the 2014 figures are young men between 18 – 34.
Leaving aside the argument promoted by some – that these are all potential jihadis, and we should be quaking in our beds, there is something else we should be looking at. These are all young men at the peak of their sexual prowess. In other words, it is highly likely that barring a minority they have been in a sexual relationship, and possibly already have several children to prove it.
Think about that for a moment. We hear about the women and children refugees, and the allegedly terrible time they have at the hands of the British government. When did you hear anything of the women and children that have been left behind in war torn, diseased, famine ridden countries that are too dangerous and terrible for a fit, agile, young man to survive in?
What has happened to the elderly mother who used to rely on that young man to bring wood for the fire? Who is tending the goat that provided milk for his children? Who is protecting his pregnant wife or girlfriend from these terrifying soldiers and acts of war? Who is farming the land to feed his village? How is his family surviving now that he has raided the family piggybank and mortgaged the family soul to pay the people traffickers? Who is digging the graves for those not able to flee the death he is escaping from?
Much is made of how these young men, so desperate that they carry knives and iron bars to threaten lorry drivers, should be resettled in European countries, and that eventually they will become useful tax payers, send for their families and live happily ever after in social housing once we have built it. What happens to their families whilst that process takes place?
It seems to me that we are watching a curious social mobility, whereby we import young men of working age, but with little education or language skills who have correspondingly little chance of genuine employment – and have proved themselves prepared to break the law and use violence to get their own way – and in turn, are denuding other countries where famine, death and war stalk the womenfolk, the elderly and the children of the very men they might have been able to rely upon to protect and nurture them.
The women folk and the elderly and infirm of Britain suffered great hardship during world war two – they coped and were proud to do so because they knew their menfolk had left these shores for a noble cause. Try to imagine how they would have felt if their menfolk had given the family savings to a people trafficker and left them to fend for themselves in the name of a ‘better life’ or because they were frightened that they might starve.
Is our sympathy for ‘the boat people’ misplaced? Should it not be going to those they left behind in their bid for a better life?
Hmmn. Discuss.
- JuliaM
June 29, 2015 at 9:06 am -
Our sympathy should be for ourselves. We owe nothing to the young men, OR their left-behind wives and children.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 10:06 am -
The British are very good at feeling sorry for themselves as it happens. World leaders perhaps, along with the rest of the English-speaking world. The Whingeing Pom has come to dominate the discourse.
- JuliaM
June 29, 2015 at 10:25 am -
It’s not ‘whinging’ to NOT want your country, your unique culture, to disappear into a sea of refugees, is it?
With the progressives in charge, the UK seems bound to end up like one of those crazy cat ladies, unable to say ‘No’ to strays out of kindness, and ending up starving to death in a shabby urine-stinking house amongst an increasing number of diseased, unsocialised ‘pets’.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 10:29 am -
That’s pretty much what our government is doing isn’t it? Refusing to accept the refugees; the trick of course is that once granted a Euro-warrant they can come here anyway. What a game it is. In the long run though, it might bring the Germans and the Italians to their senses – and the removal of a socialist hegemony in France, so the pain may be worth the gain.
- Moor Larkin
- JuliaM
- Moor Larkin
- Jim
June 29, 2015 at 9:14 am -
This is the sort of question and discussion that we should be having nationally, in order that we can look at every single strategy for helping and supporting poorer countries. At the moment we look only at the logistics, and the logistical argument is retaliated against by a sentimental, infantile, emotive response based on nothing but Facebook philosophy.
Surely there is a place in our 24-hour news and documentary TV world for the ethical, political, military, financial and sociological sides of things to be considered so that a strategy could be developed that considered the very things that Anna has raised here….she is the lone voice of reason and compassion.
- Alexander Baron
June 29, 2015 at 9:18 am -
I think anyone who wants to give any of these “asylum seekers” asylum should be made to put them up at their own expense. We’d soon see how “anti-Nazi” the Anti-Nazi League is and how “social” the Socialist Workers Party is then. These people are simply braindead but their mischief has caused incredible harm to the UK, to the West and to the wider world.
- Alex
June 29, 2015 at 9:51 am -
Bravo! Spot on.
- binao
June 29, 2015 at 10:52 am -
It’s business as usual for the handwringers – let’s use other people’s money & futures to salve our conscience. Except the handwringers are ignorant of the facts & driven only by their unassailable belief that they are right. Or left, actually, which explains a lot.
Excellent post Anna, nail, nailhead, hammer spot on.
- Ancient+Tattered Airman
June 29, 2015 at 11:28 am -
I totally agree with Alexander Baron.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 11:41 am -
That’s good to know.
- Beverley
June 29, 2015 at 12:35 pm -
But aren’t we paying out at our own expense? Taxes?
- Peter Raite
June 29, 2015 at 1:52 pm -
Yes. Those who make such fatuous suggestions forget that embarrassing detail.
- Don Cox
June 29, 2015 at 3:27 pm -
The cost of supporting refugees here could be counted as part of the Overseas Aid budget, instead of social services, health, etc.
This particularly applies to the people with HIV that Nigel Farage complained about. I don#t see how a (nominally) Christian country can tell a sick person to go away and die. But if we are to help foreigners, that help should count as overseas aid.
There is a better chance of the money being spent on ordinary people rather than disappearing into corrupt pockets if it is spent here.
- Peter Whale
June 29, 2015 at 3:49 pm -
Well said Don, use the overseas aid budget 11+billion pounds just from UK and rising should be able to buy and run a resettlement camp in Africa for processing all the single men. Women and children processed within the EU from the EU foreign aid budget. Should sort the problem.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 4:04 pm -
* resettlement camp in Africa *
Scotland has plenty of room and mountain-clear clean water, and the SNP pride themselves of being Internationalists. This could represent an economic opportunity, with EU money aplenty. - Mike Kemble
June 29, 2015 at 4:28 pm -
But they are not ‘refugees’ they are opportunity seekers, lets go to Europe and live like lords!!! And no, we should not be paying them a penny. The whole purpose behind our welfare state is that is it for those who have sent their lives CONTRIBUTING!! These people have not paid a single penny and, by law, are not entitled.
- Peter Raite
June 29, 2015 at 4:46 pm -
Migrants as a whole pay more in tax than the minority of them who claim benefits cost.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 4:50 pm -
* Migrants as a whole pay more in tax than the minority of them who claim benefits cost. *
I’ve always wondered if all the rich Arabs and Russians get counted as part of that calculation. I think we should be told. - Peter Raite
June 29, 2015 at 5:04 pm -
I doubt it, as they seem to be amongst those doing their best to pay as little tax as possible.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 5:07 pm -
Yeah, but a little for a Saudi Prince is like…. ten million….
- Mike Kemble
June 29, 2015 at 5:57 pm -
Peter, so thats a reason? I dont think so. If one person comes to the UK to sponge, its still wrong – entitlement is not theirs. The fact that some come here to work, on minumum wage, then thats the fault of the comapnies for refusing to pay a decent wage to the british. My wife runs a hotel dept, she cant get a brit to stay more than 5 seconds before the ‘go sick’. But thats by the by, 10 working immigrants do not excuse 1 sponger. All spongers should be JCB’d off the Dover cliffs. They have no entitlement to our welfare state, should not be part of it – and certainly not at the expense of the thousandsd of British people who cant get into hospitals because they are full of foreigners. Before anyone says they are not, come along to Brumistan and check out these hospitals here, full of spongers. They bring their dieases with them. I have seen it from the inside, I know. An indian lady was in the bed next to my daughter who had been rushed in on an emergency; the indian lady spat on the floors repeatedly; could not speak a word of english and, according to a nurse, had only arrived in the UK the previous week.
