UK Politics: No Bully XL for you

[maarsen]

5 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

I can't even see why government provided childcare wouldn't pay for itself anyway with the additional tax revenue of getting everyone back to work.   Longer term we should be building nurseries in the same way we build schools, not paying private providers. 

We did that experiment in Canada. Quebec did it first with $10/day daycare. So many women went back into the workforce that it did pay for itself. Now the federal government is trying to implement it across all the provinces.

[Rippounet]

8 hours ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

But they won't. You can frame it all you want and you can use stats and data and none of it will matter.

So, like Heart of ice does on a regular basis, you now claim to know the hearts and minds of millions, for now and for the future?

I have no doubt that some developed countries will in fact collectively decide that they have a superior culture to defend from uncivilized refugees and opt for some variation of the fortress strategy that will, ultimately, be self-defeating. But to present this as a fact is basically saying that bigotry is an undefeatable movement and can only prevail over reason, now and forever. And I get that some pessimism is warranted for the US, but this is the UK thread, I personally don't believe Heart of ice actually speaks for the majority of Britons, and I will not give up on my ancient frenemies just yet.

Reactions to the climate crisis will depend primarily on how much a country is affected by events. I'm still wrapping my head around how fast France is now moving after the first warnings, both in terms of public opinion and state planification, and that's under fucking neo-liberal Macron of all people. To assume that Britons and Britain will not have the ability to follow a comparable path is mildly insulting imho.

This isn't going to be about "stats and data" anymore, unless propaganda rises to the point of suppressing information - i.e. unless our societies don't just slide into authoritarianism, but totalitarianism. And holy mother of fuck dude, but even I cannot be that pessimistic, I do need to go through my day without jumping out of a window.

8 hours ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

You can choose to have some answers to the bigots and assholes that will at least appease some of them - or you can lose power, possibly forever.

Resilience is the answer that will "appease some of them." Resilience implies localism, self-sufficiency, government planification, and some measure of re-industrialisation. It is a mecanical reassertion of borders and communities out of necessity rather than out of bigotry. And resilience also happens to imply lucidity as to the numbers that can be welcomed in a given bio-region each year. It's not some liberal pie-in-the-sky dream of universal brotherhood based on a fantasized market, state-of-nature or whatever, but the technical planification of collective adaptation to a world that's fucking starting to burn because of our own stupidity.

[Heartofice]

22 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

So, like Heart of ice does on a regular basis, you now claim to know the hearts and minds of millions, for now and for the future?

A pointed jab at me, but also a very stupid one. We have already seen what happens when you don't control immigration and you let in huge amounts of people rapidly. You get swings to populism and a reaction. Look at Brexit, it was in large part because the government couldn't and wouldn't control immigration. Instead of even acknowledging it there was a demonisation of anyone even raising it as an issue. Across Europe you see the rise of the far right and that is also in large part because governments are unwilling or unable to control immigration. 

27 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

And I get that some pessimism is warranted for the US, but this is the UK thread, I personally don't believe Heart of ice actually speaks for the majority of Britons, and I will not give up on my ancient frenemies just yet.

I don't need to speak for all britons, I can just look at polling, and it's pretty consistent wherever you look. Most brits think immigration is too high and has been for the last decade:
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/do-brits-think-that-immigration-has-been-too-high-or-low-in-the-last-10-years

Currently 63% of brits think immigration has been too high, and only an extreme minority of 8% think it's too low. I don't see that changing any time soon, why would it? 

[Rippounet]

7 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Across Europe you see the rise of the far right and that is also in large part because governments are unwilling or unable to control immigration address the global consequences of the failures of capitalism.

Fixed it for you.

Mass immigration is only the symptom of a much greater problem, and the far-right is what you get if you deliberately refuse to acknowledge what the real problem is.

[Heartofice]

Just now, Rippounet said:

Fixed it for you.

Mass immigration is only the symptom of a much greater problem, and the far-right is what you get if you deliberately refuse to acknowledge what the real problem is.

Standard non answer really. There will always be inequality in the world and people will always want to move to the more prosperous places. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to just open the doors and let them. 

[Rippounet]

1 minute ago, Heartofice said:

There will always be inequality in the world and people will always want to move to the more prosperous places.

Idiotic statement posing as common sense.

Up to a third of humanity struggling for survival because of anthropogenic climate change will be absolutely unprecedented. Refusal to acknowledge our current trajectory means you're more comfortable spewing xenophobic bullcrap than looking at the fact that this is a crisis of our own making, that can and should be mitigated in numerous ways.
Humans are not frickin' locusts, and this is not the result of biological determinism, but the consequences of an ideology and of intellectual constructions that are being now proved wrong on a daily basis.

