Re: BNP on Question Time
Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2009 11:51 pm
Some good points being made by everyone - isn't it amazing how rational discussion can crystallise an issue if rational people are prepared to listen to other rational viewpoints?
Flo's point about tribalism sparked my interest. I agree - we are tribal. But I think we're very selectively tribal. I often pop onto a Sunderland supporters' forum (being counted amongst those sad people). They hate the Toonies. And if you then pop onto the Newcastle equivalent board, you find that the Toonies hate the Mackems. But you just try bringing down the north-east and, suddenly, the Toonies and the Mackems are comrades in arms. Then if a southerner makes any comment about the north, the Toonies and Mackems are joined by the Smoggies (that's Middlesbrough supporters, if you didn't know) in a united front against the southern softies. Unless England are playing, in which case those southern softies are OK lads and lasses. Mind you, the Scots and the Welsh and the Northern Irish get a bit of stick - at least until anyone from France has a go, and then they're all British through and through. And, naturally, the northerners are proud as punch of their Viking and Danish roots, and the whole of the country is proud of its early Germanic history in the form of the Anglo Saxons, and the Welsh and Cornish loudly proclaim their affinities with the Bretons (although the Welsh tend to forget that they were invaded by the Irish rather than the Anglo Saxons, but I'm sure they're proud of that too when it comes to mind).
So, we're from a town or city, from a region, from a country, from certain foreign rootstock, and proud to be so. We even pride ourselves on being the country which injected so many people into the outside world that there are now countries such as the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, (I'm sure I've left some out) - countries which, although they now have their own special identities, are certainly based upon the British model. When it comes to football, rugby or cricket, they're the enemy. At all other times, they're good old boys (and girls, of course). In more modern times, Brits have uprooted themselves and gone to live almost all over Europe - mainly because the EU laws allow them to - and there are a fair number of those people on this site.
Absolutely nothing wrong with any of it. It's healthy and, above all, it's normal. And I think it's a safe bet that anyone from any part of Britain would willingly recognise it as such.
So, in general, we as a nation would have great difficulty in fixing ourselves upon any particular set of historical roots, we tend to be an outward-looking people, and we certainly have a long history of going elsewhere. That's just us in a nutshell.
Ironic , then, that the BNP can concentrate on a section of that people and convince them that foreign is bad, going to another country is bad, not conforming to the local culture is bad (that one must strike nasty chords around what was the Empire), and that all current evils can be put down to people who have left their homelands to come here. They appear to have invented a line which coincides with our national borders and across which no-one shall pass - inwards. This is what angers and frustrates me - the ability to applaud what we have done in the past and then claim that such actions are evil - and get other people to accept the obvious fallacy.
Yes, the major political parties have not yet developed any credible immigration policy, nor the agencies to police it efficiently (I bet they will soon, though). No, I do not believe that the UK will comfortably support a population of 70 million (by the end of the next decade, I think). So yes - something has to be done and done reasonably quickly. The way to do that, though, is through the normal lobbying procedures and by the use of the normal kind of pressure groups. It does work - who, in the 60s, would have thought that those looney environmental tree-huggers would end up with political influence?
Very definitely NOT the way to do it is to frighten people with tales of immigrants taking away British jobs and occupying British social housing, undermining British religion (what?) and somehow forcing all white British people to change their customs.
It's just not British.
Mike
Flo's point about tribalism sparked my interest. I agree - we are tribal. But I think we're very selectively tribal. I often pop onto a Sunderland supporters' forum (being counted amongst those sad people). They hate the Toonies. And if you then pop onto the Newcastle equivalent board, you find that the Toonies hate the Mackems. But you just try bringing down the north-east and, suddenly, the Toonies and the Mackems are comrades in arms. Then if a southerner makes any comment about the north, the Toonies and Mackems are joined by the Smoggies (that's Middlesbrough supporters, if you didn't know) in a united front against the southern softies. Unless England are playing, in which case those southern softies are OK lads and lasses. Mind you, the Scots and the Welsh and the Northern Irish get a bit of stick - at least until anyone from France has a go, and then they're all British through and through. And, naturally, the northerners are proud as punch of their Viking and Danish roots, and the whole of the country is proud of its early Germanic history in the form of the Anglo Saxons, and the Welsh and Cornish loudly proclaim their affinities with the Bretons (although the Welsh tend to forget that they were invaded by the Irish rather than the Anglo Saxons, but I'm sure they're proud of that too when it comes to mind).
So, we're from a town or city, from a region, from a country, from certain foreign rootstock, and proud to be so. We even pride ourselves on being the country which injected so many people into the outside world that there are now countries such as the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, (I'm sure I've left some out) - countries which, although they now have their own special identities, are certainly based upon the British model. When it comes to football, rugby or cricket, they're the enemy. At all other times, they're good old boys (and girls, of course). In more modern times, Brits have uprooted themselves and gone to live almost all over Europe - mainly because the EU laws allow them to - and there are a fair number of those people on this site.
Absolutely nothing wrong with any of it. It's healthy and, above all, it's normal. And I think it's a safe bet that anyone from any part of Britain would willingly recognise it as such.
So, in general, we as a nation would have great difficulty in fixing ourselves upon any particular set of historical roots, we tend to be an outward-looking people, and we certainly have a long history of going elsewhere. That's just us in a nutshell.
Ironic , then, that the BNP can concentrate on a section of that people and convince them that foreign is bad, going to another country is bad, not conforming to the local culture is bad (that one must strike nasty chords around what was the Empire), and that all current evils can be put down to people who have left their homelands to come here. They appear to have invented a line which coincides with our national borders and across which no-one shall pass - inwards. This is what angers and frustrates me - the ability to applaud what we have done in the past and then claim that such actions are evil - and get other people to accept the obvious fallacy.
Yes, the major political parties have not yet developed any credible immigration policy, nor the agencies to police it efficiently (I bet they will soon, though). No, I do not believe that the UK will comfortably support a population of 70 million (by the end of the next decade, I think). So yes - something has to be done and done reasonably quickly. The way to do that, though, is through the normal lobbying procedures and by the use of the normal kind of pressure groups. It does work - who, in the 60s, would have thought that those looney environmental tree-huggers would end up with political influence?
Very definitely NOT the way to do it is to frighten people with tales of immigrants taking away British jobs and occupying British social housing, undermining British religion (what?) and somehow forcing all white British people to change their customs.
It's just not British.
Mike
It's the truth, really!
in the early 70s,) we worked out that if the BNP wanted to buy out her mum and dad, who have a nice house in london, us two, with our place in sussex, her sister, with a nice house in London too, plus give us our salaries for at least a year while we find jobs in Mauritius, then it would amount to over a million quid, and thats just for one family (obvioulsy i would have to go too despite being whiteish and so apparently according to the BNP "more british" than the badger, who was herself born here 
)....so for each of the 7.5% of folks who describe themselves as "non white british" the BNP, if elected, would have to stump up at least a mil??? i cant do the maths but i'm guessing thats a whole lot of money, so the whole policy of sending people back is ludicrous really...the country would go down the tube almost over night. PLUS what happens to the GDP of a country if you lose 7.5% of the workers?? surely the standard of living would go down for who ever was left? NGs ideas seem, not just repellent morally but really, really undesirable economically. sadly no one tackled NG about the economics of his ideas on QT....