[Politics] Protests/rioting in lots of places

[Since1982]

Kier Starmer is to blame for this. His speech was so badly judged. No recognition at all of the reasonable worries a lot of people have, just an attack on their right to protest. Seems more bothered about defending the perpetrators than our children.

Absolutely. Cant we just deport those rioters? The country would be a better place for it

I think we might have found a use for that Rwanda deportation scheme. Kick out the feral rioters and create opportunities for asylum seekers

 

[WATFORD zero]

The idea that you can educate the working class into being pro mass immigration is so laughably absurd and arrogant that I can't really think of a appropriate way to respond to it. It's certainly indicative of the attitude from the liberal middle class that has led us to this point.

Immigration policy and the endless supply of cheap labour it has provided has allowed successive governments to essentially abandon large sections of the (mostly) white working class. If you sat all these oafs down in a classroom and educated them on the consequences that mass immigration has had on their lives then most of them would probably be further entrenched in their views.

Attacking hotels and looting is deeply wrong. Those responsible should see the inside of a cell for a few years. Some of them are undoubtedly acting out of bigotry. But they are not wrong to want less immigration. It simply isn't in their own interests, no matter how much those who have economically benefited from it tell them otherwise.

But by cutting immigration, you'll be getting less taxes and meaning less services and money in the exchequer but that will definitely improve the lot of the (mostly) white working class.

Less qualified Doctors and Nurses in the NHS, Care Homes not being able to look after the elderly relatives of the (mostly) white working class, less services, less BENEFITS, less taxpayers to pay the state pensions of the rapidly aging population, infrastructure falling apart further, no housing being built

Certainly the way ahead

But all the time the (mostly) white working class believe there is a simple answer and aren't prepared to actually sit down, discuss and acknowledge that it's a complex situation that requires a bit of thought and keep listening to loud shouty grifters, they'll continue to be f*** over

From a (mostly) white working class poster

 

[Chicken Run]

Blaming people who have turned up in a dingy with f*** all for your ills is totally illogical.

My advice would be to try and meet some of these people and listen to their stories. It will be eye opening and unless you have a heart of stone you will want to help them.

I’m not blaming them

 

[amexer]

Immigration lke Covid should have been, should be non political and all parties getting together about how it should be dealt with. Instead like Labour did for years Tories will criticise everything.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

To be honest, I'm not fussed what it is called as long as it attracts heavy penalties. Years inside nasty crowded prisons. These would be entirely self-inflicted sentences.

I saw something yesterday that the setting fire to the asylum seeker hotel could theoretically lead to a charge which could bring a life sentence. I hope it does, but I guess it’s complicated!

 

[BadFish]

I’m not blaming them

My apologies, you were suggesting what the protesters might feel.

I misread your post as your own opinions after reading the importance of your personal experiences in your previous post.

So to clarify, did you lose your job and comfortable lifestyle to a immigrant when in your 50s?

 

[WATFORD zero]

I don’t think the issue is as binary as that, i think there is a big difference in their eyes between the medical professionals from overseas etc than the large amount of lone male refugees holed up in hotels and hostels across the country

Yes the difference between them in 2023, was 63,000 asylum immigrants compared to 1.2 Million immigrants on visas. And that's all asylum immigrants not just the 'large amount of lone male refugees holed up in hotels and hostels across the country'

*edit*
Sorry, just seen your reply

I’m not blaming them

Obviously the facepalm was for those that thought that, not you. And, as you have helpfully pointed out only 17% are males between 29 and 35, so the asylum number they are worried about is actually 10,700 against 1.2 Million Immigrants who arrived on visas

As a simple three word lie designed to appeal to a certain demographic 'Stop the boats' has worked rather well as a complete smokescreen to what's actually been happening to the majority of Britain, and not for the first time. Don't you think ?

 

[Baldseagull]

The idea that you can educate the working class into being pro mass immigration is so laughably absurd and arrogant that I can't really think of a appropriate way to respond to it. It's certainly indicative of the attitude from the liberal middle class that has led us to this point.

Immigration policy and the endless supply of cheap labour it has provided has allowed successive governments to essentially abandon large sections of the (mostly) white working class. If you sat all these oafs down in a classroom and educated them on the consequences that mass immigration has had on their lives then most of them would probably be further entrenched in their views.

Attacking hotels and looting is deeply wrong. Those responsible should see the inside of a cell for a few years. Some of them are undoubtedly acting out of bigotry. But they are not wrong to want less immigration. It simply isn't in their own interests, no matter how much those who have economically benefited from it tell them otherwise.

