White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
I'd agree that the supremacy of the host country's laws must be fully accepted by incomers. However, you then add 'values', which I don't quite agree with - especially as you cite the importance of free speech in your last paragraph. For example, equality for women, and for gay people, are values that are to some extent are enshrined in law. But there are lots of people in this country who are not immigrants who don't believe in equality for those groups, who don't share these values. yet we tolerate that in the name of free speech as long as it's not unlawful. I don't see why immigrants should be treated differently from home-grown traditionalists. In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
A vignette
I was running a team. For some reason the team knees up was organised by HR (I forget why)
They proudly announced that we were going to a halal curry shop. Two of the team said they wouldn’t go.
HR went on the war path - who were these two so they could be sacked as racists?
They were Indian Hindus who told a story of how, back in the day, the Muslim rulers of the their state had tried to impose halal etc. To them being told to eat it was cultural imperialism.
HR backed off, discombobulated.
Who was right and wrong here, and why?
Whoever allowed HR to organise the night out was obviously the person at fault.
Which after all that would make Kemi PM if she could agree a deal with Farage
It could end up being a Blair / Brown promise of shared power, with whoever was supposed to have the second half being denied and spitting the dummy out. What larks!
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
I'd agree that the supremacy of the host country's laws must be fully accepted by incomers. However, you then add 'values', which I don't quite agree with - especially as you cite the importance of free speech in your last paragraph. For example, equality for women, and for gay people, are values that are to some extent are enshrined in law. But there are lots of people in this country who are not immigrants who don't believe in equality for those groups, who don't share these values. yet we tolerate that in the name of free speech as long as it's not unlawful. I don't see why immigrants should be treated differently from home-grown traditionalists. In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
A vignette
I was running a team. For some reason the team knees up was organised by HR (I forget why)
They proudly announced that we were going to a halal curry shop. Two of the team said they wouldn’t go.
HR went on the war path - who were these two so they could be sacked as racists?
They were Indian Hindus who told a story of how, back in the day, the Muslim rulers of the their state had tried to impose halal etc. To them being told to eat it was cultural imperialism.
HR backed off, discombobulated.
Who was right and wrong here, and why?
Forcing someone to eat something they don't want to eat is surely the preserve of sadists. Your HR person isn't fit for the role.
A pet hate of mine is when one person in a group and everyone is expected, if not forced, to eat vegan. Democracy it ain’t.
Off-peak defence does not really work as a joke. Not here anyway. Maybe if we had some sort of weekdays-only national service it would fit, but we don't.
Off-peak defence does not really work as a joke. Not here anyway. Maybe if we had some sort of weekdays-only national service it would fit, but we don't.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
I'd agree that the supremacy of the host country's laws must be fully accepted by incomers. However, you then add 'values', which I don't quite agree with - especially as you cite the importance of free speech in your last paragraph. For example, equality for women, and for gay people, are values that are to some extent are enshrined in law. But there are lots of people in this country who are not immigrants who don't believe in equality for those groups, who don't share these values. yet we tolerate that in the name of free speech as long as it's not unlawful. I don't see why immigrants should be treated differently from home-grown traditionalists. In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
A vignette
I was running a team. For some reason the team knees up was organised by HR (I forget why)
They proudly announced that we were going to a halal curry shop. Two of the team said they wouldn’t go.
HR went on the war path - who were these two so they could be sacked as racists?
They were Indian Hindus who told a story of how, back in the day, the Muslim rulers of the their state had tried to impose halal etc. To them being told to eat it was cultural imperialism.
HR backed off, discombobulated.
Who was right and wrong here, and why?
Forcing someone to eat something they don't want to eat is surely the preserve of sadists. Your HR person isn't fit for the role.
A pet hate of mine is when one person in a group and everyone is expected, if not forced, to eat vegan. Democracy it ain’t.
Sometimes I'll fancy vegetarian and find the only veggie option is vegan.
A violent Polish serial criminal’s deportation was blocked under human rights laws after he claimed to be a “father figure” to his nephew.
An immigration tribunal judge ruled that Konrad Makocki, who has nine convictions, had a close enough relationship with his nephew for his deportation to be a breach of his right to a family life under article eight of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Nawraz Karbani, the judge in the matter, said his teenage nephew would suffer a “disproportionate” impact if he was deported even though Macocki had “struggled with alcoholism”, been convicted of violence and was subject to a domestic abuse restraining order to prevent him approaching his ex-partner.
I could see a scenario where Trump and Musk help a strong man dictator rise in this country. Most people lets face it are more interested in love island then democracy.
(Adjusts monocle)
You seemed dashed un-English. Are you one of those chaps who follows that perfect perisher Spode? Poor form, that.
Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
I'd agree that the supremacy of the host country's laws must be fully accepted by incomers. However, you then add 'values', which I don't quite agree with - especially as you cite the importance of free speech in your last paragraph. For example, equality for women, and for gay people, are values that are to some extent are enshrined in law. But there are lots of people in this country who are not immigrants who don't believe in equality for those groups, who don't share these values. yet we tolerate that in the name of free speech as long as it's not unlawful. I don't see why immigrants should be treated differently from home-grown traditionalists. In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
A vignette
I was running a team. For some reason the team knees up was organised by HR (I forget why)
They proudly announced that we were going to a halal curry shop. Two of the team said they wouldn’t go.
HR went on the war path - who were these two so they could be sacked as racists?
They were Indian Hindus who told a story of how, back in the day, the Muslim rulers of the their state had tried to impose halal etc. To them being told to eat it was cultural imperialism.
HR backed off, discombobulated.
Who was right and wrong here, and why?
Forcing someone to eat something they don't want to eat is surely the preserve of sadists. Your HR person isn't fit for the role.
A pet hate of mine is when one person in a group and everyone is expected, if not forced, to eat vegan. Democracy it ain’t.
As it happened, there was a vegan on the team. When I was allowed to pick the place, I found one where they could do strict vegan (Japanese Buddhism etc) in addition to fish, meat etc.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
I'd agree that the supremacy of the host country's laws must be fully accepted by incomers. However, you then add 'values', which I don't quite agree with - especially as you cite the importance of free speech in your last paragraph. For example, equality for women, and for gay people, are values that are to some extent are enshrined in law. But there are lots of people in this country who are not immigrants who don't believe in equality for those groups, who don't share these values. yet we tolerate that in the name of free speech as long as it's not unlawful. I don't see why immigrants should be treated differently from home-grown traditionalists. In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
A vignette
I was running a team. For some reason the team knees up was organised by HR (I forget why)
They proudly announced that we were going to a halal curry shop. Two of the team said they wouldn’t go.
HR went on the war path - who were these two so they could be sacked as racists?
They were Indian Hindus who told a story of how, back in the day, the Muslim rulers of the their state had tried to impose halal etc. To them being told to eat it was cultural imperialism.
HR backed off, discombobulated.
Who was right and wrong here, and why?
Forcing someone to eat something they don't want to eat is surely the preserve of sadists. Your HR person isn't fit for the role.
A pet hate of mine is when one person in a group and everyone is expected, if not forced, to eat vegan. Democracy it ain’t.
