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.
Technicolour, I feel sure that the answer to your oft-repeated question; “What part do ‘immigrants’ play in this discussion, please?”, is a matter of dynamics rather than statics. When people arrive “too” fast, they tend to form localised clumps, and that changes the local character for the existing residents in those areas. We can all cope with change, but if change seems really rapid it induces fear; it makes the future seem too unpredictable.
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If I’m answering a question other than that which was asked, please forgive me; it’s probably because I’m reading and typing too fast.
Further to my 8:40 pm comment, you could probably create similar unease if the government compulsorily purchased the homes of 250,000 existing residents each year, threw them out of their jobs, and confiscated enough of their assets such that they’d have to take up residence in cheaper areas. Add a degree of language mismatch and some different social norms… I know, it’s not a perfect analogy, but you should be able to see where the perception that it’s a problem comes from.
right, Clark. So immigration (or, as you seem to see it, too many of ‘them’ at once) has something to do with the fact that the UK is not producing as much food as it easily could, does it? Given that farmers are increasingly relying on itinerant workers to pick strawberries, mushrooms, etc, I somehow doubt it. I am also sure that immigration has nothing to do with the greenhouses of Kent disappearing; the thousands of hectares across the country left unfarmed, or turned over to wasteful beef production; the lack of fruit and nut trees in parks and on our streets…Or am I wrong? Please try to correlate the two if you can.
I’d like crab’s reply too please.
Enoch Powell was an extremely intelligent, well-read, multilingual and fascinating man. He certainly had his own views on things and wasn’t trammeled by party or orthodoxy. When I look at him now, with the benefit of decades of distance, he seems a figure who was born probably a little too late. He would’ve made a highly effective imperial administrator/intellectual adventurer (I mean that in a positive way) at the height of the British Empire on the level of, say, Curzon, Burton or Elphinstone.
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It is absolutely right to raise subjects which are important and which are not being discussed. However, Powell raised the issues of immigration and race and linked them in such a manner, he poisoned the discourse and damaged many, many lives. It was extremely ugly for around 15 years after Powell’s ‘River of Blood’ speech. Over a period of years, he continually incited people against other people. I think he felt sincerely about it and clearly had changed his mind on it because just a little earlier, he had been actively encouraging immigration from the New Commonwealth to the UK. However, I suspect that in 1968, really, having wanted to be Viceroy of India, he now yearned to be Leader of the Opposition and then Prime Minister and so he took a very big opportunistic gamble with his career and with this country’s civil society. He did it very deliberately, knowing precisely what it would cause, he planned it and executed it over a period of time. He was not simply, “the [neutral] messenger”, he saw himself as the Archangel of Annunciation. He was a provocateur of discord, his clipped, three-piece tones somehow emblematic of a profound bitterness which lay festering beneath the old-school British politesse. He became an incarnation of the anger, a dark shadow that attended the end of Empire.
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Some working class white people – not people who considered themselves racist, or ‘racialist’, as it was termed then – not infrequently used to say to me, with no malice, “Enoch Powell should be Prime Minister”; it was a common topic of conversation at the time and until the mid-1970s. I found this deeply amusing at the time.
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He was not a wholly negative figure, but he will be remembered as one because with that speech and the many subsequent speeches and interviews, he fashioned his own historical persona in that image.
“The UK can feed itself.”
At the moment it does not. I think the UK possibly could feed itself – at a stretch which i think your linked document investigates. It looks good, hopeful, but it is written to address the problem, of “how could the uk feed itself”
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“What part do ‘immigrants’ play in this discussion, please?”
(population density) I didnt bring it up, but i can confidently affirm it is relevant, in fact it is an essential concern in its own right and migration has a direct effect on it. In nature mamals are observed to become stressed, sick and destructive by high population densities. Culture and Architecture can change things for humans, but are fall short in the present.
Tech, these considerations are technical challenges for me – impossible to honestly dismiss. Whatever the policy they have to be accounted for. I would like free immigration everywhere, and living conditions everywhere which make that possible without conflicts arising. We have neither.
Enoch Powell was an extremely intelligent, well-read, multilingual and fascinating man. He certainly had his own views on things and wasn’t trammeled by party or orthodoxy. When I look at him now, with the benefit of decades of distance, he seems a figure who was born probably a little too late. He would’ve made a highly effective imperial administrator/intellectual adventurer (I mean that in a positive way) at the height of the British Empire on the level of, say, Curzon, Burton or Elphinstone.
