Angloslavia was originally a term coined by Ken MacLeod in his science fictions series about The Fall Revolution. If you have not picked these four books up, you should do so, now! The term is utilised here as a playful reference to the current flow of immigration from East Central Europe into the United Kingdom. This flow has serious consequences due to the interplay between immigration and public services. East European workers naturally respond to the market incentives provided by New Labour’s decision to open up Britain’s employment market. This improving migration is combined with an inflexible public sector which is not geared towards dealing with such a large increase in local populations. This inflexibility is due to the incompetence of New Labour’s administration, since they appear to have undermined, indeed destroyed, the Northcote-Trevelyan ethos of the mid-Victorian civil service, that ensured Britain’s civil service was more competent than most for a while.
A massive rise in immigration next year could trigger a devastating crisis in Britain’s schools, housing and welfare services, according to a secret Government report leaked to The Mail on Sunday.
The document reveals that every Government department has been ordered to draw up multi-million-pound emergency plans after being told public services face catastrophe as a result of the hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans pouring into Britain.
The government faces disaster if the courts, applying European law, conclude that all East European immigrants are eligible for the same benefits as United Kingdom subjects. A large influx will either force up taxes to pay for the extra services and benefits required, rewrite the rules to ensure that public services remain remain viable through radical reform, or do nothing.
One of her [Home Office Minister Joan Ryan] biggest fears is that the courts may force the Government to scrap its restrictions on East European immigrants applying for council houses or benefits. At present, they receive some benefits only if they register for work – which one in three don’t do – and earn full benefit rights after they have worked for a year.
Ms Ryan says: “The legal basis for this is precarious and there is a strong risk of a successful challenge. This is a concern.”
Benefits will provide an additional incentive for immigration from Eastern Europe. The pressures that this will place on the welfare state may provide a force for accelerated reform, since the free market will provide services cheaply and more efficiently, if given free rein.
So far, the addition of cheap flights to Eastern Europe, the added mix of Slavic tongues to polyglot London and the chance to taste more beers from exotic climes, has proved an exciting experience. Let us give the same chance to Sofia and Bucharest.
The document reveals that every Government department has been ordered to draw up multi-million-pound emergency plans after being told public services face catastrophe as a result of the hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans pouring into Britain.
Oh, really… What a load of crap! On the basis of what? The Mail never ceases to amaze me with their pseudo-journalism…
I find it hard to believe that most eastern Europeans are coming here for ‘benefits’. How many of them actually know our benefits system? In fact, how many EU eastern Europeans are claiming benefits?
This is just more scare-mongering on the part of worthless public sector workers, concerned that they face the prospect of ‘reform’.
I live in a tourism-driven town with a population of around 145,000. We have an estimated influx of around 8-10,000 eastern European workers. In the past two years or so that we’ve hosted this seasonal population, I can’t say that I’ve noticed public infrastructure descend into anarchy, with ‘vital’ services devastated by the ‘strain’ of this increased population.
The reality is that in my town, we’ve welcomed them quite happily. Local businesses are happy with them- they work hard and have introduced competition in the employment markets- locals are generally blasé about them, mostly because they haven’t made any sort of cultural impact or imposing presence. Even the council is happy to have them here.
Speaking to some of the ones I’ve worked with, they either return home after the season (with more than enough money to see them through until the next one) or seek alternative employment. Most of them are young and don’t have children, so they aren’t in a position to cream piles of cash off the State- has anybody experienced JSA? It’s hardly an incentive to keep out of work.
The people we’re more concerned about are the useless transient lay-abouts who come from the rest of the UK because our town is seen as a Mecca for hostels and benefits provision. The existing problem is the real concern- not the wildly hypothetical one.
Hopefully there is something to this story, of course it could just be the mail stoking up some of the Fear for it’s readership wants. If there is anything to it then since no government is going to be willing to push up taxation by the degree needed. This could finally mean some real reforms to the Welfare State, and about time too.
Chalk up another good point for free immigration.