It isn't immigration, and it certainly isnt refugees that's making their lives shit, it's like blaming the rain for a damp patch on your bedroom ceiling, it's the f***ing roof that needs fixing, if we don't get any rain, the garden doesn't grow.
I understand there are some cultural problems, and in some places Muslim people don't mix well, but I can't blame them if they live around people like these rioters. I get that if an area becomes a Muslim dominant area, you might lose the local pub, the types of shops around you might change, and if its the town you grew up in it might be uncomfortable for you, but it isn't refugees in hostels that have done that, it's people that make migrants feel unsafe in a white majority area, as much as anything else.
Please don't stop thinking about this and think you already know what the problem is and how to fix it, it isn't so simple.
More of the problem is corporations that bung millions in donations to Political parties, to ensure they don't pay hundreds of millions in tax, or pay their CEO millions of pounds, and their workers the bare minimum, having staff on full time hours that the state still needs to provide benefits for, because their wage isn't enough to live on.
Tories have done this, all of it, the country finally shifts them out, and that's when it kicks off?
I am not middle class, I have had competition for work through immigration, but I have also worked abroad. My kids struggle with rents and to be able to put a deposit together for a mortgage, my family isn't living in the lap of luxury, and life is expensive, but it isn't the refugees, its the system as operated by the Tories since the financial crash, and before that the bankers that caused the crash, and before that, the governments that deregulated banking so they could take big risks, and the tax avoidance of big corporations and wealthy individuals.

 

[BadFish]

Immigration lke Covid should have been, should be non political and all parties getting together about how it should be dealt with. Instead like Labour did for years Tories will criticise everything.

The first step would be to change the language around it. Immigration is not something that needs to be 'dealt with' as we have some how been persuaded. Not having a go at you BTW but somewhere along the line immigration HAS become something that needs to be dealt with.

Immigration is a fact of life, people come and go. I did.

It should be purely a numbers games, how many does the UK need and how many can it support? If these numbers don't tally then what can be done to make it work.

We also need to change the discussion from being about what colour or religion immigrants are and how they have arrived. (I still cannot fathom how people can see a bloke turning up with nothing on a lilo as so much worse than a bloke turning up at an airport).

I remember reading how low down the elecoratea list of priories immigration was before the campaign for Brexit started. It suggests that it is an issue that was deliberately stoked up for the refurendum.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I saw something yesterday that the setting fire to the asylum seeker hotel could theoretically lead to a charge which could bring a life sentence. I hop it does, but I guess it’s complicated!

The one piece of good news from all of this sorry situation is that the PM is the former Head of the CPS and former Director of Public Prosecutions....if anyone has the knowledge and ability to bring this about it will be him.

I hope the book is thrown at anyone involved with this.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

I appreciate you making that point. I think how much we identify with something depends on how much we are at ease with it. For me it less of a logical decision than it is an emotive one. As I've grown older I've identified more as being of Sussex than England. I have a mini Sussex flag that sits proudly on my desk. All very interesting because I am a Surrey immigrant.

In many ways it answers a wider question about those who are labelled as unpatriotic. There is no such thing except within the identity a person creates, and no requirement. It is voluntary, although often inherited.

I'm happy living in England, there is much about the English way that I like. Some of the old fashioned values and many of the good traditions. But these also exist in many other cultures too. It's not important to me. It could be that I am getting older and caring less, but I also suspect that the feeling that for a period of a good few years now the English identity thing has been pushed and often by the wrong people. This makes me resistant to it. I was happy as things were. But, again, you are probably right about these idiots. It has been going on for quite a while now. Why don't I like the St George Cross ? Why does it make me feel reluctant and, at times, hostile ? It's not because I don't like England, but because rather than being a symbol of peace and English comfort, and good tradition, it seems (in my subjective eyes) to have become a symbol of imagined supremacy and, if not that, nationalistic and racist tendencies. So it may be that it is not England I am hostile to, but some of those who claim to be her keepers.

Of course, others will say this is wrong and they see it differently. No-one is wrong there. It's about image. And at this time England has a negative one for me. But there is still much I hold dear about it. My afternoon in deep Sussex countryside watching cricket today felt very English. The nice English.

Particularly agree about the St George’s flag bit and what it symbolises.

When Farage asks questions like “what has happened to my beautiful country?”, for me the obvious people is “you and people like you”.

 

[Baldseagull]

Good post, Like most things in life unless it affects you directly you will struggle to see what all the fuss is about.

Lose your job and comfortable life style at 50 because the company you used to work for is now employing cheaper foreign labour and you personally can no longer make the mortgage payments is one still going to be pro immigration?

It's easy to blame the bloke that got your job, but it wasn't him that sacked you. Start looking up instead of down.

