The Statement
The statement my friend posted was this:
Current immigration levels combined with the birth rates of Third World
immigrants already resident in Britain mean that we have about 20 years to avoid
being completely colonised
Interesting isn't it?
My first reaction was, obviously, "Rubbish!" because it was clearly some right-wing media-fed scaremongering, but he assured me it was true. He stated that it was a quote from a government foreign affairs advisor. Now, why I should actually believe such a person isn't entirely clear - he's obviously playing to the crowd like anyone else trying to keep his job. What is this guy's personal political stance and how does it colour his statements?
The statement does have a certain, seemingly deliberate, impact. That's what annoyed me in the first place and that psychological manipulation is something I'd like to look at first.
To me the whole sentence is a huge flashing Fnord (if you don't know what a Fnord is, please look here). Let's look at it in more detail:
1. "Current immigration levels". What exactly are the current immigration levels. I don't know, but I'm going to look them up later. Do you know? The average Daily Mail reader would immediately say "Too bloody high, mate!" This phrase immediately connects on a subconscious level us to the assumption that immigration levels are high, whether they are or not.
2. "birth rates". This phrase is exactly the same as the last one. It assumes that birth rates, just like immigration levels are high. Are they?
3. "birth rates of Third World immigrants" What do you think of when you hear the term , "Third World"? That's right Africa and Asia. Or if you're a BNP supporter, "Niggers and pakis. And, oh my god! the bastards are breeding!" This phrase quite deliberately conjures up images of millions of brown children with funny accents demanding to be fed by the state - as my friend put it, "Where are the jobs & houses coming from? And where is the extra money to pay for social services, NHS & pensions?" That's exactly the expected reaction, but is it even a valid question?
4. "we have about 20 years". Armageddon is coming folks! All such phrases which give a limited time-frame well within a human lifespan have the immediate effect of causing slight panic in the reader. It's a very commonly used brainwashing method. People who panic aren't thinking straight.
5. "to avoid being completely colonised". What the hell does that mean? This phrase is the most deliberately emotive, and completely irrational of the whole bunch. It rips into our deepest, darkest fears of being totally ruled over by a foreign country who, at this very moment, is breeding itself into power through sheer fecundity.
According to the dictionary on my lap, to colonise means to found a colony and a colony is simply a group of people who all live together according to their own rules (like a farmstead, say, or the Amish in America). We've been "colonised", by those terms, for thousands of years. In other words, that phrase is totally meaningless where the argument for or against immigration is concerned.
It's interesting that I've found five Fnords. I wonder if Eris is having a little laugh at our expense. I also wonder if it's relevant that the word "colonise" begins with "colon"!
Truth?
Okay, the statement may be a massive giggling Fnord, but that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't still true. There are two basic questions to answer, plus one from the following FB discussion which probably ought to be addressed.
The two questions are: "What is the immigration rate?" and "What is the population growth rate?". If we can answer these two basic questions we should be able to tell if were likely to be "completely colonised" by anybody.
The Immigration Rate
Britain's immigration rate actually is quite high in comparison to other countries and according to most of what I've read we'll be heading for a population of about 70 million within 25 years - if rates remain at present levels.
But will they? According to a recent BBC news report immigration has slowed and during 2008 "The numbers of people arriving minus those leaving actually fell by 44%". Immigration levels are very difficult to predict and tend to come in waves. Present levels are very unlikely to continue because levels change all the time, at the last count they appeared to be falling.
To state that we WILL have specifically higher population because of immigration is impossible.
Here's a quote from Tim Finch, another government advisor:
It is now declining sharply - almost certainly because of a combination of the economic downturn, the short term nature of much migration from new EU
countries, and the impact of stronger controls put in place by the government.
There has been a lot of irresponsible scaremongering about immigration in recent years which was based on the false assumption that high migration was inevitable for years to come.
The Birth Rate
The British birth rate is indeed rising, and faster than immigration. We have just passed 61 million people, but just like immigration, birth rates come in waves. We are currently going through a boom period with 790,000 babies born in the UK last year. Roughly a quarter of those were born to mothers from other countries. A quarter that is - not a takeover, just a quarter. A significant number of these babies were born to Polish mothers - not just Third World mothers.
So, of the rising population 75% has nothing whatsoever to do with immigrants. It's different when you look at it that way, isn't it?
We had massive booms in birth rates in 1947, 1962, and 1993 with either slumps or steady settling in between. We must account for an aging population as well. We aren't living any longer as a species, but a lot more of us are reaching the upper limits of old age than previously. The current population of over-85's stands at more than 1.3 million. That's likely to rise too. There's the answer: kill your granny!
The Countryside
One very valid point was a query about what will happen to our countryside with an increasing population. The increasing population being placed squarely on the shoulders of immigrants doesn't actually work in this case though - it's another of those assumptions we tend to make.
We are losing countryside rapidly and have been for quite some time, but is this the fault of immigration?