The Welfare State + mass immigration. The first is bad enough, but combined with the latter it is a disaster.
James seems to ignore the temptation to work in the black market while claiming benefits and housing. Too much occurs already regardless of if they are a UK citizen or not.
Further, the issue would not be such a problem if the UK was not so beholden to the European courts while most other member states decide not to permit the influx, so focusing the problem on the few member states that do.
TimC,
To be honest, I’m not certain that gangsters are advertising openly on Gumtree.com for eastern Europeans to come here, claim benefits and become market stakeholders in criminal activities. Then again, I could be wrong.
I’m quite aware that there is a risk of black market activity whilst in receipt of benefits, but that’s not to say that there is a tangible and definite problem in this instance.
I would ask what we know of these EU eastern Europeans claiming benefits. What are the numbers?
I’d hate to see such apparently intelligent people falling for the trick of collectively condemning others on mere tabloid suspicion.
I think the general rule is that you can’t claim benefits until you have been “ordinarily resident” in the UK for six months. I know that if I were to return to the UK tomorrow I would not be able to claim any benefits of any sort. In theory I would not even be entitled to NHS care.
Ah yes, The Mail On Sunday’s favourite preoccupation – niggers. In this case white niggers, a-comin’ to take your jobs and your women, right? Of course, the Mail isn’t allowed to use the word “niggers”, but we know quite clearly what they mean.
The article is, of course, utter bullshit. The “crisis” in the health service and schools Britain faces is if the immigrants DON’T come, because teaching in Inner-City Schools, or Nursing, or working as Doctor in the NHS don’t come within the set of skills traditionally practiced by Brits (ie running a Public Relations Consultancy, starting a new glossy lifestyle magazine, Investment Banking, Law, or Whitehall). If you want a set of shelves put up, your sink unblocked, your offices cleaned or your old mum nursed in longterm NHS care, then you get a Pole or a Lithuanian to do it – what, catch a Brit sullying their hands with that kind of thing? Not on your nelly!
My dad had the deep misfortune to die on NHS premises, and the excellent treatment he had came from a Consultant (from South Africa), nurses from Ghana, Jamaica and Poland, and medical orderlies from Poland, Lithuania and Antigua. Not a single Brit could be found working in the hospital, in fact. Will you find Sophie, Fenella, Sorrel or Melanie signing-up for a career in which you have to help an amnesiac old man who doesn’t answer to his own name any more to go for a crap? I don’t somehow see them doing it – their little careers for the darling little architectural magazine in Frith Street are sooooo much more interesting.
The New Right love to bleat about open borders and free markets and free movement of labour – but if you actually go ahead and DO it (hello, they’re EU members, they are ENTITLED to come and work in Britain, and receive Social Services) then mysteriously the “New Right” turns into the BNP. As if they really WANTED the job as a morgue porter (I’ve done it, for a week once – bottom point in my life but I did it because I refused to go on the dole whilst jobless – I’m now a Company Director, so you can bounce-back) that Jerzy from Gdansk is doing?? I somehow don’t think they do?
Wasn’t it the American New Right that was goading “Old Europe” about access to its markets for the new nations of E Europe? That, I’m afraid, includes labour markets too. Or did you think you could pick and choose??
Glad to see the Mail On Sunday is still the same old racist toilet-paper it ever was. In a changing world, it’s nice to know there’s always a knee-jerk Little Englander moronic view you can rely on from Britain’s very own version of “Der Sturmer”.
I’m sooooooo glad I don’t live there any more.
Gawd!
I can’t imagine the mess that thye USA would be today if there were government assistance before 1940. However, I can imagine the hell it will be in a few more years if the nonsensical schemes for importing cheap labor and a ready made underclass to give government excess meaning, come to fruition.
Rather “Angloslavia” than “Anglorabia”. Perish the thought. At least those pretty Eastern European girls don’t walk around in black bin liners and bang their heads on the floor five times a day.
Samsung..