- Peter Raite
June 30, 2015 at 3:09 pm -
Well, lets not let facts get in the way of your annecdotes, eh?
- Peter Raite
- Moor Larkin
- Peter Raite
June 29, 2015 at 4:34 pm -
This particularly applies to the people with HIV that Nigel Farage complained about.
Apart from the fact that pretty much ever detail of what Farage said about patients with HIV was wrong, you do realise that when an HIV positive person is in treatment, their potential to infect others drops to virtually zero? Treating people with HIV is therefore a no brainer.
- Peter Raite
June 29, 2015 at 4:41 pm - binao
June 29, 2015 at 6:03 pm -
Peter Raite ‘migrants as a whole pay more in tax…’.
Interesting concept given that we probably have little idea how many migrants are in the country working, let alone in the tax system.The issue is in any case not about paying tax, it’s about contributing net to the economy, which most low paid workers I guess don’t, though I’m definitely not being judgemental about that.
There will always be employers wanting low cost labour because that’s their business model, but you don’t build a competitive economy on that basis. There will always be some low wage jobs & some people neither wanting or capable of more, but a lifetime in industry suggests to me that a scarcity of or expensive labour drives innovation; a surplus of cheap labour keeps wages low – for migrant or native. i.e. reduces the incentive for progress.
Just how I see it, and I wonder if it’s one of the reasons for the UK’s present indicated poor productivity.
- Peter Raite
- Johnnydub
June 29, 2015 at 4:35 pm -
There are literally millions of Africans with AIDS. Do we treat them all?
Do we treat the ones who have successfully blagged their way into the UK?
Discuss….- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 4:40 pm -
Compare and contrast with Ebola perhaps.
- Peter Raite
June 29, 2015 at 4:45 pm -
It’s pretty dumb not to treat anyone in the UK, for whatever reason.
- windsock
June 29, 2015 at 7:41 pm -
If they have the right to immigrate to the UK, whatever illnesses they have should not be a factor.
- Ancient+Tattered Airman
June 29, 2015 at 8:22 pm -
IF they have the right…………………
- Ancient+Tattered Airman
- Moor Larkin
- Peter Whale
- Don Cox
- Peter Raite
- Beverley
- Moor Larkin
- Ancient+Tattered Airman
- Alex
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 9:35 am -
Some folk say the same about all the Filipino’s coming here to run our NHS. We bleed the Philipines dry of their best and most entrepreneurial people, but hey, somebody’s got to look after our old folk while we’re all getting wrecked on sex and drugs and daytime TV. Party on dudes.
- Peter Raite
June 29, 2015 at 1:57 pm -
Not actually true. The Phillipines produces a surplus of nurses – far more than the country itself needs, with a clear relisation that man will be “exported.” In contrast, it was also certainly the case when I worked in NHS workforce development in the early 2000s that we knew that a significant percentage of the nurses we were training in the UK would, once qualified, depart to the United States and Australia at the first opportunity. Curiously, both countries seemed to have an aversion to Phillipo nurses, despite historical links and/or georgraphical closeness, at least more than either apply to the UK.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 4:09 pm -
U.S. hospitals have found a large pool of experienced nurses in the Philippines. Offering higher salaries and better living standards, U.S. hospitals have had little trouble luring Philippine nurses from their home country.
In fact, in many hospitals these immigrants make up the majority of the nursing staff. Filipino nurses have become such an integral part of the American health system that they have started their own national organization, the Philippine Nurses Association of America. In California, where Filipino immigrants compose about 6 percent of the state’s population, 20 percent of all registered nurses are Filipino (Rodis 2013).
Filipino nurses began arriving in the U.S. as early as the turn of the 20th Century, under the Pesionado Act of 1903, which funded American educations for citizens of the Philippines, a U.S. colony at the time. The migration streams continued in waves throughout the 20th Century (Rodis 2013). During the 1970s, the U.S. and other industrialized countries experienced nursing shortages, as more work opportunities began to open to women, making nursing, with its long hours and high stress, a less appealing option. But well-educated and English-speaking Filipino nurses provided the perfect replacement workforce. Without increasing wages, U.S. hospitals were able to fill necessary, but unwanted, jobs with Filipino immigrants.
At the same time, the migration of the nurses has positive economic effects in the Philippines. Once employed in the U.S., the nurses can earn as much as 20 times what they were making back home (Rodis 2013). Part of these earnings is sent home to support family and other dependents. As noted earlier, these funds are called remittances. The remittances flowing back into the country from the migrant nurses help boost the Philippine economy and support the local population. Total remittances to the Philippines have grown substantially in recent years and reached $10.7 billion in 2005, with much of these funds coming from service workers and especially nurses, who compose the largest service sector working group of Filipino emigrants (Lorenzo et al, 2007).
On top of remittances, if and when the migrant nurses return to the Philippines they will bring with them greater amounts of training and experience contributing to social capital. The government has reacted to the potential benefits from emigration by sponsoring initiatives to ease the process. In 1982, for example, the government created a whole new department, the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency, responsible for optimizing the benefits of the country’s overseas employment program (Lorenzo et al, 2007). The Philippine National Bank has also reacted with programs that encourage remittance flows, and special remittance centers have been created in various parts of the U.S.
Of course, there are negative effects as well. When the Philippine nurses come to America they leave behind nursing shortages in their home country. The Philippines is losing one of its greatest sources of social capital—educated workers. In other words, the Philippines is experiencing brain-drain.
http://www.globalization101.org/the-case-of-the-philippine-nurses/- Peter Raite
June 29, 2015 at 4:49 pm -
OK, I was wrong about America in that respect (it was a long time ago). The country was still, though, a drain on UK-trained nurses – who received NHS bursaries durign traing – at a time when the NHS was having to recruit abroad.
- Peter Raite
- Moor Larkin
- Peter Raite
- Sigillum
June 29, 2015 at 9:36 am -
Following on neatly from yesterday. I heard an interview with a woman who had fled Syria the other day. She spoke good English, and seemed a thoroughly nice and good person. I am not surprised she fled – there’s a ghastly war going on. How can one not have sympathy for her? How can one not want to take her in? But the problem is simply the logistics. It is time to recognise the unpleasant fact that whilst it is quite understandable for people to want to flee from the brutal, repressive, lawless, cruel and poverty stricken hell holes in which they live, a fairly high proportion of the world’s population live in brutal, repressive, lawless, cruel and poverty stricken hell holes, and in North Africa and its environs it appears to be just about everyone, apart from the poor Tunisians, who have probably had their economic life blood cut off, or at least severely curtailed.
One point is that it is simply impossible to cope, even on a Europe wide basis. Another is that I do not particularly relish the distinct prospect of importing cultures who’s values produce such conditions. The third point is that at the moment we are getting the most aggressive and persistent, not the most vulnerable and needy. And the fourth point is it seems that a disproportionately high number of young men – of who’s background, associations, history and intentions we know nothing at all – want specifically to come to England.
