Og God maybe there really is no alternative to use those winking things. Dear God!

However, having recently come back from India, where optimism is through the roof the UK needs to have a ‘no pain, no gain’ mentality. The UK + other Western countries for the last 200+ years have been punching above their economic weight, that’s what imperial and mercantlism created. The economic order is just naturally realigining again, not even the US president has a say. And frankly the last time the world was so globalised, the end of the 19th century, most population of countries such as India, China, Russia, etc, did not have one say in the matter. The only way things can be reversed again is if world war 3 occurs, a scenario that I hope never ever happens.

Yeah, can’t find the link, but apparently something like 73% of the population fall into some kind of victim/minority category.

Amen to that!

Re my post 84, and yours of 86. Yeah, re Scotland, it is ridiculous, which was, sort of, the point. I was trying to point out, and failed miserably, that anyone can play the nationalist card. Ho hum.

Not so sure that you are right to accuse me of self hating racism though. I was criticising an identifiable group who really aren’t doing themselves or the rest of us any favours.

Clairwill, whatever the reasons, the BNP fails miserably up here. Which was certainly exercising me when I wrote my post.

Er….?

You’re really against globalisation in general — of trade, flow of capital, etc — and you associate greatness only with manufacturing?

That’s very quaint but life has moved on.

Globalisation is the inevitable march of history and we should make sure we can remain as fighting fit as possible to deal with it and contain its excesses. You can’t roll back the tsunami of global economics — it’s surf or sink. Sure we have a large trade deficit but it’s not unmanageable and the the last time we didn’t have one was the early 1980s when we exported more oil and had the Thatcher recession (i.e. we were relatively poor and imported less, rather than export more).

Our overall balance of payments is also in better shape (export of invisibles, income from assest owned abroad). That’s why the pound is strong.

The decline of our manufacturing industries is an old, old story. The rise of out intellectual capital, service industries, and London taking over NY to become the world’s #1 financial centre is a newer one (OK, we’ve always been hot on finance but we’ve stepped up a level).

Don’t you think that a country of 60 million being the world’s fifth biggest economy and consistently punching above it’s weight is not impressive? We look pretty good compared with our European neighbours too.

That said, there is much damaging social fallout. The rich & South East gets richer, the rest of the country and poor get poorer. There is something horrible about the idea of “global employment arbitrage”. There is something heinous about the rich benefitting from the harsh capitalist logic of capital seeking the lowest cost of production and shifting jobs to other countries. And we need to address that. But what has immigration got to do with it? Look at the Gourmet Gate epsiode — who were the natives there feeling the brunt of globalisation — Asians mainly. What about Rover — West Indian, Asian, and white. etcetera

Oh, you mean Polish plumbers and Kosovan labourers, etc (take note Ravi)? But that’s also helped to create demand for home improvemengt, by making it more affordable, and is about the internal market not external, geddit?

What would you have us do — create some kind of autarky? That’s for losers. We’d fall further and further behind. If you were a true patriot, you’d appreciate that.

Life is competitive and I want my country to be the smartest, strongest, and most clued up it can be. So we should focus out energies on making sure it is by challenging chav culture (for me chav is not stricly white but a multicouloured disregard for excellence and knowledge), helping people to retrain, providing a welfare net, etc. But let’s not be lazy victims eh?
Everyone wants to be a fucking victim these days.

That’s capitalism old bean. In any case if all immigrants stayed at home they’d only be providing a bigger low pay workforce for multi-national companies, who will simply relocate to where the costs are lowest.

Please explain to me how immigrants make industries more competitive? The way I see it, is that they lower wages and therefore costs of the firm, enabling a lower product price or higher profit margin for the owners. Companies in dirct competition with this buisness are forced into lowering wages too, as price is usually the main factor when gaining custom.

So this benifits people on the lower wage scale how exactly? it benifits the owners.
Do you own a business El Cid?

In my view, the BNP is primarily a racist party, which masks itself as an anti-immigration party because you know, open racism is deemed unacceptable. The BNP didn’t make a big fuss about the new eastern european immigrants, as they would if non-europeans had free access to Britain. Their ideology is that only whites (preferably from non-mediterranean extraction) should live in Britain.