So sorry for being a dumb American, but what the devil is a bin liner? I assume it’s British and not a compliment?
I checked MacLeod’s link, and it could be my mistake, but he looks to be a Communist.
I’m quite aware that there is a risk of black market activity whilst in receipt of benefits,[…]
Which risk is rather greater in the native population, of whom there are rather more, wouldn’t you say. If ‘public services’ are on the point of collapse (though I couldn’t say I’d noticed – more officials, compliances and clipboards every day), it is because of the habitual sense of entitlement of the British non-working classes, and/or because they have been pumped-up massively by off-budget borrowing that can’t be serviced.
I live in Poland, the main source of the current influx and
a) the overwhelming majority of those going to Britain see it as a temporary phase to better position themselves and their families in Poland (of course a certain number will change plans and end up staying just as some who intend to stay end up going back but almost none are going and intending to become permanent residents)
b) those with children are mostly not bringing them along, they leave them with family in Poland (this is partly because they expect to be living in multi-bed rented rooms for a while and need to be able to move quickly). For the most part, they bring the children over only if both parents get jobs they want to keep a while.
c) apart from students who mostly go there seasonally, the majority have little interest in Britain, it’s people or culture and little desire to ‘assimilate’ Satellite tv, cell phones and computers mean they can keep up with things back home (of more interest to most of them) just fine. The already existing overall cultural similarity (comparitively speaking) may mean this isn’t so obvious.
W.E. Messamore: Ken McLeod is a Marxist. I enjoyed his early books like th Star Fraction. His fiction is better than his non-fiction. I have met him about three times and he is a charming guy, but obviously on a completely different political wavelength to me. I once remarked, at a meeting that I attended, that few serious economists seem to support the Labour Theory of Value any more – the theory underpinning Marxian exploitation theory – and Ken turned round and said, with a slightly injured tone of voice, that he did.
Oh well.
The influx from eastern Europe has been a great example of successful immigration, both socially and economically. Eastern Europeans assimulate very quickly (the number of Brits I know with Eastern European partners increases constantly) and the great majority are welcomed into the labour force quickly (I have been noticing that bank clerks in my part of London who tended to be of asian or african origin are being steadily displaced by eastern Europeans).
In short, generally speaking they have proven to be the ‘dream immigrants’ (as I suspected they would): easy to assimulate and a net contributor to the economy soon after arrival. However if in the long run they also end up causing the welfare state to collapse, then I think we should start naming streets after them in gratitude. However as the Mail are dependibly wrong on most things, I am not quite ready to break out the bubbly…
Oh, and I regard MacLeod as a vile man.
He does not approve of Israel’s action in Lebanon, which is fair enough, I disagree but I can see a coherent argument to the contrary and people of good faith can come to different conclusions… but that this also leads him to therefore refuse to condemn Hezbollah firing rockets into Israeli towns at random (they do not seem to be accurate enough to do more that aim at ‘a town’) with the clear implication that Hezbollah are actually trying to cause civilian casualties rather than just causing them as a consequence of attacking military and strategic targets within Israel (which their rockets are clearly incapable of doing), well that just proves MacLeod is a wicked collectivist holding “The Jews” in Israel as a valid collective target. There is a name of people like that.
James, please read my post again. It is not blaming due to tabloid frenzy, just observing the current situation which is already tangible within the UK population, as Guy says, and seeing how it might extrapolate given the impending circumstances and prevailing conditions.
Leaked to the Mail on Sunday eh? So they can stir up more ethnic tension and cultivate fear of the outsider in their readers. I’ve seen this kind of thing in the Mail (daily or sunday) before and find it revolting. I take everything that is written in the mail with a pinch of salt. At least the Sun doesn’t try and pretend its a serious newspaper.
I’m afraid the housing crisis is very real and considerable resentment is brewing against profiteering Britons and the British government.
the Sun doesn’t try and pretend its a serious newspaper.
Unfortunately the Guardian and Independent still try it on ..
