Britain's well crap innit

[Beerdude26]

Shows how well thought out the NHS is, in any competently run country we wouldn't need a flow of immigrants to keep things running.

Rofl

You better start breeding like **** then because even in countries that are improving economically, immigrants are needed.

I'll take my country (Belgium) as an example (mainly because I know nothing about Germany or France or anything ):

We currently NEED around 60,000 people in healthcare, 100,000 masonry workers and like 50,000 other jobs that CANNOT BE FILLED BY BORN-AND-RAISED PEOPLE from Belgium. We just don't have enough students in total to keep up with the demand. The ICT sector needs 8,000 per year, and we can only churn out like 6,000 people every year.

So currently, our economy isn't going as well as it could be because we downright don't have enough manpower available. So we allow immigrants to live and work here and in the meanwhile give them cheapish (but high-quality) courses in Dutch and/or French so they can integrate into society easier.

 

[Druckles]

I think alot of people dislike immigrants for the same reason they protest against Nuclear power. They don't understand them :/. When you say "immigrant" it often conjures up some sort of image regarding someone stowing away illegally to get into the country. What many people don't realise is that the (legal) immigrants actually worked bloody hard to get into the country, and they're probably better at helping the economy than them (which is possibly another reason for the disdain). People will eventually get used to it, and one day we'll all live happily in a society where the colour of someone's skin does not depend on where they were born.

 

[Cormeh]

There's too many hypocrites on the immigrant subject for my liking. In particular (from people I've talked to), young people at school/college/uni who have their head a bit too far up their own arses.

The entire argument about Britain's seeming floodgate opening for immigrants. Yet a lot of these people come to this country to do jobs that too many Brits are too stuck up to do.

 

[Druckles]

Yet a lot of these people come to this country to do jobs that too many Brits are too stuck up or lazy to do.

It's true D:

 

[repiV]

I think alot of people dislike immigrants for the same reason they protest against Nuclear power. They don't understand them :/. When you say "immigrant" it often conjures up some sort of image regarding someone stowing away illegally to get into the country. What many people don't realise is that the (legal) immigrants actually worked bloody hard to get into the country, and they're probably better at helping the economy than them (which is possibly another reason for the disdain). People will eventually get used to it, and one day we'll all live happily in a society where the colour of someone's skin does not depend on where they were born.

I think you'll find the problem people have is with immigrants who don't adapt to our society. We have one culture, this country is not some crazy liberal social experiment whereby anyone can come here and do whatever they like because "it's my culture".
As far as I'm concerned, whether someone is a decent person who wants to become part of Britain, and not simply to sponge off our superior economy, is a far more important consideration than whether they'll be helping us financially or not.
Culture is the very essence of any society - ultimately responsible for success or failure, just as individual attitude is responsible for individual success or failure. If you undermine our culture you undermine our society, and eventually we won't have a superior economy to benefit from.
Any society can only assimilate a certain number of immigrants over any given period of time - it's a difficult and time-consuming process to do so and if you throw more immigrants at a country than it can handle, social breakdown such as we are currently experiencing is the inevitable result.
We are way past that tipping point.

 

[Sulkdodds]

Culture's the basis of society? Bullshit! Material circumstances are the basis of society and, without meaning to suggest a mechanistic one-to-one correspondance, 'culture' is ultimately derived from such tangibilities.

Look-at-me-I'm-a-marxist-without-being-communist Sulkdodds would be up for arguing the point more thouroughly but he's trying to get some work done and this is terrible procrastination.

We have one culture

Surely not. In the past their have been considerable cultural differences between Ireland, Scotland, north and south, peasant, industrial working class, small-artisan, middle-class, upper-class, wcity, country...and by the time those things were smoothed out we already had the postwar immigration waves.

Sure, it's not exactly as polarised as USA/North Korea but I think it's reductive and misleading to suggest Britain has or has ever had a unified and stable culture.

 

[Druckles]

We do indeed have little culture of our own. The culture that we do have has been adopted or raped from some other culture. The new races that are immigrating in will be assimilated into England, and within time our culture will have adapted, forming something new. It's inevitable.

 

[Sulkdodds]

Well, now, come on, we certainly do have culture of our own. We just find it hard to identify it as such because in the modern argot we automatically associate the word 'culture' with the preceding word 'other'. The body of a nation is very similar to the body of a human in literature.

We might divide literary characters into two parts: 'character' and 'self'. Character is the outside characteristics of the person, expressed in their faces, their actions, and, in text, the 'characters' used to represent them - the actual letters making up the medium. Self is what is inside, the consciousness. In psychology, we believe self to come into existence through a process of 'othering', whereby the self distinguishes itself from the world around it. It is scientifically believed that the process of consciousness only begins when we look in the mirror and think "who is that? That is not me." The self comes into being by creating, or noticing, an Other.

