The London Olympics are already achieving the number one aim of the politicians who brought them here, which is making our politicians feel very important indeed.
The media is quite frenetic in its efforts to make us all believe we should be terrifically proud of the fact we are hosting the Olympics, as though there were something unique in this achievement. If we can’t competently do something that Greece, Spain and China have done in recent years, that would be remarkable. Of course the Games will be on the whole well delivered, sufficient for the media and politicians to declare it an ecstatic success. Some of the sporting moments will be sublime, as ever.
But did it have to be in London? We won’t know the total cost of the Games for months, but it will cost the taxpayer at least £9 billion and I suspect a lot more. I also suspect the GDP figures will, in the event, show that the massive net fall in visitor numbers has hurt the already shrinking economy further.
But to take the most optimistic figure, holding the Olympics in London has cost every person in the country an average of £150 per head in extra taxes. That is £600 for a family of four. Actually it is in the end going to be well over £2,000, as of course the money has been borrowed on the never never, and taxpayers are going to be paying it off their whole lives, along with the sum ten times higher they are already paying direct into the pockets of the bankers through their taxes.
The very rich, of course, don’t pay much tax, so they are not worried.
But to take just the figure of £600 extra taxes for a family of four, the lowest possible amount, and not including the interest. Is having the Olympics here really worth paying out £600 for? If Tony Blair had approached the head of the family and said “We are going to have the Olympics in London, but it’s going to cost you £600, would the answer have been from most ordinary people: “Yes, great idea, this is that important to us”?
People are not disconcerted because they don’t see that they have to pay. There is no special Olympics tax, and they pay their taxes in a variety of ways, and individuals are not the sole source of taxation. But this is nonetheless real money taken from the people in pursuit of the hubris of politicians.
I love sport. I hate the corruption of the International Olympic Committee, Fifa and the rest; I hate the vicious corporatism and militarisation of our capital and absurd elitism of the transport lanes; the sport itself I love. But with the economy contracting, and the NHS being farmed out for profit, is it really worth £600 for a family – and many families are really struggling in a heartbreaking way – is it worth the money to have the Olympics here rather than in Paris?
Of course it isn’t. I think many of us will feel an extra pleasure watching the Opening ceremony because it is British. Patriotic pride will surge. It is not wrong to enjoy the spectacle tonight on TV. The corporate well connected and ruling classes will enjoy it in the stadium.
But after you have watched it on TV, ask yourself this question. How much more did you enjoy it than enjoy watching the Beijing ceremony, and was that margin of extra enjoyment something that everybody in the room would have paid out £150 for?
Because they just did.
Giles: the ‘usual stuff’ happens to be true.
‘Mass unskilled immigration’ is a myth, or a lie, depending on how it is being used. You have still not tried to define either term.
“I must remember, next time I pass through Tooting, Totton, or Tottenham, to avert my gaze at what has become of my country,”
Alternatively you could live there. I’m interested, Giles, and you haven’t explained. What exactly is your problem with Tottenham, say? Tottenham’s overriding problem is, of course, the poverty. Perhaps you would have felt the same passing through the slum areas of the East End 100 years ago?
Or is it really the poor people’s skin colour you’re objecting to?
“A greater Pakistan” – sorry? Are you aware of how many people who were born in Pakistan now live here, and what percentage of the population they make up? I think it might help you to look.
Technicolour refers in one on his posts above to ‘ mythical ‘mass unskilled immigration’’.
So mass unskilled immigration is a myth dreamt up by MigrationWatch &/or the BNP eh ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalis_in_the_United_Kingdom
Some quotes plucked at random from this link-
‘Somali-born migrants have the lowest employment rate among all immigrants in the UK.[37] Figures published by the Office for National Statistics show high rates of economic inactivity and unemployment amongst Somali immigrants.’
When it comes to social housing, Technicolour, are Somalis a benefit or a burden vis a vis the rest of the UK ?