While I abhor this ideology and any ideology that excludes people based on superficial traits, I do believe that every country has the right to control immigration, to make sure that immigration continues to serve the best interests of the nation, without conflating it with racist and xenophobic ideology.

One for the Glaswegians reading. There is a free lecture at the St Mungo Museum on Scotland and her churches role in the slave trade at 2pm today.

http://www.glasgowmuseums.com/venue/showEvent.cfm?venueid=13&itemid=531

And yet, the BNP never ceases to disappoint by placing several incompetent, selfish, crime-prone councillors. And you say that these people serve the best interests of the “natives”. That is illogical to me.

>> Is the breakdown of traditional family structures the fault of immigrants?

There was an interview with a BNP candidate a few years back. To all the ills in this country, the candidate would mention immigration as the cause. So the reporter asked sarcastically about the traffic problem in London (before the congestion charge was introduced), and the candidate immediately said that by deporting immigrants it would definitely ease the traffic problem in London. Classic BNP moment.

I don’t buy the Scot’s are less racist line at all, perhaps less likely to vote BNP who are regarded as right wing though parts of their manifesto are very much on the far left. It’s also worth noting that Scotland has a population shortage which may encourage a more pragmatic response to immigration. That said if you read ‘Bloody Foreigners’ by Robert Winder you’ll squirm with embarrassment at our behaviour over Irish immigration. Very reminiscent of much of the hysteria about Muslim immigration today.

I’d recommend Robert Winder’s book to anyone with an interest in immigration either for or against. It’s pretty even handed and certainly opened my eyes to the amount and variety of immigration into Britain over the centuries. Perhaps the most striking thing of all is that we’ve always thought we were on the verge of being wiped out by it. Yet here we all are.

On the subject of the litter thing. Jerome K Jerome once asked a Turkish visitor to Victorian London what he found most striking about England. His reply was ‘all the dirty paper you have blowing about the street’.

Next time you visit an African or West Indian doctor, think about the unfortunate people in the countries they left behind that suffer from lack of adequate medical care.

Please Douglas, leave out the sickly tartan schmaltz.
That is pure 100% distilled bullshit.
Let me guess what’s next? The Scots will also wash their hands re the slavery trade, British Empire, etc.

The things you rail against are things perpetrated by white chavs.

Self-hating racism in no improvement on externally directed racism.

Anon + 1, it is true that you have been subject to the most gentle ribbing imaginable. So why exactly is the dysfunctional society you describe down to immigration?

Is the fallout from softly softly and misguided liberal education policies the fault of immigrants? Is the breakdown of traditional family structures the fault of immigrants? Is the glorification of the lowest common denominator the fault of immigrants? Is Britain’s penchant for violence the fault of immigrants? Is the regression of social mobility the fault of immigrants? I want you think about these things next time you visit the NHS and are treated by an Indian or West African doctor.

+ I dont think just education will cut it. How long have schools been around for now?

You have been subject to the most gentle ribbing imaginable here.

I know I speak for no-one else, but I agree with you about kids being bottle fed coca-cola, idiots imposing their piercings on infants, wains listening to gangsta rap. But you are representing a party with a stupid solution to these problems. Find someone to blame, find a minority you can say “caused it all”.

It is not true.

The things you rail against are things perpetrated by white chavs. They need educated to stop the abuse they do.

Anyway, you have made an attempt at communicating across barriers. Stick around. You might learn something. This is a very tolerant site.

And to get my own racist dig in:

“To be born an Englishman is to win first prize in the lottery of life”

No, you won second prize, being adopted as a Scot is first prize. Think about it. We have little of your prejudice. We actually quite like foreigners. Admire them, even.

Strange that.

“To be born an Englishman is to win first prize in the lottery of life” Theres a quote for you Roger.

However I dont believe any one race is superior to another and should be treated any differently, however I do believe in national identity and preservation of culture and values which I see bring eroded.
I see the BNP wanting to stop immigration and put the (sorry zin) native people of this country first for jobs, stopping the influx of cheap labour that lowers wages for the poorer people and increases the wealth of the rich.