Please explain what you mean by “profiteering”. Do you mean trying to get the market rate for something scarce? However if there is a housing shortage, that is not an argument against immigration, it is an argument against the absurdity of involving the state in the building of houses. The large amounts of construction that would result from unrestricted building would quickly bring down prices away from city centres.
Scrap the Country and Town Planning and Land Act and the so-called ‘housing shortage’ will disappear in a couple years. We do not have a ‘housing shortage’, we have a ‘planning regulation surplus’. The most ration thing would be to allow developers to more or less pave over Kent from Croyden to Dover.
I have never understood why Samizdata people do not object to the criminalisation of the UK economy. If we ‘need’ immigriants why don’t we just say so, instead of allowing a labour market crisis to develop?
As for the waves of prasie for Angloslavic workers. These people are the children and grandchildren of people who helped the Nazis kill millions of their own Jewish ‘citizens’. There is also plenty of truly vile criminality involved: white slavery for example.
You are right about the ‘underclass’ though. But why was such a phenomenon allowed to develop? I was skint as a kid in the sixties bit I was never one of the ‘poor’ or ‘excluded’.
The Uk has a population of 60 million and a legal workforce of nearly 33 million. Immigriants, no matter what job they do, only make a contribution to the hospitals etc. There are also whole professions that immigriants more or less eschew: teaching, the Police force, the Army.
I have never understood why Samizdata people do not object to the criminalisation of the UK economy. If we ‘need’ immigriants why don’t we just say so, instead of allowing a labour market crisis to develop?
In what way is immigration linked to criminalisation – except, that is, by your non-sequitur?
In fact you do indeed need migrants, which is why the UK overpaid some Management Consultants (another thing at which Brits excel – beats working…) to establish a list of shortage skills. This list of skills now enables those possessing them to make a fast-track application for a work-permit in Britain – it was a lynchpin of “New” Labour’s Immigration policy.
These people are the children and grandchildren of people who helped the Nazis kill millions of their own Jewish ‘citizens’
There is a technical term for what you write, and it is called “utter crap”. Who are “these people”?? Be specific. Are you referring here to Czechs, for example – who are new slavic EU members? Lots of Czechs died in Nazi Camps. My grandparents, for example. But I don’t think it was Czechs who were running those camps – it was officers of the Wehrmacht who were running Theresienstadt (Terezin), for example. But fools like you aren’t bothered by detail or accuracy – it’s inconvenient to carry by torchlight with the clubs and staves, isn’t it? And how do you know “these people” are the relatives of the few who collaborated with the Nazis? As I said – utter crap.
BTW it’s clear there was a teacher-training shortage in your youth, as you can’t spell “immigrants”, despite all the loony and irrational prejudices you have against them.
I hope that when YOU next need hospital treatment, you’ll have the courage of your convictions and say “Anglo-Saxon Medic only, yah?”. And that you bleed for long hours on a trolley in a corridor waiting until one actually comes on duty.
This looks like a form of “blood guilt” argument. Why should the kids get the blame for what their ancestors’ did? Blaming a 25-year-old east European bricklayer for what happened in 1940-5 is stupid, in fact, I would use a stronger word but I want to start the week in a nice mood.
By profiteering I am refering to the new Buy-to-Let landlord class which has developed where British people and foreign speculators take advantage of the fact that many people cannot now afford to buy their own house. I would also put other types of housing speculator in that bracket to. Where I live there is no shortage of housing. There is just a shortage of houses for sale at an affordable price. These people buy up the housing stock and then rent it back to us. Resentment is building up against them nationally and also against other sections of society such as immigrants, baby boomers, even the elderly, who are perceived by those on the other side of the fence as being the cause of the problem.
Perry,
The large amounts of construction that would result from unrestricted building would quickly bring down prices away from city centres.
And indeed in city centres. The amount of property that’s vacant and mouldering in central London is astounding once you look for it. Much of that can only be planning blight, or that building regulations, listing, or conservation area controls make it impossible to convert.
