Okay, back to the recent violent disorder. Eating in a local cheap restaurant for lunch, I grabbed a copy of the Daily Mail and was pleasantly surprised at this remarkably non-hysterical piece on the recent controversy about David Starkey, the historian. But of course, if you want a reliable mix of social conservative rant and shafts of lucid insight in the same piece, there is always Peter Hitchens (brother of Christopher) on hand. In the article I link to here, I broadly agreed with some of it but as usual, there is always the equivalent of a crack in the pavement.
“Say to him [Cameron] that mass immigration should be stopped and reversed, and that those who refuse any of the huge number of jobs which are then available should be denied benefits of any kind, and he will gibber in shock.”
Interesting. So Mr Hitchens thinks that mass immigration should be “reversed”. How exactly? There is often, I find in some of the denunciations of mass immigration, an unspoken assumption, never fleshed out, as to what said denouncers want to do about it. Does Mr Hitchens think, for instance, that those who have been living in the UK for some time, and who hold UK passports, should, if they fall into the “wrong” demographic groups as he might define them, be deported? To where? How? Never mind European “human rights” legislation, how can any supposed “conservative” such as Mr Hitchens, with his famed love of “family values” and the rest, countenance a reversal of mass immigration without spelling out the details? Casually referring to “reversing” X or why without saying how is foolish, in my humble opinion.
Of course, there are tens of thousands or more people who emigrate from the UK every year in pursuit of a better life. And I suspect the recent mayhem will only add to the shift. But I get the impression that such folk are not the ones that Mr Hitchens has in mind.
He could also reverse emigration, all UK people abroad back to UK 😉
There is actually a very easy and viable way to reverse it. First, enact laws banning the Burka, closing Islamic schools that do not preach tollerance towards Jews and equality of women and gays, enforcing our laws when islamic practices break our laws, banning practicing muslims from working in any food handling industries because of the way devout muslims “clean” themselves without toilet paper, and finally forcing by law – the Koran to be edited to remove the passages instructing muslims to kill others, to rape and pillage. Finally, after all that, there should be a ONE time offer of $10,000 per family member who wishes to migrate out and renounce their UK citizenship. Those who chose not to leave, can happily and freely continue practicing islam based on the changes listed above so as to no conflict with our laws. We will happily accept all muslims who do. Problem solved.
You seem fixated with Islam, and yet I’d wager that people such as Hitchens are concerned not with that religion per se – he’s probably quite fond of its more robust attitudes – as for immigration in general.
How are you going to enforce, say, the laws about Muslims working in certain places, for example, without constant and intrusive state action? It should, of course, be up to the employers, not the government, to decide whether a person is fit and able to do a good job. You might want to realise that a lot of devout religious people might actually be very dilgent, hard-working folk, like the kind of Muslim shopkeepers who got their premises ransacked last week.
And forcibly “editing” the Koran to remove the bits that you consider nasty. Okay, well why not edit bits of the Bible that contain violent images (as it does) or other texts, secular or otherwise?
I am of course all in favour of ceasing any state funding or support for religious/non-religious organisations, full stop.
Well, you could look to Quebec for an example of a province that has gently persuaded its anglo poplulation to leave over a period of forty or fifty years.
They used a variety of laws and social pressures that cumulatively reversed the growth of the enthnic anglo population ove the previous two centuries. Places like Quebec City once had considerable minority English populations but are effectively 99% francophone now.
Certainly libertarians would find some of the methods objectionable but there was nothing ruthless or violent involved.
Holders of British passports are citizens whose tenure cannot be revoked unless there was naturalization fraud. (I assume that British law is parallel to law here in the U.S.)
I expect the same applies to persons granted permanent residency.
However, I would guess that there are in Britain a considerable number of recent immigrants who are neither naturalized citizens nor permanent residents. It would be entirely lawful for HMG to require these people to leave.
It wouls also be lawful for HMG to limit the benefits received by permanent residents, i.e. to exclude them from the dole, NHS, etc, and to revoke the residency permits of immigrants who commit crimes, and deport them.
These policies, if actually carried out, would “reverse” the immgration policy of the last generation.
One question, though, is whether a “clean sweep” would be beneficial – I have read that Britain has received many relatively desirable immigrants from eastern Europe, e.g. pretty young women from the Czech Republic.
Yes, let’s get rid of the damn immigrants, and all will be well again. Why do people never learn?
Once you’ve got rid of immigrants, you could then ethnically cleanse the population. Push gingers back west and north. This is a local place, just for locals!
Seriously, though, who has read the book, ‘Starship Troopers’? In the book, he had the ‘Service for Citizenship’ system start in Britain, after the breakdown of law and order. This might turn out to be a prophecy!
Those who think “doing something about immigration” would have prevented the riots – by which they mean some black people are the problem, so get rid of all black people – are being so stupid as scarcely to merit answer at length. For the rioters and looters of whatever genotype are overwhelmingly born, brought up, and mis-educated in Britain – and so were most of their parents. Their grandparents were people who came here expecting to work, were injected into British society at the bottom, prey to the welfare state and the trendiest of educational trends tried out on the children of the unresisting poor. This is the result not of the effect of immigration on Britain, but of Britain on immigrants.
And for those who like ggm are obsessed with their own warped summary of Islam, thinking it the same as Islamism, the same point applies. The virulent Islamists are not generally in the first generation of immigrants. They are younger; addled and coddled kids brought up in Britain, who have been taught that huge self-esteem makes up for any amount of ignorance, that the more bolshy you are the more others owe you ‘respect’.
Guy, exactly.
On the Quebec point mentioned above, well, no outright violence may have been involved, but then again, it does not make me feel particularly disposed to go there, given the narrowminded bigotry that seems to be on display. And yet Canada is often presented as this gentle, PC, right-on, country, unlike all those rednecks south of the border.
Fuck them. If I visit Canada, I’ll be in Vancouver and do some sailing.
1. Reverse immigration? Simplest option: undo the “extended family member” part of the immigration law, and make it retrospective. In other words, if an extended family member has “joined” their legal resident placeholder and has not yet received permanent resident status, deport them. Oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth that would ensue as families are ripped apart: cousins and step-brothers/-sisters forced onto the waiting airliners at bayonet-point… so that’s never going to happen, then.
2. Quebec’s Frenchy chauvinism. Went there last year, loved every minute of it, except one. Nobody was upset when The Mrs. spoke English to them (I speak fluent French so I stood back to see how they’d react).
The ONLY negative response was, surprise, surprise, when I went into the student shop on the Uni Montreal campus to buy a souvenir T-shirt. Just for the hell of it, I asked for assistance (in English) from the slacker twerp behind the counter, and was greeted with a muttered French curse about “Anglos” — whereupon I replied to him, in French, that by law, his job was to serve customers in either of the official Canadian languages, and whether he wanted me to report him to the university for his unpardonable rudeness. There was indeed a noticeable change in attitude at that point — I may have been an inspector, for all he knew.
But apart from that one incident, we had the best time in Montreal. Will be going back, you betcha. One word: poutines.
Kim du Toit:
But apart from that one incident, we had the best time in Montreal. Will be going back, you betcha. One word: poutines.
I am an Anglo in France and I try very hard to improve my vocabulary but “poutines” qu’esque ça veux dire? putines “under age postitute”?