Some friends and I have a Christmas meal each year. One of the women is vegetarian, and another is vege-curious, so in 2023 they bookrd a vegetarian restaurant. It was actually quite nice, but there were no meat options and I came out without really feeling full. To my disappointment, they rebooked it in 2024. Fortunately for me, in Autumn 2024, the restaurant closed down because a vegetarian restauarant which by definition rules out the meals 90% of people want is a stupid idea. I may revive my Ron Swanson avatar.
A violent Polish serial criminal’s deportation was blocked under human rights laws after he claimed to be a “father figure” to his nephew.
An immigration tribunal judge ruled that Konrad Makocki, who has nine convictions, had a close enough relationship with his nephew for his deportation to be a breach of his right to a family life under article eight of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Nawraz Karbani, the judge in the matter, said his teenage nephew would suffer a “disproportionate” impact if he was deported even though Macocki had “struggled with alcoholism”, been convicted of violence and was subject to a domestic abuse restraining order to prevent him approaching his ex-partner.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
What the fuck is continuous mass immigration on the scale of 300,000-1m people a year but “deliberate destabilisation”?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
There is quite a lot you and I would likely disagree about - I'm basically a bit of a wet social democrat - but I think we're more or less on the same page about the scale of immigration. I.e. it's mad. An open door policy on immigration - about 1.2 million in the year ending mid-2023, with a net value of nearly 800,000 even accounting for those going in the opposite direction - cannot be anything other than destabilising. Apart from all the other negatives, out of control population growth entirely defeats the object of Angela Rayner's housing drive.
You would hope that this Government gets that and will put an end to it. I don't expect it though, sadly.
Emergency vehicles will be charged to enter Bath Clean Air Zone
For the remainder, we are confident that, by working with the council, we can mitigate any significant cost impact by sending alternate, compliant vehicles into the city whenever possible.
Let me tell you just scrolling the online groups and other Taiwanese media…the reaction to TSMC being pushed into a JV with Intel is 10 times stronger than the Trump tariffs. People are legitimately outraged that Taiwan is being so blatantly stripped for parts and the reaction of our leaders is so flaccid to such a blatant violation.
Tariffs are one thing. They can be passed on. But technology transfer? Taiwan is being asked to open the kimono and to keep a smile on our face while it’s being done. https://x.com/AngelicaOung/status/1890505708183114014
Off-peak defence does not really work as a joke. Not here anyway. Maybe if we had some sort of weekdays-only national service it would fit, but we don't.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Those who are encouraging the racists in order to get at one race (usually, but not always, Muslims) should realise that the racists they are emboldening will, if given power, not stop at that one race.
Why do you conflate race and Islam?
Are you saying Islamophobia's okay because you don't see it as 'racist' ?
I would say that Islamophobia is OK because Islam is a religion and hence an ideology. It's no different to being a socialist-o-phobe or conservative-o-phobe. We are entitled to dislike ideologies we disagree with, and their proponents.
But... of course most Muslims are members of non-white ethnic minorities, so separating it out from racism is tricky
Like antisemitism in this respect if not others though, dig into a version of 'Islamophobia' that says it's all about religious ideas and objections to them, and more often than not find it's not about 'ideology' but prejudice. Not least because there won't be a proportionate fear of conservative Christianity, the barmier strains of Hinduism, and so on.
In fact, some of the smartest critics of Islam, Islamism and - e.g. Christopher Hitchens - are/were the opposite of phobic about Islam and in fact fascinated by other cultures. Even Hitchens' famous 'Londonistan' piece criticising the mollycoddling of extremist Islam is admiring of an older generation of Muslim Brits for whom it was as much alien, newfangled claptrap as anyone.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
Mmm, I suspect we would not be all that different in practice (as Northern Al suggests), but I'm not convinced that our traditions are *always* right. I'm arguing, essentially, that we pick and choose what really matters to us (as you say I'd pick animal welfare among them), rather than insist that everything in British culture must be adopted - otherwise we do end up unnecessarily insisting on Yorkshire pudding. A practical issue is enforceability - it's easier to insist on a range of things if there is plenty of scope to vary in non-essential items.
Also, there are two possible variations - one is that a different practice is tolerated, another is that an existing practice is compulsorily replaced. I would be extremely reluctant to accept the latter, but I'm more relaxed about the former.
For example, what do we feel about cultures expecting women to wear headscarves? That used to be the norm in Britain (my aunt would never go out without covering her head with a scarf), and wasn't AFAIK seen as particularly oppressive, any more than the expectation that men should wear trousers. It's intolerable to conceive of it becoming generally required again, but if it's part of a particular culture, is it unacceptable for women who decide to be (or remain) in that culture? Rather, we should expect that cultures are freely chosen and deviations from it are tolerated - not that everyone adopts whatever culture happens to be currently dominant.
Emergency vehicles will be charged to enter Bath Clean Air Zone
For the remainder, we are confident that, by working with the council, we can mitigate any significant cost impact by sending alternate, compliant vehicles into the city whenever possible.
I am sorry we can't come and put that fire out at the moment all our compliant fire engines are currently busy.....
Is there any mechanism for the fire service to start charging for call outs to the affected area, and claw back the money that way? I'm not entirely sure but I think they're already allowed to charge fees in respect of fire alarms going off on some business premises.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
I'd agree that the supremacy of the host country's laws must be fully accepted by incomers. However, you then add 'values', which I don't quite agree with - especially as you cite the importance of free speech in your last paragraph. For example, equality for women, and for gay people, are values that are to some extent are enshrined in law. But there are lots of people in this country who are not immigrants who don't believe in equality for those groups, who don't share these values. yet we tolerate that in the name of free speech as long as it's not unlawful. I don't see why immigrants should be treated differently from home-grown traditionalists. In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
A vignette
I was running a team. For some reason the team knees up was organised by HR (I forget why)
They proudly announced that we were going to a halal curry shop. Two of the team said they wouldn’t go.
HR went on the war path - who were these two so they could be sacked as racists?
They were Indian Hindus who told a story of how, back in the day, the Muslim rulers of the their state had tried to impose halal etc. To them being told to eat it was cultural imperialism.
HR backed off, discombobulated.
Who was right and wrong here, and why?
The basic error there is HR listening to the voices in their head from the assumptions of their own belief / training, rather than to the members of the team by consultation with a team leader who they encourage to reflect and guide them in the context. It sounds as if they made blanket assumptions about people being Muslims.
Similar confusion happens when, for example, the majority of Iranians in California are Christian, or Westerners run up against the full social complexity of Indian society. Take them to Nagaland.
I had a similar issue that required careful navigation when I ran an interdenominational lunch group / prayer group at my workplace for 5 years.
That national organisation - the only one that existed supporting around 300 groups in the UK - was founded from within the Independent Evangelical sector (as the War Time Christian Union in 1942 approx), and was strongly and narrowly Evangelical enough that Roman Catholics were not allowed to be formal members by policy of the national organisation. The policy stated that RCs needed to be "saved".
Equally my workplace group had existed since 1956 (this was 199x), so I was not about to create a huge fuss whilst I sought to make the group more open to all and more visible. Creating a group of 4 people meeting once a week in a room is easy; doing things like running a magazine in a workplace is far more challenging.