1 minute ago, Heartofice said:

That doesn't mean it's a good idea to just open the doors and let them. 

Yes, because that's exactly what I've written.

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

So, like Heart of ice does on a regular basis, you now claim to know the hearts and minds of millions, for now and for the future?

I claim to know human beings. That's all. And opposing immigration is not remotely a new phenomenon. It's one of the most global, universal political forces that we have. Now, how that fear of another tribe manifests as action differs, and this is where we have an opportunity. 

But if you don't provide any solution to that fear, any redirection to something useful? It'll be exploited into the worst version of that.

3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

I have no doubt that some developed countries will in fact collectively decide that they have a superior culture to defend from uncivilized refugees and opt for some variation of the fortress strategy that will, ultimately, be self-defeating. But to present this as a fact is basically saying that bigotry is an undefeatable movement and can only prevail over reason, now and forever. And I get that some pessimism is warranted for the US, but this is the UK thread, I personally don't believe Heart of ice actually speaks for the majority of Britons, and I will not give up on my ancient frenemies just yet.

You're misunderstanding me, then. I'm saying that you have options. You can choose to not give an answer to this in which case it will be answered for you, and probably very badly. Or you can think about what that behavior is and figure out a way to curb it to your liking. This is no different than understanding that humans like shiny things or humans like attractive people. You can ignore it all you want, but you are missing a key important way to influence others and understand people if you do - and if you do that, someone who DOES understand that will swoop in and give them what they actually want. 

3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Reactions to the climate crisis will depend primarily on how much a country is affected by events. I'm still wrapping my head around how fast France is now moving after the first warnings, both in terms of public opinion and state planification, and that's under fucking neo-liberal Macron of all people. To assume that Britons and Britain will not have the ability to follow a comparable path is mildly insulting imho.

This isn't going to be about "stats and data" anymore, unless propaganda rises to the point of suppressing information - i.e. unless our societies don't just slide into authoritarianism, but totalitarianism. And holy mother of fuck dude, but even I cannot be that pessimistic, I do need to go through my day without jumping out of a window.

And that's my point. Given the massive pressures of the mass migration that both you and I agree are coming, and much sooner than most expect, one of the natural possibilities is a slide into authoritarianism. Heck, that is one of the dangers - that the liberals who have been decrying all of the environmental damage see no way to solve those problems and instead go to a pure mitigation strategy, and that strategy means making sure their country is preserved. "It's so horrible that all of those people have been displaced by the capitalist people, but now we don't have the resources to save them and us, so sorry". 

And we're already seeing this as a trend, so I don't know that it should be all that surprising.

3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Resilience is the answer that will "appease some of them." Resilience implies localism, self-sufficiency, government planification, and some measure of re-industrialisation. It is a mecanical reassertion of borders and communities out of necessity rather than out of bigotry. And resilience also happens to imply lucidity as to the numbers that can be welcomed in a given bio-region each year. It's not some liberal pie-in-the-sky dream of universal brotherhood based on a fantasized market, state-of-nature or whatever, but the technical planification of collective adaptation to a world that's fucking starting to burn because of our own stupidity.

Okay! That's a decent plan. Say that. Say that your plan to stop immigration is to make sure that people who want to leave currently are incentivized to stay put. Say that it's more beneficial - for them and for your country - to provide them with resources, help, support and opportunity where they are instead of spending massive amounts of money on legal and police forces  at the border. Say that you'll support making more jobs more remote and working cross-border so that people can stay at the places they are and still work for those high-paying jobs that they're going to. Say that you'll invest heavily in mitigation methods in those countries so that they stay in their homes - because no one flees their home if they don't have to. 

That's a perfectly reasonable idea. I don't know how many bigots and assholes that'll appease, but it'll at least be a coherent plan that also says 'we aren't wanting immigration'. 

[Kalbear]

10 hours ago, mormont said:

As for immigration in general, yes, migration due to climate change is due to increase. We have a choice there. We can manage that, or we can admit that all this stuff about how our success is due to our political and economic system and our values is nonsense, pull up the drawbridge, and ultimately, as Kal says, start shooting people to keep them out. A strategy that will fail, by the way. It's physically impossible to keep everyone out, even with armed patrols, and our economy can't survive that way anyway. Isolationism has never done anything but cripple a country.

Also want to say that I agree - that policy will fail as far as actually making people safer and keeping people out. Or being an economic help for that country. Immigration at any level has always been a net economic benefit in both the short and long term. Taking in refugees has often been politically and economically beneficial. That it also happens to be the morally right thing to do for a lot of reasons is a benefit too. But none of that matters because this is not about policies that make sense; it's about appeasing the conservative snowflake's precious feelings. 