‘According to reports, over 95 percent of Somali immigrants in the UK live in rental accommodation, and of this group, about 80 percent live in social housing.[75][76] However, this representation is numerically very small in relation to the total number of social tenants in the UK; 72,800 of the 92,200 person Somalia-born community reside in social housing compared to 8.4 million UK-born social tenants.[76]
Factors that account for the high uptake of social housing in the community include generally lower household incomes that make it difficult to buy property; a preference for living in London, where property prices are higher and there are proportionately more social tenants from all communities; and a high proportion of new arrivals in the Somali community, with newcomers least likely to have gathered the savings that are required to buy property.[76] Another contributing factor is the proportionately larger family sizes for which to find affordable and appropriate accommodation; about 10.8 per cent of Somalia-born households have five or more children as compared to 0.3 per cent of the UK-born population.’
Answers on the back of an e-postcard please- righteous indignation an optional extra.
Technicolour – You are factually incorrect about immigration numbers. New immigrants to Britain as a whole since 2001 are estimated to be well over 2 million people – thats roughly four new Bristols in ten years. This is about sheer numbers of people that can be managed,not colour or creed as you try to tirelessly instigate.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1249797/Labour-threw-open-doors-mass-migration-secret-plot-make-multicultural-UK.html.
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@fedup – so discussing the hitorical inaccuracies of there being such large numbers people of African or Asian descent involved in the industrial revolution of the 18th century is “scratching the surface only a tiny scratch to show ugliness in its full gory detail”? Wtf!? Get a grip man/woman – thats showing the worst kind of inverted bigotry. Wouldnt the same kind of discussion be merited if, say, a large numbers of scandinavians represented Chinese early history at the Beijing olympics ceremony? Or pale faced west midlanders were involved in a desert tribal scene at an African Olympics opening ceremony? Its a vaguely interesting discussion if nothing else – save your sixth form one dimensional indignation for people that really deserve it ,such as the racist genociders that are illegally attacking sovereign coutries and their civilians as we speak
Giles, you seem to be submitting the same comment repeatedly, and it keeps getting queued. Please check; I think I approved the first instance.
Screaming Lord Sutch, thanks for the alert. Hmmm… Now what?
OldMark is back: now we’re really having fun. And to demonstrate the reality of ‘mass unskilled immigration’ he picks on one small community group comprising 95,000 people in total out of a country of around 60 million. That’s 0.0158 percent.
Chris Jones: “New immigrants to Britain as a whole since 2001 are estimated to be well over 2 million people” – really. Source please? Don’t mind at all if it’s true: how many of these are ‘skilled’ and doing valuable jobs and contributing to the £2.4 billion which an Oxford university research group estimate is a net contribution from immigrants? One could also balance the number against the people who have emigrated, making ‘four new Bristols’ rather hysterical, since it implies that new cities have to be built, rather than the fact that people are moving in to replace others.
Yes, Technicolour, doesn’t quoting that out of context make it look as though I hate poor people? Poor show. And trying to turn it into a class issue is another diversionary tactic.
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Mass, unskilled immigration is the mass-import of labour, not necessarily to undercut the British worker but most certainly to expand the economy. Whether we “jolly decent concerned white British folk” are served by a brown person for our tandoori or a white person for our fish & chips is neither here nor there, so I’m not really sure what your point is other than some half-arse attempt at making out that we white folk like to scoff about immigrants over our curry while the little brown men run around serving us. Is that how you see it, Technicolour, as some sort of neo-colonial relationship? Most of the Asians around here seem pretty well off. They tend to own the restaurants and use their cousins for the waiting staff. As for nicking doctors from poor countries, ask our resident working class lad and son of a doctor, Sid Saadi, if his dad was thieved.
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Clark- my first effort disappeared, so I had to re-type the comment. That disappeared, too, so I tried submitting saved copies in a number of different forms. This has been happening a lot lately. I see the original has appeared now – thanks for approving it!
Screaming Lord Sutch, thanks for the alert. Hmmm… Now what?
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Let’s see how long the media blackout lasts. I suspect that Saudi Arabia is going to blow-up unless the Royal family starts making some real changes to it’s foreign and domestic policy.
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The royals have split into two factions, one pro-interventionist the other against. Bandar was obviously in the pro-camp so the balance of power has fundamentally changed. Stick that alongside the huge civil disturbances going on in Saudi Arabia at present and it all starts looking very incendiary and unpredictable.
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The only thing we can guarantee is the response from the US/EU will make the situation worse. I suspect that they are findings ways at this very moment to use Bandar’s death to launch NATO against Syria.
