Now that the religious thread has slowed down can we talk about immigration

[EltonFrog]

When I was a kid at school, there used to be another kid who's parents came over form the west indies, we used be on the same bus together, he wasn't a mate but at first we used talk to each other, later he becam a bit of a bully, and made my life difficult at school, but that is by the by. His name was Norman Joseph, anyway one day on the bus in Acton, we were coming down the stairs to alight when a Sikh kid was getting on, as this boy was getting on NJ said to me loudly " I don't know why this country is letting all these Indians into this country" . This was round anout the time Idi Amin was kicking everyone out of the country.

Even then, when I did not know what irony meant, the irony was not lost on me. 40 odd years later NJ received an OBE for services to the music industry.

I don't really have point other than that nothing has changed, and one should live and let live.

 

[P.H]

I can't look anyone in the eye and tell them I deserve a better standard of life than them because of where I was born.

 

[gbb]

I can't look anyone in the eye and tell them I deserve a better standard of life than them because of where I was born.

From a slightly different angle, in several conversations with immigrant colleagues, ive always said if you're prepared to uproot yourself from your surrounding family, travel thousands of miles to a strange country, have to learn to speak the language...respect is due.

Another one thats often come up...apologising for their poor english. What ? , your English is a thousand times better than my Polish, never apologise for that.

 

[dellzeqq]

there's a range of opinion within this thread, but, in a general way, I'm struck by the near-absence of xenophobia. Which is all to the good.

 

[Fnaar]

This might be worth watching:

 

[Rev]

It's the fecking Irish coming over here with their weird religion and bombing the shite out of us that gets on my wick! And why do they talk so daft?

 

[avalon]

It's the fecking Irish coming over here with their weird religion and bombing the s***e out of us that gets on my wick! And why do they talk so daft?

When I was growing up it was the Irish that were the scarey foreigners, coming over to England to kill us all with their car bombs and letter bombs.

 

[Minotier]

I myself am from old Anglo-Saxon stock on both parents side. My upbringing instilled in me that no one in this world is any better than another. We all aspire to achieve the best we can within the circumstances we live in.
Immigration offers those with aspirations the opportunity to make their lives better so I think these people who make this decision are on the whole the people who make this world a better place.
I have met some highly qualified immigrant doctors working in the NHS. I have also met some highly qualified immigrant engineers working in Takeaways. But they are happier doing that here than working in countries where freedom is well down the list.
Once worked with a wonderful bloke, good at his job, nice mannered. We all thought he was Albanian with an Italian passport until the police and immigration officers turned up one day and arrested him.
He was a Serb and was arrested for war crimes in Bosnia where he was involved in the torture and murders of hundreds of Bosnian Muslims. Since then I always wonder what other atrocities the alleged East Europeans working alongside may have been involved in. Sadly this one incident has tainted my view.

 

[BigonaBianchi]

Human beings were always tribal

 

[Canrider]

Now why is it any negative comments regarding immigration are guaranteed to get shouted down (so's to speak) even if they're based on personal experience and facts. Noooo, we mustn't say anything negative.

Facts? Most of your 'comments on immigration' have precisely nothing to do with where the people in question come from. Do you honestly believe the Polish guy moves the bins bags off the bins simply because he's Polish?

 

[avalon]

there's a range of opinion within this thread, but, in a general way, I'm struck by the near-absence of xenophobia. Which is all to the good.

Yes I'm plesantly surprised at the positive responses on here. Is it that cyclists are more friendly, open minded and welcoming than real people or have we just not heard from the UKIP/BNP cyclists yet.

 

[snailracer]

... in a city where there's been a minimum estimate of 16,000 immigrants in the last 10 years, and many say thats a massive underestimate, the impact it has on services, hospitals, doctors, schools, housing, parking, etc etc...is huge....simply stated the negative aspects i see living in a city where immigration is having a major impact...an impact most people outside a city like peterborough have never experienced.

Public services provision always lags behind the demand created by a growing population - this is just as true elsewhere in the UK as it is in Peterborough, but would you prefer that there was no growth in employment so no-one moved to Peterborough?