This discussion is remarkably similar to the one taking place in the U.S. about Mexican/S. American immigration.
The difference is that, in theory, we have the ability to limit immigration, or at least can pass legislation to do so.
The U.K. problem is that your hands are tied against any such action by EU law, so whatever happens, you have to live with it.
Yet one more reason why no nation should ever allow itself to be govered by a supranational body.
“A world with no borders” only works when there is a common culture. When there isn’t, it’s an open invitation to social friction.
As you’re discovering with Muslims, and we’re discovering with our own non-assimilating immigrants.
Paving over Southend to Dover would solve the housing “crisis” but I also don’t particularly have a desire to live in Fritz Lang’s metropolis made real.
Allow the decaying / derelict parts of the inner cities to be redeveloped to free up room.
And I think completely unregulated immigration as an ideal is good, in reality it’s not so great. For better or worse as it stands right now there is a general shortage of affordable housing in some parts of the country and England is a pretty small place (relatively) and you physically can’t keep accepting immigrants ad infinitum.
It really needs to be a balancing act so people in == people out.
Ah, the clever Reductio ad Hitlerum argument. No come-back for that one!
Uain: Since no-one has answered your question, I will try.
A bin liner in the UK is the black plastic bag (ususally bought on a roll) that fits inside a bin (i.e. trash can) to keep the container itself clean and hygienic, especially in a kitchen.
The allusion is to the black shapeless garb worn by many unfortunate Muslim women. Also, Bin Laden is sometimes called Bin Liner (i.e. container of garbage), as you suspect not in a complementary way.
Okay?
A very nice enthusiastic story,but they have not come for your job yet, at present they are concentrating on cutting my wages and forcing me on to the dole,it seems that i have no right to work in my own country,if a foreigner wants my job!!
We have a serious contender here for the Most Moronic Comment of the Year award.
By profiteering I am refering to the new Buy-to-Let landlord class which has developed where British people and foreign speculators take advantage of the fact that many people cannot now afford to buy their own house. I would also put other types of housing speculator in that bracket to. Where I live there is no shortage of housing. There is just a shortage of houses for sale at an affordable price.
Interesting theory. Rather than allow more houses to be built to reduce scarcity, your answer is presumably to prevent rich people from buying property and force owners to sell at below market rate.
Maybe the British government should experiment with house price control, we all know what a lovely solution rent control is to unaffordable housing. All those people living destitute lives in rented accomodation with central heating, plumbing, sewerage, electricity, gas, water, telephone, satellite TV, they have the right to ownership, god damn it.
I might suggest that many people a generation or so ago may have been able to become houseowners in two waves. First was to legislate, tax and then undercut (via state housing) the private landlord. Secondly, to sell off the said state housing again at below market rates. Now that sell off has subsided and state housing is not being replenished, we see a rise in house prices (along with the MAIN reason, cheap loans).
As for a job – NOBODY has a “right to a job”, only the right to be considered fairly for one when those offering and selecting you are not the owners (I think owners should be able to hire who they damn well please even if it is “against” HA! the PC laws du jour).
The main way to ensure the “right to work” is to not obstruct entrepreneurs. Allow entrepreneurs their head and jobs will follow as fruits follow a good summer. Most other kinds of “job creation” needs to be called what it is – “salaried unemployment”.
“In what way is immigration linked to criminalisation – except, that is, by your non-sequitur?”
Only by history, Reinert. Traditionally, immigrants, having fewer ties to the community, has always been more inclined to lawlessness than the original members — xenophobia, while not always pretty, nevertheless has some basis in observable fact.
In New York, Irish immigrants begat the Irish gangs, Jews ditto, Italians/Sicilians ditto, and, more recently, Mexicans, Nigerians and Russians ditto.
This happens as much from a distorted sense of community (gang “culture”) as it does from the lack of roots, ie. alienation.
The sheriff telling the stranger to leave town may draw our disapproval, but he’s acting on the odds.
Yes, I know: the vast majority of immigrants are law-abiding blah blah blah.
