Calais: Migration and the UK Border

[Spirit Of Slade]

For fucks sake Spirit, your interests are not threatened by asylum seekers. Your interests are actively damaged now by the policies of successive governments to de-fund public services which you and me benefit from. You're ignoring the real culprits and blaming those who are even less fortunate than yourself. You're blaming the victims of this system at the behest of those in powerful positions.

I'm not ignoring the real culprits. I've posted a number of times on this thread who I blame.

It's simplistic to argue that denying someone a visa to this country is somehow blaming them for the situation that they are in.

 

[Spirit Of Slade]

Well, ok I suppose there is that with WW1.

And yes you'll find the vast majority on this board were firmly against the war in Iraq at the time, and since.

But that war happened, as has the aftermath, and those who're trying to escape from it (and similar situations) deserve our assistance as part of an international undertaking to assist refugees fleeing such situations.

Who is "our" ?

Why can't the people who benefited from the Iraqi war put the refugees up? They might as fucking well because they are the biggest benefactors from those people coming here in the first place.

Turn Buck Palace into a refugee centre and leave normal folk out of it to live their lives.

 

[Orang Utan]

Who is "our" ?

Why can't the people who benefited from the Iraqi war put the refugees up? They might as fucking well because they are the biggest benefactors from those people coming here in the first place.

Turn Buck Palace into a refugee centre and leave normal folk out of it to live their lives.

"We" benefited. We have a duty.

 

[Spirit Of Slade]

"We" benefited. We have a duty.

No "We" absolutely did not.

 

[free spirit]

Who is "our" ?

Why can't the people who benefited from the Iraqi war put the refugees up? They might as fucking well because they are the biggest benefactors from those people coming here in the first place.

Turn Buck Palace into a refugee centre and leave normal folk out of it to live their lives.

well ok yes come the revolution etc

No problem at all with the idea of requisitioning all the 2nd homes and empty homes in the country.

 

[ViolentPanda]

So they would have come through multiple countries, many of which they could have claimed asylum at.

Bullshit. They could just have easily come on a boat from Lebanon or Turkey (both countries that are already brimful of Syrian refugees), so "would" is a value judgement on your part, based on your own preconceptions about refugees.

Therefore, they are asylum seekers at the first country, but cease to be so at the second, in which they would be economic migrants if they get anywhere near the UK.

Depending on whether your initial bollocks is accurate in the first place.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I'm white. I keep getting followed around by a middle eastern security guard every time I visit a shop.

Just coincidence, I expect.

It's probably more to do with you probably radiating an aura of "I'm an untrustworthy cunt", to be fair.

 

[Spirit Of Slade]

Bullshit. They could just have easily come on a boat from Lebanon or Turkey (both countries that are already brimful of Syrian refugees), so "would" is a value judgement on your part, based on your own preconceptions about refugees.


Depending on whether your initial bollocks is accurate in the first place.

Lebanon you might be able to argue isn't safe. Turkey is a safe country.

So let's talk about Syrians on a boat from Lebanon. On a boat to where? If you are talking about the UK, we aren't talking about the refugees in the UK, we are talking about Calais in France, remember!

 

[Spirit Of Slade]

It's probably more to do with you probably radiating an aura of "I'm an untrustworthy cunt", to be fair.

Your post says more about you than me.

 

[ViolentPanda]

That's human nature isn't it?

We're never interested in what unites us...it's that 1% that we disagree on that we get badly distracted by.

There's no such thing as "human nature", just a load of naturalised assumptions that vary from person to person, and that the powerful use to justify their actions.

 

[William of Walworth]

Your post says more about you than me.

Deeply similar in wording to other posts we've had on here

 

[hot air baboon]

Syrians entering Lebanon face new restrictions

5 January 2015

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-30657003


The figures are astonishing. There are some 1.1 million officially registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon, perhaps another half a million Syrians who are not registered.

So at least one in five people living in this tiny, fragile country is a Syrian. It's as if 15 million refugees arrived in Britain.

