Coming over 'ere, taking our jobs...

[NoSleep]

That's not everyone is it? Genuine racism can't be defended, but you can't dismiss a view on immigration that is shared by millions of people.

"Fake" racism, justified by misunderstanding economics, is genuine racism that will not disappear just because you explain it to the "fake" racists. They are racists first, looking for any excuse.

[Fa Cé-La]

a view on immigration that is shared by millions of people.

Where are you getting your numbers from?

[NoSleep]

Some of his best friends are racists.

[Talulah, really!]

As me mum used to say 'I want doesn't get.' They need to try harder and get with the modern world, innit.

They probably should have worked harder at school too, in my experience the people who think that foreigners are taking the jobs are thick as shit and pig ignorant, topped off with a ludicrous and unearned sense of entitlement - which is probably why they're always scapegoating. It never occurs to them that they might have some responsibility for bettering their lot.

Norman says "Get on your bikes"

[Treguard of Dunshelm]

you can't dismiss a view on immigration that is shared by millions of people.

Why not? There are millions of people that don't agree with your opinions, yet you're pretty dismissive of them on a daily basis.

Immigrants aren't the problem, the economic policies of successive governments that have eroded peoples jobs, earnings, housing and living standards are the problem.

Agreed

You can all millions of people ignorant, lazy, stupid etc if you want but not everyone has the same opportunities to be as enlightened and educated about complex problems as you.

Yes they do. I'm hardly from a privileged background, but I try to better myself, to learn about the world, and to not blame other people for my own failures. What prevents other people from doing the same?

I'm not excusing racism, casual or otherwise but just dismissing all these people as stupid racists doesn't actually do anything to enlighten the nature of the genuine issues behind such views.

It's not stupidity as much as intellectual and moral laziness, I think. It's always easier to blame something on other people, especially if they're different (in whatever way) to you, rather than to take responsibilty for your own life.

[rudi]

Of course I knew, rudi is a cunt he replies like that to everything I post.

You've shown yourself before unable to withstand robust argument without acting like a child. What are you made of puppy dog tails?

[Treguard of Dunshelm]

Norman says "Get on your bikes"

Oh, I'm not saying there's nothing to prevent people from getting jobs - there are indeed many hindrances to finding employment, and it's absolutely not true to say that because someone is unemployed they must automatically be lazy (my family were on benefits for most of my childhood) - biggy has already pointed out some factors that lead to unemployment. What I'm talking about is the laziness of blaming unemployment on foreigners.

[biggytitbo]

Your not going to cry again like last time are you?

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Don't think there is too much I can say to someone self-confessedly detached from reality.

Handy that. Don't fancy explaining how me being a misogynist would inform/disinform my views on race then? Very handy.

I had hoped over on the other thread I would spark an interesting argument about why it is that we laugh at clearly wrong things (using that guy slipping on the ice in Ireland as a lesser example to the falcon_punch.gif as a more extreme example), but instead you've pretended you're above all that simply to leap up to some perceived moral highground and wave your private parts around. If you hadn't aggressively and fallaciously labeled as misogynist and then tried to suggest that would influence my views on race somehow, that might have even been alright.

[ThickAndCreamy]

Ah, I do love a good immigration thread.

I think you're all being too harsh on biggy here, he makes a reasonable point (even if his ideas on how to fix them are wrong). I know first hand that a mixture of poverty, poor education, underfunded schemes, urban decline and shopping decentralisation have completely changed areas near me. This is the result of the private housing boom, increase in out of town shopping centres, poor funding and industrial decline. However, instead of getting to the heart of the problem it easily manifests itself as anti-immigration.

Take Dagenham as an example. Former industrial heartland for Ford factory, a traditional Labour seat, high proportions of their people living on council estates. However in recent years the closure of Ford factory, as well as the loss of low paying jobs, has contributed to massive changes. The affluent have left thanks to suburbanisation, whilst a large proportion of first generation immigrants have moved in. Shops have become low order everywhere, with pound shops and endless low grade discount stores. All major shops have been sucked from the area thanks to other local towns and Lakeside, an out of town shopping centre, with the council and local government being too underfunded to gentrify.

