It's a common myth that immigration into the UK is out of control. But, it simply isn't true. There are parts of the UK that haven't seen a new immigrant since the Normans popped their heads over the wall almost a thousand years ago now.
The only part of the UK that is drowning beneath a constant stream of immigrants, legal and illegal, is England and even then only that part beneath a line drawn from Norwich in the East to Oxford in the West. People , you see, don't arrive on these shores thinking that they will seek their fortune in Greenock, Wick or Thurso. Granted, some may occasionally take a wrong turn and end up living very happily in Cwmbran or even Glasgow.. But, for the most part, the Land of Milk and Honey they are seeking lies within the confines of the M25 motorway.
That is why, while the population of Scotland is expected to decline by 5% over the next 20 years and those of Wales and Northern Ireland are predicted to rise by a very small percentage, England will see its population explode from around 55 million now to close to 70 million by 2025.
What makes the situation particularly ironic, of course, is that the English people were never consulted before this torrent of immigrants was unleashed on them. They did not choose to have many of their rural towns turned into centres of Polish culture or for up to 40% of Council Housing to be allocated to newcomers from Eastern Europe. Likewise, it was never their intention that vast swathes of Green Belt should be sacrificed to accommodate these newcomers.
No, these decisions were taken on their behalf by people like Gordon Brown, John Reed, Gordon Darling and Margaret Beckett. All of whom, of course, are Scots and therefore extremely keen to share England's bounty with the poor and deprived of the former Soviet empire.
If, in the process, they also managed to regally piss a lot of English bastards off, while providing the Labour Party with a transfusion of potential new voting stock, then so much the better.
Tuesday, 15 April 2008
Saturday, 12 April 2008
The Big Brother world of UK 2008
Many years ago, when the Soviet Union still loomed like a malignant mushroom over much of Eastern Europe, my wife and I went on holiday to the Black Sea coast of Rumania. Still in the grips of the Ceaucescu family, Rumania in those far off days was a model of Soviet idiocy. It had no unemployment because anybody caught walking the streets during the day was simply rounded up, thrown into a lorry and taken to the nearest road works or collective farm.
There was, officially, no poverty or hunger. This was due less to the triumph of socialism over starvation than the fact that all of the peasants who worked the collective farms also grew their own fruit and vegetables on private 1/2 acre plots. It was the bounty from these plots - which contrasted strongly with the arid inefficiency of the huge collectives - that not only fed them but also provided some of the small extras that made life bearable.
Locals sold plums, berries and vegetables at the side of the road, at small street markets and direct from their small holdings. If they could sell to a tourist, so much the better because they could exchange the hard currency they received for up to four times the official exchange rate and that would enable them to buy proper leather shoes rather than the plastic creations that were the regulation issue to the state shoe shops. With a bit of luck, the money might also stretch to a pair of tights for their wife or daughter.
There was no homelessness because, everywhere one looked, blocks of identical, slab-sided apartments were being thrown up. Apart from their monotonous ugliness - imagine Sixties Council architecture and then brutalise it even more - what was most striking about these flats was the fact that, at one end of each storey, there was one unit that was considerably larger than all of the others. I asked our Yugoslavian tour guide if these apartments were for larger families. He laughed at the idea that any such level of human consideration had gone into their construction.
The answer was much more prosaic - and infinitely more sinister.
Our guide explained that the larger flats were for the Government informers who were installed on each floor of each block. Their job - i.e. that of the whole family - was to keep tabs on their neighbours and report any infractions, such as complaints about food shortages, to the authorities so that the miscreants coud be dealt with in the appropriate way. Sanctions included being re-housed in inferior accommodation, the loss of job or travel privileges or, in severe cases, breaking the family up and sending its members to different re-education camps scattered about the Rumanian countryside.
At first I thought it was odd that the government seemed happy for everyone to know precisely who and where the spies were in each block of flats. It was only once I thought about George Orwell's 1984 that I appreciated the sophistication of the methods that the Rumanians - in common with other Socialist Republics - employed to terrorise their citizenry into meek compliance. It was the very visibility of the spies that lent real menace to the arrangement. The knowledge that whatever you did or even thought was being monitored and reported back. I can remember the shudder which greeted this dawning of understanding. It was Big Brother made flesh.
I experienced a similar feeling of revulsion the other day when I read about an ordinary family in Poole, surely the epitomy of Middle England, who had been systematically stalked, shadowed and reported on for three weeks because some busybody in the local council thought they migh be trying to pull a fast one when it came to schooling for one of their children.