In Lebanon, rents are up, wages are down, and refugee families are living 10 or 15 people to a room, or in makeshift camps in the mud and snow.

Resentment against Syrians is increasing. Some towns and villages have imposed curfews on the new arrivals, enforced by vigilante groups. Above all, many Lebanese fear the country's religious and sectarian balance is being altered in a way that will eventually trigger a renewed civil war here.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Your post says more about you than me.

If you say so.
The difference between us is that I make no bones about being a cunt, whereas you try to dress up your prejudice as economic rationality.

 

[ddraig]

Deeply similar in wording to other posts we've had on here

c'mon, out with it william!

 

[William of Walworth]

ddraig : I can't actually guess right now as it goes, but all the same I'd be a tad surprised if S of S hadn't also been somebody else on here prior to this.

 

[ViolentPanda]

You're the one who wants to stop foreign aid and close the borders. The mark of a fearful racist who doesn't want to help anyone but their own.

The hilarious thing being that our international aid budget per annum brings in a net profit in trade, most often in the engineering and civil engineering sectors. This isn't difficult stuff to find out, if you're prepared to scrutinise investment cross-referenced to export credit guarantees from nation-states given international aid. I'm pretty sure Paul Foot wrote a decent "exposé" on this in the early noughties, when Iain Dunked-in Shit as leader of the Tory Party was having a whine about aid.

 

[ViolentPanda]

We have loads of money. We're one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We also have the privilege of a considerable amount of freedom. We have the ability and duty to look after those whose countries are fucked up, as a consequence of our own wealth and freedoms.

Yup.
What we don't have is an equitable and progressive taxation system, or a political class with the will to instigate taxation policies outside of the ambit of neoliberal economics, so we're left with the cheese-paring of "austerity", which demands that ordinary people pay off the debts incurred by the political class and their capitalist friends - capitalist friends who've been given some of the most pro-business tax policies this side of Brown 2002 by the coalition.

 

[ViolentPanda]

SpookyFrank thanks very much for your insights and the work you are doing, bearing witness to some brutal realities.

Spirit Of Slade the UK working class share the same enemies facing migrants at Calais. The only difference, on a comparative basis, is that its easier to disregard the outsider, the other, to deny more of their basic rights in a systemic, institutional way. These are people, not just collateral of the global neoliberal set-up or statistics of displacement from war zones.

The startlingly-horrible truth being that some economists who don't rely on capitalist institutions for their living have been saying for decades that the UK and most of Northern Europe (and the US of A too) face a demographic time-bomb whereby immigration is necessary in order to pay for an ageing "native" population. We're not just talking skilled/professional immigrants, here, we're talking artisans and manual workers too, and this is irrespective of achieving full employment of the "native" population. The down-force on the argument, that causes the most friction between "native" and immigrant, being that immigrant labour is easier to exploit, and that this forces down pay and conditions for natives in such a way that taking employment sometimes doesn't pay.
Railing against immigrants and immigration does capitalism's job for it, in terms of suppression of pay and conditions. It just feeds the beast.

We ain't broke, we're unequal. On both sides of the Channel. Stop mining this barren seam.

He can't help it. It's the logical end-point of his poorly-constructed arguments.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Jesus titting Christ

This is definitely more of a "Jesus arsefucking Christ" situation, in my opinion.

 

[ViolentPanda]

No we don't. If we nationalised the banks, put the printing of money under government control and away from private banking then the government could actually make so much money, we wouldn't need to tax many people for anything.

But the private bankers won't like that - they'll use whatever means at their disposal to destabalize the country.

You don't understand basic economics. You can't "make" money. Germany found that out big-time in the 1920s and 1930s. If you "make money", you inflate the value and price of goods, and devalue the purchasing power of each unit of currency.

 

[ViolentPanda]

If WW1 didn't happen, then Hitler would not have risen to power.