There's also a large minority living on council estates, seen as a thing of the past by many and routinely ignored by Labour or given schemes that are inadequate. Schools are of a low standard, except for a select few, ultimately creating generations destined to work in low paid, low skilled jobs. It isn't that they're lazy, it's more that most come out of school without even 5 A-C GCSE's, and without that it's hard to get many jobs, let alone a well paid one. It's the lack of opportunity that spurs on the anti-immigration movement, people fear not being able to succeed or develop in life. Instead of blaming economic problems, immigration is a lot easier to handle and see and use as a movement. These aren't conservatives either, they are former socialists, angered at the failure of New Labour to achieve anything to help them. Huge social and economic problems are lumped together into an easy package of anti-immigration ideas. If you notice the BNP have more socialist policies than New Labour now have economically, they're not recruiting typical far right fascists, just angry former socialists unable to cope with the consequences of Thatcherism and new Labours continuation of it.

Obviously, this is not to say all people are anti-immigration for the above reason, they are still the social conservative cunts. However, the recruitment of the left is still a significant proportion, especially in strong traditionally Labour, former industrialised constituencies.

[rudi]

Your not going to cry again like last time are you?

Manners cost nothing. One fewer thing that'll have to be cut when you're leading your tribe from the gutter to the stars though, so that's a positive.

[Dusty Gozongas]

Such comments were a regular thing at the place I worked at up until a year and a half ago. During the four years before I left, the company started employing Poles as process operators and it wasn't taken kindly to by a fair few there, probably for the following reasons:

- Shortly before the company began employing Poles, probationary workers with less than a year's service were all told that they didn't have a job. There was a reasonably small but regular turnover of new employees up until this time, and all but a few were offered employment after a year. There was a six month-ish period where management claimed to be struggling to find suitable applicants for vacancies. Yeah. Right.

- All newcomers were Polish after that point.

- All of the timekeeping and payment details were dealt with separately to the rest of the workforce. Even the usual HR staff weren't involved with the wage/payslip aspect of the new employees.

- Accommodation was taken care of by one of the managers who owned a few properties in the area, like.

Annoyance expressed by any of the rest of the workforce was more often than not due to any combination of the above, and as such I would say that company policy was to blame for creating, or furthering an already extant, "Coming over 'ere, taking our jobs" attitude.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

People should look at the self-drive of immigrants who have made it over here and be inspired by them. They are often people who have all reason in the world to have limited horizons and still manage to fashion a living through all manner of adversity, the kind that most people in the country wouldn't have ever have had to face, or could identify with.

The issue is falling into the trap of seeing these people as the enemy rather than the people they should be striving to be like.

Don't forget that the stigmatisation of people on benefits is similarly strong as that of immigrants and that helps feed further resentment.

[NoSleep]

...- All newcomers were Polish after that point.

- All of the timekeeping and payment details were dealt with separately to the rest of the workforce. Even the usual HR staff weren't involved with the wage/payslip aspect of the new employees.

- Accommodation was taken care of by one of the managers who owned a few properties in the area, like...

Did the Polish workers keep quiet about how much they were getting paid? Did they not have any communication with other staff?

[Treguard of Dunshelm]

Schools are of a low standard, except for a select few, ultimately creating generations destined to work in low paid, low skilled jobs. It isn't that they're lazy, it's more that most come out of school without even 5 A-C GCSE's, and without that it's hard to get many jobs, let alone a well paid one. It's the lack of opportunity that spurs on the anti-immigration movement, people fear not being able to succeed or develop in life. Instead of blaming economic problems, immigration is a lot easier to handle and see and use as a movement.

Some truth in this. If you go to a shitty underfunded school where most of the teachers have given up, it is big handicap that is difficult to overcome. Lots of people do overcome it, though. I know cos I and most of my friends went to schools like that!

It probably is true that it's better to engage with people than to sneer at them, but it's hard to overcome the temptation as some of my earlier posts show! I still hold that anti-immigration sentiments are usually the result of moral laziness, but sternly telling someone they're morally lazy isn't going to make things any better, much as I wish it would.

These aren't conservatives either, they are former socialists, angered at the failure of New Labour to achieve anything to help them.

Not in my experience, I've found that most BNP supporters have been pretty apolitical until recent years. They may have voted Labour, that doesn't make them socialists though.

People should look at the self-drive of immigrants who have made it over here and be inspired by them. They are often people who have all reason in the world to have limited horizons and still manage to fashion a living through all manner of adversity, the kind that most people in the country wouldn't have ever have had to face, or could identify with.