I tried to picture some minor council clerk, who years ago would have settled quite happily for totting up how many childen were eligible for free milk, spending his days in some sub-James Bond role, shadowing the family as they moved through their sinister world: from school to Tesco, to work, back to school, to piano lessons after tea, back home and finally to pick up the oldest child from pony riding lessons.
How did this fantasist feel, writing things like, "female subject and three children enter dwelling,. Lights on"? How did his, presumably, intelligent manager keep a straight face when he signed his expenses? The whole scenario sounds so farcical that the temptation is to laugh it off as yet another example of institutionalised stupidity.
But, that would be a mistake. This is much more sinister than that. It is evidence of a fundamental shift in our society. Once we were served by Public Servants whose role, at a local level, was to maintain the roads, dispose of our rubbish and ensure that the streets were kept clean and reasonably well lit. It was never a part of their remit to spy on us, whether in person or via an array of cameras and other electronic gadgets.
Now, the relationship is much more that of the Governed and the Governors. In this new arrangement, it is the State, in all its forms, that regards itself as the font of all our needs. It is the State that decrees not only what those needs might be but who will or will not be entitled to them. And it is the State that demands to kknow everything about us the better - according to its propaganda machine - to protect us from the 0.00001% of the population that wants to blow the rest of us up; or, at the very least , steal our identities and rip off the benefits system.
In the early days of this administration, the Press ran regular stories about our being the most surveilled country in the world. Government ministers poo-pooed the idea while secrectly, I suspect, waiting for the backlash that was certain to come from an enraged and outraged populace demanding an end to the surveillance society. It didn't happen. The famous British hatred of Government interference turned out to be a myth. Cruelty TV shows such as Big Brother, helped to feed our newly-found appetite for nosey-parkering and, no doubt, encouraged the state to extend its own use of electronic surveillance whether through CCTV cameras on every street corner or Gatsos on every dual cariageway and motorway.
Now, the government - whether local or National - makes no attempt to deny that it wants to tag and track the population at large. The idea of a national ID Card hasn't gone away, simply been put on the back-burner until the army of beaurocrats and expensive consultants enlisted to run the project can come up with a system that might actually work. Just today, another little story crept into the broadsheets about the DOT inviting tenders for the development of a vehicle tracking system that would log every car journey made within the UK. The offical line is that, at this stage, it's just an exercise to find out what sort of tracking equipment is currently available. However, there was nothing vehement or even defensive about the disclaimer.
Just like the Rumanians all those years ago, this government has discovered the virtue of letting us all know that Big Brother really is watching us.
There was, officially, no poverty or hunger. This was due less to the triumph of socialism over starvation than the fact that all of the peasants who worked the collective farms also grew their own fruit and vegetables on private 1/2 acre plots. It was the bounty from these plots - which contrasted strongly with the arid inefficiency of the huge collectives - that not only fed them but also provided some of the small extras that made life bearable.
Locals sold plums, berries and vegetables at the side of the road, at small street markets and direct from their small holdings. If they could sell to a tourist, so much the better because they could exchange the hard currency they received for up to four times the official exchange rate and that would enable them to buy proper leather shoes rather than the plastic creations that were the regulation issue to the state shoe shops. With a bit of luck, the money might also stretch to a pair of tights for their wife or daughter.
There was no homelessness because, everywhere one looked, blocks of identical, slab-sided apartments were being thrown up. Apart from their monotonous ugliness - imagine Sixties Council architecture and then brutalise it even more - what was most striking about these flats was the fact that, at one end of each storey, there was one unit that was considerably larger than all of the others. I asked our Yugoslavian tour guide if these apartments were for larger families. He laughed at the idea that any such level of human consideration had gone into their construction.
The answer was much more prosaic - and infinitely more sinister.
Our guide explained that the larger flats were for the Government informers who were installed on each floor of each block. Their job - i.e. that of the whole family - was to keep tabs on their neighbours and report any infractions, such as complaints about food shortages, to the authorities so that the miscreants coud be dealt with in the appropriate way. Sanctions included being re-housed in inferior accommodation, the loss of job or travel privileges or, in severe cases, breaking the family up and sending its members to different re-education camps scattered about the Rumanian countryside.
At first I thought it was odd that the government seemed happy for everyone to know precisely who and where the spies were in each block of flats. It was only once I thought about George Orwell's 1984 that I appreciated the sophistication of the methods that the Rumanians - in common with other Socialist Republics - employed to terrorise their citizenry into meek compliance. It was the very visibility of the spies that lent real menace to the arrangement. The knowledge that whatever you did or even thought was being monitored and reported back. I can remember the shudder which greeted this dawning of understanding. It was Big Brother made flesh.