The process by which a nation selves itself, and comes to see itself as a nation at all, is very similar. The nation comes into existence in opposition to a political Other. In part the English nation really began by the concerted effort of people to selve their land against the dangerous viking raiders, who were seen as sea-hosts, sea-people, people with no land of their own and no roots, almost like a void in the form of a pillaging army. So a culture defines itself often by saying "we are not that other culture." It defines itself by what it is not, by what Derrida calls Diff?rance.

In works by Dickens people will have foreheads like walls, eyes like cellars, and physical features which act as solid signs of their personalities. Character, for Dickens, is therefore the outward physiognomical inward traits, a kind of Pathetic Fallacy of the inner essence. And the way in which the study of literature and the writing of 'character' has evolved mirrors the evolution of how we regard our own selves, how we are forced to regard our own selves. Once, we assumed that character was essentially linked to self (phrenology, physiognomy), and that self was stable and united (the soul); we no longer have that luxury, not in our literature, not in our lives - if indeed there is a difference.

Nor can we any longer assume a stable and united notion of national self, like the Victorians did. Modern nationalism is an kind of mad, sad attempt to Otherise the Other so hard that it will restore the national Self to its former glory.

 

[repiV]

Culture's the basis of society? Bullshit! Material circumstances are the basis of society and, without meaning to suggest a mechanistic one-to-one correspondance, 'culture' is ultimately derived from such tangibilities.

Look-at-me-I'm-a-marxist-without-being-communist Sulkdodds would be up for arguing the point more thouroughly but he's trying to get some work done and this is terrible procrastination.

If material circumstances are the basis of society, why are we so much richer than many other countries with vastly more resources to hand?
If that were true, certain Arab countries would be the envy of the whole world. They have the wealth on tap to be able to create a society far more advanced than anything in Europe of North America, they just don't make use of it.
In Russia for example, you can't rely on anything working as it's supposed to. The bank is supposed to stay open until five, but today actually the staff feel like going home at 2pm and getting wasted. Our culture puts a far greater emphasis on taking your work seriously, businesses deliver on their promises and they deliver on time. People keep their appointments, time is a resource. As such our systems are far more efficient wealth-generating mechanisms.
The Polish work ethic people often use to defend mass-immigration is another example of culture - they understand the value of hard work to a much greater extent than the layabouts here do.
Any reasonably successful person in the West has some kind of life plan - they're not just thinking about now, they're deciding what university they're going to go to, what job they're going to get, how they're going to invest...
People generally lack this kind of foresight and ambition in poorer countries, that's why their economies are doomed to eternal stagnation.
We also value science, technology, education and knowledge in ways that, say, Islamic culture does not - which is also why Islamic countries are doomed to eternal inferiority until they fundamentally change.
The only way to explain the success of the USA, Hong Kong and Singapore is by culture.
The only countries that are poor as a result of something other than culture are those recovering from communism (eg. China, much of Eastern Europe) and those ravaged by ongoing war. Both are temporary setbacks - China and Poland both will become rich countries, that is inevitable. Others - most of Africa, much of Asia and the Middle East, will stay poor until their fundamental cultural outlook changes.

Surely not. In the past their have been considerable cultural differences between Ireland, Scotland, north and south, peasant, industrial working class, small-artisan, middle-class, upper-class, wcity, country...and by the time those things were smoothed out we already had the postwar immigration waves.

Sure, it's not exactly as polarised as USA/North Korea but I think it's reductive and misleading to suggest Britain has or has ever had a unified and stable culture.

No culture in a free society is ever completely unified or stable, but it's still kept together by a status quo and many threads of commonality.

 

[Mr Stabby]

Rofl

You better start breeding like **** then because even in countries that are improving economically, immigrants are needed.

I'll take my country (Belgium) as an example (mainly because I know nothing about Germany or France or anything ):

We currently NEED around 60,000 people in healthcare, 100,000 masonry workers and like 50,000 other jobs that CANNOT BE FILLED BY BORN-AND-RAISED PEOPLE from Belgium. We just don't have enough students in total to keep up with the demand. The ICT sector needs 8,000 per year, and we can only churn out like 6,000 people every year.

So currently, our economy isn't going as well as it could be because we downright don't have enough manpower available. So we allow immigrants to live and work here and in the meanwhile give them cheapish (but high-quality) courses in Dutch and/or French so they can integrate into society easier.

Our problem isn't a lack of people, it's the fact that our education system is abysmal and does not produce enough qualified people.

 

[Sulkdodds]

If material circumstances are the basis of society, why are we so much richer than many other countries with vastly more resources to hand?