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It is absolutely right to raise subjects which are important and which are not being discussed. However, Powell raised the issues of immigration and race and linked them in such a manner, he poisoned the discourse and damaged many, many lives. It was extremely ugly for around 15 years after Powell’s ‘River of Blood’ speech. Over a period of years, he continually incited people against other people. I think he felt sincerely about it and clearly had changed his mind on it because just a little earlier, he had been actively encouraging immigration from the New Commonwealth to the UK. However, I suspect that in 1968, really, having wanted to be Viceroy of India, he now yearned to be Leader of the Opposition and then Prime Minister and so he took a very big opportunistic gamble with his career and with this country’s civil society. He did it very deliberately, knowing precisely what it would cause, he planned it and executed it over a period of time. He was not simply, “the [neutral] messenger”, he saw himself as the Archangel of Annunciation. He was a provocateur of discord, his clipped, three-piece tones somehow emblematic of a profound bitterness which lay festering beneath the old-school British politesse. He became an incarnation of the anger, a dark shadow that attended the end of Empire.
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Some working class white people – not people who considered themselves racist, or ‘racialist’, as it was termed then – not infrequently used to say to me, with no malice, “Enoch Powell should be Prime Minister”; it was a common topic of conversation at the time and until the mid-1970s. I found this deeply amusing at the time.
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He was not a wholly negative figure, but he will be remembered as one because with that speech and the many subsequent speeches and interviews, he fashioned his own historical persona in that image. May his soul rest in peace. There was a time when I would have wished him nothing but eternal damnation in the fires of the Abrahamic (and not Graeco-Roman) Hell.
Clark: “you could probably create similar unease if the government compulsorily purchased the homes of 250,000 existing residents each year,”
Yes, I can see that’s how it’s being sold to you, but that’s not what has happened, is it?
“threw them out of their jobs,”
that’s not what has happened either
“and confiscated enough of their assets”
I’m sorry? Your analogy is a fantasy, Clark, and a dark one. Who do you know whose house has been confiscated, who has been thrown out of their job, and has had their assets confiscated because of immigration? Anyone? Anyone at all? No, *because it hasn’t happened*.
such that they’d have to take up residence in cheaper areas.
good lord, so all those people who sold their houses in London for about 100 times more than they paid for them and moved to Essex with the proceeds and a nice chunk left over are economic refugees? It’s not the bankers moving in and driving up prices with their million pound bonuses, it’s the poor people? The poorest?
I despair. You obviously want to believe this, Clark.
For anyone’s information, neither I, nor anyone else I know, who has visited a traveller site with decent intentions, has ever been met with hostility and swearing. I wonder why that is.
crab wrote – “The lexical(sic?) error was the switch between the similar words ‘english’ and ‘british’” ..no Crab, that’s precisely the common misrepresentation i was trying to illustrate – that England/English is often casually synonomous/interchanged for Britain/British and vica versa. They are obviously not one and the same thing.
“We have neither.” – sorry that is wrong: neither is ideal, but we do also have a lot to be getting on with and almost limitless potential.
(Suhayl,Nuid,Tecnicolour – i think it would be great/helpful/interesting if you could have a think about this which i posted yesterday, and hopefully share your thoughts. I’ve added an extra option on the points, which is number 7: ‘limitless immigration’)
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Suhayl Saadi wrote: “I think it is intellectually honest to state what one believes. I think it is entirely justifiable to ask people to be clear”
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.Great news. Taking this statement in to account, as well as the fact that a broad consensus has been agreed that ‘yes,racism is bad but we can have a debate about it anyway’,i think it would be constructive to get down to brass tacks:
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Suhayl Saadi,Nuid and Technicolour(and anyone else interested obviously)- taking an average number of 150,000 people emigrating from Britain every year, how many new people do you think should be admitted in to the island of Britain every year, taking in to account asylum seekers as well?;
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1.250,000
2.100,000
3.50,000
4.10,000
5.Some other number
6.None
7.Limitless immigration
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Constructive straightforward answers in the form of figures if at all possible, would be greatly appreciated – by myself at least. Thanks for your consideration
“They are obviously not one and the same thing.”
Almost everyone knows that of course. Technicolor certainly does. To misattribute a typo as ignorance is not impressive.
Crab: “In nature mamals are observed to become stressed, sick and destructive by high population densities.”