The Ecumenical Movement has been developing principles around how to deal with such circumstances since it started at the Edinburgh Missionary Conference in 1910.
Being on the "secular" side of the sacred-secular divide was interesting - it means that there were all sorts of people, removed from the Church situation, and my contacts list was around 100 individuals with known church affiliation. But they were in the habit of relating in terms of "work", not often in terms of "thinking about work using their faith".
In the event, I adopted a policy of saying the traditioaln "grace" - "in the name of the Father, the Son etc" which is in everyone's Bible, and a set of emphases from a book about ecumenism written by George Carey. So, a policy of identifying by the centre, and not by defining edges.
For the team event, I would aim to do similar.
Politically, you'll note that the sectarians of whatever stripe - whether Yaxley-Lennon, Jenrick, JD Vance, or Islamists drive wedges and create division to drive hostility and division, not dialogue and respect.
Lying about the "other" is easy to get away with if you succeed in driving wedges by talking to your target ethnic group. Jenrick going to an ethnic area of Birmingham to create his film about dirty immigrants with rubbish in the streets, whilst saying nothing about his Government, and him personally, having shredded resources for local authorities, sticks out a mile.
Emergency vehicles will be charged to enter Bath Clean Air Zone
For the remainder, we are confident that, by working with the council, we can mitigate any significant cost impact by sending alternate, compliant vehicles into the city whenever possible.
A violent Polish serial criminal’s deportation was blocked under human rights laws after he claimed to be a “father figure” to his nephew.
An immigration tribunal judge ruled that Konrad Makocki, who has nine convictions, had a close enough relationship with his nephew for his deportation to be a breach of his right to a family life under article eight of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Nawraz Karbani, the judge in the matter, said his teenage nephew would suffer a “disproportionate” impact if he was deported even though Macocki had “struggled with alcoholism”, been convicted of violence and was subject to a domestic abuse restraining order to prevent him approaching his ex-partner.
To be fair to Elon and his free speech and X ramblings, this appeared on my feed:
Karly Kingsley @karlykingsley · 13h The U.S. Defense Secretary can’t even figure out what dumb college kids know - you put vodka in a Poland Spring bottle and you call it water. We’re all dead.
A violent Polish serial criminal’s deportation was blocked under human rights laws after he claimed to be a “father figure” to his nephew.
An immigration tribunal judge ruled that Konrad Makocki, who has nine convictions, had a close enough relationship with his nephew for his deportation to be a breach of his right to a family life under article eight of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Nawraz Karbani, the judge in the matter, said his teenage nephew would suffer a “disproportionate” impact if he was deported even though Macocki had “struggled with alcoholism”, been convicted of violence and was subject to a domestic abuse restraining order to prevent him approaching his ex-partner.
I can't read that without paying for it. How old is the nephew?
Says teenage nephew...but it should be irrelevant as in addition to multiple criminal convictions he has a restraining order against him due to domestic abuse. But we are supposed to believe this relative relationship should trump all of that.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
This comes back to the failure of our systems and particularly, for want of a better term 'multiculturalism'. Had we followed the Norwegian system of insisting that all new long term settlers adopt Norwegian language and custom, then I think our immigration experience and attitudes would have been very different. As it is we have left it to the individual and, at some point, adopted the idea that advocating British/English culture equates with racism.
Though France is avowedly against "multiculturism" to the point of refusing to keep ethnicity data etc
It's not a matter of "multiculturalism" or not, it's a matter of being welcoming.
Having lived as an immigrant myself (in Australia and New Zealand, possibly the two countries most similar to Britain) I found being a foreigner quite isolating at times. I therefore make a conscious effort to invite immigrant colleagues to dinner. Indeed many years I have had such colleagues for Christmas dinner.
I have lived in a few countries in asia and europe never felt isolated and always got on with the locals...if you felt isolated maybe the problem is you
So they have got the Mauritians down from the £8 billion which was widely quoted. Good work.
The inflated figure was because it was reported the UK agreed to pay the money taking inflation into account over 99 years, then pay a chunk of it upfront, so no.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
What the fuck is continuous mass immigration on the scale of 300,000-1m people a year but “deliberate destabilisation”?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
There is quite a lot you and I would likely disagree about - I'm basically a bit of a wet social democrat - but I think we're more or less on the same page about the scale of immigration. I.e. it's mad. An open door policy on immigration - about 1.2 million in the year ending mid-2023, with a net value of nearly 800,000 even accounting for those going in the opposite direction - cannot be anything other than destabilising. Apart from all the other negatives, out of control population growth entirely defeats the object of Angela Rayner's housing drive.
You would hope that this Government gets that and will put an end to it. I don't expect it though, sadly.
I actually think some in the Labour Party DO get this, but it’s far too late, and too many still don’t get it - or simply won’t
Absent a tech revolution saving us, here’s how this will play out. European electorates - UK definitely included - will vote for increasingly hard then far right parties. These parties won’t just limit or prohibit immigration, they will go much further. They will begin mass deportations of - firstly - illegal migrants and then legal migrants. Millions of people will be forcibly expelled and borders will be guarded with live ammunition
No doubt I will be accused of wishcasting. This is not that. I have two daughters growing up in the UK and Oz and I dearly want them to grow up in peaceful, racially harmonious societies
I simply don’t believe that’s doable. A brutally violent outcome is now unavoidable (absent the saviour machines). It’s so bleak I generally try not to think about it
Up to the Global Financial Crisis, EU and US economies were of roughly equal size. Afterwards, America left us in the dust. Washington invested; we had George Osborne and Europe had Angela Merkel imposing austerity. Turns out the old saw was right. You can't cut your way to prosperity.
Everyone who knows me sees me as a realist, some even a pessimist. With that in mind, you’ll understand the weight of what I’m about to say: I believe we’re on the brink of uncovering a dark legacy in this country that’s been hidden for far too long.
If you’re struggling to grasp how your ex government could do such things, my advice is to either brace yourself or go hide until someone saves you.
I truly think the dam is breaking, and regardless of how it unfolds, real change is coming. Those at the federal and state levels should be preparing to lose sleep—it’s about to go mainstream. 1:02 PM · Feb 13, 2025 · 201.6K Views
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
What the fuck is continuous mass immigration on the scale of 300,000-1m people a year but “deliberate destabilisation”?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
There is quite a lot you and I would likely disagree about - I'm basically a bit of a wet social democrat - but I think we're more or less on the same page about the scale of immigration. I.e. it's mad. An open door policy on immigration - about 1.2 million in the year ending mid-2023, with a net value of nearly 800,000 even accounting for those going in the opposite direction - cannot be anything other than destabilising. Apart from all the other negatives, out of control population growth entirely defeats the object of Angela Rayner's housing drive.
You would hope that this Government gets that and will put an end to it. I don't expect it though, sadly.
