Immigration: "No proper debate for many, many years"

The Nick Robinson tv programme about immigration was a bit interesting. One of the things that came out of it is how the British people have never been consulted and were kept in the dark about policies and decisions, all very undemocratic really.

The picture Nick Robinson painted in quite a cheerful way, handing out slices of pie, is of many years of sinister government secrecy and incompetence. The amazing, and rather worrying thing is that much of the British public accepted the implied ban on discussing immigration.

The logic of the economics that have now developed, as explained, demand that, to sustain the immigration supported type economy, a constant supply of new immigrants to replace the immigrants that have gone on to develop more settled lives is needed.

An unconvincing economic roundabout that doesn't much economically involve less well off native English people, but does impact on them in social terms, and now has to go faster or collapse.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25638175

There is something vaguely along those lines on tv same time next week. The subject of immigration and it's consequences has been so un-discussed for so many years, there is plenty to catch up on.

Apart from the social consequences, It's difficult to imagine an England of the future with enough housing and so on for a huge and growing population without considerable damage to what wildlife, nature, landscape and ecology we have left.

On the social consequences side, it has to be admitted that a lot of people are stressed about and by immigration. It tends to be better off English people that get the positive side of it in terms of cheap labour and so on, and the not so well off that suffer the down side.

cyfrifia wrote:
On the social consequences side, it has to be admitted that a lot of people are stressed about and by immigration. It tends to be better off English people that get the positive side of it in terms of cheap labour and so on, and the not so well off that suffer the down side.

Oh HOW I agree, as long as it is NIMBY 'all's well with the world' !  On the other hand, if you are living in the thick of it, your views are going to be VERY different....

You are right Hinch, I am STILL struggling with RMBC's Cleansing Department to have the mounds of rubbish cleared from a street close to me and, yes, we are aware that the main perpetrators ARE foreigners.  

This has been going on since May 2013, surely long enough for RMBC to have 'got to grips' with the problem but ..... softly, softly does it, or so it would appear !

Definitely NOT from where I am standing.

Hinch wrote:
You'd think that wanting to live in a clean, tidy area, free from rubbish, would be common to all irrespective of race, culture or income, but perhaps not.

People with different cultural backgrounds do behave and respond differently to situations.  Because it's been politically incorrect to recognise and find solutions to such problems as they arise, they have been allowed to fester. Better for everyone if local authorities are politely blunt about such problems and sort them out.

What is of no interest or consequence to one group of people may be important or offensive to another. Piles of rubbish and discarded furniture as a feature of a housing area can either be a comfortable and reassuring territorial marker, or horribly depressing, depending on cultural background and outlook.

cyfrifia wrote:
Piles of rubbish and discarded furniture as a feature of a housing area can either be a comfortable and reassuring territorial marker, or horribly depressing, depending on cultural background and outlook.

Comfortable and reassuring territorial marker? ....PASS! and Hinch, ....no, it's not me, HONEST and 'CITIZENSHIP'...did they really teach that? must have been absent that day    but, you know what they say 'if you can't beat 'em - join 'em, could be an option? save me a fortune in skips!!  

Poppyanna555 wrote:

cyfrifia wrote:
Piles of rubbish and discarded furniture as a feature of a housing area can either be a comfortable and reassuring territorial marker, or horribly depressing, depending on cultural background and outlook.

Comfortable and reassuring territorial marker?....PASS! .   .   .   .

Of course such a relationship with rubbish would be foreign to you, Poppyanna, but the fact obviously remains that other inhabitants of the area do have a different way of thinking about rubbish.

People from various countries have various ideas and habits about rubbish. Some countries have not yet had to, or managed to, adapt to the amount of rubbish there is in a consumer society, and have no habit of disposing of it properly. In some places, rubbish is seen as a useful resource, a way of earning a living, and enthusiastically hoarded, re-cycled or reused.

Small groups of immigrants may soon adapt to the way people around them behave, but larger groups reinforce each other. It should in theory be fairly straightforward to impress upon those particular immigrant communities that it's better all round if they don't leave rubbish lying about, but as yet, not many local authorities have managed to arrange within themselves to recognise and deal with such 'culturally sensitive' problems.

You might think places like Rochdale, with a long history of adapting to fairly large immigrant communities, would be ahead of the field in coping with this sort of thing, but, perhaps there is some catching up to do.