Answer the question, please, Giles. When you ‘avert your gaze’ while driving through Tottenham, from what are you averting it? The evidence of poverty and inequality? Which has plagued the east end for centuries? Or the complexions?
The ‘mass-import’ of labour – you have switched your tune. Previously it was ‘unskilled’ labour, which is a way of denigrating manual labour, I suppose – nothing to do with a colonialist view.
So what is this ‘mass’ of which you speak? What has it now got to do with the British people in Tottenham? Have you looked at the percentage of people currently making up the number who were born in Pakistan and now live here?
Or are you referring to the importation and exploitation of – say – Polish people to build the Olympic site, or the exploitation of – say – Portuguese workers imported into Iceland to build the recent rash of giant dams? In that case, are you not objecting to exploitation? No?
Your rude comments about Suhayl are – rude. But illuminating.
Crumbs, the Olympics obviously wasn’t contentious enough.
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Prince Bandar assassinated??? That is very, very major news. Read nay book on the Arms Trade.
Omar Suleiman – remmeber him? Mubarak’s VP and spy chief, psychopathic torturer, rendition and CIA black site operative. Died suddenly and unexpectedly 2-3 weeks ago in the USA while undergoing medical treatment.
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Something is going on. Now, will be an invasion of Iran in ‘revenge’ for Prince Bandar’s killing? How very convenient. Remember Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, premised on the killing of their Ambassadotr in London? This is major, people. This is major.
“Prince Bandar assassinated??? That is very, very major news.”
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Try telling that to the BBC. It was Bandar who introduced the Bush family to the Bin Ladens, and look how that ended up. He was also famous for shipping tons of cocaine around the planet in a gold jumbo jet.
Yes, as a friend of mine just said, Bandar is hardly short of enemies. And yet I see they’re plumping straight for Iran in that link…
Now, will be an invasion of Iran in ‘revenge’ for Prince Bandar’s killing?
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You could well be right. The DEBKA (known Mossad front) article clearly lays the blame at Iran working with Al Qaeda – obviously irony is not a strong point of the Israeli secret services seeing as Al Qaeda is, and always has been, a Saudi/US outfit. It is even casually remarked in the MSM that Al Qaeda is fighting in Syria.
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Nothing illustrates the news-speek age better than Al Qaeda – planners of 911 and fighting for freedom in Syria, clearly that can’t be right.
No-one’s attacking anyone, Technicolor. Calm down. I was not referring to the prescriptions (ineffectively applied and monitored as even you would agree…as even the government agrees…) of the Border Agency NOW, but to the policy statements made in times past. In practice, anyone with a good sob story could get in until very recently. And before you kick off again as the only person here who has ever met an immigrant, the Turk with whom I once shared a house, and who had entered as a Kurdish refugee (he was no such thing) confirmed this. Oh, and my next-door neighbour is Chinese, and he works for a Malaysian-owned company in the UK. Oh, and…no, I’ll spare you.
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The immigration figures are horrendous, and the BA has no idea how many have slipped through controls. And if you think that everyone who arrives here will be doing a job the locals can’t do you are deluding yourself.
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Funny how people condemn government propaganda when it concerns, ohhh, missiles on tower blocks, but are happy to swallow the pabulum when it concerns immigration. Innit?
Here you are then Technicolour – some more facts and figures for you from an excellent and informative Guardian article by Siomon Rogers, using the latest immigration figures from the Office for National Statistics.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/jun/26/non-eu-immigration-uk-statistics
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A quote from his article;
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“The big number in today’s story is the net migration of 250,000 people – the difference between the 593,000 people who came into the country in the year to June 2011 and the 343,000 who left the country to live abroad for more than 12 months”
IPPR estimate: “temporary” workers settling here 40,000 annually. Government: net migration 239,000 annually.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/31/home-office-warned-economic-migration
To me it sounds like the same paranoia as when US Protestants thought the Pope would control JFK.
Catholics do not toast and pray for: “next year in
JerusalemVatican”, and furthermore Vatican has not seen any territorial expansion based on the promissory notes sought and found in the Bible. Also Vatican does not have “Catholics Only” roads, as well as any concentration camps whereupon the Protestants are kept under continual coercion and inhumane degradation, through enormous application of “kinetic force multipliers” ie the most sophisticated killing technologies at the service of the crazed lunatics bent on destruction for the sake of theft and plunder.,
Finally anyone whom does not oppose and despise zionism and its vile supremacist claims, is equally guilty of the crimes committed by the crazed theocratic lunatics caught up in their own frenzied fantasies.