I actually think some in the Labour Party DO get this, but it’s far too late, and too many still don’t get it - or simply won’t
Absent a tech revolution saving us, here’s how this will play out. European electorates - UK definitely included - will vote for increasingly hard then far right parties. These parties won’t just limit or prohibit immigration, they will go much further. They will begin mass deportations of - firstly - illegal migrants and then legal migrants. Millions of people will be forcibly expelled and borders will be guarded with live ammunition
No doubt I will be accused of wishcasting. This is not that. I have two daughters growing up in the UK and Oz and I dearly want them to grow up in peaceful, racially harmonious societies
I simply don’t believe that’s doable. A brutally violent outcome is now unavoidable (absent the saviour machines). It’s so bleak I generally try not to think about it
I agree though the british dont have the stomach for this yet. By 2035 though all bets are off.
Hopefully we'll not have to hear anything more of these self-indulgent idiots:
The family of a British couple in custody in Iran say they are united in their determination to secure their safe return.
Craig and Lindsay Foreman were arrested in January, but news of their detention emerged on Thursday when state-run Iranian media reported they were being held on unspecified security charges.
The couple, in their early 50s, had been on a motorbike trip across the world, and had only planned on being in Iran for five days.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
What the fuck is continuous mass immigration on the scale of 300,000-1m people a year but “deliberate destabilisation”?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
There is quite a lot you and I would likely disagree about - I'm basically a bit of a wet social democrat - but I think we're more or less on the same page about the scale of immigration. I.e. it's mad. An open door policy on immigration - about 1.2 million in the year ending mid-2023, with a net value of nearly 800,000 even accounting for those going in the opposite direction - cannot be anything other than destabilising. Apart from all the other negatives, out of control population growth entirely defeats the object of Angela Rayner's housing drive.
You would hope that this Government gets that and will put an end to it. I don't expect it though, sadly.
I actually think some in the Labour Party DO get this, but it’s far too late, and too many still don’t get it - or simply won’t
Absent a tech revolution saving us, here’s how this will play out. European electorates - UK definitely included - will vote for increasingly hard then far right parties. These parties won’t just limit or prohibit immigration, they will go much further. They will begin mass deportations of - firstly - illegal migrants and then legal migrants. Millions of people will be forcibly expelled and borders will be guarded with live ammunition
No doubt I will be accused of wishcasting. This is not that. I have two daughters growing up in the UK and Oz and I dearly want them to grow up in peaceful, racially harmonious societies
I simply don’t believe that’s doable. A brutally violent outcome is now unavoidable (absent the saviour machines). It’s so bleak I generally try not to think about it
Professor David Betz of King's College London believes that we are heading towards ideal conditions for civil conflict:
Moreover, it is not simply that the conditions are present in the West; it is, rather, that the conditions are nearing the ideal. The relative wealth, social stability and related lack of demographic factionalism, plus the perception of the ability of normal politics to solve problems that once made the West seem immune to civil war are now no longer valid. In fact, in each of these categories the direction of pull is towards civil conflict. Increasingly, people perceive this to be the case and their levels of confidence in government would seem to be declining even more in the face of the apparent unwillingness or inability of leaders to confront the situation honestly.
Everyone who knows me sees me as a realist, some even a pessimist. With that in mind, you’ll understand the weight of what I’m about to say: I believe we’re on the brink of uncovering a dark legacy in this country that’s been hidden for far too long.
If you’re struggling to grasp how your ex government could do such things, my advice is to either brace yourself or go hide until someone saves you.
I truly think the dam is breaking, and regardless of how it unfolds, real change is coming. Those at the federal and state levels should be preparing to lose sleep—it’s about to go mainstream. 1:02 PM · Feb 13, 2025 · 201.6K Views
BREAKING - Starmer hands another £12m in aid to Mauritius, run by Navin Ramgoolam’s Labour Party Government, despite huge Chagos surrender giveaway
Telegraph
It does seem odd that SKS seems obsessed with giving money away to all and sundry.
We need to find some evidence of the Mauritians supporting Argentina torpedoing his uncle. Maybe that would make him reconsider.
No it wouldn’t.
This Mauritius thing could be his retirement plan. I think he knows his political career is past saving, and I don't think he ever cared about the UK. All he's got left now is to make pots and pots of money.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
What the fuck is continuous mass immigration on the scale of 300,000-1m people a year but “deliberate destabilisation”?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
There is quite a lot you and I would likely disagree about - I'm basically a bit of a wet social democrat - but I think we're more or less on the same page about the scale of immigration. I.e. it's mad. An open door policy on immigration - about 1.2 million in the year ending mid-2023, with a net value of nearly 800,000 even accounting for those going in the opposite direction - cannot be anything other than destabilising. Apart from all the other negatives, out of control population growth entirely defeats the object of Angela Rayner's housing drive.
You would hope that this Government gets that and will put an end to it. I don't expect it though, sadly.
I actually think some in the Labour Party DO get this, but it’s far too late, and too many still don’t get it - or simply won’t
Absent a tech revolution saving us, here’s how this will play out. European electorates - UK definitely included - will vote for increasingly hard then far right parties. These parties won’t just limit or prohibit immigration, they will go much further. They will begin mass deportations of - firstly - illegal migrants and then legal migrants. Millions of people will be forcibly expelled and borders will be guarded with live ammunition
No doubt I will be accused of wishcasting. This is not that. I have two daughters growing up in the UK and Oz and I dearly want them to grow up in peaceful, racially harmonious societies
I simply don’t believe that’s doable. A brutally violent outcome is now unavoidable (absent the saviour machines). It’s so bleak I generally try not to think about it
Professor David Betz of King's College London believes that we are heading towards ideal conditions for civil conflict:
Moreover, it is not simply that the conditions are present in the West; it is, rather, that the conditions are nearing the ideal. The relative wealth, social stability and related lack of demographic factionalism, plus the perception of the ability of normal politics to solve problems that once made the West seem immune to civil war are now no longer valid. In fact, in each of these categories the direction of pull is towards civil conflict. Increasingly, people perceive this to be the case and their levels of confidence in government would seem to be declining even more in the face of the apparent unwillingness or inability of leaders to confront the situation honestly.
I think we're further away from civil conflict now than we were in the period 2016-19, when the refusal or inability of a large part of the political class to implement the results of the largest vote in the nation's history, which they themselves had called and promised to implement, meant that the legitimacy of our democracy was under serious threat.
And we're considerably further away than we were in the late 1970s, when tens of millions of days were lost to strikes, rubbish was piling high in Leicester Square, the dead were going unburied and Northern Ireland was being, well, Northern Ireland.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
Mmm, I suspect we would not be all that different in practice (as Northern Al suggests), but I'm not convinced that our traditions are *always* right. I'm arguing, essentially, that we pick and choose what really matters to us (as you say I'd pick animal welfare among them), rather than insist that everything in British culture must be adopted - otherwise we do end up unnecessarily insisting on Yorkshire pudding. A practical issue is enforceability - it's easier to insist on a range of things if there is plenty of scope to vary in non-essential items.
Also, there are two possible variations - one is that a different practice is tolerated, another is that an existing practice is compulsorily replaced. I would be extremely reluctant to accept the latter, but I'm more relaxed about the former.
