Sunny,
“1. You questioned whether I've ever had to work to pay for my own living, tax, etc, so I replied and explained that I have. If you don't want to hear the answer, you shouldn't ask the question.
2. Your replies to seem to be far more about my personal circumstances than about the issue we initially disagreed on: Whether or not UK can afford immigration. I'm not prepared to let this turn into a series of personal attacks and snide remarks. So let's just agree to disagree.”
1. I was thrilled to hear your reply; that’s why I asked the question: to see from where your views come.
2. On the contrary: once I understood your circumstances, I was able to understand your politcal base. Sometimes, it’s all very prediictable, and at others, not.
Regarding snide: wasn’t it you making broad, sweeping statements about lower-middle class people, expats living off the EC (you imagined) and so forth?
Yep, I think we may as well just agree to differ – there’s no future in anything much else here.
“Safe living standards, fair laws and a reasonably un-corrupt judicial system, schools and universities, etc, are not finite resources. The more people contribute to society, the more of these things we can afford. It’s a win/win situation (and that’s how America got great while Britain got poor.”
And people from poorer countries are going to get these standards at home by running away rather than fighting for what they want?
Contributing to society? By having a far higher birth rate than the indigenous population? By stretching demands on public housing, education (my kid teaches in Scotland; there are kids in her class who can’t speak a word of English, just spending the day sitting in the corner playing with their cellphone. No doubt, that’s her failure you would suggest; maybe she should disadvantage her Scottish kids by spending more class time with the immigrants?). They are unteachable, grow up in a racial cocoon and have no way to survive other than via gang culture because they can contribute nothing to either society: neither their own nor the wider British one. We need to import more, you think, broaden the base?
Those capable of contributing to society were ever welcome, almost everywhere on earth.
And no, Britain got poor by being suckered into empire-guilt, by having industries that were of old expertise, moribund things such as ships, and a left-wing labour ethic that brought trade unions to power at the expense of progress and innovation which were stifled at every attempt. Why do you think we lost a car industry? Because we didn’t have the experts? The converse is why Germany became great; importantly, new, state-of-the-art factories were built as part of the Marshall Plan whereas Britain found itself deep in war debt right up until the time of Mrs Thatcher.
I’m afraid you don’t know much about life at the great British coalface at all, however long you may have lived in the country.
Perhaps you should have lived along the Clyde, just for kicks. Plenty of dead reality there.
;-)
Rob C
P.S. No idea why this has taken on a new typeface; it doesn't exist as I write.