I do not like the look of many of these young men at Calais, for example, at all. Yes, I know they have been stuck in a nasty camp, uncared for. But notwithstanding that, my every instinct screams: trouble. Other European nations are playing pass the parcel with these people, happy to give them free passage because they have one goal: “Ing-land”. The land of milk and honey, or
rather, lacks checks and “controls” and checks on immigration which are not fit for purpose at best, and treasonable at worst, and where you can slip away into the unregulated economy sufficiently long enough to produce a family and thus be immune on Human Rights grounds from deportation, no matter what heinous crime you may have committed in the past or now, even if the government had the back bone to try and deport you.The first duty of any government is to defend its borders, but our Government shrinks from that. It could upset someone! I heard HMS Bulwark recently plucked 3,000 souls from the Med. And then landed them…in Italy, where I have no doubt the Italian authorities will be only too glad to see the backs of them, as they migrate North and West. Madness. Utter madness.
The brutal truth – hard and nasty – is that migrants from the African continent has to be intercepted and returned to Africa by any means, including force. Nothing else will stop the mass migration, and the failure to do so threatens Europe’s and the UK’s security. Every truck and every car arriving at Dover must be carefully searched and any illegal immigrant removed at once. I can see all the cries of “Yuman rights” etc but that is what should be done.
Soon there will be the first “outrage” as an IS operative or cell, perhaps plucked from the Med by a jolly Jack Tar and given a lovely cup of cocoa and a hot breakfast before being ferried to the mainland, wreaks havoc on its host. Just don’t say you haven’t been warned.
- Alex
June 29, 2015 at 9:54 am -
Agree 100%.
- Mudplugger
June 29, 2015 at 12:26 pm -
“The first duty of any government is to defend its borders, but our Government shrinks from that.” Trouble is, our government is not allowed to ‘defend’ its own borders because we’re in the EU, and never will be allowed to as long as we stay in.
Ponder this – if the French Government decided to solve the ‘Calais problem’ once and for all, the only thing it needs to do is ‘fast-track’ all the illegals through a quasi-approval system and instantly grant every one of them a French passport – no reason for the French not to, the illegals don’t want to stay in France anyhow.
With that ‘treasure’ grasped in their dusky, grubby hands, they could legally board the next ferry or Eurostar to Britain and there’s not a blind thing that Cast-Iron Cameron, Daisy May or anyone else can do about it. They’re now all citizens of an EU country and have full rights of free-movement anywhere in the EU. No downside to the French, it’s all upside, local problem solved. Watch this space……- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 12:28 pm -
That latter is exactly what the Italians said they would do after the EU compelled them to allow the boats to land. They know their onions.
- Moor Larkin
- Alex
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 9:41 am -
* brutal, repressive, lawless, cruel and poverty stricken hell holes *
It’s not often commented-upon but most, if not all of them, are ex-Socialist/Communist brutal, repressive, lawless, cruel and poverty stricken hell holes. No coincidences methinks.- Peter Raite
June 29, 2015 at 2:04 pm -
Can’t be bothered tallying them up, but I would think that either it’s 50/50, or else many countries have had just as much of a taste of right-wing oppression as the left-wing variety.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 2:41 pm -
Syria – Commie
Libya – Commie
Ehtiopia/Eritrea – Commie
Afghanistan – Commie
Iraq – Baathist… Commie
Egypt – a bit Commie till Sadat, who was promptly shot.
DDR – fortunately occupied by the Germans
Yugoslavia – Reinvented Genocide in EuropeEx-Right wing fascist States:
Spain – full member of the EU and very popular with de Inglish
Phillippines – bit of a mess, but keeps on truckin’
Portugal/Greece – the more socialist they get, the deeper in the shit they get
Indonesia – biggest Moslem nation on earth – looks after all of them as best it can.
Chile – doing okay
Argentina – Roller Coaster but very united, even if only over the Malvinas.Of course, the two biggest ex-Commie nations and the two who ARE making a reasonable fist of it on behalf of their own people are the two continually derided by the “liberal” media and Chatterati: China and Russia.
Over to you big boy, to show me what you’ve got.
- Don Cox
June 29, 2015 at 3:33 pm -
Syria was Vichy territory during WWII, and has been Fascist in politics since. But really it is ruled as an absolute monarchy by a man whose great aim was the power and honour of his own family. This is the kind of right-wing aristocracy that we have seen in Hungary, for example, early in the 20C.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 3:39 pm -
It might have been fascist in structure but Syria was always part of the Soviet sphere during the Cold War – Commie.
- Moor Larkin
- Don Cox
- Moor Larkin
- Peter Raite
- Time Traveller
June 29, 2015 at 9:54 am -
If they’re fleeing war and oppression they’re presumably leaving the women and children to do the fighting. With feminist credentials like that, no wonder Europe welcomes them.
- Alex
June 29, 2015 at 10:01 am -
Excellent, excellent post Anna. You make a point that seems to have been totally overlooked by “the powers that be”. Odd isn’t how we continue to be castigated for removing Africans from Africa 200-300 years ago, but now we are often vilified for not taking Africans from Africa – and in very much larger numbers than during the slave trade? By the bye, I can’t help thinking how lucky the descendants of those slaves are that they weren’t born in the lands of their ancestors.
- windsock
June 29, 2015 at 10:51 am -
The issues of free will and consent seem to have been overlooked in your post.
- Cascadian
June 30, 2015 at 8:47 am -
Nevertheless, the “plight” of blacks in the USA (and the blacks in ghettoes throughout the UK), is the dream that these refugees seek to attain, a mostly government provided free-ride for life.
That is not a criticism of the refugees, I completely sympathize with anybody escaping the muslim nutters over-running their countries, courtesy of camoron and obama’s deluded sense of improving their freedom.
As to the landladies concern of those left behind, I have sympathy but sense that these young men are surplus to requirements and would have left their communities anyway in the normal course of events.
- Cascadian
- windsock
- backofanenvelope
June 29, 2015 at 10:03 am -
These people are fleeing from their shithole countries. But who made them like that? We have spent 60 years pouring money into Africa to no avail. Once enough of them have arrived, they will convert our country into a shithole.
- JuliaM
June 29, 2015 at 10:26 am -
It’s well on its way already…
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 10:36 am -
Presumably those going the other way feel the same…
http://www.usnews.com/cmsmedia/32/a2/42df3ba943e39cd047c4e7e97620/140708-isil-jihad-graphic.jpg
- JuliaM
- Daft Lassie
June 29, 2015 at 10:09 am -
Some of the places they come from were better off under British colonial rule.
Those Philipinos and Poles send money back to their dependants who live in their home countries and where the living costs are a fraction of those here. There is at least some intention of going back, perhaps even with a UK pension, and thus living the life of an expat in their own land. Sometimes, and shamefully, the money they send back is culled from our benefits system, and I for one would insist that benefits paid to non-resident dependants must be capped at the rates of the country where they live (if anything at all). I wonder if the Calais Campers intend the same?
Katie Hopkins has been reviled on this site, no doubt for suggesting that they are cockroaches. So what are they?
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 10:18 am -
Cockroaches? OMG… it’s like Starship Troopers has come to pass…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijvTiDnWJLE - Mrs Grimble
June 29, 2015 at 10:28 am -
“What are they?”