 

[BadFish]

It isn't immigration, and it certainly isnt refugees that's making their lives shit, it's like blaming the rain for a damp patch on your bedroom ceiling, it's the f***ing roof that needs fixing, if we don't get any rain, the garden doesn't grow.
I understand there are some cultural problems, and in some places Muslim people don't mix well, but I can't blame them if they live around people like these rioters. I get that if an area becomes a Muslim dominant area, you might lose the local pub, the types of shops around you might change, and if its the town you grew up in it might be uncomfortable for you, but it isn't refugees in hostels that have done that, it's people that make migrants feel unsafe in a white majority area, as much as anything else.
Please don't stop thinking about this and think you already know what the problem is and how to fix it, it isn't so simple.
More of the problem is corporations that bung millions in donations to Political parties, to ensure they don't pay hundreds of millions in tax, or pay their CEO millions of pounds, and their workers the bare minimum, having staff on full time hours that the state still needs to provide benefits for, because their wage isn't enough to live on.
Tories have done this, all of it, the country finally shifts them out, and that's when it kicks off?
I am not middle class, I have had competition for work through immigration, but I have also worked abroad. My kids struggle with rents and to be able to put a deposit together for a mortgage, my family isn't living in the lap of luxury, and life is expensive, but it isn't the refugees, its the system as operated by the Tories since the financial crash, and before that the bankers that caused the crash, and before that, the governments that deregulated banking so they could take big risks, and the tax avoidance of big corporations and wealthy individuals.

You should read/listen to The People that Broke Britain by James O'Brien. It outlines how Britain got here and who was responsible.

 

[Jim in the West]

I met a lone male who was here in Australia, he spent his families saving on a boat journey from Indonesia. They would only afford to send one person.

The plan was that once he gain asylum and safety he could then bring his wife and kids over.

Our heartless governments stuck him in a detention centre for 6 years. How he held on to his mental health I will never know. By the time he got out and was given refugee status his family had been shifted from refugee camp to refugee camp and he couldn't find them.

When I met him he was delighted to have been given refugee status so he could work and save enough money to try and find his family.

It absolute beggars belief that somehow people have been persuade that people like this fella are some sort of threat.

I agree - incredible. But that’s what happens when politicians and newspapers (mainly) demonise immigrants.
They highlight the “lone male” without thinking about the unbelievable courage, strength and endurance it takes to get to the UK from places like Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Also, the levels of sexual violence mean it is just far too dangerous for most women to attempt such journeys.
I would also add that in my own experience of speaking to Afghan asylum seekers, there’s also the issue that when the Taliban target a village, the women are killed or maimed. Men are more likely to be able to escape.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

The one piece of good news from all of this sorry situation is that the PM is the former Head of the CPS and former Director of Public Prosecutions....if anyone has the knowledge and ability to bring this about it will be him.

I hope the book is thrown at anyone involved with this.

I believe he was actually head of the CPS during the last lot of major riots, so he’s very much “been there, done that, got the t-shirt.!”

 

[jcdenton08]

There’s numerous issues at play here. Please read the whole post and don’t cherry pick the bits you don’t like, if you’re going to reply. This post is being made as a whole with each paragraph relating to the previous one.

There are the very real concerns residents of some towns have about very large numbers of asylum seekers and illegal refugees arriving in their towns. Families in some areas who have lived their whole lives for generations have seen crime rates rise, property prices fall and cultural change which - let’s face - isn’t always for the better. For example, many Muslim men who have arrived from countries where women and girls are second class citizens don’t just turn up on British shores and immediately adapt to our cultural values, after a lifetime of very different behaviour.

Examples of this include the repeated and ongoing criminal cases against predominantly Muslim immigrants who have targeted, groomed, drugged and raped underage white girls. These are uncomfortable truths.

Of course, despite the above, reports estimate 85-92% of perpetrators of such crime are white.

Then, quite separate to the above points, there are right-wing openly racist thugs who are taking the opportunity to behave like louts - looting, assaulting innocent legal migrants, and generally acting like fascist scum.

The problem is, and we’ve seen it in this thread and will forevermore, most people aren’t wired in the brain to see nuance on such an emotionally charged subject.

Liberals and anti-fascists will ignore people with legitimate concerns and grievances - people who aren’t smashing up mosques, setting fire to police cars and looting Sports Direct. But they all get swept in together as “Nazis”.

Then the actual Nazis become emboldened and commit the crimes we are seeing. There are absolutely no winners here.

Government needs to punish rioters in the strictest possible terms, and actually listen to normal working people’s concerns.

