Politics

[The Fish 10872]

Some might say that sunshine follows thunder

[Christmas Tree 4729]

Let's face it, at base level we're all a bunch of cunts regardless of what public face we try to portray.

 

Be that with intolerance to our neighbour, our fellow motorist, our fellow public transport user, our political adversary , our welfare user or our fellow immigrant.

[Meenzer 15558]

Speak for yourself

[Christmas Tree 4729]

Speak for yourself

I don't need to, I know human instincts fairly well.

[Renton 21642]

I don't need to, I know human instincts fairly well.

How so?

[The Fish 10872]

How so?

He's a cabbie, innit

 

annanuvvafing, them poles, roight, nahw, I don' mine thems what wanna work an' that, bu' them ones tha' come ohva wiv fir'een kids an' won' even learn English? fahk'em innit

[Meenzer 15558]

I don't need to, I know human instincts fairly well.

Did you ask a forum about them or did you finally work out how to use Google?

[Howmanheyman 33274]

Let's face it, at base level we're all a bunch of cunts regardless of what public face we try to portray.

 

Be that with intolerance to our neighbour, our fellow motorist, our fellow public transport user, our political adversary , our welfare user or our fellow immigrant.

So speaks the Tory.

 

[Christmas Tree 4729]

Every political party thinks immigration over the last ten years was fucked up.

 

Most academic studies show that it had a damaging effect on low skilled British workers and pushed wages down.

 

Most councils will tell you that it caused severe problems with regard to local services and housing.

 

So to dismiss a poll seems a tad silly IMO.

 

 

[Meenzer 15558]

Every political party thinks immigration over the last ten years was fucked up.

 

If there were a compelling net benefit to not allowing that immigration to happen, we'd have long since elected a party that would stop it, reactionary sorts that we are. Turns out they all know the real story beneath the headline-friendly soundbites they're happy to issue every so often, hence never actually acting on them.

[Meenzer 15558]

Although I suppose it's mildly ironic that my plan in the event of a UK withdrawal from the EU is to emigrate immediately.

[PaddockLad 17289]

Every political party thinks immigration over the last ten years was fucked up.

 

Most academic studies show that it had a damaging effect on low skilled British workers and pushed wages down.

 

Most councils will tell you that it caused severe problems with regard to local services and housing.

 

So to dismiss a poll seems a tad silly IMO.

 

Have you ever asked yourself who wanted mass EU immigration in the last decade,who facilitated it, and who in the big scheme of things benefited most from it?

[Christmas Tree 4729]

If there were a compelling net benefit to not allowing that immigration to happen, we'd have long since elected a party that would stop it, reactionary sorts that we are. Turns out they all know the real story beneath the headline-friendly soundbites they're happy to issue every so often, hence never actually acting on them.

That's not how politics really works though is it, particularly when it's the less well off in society who are more effected.

 

These things happen in increments which is why heading to the next election UKIP, Europe and immigration are going to be one of the top issues.

[Christmas Tree 4729]

sorted

Top work

[Meenzer 15558]

That's not how politics really works though is it, particularly when it's the less well off in society who are more effected.

 

These things happen in increments which is why heading to the next election UKIP, Europe and immigration are going to be one of the top issues.

 

They won't be, though. They might be talked about a lot in the build-up, but come the crunch, they'll be secondary to how normal people actually think and vote.

[Christmas Tree 4729]

Have you ever asked yourself who wanted mass EU immigration in the last decade,who facilitated it, and who in the big scheme of things benefited most from it?

The men in smoke filled rooms?

[Christmas Tree 4729]

They won't be, though. They might be talked about a lot in the build-up, but come the crunch, they'll be secondary to how normal people actually think and vote.

As we know the blue and red sheep will do as they always do, it's those swingers in the middle who change things.

 

Conservatives need to go tough on immigration / Europe to try and see off UKIP. Labour need to go tough on immigration (they've already started) to avoid looking weak and to see off UKIP.

 

 

[Meenzer 15558]

As we know the blue and red sheep will do as they always do, it's those swingers in the middle who change things.

 

Conservatives need to go tough on immigration / Europe to try and see off UKIP. Labour need to go tough on immigration (they've already started) to avoid looking weak and to see off UKIP.