For example, what do we feel about cultures expecting women to wear headscarves? That used to be the norm in Britain (my aunt would never go out without covering her head with a scarf), and wasn't AFAIK seen as particularly oppressive, any more than the expectation that men should wear trousers. It's intolerable to conceive of it becoming generally required again, but if it's part of a particular culture, is it unacceptable for women who decide to be (or remain) in that culture? Rather, we should expect that cultures are freely chosen and deviations from it are tolerated - not that everyone adopts whatever culture happens to be currently dominant.
Simple answer,,,,I have no objection to women who choose to wear head scarves...I have an extreme objection to women feeling they have to wear headscarves because of the community around them
Everyone who knows me sees me as a realist, some even a pessimist. With that in mind, you’ll understand the weight of what I’m about to say: I believe we’re on the brink of uncovering a dark legacy in this country that’s been hidden for far too long.
If you’re struggling to grasp how your ex government could do such things, my advice is to either brace yourself or go hide until someone saves you.
I truly think the dam is breaking, and regardless of how it unfolds, real change is coming. Those at the federal and state levels should be preparing to lose sleep—it’s about to go mainstream. 1:02 PM · Feb 13, 2025 · 201.6K Views
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Those who are encouraging the racists in order to get at one race (usually, but not always, Muslims) should realise that the racists they are emboldening will, if given power, not stop at that one race.
Why do you conflate race and Islam?
Are you saying Islamophobia's okay because you don't see it as 'racist' ?
I would say that Islamophobia is OK because Islam is a religion and hence an ideology. It's no different to being a socialist-o-phobe or conservative-o-phobe. We are entitled to dislike ideologies we disagree with, and their proponents.
But... of course most Muslims are members of non-white ethnic minorities, so separating it out from racism is tricky
Would you say anti-Semitism is OK because Judaism is a religion and hence an ideology? Or anti-Christian bigotry?
That's the point: it doesn't matter when the asshats with funny moustaches and salutes put you in the cattle wagons to the camp. If you're different - whether you are Jewish, disabled, Roma, black, slav, whatever - then you're in trouble.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Those who are encouraging the racists in order to get at one race (usually, but not always, Muslims) should realise that the racists they are emboldening will, if given power, not stop at that one race.
Why do you conflate race and Islam?
Are you saying Islamophobia's okay because you don't see it as 'racist' ?
I would say that Islamophobia is OK because Islam is a religion and hence an ideology. It's no different to being a socialist-o-phobe or conservative-o-phobe. We are entitled to dislike ideologies we disagree with, and their proponents.
But... of course most Muslims are members of non-white ethnic minorities, so separating it out from racism is tricky
Would you say anti-Semitism is OK because Judaism is a religion and hence an ideology? Or anti-Christian bigotry?
That's the point: it doesn't matter when the asshats with funny moustaches and salutes put you in the cattle wagons to the camp. If you're different - whether you are Jewish, disabled, Roma, black, slav, whatever - then you're in trouble.
Anti-semitism clearly isn't a disagreement with the tenets of Judaism.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
What the fuck is continuous mass immigration on the scale of 300,000-1m people a year but “deliberate destabilisation”?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
There is quite a lot you and I would likely disagree about - I'm basically a bit of a wet social democrat - but I think we're more or less on the same page about the scale of immigration. I.e. it's mad. An open door policy on immigration - about 1.2 million in the year ending mid-2023, with a net value of nearly 800,000 even accounting for those going in the opposite direction - cannot be anything other than destabilising. Apart from all the other negatives, out of control population growth entirely defeats the object of Angela Rayner's housing drive.
You would hope that this Government gets that and will put an end to it. I don't expect it though, sadly.
I actually think some in the Labour Party DO get this, but it’s far too late, and too many still don’t get it - or simply won’t
Absent a tech revolution saving us, here’s how this will play out. European electorates - UK definitely included - will vote for increasingly hard then far right parties. These parties won’t just limit or prohibit immigration, they will go much further. They will begin mass deportations of - firstly - illegal migrants and then legal migrants. Millions of people will be forcibly expelled and borders will be guarded with live ammunition
No doubt I will be accused of wishcasting. This is not that. I have two daughters growing up in the UK and Oz and I dearly want them to grow up in peaceful, racially harmonious societies
I simply don’t believe that’s doable. A brutally violent outcome is now unavoidable (absent the saviour machines). It’s so bleak I generally try not to think about it
You have travelled lots. Before you tie yourself completely in knots on this you should pop over to, say, Reyhanli in Turkey to see what cultural dislocation really looks like.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Those who are encouraging the racists in order to get at one race (usually, but not always, Muslims) should realise that the racists they are emboldening will, if given power, not stop at that one race.
Why do you conflate race and Islam?
Are you saying Islamophobia's okay because you don't see it as 'racist' ?
I would say that Islamophobia is OK because Islam is a religion and hence an ideology. It's no different to being a socialist-o-phobe or conservative-o-phobe. We are entitled to dislike ideologies we disagree with, and their proponents.
But... of course most Muslims are members of non-white ethnic minorities, so separating it out from racism is tricky
Would you say anti-Semitism is OK because Judaism is a religion and hence an ideology? Or anti-Christian bigotry?
That's the point: it doesn't matter when the asshats with funny moustaches and salutes put you in the cattle wagons to the camp. If you're different - whether you are Jewish, disabled, Roma, black, slav, whatever - then you're in trouble.
Anti-semitism clearly isn't a disagreement with the tenets of Judaism.
I think that's very much debatable. Certainly, the Nazis went after people who had converted from Judaism, or those who were related to jews. And I'm sure racists check the religious beliefs of someone who looks different before they beat them up.
Such hatred is not just about race or religion: it's about people daring to be different. The other.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
This comes back to the failure of our systems and particularly, for want of a better term 'multiculturalism'. Had we followed the Norwegian system of insisting that all new long term settlers adopt Norwegian language and custom, then I think our immigration experience and attitudes would have been very different. As it is we have left it to the individual and, at some point, adopted the idea that advocating British/English culture equates with racism.
Though France is avowedly against "multiculturism" to the point of refusing to keep ethnicity data etc
It's not a matter of "multiculturalism" or not, it's a matter of being welcoming.
Having lived as an immigrant myself (in Australia and New Zealand, possibly the two countries most similar to Britain) I found being a foreigner quite isolating at times. I therefore make a conscious effort to invite immigrant colleagues to dinner. Indeed many years I have had such colleagues for Christmas dinner.
France is quite French; they tend to treat 'secularism' as somewhere between a philosophy and an official religion - sometimes quite aggressively. Some places - eg the North-East - can be different. AIUI, when France brought in their liacite laws at the start of the 20C, those areas of France were still part of Germany, so the full purgative did not apply.
(That is somewhat simplistic, but seems to me to have some basis.)
In philosophical / ideological thought, there is a distinction between "positive" and "negative" secularism, which is essentially exclusive and inclusive.
Similarly, if you dig into campaigning by Humanists UK and the NSS, they sometimes do a soft-cop hard-cop act.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
What the fuck is continuous mass immigration on the scale of 300,000-1m people a year but “deliberate destabilisation”?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
There is quite a lot you and I would likely disagree about - I'm basically a bit of a wet social democrat - but I think we're more or less on the same page about the scale of immigration. I.e. it's mad. An open door policy on immigration - about 1.2 million in the year ending mid-2023, with a net value of nearly 800,000 even accounting for those going in the opposite direction - cannot be anything other than destabilising. Apart from all the other negatives, out of control population growth entirely defeats the object of Angela Rayner's housing drive.
