British Politics
Been on holiday for a few weeks, surprised to find no general discussion of British politics so though I'd kick one off.
Tory leadership contest is quickly turning into farce. Trump has backed Boris, which should be reason enough for anyone with half a brain to exclude him.
Of the other candidates Rory Stewart looks the best of the outsiders. Surprised to see Cleverly and Javid not further up the betting, but not sure the Tory membership are ready for a brown PM.
https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/bri...
Regarding the LD leadership contest, Jo Swinson is miles ahead of any other candidate (and indeed any of the Tory lot). Should be a shoe in.
Finally, it's Groundhog Day in Labour - the more serious the anti-Semitism claims get, the more Corbyn's cronies write their own obituary by blaming it on outlandish conspiracy theories - this week, it's apparently the Jewish Embassy's fault...
What will probably happen instead is that someone will ask AI for the optimal solution and it will reply with compulsory euthanasia for the over 70s.
We get 19y old people with no skills who are barely able to read , don't speak Italian nor English, have 3-5 years of formal education, and we get told they will pay our pensions by the Italian jalfrezis.
I love British people so I tell them, go to the UK to pay British pensions
They will pay your pensions, that's the point. Immigration is a huge boost to any economy because the cost of their pre-natal and post-natal health care and early years have been paid for by another country.
They will pay your pensions, that's the point. Immigration is a huge boost to any economy because the cost of their pre-natal and post-natal health care and early years have been paid for by another country.
Not if the person arriving is a much worse fit for your economy than your median citizen no.
And especially not if the education they got 3 to 18 was of disastrously bad quality.
I mean I don't believe you really believe the median swiss citizen will be better off if a million men (no women) from India with 5 years of formal education were allowed to enter Switzerland and live there and access swiss welfare.
You don't believe that.
Not if the person arriving is a much worse fit for your economy than your median citizen no.
And especially not if the education they got 3 to 18 was of disastrously bad quality.
I mean I don't believe you really believe the median swiss citizen will be better off if a million men (no women) from India with 5 years of formal education were allowed to enter Switzerland and live there and access swiss welfare.
You don't believe that.
You bring people in to fill vacancies at a time of full employment. No one when we were in the EU could come to the UK and claim benefits - that was a lie put about by the far right tabloids that was never effectively challenged.
You bring people in to fill vacancies at a time of full employment. No one when we were in the EU could come to the UK and claim benefits - that was a lie put about by the far right tabloids that was never effectively challenged.
We aren't at full employment in Italy and we were even worse before and yet the Italian people thinking like you wanted unlimited boat people to disembark here for "humanitarian" reasons.
We haven't been in full employment in Italy since forever. Some regions are still economic black holes. The same is true in Spain , and partially in France.
What we need is to ban low skilled immigration completely z remove domestic welfare, so unemployed residents move where jobs are (or starve to death) and stop being wardens of the state in their areas of origin
Worry about people to do the work is like planning to fight future wars with swords on horseback.
All of this entirely predictable from the moment the left decided to abandon their “racist” core voters in favour of pandering to marginal pressure groups.
The voice that is convinced that immigrants are criminals hath spoken.
All of this entirely predictable from the moment the left decided to abandon their “racist” core voters in favour of pandering to marginal pressure groups.
There' sa dose of all that sort of stuff. The way we do politcs is often so stupid. But what makes it more than fairly fringe groups are the underlying problems.
It's ordinary, often left wing inclined, often young who are looking towards the far right because no-one is doing anything to address their problem with housing etc etc. No vision is being offered for anything better. The only way we defeat the far right rather than perpetually trying to fend it off is to offer something else and then deliver real change.
There' sa dose of all that sort of stuff. The way we do politcs is often so stupid. But what makes it more than fairly fringe groups are the underlying problems.
It's ordinary, often left wing inclined, often young who are looking towards the far right because no-one is doing anything to address their problem with housing etc etc. No vision is being offered for anything better. The only way we defeat the far right rather than perpetually trying to fend it off is to offer something else and then d
Housing is (far) cheaper in the areas of Germany where AFD got the most votes. (AFD vote is 2017 results)
It's ordinary, often left wing inclined, often young who are looking towards the far right because no-one is doing anything to address their problem with housing etc etc. No vision is being offered for anything better. The only way we defeat the far right rather than perpetually trying to fend it off is to offer something else and then deliver real change.
I totally agree.
It's ordinary, often left wing inclined, often young who are looking towards the far right because no-one is doing anything to address their problem with housing etc etc. No vision is being offered for anything better. The only way we defeat the far right rather than perpetually trying to fend it off is to offer something else and then deliver real change.
This might be true to some degree in the EU, but is not really borne out in the current uk polling.
Yes I was talking about the EU.
The UK is an odd beast but eventually something is going ro give.
Yes I was talking about the EU.
The UK is an odd beast but eventually something is going ro give.
But in many places in the EU housing isn't the problem it is in the UK. In italy in particular outside few cities it's really cheap (or was until very recently). We literally give houses for 1 euro in many places (if you pay for the renovations).
You are projecting a british problem that doesn't exist in many areas of the EU upon EU politics
Yes I think he is.
He doesn't want to talk about racism and xenophobia, which are the drivers behind the swell in the far right's popularity - that much is obvious. Even people here, like Elrazor, have talked about how women's rights have taken away some of his assumed privileges and how immigration has given UK women a much wider and more attractive pool of men to choose from.