It will, however, get a lot of people elected on those promises and get a lot more people killed. It will very likely make that country illiberal and eventually authoritarian. It will very likely be a major success for the politicians that are pushing it. 

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

Okay! That's a decent plan. Say that. Say that your plan to stop immigration is to make sure that people who want to leave currently are incentivized to stay put. Say [...]...

So you'd want... Environmentalists to pander to xenophobic tendencies to halt the rise of the far-right?
Well, fuck, it's crazy enough to work, but I'm not sure I'd want to be the guy promoting this kind of position. There's a lot of pitfalls there, and both the far-right and the neo-liberals might jump on a selection of key proposals to have an excuse not to do anything else. If the timing is wrong to push for that angle, you could even end up helping the status quo!

Edited October 6, 2023 by Rippounet

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

So you'd want... Environmentalists to pander to xenophobic tendencies to halt the rise of the far-right?
Well, fuck, it's crazy enough to work, but I'm not sure I'd want to be the guy promoting this kind of position. There's a lot of pitfalls there, and both the far-right and the neo-liberals might jump on a selection of key proposals to have an excuse not to do anything else. If the timing is wrong to push for that angle, you could even end up helping the status quo!

I don't exactly want this but I don't see many alternatives. Because the other options that have been presented - to try and say 'no, actually, we're going to want to bring in a lot more people' will lose you elections in a lot of places. They're already losing elections and leading to the rise of far-right parties all over the place, in very otherwise liberal places. Presenting it as something that you have to do because you caused the mess isn't going to win either as a message - even if it's largely accurate. 

And as I said (and you agree, I think) that's only going to get worse as the environmental damage grows. 

I've said before that one of the ways that I could see people going more for climate restoration and fighting climate change is by making it a moral/religious view because it won't be done by people just doing things intellectually. This is in a similar vein of thought. The notion that people given the right arguments and the right data will make the right decisions has been disproven, stabbed, run over and exploded. It's time to stop thinking about rational arguments to make people side with you and to start thinking about how messy humans as a whole are and use that to your advantage. Once you do that, THEN you put in the policies that make sense and do well, but you won't be able to do that unless you win first.

[Zorral]

16 hours ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

And those are going to be a lot of people.

Yet -- they are far fewer than climate catastrophe refugees.  Old Britain couldn't keep the Romans from coming in and taking over, any more than it could the Saxons, any more than the Saxons could prevent the invasion and take over of by the norse/Normans.

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

I don't exactly want this but I don't see many alternatives.

I have to say you've made some excellent points.

[SeanF]

On 10/6/2023 at 8:05 AM, BigFatCoward said:

Cracking result for labour. Getting a big swing fron the conservatives means nothing, they are after all utterly dogshit. But making inroads into SNP bodes well. 

What it shows is that Conservatives will vote for a Labour candidate to defeat the SNP.  Labour seem on course for 20+ Scottish seats at the next election.

The big worry for the SNP is tactical voting against them.  Not a problem, when the are on 45%, but very much a problem if they fall to 35%.

 

[Heartofice]

If you genuinely want the UK to accept more immigration then you need to understand the reasons why people might be cautious of immigration.

Firstly the population has to be confident that those coming here are in genuine need and are using the correct methods for coming in. Illegal immigration is unpopular because it goes against peoples sense of fairness and Brits are especially conscious of fairness. If people are cheating the system and getting away with it then it gives little incentive to play by the rules at all. So not only do we need to make it easier for genuine refugees to come here but we need to make sure that those lying and cheating to find a way in, those who are purely economic migrants need to be turned away and sent home. If you pretend to be gay to get in then you are gone. 
 

Secondly integration is a key issue, which is why rate of immigration is such a key fear in people’s minds. You need to be able to demonstrate that new migrants are assimilating into the native population, not just creating new communities that don’t mix. Britain has had too lax an approach to this and it’s meant that whole areas stick to themselves and live parallel lives. Whatever the methods to enforce this, mandatory English lessons, directly placing people in certain areas etc, it has to be seen to be creating a sense of integration. 
 

Then, there is a sense of limited resources that people feel immigrants and competing against them for. UK population has gone up by about 8m in 20 years, mostly via immigration, but there really hasn’t been a corresponding increase in hospitals, schools, transport  or housing to cope with it. So we will need to show that we are creating all this things to cope, and that the immigrants are somehow helping to pay for it. 
 

As I said, Brits are very happy to have immigration, but it has to be genuine need and it needs to be controlled. 

[mormont]

39 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Firstly the population has to be confident that those coming here are in genuine need and are using the correct methods for coming in.

But hand in hand with that, there have to be correct methods. People do not use illegal, dangerous methods to move here just because they're scofflaws who don't care about the rules. They're literally risking their lives! They do it out of desperation because the government have made it so difficult for people to immigrate legally.

