Immigration to the UK - do you have concerns?

[littlebabyjesus]

“European” is a constructed identity for part of Eurasia. Europe and Asia are part of the same landmass. The Ancient Greeks invented the concept of “Europe”.

I did not know that there were bi-lingual signs and announcements in Provence.

By the way, are not Occitan and Provencal different names for the same language?

All identities are constructed, no? Isn't that the point. Doesn't mean they are meaningless or are not sincerely felt.

 

[Edie]

What have men got to do with it?

So the welfare dependency arguement.

On the Far right riots thread you said this:


I haven't even heard the centre right argue that here.

What is the basis for this. As to me it does not make sense.

Given you posted that a while back what is conclusion?

Let’s leave the men thing. No point.

Also there’s no conclusion. You’re a kinda funny guy for thinking that peoples views are set like that. Most people are more flexible than that aren’t they?

The argument is pretty simple. But you have to understand American culture, at least parts of it, is different from the UK. Different mindset. Much more independent. So hold that in mind. Also I don’t believe all the below I’m just your correspondent over here

Anyway… Dependence on the state is a bad thing. This is for a number of reasons but probably the most fundamental and btw the one I most relate to is that you can’t really be free from the state if you are taking handouts. You are vulnerable and dependent. It’s very key to their deep seated suspicion of Government. Freedom. Second amendment etc

Then there’s an argument around shame about taking handouts. I hear that a lot. A single Mom I know here said she’d rather go on a date and eat salad bar and bring the steak home for her kids than collect welfare. That probably sounds extreme to British ears but I can respect that. There’s a deep cultural expectation that you make your own way, you provide for yourself and your dependents.

Alongside this is an idea that if you are not contributing to society (ie working) then you are on a kind of slippery slope morally. You lose your sense of pride and self esteem, more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, more likely to not take care of your children, not take care of yourself or family or community. This is upside down from the British or socialist way of thinking so took me a while to see. For example- A lot of folk here truly believe homelessness is a blue state city problem and occurs at much lower rates in red states. I don’t know about that- may be bullshit.

When I’ve discussed the UK riots over here (most people hadn’t heard about them obviously) some of the responses I got were linked to what they perceive as a socialism problem. If British people are dependent on the state for things like healthcare then with a system that already cannot cope with demand then of course there will be riots.

Immigration is also a big topic here of course. The debate here is very polarised- there’s two Americas really. And the working class is mainly Trump.

This in garden across the road to make you laugh

 

[Serge Forward]

I get the weird American stuff but what do you think Edie?

 

[PTK]

Some of this stuff is sensible. With the arrival of the railways, standardised time was a sensible idea. Other things like standardised weights and measures are also sensible once people are moving around. These aren't necessarily peculiarly national things, of course - transnational standardisations are also sensible - but they require a unified political entity and administration of some kind to get them going.

And then sometimes nationalism can produce strange results in this regard, such as China Standard Time, which doesn't really make a lot of sense, and reflects the dominance of a particular region in China.

The changes to which you refer have come about to facilitate capitalism.

Rambling on a bit, modern sports, which are part of culture, are a product of capitalism. The of a game idea of starting and ending at a fixed time, did not exist before there were factories, I believe.

The invention of newspapers did much to weld a sense of "national" identity. The daily newspaper informs the person in Chelmsford that a dog has killed someone in Carlisle, but not of the dog killing someone in Amsterdam.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The changes to which you refer have come about to facilitate capitalism.

Rambling on a bit, modern sports, which are part of culture, are a product of capitalism. The of a game idea of starting and ending at a fixed time, did not exist before there were factories, I believe.

The invention of newspapers did much to weld a sense of "national" identity. The daily newspaper informs the person in Chelmsford that a dog has killed someone in Carlisle, but not of the dog killing someone in Amsterdam.

I think it's oversimplistic to say that this is all about capitalism. Standardisation of weights and measures stops people from being ripped off. It's a good idea for any society that is becoming increasingly interconnected through technological advances, however those advances have been brought about.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

I think it is that that states do not equal cultures. A definition of a nation, to which I subscribe, is that a nation is a group of people sharing a common language, culture, and territory,

Attempts to make reality on the ground match this idea have been behind a lot of the bloodiest, most brutal periods of history. Can't say I'm in favour.

 

[The39thStep]

Yes, members of the Kurdish nation have been campaigning for their own state, or self-determination as it is known. The case of the Kurds illustrates the difference between the concepts of state and nation.