Large scale immigration is a big issue, changing the social fabric of England fairly rapidly now, especially 'down south', so it's a matter of making the best of that reality, by making good use of the positives, but also dealing robustly with the snags, without becoming too caught up in a limbo land of 'cultural sensitivity.'

Of course rubbish strewn housing areas are not exclusive to immigrant areas, but it usually is to do with sometimes quite complicated cultural or sub-cultural attitudes and circumstances.

A fair point, that "rubbish strewn housing areas are not exclusive to immigrant areas".

It is very dispiriting to live in a housing area which is rubbish strewn, and typically then goes downhill as a place to live in other ways as well.

Poppyanna has been asking for something to be done about where she lives, and something should be done. If that means facing up to issues of the circumstances of people living in that area, as well as checking out other things, someone will need to jump the hurdles of cultural sensitivity in order to get a result.

I phoned the RMBC Call Centre on Monday and reported various amounts of rubbish that have been 'cherry picked' around and left.  By this I mean, RMBC Cleansing have come up with a vehicle, picking up as far as the vehicle reached and then, instead of driving it around to the other end where they couldn't .....leaving the rest and so, the area is never completely cleared.  

As in the title of the thread, "No proper debate for many, many years", which refers to the subject of immigration being ignored for so long, equally, the subject of immigrant behavior has also not been openly discussed for many many years.

It is surprising, if you can lift the lid on why some housing ares are treated differently to others, the fact that they have 'ethnic community' within them can be seen to affect the attitudes of people in all sorts of departments in different ways, for good or for bad, and paralyze what should be normal procedures for something as apparently simple as maintenance and street cleansing.

When an area is left and neglected, the people sent in to do tidying up and rubbish removal can see this is an area of deep neglect, and will not apply the same standards to doing the job of cleaning up as they should. Whoever is in charge of them will not want to become embroiled in any dispute about why that is, because it may involve something 'culturally sensitive'.

Once caught in a negative cycle like that, it takes a good shaking to turn it around.

The responsibility is in the lap of the local authority. They probably can and will ignore and fobb off complaints eternally, they are well organised, structured and geared up to do exactly that. No amount of conventional complaints put in through the proper channels will have any effect, the only way round this problem is to think 'outside the box'.

The chances of getting anything positive done about the housing area you live in by conventional means is close to zero. There is just an outside chance that some unconventional and opportunistic approach might work. Someone who is close to and understands the personalities and issues in local government may know how to throw a spanner in disguise into the works in some way. It's all very sad really.

Hinch wrote:
I think when you scratch below the surface, it is certain types of immigration that are seen as being particularly problematic. Large numbers of people settling in specific areas who are seen as being slow to assimilate or learn the lingo etc.
The lack of genuine, meaningful debate is perhaps the greatest problem of all.

This is a much larger than average primary school, catering for children aged 3 – 11 years of age. Ofsted reports the pupils are of Asian or Asian British heritage, and concludes ...

The governing body does not have the necessary knowledge and skills to hold leaders and managers to account for the school’s performance.

The achievement of pupils is inadequate

Pupils’ knowledge and understanding in English and mathematics are not good enough.   As a result, standards at the end of Year 6 in English and mathematics are too low.


So, many of these Rochdale children of S Asian heritage will be going on to local Secondary Schools  disadvantaged in basic skills and in future opportunities across employment markets ? ?  

Mojo Hill wrote: disadvantaged in basic skills

Basic skills are needed, but are they really missing? These children may not get much maths etc, but seem to be otherwise well looked after in school. UK educational standards are not brilliant for the mass of people, many people can't do the maths for a supermarket shop, or don't bother.

If we had a huge mass of well educated people, what would happen then? There are only a certain amount of jobs require that level of skills. Would the economy suddenly expand into a high tech wonderland like South Korea to accomodate them? Seems very unlikely in the UK.

Perhaps it's better to give these children a happy time at school and let them be themselves rather than try to push them into academia.

Evidence of Fraud and Abuse of Free Movement in the UK

A secret-ish Home Office report shows what we already knew, that our immigration system is abused by criminals and confidence tricksters.

The snag with this is that our immigration control act as a filter, favoring criminals over other people, so we end up with a higher crime rate, and the expense of policing and keeping people in in prison.

Complaining about immigration is generally labelled as racist, but, it's more 'criminalist'. Is it politically incorrect to discriminate against criminals in favor of not-criminal people?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10597409/Home-Office-hid-dossier-on-EU-migrants.html

We welcome discussion on all topics, though threads on immigration and culture can cause problems for Moderators as they occasionally get hijacked by outright racist groups or people who use sweeping and very general accusations when posting.

