The wealthy right-winger Yvette Cooper has just been on television intoning Labour’s new mantra “It isn’t racist to be worried about immigration.” This should be challenged robustly at all times. Above all, it is very, very racist for politicians to go around saying “It isn’t racist to be worried about immigration” when they are using it nakedly and cynically to bid for the votes of racists.
I can never recall any by-election that got as much BBC publicity as that in Rochester, not even Hillhead or Warrington. The BBC and media establishment are continuing their massive promotion of UKIP at all times. The Labour Party is responding by pandering to racism. Yvette spoke of the “race to the bottom in the labour market”. The country’s real problem is the race to the bottom in the fascist market.
Promising 1.000 new uniformed border guards as their headline policy initiative is a pretty impressive spurt by Labour in this fascist race.
It shows how sour politics have gone when it takes the Confederation of British Industry to inject some sense from a liberal perspective into the immigration debate. Over 60% of CBI embers say that immigration has benefited their company. Only 3% believe it has hurt their company. Immigration is a tremendous boon to the British economy. Without it we would be deep in recession. Nor is it in the least responsible for the growing wealth gap. The period of highest immigration into the UK coincided with the period when social mobility and social equality were making the most progress.
That people still fall for the old con-trick astonishes me. Don’t blame Britain’s 100 billionaires, multi millionaire bankers or grasping landlords for your poverty – look! blame that foreign-looking poor man over there. He is eating a bit of cheese. He has taken that cheese from the mouths of your children!
It is primal and it is ludicrous, but the appeal to atavism can work and Labour are seeking to profit from it.
The Labour Party’s deliberate conflation of the unrelated questions of corporate, banker and executive rapacity, the exploitation of the workforce, and immigration is deeply, deeply, shameful. There was very little Yvette Cooper said that Nigel Farage would not second. But that, after all, was the purpose of the exercise.
Skotskinorge
20 Nov, 2014 – 6:22 pm
“Dougie, you’re clearly a twat, so I’ll refrain from commenting again.”
…………………………
If you make statements Skotskinorge you should be able to back them up with a little evidence.
You haven’t provided any back up for what you have said so ‘tis you that is the twat.
Please comment again on any subject that might arise on this blog but please prepare to be cross-examined on any claims you make that are not backed up.
Macky
20 Nov, 2014 – 1:22 pm
“@ Skotskinorge, great Post, you should post more often !”
……………………………………………..
What was great about it Macky?
Detailed reasoning would be appreciated.
Ba’al ; I don’t do empathy”
&
“I’m happy to see that your concern for the poor of other countries transcends that for the poor of this one. Such unselfishness will doubtless be rewarded, come the revolution”
Well it seems this issue has revealed, despite your pretentions, just how much you really do have in common with trolls like the Habbu-Clown & his fellow-minded associates; not only is there a common core of the Little Englander in you, which gushing out to the fore, but your ability for rational debate also seems to go to pot when you are forced to confront your prejudices, but as you know, we’ve been here several times before, I think the last time ended with you saying something along the lines of being proud of the British Empire, and that overall it was force of good.
All of us are have an innate self-defence mechanism that causes us to fear the “other”, those that are different to us; some people acknowledge this and temper this natural instinct with rational reasoning, but others go into self-denial about it and dress it up in disengenous terms to call it something else, which is exactly what has been done by many on the thread.
@ doug scorgie, “two things that struck me about there culture was their nationalism and racism”
Do you think that not only is that a rash generalization to state that about any culture on the basis of meeting a few individuals, but also your subjective perception of nationalism of an unfamiliar culture, may be interpreted by others more in tune with that culture, as nothing more than a deep attachment & love for that culture? Similarly it is rational to use today’s standards for judging private social clubs operating decades ago, especially clubs that were the set-up by & intended for particular ex-pat ethnic groups, whose countries had probably virtually no black populations at all ? The same again iro of women, attitudes & customs coming from very traditional societies back then were very different to what they are today, & not just for them, but globally.
Further, why with your latest comments on this thread, do I have to keep re-checking that it really is you that is posting them ? Such is their similarly in tone, content & attitude, to a certain Habbu-Clown, even down to word for word sometimes ! ;
”please prepare to be cross-examined on any claims you make that are not backed up”
“Detailed reasoning would be appreciated.”
Amazing what a raw hot button issue immigration is, seemingly even has the ability to turn normally sensible Posters into Habbu-Clown imitations !!
@Fred “I didn’t pick on you, you picked on me.”
No, I didn’t. I “picked on” a phrase that you like using, which I think is hurtful to those who have never done you any harm whatsoever.
Yvette Cooper isn’t “right wing”, she’s just another venal, self-serving con-artist who’ll say anything at any time with whatever “spin” is deemed necessary to preserve the position, salary, expense account and pension which she and many of her fellow upstarts imagine to be their automatic due. After all, if she lost her seat tomorrow, she wouldn’t go out and get a job in the local widget factory would she? – not even if the local widget factory hadn’t been shipped out to Shanghai. Professional egalitarians just don’t do that sort of thing.
What’s this fixation on racism anyway? It’s a bogus, ill thought-out dogma to which very few people actually subscribe – a bit like “holocaust denial”. Just as I don’t know anyone who genuinely claims that extermination camps weren’t set up in territory occupied by National Socialist Germany and that they weren’t used, I don’t know anyone who is a racist either. Yet they’ve wasted time in Parliament outlawing the very suggestion of the former and plenty of people just won’t abandon their comforting, superiority-inducing fantasies about the latter.
The rare – or at least quiescent – racists and the rather more voluble non-racists have at least one thing in common: they are both obsessed with the colour of peoples’ skins.