I was on their first national demo in the UK. I used to work on a building site with two Peshmerga fighters who had fled here.

 

[mojo pixy]

A single Mom I know here said she’d rather go on a date and eat salad bar and bring the steak home for her kids than collect welfare. That probably sounds extreme to British ears but I can respect that.

So it's not OK to take a freebie from the state but it's OK to take a freebie from some bloke?

Fair play though, I didn't realise you live in the US. That definitely changes how I understand your posts wrt how your outlook might appear surprising from a UK perspective.

 

[Edie]

I get the weird American stuff but what do you think Edie?

Umm I’m not entirely sure. I kinda deep seated agree with suspicion about State. In my very long standing view the less State there is and the less it is in people’s lives the better. And aside from getting so ill I physically could not work I would never be dependent on it (and even then I wouldn’t rely on it).

I think people should take care of their own families and communities. And honestly? That seems to happen more here but I’m in rural America vs Leeds so probably can’t fairly compare. They build each others houses here which is pretty cool and home schooling is fairly common.

I think the welfare causing social problems is probably bullshit. I suspect it’s unemployment. The argument is ‘we’ll just move to where the work is’ but I don’t think that’s how humans work and you lose community. So I don’t buy that.

That socialism is part of the reasons for the riots … I don’t think so. Not really. I think it’s simply fear of the other more than competition for state resources.

What do you think Serge Forward ?

 

[MickiQ]

Who is standardised time sensible for? Why have we barely advanced from the 8 day week fought for in the c19? Time is not apolitical. It is in its own way a tool of oppression.

Lots of things including
The Internet which you use to spread your disdain of standardised time. All Internet packets have to be timestamped for a variety of technical reasons the most important ones being synchronisation and resending of lost ones. In order for this to work everyone has to use a standardised clock (GMT but it's called UTC to protect the fragile egos of Americans)
Ship and air navigation, the reason GMT was adopted as a baseline was for calculating latitude, if you knew what time it went dark in London and it went dark x mins later where you were you could work out where you actually were.
GPS has largely replaced this but standardised time is how GPS works it receives a time signal from the satellites and by comparing the differences it can calculate where it is.
Airline and train scheduling would be impossible unless everyone is working to a standardised time since it's that makes it the same time everywhere in the world, it's fine if your ticket or the clock in the airport show the local time of course.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

When I’ve discussed the UK riots over here (most people hadn’t heard about them obviously) some of the responses I got were linked to what they perceive as a socialism problem. If British people are dependent on the state for things like healthcare then with a system that already cannot cope with demand then of course there will be riots.

First, it's important to stress that the rioters were a very small group of people whose actions were overwhelmingly opposed by others. They don't represent wider concerns.

But this attitude towards 'socialised' healthcare is a very odd one. The existence of an NHS or equivalent is a plank of basic freedom - freedom from worrying about how to pay for healthcare. Millions of Americans are tied to their jobs whether they want to be or not because they need the health insurance. That's not freedom.

 

[Edie]

So it's not OK to take a freebie from the state but it's OK to take a freebie from some bloke?

Fair play though, I didn't realise you live in the US. That definitely changes how I understand your posts wrt how your outlook might appear surprising from a UK perspective.

I don’t live here. I’ve been in a long term relationship with a Kenyan guy who immigrated to America. He brings me over quite a bit. I live in Leeds.

 

[Edie]

First, it's important to stress that the rioters were a very small group of people whose actions were overwhelmingly opposed by others. They don't represent wider concerns.

But this attitude towards 'socialised' healthcare is a very odd one. The existence of an NHS or equivalent is a plank of basic freedom - freedom from worrying about how to pay for healthcare. Millions of Americans are tied to their jobs whether they want to be or not because they need the health insurance. That's not freedom.

It’s the freedom from vs freedom to argument I guess.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It’s the freedom from vs freedom to argument I guess.

Except that there's no 'freedom from' in the US. Not really. They still have to pay taxes. Odd to me at least that they would object to those taxes being put towards healthcare a bit more and, say, the military a bit less. If they ever acheive a universal healthcare system, there won't be many people advocating its abolition.

And I'm sure you know the numbers. The US spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world in per capita terms (not just a little bit more, way more), yet it has life expectancy of well under 80. It's an awful system.

 

[Edie]

Except that there's no 'freedom from' in the US. Not really. They still have to pay taxes. Odd to me at least that they would object to those taxes being put towards healthcare a bit more and, say, the military a bit less. If they ever acheive a universal healthcare system, there won't be many people advocating its abolition.