Well, for a start, they’re all human beings. And, like the rest of us, they all have their own stories to tell, if you could just sit down and talk to them. For instance, some of those fit young men might be able to tell you that their choices back home are limited to which local militia and/or criminal gang they want to be recruited into. Or that their family back home are, so far, safe from the fighting but sinking into poverty; if they can get a job in the prosperous, fabulous, West they can send money back. Or that their country is falling apart and that they see no future for themselves there – so ‘Go West, young man’ and make your own future.
So I wish that some of those newspeople showing us pictures of men clinging onto lorries and climbing fences would try to talk to these people and find out why they’re doing this. It would save us an awful lot of fruitless and uninformed speculation.- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 10:31 am -
The BBC regularly do this on the World Service. They’be been “following” an illegal immigrant for several years. It doesn’t make any difference whether you like them or not… unless they’re Vietnamese Boat People of course, or Cubans fleeing Communism.
- Engineer
June 29, 2015 at 10:40 am -
I think we know why they’re doing it. They think they’ll be better off in Britain. They’re probably right. But we’re a small island, and we can’t accommodate every refugee from every hellhole round the globe, whether we’d like to or not.
What’s the answer? Sort the hellholes out. If there’s peace, stability and the rule of law, there’s no need to leave to seek a better life. Easier said than done, though.
- binao
June 29, 2015 at 10:57 am -
Given that the most able & wealthy are probably the most likely to be able to escape their home country it would seem counterproductive to help. They surely are needed at home- to either defend it or help it forward.
Also easier said than done, though.- JuliaM
June 29, 2015 at 11:18 am -
Good lord, Mrs Grimble, don’t you read ‘The Guardian’ and ‘The Independent’? They are full of sob stories. All very heartreanding, even if only half true.
And totally beside the point.
- JuliaM
- binao
- Moor Larkin
- Don Cox
June 29, 2015 at 3:40 pm -
A good many Poles came here in the 1940s. Their descendants are completely integrated into British society — as much as the Huguenots, or the Danish invaders/colonists.
I don’t think the people from mainland Europe are a problem at all, except perhaps the Gypsies, who are not exactly new here.
The problem people are those from tribal Muslim areas in Pakistan, Bangle Desh or Eritrea. As for the Syrians, I think a good proportion will be Christians or other non-Muslims.
- Flubber
June 29, 2015 at 4:40 pm -
Dont forget the Somlians. According to the IIPPR report on immigration the least likely to be employed and the greatest consumers of benefits. Chcuk in a bit of knife crime for the perfecta!
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 4:42 pm -
But Mo is a hero, with a capital M!!
- Moor Larkin
- Flubber
- Moor Larkin
- Able
June 29, 2015 at 10:47 am -
Interesting as always but there are a number of false assumptions.
These ‘refugees’ are not the sole bread-winner/protector of some poor, desperate sad little family, fleeing a war-torn country with only the ragged clothes on their backs – ever! They are the ‘expendable’, excess young males – the same section of the population, whatever the country, culture or point in history that is always sent out to fight, die or risk all opening up new areas for the rest. These are not the doctors, engineers, civilisation builders or even pillars of the community of their cultures/countries, they are the useless, the unwanted/unmissed, the potential/actual criminals, the parasites, trouble-makers and the mentally-ill – ie. those most easily dispensed with, disposable and beneficial to send elsewhere (for their cultures anyway). They are lavishly funded by their extended families (you think the real poor, at risk or desperate can afford the costs to be smuggled through?) on the hope/wish/chance that once in they will be used as a reason to get the whole extended family in (if they fail – no loss). They are often (in the majority of cases) from the very section of the population ‘causing’ the problems in their own communities, ‘in power’ and exclusively able to access the finances, material, contacts and support to undertake such a journey.
The really at risk, the poor, dispossessed, the powerless have no option but to either hide, suffer, die or, in extremis (and only if lucky enough to escape notice), walk out to the nearest safe area (the next country, city, state or refugee camp – just how many safe areas have these ‘refugees’ crossed to get here?).
So? We are (deliberately/intentionally) being forced to take the worst of the rest of the worlds dross based on a false claim of humanitarianism. (It’s hardly a new, or even third world issue – Ireland has one of the lowest mental health problems in the western world, why? Because they send most of them over here for the free treatment, housing and benefits. Most mental health units in London have a majority of Irish ‘clientèle’, I worked in on that only had a single English patient). We then hear never-ending excuses for why such people continue to act exactly the same here with the only solution being offered being to throw yet more (of our) money at them.
Much like the US, where the illegals, criminals, the unskilled and uneducated are actively rewarded over those really willing to work who apply legally for permits, we here are being required to support a system that actively excludes the very people the system was allegedly set up to aid.
One example amongst many, a hospital in London where I worked recruited a number of Rwandan refugees to train (for free, special additional places opened up, special accommodations and extended financial support provided)) as nurses following the genocide. This continued even after a number of other (African) nurses pointed out that not only were they from Hutu tribe (who committed the genocidal atrocities) but that two of them were actually family members of the rich, elite, akazu (the political elite who both ran the country and planned, executed the genocide). They ‘all’ received citizenship here and subsequently brought over other family members – of course. I know of no Tutsi who ever worked there!
- Peter Raite
June 29, 2015 at 2:11 pm -
It’s hardly a new, or even third world issue – Ireland has one of the lowest mental health problems in the western world, why? Because they send most of them over here for the free treatment, housing and benefits. Most mental health units in London have a majority of Irish ‘clientèle’, I worked in on that only had a single English patient.
Or maybe you just worked in an area with a high Irish population and – gasp! – the clientele refelected that. Eitehr way, presumably you can back up your claims with relevant statistics?
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 2:32 pm -
The Irish can of course vote here, a privilege denied to an Englishman in the green homeland, so servicing their insane may explain ireland’s second city, Liverpool, and it’s determined electoral support of Labour – “they’re all mad yer ‘onour”…
- gunker
June 29, 2015 at 5:41 pm -
I am afraid you are wrong there, Moor. British subject can vote in local and parliamentary elections in Ireland. They are only restricted from voting in presidential elections and referenda.
- Able
June 29, 2015 at 10:47 pm -
Really Peter?
So could you perhaps point out which area of London, covered by any hospital, that is 99% Irish?
There ‘are’ certain areas with large Irish populations however, since the generally agreed guestimate is that 1in 4 will experience some mental health issue in their lifetime, what you are saying is that, let’s say 40% of a given areas population (a gross overestimation anywhere in London) is presenting 99% of its mentally-ill patients. So, aren’t you proving the very assertion I made?
I have no overweening issues with the Irish as a nation or people but they ‘are’ a perfect example that those who emigrate to Britain are very rarely only those gifted, educated, skilled individuals (both that they are all painted as, and that any nation would welcome open-armed) – those will mostly be having a good life ‘back at home’.
Ireland has no higher rates of mental-illness, alcoholism or criminality than any other western nation – so why is it, do you think that Irish immigrants to Britain present significantly higher percentages of all those groups?
Yes, there are many skilled, hard-working and educated Irish who come here too (we’ll gloss over the fact that many only come here for the better wages, free training and access to paid-for-by-British college/university educations to get the very money/skills/qualifications they then use as a reason we should be glad they are here) but for every one of them there are two ‘travellers’, alcoholics and benefit spongers. The former are generally (even with the caveats) welcome, the latter … not so much.
