Southport

[Mito Man]

I mean, government budgets are finite.

I’d happily scrap trident to improve services for poor people though.

Scrap Trident, then let Russia nuke us. Nice.

[ZedLeg]

If Russia wanted to nuke us, they’d nuke us. MAD is a moronic defence strategy.

[Mito Man]

Christ we've got some experts here, how about you all go work for the government and sort it all out if it's so simple?

[Beany]

An aside of levity for you lovely lot.

I think we can all agree that this is hilarious.

https://x.com/BladeoftheS/status/1820532705165193523

Screeny in case removed:

TommyLawyer.png (80.99 KiB) Viewed 2566 times

The WhatsApp messages read: “I am just letting you know that in good conscience with your instigation of riots in the UK, causing a lot of people to suffer. I can’t represent you anymore. Please provide your bank details so I can return your deposit.

“Between you and the Zionists you are destroying our country. The irony is that if I was in the streets your followers would attack me because of the colour of my skin.”

After accidentally posting the hard-hitting message, one of Robinson’s followers asked him: “Is the last picture supposed to be there.”

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/ ... ot-380445/

[dinny_g]

We can't claim to be a forward looking, modern looking, world leading country by just slapping a number on immigration numbers

Horseshit... Japan, Canada, New Zealand, Australia all have caps on immigration - defined as an actual Number.

[ZedLeg]

Christ we've got some experts here, how about you all go work for the government and sort it all out if it's so simple?

The point is that it isn’t simple and anyone who claims otherwise is lying to you.

[ZedLeg]

We can't claim to be a forward looking, modern looking, world leading country by just slapping a number on immigration numbers

Horseshit... Japan, Canada, New Zealand, Australia all have caps on immigration - defined as an actual Number.

Hard to argue that Japan and Australia are forward looking tbh.

[V8Granite]

I think Sweden has a good idea of what happens when too many come in too quickly.

I’m also amazed that it’s only young men persecuted against, on the coaches at Ramsgate I don’t think I ever remember seeing a woman on them. (Just looked and the figures are 85% male)

Australia is ramming policies down the throats to do with immigration and the Aboriginal communities. Which seem strange as even when you land it comes over the tannoy and says “we pay our respect to the elders past and present” it’s massively more left wing politically than any country I’ve ever been to. Lots of protests in Perth, Hong Kong, religious, Aboriginal, immigration etc etc.

Japan was a whole different thing, I don’t think it was racism, it felt more like any outsider was a problem.

Dave!

[ZedLeg]

They send the men ahead as they’re more likely to survive the trip. Once they’re here they’ll work to get their family here.

Makes sense, no?

[V8Granite]

Yeah they seem to forget that part in Peterborough.

Dave!

[ZedLeg]

If we had an asylum policy that didn’t rely on people traffickers so much it wouldn’t be an issue.

[V8Granite]

They forgot it at Napier barracks too, when they were leaving apparent persecution and warzones but the barracks was too inhumane and hellish ?

We had annual camp there when we went to Ypres in Belgium in 1997, it’s absolutely fine and we had a great time.

Dave!

[ZedLeg]

What’s your point here Dave?

The barracks isn’t the only place where people have complained of the conditions and having seen the quality of accommodation offered to the homeless I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some merit to the complaints.

[V8Granite]

So people fleeing these awful conditions can’t possibly stay in a barracks ? Where soldiers lived for years, where young kids stayed for annual camps?

Judge people on how they act, not what they say. If they were fleeing these awful conditions then why is 2 rows of steel beds, locker by each bed, 6 person shower block, 6 sinks, 6 cubicle toilets, large canteen and kitchen area and underfloor heating so bad ?

Hotels in Bangladesh have been ten times worse than that.

Dave!

[V8Granite]

We had lovely immigration till the mid 90s, then everywhere segregated, crime went up, tensions went up, town now cited as the worst in the country despite good job prospects, a nice historical town, big shopping centre, great train links etc.

I’m a bit butt hurt how it messed Peterborough up but I try and hide it

Dave!

(I’m bailing out now, it’s been a long day and I’m too tired)

[ZedLeg]

I don’t know Dave. I just tend to towards giving people the benefit of the doubt rather than thinking that everyone coming here is a jihadi with delusions of grandeur.

On balance, it’s easier to believe that G4 are treating these people like shit than it is that everything is fine and they’re being ungrateful.

[Beany]

We can't claim to be a forward looking, modern looking, world leading country by just slapping a number on immigration numbers

Horseshit... Japan, Canada, New Zealand, Australia all have caps on immigration - defined as an actual Number.