Deep deep suspicion about the damaging effects on society of universal healthcare.

That is very strange to me.

Eta: quick google shows about 12.5% of Americans on food stamps btw

 

[PTK]

Settler states had a problem when it came to “national identity”. They could not justify becoming independent from the imperial state on the basis that they had a different language and culture. This is why, I believe, people in the USA often refer to it as “the land of the free”. The basis for the existence of the USA is said to be that it adhered to particular values, rather than that it had a different culture and language from Britain.

This is, I think, why there is a concept of being “UnAmerican”. The Un-American Activities Committee of the House of Representatives was central to the anti-left persecutions of the 1940s and 1950s.

​

 

[mojo pixy]

A brief aside...

I've never really understood the US aversion to welfare tbh. Charity is bad, unless it's from a church and then it's OK. State handouts are bad but accepting a gift is fine. I guess it's to do with that attitude famously expressed by John Steinbeck that Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

An aversion to accepting that you need support, a commitment to insisting you can and will 'succeed' by yourself. And a corollary is the fetishisation of the 'self-made man'. We have that here too of course, Britain has its own 'home as castle' individualism, but in the US it's truly writ large. The pursuit of happiness, US-style, is very much an individualistic pursuit.

Anyway, this is a bit off topic so back to it.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I think this graph, plotting life expectancy next to health care expenditure, most starkly illustrates the US's failing system. It started to diverge from Reagan onwards.

It's an act of self-harm by most Americans to support it.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

A brief aside...

I've never really understood the US aversion to welfare tbh. Charity is bad, unless it's from a church and then it's OK. State handouts are bad but accepting a gift is fine. I guess it's to do with that attitude famously expressed by John Steinbeck that Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

An aversion to accepting that you need support, a commitment to insisting you can and will 'succeed' by yourself. And a corollary is the fetishisation of the 'self-made man'. We have that here too of course, Britain has its own 'home as castle' individualism, but in the US it's truly writ large. The pursuit of happiness, US-style, is very much an individualistic pursuit.

Anyway, this is a bit off topic so back to it.

When I returned here from Cuba, I had a bit of a culture shock in the first few days, feeling bombarded with 'me, me, me' propaganda wherever I looked. I hadn't realised how accustomed I had become to the 'us, us, us' propaganda that Cubans are bombarded with. I temporarily became something of a bore in saying this to people, but capitalist societies in general contain precious little that is aimed at anything other than the individual consumer. We become inured to it.

 

[Pickman's model]

Lots of things including
The Internet which you use to spread your disdain of standardised time. All Internet packets have to be timestamped for a variety of technical reasons the most important ones being synchronisation and resending of lost ones. In order for this to work everyone has to use a standardised clock (GMT but it's called UTC to protect the fragile egos of Americans)
Ship and air navigation, the reason GMT was adopted as a baseline was for calculating latitude, if you knew what time it went dark in London and it went dark x mins later where you were you could work out where you actually were.
GPS has largely replaced this but standardised time is how GPS works it receives a time signal from the satellites and by comparing the differences it can calculate where it is.
Airline and train scheduling would be impossible unless everyone is working to a standardised time since it's that makes it the same time everywhere in the world, it's fine if your ticket or the clock in the airport show the local time of course.

you don't seem to know the difference between what and who. as my auld chemistry teacher used to say, it helps if you read the question

 

[MickiQ]

The Americans objection to publicly funded healthcare has always struck me as totally bizarre tbh. Even if you strenuously object to paying for other people it will still work out cheaper for you because more people are paying into the pot.
Plus of course there is zero opportunity for the insurance company to wiggle out of paying for you despite paying them a fortune.
Public healthcare is one of those things that is both selfish and selfless at the same time.

 

[Serge Forward]

Umm I’m not entirely sure. I kinda deep seated agree with suspicion about State. In my very long standing view the less State there is and the less it is in people’s lives the better. And aside from getting so ill I physically could not work I would never be dependent on it (and even then I wouldn’t rely on it).

I think people should take care of their own families and communities. And honestly? That seems to happen more here but I’m in rural America vs Leeds so probably can’t fairly compare. They build each others houses here which is pretty cool and home schooling is fairly common.

I think the welfare causing social problems is probably bullshit. I suspect it’s unemployment. The argument is ‘we’ll just move to where the work is’ but I don’t think that’s how humans work and you lose community. So I don’t buy that.

That socialism is part of the reasons for the riots … I don’t think so. Not really. I think it’s simply fear of the other more than competition for state resources.