Oh, I see, you want me to undertake an entire historical study. Yeah, I'm qualified for that.

I shall address your points, however, as vaguely as you've brought them up...and as best I can, because I'm not an anthropologist or a historian.

How the hell would Arab countries have gotten rich off oil before they had the technology to extract it? Those nations were once the envy of the whole world, when they were in the perfect position for trade and agriculture, and in a good state to exploit that. Indeed, perhaps you should read about exactly why the Fertile Crescent was the cradle of civilisation. The clue's in the name.

Britain, meanwhile, was able to mine its substantial coal and metal resources when it needed to, not to mention having a relatively good climate, being less prone to war, being in an advantageous position because Roman 'civilisation' remained for ages, later having a command of the sea, London becoming even more of a major centre of commerce when European trade cities were destroyed by continent wars. See! Economics! Material circumstances! It certainly wasn't because the Anglo-Saxons set their bloody clocks right.

And hey, I guess the fact that people in the West have "some kind of life plan" is the cause, not the effect, of an economic system that enshrines education and career advancement. Because focus on career advancement is a cause and not a natural consequence of individualism engendered by the growth of mercantilism itself rising from the simple desire to trade surplus goods and materials. And education being important because of the need for skilled workers because of the industrial revolution because of resources and science and blah blah blah.

Protestantism was a product as well as a cause!

I am not saying that culture doesn't affect anything, doesn't feed back, because of course it does, but if culture bred civilisation then no civilisation could ever have developed in the first place, could it?

In a scottish country dance, each participant is involved in a quite regimented and careful scheme whereby everybody gets to dance with everybody else; everybody gets their chance in the limelight, spinning with a beautiful girl, and everybody has a period where they must stand at the side and clap. The dance encourages and typifies community coperation, mutual respect, and so on. It's evolved in rural societies where everyone has to work together with each other, and take their turn at what needs doing, or else they'll die of cold or starvation or something.

Compare this with the elegance and formal rigour of 18th century dance - a dance form engendered by a society where aristocrats no longer had to be warriors, society was characterised by interlocking and complex webs of trade and contract, and affluence was rising by the year. Hell, compare it with dancing at a modern nightclub: the predatory and individualistic experience of trying to pull the opposite sex, the complete freedom of movement and volition, and the bare (awesome) sexual subtext of the dancing itself. That is what our society has produced.

 

[Iron Kat]

My friend, Agnes, has said she wants to go back home to Uganda because she doesn't like the British weather. She's constantly saying that it's too cold, but I suppose she's right. If you've lived in Africa all you life and then come over here it must be like moving to the Arctic!!!

 

[Druckles]

My friend, Agnes, has said she wants to go back home to Uganda because she doesn't like the British weather. She's constantly saying that it's too cold, but I suppose she's right. If you've live in Africa all you life and then come over here it must be like moving to the Arctic!!!

My old friend, who was ironically called Kat always hated England. She was Greek.

 

[Beerdude26]

My old friend, who was ironically called Kat always hated England. She was Greek.

Greeks in my homeland?! But I thought they were all murdered by the Aztecs!!!

p.s. If you don't get the reference don't bother

 

[Nemesis6]

Well said, Eejit.
It's interesting that a lot of people who bemoan "politically correct" terms for social/racial groups don't seem to have even considered the possibility that these terms are being used because that's what the communities in question want.

So because some black people people want to be called African-Americans we should all do it? Granted this is actually a reversed example, the problem here being that it's too specific, but it's basically the same. How about sticking to just telling things how they are in the interest of, well, common sense? Yeah, of course they're Asians, but it's a very broad term that can mean so many things; the scope of the word renders it more or less useless in a context like newspaper articles.

 

[repiV]

Oh, I see, you want me to undertake an entire historical study. Yeah, I'm qualified for that.

I shall address your points, however, as vaguely as you've brought them up...and as best I can, because I'm not an anthropologist or a historian.

How the hell would Arab countries have gotten rich off oil before they had the technology to extract it? Those nations were once the envy of the whole world, when they were in the perfect position for trade and agriculture, and in a good state to exploit that. Indeed, perhaps you should read about exactly why the Fertile Crescent was the cradle of civilisation. The clue's in the name.

What's that got to do with anything? You're talking about an era that preceded Islam by thousands of years. The cultures bear no resemblance.
The point is that now they have oil and it would be easier for them than most to create vast wealth and an amazing standard of living.
But they don't. Because their culture is a regressive force. It's no accident that the only half-decent places in the Middle East are the ones with the most tenuous ties to Islam.