Remember, this is a nation that ‘still’ constantly reiterates their wish/desire to ‘have nothing to do with the English’ – unless it’s to get some freebies (care to check Irish use of the NHS as a whole – health tourism isn’t just a third-world issue) .
Gunker
As to the mentioned vote, yes both can vote in each others elections but compare/contrast the effect a few English specialists/pensioners in Ireland have with the (literally) millions of Irish citizens in England (a significant number with no ties, and a great deal of animosity, towards Britain). So I think it’s a valid question/concern when elections are often swung by a few hundred (or just a few) votes. (of course the same could be said for all those Scots in England voting on English only affairs – not to mention The West Lothian aspect ).
- Peter Raite
June 30, 2015 at 12:00 pm -
So, no specific stats on mental health admissions to back up your claim, then?
- Peter Raite
June 30, 2015 at 12:37 pm -
http://www.nepho.org.uk/mho/MentalHealthEthnicityAdmissions/atlas.html
In fact, this shows that mental health admission rates vary wildly from borough to borough in London. In Lewisham, for example, the admissions per 100k of population in 2006 were 386.3 for male working age Whites and 347.8 for White Irish. In Enfield it was 230.3 and 291.7 respectively, but in Lewisham it was 334.2 and 666.7. Given that – as you say – there are no boroughs with and overwhelmingly Irish population, it’s hard to see where admissions numbers can be the majority, even were rates are significantly higher. You are, of course, free to identify the borough you are most aquainted with, so we can see how the declared admission rates stack up against the local demographics.
- Able
June 30, 2015 at 9:14 pm -
Peter
Thank you for those figures, they make some interesting reading do they not? (well, they would if I could get the dam thing to stop jumping all over the place).
As you’ll be aware there are “lies, damn lies and statistics” so all should be taken with a grain of salt (or at least some consideration). I could point out that there is a considerable difference between admission and being served by a unit (one often reflects the other, but not always – admission is at the discretion of the admitting psychiatrist depending on circumstances and clinical presentation). That ethnicity on admission documentation is either a self-defined ‘after-thought’ or (especially in mental health situations) a ‘paperwork, get-it-out-of-the-way’ immediate choice by the admitting nurse/doctor or even clerk without any patient/relative input (it being seen, rightly, as relatively unimportant when compared to assessing/delivering the support/care needed). I could point out that such statistics are both pointless and irrelevant without the relevant ethnic breakdown of the population in those boroughs (so 300+ White Irish of 100K ‘general’ population are admitted, but what percentage of the White Irish population is that? And no, the data does not, unaccountably, reflect that as far as I could see). That ‘no’ hospital ‘on-take’ area covers a single, or even close to borough boundaries. … I could go on.
But. And yet. Those you quote indicate that even with all the caveats those identified as White Irish are in the main admitted at higher rates than White Other, no? (despite being, possibly/probably, a smaller number). So what does that indicate? (In all the major cultural/societal criteria Ireland is the equivalent, or often actually considerably better, than Britain, so if the emigrant population shows significantly worse markers that would indicate some self-selection/filtering is occurring, no?).
Unfortunately all of that is, with due respect, a Straw-man argument. You have, for possibly entirely legitimate (to you) reasons focused on that one small point, whilst completely ignoring the gist of my comment. That a significant proportion of those emigrating to Britain are those who have significant ‘issues’ and that their rates here are higher (as a percentage of the nationalities population) than ‘at home’, and that that indicates that Britain is being used/seen as a suitable/beneficial place for such persons/a soft touch.
Much as the British population of the Costas does not reflect the British population as a whole, so the ‘problems’ associated with emigrant populations does not necessarily reflect their ethnicity, nor exclude ‘other than normally stated/claimed reasons for emigrating’ (nor ‘tar all with the same brush’).
- Able
- Peter Raite
- Peter Raite
- Able
- gunker
- Moor Larkin
- Peter Raite
- Ed P
June 29, 2015 at 10:53 am -
It would be beneficial for those left behind if all these 1000s of fit young men were given a one-way ticket home and £1000 each (in their own currency, so most of it would actually reach the families back home).
This might sound crazy, but it would cost the UK a lot less overall than the security, housing, welfare,etc.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 11:01 am -
Sounds like the Arnie Syndrome to me: “I’ll be back”.
- Ed P
June 29, 2015 at 1:35 pm -
A mandatory DNA test before the hand-out should fix that.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 2:27 pm -
I can see the government department already. Cheaper to let them in I should imagine…..
- Ed P
June 29, 2015 at 10:52 pm -
No Moor, when you tot up the welfare costs over years or decades, it’s much cheaper to provide a one-off repatriation payment. And knowing that if they try again the DNA record would prevent a repeat payment, the majority will not return.
It wouldn’t have to be at Calais – the point of entry in Italy or France could be the, “Here’s the cash now piss off home” point, under EU control.
- Ed P
- Moor Larkin
- Ed P
- Moor Larkin
- windsock
June 29, 2015 at 11:03 am -
Anna, I think you’re overlooking the Darwinian principle here: natural selection and survival of the fittest. You are making assumptions these young men have families to support, but equally, they could be un-married and childless just out to look after themselves, as they would have to if they remained at their point of origin.
As for why there are fewer women refugees, well, maybe this story might help. While living in San Francisco in the late 80s, I worked alongside a lovely Cambodian woman. She told me her story of how her husband, a teacher, had been killed by Pol Pot’s thugs and she had set out for the Thai border with her 12 children. When she arrived at the border, only two of those children were still alive. She eventually made it on to England then USA. Maybe many women would like to make that same journey to the apparent safety of the West but have concerns for their own and the children’s welfare that such a trip would entail.
I asked the Cambodian woman how she dealt with the loss of 10 children. She shrugged and said “I saved two.”
What we also don’t seem to realise is the people want to come to GB because English is the second (and some case, first) language of nearly everyone globally. I’m not saying that’s reason to let them in, but it is an attempt to understand why they want to come here, over other countries.
And no, I don’t know what the answers are either. To create Heaven in Africa? Well, I can already hear the arguments against that one.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 11:20 am -
Fings aint wot they used to be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladys_Aylward- windsock
June 29, 2015 at 11:27 am -
Well done Gladys Aylward – tough titty Su Shi?
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 11:40 am -
I’m still trying to compute how old shi must have been to have 12 children already, and how she ended up in England rather than the good old USA nayway. Must have taken the long way round. The DDR created quite a Vietnamese community in East Berlin I was reading, but theirs all came from North Vietnam as Comrades rather than refugees.
- windsock
June 29, 2015 at 11:51 am -
She wasn’t young, but being the gentleman I was, I never asked her age. She looked the “wrong” side of 50. As for her roundabout route, I think there was some sort of Cambodian refugee disbursement programme. She spoke very warmly of Oxford and the British. I have no reason to doubt her story and I’m not sure why you would.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 12:03 pm -
I knew an Irish woman once who said all seven of her children were killed by a bomb during the war. I have no reason to doubt her story either, but I also have no idea if it was true and it makes no difference to anyone what I “believe” anyway. The past is always a useful reference point to try and figure out the present however.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2014/04/how-thatcher-gave-pol-pot-hand
- Moor Larkin
- windsock
- Moor Larkin
- windsock
- Time Traveller
June 29, 2015 at 1:21 pm -
“Create Heaven in Africa” – Didn’t we do that in Rhodesia before we all became progressive? What happened there?