What do you think Serge Forward ?

I am a socialist, though I'm not a big fan of the state, including the welfare state, but in the absence if anything more revolutionary on the horizon, I'll take the welfare state over the "devil take the hindmost" system they have in many parts of the US any day. As for the riots being something to do with socialism, that just shows you've encountered some of the more ignorant Americans, of which there are a fair few.

Yes, it's nice if the community sticks together and helps each other out. Id like to see the whole society built in such a way. It's good if you have family to help too but awful if you don't. Relying only on self and family is no way to build a better world.

The riots had nothing to do with socialism and everything to do with the poisonous drip feed of anti foreigner, racist and divide and rule poison that's been fed the UK population for decades, now on turbo with social media.

 

[The39thStep]

The BMA were against the introduction of the NHS

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The BMA were against the introduction of the NHS

And it wouldn't surprise me if most US doctors were against 'socialised' healthcare. Doctors in the US are paid huge amounts of money.

However, it is important to note that the alternative to the NHS proposed by the Tories at the time was an insurance system similar to what many countries in Europe have. We would have had universal health coverage in one form or another.

 

[MickiQ]

The BMA were against the introduction of the NHS

Everyone defends their turf especially if they're doing well under the current system. I get why insurance company execs might defend the US system but not anyone else.

 

[kabbes]

A quick google shows me that there are lots of weather maps on British TV that show the whole of Ireland but only give the weather/temperature for Northern Ireland. If you live in Northern Ireland, you're much more likely to be driving down to Dublin in the afternoon than flying to Birmingham, but the weather for south of the border is not marked.

I’m similarly more likely to take the train to Paris than fly to Northern Ireland

 

[The39thStep]

I am a socialist, though I'm not a big fan of the state, including the welfare state, but in the absence if anything more revolutionary on the horizon, I'll take the welfare state over the "devil take the hindmost" system they have in many parts of the US any day. As for the riots being something to do with socialism, that just shows you've encountered some of the more ignorant Americans, of which there are a fair few.

Yes, it's nice if the community sticks together and helps each other out. Id like to see the whole society built in such a way. It's good if you have family to help too but awful if you don't. Relying only on self and family is no way to build a better world.

The riots had nothing to do with socialism and everything to do with the poisonous drip feed of anti foreigner, racist and divide and rule poison that's been fed the UK population for decades, now on turbo with social media.

America is quite contradictory isnt it, on one hand it has all sort of communitarian aspects to it , some good examples of local democracy in the middle of a ruthless capitalist economy. The side of the US that isn't often projected is the side of unionised workers with holidays and healthcare who share a labour tradition.

 

[Edie]

The BMA were against the introduction of the NHS

A lot of UK doctors have turned against the NHS even in the decade plus I’ve been practising. Abusive employer.

 

[danny la rouge]

I've even seen it suggested here by others that there is no such thing as British culture.

This is a fast moving thread with a lot of currents and open lines of investigation, and I’m aware I’m missing some, many, when I reply.

This is one I’d like to pick up on. I may be wrong, but I don’t remember anyone suggesting that “there is no such thing as British culture”. I have seen it suggested by poster A this is what poster B was saying, but in every instance poster A had read poster B incorrectly. (A and B are not particular people, they’re labels to try and avoid a confusing sentence).

I don’t think that by saying culture is heterogenous, overlapping, without uniform structure and composition, and that it doesn’t start and finish at checkpoints, I don’t think that by saying any of that one is saying it doesn’t exist. Just that it’s complicated.

So, I have seen it said (I paraphrase) “oh, here we go, ‘there’s no such thing as British culture’!”, but I haven’t seen it said “there’s no such thing as British culture”.

There is certainly no such thing as a uniform thickness monoculture cut to fit the borders. But that’s a question of establishing what culture is. It isn’t unique to these islands.

 

[MickiQ]

And it wouldn't surprise me if most US doctors were against 'socialised' healthcare. Doctors in the US are paid huge amounts of money.

However, it is important to note that the alternative to the NHS proposed by the Tories at the time was an insurance system similar to what many countries in Europe have. We would have had universal health coverage in one form or another.

And we would probably be happy with it, the key points are free or near free at point of delivery, universal access and no restrictions based on health conditions. I can't see the Americans adopting the NHS but there plenty of other models out there the Canadian system basically works like that.
Doctors are paid well because of their relative rarity due to the time and expense of training them not because of the particular makeup of the healhcare bureaucracy.