Suhayl Saadi
You are making it sound more complicated. Immigrants are under pressure to be exploited at a cheaper rates, to compensate for the over bloated budgets that often include huge black components not controlled by any due process, and is allocated in secret by a handful, few whom are free from any constructs of oversight and accountability.
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Therefore to find the usual arguments about immigrants is only a natural preoccupation of the recalcitrant
traditionalistsreactionaries, whom find their own tenuous position is under some kind of an attack and threat of equality of the “immigrants”, which would herald a wholesale change in their life styles and entitlements.,
Troubling fact is, often this threat is not from the “immigrants” but from the state, and the slight of hand in cutting back on the obligation of the government, and introduction of more laws to further regulate and control the masses who are lashing out at the “immigrants”.
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Therefore no amount of reason or logic will sway these “traditionalist” from their ill conceived and flawed weltanschauung .
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PS. Bandar is not dead, his deputy is dead. (old news)
Snap! The figures are available, but look how they’re spun.
But he’s been dead for days, Bandar has, and days before that injured then dead for days before even alternative news sites began commenting. Looked a but peaky too before that.
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How can they play divide and rule if we were one homogenous mass and how will they play divide and rule when we are all mercifully one heterogenous mass, eons in the future with dark skin, ginger hair and dog only knows what other fun combinations of genetic factors. There is always religion when all else fails. These Somalis, are they Protestant Somalis or Catholic Somalis, and if they’re Muslim, are they Protestant Muslims or Catholic Muslims? Which team do they support, school did they go to? There are still players and dupes of 17thC and earlier religion-based divide and rule tactics, different races might overload their tiny minds. There is only us 99% and that 1% who exploit us, physically and emotionally; alright nothing has come of the Occupy movement, no leadership or strategy emerged, can we accept that groups, forces for change are often creations of the very things they loudly decry. Evolutionary theory applied to political organisation suggests that there should be new parties springing up, mushrooming into existence hourly, by the minute, and that the better ones should last, even if they betray their founding principles and supporters almost immediately they reach critical mass. I doubt the solution to these issues will be discovered or practiced in England ever, forever dark, unenlightened.
Ultimately, Passerby, isn’t the weak control on the immigration of cheap labour a logical extension of the neoliberal desire for “flexible” (ie serf) labour?
This is getting fucking stupid, today is Tuesday: time to attack Iran. Oh the grand national winner that I picked did not come first, well it is time to attack Iran.
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The fucking crazed lunatics in tel aviv are running out of excuses, and the masses want more than the body count of Palestinians, and real jobs, and more wages, well time to attack Iran.
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Bandar’s deputy is dead, and so that is only a sure sign that it is time for attacking Iran.
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Stop the ridiculous game of memes games, Obama is talking about the first time in twelve years US troops are not in Iraq war, and these tossers in tel aviv are trying to start a new war before the US empire has hung its holster and sitting at home broke and out of options. Talk about disconnect from reality.
Fact is anyone daring to so much fire a shot in anger at the Iranians, will have their arse handed back to them pronto, with a few more new aholes drilled into their butt into the bargain.
Saudi spy chief Prince Bandar assassinated: report
(This from the Tehran Times)
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Unconfirmed reports say Saudi Arabian spy chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has been assassinated.
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The death of 63-year-old Prince Bandar has been confirmed, the Paris-based Voltaire Network reported on its website on Monday, citing unofficial sources.
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The international non-profit organization, which publishes a free website (voltairenet.org) in eight languages (Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish), said that Prince Bandar was killed because of his role in the July 18 deadly bombing in Damascus.
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Continues: http://tehrantimes.com/middle-east/100129-saudi-spy-chief-prince-bandar-assassinated-report
“No-one’s attacking anyone, Technicolor. Calm down”.
No, I love a good fight, me. But don’t let the fact that you’re the first person to refer to an attack stop you.
“I was not referring to the prescriptions (ineffectively applied and monitored as even you would agree” – would I, indeed.
Right, so 225,000 people is ‘mass’, is it? How many stay? How many are ‘unskilled’?