But a settled community has less crime than one which is constantly getting influxes of newcomers — it’s one of the main reasons, by the way, why America has always had a higher crime rate than most other countries in Europe.
But as Europe starts to resemble America more and more, with a growing tide of immigrants (especially immigrants who do not share the culture of their adopted country and who refuse to assimilate), so is Europe’s crime rate beginning to reach, and in many cases exceed the U.S. crime rates.
I’m not anti-immigration — I’m a naturalized U.S. citizen myself — but I am against people who transplant themselves and their culture into that of their adopted country, and cry out about “xenophobia:, “racism” and “exclusion” when their own chauvinism is the cause.
Immigrant crime is just a manifestation of that.
Reiner, my apologies for misspelling your name in the post above. PIMF.
To translate into American, a bin liner is a trash bag. I got it immediately, partly thru past participation in the Usenet alt.dumpster newsgroup.
Seeing as I employ myself, somehow I cannot see that happening.
Did it ever occur to you that you might not be worth what you are currently being paid?
Sure you have a right to work! What you do NOT have is a right to the job of your choice for life. If you are less attractive as an employee at what ever it is you do than somone else (such as, say, some Slovak), what makes you think you have some ‘right’ to that job if someone else can do it better or cheaper? I for one would rather pay less for things rather than pay more just to protect your job.
Kim, you are absolved of all typos without a grain of malice aforethought 🙂
It occurred to me later that if we really do wish to take revenge against the grandchildren of Hitler’s accessories to genocide, then… well, it’s a matter of proven fact that Prescott Bush, grandfather of the current US President was convicted by United States courts for “Trading With The Enemy”, and making a fortune from his investments in the East Silesian Steel corporation… a corporation whose profits were so remarkably successful because its workforce were Auschwitz-Birkenau slave labourers, who didn’t have to be paid anything.
I’d be interested to watch “Richard” put his firmly-held principles into practice and take out a suit against GWB on this basis… since after all, he’s a man who is provably the grandson of an investor in Auschwitz slave-labour schemes?
Perry/Reiner,
I am sorry to contradict you both but large sections of the Baltic/Polish/Belarus population DID help the Nazis to exterminate the Jewish population of those countries.
Anyone even half educated should be aware of this but you two aren’t. This is the historical record. If you think I am wrong show me evidence.
I used to believe that the post-war Commonwealth immgriants were integrating into British society better than anyone could have predicted. The 80’s riots and the Satanic Verses affair made me a great deal more pessismistic, like a great many other people. And that is twenty years ago. I am not pessimistic anymore. The worst has come to pass. BTW, what are the odds of a young, educated Muslim planting a ‘dirty bomb’ in one of our cities?
I have already said that you cannot blame young Latvians or Poles for war-time events. However, the fact is people who migrate take their history and culture with them and I have already seen clear evidence that East-European ‘culture’ in the form of anti-semitism. Catholcism, racism, and criminality is not a right-wing myth. I would love to see a poll of recent East-European immgriants attitudes to the current middle-east crisis. I would be astonished if a chunk of them did not, a la Mel Gibson, blame the Jews, or should that be Yids?
I see from this mornings Telegraph that the Polish government is desperate to stop the disasterous outflow of people from a country that needs its young workers to stay at home.
I don’t think people should be forced to live 8 to 10 to a room or have their wages ‘taxed’ by a gangmaster. If our own Government had been upfront about our need for workers and had made certain conditions: no criminals, people must have a job offer before they get here, Local Councils to provide accommodation, ( they could have been put in Public or HA flats and paid a higher rent than other tenants in lieu of not paying a deposit ) there would be a lot less resentment but that would have meant actually consulting people instead of imposing an ad hoc catastrophe in the making.
Richard, let’s remind ourselves of what you said in your first comment. Your comment frankly made me wonder whether to take you seriously. And we know our history of WW2 thanks, and I suspect a good deal more thoroughly than you do.