- Don Cox
June 29, 2015 at 3:45 pm -
What happened in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe when the British left was the same as happened in Britain when the Romans left.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 3:50 pm -
In Britain the Saxons arrived and we were finally on the road to democracy, apart from a blip when the French took for a while…
- binao
June 29, 2015 at 6:09 pm
- binao
- Moor Larkin
- Don Cox
- JonD
June 30, 2015 at 12:22 am -
Perhaps we might improve our situation in the future if we were to train up and deploy throughout the third world a massive army of French teachers. We could even target said training at the current group of migrants and send them back to teach their compatriots French. Our problems reduced, French problems increased… what’s not to like ?
- Moor Larkin
- prog
June 29, 2015 at 11:43 am -
Travel from many parts of Africa to Europe doesn’t come cheap.
‘The migrants who embark upon this journey are typically represented as terrorized and impoverished—as people driven (to quote Amnesty International) “to risk their lives in treacherous sea crossings in a desperate attempt to reach safety in Europe.” The demographic and economic facts complicate that story. When populations flee war or famine, they generally flee together: the elderly and the infants, women as well as men. The current migrants, however, are overwhelmingly working-age males. All of them have paid a substantial price to make the trip: it can cost upwards of $2,000 to board a smuggler’s boat, to say nothing of hundreds or even thousands of dollars to travel from home to the embarkation point in the first place. ‘
‘Every boat person I’ve met has been ambitious, urban, educated, and, if not middle-class (though a surprising number are …), then far from subsistence peasantry. They are very poor by European standards, but often comfortable by African and Middle Eastern ones.’
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/closing-european-harbors/395321/
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 12:13 pm -
This lay behind the Gurkha campaign by Joanna Lumley a few years back. The pension paid to those in Nepal was less than the one paid to those in Britain, but proportional to local wealth, it put the Pensioners in the comfortably-off class. Now they’re all in Aldershot living in an unwelcome ghetto. Absolutely fabulous, what-ho.
- Mudplugger
June 29, 2015 at 12:29 pm -
Not a bad result for a bunch of mercenaries.
Bit like ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter’ – one man’s mercenary is another man’s Gurkha. Obviously depends whose side they’re on.- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 12:38 pm -
But one of them once saved Joanna’s dad, so everything is justified because of the story of Joanna’s dad.
- JuliaM
June 29, 2015 at 12:56 pm -
Better the Gurkhas, who earned their pensions serving in HM Forces, than Somali or Syrian would be gangsters…
- Hadleigh Fan
June 29, 2015 at 4:17 pm -
Gurkhas are mercenaries in the same class as the Swiss Guards at the Vatican, or the Varanginians who served with the Byzantines – and quite a different matter to people going to fight in guerrilla wars.
Joanna Lumley is what Joanna Lumley is – a person of very little brain. The logical thing to have done wasn’t to settle the Gurkhas here, but to put money into Nepal to improve the conditions there.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 4:30 pm -
And so back to Mme. raccon’s theme it seems:
Across Pokhara, there are posters of men in uniform, their faces covered in camouflage paint, advertising training classes for those who aspire to join the British, Indian and Nepalese armies and the Singapore police. Young men have also left to do other kinds of migrant work…. The outflow has left Barpak vulnerable. Santakumari Gurung, 63, said her husband, who served in the Indian army, abandoned her. Her two sons work as construction laborers in Malaysia. Ms. Gurung said she has hunted for days, but hasn’t been able to retrieve the piece of paper on which her sons’ phone numbers are written. “My sons are not here, my brothers are not here, my husband is not here,” said Ms. Gurung, tears streaming down her face. “I am all alone in this time of hell. Nobody is with me.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/nepals-elite-fighters-struggle-to-save-homeland-1430687566- macheath
June 29, 2015 at 5:58 pm -
An interesting point about phones; a recent Radio 4 documentary followed migrants on their journey from the Mediterranean to Calais partly through calls to their mobile phones – “And where have you got to now?”
Just as the nature of looting and rioting changed forever once the participants (and potentially orchestrators) had access to instantaneous communication, so migration has altered with the possibility of maintaining contact in spite of the distances involved. My home town has, in recent years, acquired a plethora of back-street shops advertising cheap phone services and money transfers; might this facility play a part in the attitude of the family members left behind? (Always assuming, of course, that the womenfolk are allowed any say in the matter).
- macheath
- Moor Larkin
- Hadleigh Fan
- JuliaM
- Moor Larkin
- Mudplugger
- Moor Larkin
- Opus
June 29, 2015 at 12:45 pm -
This is an excellent post, but allow me to turn it on its head. Whilst these strong virile
- Opus
June 29, 2015 at 12:48 pm -
.. men are storming the Calais barricades, are their antics any the worse, than those east European, South American and Thai women who go on-line for the purpose of finding a sugar Daddy in the Home Counties and who frequently bring their brood here. I fail to see any moral difference.
- Opus
- Beverley
June 29, 2015 at 12:54 pm -
Adopt Australia’s stance – send them back. If our Navy (funded by our taxes) rescues boat people (right and proper) they should take them back not dump them in the nearest EU country where they complain about the lack of wifi for their mobile phones? Either they’re destitute or they’re not. It is unfair that indigenous British people (and yes – I know we have a lot of ‘foreign’ indigenous people but that is historical) are having their benefits restricted because there’s not enough to go round when the vast majority needing benefits have at one time or another paid into the system. We send billions in foreign aid which does not reach the people who really need it while the fatcats of the country live in luxury. Stop it! Look after our own. Close the borders. How much is it costing to keep the Royal Navy in the med? Stop it!
- Don Cox
June 29, 2015 at 3:48 pm -
Just take the cost of immigrants from the overseas aid budget. Simples.
- Mudplugger
June 29, 2015 at 4:19 pm -
Another finanical tweak should be to put the Borders Agency under the Ministry of Defence – because their job is ‘defending’ the nation’s borders, it’s simply a ‘Defence’ job.
And, as a bonus, it suddenly get so much easier to reach the NATO target of 2% of GDP on defence, without wasting any more tax-dosh on weapons that don’t work, armoured vehicles that aren’t and admirals who don’t have any ships.
- Mudplugger
- Don Cox
- The Blocked Dwarf
June 29, 2015 at 2:16 pm -
*wanders into the lunchtime bar, wanting nothing but a decent coffee and perhaps a hearty Croque (that’s a ‘Ham N Cheese Toastie’ to you Pet) lovingly prepared by the Landlady’s own fair hand. Catches the drift of the conversation, recalls he has more and different ‘furrin’ bloods in him than Heinz has varieties – the paternal Granddrawves having hailed from Pompey with all it’s foreign seamen and semen , it’s mongrel matings – and decides to give the funny foreign food and drink a miss today *
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 2:45 pm -
Worth reflecting on how the fear of the Welfare State has turned as nation famed for it’s self-supporting immigrants of all creeds and colours and cultures over centuries, that has given rise to your DNA pool, is now being turned into a fearful den of xenophobia and greed. Another big tick in the achievements of Nanny State.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 2:48 pm -
ED.
fear of the Welfare State = fear of furriners feeding off the Welfare State - gunker
June 29, 2015 at 5:52 pm
- Moor Larkin
- Moor Larkin
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 2:47 pm -
ED.
fear of the Welfare State = fear of furriners feeding off the Welfare State - Mike Kemble
June 29, 2015 at 2:54 pm -
They are money grabbing economic refugees. Many are wanted men, many are terrorist sympathisers, many are looking for free handouts. Crime in these countries stupid enough to let them in is rocketing. In the UK more crime is committed by these undeserving foreigners than in history. They even steal our swans off the lakes as food. The police and wardens do nothing, even though they belong to the Queen. These are the same people who were bombing and shooting soldiers sent to various locations to protect them from each other. Above all, they are in therse countries to TAKE OVER and turn them into medieval islamic hell holes.