The issue is falling into the trap of seeing these people as the enemy rather than the people they should be striving to be like.

Don't forget that the stigmatisation of people on benefits is similarly strong as that of immigrants and that helps feed further resentment.

This

[biggytitbo]

Thats the thing. The people who go on about immigrants and the immigrants themselves are exactly the same kinds of people. Thats the frustrating thing about people fighting each other because of cultural and ethnic differences, the vast majority of people here and abroad are in exactly the same boat, they have the same problems and they're generally shafted by the same people. If only they could stop squabbling amongst themselves about imagined problems and unite and fight their common enemy. But they never do, they prefer to fight each other - and that suits the cunts in charge just fine.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The people who go on about immigrants and the immigrants themselves are exactly the same kinds of people.

United mainly by their modest upbringings, but not much else.

[Dusty Gozongas]

Did the Polish workers keep quiet about how much they were getting paid?

That wasn't a question I'd ever be impolite enough to pose but they were tight lipped when asked by their workmates.

Did they not have any communication with other staff?

Not sure what you mean by that, but for all intents and purposes their daily interactions were according to the usual chain of command. They were regular employees working alongside everybody else. It was only their timekeeping and payment stuff that was suspiciously outside of the norm.

[Dusty Gozongas]

People should look at the self-drive of immigrants who have made it over here and be inspired by them.

It's often policy that gives immigrants the opportunity rather than drive.

[Talulah, really!]

Handy that. Don't fancy explaining how me being a misogynist would inform/disinform my views on race then? Very handy.

Not only are you detached from reality you're frankly delusional. What I did was agree with biggytitbo about the sneery moral superiority you trumpeted in your first post "reassess my friends" and contrasted that with the misogyny on show elsewhere to highlight what to me is hypocrisy as I see both misogyny and racism as bad things.

So to be clear I was calling you a misogynist and a hypocrite.

I had hoped over on the other thread I would spark an interesting argument about why it is that we laugh at clearly wrong things (using that guy slipping on the ice in Ireland as a lesser example to the falcon_punch.gif as a more extreme example),

Alasdair Campbell in a washing machine couldn't spin as well as that! PROTIP: If you want to spark an interesting argument about why we laugh at the wrong things, start a thread called "Why we laugh at the wrong things" then introduce the contentious material in context and ask what others think. Don't just post

It's quite entertaining seeing someone with the view 'oh I'm a woman he can't hit me' have that delusion physically disproven (from the safe reality-barrier of the internet)

or

It's sad that the two things that have made me laugh today both involved seeing women being punched.

and then pretend you were starting some sort of debate. You were merely passing comment.

but instead you've pretended you're above all that

I'm not pretending anything because there was nothing there of what you state.

simply to leap up to some perceived moral highground and wave your private parts around.

If you aren't a misogynst what is that last remark about?

I haven't mentioned my gender at all as it has no relevance.

[biggytitbo]

It was the moral superiority I didn't like. Some people with lots of real problems sometimes blame the wrong people out of ignorance, lack of education or whatever and they just get dismissed en masse as been somehow unworthy and sub-human.

[NoSleep]

It was the moral superiority I didn't like. Some people with lots of real problems sometimes blame the wrong people out of ignorance, lack of education or whatever and they just get dismissed en masse as been somehow unworthy and sub-human.

No.... as being actually racist.

[Talulah, really!]

It was the moral superiority I didn't like. Some people with lots of real problems sometimes blame the wrong people out of ignorance, lack of education or whatever and they just get dismissed en masse as been somehow unworthy and sub-human.

Exactly. The cliche of the racist underclass is as unhelpful as any other. There are just as many middle and upper class racists and they are the ones with the real power.

[NoSleep]

They're just as ignorant.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Not only are you detached from reality you're frankly delusional. What I did was agree with biggytitbo about the sneery moral superiority you trumpeted in your first post "reassess my friends" and contrasted that with the misogyny on show elsewhere to highlight what to me is hypocrisy as I see both misogyny and racism as bad things.

So to be clear I was calling you a misogynist and a hypocrite.

Alasdair Campbell in a washing machine couldn't spin as well as that! PROTIP: If you want to spark an interesting argument about why we laugh at the wrong things, start a thread called "Why we laugh at the wrong things" then introduce the contentious material in context and ask what others think. Don't just post

or

and then pretend you were starting some sort of debate. You were merely passing comment.