We are in no way UKIP supporters, nor any other party for that matter, but do welcome the fact that they have put these issues on the mainstream political agenda.

Immigrants have always come to the UK from many different countries and for a variety of reasons. They are not just one homogeneous mass and posters need to remember this when accusing 'them' of a variety of social ills from littering, child-grooming, benefit fraud etc. We have plenty of our own home grown people involved in all these activities.

So, the floor is yours; debate and discuss away.

Thankyou for the note of caution, Admin. Debate so far seems calm and reasonable.

The Home Office dossier 'Evidence of Fraud and Abuse of Free Movement in the UK', with an assessment of the extent of sham marriages, proxy marriages, benefit fraud, and fraudulent documents, due for release this week, may attract general as well as political interest.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10597409/Home-Office-hid-dossier-on-EU-migrants.html

Raising the question of why the UK accepts an immigration policy that attracts a certain amount of criminals and fraudsters. Perhaps these are seen as more economically vigorous citizens?

Some may understand the UK as a country whose success is historically based on piracy, colonial theft of resources and a form of vigorous capitalism sometimes difficult to distinguish from crime. The UK today seems to have a split attitude about crime, insisting on obeying niceties of regulation and legal process that other countries ignore, but also making celebrities of criminals, from Robin Hood to Ronnie Biggs, even the Kray twins and Raoul Moat had their admirers.

Does an underlying British acceptance of crime as part of our culture explain our acceptance of an immigration system vulnerable to fraud, is it 'realism' or, just down to general incompetence?

Your calm and reasonable response, Hinch, seems to go for the general incompetence explanation.

On the acceptance of fraud etc, as part of national life, Parliament demonstrated an attitude with the M.P.'s expenses scandal. Our lawmakers flipped and twiddled acrobatically round the regulations to boost their incomes, setting the tone for the way of things.

The move towards a fraud society got a kick start during the Thatcher years, the government was seen as a robber baron oppressing the poor, and it became more acceptable to do some ducking and diving to make ends meet and re-balance towards fairer distribution of wealth, the Robin Hood effect.

The steel and coal industries were dumping their employees, many suffering work related health problems. G.P.s got into the habit of putting many such people on sickness benefit rather than unemployed, to give them a better income. This legitamised pretense, or fraud in both the working and middle classes. The upper classes have their own rules, and frankly, few become rich and powerful without bending the rules and the law, and this was admired under the greed is good understanding of Thatcherism.

Entry into the E.U. exposed British society to an economic, business and social environment where bribery and corruption are more widespread. Bribery and corruption in Europe is "breathtaking" and costs the EU economy at least £99 billion pounds per year. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26014387

Today's society has become accustomed to crime of all kinds, credit card fraud, fraudulent bankers, mis-selling, bogus goods, stabbings, gang and gun crime. Life goes on, but arguably in a more criminal envionment. Fraud that involves organisation has flourished, with people traffiking and other types of crime that involve pretense, cover stories and false paperwork. Our society has become much more complicated, opportunities for financial crime involving identity have multiplied, people have to be much more wary of just about everything, we have become street wise.

Is this just the way the world is going in general, do we as a nation need to accept crime as part of modern life and economy? Are criminals who clone credit cards and organise sham marriages just regular citizens showing a bit of risk taking behavior? Our banking system became more and more of a huge gambling machine, and gambling machines themselves have become more popular.

Should we as a country attempt to some extent to isolate ourself from international crime,  insising on more checks on identity and criminal records for people entering and migrating into Britain, or, is it just a case of welcome to the criminal islands?

The immigration minister has resigned because it turns out he was employing an illegal immigrant. An illustration of how too much of our immigration system runs on false documents, and how checking systems are not in place.

It's far more an illustration on how much more complicated governing the country has become 'from cradle to grave' and how there are not the resources to put in place and keep in place sufficient efficiency to produce 'proper' control. From bin collections to nuclear subs and - how everything is the government's fault and why haven't they done something about it. Policy is one thing. Controlling it quite another. The same goes for 'laws' done on the back of a fag packet whilst knees are jerking. Everybody wants everything and they want it now. Immigration went out of control in the 1980's and has never caught up or recovered and probably never will until this country is no longer perceived as a honey pot and an easy ride. Try to remedy that and watch for the hue and cry that will follow. No politician would risk it - unless he had first gone insane and had a death wish.