Monday, September 24, 2007

papering over the cracks

New figure of derision and score is Keith Best. Anyone who listened to BBC Radio 5 Live last night will know why. Spaz-head of monumental proportions that he is.

Tory MP from 1979 to 1987, he is now Chief Executive of the Immigration Advisory Service. This means he refuses to listen to any point of view which states that mass migration from poor countries to rich countries may not be such a good idea, and could be, in actual fact, wholly irresponsible.

Last night, apart from being terribly rude and unable to shut up for 10 seconds to let someone else speak, he said such crazy things as 'if we didn't have migrant workers then vegetables would be rotting in the fields.' Right. He told a woman who called up saying that she found the gangs of Poles in Ramsgate 'intimidating' that she was wrong. How dare he tell someone he doesn't know that she is wrong for feeling something. That's like telling someone they're wrong because they prefer strawberry to chocolate ice cream - they can't help it.

He should know all about crime, mind, seeing as he was found guilty of share cheating and served time at HM's pleasure.

Businesses might very well need extra people to come work in the UK, but Work Permits would work nicely, as it does in the USA, Australia and other successful countries all over the world. Best decided that if Britain had a system of work permits then British workers would never be able to get jobs overseas. He was told that there were hundreds of thousands of people working in the USA for example, where we don't have a right of movement or residence, but that appeared to be too complicated to get in his head, bless the thick chap.

But the issue which that point of view for pro-immigration should bring up is about British unemployed.

Lots of people say they'd rather employ a polish worker than some British chav, but that's just papering over the cracks. Because what we need to do in this country is change this mentality where it is acceptable to live off the state, to get knocked up and get a council house at the age of 16 and to leave school without qualifications. I suspect if we didn't have a social security system which rewarded people for being lazy bastards then we wouldn't need hundreds of thousands of migrants to pick fruit, because people who currently can't be bothered to work would have to, or go hungry and get wet when it rained.

Maybe if we had some discipline in schools and people were not so concerned about 'their rights' but rather 'their responsibilities' then we wouldn't have such a prevalent underclass.

By letting them off with not working, and instead burdening the system even more with hundreds of thousands of migrant workers we are being unfair and irresponsible to our whole society, and especially those people who work hard and play fair. Young people who have a job but can't afford a house - shouldn't they be given some thought?

The attention is wrong, and until it changes it won't get any better.

5 comments:

Jackart said...

Trixy, I think you missed the point of my post criticising you. It's not that I think that talking about immigration is racist. It's just that to campaign on it is perceived as such.

By all means have a policy - work permits and all the rest. The Tories do. But accept that the poles and other accession countries are qualitatively different from those outside the EU, where very different cultural norms apply.

The point I am making is that campaigning on immigration, whether or not polling indicates the electorate agreeing, is counter productive. It's not, well, polite. After all, look where it got the Tories when they tried it: nowhere.

You have hit the nail on the head here though. We would not need migrants, if there was not such an absurdly generous welfare state.

That's the real problem, not those hard working Poles.

Trixy said...

I'm glad we've found some common ground...

(that wasn't meant to rhyme)

Shug Niggurath said...

I personally think that Clem Attlee would be spinning in his grave if he seen what the welfare state gave birth to.

Safety net my arse.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Trixy, broadly agreed.

The way in which welfare state discourages work is a bit trickier than that.

I've applied for a mobile 'phone, BTW, up and running in a week or so.

James Higham said...

Agree with Hugh Miller here.

By the way, congrats, Top 100 blogger.