[Flipside]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/10072006/344/cameron-defends-hoodies-policy.html

I find this article hilarious. Not for the Tory leaders comments, which are actually pretty accurate (even if it is something Labour should be rolling with, not the conservative party), but the simple term 'Hug a Hoodie' already proves his point for him.

[Colonol Dekker]

Trouble is, if he hugged a hoodie, the rest of the crew would knife him into next week........ Dirty Chameleonic worng'un that DC is....

[Flipside]

Oh yeah, he's as slippery as a butter-coated ghecko, but it's the whole assumption that Hoodie = Young Offender that makes me laugh, I think they still live in a world where the 'bad guys' have uniforms so you can tell them from the 'Good guys'. :/

Edit : It seems odd that Conservative are taking the 'softly softly' approach to it whilst Labour is giving the 'Burn in Hellfire!' speech. Seems kinda the wrong way round. Personally, I blame it on the recent laws taking a lot of power to raise children away from adults. I'm not a favour of the cane or things like that, but we've crippled ourselves with laws that are designed around not only protecting children, but keeping them children.

[aldo_14]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/10072006/344/cameron-defends-hoodies-policy.html

I find this article hilarious. Not for the Tory leaders comments, which are actually pretty accurate (even if it is something Labour should be rolling with, not the conservative party), but the simple term 'Hug a Hoodie' already proves his point for him.

Firstly, I am reminded of a hilarious Ian Duncan Smith comment (bemoaning the collapse of families or some right-wing tripe) from a day or so ago;
"We've got eight or nine year old children roaming the streets on crack, living with their prostitute mothers in sordid squats where, where rats, literally, eat the babies."

Secondly;

[Colonol Dekker]

Yep they are definitely South East London kids..............
My Opinion is Do-Gooders ruined English/British society, Bloody John major and the end of thatchers administration, thats what started the ball rolling downhill.

[aldo_14]

Yep they are definitely South East London kids..............
My Opinion is Do-Gooders ruined English/British society, Bloody John major and the end of thatchers administration, thats what started the ball rolling downhill.

**** Thatcher, that old bag ruined many, many lives.  She sacrificed the good of much of the country to score points & votes from a bunch of ****ing yuppy twats, and the middle england tory strongholds.

anyways, how can you possibly characterise the following Major & Blair governments as 'do gooders'? (!)

[Colonol Dekker]

LAX immigration policies and toning down of police funding from Major and Blair sucking off bush to gain Favour in the UN also getting pally pally with the EU which will inevitably open the floodgates for even more immigrants starining an already fexxed up society.

[Flipside]

Well, Blair does try to instigate a 'Nanny State', if theres anything I'll ever say in defence of Maggie is what that, at least for the first 4-8 years, she didn't pretend she was doing it for the good of the common person, she awarded those that pleased her and made no secret of the fact. Not a good thing to actually do, but at least we knew where we stood. However, Thatcher did harm that will take years to repair, a lot of more modern Northern Englands opinion of 'Southerners' was not generated by William Wallace and all that crap, it was generated by spending over a decade watching the South revelling in an simulated economic 'boom' while they were taking the brunt of the fallout.
Major wasn't useless, he was simply helpless, he commanded a failing government that had been corrupted for years thanks to Maggie, and, like the North, he took the fallout for her actions.

As far as immigration is concerned, that was really more of a EU thing, we still have a fair number of imiigrations to expect in a couple of years iirc. I don't think immigration is the problem, it's the whole question of balancing tolerance/acceptance with integration, and what levels do we take those to?

[aldo_14]

LAX immigration policies and toning down of police funding from Major and Blair sucking off bush to gain Favour in the UN also getting pally pally with the EU which will inevitably open the floodgates for even more immigrants starining an already fexxed up society.

Oh, don't start on that immigration pish, please.

