tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5524682876220396502.post3364251171323566002..comments2024-03-27T06:56:10.255+00:00Comments on Broad Oak Magazine: PlantationUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5524682876220396502.post-83654579296735772692009-10-25T19:42:41.566+00:002009-10-25T19:42:41.566+00:00Thank you for your detailed comments, Blissex. It&...Thank you for your detailed comments, Blissex. It's outrageous that a democratic government will so grossly exceed its brief, not only in this but in the EU project. It's being messed up from the top down.Sackersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09410040031410954403noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5524682876220396502.post-51713468733809424202009-10-25T19:24:11.689+00:002009-10-25T19:24:11.689+00:00Oops the previous post was me again. Also wanted t...Oops the previous post was me again. Also wanted to expostulate a bit more:<br /><br />"<i>New Labour's policy was probably as motivated by a secret desire to increase multiculturalism</i>"<br /><br />Unless the plan is long term, and the idea is that all those immigrants will have children that will have voting rights, and will tend to vote Labour, thus recreating a Labour voting base in England (which previously consisted mostly of the descendants of the previous waves of celtic fringe "immigrants") where Labour voting had become almost only limited to the North and the celtic fringe.<br /><br />But that is a long term plan, and I wonder whether long term is part of the New Labour mindset.<br /><br />Thatcher did plan for long term Tory success by fostering home, car and stock ownership, and she was wildly successful (Tories now are arguably a majority of Labor's voters and politicians...), but a different mindset.Blissexnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5524682876220396502.post-17278587293889038402009-10-25T19:22:01.179+00:002009-10-25T19:22:01.179+00:00«"RDS Occasional Paper no. 67", "Mi...«<i>"RDS Occasional Paper no. 67", "Migration: an economic and social analysis" focused heavily on the labour market case.<br /><br />But the earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural.</i>»<br /><br />That a poll-driven government decides to deliberately alter the social and cultural composition of the country without any voter demanding that, and worrying that many are hostile, sounds ludicrous to me.<br /><br />Some ministers have instead stated quite clearly that mass immigration, especially from the poorer countries of the EU, and from even poorer ones outside the EU, was motivated by a desire to drive down the wages of low end workers, and some ministers said that applied in particular to NHS wages (low ones: the compensation of NHS professionals has been protected and increased), but also those of workers typically employed by the aspirational middle classes, as alluded to here:<br /><br />«<i>The results in London, and especially for middle-class Londoners, have been highly positive. It's not simply a question of foreign nannies, cleaners and gardeners</i>»<br /><br />Fostering mass immigration to the UK and in particular to South East England seems to have been motivated by the shift in Labour's core base from low wage factory workers in the North and Scotland to the affluent English aspirational middle classes (the fans of Waitrose and M&S) like the author; the people who want to moderate low end wages, because they contribute to the costs they pay (for cleaners and nannies, but also for the NHS and council services), but also want steadily increasing capital gains on their assets thanks to increasing population and in particular in renters and first time buyers.<br /><br />The dream of the median "aspirational" voter seems to become a proper squire of the manor, in a rapidly appreciating large home in a classy neigbourhood, with easily found, cheap nannies and gardeners and other hired help freeing him or her to manage a rapid career in a cool professional job, or a comfortable retirement with low taxes thanks to low council and NHS wage costs.<br /><br />New Labour strategists realize that, and to a very large extent the New Labour policies, from ASBOs to mass immigration from poor countries, seem to have been designed to appeal to or satisfy the interests of middle aged or pensioned, richer middle class voters, by importing lots of non voting, young, low paid outsiders to drive down their service costs ("good help is hard to find nowadays") and up the cost of accomodation.<br /><br />By radically altering the bargaining powers of younger, foreign, non-voting, assetless workers and those of older, native, voting, asset rich rentiers (which includes the owners of a secure, well paid government or council sinecure) the goal of New Labour policy has been a massive income redistribution upwards (while admittely keeping the poorest happy with income tax credits).<br /><br />This is a traditional English solution, previous solutions involved poor scots and irish to move to England working hard for low wages and paying high rents, to the benefit of the insider classes of professionals, businesses and rentiers.<br /><br />New Labour's policy was probably as motivated by a secret desire to increase multiculturalism as that of past whig and tory governments to increase the celtic character of England by attracting lots of poor scots, irish and welsh.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5524682876220396502.post-52935001063779955422009-10-25T14:03:15.175+00:002009-10-25T14:03:15.175+00:00This post leaves me astonished at as it seems to m...This post leaves me astonished at as it seems to me pure spin with an amazing level of obfuscation and misrepresentation...<br /><br />The principal issue is that it discusses as "immigration" two very, very different things:<br /><br />* «<i>My family's east European former nannies, for example, are model migrants,</i>» may be migrants, but in the same sense that a glaswegian moving to London is: for if they come from an EU country, they are just exercising their rights as citizens of the EU to work in any part of th EU that they choose. A right that UK people have too, and indeed many go live and work in Spain or France or other EU countries, as citizens of the EU. There is no questions of limiting or not immigration from EU countries, because there is none (with a few exceptions of EU countries that have not yet fully joined the single labour market), and in any case the single labour market is a treaty right, in the same way as the right of any UK citizen to move within the UK and indeed the whole EU.<br /><br />* «<i>Even now, most graduates with good English and a salary of £40,000 or the local equivalent abroad are more or less guaranteed enough points to settle here.</i>» «<i>from 1971 onwards, only foreigners joining relatives already in the UK had been permitted to settle here.</i>»: these statements are absurd, and crassly misleading. Absolutely any foreigner coming from the EU, regardless of points or family relationships, has been able to move to live and work in the UK for decades. The rules above only apply to immigration from countries outside the EU, from which only a small part of the increase in non-UK workers in the UK has come.<br /><br />Fostering a confusion between the massive amount of worker flows within the EU, where it is a right of nearly every EU citizen, and the much smaller ones from outside the EU, whee it is not, is ridiculously misleading.<br /><br />The idea that a speechwriter tasked with presenting policy thinks he can get away from misrepresentations as big as "a major shift from the policy of previous governments: from 1971 onwards, only foreigners joining relatives already in the UK had been permitted to settle here" is either depressing or scary.Blissexnoreply@blogger.com