I experienced a similar feeling of revulsion the other day when I read about an ordinary family in Poole, surely the epitomy of Middle England, who had been systematically stalked, shadowed and reported on for three weeks because some busybody in the local council thought they migh be trying to pull a fast one when it came to schooling for one of their children.
I tried to picture some minor council clerk, who years ago would have settled quite happily for totting up how many childen were eligible for free milk, spending his days in some sub-James Bond role, shadowing the family as they moved through their sinister world: from school to Tesco, to work, back to school, to piano lessons after tea, back home and finally to pick up the oldest child from pony riding lessons.
How did this fantasist feel, writing things like, "female subject and three children enter dwelling,. Lights on"? How did his, presumably, intelligent manager keep a straight face when he signed his expenses? The whole scenario sounds so farcical that the temptation is to laugh it off as yet another example of institutionalised stupidity.
But, that would be a mistake. This is much more sinister than that. It is evidence of a fundamental shift in our society. Once we were served by Public Servants whose role, at a local level, was to maintain the roads, dispose of our rubbish and ensure that the streets were kept clean and reasonably well lit. It was never a part of their remit to spy on us, whether in person or via an array of cameras and other electronic gadgets.
Now, the relationship is much more that of the Governed and the Governors. In this new arrangement, it is the State, in all its forms, that regards itself as the font of all our needs. It is the State that decrees not only what those needs might be but who will or will not be entitled to them. And it is the State that demands to kknow everything about us the better - according to its propaganda machine - to protect us from the 0.00001% of the population that wants to blow the rest of us up; or, at the very least , steal our identities and rip off the benefits system.
In the early days of this administration, the Press ran regular stories about our being the most surveilled country in the world. Government ministers poo-pooed the idea while secrectly, I suspect, waiting for the backlash that was certain to come from an enraged and outraged populace demanding an end to the surveillance society. It didn't happen. The famous British hatred of Government interference turned out to be a myth. Cruelty TV shows such as Big Brother, helped to feed our newly-found appetite for nosey-parkering and, no doubt, encouraged the state to extend its own use of electronic surveillance whether through CCTV cameras on every street corner or Gatsos on every dual cariageway and motorway.
Now, the government - whether local or National - makes no attempt to deny that it wants to tag and track the population at large. The idea of a national ID Card hasn't gone away, simply been put on the back-burner until the army of beaurocrats and expensive consultants enlisted to run the project can come up with a system that might actually work. Just today, another little story crept into the broadsheets about the DOT inviting tenders for the development of a vehicle tracking system that would log every car journey made within the UK. The offical line is that, at this stage, it's just an exercise to find out what sort of tracking equipment is currently available. However, there was nothing vehement or even defensive about the disclaimer.
Just like the Rumanians all those years ago, this government has discovered the virtue of letting us all know that Big Brother really is watching us.
Wednesday, 2 April 2008
The Humming Chorus
Despite the title of this blog it has nothing to do with Puccini or opera - unless you regard the long-running saga of the Brown administration as a soap opera in itself. Personally, I am more inclined to regard it as a cross between a Farce and a Tragedy.
The Humming Chorus refers to those old stagers on the Labour Front Bench - Straw, Harman, Brown, Browne, darling et al - who really, really know the game is up but stubbornly refuse to accept the fact. Every time they get caught in a lie or face a difficult situation,they behave like children; hugging their knees and humming loudly to shut out an awkward parent or teacher. Yesterday, for instance, a group of fairly savvy Peers with not inconsiderable experience of running companies and countries, delivered its verdict on the net effect of immigration on the UK. They did so having studied the subject in some depth for the previous six months and taken evidence from various groups, officials and academics who specialise in immigration. Their considered view was that immigration has zero beneficial effect on the economy of this country; that, indeed, for many working people it has a negative impact because it is their jobs and small businesses that the flood of cheap labour threatens. And that, contrary to the government's claims that immigrants contribute £6 billion to the economy, once the cost of housing,educating and caring for them is factored in, we are probably paying them for the privilege of their being allowed to live and work here.
Guess what. No sooner had the report been published than up popped Liam Byrne on the radio to provide the government's answer. He did so in the now time-honoured fashion of any Labour minister caught out being economical with the truth - he put his hands over his ears, refused to answer any direct questions and then repeated the self-same £6 billion claim that their Lordships had so comprehensively demolished in their report.