[Colonol Dekker]

You asked for reasons, I'm giving them to ya, Its the equivalen of an already sinking lifeboat taking on a cruiseliners passenger compliment and expecting to stay afloat.......
Give me a good enough reason not to include em and i'll happily withdraw them

[Kazan]

scapegoating immigrants for a societies' problems isn't the solution to those problems

but it is xenophobia, and quite often racism

[aldo_14]

You asked for reasons, I'm giving them to ya, Its the equivalen of an already sinking lifeboat taking on a cruiseliners passenger compliment and expecting to stay afloat.......
Give me a good enough reason not to include em and i'll happily withdraw them

I'll give you more than one...

1/ the UK takes in 1 refugee to every 317 people; less than the european average.  The asylum application rate is also less; we have 1 in a 1000, the likes of Denmark and Norway have 3-4 per 1000.  These particular Scandinavian countries boast some of the strongest economies in europe, and also have some of the highest asylum acceptance rates.
2/ We're also well down the table of countries accepting refugees, too; Iran is actually 1st (!), with the USA and Germany in particular ahead of the UK (which ranks about 32nd).  Our (averaged) acceptance rate is 34%, less than the likes of Canada or Denmark.
3/ As of April 2003, there were 1,396,000 overseas workers in the UK, and less than 50,000 asylum applications (only 23% of whom were give permission to stay).  Neither represents a significant enough number to be made scapegoats for social changes.  10% of British GDP - more than North Sea Oil - is attributable to migrant workers (income tax from said workers also is £2.5bn more than is spent on immigration; FYI more than twice more is spent on arms subsidies - £900m - than on asylum seekers - ~£440)
4/Asylum applications across europe fell 40% last year.  Despite the Sudan conflict (for example) displacing over 4m people, the number applying to the UK was....930.
5/ Asylum seekers are also more likely to be qualified for work than the general population; i.e. 53% have academic qualifications)
6/ 80,000 asylum seekers are on the NASS benefits (which is less than both the dole and below the poverty line); 15.5m are on benefits.  That is, a whopping 0.5% of those on government support are asylum seekers.  I'll note that asylum seekers are not allowed to work.

In other words, this suggestion of being swamped by immigration is complete and utter bollocks, which is disproven by any number of statistics.  We treat asylum seekers like ****, and then blame them for society.  The net population rise to immigration since 1997 has been a million; that's less than 2% by my hand-wavy calculations, and we need relatively young foreign workers who'll come in, give income tax to prop up the likes of pensions, and then go back home after 10 or so years (as most of the eastern european immigrants do).

[Colonol Dekker]

For all those points i assume your basing that on existing stats or records which is fine. But ILLEGAL immigration is is over-rife in the UK and i guarantee theres not a shred of evidence to prove it but anyone living round London can vouch for the fact that most refugees legal or otherwise are centered here, particularly in the southeast. Im sure its very serene up north but down here in the big smoke gimme 2 seconds *looks out of office window* I just counted at least 11 blatant eastern eurpeans hanging around outside costcutters on tooley street drinking stella. <true> What can i say?

[aldo_14]

For all those points i assume your basing that on existing stats or records which is fine. But ILLEGAL immigration is is over-rife in the UK and i guarantee theres not a shred of evidence to prove it but anyone living round London can vouch for the fact that most refugees legal or otherwise are centered here, particularly in the southeast. Im sure its very serene up north but down here in the big smoke gimme 2 seconds *looks out of office window* I just counted at least 11 blatant eastern eurpeans hanging around outside costcutters on tooley street drinking stella. <true> What can i say?

There are, at the highest estimation, about 570,000 illegal immigrants; that's statistically insignificant by any measure; how can about 1% of the population (at most) be blamed for a cultural & sociological shift?

Hell, if they're all in London (and I have been to London on work; nice city, bit soulless), then it's even less likely to affect the rest of the country, isn't it?

[Fineus]

scapegoating immigrants for a societies' problems isn't the solution to those problems

To identify a proper solution you need to identify the proper causes to the problem though.

