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I love this type of thing - it shows those of us who spend their lives pontificating that Britain should be more British by halting immigration are arguing such
by gloves 11y ago
I love this type of thing - it shows those of us who spend their lives pontificating that Britain should be more British by halting immigration are arguing such a deeply contradictory argument (as if it wasn't obvious enough already)
Really, the best thing is to remember we're all just human beings, and should try our best to try and look after one another as best as possible.
- pcardh0 11y agoVery bizarre thinking. I guess the Irish should have welcomed Oliver Cromwell.
- anigbrowl 11y agoEquating Cromwell with immigration is pretty fallacious. Overall, I think colonialism was nevertheless a net benefit to my home country, thanks.
- danieltillett 11y agoDid Oliver Cromwell ever personally travel to Ireland?
- AlecSchueler 11y agoYes, sure didn't he command and travel with the troops at e.g. the siege of Drogheda?
- danieltillett 11y agoYes you are right - very interesting.
- im2w1l 11y agoSeveral of these "waves of immigration" were literal invasions.
- conceit 11y agoThe Romans and the Norman, who else?
- andrewmu 11y agoThe Danes were quite rowdy tourists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_the_British_Isles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_the_British_Isles
- simonh 11y agoAnd before then the Saxons. And it's worth bearing in mind the Roman soldiers in Britain weren't all of Italian peninsular extraction. Many of them were levies from places all over the Empire, including the regions of the Middle East and North Africa from which many of the current wave of migrants also originate. It's hard to believe that absolutely none of them left a genetic legacy behind.
- nova 11y agoIt never stops to amaze me the doublethinking necessary to simultaneously believe that "colonization is bad and Africa is war-torn because of the arbitrarily drawn borders by Western powers" and "multiculturalism for the West is a great idea".
- toyg 11y agoWhy? The problem with colonization is that it disrupted the holistic growth of national communities like we experienced in XVIII to XIX century. We've "grown up" since then, recognising the competitive advantage of exploiting talents regardless of cultural provenance; but we couldn't do the latter without going through the former process and recognising its limits. Colonised countries were blocked from experiencing a similar process. No doublethink involved, as long as you see history as a continuum, rather than believing in a fixed set of norms (typically your own, no offense) as an absolute ideal "best" transcending space and time.
- danieltillett 11y agoThe rational argument about halting immigration has nothing to do with genetics, but if it makes the people already living there better off (assuming it is not a literal invasion and they have a choice). If it does help then it is a good idea and if it doesn’t then it is a bad idea.
- _delirium 11y agoA surprising proportion of the European populace really does think something like genetics, or maybe the slightly fuzzier "ethnicity", is at the core of the issue. Many people really think that they belong to a specific ethnicity that has existed in roughly its current form for hundreds or thousands of years, and that this is the glue holding together their nation-state and the reason for its success. That Europe's current ethnicities are the product of melting pots that emerged from waves of migration and intermingling and assimilation, is a common view among academics, but not so much the average person. I've had reasonably educated people specifically tell me that this is the thing Americans don't understand about Europe: that the American identity was created in the last 200 years from people of many backgrounds, while the European ethnic identities are 2000 years old and not the products of melting pots. Which is not really exactly right, but it's what many Europeans think. This is even true in Greece (I'm Greek-American), which is historically maybe one of the world's most "melting-pot" oriented ethnicities, almost evangelical in its desire to Hellenize people of any background.
- Swizec 11y agoThe countries came into existence in the last 200 years. The ethnicities have been there for a while. For instance, my country only started existing in 1991. But we have written records of people speaking our language and thinking of themselves as us going back to 800 AD. Germany can trace its origins straight back to The Holy Roman Empire, the ruling classes of which spoke German, thought of themselves as Germanic, had the same crest as Germany uses now, and started existing as a state in 962 AD. And so on. It's less about genetics and more about language.
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- vixen99 11y agoDo you write anodyne Christmas card mottos as a side project? With price a consequence of demand, <all> Britons on average salary (about $38K pa) have given up any hope whatsoever of buying their own home thanks to demand exacerbated by an influx of immigrants unprecedented in any of the last two centuries. Indeed even professionals earning around $150K are very hard pushed. Of course planning permission & other factors have played a role in this but unquestionably, Britain is overcrowded and folk-in-the-street looking for jobs and accommodation are suffering thanks largely to a smug rich elite who accumulate moral brownie points opining on the value of immigration. I would have thought that enough is enough. All this is redolent of vitamins: "If Y mg of vitamin X is good for you then Y*10 mg is ten times as good for you!". Really?
- toyg 11y agoI think you'll find that 1) the housing problem is strictly localized to London and surrounding areas, rather than Britain as a whole, and 2) it's mostly due to rich speculators keeping buildings empty, rather than everyday immigrants looking for cheap accomodation.
- throwcc 11y agoapart from the very centre of london where there is an unavoidable shortage of space, the main cause is planning restrictions, with the refusal to expand on to "green field" sites the biggest barrier to more affordable housing. rich speculators cannot hold up the price of property all on their own without very strong supply side restrictions...
- JetSetWilly 11y agoI must have hallucinated when I bought my 3 bedroom detached house for £145k. Britain is not "overcrowded". If you don't want to live in expensive London, then move.
- simonh 11y agoImmigration has a tiny effect on housing demand. In part that's because immigrants are generally far more willing to share accommodation in order to save money. A far bigger effect is elderly people continuing to live in large family homes after their children have left, even on their own after the death of a partner. This is a much bigger drag on housing availability. The main reason we need working age immigration is our ageing population. Our retiree population is set to massively inflate over the next few decades. Unless our otherwise shrinking working age population wants to be financially buried under the costs of supporting them, we need to support our working age population size and the only way to do that is through immigration.