Britain, meanwhile, was able to mine its substantial coal and metal resources when it needed to, not to mention having a relatively good climate, being less prone to war, being in an advantageous position because Roman 'civilisation' remained for ages, later having a command of the sea, London becoming even more of a major centre of commerce when European trade cities were destroyed by continent wars. See! Economics! Material circumstances! It certainly wasn't because the Anglo-Saxons set their bloody clocks right.

That doesn't really have anything to do with our modern economy. As countries like the USA, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore prove, historical factors are irrelevant to success - if you have a winning attitude, you become a winner.
That's just as true for nations as it is for individuals.

And hey, I guess the fact that people in the West have "some kind of life plan" is the cause, not the effect, of an economic system that enshrines education and career advancement. Because focus on career advancement is a cause and not a natural consequence of individualism engendered by the growth of mercantilism itself rising from the simple desire to trade surplus goods and materials. And education being important because of the need for skilled workers because of the industrial revolution because of resources and science and blah blah blah.

The answer to that lies in middle-of-the-road economies such as those found in much of Central and South America, and parts of SE Asia.
They work in the same basic way as our economy, they are industrialised, the people work in offices, drive cars etc. - but they're a whole lot poorer still. Why?
Well - have a look at some of the things these countries have in common. Rampant corruption, extremely high crime levels, the fact that you need to bribe anyone and everyone to do anything, etc.
You should read some stuff about the principles of Singapore. Much as I disagree with their authoritarian approach, the reasoning behind the ultra-strict justice system and codes of behaviour has always been that in order for Singapore to become a first world nation, their third world population must be forced to think and behave like first world citizens. In other words - economic success depends on the behavioural habits and attitudes of a population.
And he's right - it certainly worked. It's not like they have anything to export, and the climate is unbearably hot and humid all year round, but in the space of 50 years Singapore has gone from a poor piece of rock to a truly world-class city-state.

I am not saying that culture doesn't affect anything, doesn't feed back, because of course it does, but if culture bred civilisation then no civilisation could ever have developed in the first place, could it?

In an economic sense, culture is an aspect of competition. Some cultures are more economically successful than others, and it is the nations with those cultures that are rich today - or will be after they've recovered from years of communism.

In a scottish country dance, each participant is involved in a quite regimented and careful scheme whereby everybody gets to dance with everybody else; everybody gets their chance in the limelight, spinning with a beautiful girl, and everybody has a period where they must stand at the side and clap. The dance encourages and typifies community coperation, mutual respect, and so on. It's evolved in rural societies where everyone has to work together with each other, and take their turn at what needs doing, or else they'll die of cold or starvation or something.

Compare this with the elegance and formal rigour of 18th century dance - a dance form engendered by a society where aristocrats no longer had to be warriors, society was characterised by interlocking and complex webs of trade and contract, and affluence was rising by the year. Hell, compare it with dancing at a modern nightclub: the predatory and individualistic experience of trying to pull the opposite sex, the complete freedom of movement and volition, and the bare (awesome) sexual subtext of the dancing itself. That is what our society has produced.

Which reflects on the single-minded pursuit of "stuff", selfishness and greed fundamental to our society today. A dual-edged sword, but an entirely useful trait in generating wealth.

 

[Stigmata]

That doesn't really have anything to do with our modern economy. As countries like the USA, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore prove, historical factors are irrelevant to success - if you have a winning attitude, you become a winner.
That's just as true for nations as it is for individuals.

So what, is that how countries are expected to become successful? Let's just talk to some people and give Somalia a "winning attitude"; I'm sure they'll be fine within the month.

Oh hello Iraq, got civil war? Here's some balloons!

Aww don't be sad Ethiopia, cheer up! Your hunger problems will disappear soon if you just be happy!

Seriously. I... literally cannot comprehend how you think a winning attitude trumps massive amounts of useful and profitable resources in the development of a nation.

 

[repiV]

So what, is that how countries are expected to become successful? Let's just talk to some people and give Somalia a "winning attitude"; I'm sure they'll be fine within the month.

Oh hello Iraq, got civil war? Here's some balloons!

Aww don't be sad Ethiopia, cheer up! Your hunger problems will disappear soon if you just be happy!

Seriously. I... literally cannot comprehend how you think a winning attitude trumps massive amounts of useful and profitable resources in the development of a nation.

Iraq has massive amounts of useful and profitable resources. So does the rest of the Middle East and Africa.
Hong Kong and Singapore have none. Zip. Nada. In fact, most of HK cannot even be built on because it's so horrendously mountainous. Natural resources are almost irrelevant to developed nations, and nor are they a requirement for a nation to become developed.
Resources mean **** all unless you know what to do with them. They aren't a magic ticket to guaranteed prosperity, that should be obvious from the fact that it's the rich parts of the world that are totally dependent on imports from poorer countries.
Perhaps my regrettable need to state the bloody obvious aids your comprehension a little.