You wrote:
So their parents and grandparents may have done terrible things. Your comment implies, none too subtly I might add, that the children of said are tainted accordingly. The rest of your comments, even though they contain some truths and half-truths, cannot dispel my considerable distaste for someone who tars young immigrants with the sins of their elders.
I am sure that is true. The emigration of young entrepreneurs from Britain in the 1960s and 70s was also resented by the then-governments of the UK, presumably incredulous as to why anyone should want to leave their socialist utopia. The fact is that, despite improvements since the end of Communism, many young Poles feel no sympathies for their home nation or at least prefer to take a chance and live somewhere else. Maybe the government of Poland should take measures to encourage folk to stay.
Personally, when lots of people want to live in Britain, it is often the sincerest form of flattery to that country. Notwithstanding all the issues about culture and crime and welfare etc, I broadly stick to that view.
Idiot. You seem to be missing the point that this has NOTHING to do with people from that part of the world in 2006. SO WHAT if some people’s grandparents from helped exterminate Jews? Do you think Germans should also not be allowed into the UK? Or how about the Dutch (very widespread resistance to the Nazi occupation AND largest number of non-Germans to join the SS)? Your points are absurd.
And “Catholcism” is bad? Also perhaps you need to spend more Friday nights after closing time outside your home in town centres in Britain before you start claiming that racism and criminality are not endemic in Britain. Nothing I have seen in Eastern Europe quite compares to that.
I do not need a poll as I know large numbers of people from Eastern Europe who do not take such views, particularly the ones who get out of Eastern Europe and move west. I have also met some in Eastern Europe who do indeed blame the Jews for everything. But then all you have to do is read the Guardian or Independent or Daily Mail to get the same judeophobic views, just dressed up in coded language.
And in any case, given that loony views are easy to find in the Anglo-Saxon/Celtic majority, I cannot see how that is an argument against immigration by a self-selecting high initiative group from Eastern Europe.
So what? The Polish state does not OWN the people of Poland. If an individual wants to make a life elsewhere, why should they care about the needs of the Polish state? I live in Briotain and I do not give a damn about what the British state wants me to do.
Neither do I but if you think that is how the typical Eastern European in the UK lives, you are delusional.
Ah. Now I understand. You are a national socialist and cannot stand the idea that the state is completely superfluous in this matter. The fact that far from swelling the lines of people on the dole, the vast majority of Eastern European are already working (I can hardly enter a place of business where I live without seeing an Eastern European employee) and are generally living without recourse to the distorting pox that is ‘council housing’, I can see how that must be driving you up the wall. The idea of people contracting between themselves as employer and employee without you getting to interfere via the political system must be maddening for you. Hilarious.
Perry,
The ‘state’ was not ‘superflous in this matter.’ The British Government simply opened the doors and said come in and they did, in much greater numbers tahn greatly anticipated, with the result that people are being exploited. As for implying that I am Nazi, please, grow up. I thought Samizdata people were for Capitalism and the rule of law, not chaos come again.
I have spoken to two Serbs, not very many obviously, but both, a man and a woman, thought the NATO bombing of Belgrade was ‘genocide’.
The problem I have always had with likes of Hayek is this: they are basically correct in saying that Modern Captilalism is the best economic sytem ever devised, they paid to little attention to society. It is all well and good welcoming people from all over the world but does this mean that the indengenous population should have no say in anything. I though we lived in a Deomcracy.
Jonathon,
the reason why there is so much Council Housing is because of war damage, those pesky Nazis again, and because so much privately owned housing was unihabitable.
The first twenty years of the Welfare State were ok. People were exhausted by the war and the preceding depresssion.It is the last thirty years that have been a disaster.
BTW Mrs Thatcher’s Goverment intoduced two forms of public spending that have contributed greatly to the current malaise: Banks and Building Societies were paid tens of billions by the state when mortgage holders could not keep up their payments: billions more was spent paying of dole wallahs to private landlords.
As for drunken Brits. they may be repugnant but are they trafficking thousands of women into the country?