Governments are blind, people are blind, both seem to have a distinct disease inherant known as ostrich syndrome, and most others, apathy. When it is your child dragged off by these perverts in cars, dont cry to me!! I have been foretelling this crap for years. Left whingers shout me down, saying I am deluded and there is not a problem. In as little time as only TEN YEARS, Islam will be the dominant religion in the UK. And because of our voting system, they will be putting THEIR candidates in Westminster.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 2:58 pm - The Blocked Dwarf
June 29, 2015 at 3:50 pm -
TEN YEARS, Islam will be the dominant religion in the UK
Scary… until you see the fate of all religions in the UK, creeds and denominations. What you are saying is that in decade Britain will be FULL of Muslims that only ever go to the Mosque at Xmas or for their son’s or daughter’s Bar Mitzvah. Or as the Muslim 1st Gen-immigrant (judging by their ‘English’) owners of the chip shop downstairs said the other day ‘Oh yes we are often eating pork, except when the Grandparents are coming to visit from Backwardstan’.
If I were a betting man, I would bet McDonald’s Croydon lunchtime takings don’t plummet during Ramadan….for all the Lee Rigby beheading ‘islamist’ yuff….
- JimS
June 29, 2015 at 5:54 pm -
BBC Radio4’s programme “In Search of Moderate Muslims”, surprisingly to them, found the exact opposite. Young Muslims living in Britain considered that their parents had betrayed their heritage and they were out to reclaim it. No wonder ISIS can recruit girls from here.
- The Blocked Dwarf
June 29, 2015 at 7:19 pm -
Young Muslims living in Britain considered that their parents had betrayed their heritage and they were out to reclaim it.
Yes I know but the key word there is ‘heritage’ or perhaps ‘sense of identity’ . Miss Yoko will no doubt return to the UK in a few years time, an older and wiser woman with a string of junior Johns in tow. A few months of claiming benefits, dealing with Primary School teachers and other caring professionals will no doubt put paid to any remaining fundamentalist feelings and her little Ringos and Johns will grow up to sit in the arcades swigging cheap lager and hiding from the ‘feds’ like all their other peers whilst Yoko herself tries to get treatment for her *insert whatever syndrome* on the NHS . Her Grandchildren will be probably be very surprised to hear that she once not only wore ‘one of them head scarf things like’ let alone believe Granny’s 1001 Arabiannightesque tales of nights in the Wadi (‘is like Jedi Knights, Nan?’) of shooting infidels under the stars.
When the Holy Quran has moved from on the coffee table to under the remote , from under the coffee table to the dvd shelf and finally propping up the corner of the wide screen TV unit then you know the conversion to British Islam is complete…innit.
- JimS
June 29, 2015 at 10:49 pm -
Listen to the programme.
- JimS
- The Blocked Dwarf
- JimS
- Peter Raite
June 30, 2015 at 3:13 pm -
In as little time as only TEN YEARS, Islam will be the dominant religion in the UK.
Based on what crackpot calculation?
- Mike Kemble
June 30, 2015 at 5:37 pm -
crackpot! My, you are short of reality. Take in mind the fall of christianity in this country, the dropping of church goers almost daily, and the rise in population of the islamics and it does not take the brains of a chocolate mouse to see where it is going. The source was a noted national newspaper quoting sources I cant recall now, but will try and find out again, just for you. We cant have you calling me crakpot without proof can we?
- Moor Larkin
June 30, 2015 at 5:45 pm -
* The source was a noted national newspaper quoting sources *
You’re gonna have to do better than that in here Mike…- binao
June 30, 2015 at 8:17 pm -
Good point Moor Larkin, & then there’s the issue of assimilation.
Some years back I had reason to regularly visit Alum Rock & Stechford. Only white faces in the Ward End Labour & Ex Serviceman’s Club, where I tested significant volumes of Drum bitter. But according to the locals, ‘the Pakistans’ had taken over several local pubs as their own, so maybe Islam is more vulnerable than we think.
Just think what proper beer might achieve!.
- binao
- Moor Larkin
- Mike Kemble
- Moor Larkin
- macheath
June 29, 2015 at 3:21 pm -
There’s some food for thought in an article in this week’s Sunday Times by Waris Dirie, the anti-FGM campaigner. She descries a conversation between one of her colleagues and the Somali man whose daughter plays Dirie in a new film and who had brought the child on a visit to Paris.
“I want to live in Europe with my family. Everything is so beautiful and clean here. Everyone has money, and people can afford what they want. I want to live like that too.”
“Idriss,” Sophie sighed, “Everything here is much more expensive than where you live. Even if you could work as a taxi-driver, your wages wouldn’t be enough to feed you whole family. You would still be living in poverty.”
“But I just need one of those cards, like you have,” he said. He thought a plastic cash card would be the answer to his prayers, so Sophie had to explain how cash machines work. Idriss was deeply disappointed. “So I have to put money in before I can take it out again? Well, that’s stupid!”- Mark II
June 29, 2015 at 3:46 pm -
“The putting money in before taking it out” lesson is one that most of our politicians still need to learn.
- Mudplugger
June 29, 2015 at 4:22 pm -
To say nothing of the Greek politicians and their nation of non-taxpayers.
- Mudplugger
- Mark II
- Mark II
June 29, 2015 at 3:45 pm -
My solution to these 21st century boat people is quite simple – but not for the squeamish.
Anyway – they are clearly not the sort of people we want here as if they had any decency they would stay at home and try to sort out their own country’s problems rather than running away from them.- Don Cox
June 29, 2015 at 3:54 pm -
I think the ones you object to are not running away from problems but running toward opportunities.
But to suggest that Syrians, for instance, should stay in Syria and sort out their problems seems rather harsh when their king is dropping barrel bombs on them.
- Mark II
June 29, 2015 at 5:08 pm -
I reserve judgement on the supposed bombing by Assad – there has been misleading propaganda produced by the ever trustworthy BBC in the past.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 5:15 pm -
From what I understand Syria is reduced to tribes anyway… Assad and his Alawites against the rest, another sub-branch of the global religion that unifies so many folks across the world.
- Mudplugger
June 29, 2015 at 7:54 pm -
Some would say that the ‘tribes’ are only setting about correcting the arbitrary border divisions in the area devised by Sykes/Picot, i.e. the British and French, a hundred colonial years ago.
- Mudplugger
- Moor Larkin
- Mark II
- Don Cox
- ivan
June 29, 2015 at 5:27 pm -
The one thing that almost everyone will not look at is the why of their moving.