...Drunken mothers...its fact. You may not like or believe it, but a former colleage (who's Danish) married a girl who's Polish. When they had their child, the Maternity Unit was bursting at the seams with immigrant families ..i mean truly bursting. It caused a big stir at the time, they (the NHS) knew it was coming, and it caused a lot of fuss...HE was telling me this (an immigrant), it also made the papers at the time.
Anyway...drunken mothers..(perhaps a harsh term)...mothers who come from a culture where alcohol is prevalent, simple mathematics dictates if you have a high proportion of them having children, there'll be the natural increase in the amount of disabled children born to mothers who live in a culture where alcohol is used heavily.
My wife's worked in this school for many years. The increase in immigrant children with disabilities has meant the school has doubled in size. They're currently trying to figure out whether to move the school so they can accomodate the extra...

Well nobody's perfect. At my wife's ante-natal classes, the intake was entirely British teenage single mums and old women. Do you know that teenage single mums bring up tearaway kids and old women are much more likely to have disabled children that burden the NHS? Maybe they should be stopped?!?

Boomtown ...depends on Wikis definition. All the major employers from 20 years ago, as follows.

Perkins Engines...a fraction of the company it used to be. It used to employ thousands.

Baker Perkins......all but gone. Used to be a major employer. Hundreds of jobs gone.

Salvesens............gone. Used to employ circa 400 at its peak.

Brotherhoods......all but gone. Another ex major employer in the city.

Pedigree Petfoods...going.

Hotpoint...............gone. Perhaps used to employ a thousand or two.

Redring..............all but gone.

Thomas Cook..employ hundreds, soon to come under the axe perhaps.

Molins.................used to be a big employer, gone.

There are virtually NO major employers left in Peterborough. Walk past the jobcentre, its bursting. There's no roads paved in gold round here.

There are some major employers actually...but the only way you get in there is through agencies. Substandard employment IMO. Thats not immigrants fault BTW, before i get accused of that as well...

Jobs attract people. More jobs attract more people. Pretty much every part of the UK has a sad story about the loss of premium manufacturing jobs, so any replacement job is better than no job.

...Now why is it any negative comments regarding immigration are guaranteed to get shouted down (so's to speak) even if they're based on personal experience and facts. Noooo, we mustn't say anything negative...

I took a dim view of your post because, while I don't doubt that they are your personal experiences, I think you are analysing them through xenophobia-tinted glasses. This post in particular got my attention:

...And now, in my area we have a population (not a small one, maybe a hundred or so) of Africans i assume, possible French as their language. Where the heck have they all come from and why are they here ? They don't appear to be European. Who's paying ? you and me, the good old.......

 

[Canrider]

Well nobody's perfect. At my wife's ante-natal classes, the intake was entirely British teenage single mums and old women. Do you know that teenage single mums bring up tearaway kids and old women are much more likely to have disabled children that burden the NHS? Maybe they should be stopped?!?

Beyond that, I can relate exactly how quickly a maternity ward can become rammed--we went in to have Miss Canrider, arriving about 4am to a deserted ward, two staff literally standing about for lack of anyone to look after. Miss Canrider arrived around 3:30PM. In the next six hours before I went home (visiting hours ending 9PM), they went from just us to full capacity (8 in our room, another 10 in the adjoining ward) with two late arrivals on trolleys and we heard them discussing redirecting new arrivals elsewhere (ultimately they didn't do that). All without the use of drunken immigrant baby-factories (although one senior midwife was Scottish).

 

[byegad]

I'm just hoping we send everybody home. I quite like the idea of living in Normandy, where some of my ancestors hailed from in 1066. However I'm likely to get moved on to somewhere Scandinavian by the French after that as the reason it's called Normandy is that the Northmen lived there after settling from the err... North.

 

[User169]

Anyway...drunken mothers..(perhaps a harsh term)...mothers who come from a culture where alcohol is prevalent, simple mathematics dictates if you have a high proportion of them having children, there'll be the natural increase in the amount of disabled children born to mothers who live in a culture where alcohol is used heavily.
My wife's worked in this school for many years. The increase in immigrant children with disabilities has meant the school has doubled in size. They're currently trying to figure out whether to move the school so they can accomodate the extra.
.

This sounds completely bizarre. What/where exactly is the culture you referring to?