And Japan and Australia regularly get shit for how they run their immigration systems, internally and externally.

The Australian system has a 'hard limit' on permanent migration, but their temporary residency system is so broken after years of exactly the sort of rhetoric we see in the UK, that they want to rebuild it from scratch because it hasn't done what they claimed it would do.

Australia’s “broken” migration system encourages 1.8 million guest workers to be “permanently temporary” due to strict caps on permanent migration, a landmark review has found.

The migration review, to be released on Thursday by the home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, calls for “major reform”, warning that fixing Australia’s migration system “cannot be achieved by further tinkering and incrementalism”

....

It noted that while “successive governments” had imposed caps on permanent migration – currently 195,000 – “the temporary migrant cohort has been demand driven and has doubled in size since 2007 and now stands at 1.8 million people”.

That's from the Aus governments own report.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... view-finds

Basically, by putting a 'hard number' on permanent residents, they've just swept the problem under the carpet, and because it's a 'hard number', if it moves up, it looks very bad for governments with a firm 'look at us, we're tough on immigration' standpoint.

The number of temporary residents who are basically permanent without the rights of permanent residents proves they need to adjust the numbers of permanent migrant residents up, but to do so is politically....dangerous.

And Japan? Japan has it's own, well known, problems - there are plenty of parts of the major cities that have 'non-tourist' areas - that is if you don't appear ethically Japanese, you won't get served. Japan is notably xenophobic, even compared to the far east overall who are generally more insular on the whole. They have effectively no laws against hate speech. I mean, they have a law to confirm with UN regs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_Spee ... 16_(Japan)

But it's so poorly worded that local regional governments don't know what actually constitutes hate speech outside of extreme examples:
https://soranews24.com/2017/02/07/japan ... ation-law/

So telling someone to get out of the fucking country and go home is given as a (near comically, childlike) example, but calling someone from the indian subcontinent a p*ki day in day out - the sort of subversive, daily racism might not be - due to the wording and subjective nature of the regs.

As another example, a famous author there genuinely suggested the South African model of apartheid for foreign workers and it was published in the mainstream press (one of the top 5 conservative leaning japanese newspapers - like a japanese Daily Express) and no, I am not joking.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-JRTB-19220

“Since I learned the situation in South Africa 20 to 30 years ago, I’ve come to believe residential areas should be separated, so whites, Asians and blacks will live among themselves,” she wrote.

She then offered an anecdote about an apartment building in Johannesburg, saying that an influx of black residents after the end of apartheid caused white residents to flee.

This was ten years ago, and it caused a minor kerfuffle, but it was never retracted and I can't find any evidence of her or the paper apologising for publishing it - this is not a wildly outrageous position for conservatives in Japan.

The wiki on Racism on Japan (not a gotcha, most countries have one) is worth a read with respect to their highly insular attitude, which is part of the reason their population balance is a mess - the young are being born at a lower rate, and are leaving more often and those that don't are having fewer families, but they're also such a migrant hostile country that they don't want immigrants, hence why their socio-economics are such a mess.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/01/asia ... index.html

I know about those off the top of my head - I remember rolling my eyes at that hate speech law for example a few years ago, and I know Aussies who grumble about the shitty immigration system on a regular basis.

I'd wager if I dig into New Zealand and Canada I'd find problems with their systems too, such as obfuscation of numbers (as our press do by conflating asylum seekers, people without right to remain, and migrant workers, all the time) but I don't know that many canucks or kiwis who talk politics, and besides I think I've demonstrated well enough that 'hard caps' on immigration aren't a magical solution to anything.

Again, I tap the sign and repeat that simple answers are, more often than not, the incorrect ones for complex issues.

[MikeHunt]

Hotels in Bangladesh have been ten times worse than that.

Dave!

My cousin recently spent a week at butlins, minehead.

[dinny_g]

With respect Beany, how about you try to suggest an answer, rather than just picking holes in others.

Saying things like "The Japanese are racist too" and "the problem wouldn't have happened if we had decent immigration policies 15 years ago" is just deflection

and to tap your sign...

"Idealistic Solutions are generally unsuccessful" and "Realistic solutions are often unpalatable but generally successful"

[ZedLeg]

The thing is that it’s fine to criticise a clearly failed policy without suggesting a solution as we’re not experts.

Like it’s not nitpicking to say something’s gone wrong when we had rioters trying to burn asylum seekers to death at the weekend.