No, I'm not saying that all immigrants are evil / terrorists / whatever. But some are. Shocking I know, un-PC I'm sure, but it's true. You want me to say that there are no English people in this country who are evil / terrorists / whatever? I won't do that either. I'm not prepared to lump the blame entirely on one party. But given our already strained and shoddy infrastructure is having enough trouble catering for the English people originally born in this country, what effect do you think an influx of outsiders will have? They'll want jobs, housing, support for their families and if times are hard then yes perhaps some will turn to crime. If they illegally immigrated we (that is; "the system") doesn't even know who they are. Our already strained system cannot support outsiders.

I'm under no illusion that I'm a white middle class citizen in this country. You know something? We are the down-trodden. The cost of living on the south coast is a lot higher than it is to live in the northern end of the country and for what? Our health and transport system isn't any better... crime is just as prominent here as anywhere else.

So yes - I'll admit bias on this one. But I feel I'm allowed it. Were the cost of living equal across the country, the services and industries working nicely and our infrastructure in a stable condition - I'd happily say we should allow those from trouble spots in the world to try and make a new life here. I'm not a racist and have nothing against those who wish to immigrate.

In closing, some local news at my end for your consideration. My towns hospital - the only A&E hospital in about a 20 mile radius - may close due to lack of funding. It can't support itself. That means that if I'm involved in a car crash outside my own house, or I suffer a heart attack - I may have to wait up to an hour before I can even get to the next nearest hospital that could help me. Following that we're assuming that it's not already full as everyone else in the area is in the same position. This in an area of the country that pays more for the cost of living than almost any other County.

To condense my opinion to a sentence; We should support others once we can support ourselves.

[aldo_14]

Ah, but you do know that immigrants - i.e. those given state support - are given the council houses (if given housing atall) that councils consider otherwise unsafe for human habitation, and receive benefit literally below the poverty line.  If you have a go at the asylum system, then why not at something that costs more?  I said before, we pay £900m per year for subsidies to the arms industry, and £430m to lock up asylum seekers (people who can work if allowed, and are more likely to be qualified to do so than the general population).

The rest just have to pay for themselves, after all, and somehow I doubt a dishwasher on below the minimum wage is going to be taking up accomodation any of us would want.  Plus, I feel obliged to point out again - working, legal, migrants pay a lot of income tax.  Billions of pounds.  And we need that money... we need the people who come over from Poland (for example), work for a few years to send money back to their families, and then go home (which is the majority case); because those people pay income tax, but have a low drain.  If anyone can be blamed for draining the economy & infrastructure, it's the 15.5m on benefits (let's not ignore, though, how incredibly hard it is to find a job in certain sectors, of course), or all those pensioners out there.

Or house prices; they're not raised by an influx of rich illegal immigrants, surely?

what I mean, is, how does migration remove services, unless you assume every single person that migrates - a tiny actual number in proportion to the population - is nothing but a constant drain on services?  And how could you justify such an assumption?  I can't think of one.  We have hospital closures here too, but it's not down to migration, just government inadequacy and misspending.

Why is our system strained?  Why is it unable to support migration?  What figures back this up?  What proves that migration is a 'burden on the nation'?

[IPAndrews]

This is a small country Aldo. It's getting very crowded. It was nicer to live here when it was less crowded.

[aldo_14]

This is a small country Aldo. It's getting very crowded. It was nicer to live here when it was less crowded.

The growth rate of the UK population is 0.29%.  What you mean is, certain parts are crowded.  Scotland needs more immigration, not less, for one thing.

[Colonol Dekker]

This is a small country Aldo. It's getting very crowded. It was nicer to live here when it was less crowded.

My feelings put into words exactly.

We should just ship em to jockanese lands and then build a new wall....

[aldo_14]

This is a small country Aldo. It's getting very crowded. It was nicer to live here when it was less crowded.

My feelings put into words exactly.

We should just ship em to jockanese lands and then build a new wall....

I would love that, very much.