So, as I said above, any serious attempt to tackle this issue has to institute new, expanded legal methods for immigration, including economic migration. Because if people are willing to risk their lives for that reason, we can't stop them - we can only offer them a viable route in.

Quote

Illegal immigration is unpopular because it goes against peoples sense of fairness and Brits are especially conscious of fairness.

So we tell ourselves, anyway. In fact research suggests we have about the same attitude to fairness as other developed countries. (Also, we mostly regard the current level of wealth distribution as unfair, but for some reason that isn't hyped as an issue? Odd, that.)

Quote

If people are cheating the system and getting away with it then it gives little incentive to play by the rules at all. So not only do we need to make it easier for genuine refugees to come here but we need to make sure that those lying and cheating to find a way in, those who are purely economic migrants need to be turned away and sent home. If you pretend to be gay to get in then you are gone. 

To achieve this will require a significant investment in the system - one which the Tories have consistently refused to make. The problem isn't that bogus claims are being accepted, the problem is that claims take an age to process. (That, and that certain newspapers don't accept the outcomes of the assessment process because they think they know better.)
 

Quote

Secondly integration is a key issue, which is why rate of immigration is such a key fear in people’s minds. You need to be able to demonstrate that new migrants are assimilating into the native population, not just creating new communities that don’t mix. Britain has had too lax an approach to this and it’s meant that whole areas stick to themselves and live parallel lives. Whatever the methods to enforce this, mandatory English lessons, directly placing people in certain areas etc, it has to be seen to be creating a sense of integration.

This is largely a myth, one recycled with every wave of immigration in our history. Every time significant immigration happens, we hear that this wave of immigrants (unlike previous waves) are 'keeping to themselves', 'not integrating', etc. It always turns out to be nonsense. A couple of generations in, integration proceeds (without people giving up their own culture, to which they're absolutely entitled and which generally enriches our own). People intermarry, move house, integrate in the workforce, etc.

You may say that this time really is different. But as I say, that's what's been said every time! Some objective evidence is required, and I know of none.

I also know of no way to be less 'lax' without imposing on people's personal lives in ways that are, in themselves, quite against our values as a country. The measures you're proposing are impractical (how do you make people stay in an area they don't want to be in?) even if they weren't awful.

Quote

Then, there is a sense of limited resources that people feel immigrants and competing against them for. UK population has gone up by about 8m in 20 years, mostly via immigration, but there really hasn’t been a corresponding increase in hospitals, schools, transport  or housing to cope with it. So we will need to show that we are creating all this things to cope, and that the immigrants are somehow helping to pay for it. 

Generally they have jobs and pay taxes, so that's fine. If only our government was making these investments!

[Pebble thats Stubby]

10 minutes ago, mormont said:

 

Generally they have jobs and pay taxes, so that's fine. If only our government was making these investments!

I think at the moment they mostly don't have jobs but thats cos they are waiting for their claims for asylem to be processed and are not allowed to have jobs.  Thus by many people it is seen as the imigants are costing the tax payer a lot of money.

 

The answer to this is not less migration,  but dealing with the back log.  maybe even have a processing center in france so many don't need to come here first?  ya know safe a legal routes.

maybe give them a temperary permit to work while their claim is being processed?

[Derfel Cadarn]

Climate change not an issue …

that ‘river’ is a train line in Greenock Scotland

 

Edited October 7, 2023 by Derfel Cadarn
Link might help

[mormont]

12 hours ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

I think at the moment they mostly don't have jobs but thats cos they are waiting for their claims for asylem to be processed and are not allowed to have jobs.  Thus by many people it is seen as the imigants are costing the tax payer a lot of money.

Most immigrants have jobs. You’re confusing immigrants with asylum seekers, which is forgivable because a certain section of the media and politicians want you to do this and so talk about immigration and asylum as if they were the same topic. But they’re not. 

[dog-days]

7 hours ago, mormont said:

Most immigrants have jobs. You’re confusing immigrants with asylum seekers, which is forgivable because a certain section of the media and politicians want you to do this and so talk about immigration and asylum as if they were the same topic. But they’re not. 

No, she's not. She clearly says "they're waiting for their claims for asylum to be processed". It's the British public, not Pebble, who are doing the confusing. 

[polishgenius]

13 minutes ago, dog-days said:

She clearly says "they're waiting for their claims for asylum to be processed"

 

Yeah, because she's confusing immigrants with asylum seekers. Because she's responding to the conversation between mormont and HoI which is about immigration in general (there have not been 8million+ successful asylum seekers in the UK in the last 20 years, so even though HoI is largely focusing on issues centering around asylum claims in terms of the process, he's talking about immigration in general too).