I'm not pretending anything because there was nothing there of what you state.

If you aren't a misogynst what is that last remark about?

I haven't mentioned my gender at all as it has no relevance.

Through your determination to have got me all wrong, you've got me all wrong.
Indeed, you're now moving on to selectively quote things I've said out of context.

Regarding the 'starting a debate' - this is a public forum where people can raise points in all manner of ways on all manner of topics, so forgive me for not obeying your frankly arbitrary rules on how people should behave- I merely said I hoped what I said sparked a discussion- I wasn't banking on it- otherwise I would've made a specific topic- but, your thread idea sounds good- I'll probably do that one in a few weeks.

I'm not claiming moral superiority- and that's rich coming from someone determined to paint someone as misogynistic despite a)not actually knowing them personally and b)basing this 'judgement' on 2 sentences in 8 years of posting on here  -I'm simply stating that I'd reassess my friends if they held anti-immigration views I held repugnant. As an individual you or I both have that freedom. The idea that you believe that to be some sort of trumped-up moral stand says more about you than me.

As for the 'private parts' you're essentially reading something into what isn't there. The entire reason I said 'private parts' is because I'm not sure whether you are a man or a woman. As far as I recall, both men and women have private parts.

For the 3rd time: Please explain why misogyny has some bearing on whether someone can hold racist opinions. If you can't do so then why did you bring your set of flimsy insults into this thread?

In conclusion- I don't believe myself to be misogynistic, and I would never draw similar conclusions on such flimsy evidence. As for hypocrisy, I would never accuse anyone of hypocrisy because I would be a hypocrite for that moral stance alone.

[Treguard of Dunshelm]

It was the moral superiority I didn't like. Some people with lots of real problems sometimes blame the wrong people because it's easier to blame asians and poles rather than cunts who belong to the same ethnicity as them

Fixed. Being poor is shit, but it doesn't justify bigotry. The argument "people are anti-immigration because they're shat on by the powers that be" has some merit, but it's far too simplistic. Not every anti-immigrationist is from a council estate. And it's a bit patronising to assume that because someone has a poor background that they're incapable of transcending that.

Exactly. The cliche of the racist underclass is as unhelpful as any other.

Yes, because it's untrue. Most working class people aren't racist, however much the middle class media depicts them to be so.

[Backstage With Slowdive]

My grandma (1913-2008), was conservative, homophobic and not exactly non-racist, but she was quite insistent that immigration did not cause any white unemployment. "They took the jobs the white men wouldn't do", was the gist of what she always said.

[Backstage With Slowdive]

This may be of interest.

[biggytitbo]

No.... as being actually racist.

Not helpful to say 'ohh they're just racists'. It plays right into the hands of parties like the BNP. We should be engaging with people who have the wrong concerns but for the right reasons.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Interesting article, BWS

Second, the introduction of the Human Rights Act made it harder to clamp down on the asylum wave which began to rise sharply in 1999 to over 70,000 a year

That is a good thing. The idea a developed nation looks at the number of asylum seekers and decides to 'clamp down' is against the entire point of asylum claims in itself. That statement suggests the Human Rights Act enables people who did not or do deserve the right to remain in the UK to do so, when the primary result is it enables people who do deserve asylum the right to do so. If you care at all about the concept of giving individuals 'asylum' from discrimination abroad, this is not a bad thing, and if you know about how difficult it is to obtain leave to remain in the UK- especially permanent residency, you will understand how important the Human Rights Act is.

Some asylum claimants are bogus, but the entire process is more legitimate than people who enter and remain in the country illegally. The slowness by which the claims are processed is a fault of the Home Office, not the claimant. Lastly, the amount of genuine asylum applications refused which are overturned on appeal is scary and proves that the Border Agency is politically motivated, whatever it tries to say.

But Labour policy has been an odd mix of restriction and frenetic intervention on asylum for example, combined with benign neglect on the broader national purpose of mass immigration

This is entirely accurate. The government publically keep up an effort to talk up the benefits of immigration- it is one of the bolder things they have done, even. At the same time, the Home Office has become obsessed with showing figures that prove to the press they have a handle on immigration, which has affected decision making badly, and given rise to really suspect policy ideas.

Oh god..someone on the comments has actually said something really interesting!

. In brief, successful and dynamic societies in the future will be more like us than not.