Well it seems this issue has revealed, despite your pretentions, just how much you really do have in common with trolls like the Habbu-Clown & his fellow-minded associates; not only is there a common core of the Little Englander in you, which gushing out to the fore, but your ability for rational debate also seems to go to pot when you are forced to confront your prejudices, but as you know, we’ve been here several times before, I think the last time ended with you saying something along the lines of being proud of the British Empire, and that overall it was force of good.
I am quoting this as an instance of the overweening self-righteousness of the kneejerk-PC Left. With which I make no apology for dissenting.
Can’t remember my alleged reference to the British Empire, but it seems unlikely. If I made it, there was probably some context in which the remark should have been retained, and I wouldn’t think it was a blanket endorsement, as you present it. Details, please.
To recap; the original proposition was that it is racist to worry about immigration. My position is that it is perfectly possible and legitimate to worry about immigration without being racist. The question of race (at the very least in the case of Caucasian immigrants) doesn’t come into it and there are plenty of reasons for being suspicious of mass immigration. Here, IMO, Craig and his supporters are adopting a stance very reminiscent of those Israelis who denounce all their critics as being antisemitic.
As to my perceived affinity with Habbabcuk, or anyone else here, if I agree with them on an issue, I’ll say so. If I disagree, I’ll say so. I don’t have to join one club or another, and I’m not here to make friends. You’re making the same mistake as H – stereotyping your opposition. Perhaps it is you, not I, who sympathises with him…
PS All of us are have an innate self-defence mechanism that causes us to fear the “other”, those that are different to us; some people acknowledge this and temper this natural instinct with rational reasoning,
So it’s a natural instinct, then? I mean, I agree, but why are you treating it as an aberration? Your ‘racism’ is Darwin’s ‘normal’…I’m with Darwin.
Ba’al: “Can’t remember my alleged reference to the British Empire, but it seems unlikely”
Well luckily for you finding comments made months, or perhaps even years ago, is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack, so if you need to, you can resort to implying that I’m making up your comments of support for the British Empire, and that it was overall a force for Good; I know that you stated exactly that, because it has stuck in my mind ever since, but perhaps for the purpose of this present discussion, it would be relevant to hear your present pov iro of the British Empire ?
Ba’al: “My position is that it is perfectly possible and legitimate to worry about immigration without being racist”
Do you think it would be legitimate to go around effectively encouraging hysteria & racial conflict in respect of something that really is not a problem at all, and/or for something that cannot be avoided ? All those arguments aired for this Thread purporting to show that immigration is such a detriment to this country, either simply fall apart when examined or cannot be separated from how our society is set-up to work; so to provoke social tensions via bogus arguments combined with an inability and/or unwillingness to fundamentally change the system we live under, does not seem very “legitimate” to me.
Ba’al: “You’re making the same mistake as H – stereotyping your opposition. Perhaps it is you, not I, who sympathises with him”
LOL ! Yes of course, it is I, rather than you, who shares a common cultural superiority complex with the Clown !!
Ba’al: “So it’s a natural instinct, then? I mean, I agree, but why are you treating it as an aberration?”
I’m not, I’m treating the inability to recognise & control this hardwired instinct through rational reasoning, as an aberration.
Is it elitist to tweet pictures of doric columns on a Rochester house next to a white van and flag of St George? I had thought Ed was preferable to his brother, but I can’t remember why I ever thought that now – the party is so discredited. To force a shadow AG to resign and allege that you have never been so angry – the party is a sham.
‘The period of highest immigration into the UK coincided with the period when social mobility and social equality were making the most progress.’
I’ve held back from commenting on this post hoping someone else would ask Craig what on earth he means here. He uses the past tense to describe the period when immigration allegedly peaked, and then links this to the golden age of social mobility- by which I assume he means the period 1945-79.
Immigration back then wasn’t on anything like the scale we’ve had over the last decade;during the 50s and early 60s immigration from Ireland was 40-50,000 per annum. Until 1960 immigration from the anglophone West Indies was always lower than this, but in the early 60s matched, and for a time exceeded, Irish immigration. Immigration from the subcontinent, and by East African Asians, was in the low thousands until around 1963, but by 1968 (the year of Powell’s notorious speech) had exceeded the inflow from both the WI and Ireland. Immigration by south Asians (either directly or from East Africa) peaked in 1968-72, but in no single year exceeded 100,000. Permanent immigrant from elsewhere (ie excluding Aussies and Kiwis who came in their thousands on reciprocal working holiday arrangements, and often worked in jobs now done by Poles and other East Europeans) was minimal.
In almost every year since 2004 however gross immigration was been around the half million mark each year- higher by a factor of 4 or 5 than the annual figures for the period 1957- 75, to which I assume Craig alludes when referring to the period of high social mobility.
In other words Craig is talking, or rather emoting, thru his hat on this topic- as several other commenters have already pointed out. I can only assume his distaste for White Van Man a la Ms Thornberry, trumps any rational considerations he may be capable of on this subject
Rod Liddle on form today in Sunday Times,not only pointing out that although Emily Thornbury set herself up for trouble at least she was honest to call it as she sees it whereas Ed just lies, but he also gets back to the subject in his footie piece, which again calls it as it is – lot of hyprocrits. Funny end anecdote about Millwall supporting Emily Thornbury because a West Ham fan has stepped into a Millwall blog.
UK ‘unlikely to meet’ migration target
EU migration has “blown off course” the UK’s target to cut net migration to the tens of thousands, the home secretary says.
Watch Q&A: EU freedom of movement
Romania and Bulgaria migration rises
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30167160
If worrying about the local impacts of immigration is racist, what terrible sociological crime can we accuse those of who believe that this is even worse? – –
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/06/20126191060849944.html