“In practice, anyone with a good sob story could get in until very recently”.
Love those facts. What are all those people doing in detention centres, I wonder.
“And before you kick off again as the only person here who has ever met an immigrant” – when in doubt, make stuff up, right? Do your fortunate neighbours know of your objections to the skin colour of British people in the opening ceremony?
The figures are ‘horrendous’ are they? To whom, to what and why? Explain, oh dark mutterers.
Like POV, Crytonym.
‘OldMark is back: now we’re really having fun. And to demonstrate the reality of ‘mass unskilled immigration’ he picks on one small community group comprising 95,000 people in total out of a country of around 60 million.’
Yes, Techie, and I appear to be debating an offtopic issue with someone possessing limited comprehension skills. The wiki link refers to an ONS estimate from 2010 of 108,000, not 95,000. And the latest census data confirms that these ONS estimates are under estimates. Epic fail.
If the ‘point’ you are attempting to make had any validity you’d have to demonstrate that the socio-economic characteristics of Somali immigrants are unique among recent immigrants, and not shared, in a slightly attenuated form, by many of the much larger immigrant groups. In fact, the Bangladeshi & Pakistani communities (combined population 1.5 million at a minimum) also exhibit many of the same characteristics in slight dilution- low economic activity rates, high welfare dependency rates,large family size leading to disproportionate use of taxpayer funded education and social housing, et al.
I agree some recent immigrant groups are almost certainly a net benefit, and not a burden, to the country, for example-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koreans_in_the_United_Kingdom
however I’d wager that the Koreans are much more of a statistical outlier, and less typical of recent waves of immigrants, than the Somalis.
Komodo,
Sounding so sanguine about the “serf” labour and forgetting that, under the free trade agreements (I should cocoa too), the conditions are set for the economic migrants to be compelled to get on the road in search of jobs. As we speak most of the hospitality sectors vacancies are now taken up by the Spaniards, as of the crash of Spanish economy.
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The usual Filipino, Thai, and east Asian workers are relegated to work in even more gruesome conditions in Saudi, Bahrain, et al. Not so surprisingly the same goes for the “Pakis” and the Indians too, who are the work force under atrocious conditions of the same “job markets”.
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Therefore to conveniently discount the precursors and only stick to the end results waxing lyrical is an all too tested and tried method, that further dehumanizes the said immigrant labour force.
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However, as the ripple effects continue, the race to the bottom is set for the so called “indigenous” populations, that would be joining the same conditions and ranks of the immigrant labour force, and the immigrants will find new economies to turn to.
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To blame the immigrants is a nice way of feeling important that the complainant is not an “immigrant” and further to help to depress the labour rates for the said sector. without unions, and without any recourse to any kind of legal protection, all the while without any kind of state aid, the immigrants choices are: get exploited, or get back to unemployment and misery of not affording the bread o the night. Indeed a Hobson’s choice.
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Never have I seen anyone of the sol called traditionalists, to ever attack the uncompetitive and exploitative trade practices that include the full might of the US, UK intelligence services apparatus. Fact that the dispossessed have no choice but to emigrate never even crosses the obtuse minds of these dullards.
Oh, OldMark: you mean Somalis make up an extra 0.01 percent of the population? Epic fail, sure.
It’s now ‘good’ immigrants like Koreans v ‘bad’ ones is it? You’d ‘wager’. would you? Not much chance of taking your money online, so you”re on a safe one there.
Sure we can stay on this and offtopic all day: do you want to carry on? You object to immigrants, and are prepared to go on about it. You still haven’t provided any reasons for it: perhaps an unhappy experience in your youth with someone from Ostend. Is there any more point in you typing?
I’m off to the shop.
“Something is going on. Now, will be an invasion of Iran in ‘revenge’ for Prince Bandar’s killing? How very convenient. Remember Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, premised on the killing of their Ambassadotr in London? This is major, people. This is major.”
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Good insight Suhayl – you are on top form – Bravo!
@Technicolor
1) To feign ignorance
2) To make an unfounded accusation against a person.
3) Time Constant
So not a good look
Clark,
Have you noticed the slowdown in the transactions? Do you think the stuff is getting filtered through sieves and checked (all isps)? If so these guys are now bordering the fucking Matrix.