Yes I think he is.
He doesn't want to talk about racism and xenophobia, which are the drivers behind the swell in the far right's popularity - that much is obvious. Even people here, like Elrazor, have talked about how women's rights have taken away some of his assumed privileges and how immigration has given UK women a much wider and more attractive pool of men to choose from.
ofc you want to claim it's "racism and xenophobia" as if the natural course of affairs was the ultra-radical open borderism (with welfare) that very few people worldwide agreed with until recently.
OR, we might simply accept the idea that taking in random people without vetting their usefulness for our economies for europe has been an unmitigated disaster, and more and more people are recognizing it as such.
We aren't the land of infinite opportunities that can provide jobs to anyone with 2 arms and 2 legs. We are a place full of people where it's already pretty hard to find jobs for the domestic bottom of the pile, with big numbers of NEETs in various areas of the EU. Ofc socialist policies are what cause this, but that's the state of things. We need young people but only with a lot of caveats and it's very easy to claim that a lot of the people who entered recently are significant net negatives for our societies.
In that scenario it's complete madness to take in random people from outside in large numbers. Unlike the USA most european countries actually were ethno-states to begin with. And prospered without any extre-european immigration for many years.
Applying the "multiethnic" , "diversity is our strength" ideas to countries that literally built marvelous civiliazations by doing the opposite was absurd on paper and proved disastrous in practice.
And more and more people are recognizing that's the case.
Then there is the other set of green insanities to completly dismantle, and more and more people are recognizing that's a priority as well. Greens lost a lot of seats in these elections for example. And parties who voted against green monstrosities in the EU parliament, and run on platforms that include dismantling the orwellian "green new plan" gained massively.
Unlike the USA most european countries actually were ethno-states to begin with. And prospered without any extre-european immigration for many years.
Woah there.
As an Italian I thought you might have heard of the Moors. Using your definition of ethnicity that makes Italy and Spain, Portugal etc most definitely not ethno-states.
Germany is a relatively recent state comprised historically of several different groups or as you would have it, ethnicities.
And so on.
Yes I think he is.
He doesn't want to talk about racism and xenophobia, which are the drivers behind the swell in the far right's popularity - that much is obvious. Even people here, like Elrazor, have talked about how women's rights have taken away some of his assumed privileges and how immigration has given UK women a much wider and more attractive pool of men to choose from.
Thatw ould be getting silly
Woah there.
As an Italian I thought you might have heard of the Moors. Using your definition of ethnicity that makes Italy and Spain, Portugal etc most definitely not ethno-states.
Germany is a relatively recent state comprised historically of several different groups or as you would have it, ethnicities.
And so on.
Italy and Germany unified the same year (1871). I mean italy uses 1861 but we got Rome in 1871 so in the polity sense , same year. Those unifications of wildly different populations were already a big stretch and we would be better off going backwards from that yes. No reason to have a unified Germany inside the EU, nor a unified Italy or Spain. France is different as the unification is 600+ years older.
With ethno-states i mean what actually made europe the area of the world that colonized the rest and not viceversa. So for Italy Venice , Florence, and so on. For Germany the city-state then Prussia and so on.
Italy has more UNESCO sites than any other country in the world, and most of them were built by... ethnostates (and very small ones at that). Many millions of people per year want to visit what a minuscule population in Florence (and venice and other places) did some centuries ago.
If there was no need for immigration to build the best buildings in the history of the world... then maybe you are overvaluing immigration in general.
Anyway it stays as a fact: the worldwide pinnacle of human arts (which many/most people define as the italian renaissance) was reached by minuscule ethnostates.
Racism is always silly at the least dangerous end.
Italy and Germany unified the same year (1871)With ethno-states i mean what actually made europe the area of the world that colonized the rest and not viceversa. So for Italy Venice , Florence, and so on. For Germany the city-state then Prussia and so on.
Your definition of ethnicity varies from post to post. We went back and forth over your determination that genetics are an essential factor but now it seems not.
But in many places in the EU housing isn't the problem it is in the UK. In italy in particular outside few cities it's really cheap (or was until very recently). We literally give houses for 1 euro in many places (if you pay for the renovations).
You are projecting a british problem that doesn't exist in many areas of the EU upon EU politics
It's just an obvious example. Housing is one of the more obvious problems but it's not necessary as there are plenty of others.
It's not projection at all.
It's just an obvious example. Housing is one of the more obvious problems but it's not necessary as there are plenty of others.
It's not projection at all.
Except it isn't in many european countries. I mean it is in big cities but the people experiencing it overwhelmingly vote left.
Let me give you an example so you understand what i mean: the 20y old who moves to Berlin and experiences hardship in finding decent housing at decent prices, is very very very often going to vote left. It's not that he is happy about Berlin housing situation. But he is going to vote left anyway.
The 20y old who stays in his 40k people town in Saxony is going to vote AFD a lot. Housing there is plentiful and cheap and he can rent while working simple jobs ok?
He is voting AFD for other reasons. Including having actually met the pension-payers at school a tad too often for his taste, not always with good outcome for his health (unlike his parents , uncles, older relatives). Or having seen one too many pension-payer knife fight in the streets.
Or discovering the entry level car his older brother paid 6k used, now costs 11k and gasoline costs more every year because "the climate".
Or maybe he isn't really enamored with LGBTQ+123ABC stuff , having missed the college indoctrination course on that.
And so on