 

And UKIP will get no MPs, just like they were always going to anyway, and the country can delight in another coalition of the unwilling. Change, you say?

[Renton 21642]

Don't think it will be any where near as big an issue as falling living standards, and I doubt any of the big three will try and pin that on immigrants. I hope not anyway.

[Meenzer 15558]

Don't think it will be any where near as big an issue as falling living standards, and I doubt any of the big three will try and pin that on immigrants. I hope not anyway.

 

There's only one that might, since they're the ones who can't shift the blame elsewhere. I doubt even they're that desperate, though.

[Christmas Tree 4729]

And UKIP will get no MPs, just like they were always going to anyway, and the country can delight in another coalition of the unwilling. Change, you say?

The point is all parties will ramp up the immigration card meaning that whoever wins will probably implement tougher immigration rules.

[Meenzer 15558]

The point is all parties will ramp up the immigration card meaning that whoever wins will probably implement tougher immigration rules.

 

Bet you they won't.

[ewerk 30656]

The point is all parties will ramp up the immigration card meaning that whoever wins will probably implement tougher immigration rules.

 

Why wait until after the election?

[Christmas Tree 4729]

Why wait until after the election?

We'll the coalition has just started the immigration bill going through parliament and the Labour Party launched their immigration policy (one of their first policies) two weeks ago.

 

The big issue however is no doubt the free movement under the EU and nothing will happen on that until post 2015

[Christmas Tree 4729]

Since Ed Miliband became leader, the Labour Party has tried to reformulate its stance on immigration.

 

The new approach contains an admission that the last government "got it wrong", largely because it did not listen to the people's concerns, in particular those of Labour supporters such as Gillian Duffy, who was dismissed by Gordon Brown as a "bigoted woman" simply for airing her anxieties.

 

That ghastly moment grabbed the headlines, but the flaw in the Blair-Brown immigration policy was far more fundamental than the casual traducing of a Rochdale voter who dared to challenge an angst-ridden Prime Minister.

 

From 2002 to 2010, Labour opened the United Kingdom's doors to more than 500,000 legal incomers a year.

 

At the same time, it launched a propaganda offensive to persuade us that immigration on this scale would not only make us all better off, because it expanded national output by £6bn a year, but also help solve our long-term pensions crisis, because diligent newcomers would pay into the nation's retirement pot, which an ageing indigenous population was rapidly exhausting.

 

These were fallacies masquerading as serious politics. Neither element was true, as a House of Lords report, The Economic Impact of Immigration, made clear in 2008. Its conclusion was, in effect, the British public had been sold a false prospectus.

 

Yes, mass immigration increases GDP, but not GDP per head, because the expanded cake has to be shared amongst many more people.

 

As for pensions, the arrival of half a million overseas workers a year merely delays the day of reckoning, because they too will grow old and need retirement care. Expecting ever greater numbers of immigrants to keep the system in credit is to have faith in a Ponzi scheme.

 

That's not to say immigration changes nothing. For the employer class, it provides a ready supply of child-minders, cleaners and plumbers who are grateful for a job and prepared to work for the minimum wage. Life for the rich improves.

 

But, as Cambridge University economist Professor Robert Rowthorn points out: "It does not benefit indigenous, unskilled Britons who have to compete with immigrants willing to work hard for very low wages in unpleasant conditions."

 

What's more, British companies have little incentive to train domestic workers if they able to import foreign staff with higher skills and a stronger work ethic.

 

Then there is Britain's chronic housing shortage. This is not the fault of immigrants, but it's disingenuous to pretend that 176,000 net arrivals (the figure for 2012) do not make an acute problem even worse. They do, after all, have to live somewhere.

 

Some arrive with enough wealth to buy homes in desirable neighbourhoods. But the vast majority end up competing for space on the lower rungs of the property ladder, where working-class Britons are already struggling to make ends meet.

 

It was, says Professor Rowthorn, bizarre that Labour, ostensibly the party of the poor and vulnerable, endorsed a policy which created, as Marx put it, a "reserve army of labour", whose presence ensures that bottom-end pay rates are suppressed.

 

Ed Miliband, it seems, now recognises his predecessors' blunder.

 

 

http://news.sky.com/story/1154577/labour-got-it-wrong-on-immigration