You would hope that this Government gets that and will put an end to it. I don't expect it though, sadly.
I actually think some in the Labour Party DO get this, but it’s far too late, and too many still don’t get it - or simply won’t
Absent a tech revolution saving us, here’s how this will play out. European electorates - UK definitely included - will vote for increasingly hard then far right parties. These parties won’t just limit or prohibit immigration, they will go much further. They will begin mass deportations of - firstly - illegal migrants and then legal migrants. Millions of people will be forcibly expelled and borders will be guarded with live ammunition
No doubt I will be accused of wishcasting. This is not that. I have two daughters growing up in the UK and Oz and I dearly want them to grow up in peaceful, racially harmonious societies
I simply don’t believe that’s doable. A brutally violent outcome is now unavoidable (absent the saviour machines). It’s so bleak I generally try not to think about it
Professor David Betz of King's College London believes that we are heading towards ideal conditions for civil conflict:
Moreover, it is not simply that the conditions are present in the West; it is, rather, that the conditions are nearing the ideal. The relative wealth, social stability and related lack of demographic factionalism, plus the perception of the ability of normal politics to solve problems that once made the West seem immune to civil war are now no longer valid. In fact, in each of these categories the direction of pull is towards civil conflict. Increasingly, people perceive this to be the case and their levels of confidence in government would seem to be declining even more in the face of the apparent unwillingness or inability of leaders to confront the situation honestly.
I think we're further away from civil conflict now than we were in the period 2016-19, when the refusal or inability of a large part of the political class to implement the results of the largest vote in the nation's history, which they themselves had called and promised to implement, meant that the legitimacy of our democracy was under serious threat.
And we're considerably further away than we were in the late 1970s, when tens of millions of days were lost to strikes, rubbish was piling high in Leicester Square, the dead were going unburied and Northern Ireland was being, well, Northern Ireland.
But maybe I'm one of nature's optimists.
Sadly I think you are wrong, people here are mostly top 10% the world as it is works for them. There is growing anger and I am not top 10% I mix with these people daily. I think reform will be tried first then when it doesn't work as it wont then it will become civil conflict...the bottom 50% really don't have anything to lose
Here is an example, people here go on about people like nurses having to use a food bank....fair enough then they go on in other posts going lets just add a couple of percent on income tax....yeah well that person on min wage already struggling is going to have 20£ less each month.....2% extra for most here means I will buy a cheaper bottle of wine
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Those who are encouraging the racists in order to get at one race (usually, but not always, Muslims) should realise that the racists they are emboldening will, if given power, not stop at that one race.
Why do you conflate race and Islam?
Are you saying Islamophobia's okay because you don't see it as 'racist' ?
I would say that Islamophobia is OK because Islam is a religion and hence an ideology. It's no different to being a socialist-o-phobe or conservative-o-phobe. We are entitled to dislike ideologies we disagree with, and their proponents.
But... of course most Muslims are members of non-white ethnic minorities, so separating it out from racism is tricky
Would you say anti-Semitism is OK because Judaism is a religion and hence an ideology? Or anti-Christian bigotry?
That's the point: it doesn't matter when the asshats with funny moustaches and salutes put you in the cattle wagons to the camp. If you're different - whether you are Jewish, disabled, Roma, black, slav, whatever - then you're in trouble.
Anti-semitism clearly isn't a disagreement with the tenets of Judaism.
Though disagreeing with a basic tenet of Judaism that Israel is land promised to Jews by God is often portrayed as antisemitic.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
What the fuck is continuous mass immigration on the scale of 300,000-1m people a year but “deliberate destabilisation”?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
There is quite a lot you and I would likely disagree about - I'm basically a bit of a wet social democrat - but I think we're more or less on the same page about the scale of immigration. I.e. it's mad. An open door policy on immigration - about 1.2 million in the year ending mid-2023, with a net value of nearly 800,000 even accounting for those going in the opposite direction - cannot be anything other than destabilising. Apart from all the other negatives, out of control population growth entirely defeats the object of Angela Rayner's housing drive.
You would hope that this Government gets that and will put an end to it. I don't expect it though, sadly.
I actually think some in the Labour Party DO get this, but it’s far too late, and too many still don’t get it - or simply won’t
Absent a tech revolution saving us, here’s how this will play out. European electorates - UK definitely included - will vote for increasingly hard then far right parties. These parties won’t just limit or prohibit immigration, they will go much further. They will begin mass deportations of - firstly - illegal migrants and then legal migrants. Millions of people will be forcibly expelled and borders will be guarded with live ammunition
No doubt I will be accused of wishcasting. This is not that. I have two daughters growing up in the UK and Oz and I dearly want them to grow up in peaceful, racially harmonious societies
I simply don’t believe that’s doable. A brutally violent outcome is now unavoidable (absent the saviour machines). It’s so bleak I generally try not to think about it
Professor David Betz of King's College London believes that we are heading towards ideal conditions for civil conflict:
Moreover, it is not simply that the conditions are present in the West; it is, rather, that the conditions are nearing the ideal. The relative wealth, social stability and related lack of demographic factionalism, plus the perception of the ability of normal politics to solve problems that once made the West seem immune to civil war are now no longer valid. In fact, in each of these categories the direction of pull is towards civil conflict. Increasingly, people perceive this to be the case and their levels of confidence in government would seem to be declining even more in the face of the apparent unwillingness or inability of leaders to confront the situation honestly.
I think we're further away from civil conflict now than we were in the period 2016-19, when the refusal or inability of a large part of the political class to implement the results of the largest vote in the nation's history, which they themselves had called and promised to implement, meant that the legitimacy of our democracy was under serious threat.
And we're considerably further away than we were in the late 1970s, when tens of millions of days were lost to strikes, rubbish was piling high in Leicester Square, the dead were going unburied and Northern Ireland was being, well, Northern Ireland.
But maybe I'm one of nature's optimists.
I'm also not so pessimistic on the possibility of conflict, but I do think that large scale, migration driven population growth is a recipe for long term decline - firstly, because the longer we allow the population Ponzi scheme to carry on for, the more difficult and painful it will be to stop it; and secondly, because if the percentage of the population that takes religious and cultural exception to our existing social conventions grows too large then they will start to attempt to impose their conservatism at the ballot box and drag us backwards.
The country has enough problems as it is without completely stuffing it from top to bottom with people, and for those people to end up having increasingly vehement differences of opinion about basic social mores as well as public policy.
A violent Polish serial criminal’s deportation was blocked under human rights laws after he claimed to be a “father figure” to his nephew.
An immigration tribunal judge ruled that Konrad Makocki, who has nine convictions, had a close enough relationship with his nephew for his deportation to be a breach of his right to a family life under article eight of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Nawraz Karbani, the judge in the matter, said his teenage nephew would suffer a “disproportionate” impact if he was deported even though Macocki had “struggled with alcoholism”, been convicted of violence and was subject to a domestic abuse restraining order to prevent him approaching his ex-partner.