Which is a good thing in my view.
Really? All those Slovak NatWest bank clerks and Polish builders are being ‘exploited’? How does that work?
No, I do not think you are a ‘Nazi’ but you clearly are both a nationalist and socialist as you think that the state needs to be intermediated in all this unregulated economic activity. A free market capitalist you ain’t.
So? What does this have to do with anything? I know people who think Elvis is still alive.
Which suggests you really do not understand Hayek very well.
I assume by that you mean you feel you should be able to use politics (i.e. violence backed laws) to prevent me (an employer) from contracting with some Slovak who has moved to London in preference to, say, you. So the answer is yes, I am most certainly of the opinion “the indengenous population” (i.e you) should not have any say in that.
Obviously a big sample of Serbian opinion.
I did not raise the issue of council housing. I know perfectly well that German bombs caused a lot of damage; the various Fabian intellectuals and politicians – of both parties – after the war were also infused with the dream of obliterating slums and putting folk into big housing estates. It is arguable, as various authors like James Bartholemew, Alice Coleman, Jane Jacobs et al have argued, that socialised housing as carried out after WW2 was one of the biggest social policy disasters of the past century.
Well I don’t carry water for the late government of Mrs T. so I don’t necessarily approve of such things. In fact, subsising mortgages is obviously a bad idea and hardly the sort of laissez faire economics I champion.
Perry has pretty well disposed of your other arguments, so I will leave it there.
Dear Richard
It’s hard to believe that someone who persistently misspells the word “immigrant” has any knowledge of anything much, so I’ll pass on your witless condemnation of the entire populations of Belarus, Poland and Lithuania. Come to think of it, Churchill sent the White partisans who’d fought for the Allies back to Stalin, knowing they’d be shot (and they were, by the thousand) – so one could say that you personally are complicit in this appalling crime if I hold you to the same idiotic standards you require of others?
If you knew the slightest thing about Belarus (which you clearly don’t), or had ever been to that country (which you haven’t), you would realise that the population was decimated by warfare with the Nazis, and most of the country was razed by the Wehrmacht on their way Eastwards… and then again as they retreated to the Fatherland intent on leaving nothing standing that might afford the Red Army a scrap of assistance in pursuing them. You’ve talked to “two Serbians”? Well, spiffing job, old bean. Come over and talk to my friend Zara Abramovna sometime? She spent two months on the run in her homeland of Belarus in 1941, caught the wrong side of the advancing Germany army, when she was 14. She and her mother and sister were finally rescued by the Red Partisans, and evacuated on a troop-train that took 3.5 weeks to get into Russia via Ukraine. She continues to have nothing but admiration for “those boys who loaded up the train, not older than me – we knew we were leaving them to their deaths, and they knew it too”. She was so moved by the experience that she lied about her age and returned to the Front the following year as a Nursing Auxiliary. She still can’t speak about Stalingrad – I think she saw things there that no human should have to witness. After Stalingrad she was asked to take charge of a Clearing-House Centre for war orphans, and was evacuated with “her children” (she was only 17 herself) to Tashkent, safely away from the fighting. Being an Ashkenazi jew had no bearing on being rescued by the Belarusian partisans, nor on caring for an orphanage-ful of slavic kids. She used to march in the May 9th Victory Parades until a few years ago, but her arthritis has got the better of her of late.
And are you proud of bombing Belgrade, Richard? Deliberately targetting civilian housing, using shrapnel munitions which the UK had declared “inhumane”, and signed declarations that all stocks had been destroyed? I seem to remember your war left Slobodan Milosevic, errr, in power? And the Kosovans you claimed to be “rescuing” all gathered in a tent city on the Macedonian border, at which point Madeleine Allbright declared “victory” and you pulled-out, saying that the Kosovans were no longer your problem and the UN could come and feed and house them. Nice, errr, “rescuing”. Thankfully Macedonia opened its borders to take them in, preventing the humanitarian crisis you’d pre-empted.