Little Liam was followed by Hummer Number 2; that venerable bass baritone Jack Straw, of whom it has frequently been said that no man was more appositely named. Straw was there to put the government's position on law'n'order. A stream of callers made it clear that they were both frightened and bemused by the levels of violent crime in this country. Straw's response was - you guessed it - to clamp his hands firmly over his ears and start humming a string of statistics that proved the complete opposite. It didn't matter which part of the country the caller was from, Straw had the statistics to prove that their town, parish, borough, manor, demesne or county had never been so crime-free;its citizens able to walk the streets in perfect safety, leave their front doors unlocked and their children unguarded.
That this was utter bollocks was proven most effectively next day by pictures of Harriet Harman (or should that be Harperson?) walking the streets of Peckham, accompanied by a set of beautifully diverse police officers, but still sufficiently frit to be attired in a Kevlar stab vest. This act, surprisingly enough, did not have the reassuring effect her advisers had told her it would. In fact, many Peckham residents probaly wondered where they could obtain their own police escort and stab vest so that they could stroll just as insouciantly through their native borough. Of course, once the idiocy of this stunt had been explained to the dim-witted Ms Harman - presumably by another adviser with more than just pea-soup for brains - she hurriedly did the rounds of the radio talk shows to explain her actions. When it became obvious that she had made a prat of herself and no one was going to be persuaded otherwise, she did the hand over ear thing and started humming somewhere in the register between alto and tenor.
By the end of the day,there was such a hum coming from my radio that it had started to sound more like an old crystal set than a state-of-the-art DAB digital. Fortunately, the whine disappeared altogether once the last politician had gone about their business.
The Humming Chorus refers to those old stagers on the Labour Front Bench - Straw, Harman, Brown, Browne, darling et al - who really, really know the game is up but stubbornly refuse to accept the fact. Every time they get caught in a lie or face a difficult situation,they behave like children; hugging their knees and humming loudly to shut out an awkward parent or teacher. Yesterday, for instance, a group of fairly savvy Peers with not inconsiderable experience of running companies and countries, delivered its verdict on the net effect of immigration on the UK. They did so having studied the subject in some depth for the previous six months and taken evidence from various groups, officials and academics who specialise in immigration. Their considered view was that immigration has zero beneficial effect on the economy of this country; that, indeed, for many working people it has a negative impact because it is their jobs and small businesses that the flood of cheap labour threatens. And that, contrary to the government's claims that immigrants contribute £6 billion to the economy, once the cost of housing,educating and caring for them is factored in, we are probably paying them for the privilege of their being allowed to live and work here.
Guess what. No sooner had the report been published than up popped Liam Byrne on the radio to provide the government's answer. He did so in the now time-honoured fashion of any Labour minister caught out being economical with the truth - he put his hands over his ears, refused to answer any direct questions and then repeated the self-same £6 billion claim that their Lordships had so comprehensively demolished in their report.
Little Liam was followed by Hummer Number 2; that venerable bass baritone Jack Straw, of whom it has frequently been said that no man was more appositely named. Straw was there to put the government's position on law'n'order. A stream of callers made it clear that they were both frightened and bemused by the levels of violent crime in this country. Straw's response was - you guessed it - to clamp his hands firmly over his ears and start humming a string of statistics that proved the complete opposite. It didn't matter which part of the country the caller was from, Straw had the statistics to prove that their town, parish, borough, manor, demesne or county had never been so crime-free;its citizens able to walk the streets in perfect safety, leave their front doors unlocked and their children unguarded.
That this was utter bollocks was proven most effectively next day by pictures of Harriet Harman (or should that be Harperson?) walking the streets of Peckham, accompanied by a set of beautifully diverse police officers, but still sufficiently frit to be attired in a Kevlar stab vest. This act, surprisingly enough, did not have the reassuring effect her advisers had told her it would. In fact, many Peckham residents probaly wondered where they could obtain their own police escort and stab vest so that they could stroll just as insouciantly through their native borough. Of course, once the idiocy of this stunt had been explained to the dim-witted Ms Harman - presumably by another adviser with more than just pea-soup for brains - she hurriedly did the rounds of the radio talk shows to explain her actions. When it became obvious that she had made a prat of herself and no one was going to be persuaded otherwise, she did the hand over ear thing and started humming somewhere in the register between alto and tenor.
By the end of the day,there was such a hum coming from my radio that it had started to sound more like an old crystal set than a state-of-the-art DAB digital. Fortunately, the whine disappeared altogether once the last politician had gone about their business.
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