When you do you will find that they see Europe and the UK as prosperous places where life is easy. Now we have to ask, considering all the foreign aid poured into Africa and the number of NGOs working there, why is it that there is no flourishing economies there? The answer to that is very simple – the left leaning green movement (FoE, WWF, etc) don’t like the idea of the people having abundant, reliable cheap energy in the form of electricity from large power stations. They also object to to the idea of running pipes for clean water to all the houses – they would rather that the people have one stand pipe and have to carry the water home in far from sterile containers. As for a sewage system, the greens will have heart failure if anyone suggests that.
For some reason there is the idea among the ‘do gooders’ in the west that the native people must be kept in their ‘traditional’ conditions. Is that because those ‘do gooders’ secretly believe that the Africans are not capable of advancing beyond the old ways?
The other thing that the left leaning green movement is dead against is anything that night make a profit. They have to be, otherwise why are they so dead against medium scale farming using modern machinery? They would rather see local people hacking away at almost useless ground in the hope of maybe growing enough to feed the family when, if the village got together they could use machinery to do that work and profit from it (don’t let me get started on un-fair crops where those growing them are paid slave wages and the end man makes several hundred percent profit).
Nothing will change the situation in Africa until there is a change in attitude in the west that the Africans be allowed to have abundant, reliable energy (renewables just don’t cut it and never will).
The problems in the middle east and north Africa are those caused by the left leaning western do gooders.that wanted to change something that worked into something the doesn’t (a typical left attitude). As such people leaving those countries should be billeted with and be the responsibility of those do gooders, end of story.
- Moor Larkin
June 29, 2015 at 5:33 pm -
* As such people leaving those countries should be billeted with and be the responsibility of those do gooders, end of story. *
Camden and Islington it is then…
- Moor Larkin
- Tony (Somerset)
June 29, 2015 at 7:04 pm -
Where are all these thousands of young men going to find womenfolk, once they are settled in Europe ?
- Mudplugger
June 29, 2015 at 7:56 pm -
Rotherham, Bradford, Keighley, Burnley, Oxford – maybe not the marrying kind, but OK to practice on apparently.
- Ted Treen
June 30, 2015 at 1:55 am -
You missed out the West Midlands: but Plod overlooked it as well, so that’s understandable.
- Mike Kemble
June 30, 2015 at 9:49 am -
Ted, the nickname for Birmingham is now Brumistan. Somalis swagger the streets pushing people out of their way, arrogance personified. After 2200hrs the asians take over the streets, ignoring traffic lights, halt signs, speed limits, taxis are the worst. They have to get back to their stand no matter what, an empty taxi if fare free. Nobody gets in their way, if they have any sense. The only time a police car is in evidence is on a blue light, rushing to the curry house.
Arrogance is the stance of most so called ‘ethnics’ now, they know the city is now theirs, and they flaunt it. I used to work in Brumistan through the night, its not a nice place at all. Very rare now to see a white person after dark. They walk out into the street if you are unlucky enough to be driving along, and dare you to hit them. If I did, they would not be getting up again.
- Mike Kemble
- Ted Treen
- Mudplugger
- Sigillum
June 29, 2015 at 7:56 pm -
I suspect I now know the overwhelming view of the “man/woman/person of no specific gender in the street”. And it is, as usual, ignored by those who will not face the consequences.
- JuliaM
June 30, 2015 at 11:44 am -
Well, it won’t be their daughters told to dress modestly to avoid inflaming the passions of these poor, misunderstood guests in their country, will it?
- Mike Kemble
June 30, 2015 at 12:26 pm -
person of no specific gender in the street” does not exist
- windsock
June 30, 2015 at 12:52 pm -
- Mike Kemble
June 30, 2015 at 2:38 pm -
Sending me a link Windsock, is irrelevant when its produced by these man and women; thats all nature produces, which to my mind are (heavily censored).
- Peter Raite
June 30, 2015 at 3:07 pm -
Are you denying that nature produces intersex children?
- Mike Kemble
June 30, 2015 at 3:09 pm -
Nature produces two human variants. Male & Female, indesputable. What becomes of these variants in later life is known as a perversion.
- Moor Larkin
June 30, 2015 at 3:11 pm -
This is genuinely interesting… On the NHS back then even!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6paqi-oz3iA - Peter Raite
June 30, 2015 at 3:25 pm -
“Perversion” is a social/moral fiction. Nature routinely produces variations from the norm.
- Mike Kemble
June 30, 2015 at 5:43 pm -
I was waiting for the inevitable reply to perversion. You fewll for it.
Look up perversion in the dictionary:
THAT which is different.
I am perverse, simply because I do not agree with the so called gay people and certainly not the liberal crap that accompnaies them.
- Mike Kemble
- The Blocked Dwarf
June 30, 2015 at 3:27 pm -
Thank goodness! I was worried, for a minute, that when the Xenophobia passed you’d run out material. Praise the Lord for the gift of homophobia.
- The Blocked Dwarf
June 30, 2015 at 3:29 pm -
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Moor Larkin
- Mike Kemble
- windsock
July 1, 2015 at 7:15 am -
There are none so blind as those who keep their eyes shut.
- Mike Kemble
July 1, 2015 at 2:51 pm -
Convicted felons have more rights under existing UK laws than the blody victims. The commit, they should pay, including NO rights.
- windsock
July 1, 2015 at 3:07 pm -
Non sequitur.
- Mike Kemble
July 1, 2015 at 3:11 pm -
bloody liberals!!
- Moor Larkin
July 1, 2015 at 3:22 pm -
To be fair to Mike, I think he had this misplaced comment of mine in his cross-hairs.
https://annaraccoon.com/2015/06/29/a-recipe-for-disaster/comment-page-1/#comment-118202
I confess to being a right-wing liberal, so he’s not wrong.
- Mike Kemble
- windsock
- Mike Kemble
- Peter Raite
- Mike Kemble
- windsock
- JuliaM
- Mike Kemble
June 30, 2015 at 3:12 pm -
Who has these facts? If you are a left whinger, then facts are as portrayed by said left, and is based on ideology. Facts as portrayed by the ultra right wing are exactly the same, based on ideology. For the rest of us, we see with our own eyes at the thousands of criminal spongers flooding in here, knowing the chances of them getting caught are minimal and the fruit is ripe for stealing.
- Peter Raite
June 30, 2015 at 3:29 pm -
Presumably you can come up with some documentary evidence “thousands of criminal spongers”? And by evidence I mean a rational quantification and not a few hysterical annecdotes that you would have extrapolate beyond all reality.
- Mike Kemble
June 29, 2015 at 11:06 pm -
Illegals have NO rights
- Peter Raite
June 30, 2015 at 3:31 pm -
Untermenschen?
- Peter Raite
June 30, 2015 at 3:37 pm -
Hmmm… comments not going where they should? In the above case, in response to Mike’s shouty “Illegals have NO rights”…
- Moor Larkin
June 30, 2015 at 4:13 pm -
It might seem reasonable to posit that an “illegal” should have no more rights than a convicted felon, who is currently living at the whim of the State, no matter what contribution they may have made to Society prior to their crime.
- Peter Raite
June 30, 2015 at 4:34 pm -
Even convicted felons have rights. Illegals should be deported as soon as is practicable, but the trick is locating and catching them first, and the ability to work out where they should be deported to.
{ 161 comments… read them below or add one }