 

[Chicken Run]

Yes the difference between them in 2023, was 63,000 asylum immigrants compared to 1.2 Million immigrants on visas. And that's all asylum immigrants not just the 'large amount of lone male refugees holed up in hotels and hostels across the country'

*edit*
Sorry, just seen your reply



Obviously the facepalm was for those that thought that, not you. And, as you have helpfully pointed out only 17% are males between 29 and 35, so the asylum number they are worried about is actually 10,700 against 1.2 Million Immigrants who arrived on visas

Cheers for that Sherlock

 

[WATFORD zero]

There’s numerous issues at play here. Please read the whole post and don’t cherry pick the bits you don’t like, if you’re going to reply. This post is being made as a whole with each paragraph relating to the previous one.

There are the very real concerns residents of some towns have about very large numbers of asylum seekers and illegal refugees arriving in their towns. Families in some areas who have lived their whole lives for generations have seen crime rates rise, property prices fall and cultural change which - let’s face - isn’t always for the better. For example, many Muslim men who have arrived from countries where women and girls are second class citizens don’t just turn up on British shores and immediately adapt to our cultural values, after a lifetime of very different behaviour.

Examples of this include the repeated and ongoing criminal cases against predominantly Muslim immigrants who have targeted, groomed, drugged and raped underage white girls. These are uncomfortable truths.

Of course, despite the above, reports estimate 85-92% of perpetrators of such crime are white.

Then, quite separate to the above points, there are right-wing openly racist thugs who are taking the opportunity to behave like louts - looting, assaulting innocent legal migrants, and generally acting like fascist scum.

The problem is, and we’ve seen it in this thread and will forevermore, most people aren’t wired in the brain to see nuance on such an emotionally charged subject.

Liberals and anti-fascists will ignore people with legitimate concerns and grievances - people who aren’t smashing up mosques, setting fire to police cars and looting Sports Direct. But they all get swept in together as “Nazis”.

Then the actual Nazis become emboldened and commit the crimes we are seeing. There are absolutely no winners here.

Government needs to punish rioters in the strictest possible terms, and actually listen to normal working people’s concerns.

Just for clarity, this post is definitely only about the 63,000 asylum immigrants and not the 1.2 Million who arrived on Government issued visas last year ? Thanks

 

[Baldseagull]

I saw something yesterday that the setting fire to the asylum seeker hotel could theoretically lead to a charge which could bring a life sentence. I hop it does, but I guess it’s complicated!

Arson with the intent to endanger life can get a life sentence I think. Hard to argue there was no intent to endanger life when you know people are inside, and it's the people inside that are the reason you are burning the building.

 

[BadFish]

There’s numerous issues at play here. Please read the whole post and don’t cherry pick the bits you don’t like, if you’re going to reply. This post is being made as a whole with each paragraph relating to the previous one.

There are the very real concerns residents of some towns have about very large numbers of asylum seekers and illegal refugees arriving in their towns. Families who have lived their whole lives for generations have seen crime rates rise, property prices fall and cultural change which - let’s face - isn’t always for the better. For example, many Muslim men who have arrived from countries where women are second class citizens don’t just turn up on British shores and immediately adapt to our cultural values, after a lifetime of very different behaviour.

Examples of this include the repeated and ongoing criminal cases against predominantly Muslim immigrants who have targeted, groomed, drugged and raped underage white girls. These are uncomfortable truths.

Of course, despite the above, reports estimate 85-92% of perpetrators of such crime are white.

Then, quite separate to the above points, there are right-wing openly racist thugs who are taking the opportunity to behave like louts - looting, assaulting innocent legal migrants, and generally acting like fascist scum.

The problem is, and we’ve seen it in this thread and will forevermore, most people aren’t wired in the brain to see nuance on such an emotionally charged subject.

Liberals and anti-fascists will ignore people with legitimate concerns and grievances - people who aren’t smashing up mosques, setting fire to police cars and looting Sports Direct. But they all get swept in together as “Nazis”.

Then the actual Nazis become emboldened and commit the crimes we are seeing. There are absolutely no winners here.

Government needs to punish rioters in the strictest possible terms, and actually listen to normal working people’s concerns.

I didn't read it all so will only respond to the bit I have read.

Your first paragraph makes a number of claims about asylum seekers, house prices and crime rates. None of these claims are substantiated with evidence and your towns are not named.

You may have made some great points in your subsequent paragraphs but as I am unable to corroborate them with the facts you are basing them on they are not worth much.

Provide the links to the case study your points are made about and I am in.

Yoy have also made an error in mentioning 'illegal refugees' which is incorrect because if you have been given refugee status then you are allowed in the country so, by definition, you cannot be illegal.