So, economically-ignorant, and historically-ignorant.
Given Bismarckian political rhetoric and policy, there would always have been a conflict involving Germany, the Habsburg Empire, the Russian empire, the British empire and France.
Given the sheer volume of Volkisch nationalist parties and individuals in Germany from Bismarck-onward, then a Germany defeated in that conflict, and a Germany which had democracy imposed on it, would have produced something akin to Hitler's NSDAP anyway. The only thing that might have differed with Hitler out of the equation, would have been whether the Slavs in the Greater Reich (i.e. the ethnic German territories in Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Poland etc) were targeted, rather than the Jews. How do we know this? Because of the composition of so many of the Volkisch nationalist parties, which were top-heavy with anti-Slav ethnic Germans.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Lebanon you might be able to argue isn't safe. Turkey is a safe country.

Yes, it's very safe for minority-sect Muslims and relict Christians to take safe haven in Turkey, or for Kurds of any faith.

So let's talk about Syrians on a boat from Lebanon. On a boat to where? If you are talking about the UK, we aren't talking about the refugees in the UK, we are talking about Calais in France, remember!

And you constructed your Calais narrative around a premise to do with aeroplanes and "first safe countries".

 

[Spirit Of Slade]

You don't understand basic economics. You can't "make" money. Germany found that out big-time in the 1920s and 1930s. If you "make money", you inflate the value and price of goods, and devalue the purchasing power of each unit of currency.

That's if too much money is printed, therefore taking away it's value.

 

[Spirit Of Slade]

Yes, it's very safe for minority-sect Muslims and relict Christians to take safe haven in Turkey, or for Kurds of any faith.



And you constructed your Calais narrative around a premise to do with aeroplanes and "first safe countries".

Turkey is supposed to be secular, however it if it how you describe it, then I'm sure you'll run a tireless campaign to exclude them from the EU.

Anyway....none of this detracts from my point that France itself is a safe country as is may other countries in Europe.

 

[Spirit Of Slade]

The startlingly-horrible truth being that some economists who don't rely on capitalist institutions for their living have been saying for decades that the UK and most of Northern Europe (and the US of A too) face a demographic time-bomb whereby immigration is necessary in order to pay for an ageing "native" population. We're not just talking skilled/professional immigrants, here, we're talking artisans and manual workers too, and this is irrespective of achieving full employment of the "native" population. The down-force on the argument, that causes the most friction between "native" and immigrant, being that immigrant labour is easier to exploit, and that this forces down pay and conditions for natives in such a way that taking employment sometimes doesn't pay.
Railing against immigrants and immigration does capitalism's job for it, in terms of suppression of pay and conditions. It just feeds the beast.

He can't help it. It's the logical end-point of his poorly-constructed arguments.

Who pays for the aging immigrants pensions? More immigrants? If immigrants aren't in their countries, who is paying for the pensions in Poland for example?

Sounds to me that you have got your priorities wrong.

Cancel trident. Cancel foreign aid. Cancel the expensive wars. Pull of out the expensive EU and close the borders.

Put more money into the state pension pots. Encourage individuals to put more into private pensions.

And then when it's all sorted, invade Argentina.

 

[ddraig]

who is paying for the english pensioners in the Med?

 

[DotCommunist]

Turkey hasn't been secular for a while now. Politically. Socially, it hasn't been secular for even longer. Centuries longer.

 

[Spirit Of Slade]

who is paying for the english pensioners in the Med?

Why don't you ask them?

They'll either reply "I've paid into the system all my life...so...." or they'll say it's a private pension job.

Besides, most of them would have been in employment all of their lives paying into the British system. While I'd rather they stayed in the UK supporting the UK economy, rather than Spain's.

Either way, immigrants or YOUNGER people paying for pensions of the older, clearly isn't the answer...it's like trying to fill a bath without a plug in the plug hole.

 

[ddraig]

good god! you really don't know how it works do you

 

[Spirit Of Slade]

good god! you really don't know how it works do you

They've retired ddraig. It doesn't matter where they reside, their pensions would still need paying if they were residing in the UK.