Well, no! Immigrants tend to live in whatever they can get. The vast majority of immigrants live in areas of extremely high population, in poor housing close to or even within cities. Most of them haven't acquired the almost uniquely British idea of moving out to the suburbs, or better yet a place in the country. The destruction of the British countryside is not happening, and has never happened, to house immigrants - it happens purely because of our own selfish, short-sighted, acquisitive greed. Why do you think that Wimpey is such a huge company?
This is something you'll see regularly after the building of a housing estate outside a village. Regardless of the protests it immediately fills up with upper-middle class families who'll commute to work, for a better place in the countryside which they've just helped to destroy.
Finally
. . . because I'm getting tired now!
Right at the end of this piece I'm going to put a list of all the immigrants into Britain. See if you know anyone (including yourself) who isn't on that list somehow. We're all descended from immigrants in Britain, even Nick Griffin. A society is made of its people and this society's people are all immigrants. We won't lose our cultural heritage by allowing immigration because our cultural heritage has migrated with us and been adapted by and to where we live. Even the country's national religion is a foreign import.
Personally I prefer the philosophy of the No Borders movement, but perhaps that's a blog for another time. Meanwhile I'd like to ask a moral question - not answer it, just ask:
If someone sees a way of improving the lives of himself and his family
without knowingly causing harm to anyone else, does anyone have the right to
stop him?
Love and freedom,
Seán
Picts, Celts, more Celts, Romans, Afro-Roman Legionaries, Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Danes, Normans, Jews, Huguenots, North African slaves, Indians, Chinese, Irish, Bengali Lascars, Polish, Italians, West Indians, Pakistanis, Kashmiris, Ugandan Asians, Australians, New Zealanders, white South Africans, Americans, South Asians.
We're all foreigners sooner or later!
5 comments:
I come under the Roman section of your list as my maternal family were from that part of the world! Mass immigration has been going on for thousands of years and will continue to do so for as long as humanity exists as will bigotry, racism, religious differences and fear of what is different. All our ancestors came from Africa millions of years ago and displaced the Neanderthal so in effect we are all 'immigrants'.
Yes we are all foreigners to some extent, there are very few native Britins anymore.
The current immigration policy is not totally to blame for the situation, but accepting more people into a country that cannot cope with those it already has cannot be a good idea surely.
I now people who were born in this country who are living in sub standard accommodation because immigrants are being given priority to council housing. Not an inflammatory statement - a fact here in Ipswich. It's also a fact that in Ipswich immigrants are creating their own areas and not interacting with locals, most cannot and have no intention of speaking English.
Don't get me wrong I am not a supporter of BNP to any extent nor am I a Daily Mail reader or The Sun but . . . . . . . . . . . .
I'd like to see the council housing policies which are used in Ipswich. Many people perceive a preference towards immigrants because the policies automatically favour the homeless (or certain other characteristics) above anybody else on the list, and thus those who fit tend to be immigrants.
As for the creation of their own areas, yes people tend to do that. I've lived in an area with a huge Asian population, the vast majority of which came from the same village in Kashmir. People group together for comfort and protection it's a natural response to being somewhere where the language gives you a headache.
These individuals may not be learning English much yet, but they will in order to survive. Their children will because it will be their second language and the language of their friends and schoolteachers, but their grandchildren will barely speak the old language at all.
By the 3rd generation an immigrant isn't one anymore.
Immigration is always going to be an issue, for my part I prefer hardworking immigrants to the lazy british sods I see drinking WKD or cider outside the job center near where i used to work. That came into the job agency asking for there form to be signed so they could look like they looked for work. Trouble is thery are the ones that will happily vote BNP claiming that immigrants are taking the jobs that they wouldn't do anyway..
But what is odd is that many travel over lots of safe countries to get here. I've never understood that.
It can't just be about the benefits they get as i've seen many homeless and jobless. And seen people remark thet the very same are taking there jobs and claiming on our taxes... Hello they guys homeless!
I do believe intregration is key though, if i go to a nother country (i lived in Germany for a number of years) You learn the languege, respect the culture etc..
Having your own culture at home is fine, and we should be fascinated by it and learn about it, but equally ours should not be smothered.
Birthrates... hmm I won't get started on that, lets just say we are starting to devolve as the best and brightest don't tend to have the biggest families and vice versa.
Interesting article along with the reason behind the article.
After reading it I get the impression that "colonisation" is a very disliked word in todays Britain. For all it's true, political and socially hidden meanings.
I find this very interesting. Why?
There was an old expression coined many, many decades ago, "The sun never sets on the British Empire". Why was this expression born?
Simply because Britain of the last three hundred odd years had an obsessive desire, and a selfish closed-minded attachment to aquiring any land, just about anywhere they could land their ships on, to claim it as their own. Without any thought for the opinion, welfare, permission of the local inhabitants. These original inhabitants were robbed of the wealth of their country, robbed of their culture/religion and generally ignored by the Colonists. Ahhh, there is that word again, Colonists.
The British people were the extreme Colonists of our recent World history. They took over just about everywhere and they didn't care about the impact.
To keep it short, dare I say, History always repeats. The wheel will turn. Karma. The three-fold return.
So Britain will be completely colonised(taken over)in twenty years, well, so what!
It will survive, as the previous colonised countries did.
Rose Kviz
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