21-03-2018, 14:30
I'm sure both sides of these arguments accurately represent parts of a bigger picture. I remember when working for Ucas - university applications - and speaking to Mohamed Mohamed who I had to ask to repeat everything twice or three times, ............. because of his broad Glaswegian accent. Some of the broadest Yorkshire accents I met were Patels and Khans. Equally there really are women who have been here forty years and have little or no English. And at Ucas we also used to get girls who applied for a list of universities asking to change their choices because they could only attend the university or college nearest their home as they had to be accompanied every day to and from lectures by a male member of the family - usually grandad. (When making their choices originally they had made choices which would have necessitated them leaving the family home completely, so there was clearly a gap between the life they wanted and the one they could have!)
Equally there are businesspeople who screw staff for every last penny, import the cheapest labour possible, care very little about the conditions they provide or the quality of their product .......... but for every one of them there are loads of people of absolute probity doing exactly as Dancing with the same ambitions, and by doing so providing not only for their own families, but for all those they employ. Not everyone is a gangmaster drowning illegal immigrant shrimpers in Morecambe Bay. Though I might organise a very different kind of world, I admire what Dancing has done and hope the current crazed processes of EU withdrawal that even I didn't foresee, don't wreck it. I've very little idea of where we now think we are going and don't believe our EU partners are much clearer than our own idiots.
Brits go overseas for all kinds of reasons. A whole raft of them have properties in France and Spain and do exactly what we complain of in immigrant communities. They learn no more than 20 words of the language. They live British lives in the sun, bringing over family for holidays, find ex-pat friends and collect their British pensions ......... because yes property is so much cheaper. (If we sold our bungalow down here in Devon we'd get £300-£350K and there are beautiful properties on the continent for that.) But there are also loads of Brits overseas for work, setting up businesses, fluent in the language, building a new way of life and contributing to the countries to which they've moved.
All restrictions on trade and movement are created by those same people who open up the EU to apparent freedom. The world could have free trade. There is no actual need to buy and sell money ......... But the world is what it is - a finite planet whose whole future is predicated on growth, whose population rises exponentially every time we get round to counting it ....... where rhinos are wiped out and orang utan are marooned in the last tree of a felled rainforest. Ordinary men have no control and those who might make a difference either set up Facebook or do a bit of networking deep in the snows of Switzerland. (Getting your team relegated at football is fairly insignificant!)
Equally there are businesspeople who screw staff for every last penny, import the cheapest labour possible, care very little about the conditions they provide or the quality of their product .......... but for every one of them there are loads of people of absolute probity doing exactly as Dancing with the same ambitions, and by doing so providing not only for their own families, but for all those they employ. Not everyone is a gangmaster drowning illegal immigrant shrimpers in Morecambe Bay. Though I might organise a very different kind of world, I admire what Dancing has done and hope the current crazed processes of EU withdrawal that even I didn't foresee, don't wreck it. I've very little idea of where we now think we are going and don't believe our EU partners are much clearer than our own idiots.
Brits go overseas for all kinds of reasons. A whole raft of them have properties in France and Spain and do exactly what we complain of in immigrant communities. They learn no more than 20 words of the language. They live British lives in the sun, bringing over family for holidays, find ex-pat friends and collect their British pensions ......... because yes property is so much cheaper. (If we sold our bungalow down here in Devon we'd get £300-£350K and there are beautiful properties on the continent for that.) But there are also loads of Brits overseas for work, setting up businesses, fluent in the language, building a new way of life and contributing to the countries to which they've moved.
All restrictions on trade and movement are created by those same people who open up the EU to apparent freedom. The world could have free trade. There is no actual need to buy and sell money ......... But the world is what it is - a finite planet whose whole future is predicated on growth, whose population rises exponentially every time we get round to counting it ....... where rhinos are wiped out and orang utan are marooned in the last tree of a felled rainforest. Ordinary men have no control and those who might make a difference either set up Facebook or do a bit of networking deep in the snows of Switzerland. (Getting your team relegated at football is fairly insignificant!)