Well, why, then, do humans congregate in cities? PJ O’Rourke, in Eat the Rich, pointed out that no-one raises an eyebrow about the population density in San Francisco. But they yammer on about ‘overpopulation; in Africa: it’s only brown people who have too many babies. I assure you, having experienced both, that in packed, vibrant Hackney people are far less stressed – more cheerful, happier on the streets in general – than in rural, depleted Wales. And are you seriously suggesting that immigration – the addition of approximately 100,000 people a year (you look it up) into the UK in what people like OLdMark would consider the *worst* years of Labour has significantly contributed to the stress of London (6 million people) or Manchester or Brighton?
Bollocks it has. What contributes to stress is the fear and suspicion and the turning of human against human which several voices on this blog would apparently like to spread. You must know that.
And economic policies directed at the poorest. And a disgraceful, insane, deliberate policy which discourages the country from growing food, and which goes hand in hand with the drive to the bottom policies of the supermarkets and which results in farmers giving up or killing themselves rather than being valued members of society. What has happened to the UK is a tragedy but it is not irreversible and it is not the fault of immigration.
Chris Jones: It’s ‘vice versa’, not ‘vica versa’, but I won’t hold that against you. Crab is right (thank you, Crab) a simple lexical (technical) error in the speed of the moment. I meant ‘English’. Is that OK now?
PS you missed out 8: anyone who can play calypso
Crab wrote “They are obviously not one and the same thing.
Almost everyone knows that of course. Technicolor certainly does. To misattribute a typo as ignorance is not impressive.”
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Not one typo Crab – a consistent theme repeated many times by Technicolour, in that one post at least. And yes – showing considerable ignorance, espcecially for someone claiming to be so enlightened about different cultures in all their different manifestations.
Technicolour, please, try to calm down, read what was written, and try to assume good faith. My comment about the food supply is about the GLOBAL grain reserves, nothing to do with immigration, I was continuing from Mary’s comment about rising food prices. Last time I checked, it looked like there was a problem with the global food supply, like ends might fail to meet soon.
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My other comment WAS about immigration. When immigrants arrive, many* of them have to find housing and income (*ie, a larger proportion than for existing residents). I’m saying that my imaginary piece of governmental idiocy of removing housing and jobs from a similar number of people such that they had to re-find them, would cause similar upheaval as that many people coming to settle in the UK.
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What’s the matter? You seem really cross. I still haven’t caught up with the thread, so I don’t know the context. Or do you just want me to stop commenting?
Clark: take Barking; home to many immigrants, and probably the type of place you think you’re describing. Griffin thought he could stand there as an MP and in would be a shoo-in. In fact not only did his party lose dismally, but lost all their council seats as well.
The reality is that the people in Barking were decent people (even the people from Griffin’s party, though misguided). Most people are decent people. They did not generally blame people of a different colour or background for the appalling lack of social provision. They knew that the council and the government had built too few new houses to mention, had opened no new social centres, had let the local shops die, had let down the young people. They knew that the council had provided no real bus service, that the government had banned smoking in pubs, leading to many closures, that their main industry had been taken over and nothing put in place to replace it. They were suffering, but they did not turn against their neighbours, because it did not make common sense to do so, or moral sense. The fact was that they ended up voting Labour again, because at least that did not bring hate and division to their borough. But if they can see the reality of humanity, why can’t you?
Technicolour, I feel that you have just cast me as racist. I deny it, and I ask you to retract it.
“Well, why, then, do humans congregate in cities?”
You are getting into a different argument, that pop density is not a problem to humans. When you hack that out, and win it, then you can declare it is not relevant to migration perhaps. But you are along way away from having done that. I have just enough time to tell you your final conclusions dont rule as irrelevant the normally considered factors of an issue. No more time for the rest, many may be relieved.
Clark, I’m certainly not assuming bad faith! And my question ‘what has this to do with immigration’ was linked to a discussion about the UK’s food resources – obviously things get can easily missed when one is reading/typing too fast (smiley icon)
Technicolour, I have e-mailed you.
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All:
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I’m going to stop reading or writing comments. I’ll just release the pending comments as soon as I see them. If anyone has any complaints, I’ll be checking my e-mail frequently.