I can't read that without paying for it. How old is the nephew?
Says teenage nephew...but it should be irrelevant as in addition to multiple criminal convictions he has a restraining order against him due to domestic abuse. But we are supposed to believe this relative relationship should trump all of that.
We'll if the nephew is 18, he is an adult and has no need of a father figure. And in any case can take a trip to Poland. If he is under 18, maybe the uncle can be deported on his nephew's 18th birthday.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Those who are encouraging the racists in order to get at one race (usually, but not always, Muslims) should realise that the racists they are emboldening will, if given power, not stop at that one race.
Why do you conflate race and Islam?
Are you saying Islamophobia's okay because you don't see it as 'racist' ?
I would say that Islamophobia is OK because Islam is a religion and hence an ideology. It's no different to being a socialist-o-phobe or conservative-o-phobe. We are entitled to dislike ideologies we disagree with, and their proponents.
But... of course most Muslims are members of non-white ethnic minorities, so separating it out from racism is tricky
Would you say anti-Semitism is OK because Judaism is a religion and hence an ideology? Or anti-Christian bigotry?
That's the point: it doesn't matter when the asshats with funny moustaches and salutes put you in the cattle wagons to the camp. If you're different - whether you are Jewish, disabled, Roma, black, slav, whatever - then you're in trouble.
Anti-semitism clearly isn't a disagreement with the tenets of Judaism.
Though disagreeing with a basic tenet of Judaism that Israel is land promised to Jews by God is often portrayed as antisemitic.
It's often accompanied by blood curdling cries for Israel's destruction
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Those who are encouraging the racists in order to get at one race (usually, but not always, Muslims) should realise that the racists they are emboldening will, if given power, not stop at that one race.
Why do you conflate race and Islam?
Are you saying Islamophobia's okay because you don't see it as 'racist' ?
I would say that Islamophobia is OK because Islam is a religion and hence an ideology. It's no different to being a socialist-o-phobe or conservative-o-phobe. We are entitled to dislike ideologies we disagree with, and their proponents.
But... of course most Muslims are members of non-white ethnic minorities, so separating it out from racism is tricky
Would you say anti-Semitism is OK because Judaism is a religion and hence an ideology? Or anti-Christian bigotry?
That's the point: it doesn't matter when the asshats with funny moustaches and salutes put you in the cattle wagons to the camp. If you're different - whether you are Jewish, disabled, Roma, black, slav, whatever - then you're in trouble.
Anti-semitism clearly isn't a disagreement with the tenets of Judaism.
Though disagreeing with a basic tenet of Judaism that Israel is land promised to Jews by God is often portrayed as antisemitic.
It's often accompanied by blood curdling cries for Israel's destruction
What about all the times when it’s not accompanied by blood curdling cries for Israel's destruction?
France is discussing with its allies holding an informal summit of European leaders to discuss Ukraine, a French presidency official said on Saturday, and four European diplomats said the meeting was likely to go ahead on Monday.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Those who are encouraging the racists in order to get at one race (usually, but not always, Muslims) should realise that the racists they are emboldening will, if given power, not stop at that one race.
Why do you conflate race and Islam?
Are you saying Islamophobia's okay because you don't see it as 'racist' ?
I would say that Islamophobia is OK because Islam is a religion and hence an ideology. It's no different to being a socialist-o-phobe or conservative-o-phobe. We are entitled to dislike ideologies we disagree with, and their proponents.
But... of course most Muslims are members of non-white ethnic minorities, so separating it out from racism is tricky
Would you say anti-Semitism is OK because Judaism is a religion and hence an ideology? Or anti-Christian bigotry?
That's the point: it doesn't matter when the asshats with funny moustaches and salutes put you in the cattle wagons to the camp. If you're different - whether you are Jewish, disabled, Roma, black, slav, whatever - then you're in trouble.
Anti-semitism clearly isn't a disagreement with the tenets of Judaism.
Though disagreeing with a basic tenet of Judaism that Israel is land promised to Jews by God is often portrayed as antisemitic.
The cutting edge definition of antisemitism is envisaging any sort of limit on what the "destruction of Hamas" might necessitate. I've been caught bang to rights on this a few times.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Those who are encouraging the racists in order to get at one race (usually, but not always, Muslims) should realise that the racists they are emboldening will, if given power, not stop at that one race.
Why do you conflate race and Islam?
Are you saying Islamophobia's okay because you don't see it as 'racist' ?
I would say that Islamophobia is OK because Islam is a religion and hence an ideology. It's no different to being a socialist-o-phobe or conservative-o-phobe. We are entitled to dislike ideologies we disagree with, and their proponents.
But... of course most Muslims are members of non-white ethnic minorities, so separating it out from racism is tricky
Would you say anti-Semitism is OK because Judaism is a religion and hence an ideology? Or anti-Christian bigotry?
That's the point: it doesn't matter when the asshats with funny moustaches and salutes put you in the cattle wagons to the camp. If you're different - whether you are Jewish, disabled, Roma, black, slav, whatever - then you're in trouble.
Anti-semitism clearly isn't a disagreement with the tenets of Judaism.
Though disagreeing with a basic tenet of Judaism that Israel is land promised to Jews by God is often portrayed as antisemitic.
It's often accompanied by blood curdling cries for Israel's destruction
What about all the times when it’s not accompanied by blood curdling cries for Israel's destruction?
Who cares if you say it's not the promised land?
As long as you don't think that Palestine should be from the river to the sea - ie no Israel
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
What the fuck is continuous mass immigration on the scale of 300,000-1m people a year but “deliberate destabilisation”?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
There is quite a lot you and I would likely disagree about - I'm basically a bit of a wet social democrat - but I think we're more or less on the same page about the scale of immigration. I.e. it's mad. An open door policy on immigration - about 1.2 million in the year ending mid-2023, with a net value of nearly 800,000 even accounting for those going in the opposite direction - cannot be anything other than destabilising. Apart from all the other negatives, out of control population growth entirely defeats the object of Angela Rayner's housing drive.
You would hope that this Government gets that and will put an end to it. I don't expect it though, sadly.
I actually think some in the Labour Party DO get this, but it’s far too late, and too many still don’t get it - or simply won’t
Absent a tech revolution saving us, here’s how this will play out. European electorates - UK definitely included - will vote for increasingly hard then far right parties. These parties won’t just limit or prohibit immigration, they will go much further. They will begin mass deportations of - firstly - illegal migrants and then legal migrants. Millions of people will be forcibly expelled and borders will be guarded with live ammunition
No doubt I will be accused of wishcasting. This is not that. I have two daughters growing up in the UK and Oz and I dearly want them to grow up in peaceful, racially harmonious societies
I simply don’t believe that’s doable. A brutally violent outcome is now unavoidable (absent the saviour machines). It’s so bleak I generally try not to think about it
Professor David Betz of King's College London believes that we are heading towards ideal conditions for civil conflict:
Moreover, it is not simply that the conditions are present in the West; it is, rather, that the conditions are nearing the ideal. The relative wealth, social stability and related lack of demographic factionalism, plus the perception of the ability of normal politics to solve problems that once made the West seem immune to civil war are now no longer valid. In fact, in each of these categories the direction of pull is towards civil conflict. Increasingly, people perceive this to be the case and their levels of confidence in government would seem to be declining even more in the face of the apparent unwillingness or inability of leaders to confront the situation honestly.