Crab, I guess many might be relieved, but then they don’t have to read this far. I rather wish I didn’t, too. But, since I have, you suggested, I think, that population density had a direct bearing on immigration, since humans suffered from stress when faced with ‘overpopulation’. Now you say that I am “getting into a different argument, that pop density is not a problem to humans”.
I don’t think it is a different argument: at least, you link immigration with a negative – overpopulation – , and I am saying that a) immigration in the current UK context has had a questionable impact on UK city density as a whole and b) that density of population is not necessarily a negative in any case. I hope that’s clear.
Clark, no, I am not saying you are a racist. I made that very explicit, very early on. I don’t understand why you are using emotive, exaggerated analogies when discussing an already emotive issue, that is all. If I sound ‘uncalm’: I apologise.
Clark Ref grain production.
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http://www.igc.int/downloads/gmrsummary/gmrsumme.pdf
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From my own experience, the weekly shopping costs a third more than it used to a few years back. I grow most of my veg and eat little meat. A bag of layers’ pellets for my two hens used to cost £6 two years ago and is now over £8. A bag of dog food was £7 two years ago and is now nearly £12. And so on.
“a consistent theme repeated many times by Technicolour, in that one post at least”
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That’s as silly as it sounds.
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“a broad consensus has been agreed that ‘yes,racism is bad but we can have a debate about it anyway’”
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There has been no such consensus.
Tecnicolour – thank you for correcting my lazy colloquialism. Your ‘typo’ has been repeated many times so i suspect your defence is slightly disingenious – the subject obviously wasn’t something you had thought through properly and are ignorant of. Which is no big crime of course:it just seems peculiar seeing as you seem to champion yourself as being a bit of an enlightened ‘culcha vulcha’in general.
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Why not just answer the immigration number question sensibly and choose one of the answers? This would be a constructive thing to do,which would aid the debate positively.
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Your calypso gag ….hmmm….the phrase ‘delusions of grandeur’ comes to mind
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Sorry – two posts of mine almost identical at 9:03 and 9:06pm today. The first could be deleted. I must have thought the first hadn’t gone through, when it was queued.
“a consistent theme repeated many times by Technicolour, in that one post at least”
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That’s as silly as it sounds”
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Can’t you be consistent in repeating a theme Nuid?
Mary,
We have Mervin King to thank for this. His policy of QE, basically buying the bad debts and handing out more IOU with a better rate of return (ie printing more money), has resulted in oodles of money to slush around the system and wind up in speculations for food, and commodities. This is repeated across the pond too hence the rise in prices. Of course the weather has played its part too, but the bigging up of the disasters is to cover up for the huge sums that is getting made out of the commodities. The money junkies cannot simply stop.
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Inflation is eating away workers earnings and the savings of those who have tried to keep a nest egg of sorts.
Chris, forgive my ignorance, but I really don’t know. 6) and 7) are daft. I’m not sure the numbers game is the key here. I think it’s more about what kind of country we want to be and perhaps an acknowledgement that there has always been immigration and emigration and that these movements have varied over time due to a multiplicity of historical/economic factors. Since the time of the Norman Conquest and its long aftermath (since 1066 and all that seems to be in great vogue), there has never been “limitless immigration”, there have always been filters which have been as much about people generally not wanting to move, actually, unless they have to, nor have there ever been (to quote Thatcher) “floods” of foreigners, nor will there be. I think it’s a spectre raised to create division and fear. Technicolour’s early posts about imperial foreign policy, economic policies (neo-liberal) and the reasons people move is worth re-reading. Immigration, then, in the current global configuration is inevitable. In general, over time, it has brought great benefit to our society.
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Since you asked the question, which of the seven figures would you select, and why? And why and how were those figures chosen by you?
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Thank you so much for your consideration. Much appreciated. Have a good evening.
Now, as Crab suggested awhile back, it seems it is time for the vicar’s tea-set to be brought out of the musty cupboard. ‘Brickie’s Tea’ (aka ‘West Coast Tea’,I was told by an Outer Hebridean) really is the only way to drink British tea, in my view. Let’s tinkle some china! (as Chairman Mao never said)
“Can’t you be consistent in repeating a theme Nuid?”
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You claimed that Tech had “a consistent theme repeated many times” and then qualified that with “in that one post at least”.
Tech must have posted about 25 times by now. Are you suggesting that Tech consistently posts ‘British’ when she means ‘English’ and that she does that in many posts? Well, no, you’re not. Since you say it’s in one post. You need to make up your mind.