I think we're further away from civil conflict now than we were in the period 2016-19, when the refusal or inability of a large part of the political class to implement the results of the largest vote in the nation's history, which they themselves had called and promised to implement, meant that the legitimacy of our democracy was under serious threat.
And we're considerably further away than we were in the late 1970s, when tens of millions of days were lost to strikes, rubbish was piling high in Leicester Square, the dead were going unburied and Northern Ireland was being, well, Northern Ireland.
But maybe I'm one of nature's optimists.
Sadly I think you are wrong, people here are mostly top 10% the world as it is works for them. There is growing anger and I am not top 10% I mix with these people daily. I think reform will be tried first then when it doesn't work as it wont then it will become civil conflict...the bottom 50% really don't have anything to lose
Here is an example, people here go on about people like nurses having to use a food bank....fair enough then they go on in other posts going lets just add a couple of percent on income tax....yeah well that person on min wage already struggling is going to have 20£ less each month.....2% extra for most here means I will buy a cheaper bottle of wine
The solution to the increasingly stretched and threadbare state is therefore, amongst other things, expressly not to keep jacking up income tax and national insurance, but to end the excessively lenient treatment of assets. That, and to better target benefits and tax breaks on those who really need it.
An older society is a poorer society, but that would be a lot easier to manage if more of the burden was shifted away from work and put onto capital, and if large quantities of tax receipts weren't needlessly squandered. To return to one of my favourite topics, I care about skint old people having enough to eat, but I'm against propping up the spending power of rich old people with taxation and wealth transfers that erode the living standards of poorer, younger ones. The hikes in taxes on work to raise billions to subsidise the booking of cruise holidays by asset millionaire pensioners must be stopped.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
Mmm, I suspect we would not be all that different in practice (as Northern Al suggests), but I'm not convinced that our traditions are *always* right. I'm arguing, essentially, that we pick and choose what really matters to us (as you say I'd pick animal welfare among them), rather than insist that everything in British culture must be adopted - otherwise we do end up unnecessarily insisting on Yorkshire pudding. A practical issue is enforceability - it's easier to insist on a range of things if there is plenty of scope to vary in non-essential items.
Also, there are two possible variations - one is that a different practice is tolerated, another is that an existing practice is compulsorily replaced. I would be extremely reluctant to accept the latter, but I'm more relaxed about the former.
For example, what do we feel about cultures expecting women to wear headscarves? That used to be the norm in Britain (my aunt would never go out without covering her head with a scarf), and wasn't AFAIK seen as particularly oppressive, any more than the expectation that men should wear trousers. It's intolerable to conceive of it becoming generally required again, but if it's part of a particular culture, is it unacceptable for women who decide to be (or remain) in that culture? Rather, we should expect that cultures are freely chosen and deviations from it are tolerated - not that everyone adopts whatever culture happens to be currently dominant.
That's a good observation.
For people who complain about Muslims wearing 'headscarves' (especially Niqab), it's an icon that lets them generate an easy hate-narrative against a group they can identify and "other". It's exactly the same process as skin colour, which is identifiable, whether 'pakis', 'n****rs', 'wops', 'greasers' or whatever.
There is valid critique of the way some groups use Niqab etc around critique of eg Salafi or other traditions, and Muslims will willingly debate it (talk to some), but when it is used as a hate-lever for politics that must be rejected and resisted.
But headscarves can also are also be cultural. An ex-Restoratonist (New Frontiers stream - founded by Terry Virgo ie Calvinist) turned Anglican Evangelical Anglican I knew observed that not only was she expected to wear a headscarf to church, there was a box of SPARE headscarfs kept at the door in case any of the women forgot to bring their own.
The cultural DNA there is that Terry Virgo the founder of that stream of House Churches was from a Brethren background.
The first Pioneer church is not Christ the King in Brighton founded in ~1975 as "Coastlands", and they have 1500 linked churches worldwide now.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Those who are encouraging the racists in order to get at one race (usually, but not always, Muslims) should realise that the racists they are emboldening will, if given power, not stop at that one race.
Why do you conflate race and Islam?
Are you saying Islamophobia's okay because you don't see it as 'racist' ?
You can always guarantee the islamaphobia card will be pulled out. Why is it a phobia not to like the pathetic ethics and mental rules of a religion that imprisons women , men can do as they wish biut women are for hiding in the house etc.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Those who are encouraging the racists in order to get at one race (usually, but not always, Muslims) should realise that the racists they are emboldening will, if given power, not stop at that one race.
Why do you conflate race and Islam?
Are you saying Islamophobia's okay because you don't see it as 'racist' ?
I would say that Islamophobia is OK because Islam is a religion and hence an ideology. It's no different to being a socialist-o-phobe or conservative-o-phobe. We are entitled to dislike ideologies we disagree with, and their proponents.
But... of course most Muslims are members of non-white ethnic minorities, so separating it out from racism is tricky
Would you say anti-Semitism is OK because Judaism is a religion and hence an ideology? Or anti-Christian bigotry?
That's the point: it doesn't matter when the asshats with funny moustaches and salutes put you in the cattle wagons to the camp. If you're different - whether you are Jewish, disabled, Roma, black, slav, whatever - then you're in trouble.
Anti-semitism clearly isn't a disagreement with the tenets of Judaism.
It can be. It depends. There are many different types of anti-Semitism:
- religious anti-Semitism: that's the belief that Jewish religious teachings are heretical and you see that across the Muslim world though with the collapse of Christian belief it's mostly dead in non-Muslim Europe. It's also rather difficult to follow it given how similar Jewish, Christian and Muslim teachings are, so better religious education has delivered a serious blow to it. - socialist anti-Semitisim: the fantasy that Jewish capitalists are conspiring to screw over the Christian working class. Oddly descended from the medieval belief that Jews are inherently usurers, even though they were usually banned from doing much else - right-wing anti-Semitism: the belief, directly contradicting the above, that Jews are all Communists or Anarchists, because of the huge overrepresentation of Jews amongst the Bolsheviks, though of course it was their oppression under the Russian Empire that caused this - racial anti-Semitism: the weird belief that Jewish genes are somehow different and a menace to the non-Jewish gene stock.
None of these are to be confused with anti-Zionism, objection to the constitution of an avowedly Jewish state of Israel on Palestinian land over the last 150 years, though of course people can be both anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
I'd agree that the supremacy of the host country's laws must be fully accepted by incomers. However, you then add 'values', which I don't quite agree with - especially as you cite the importance of free speech in your last paragraph. For example, equality for women, and for gay people, are values that are to some extent are enshrined in law. But there are lots of people in this country who are not immigrants who don't believe in equality for those groups, who don't share these values. yet we tolerate that in the name of free speech as long as it's not unlawful. I don't see why immigrants should be treated differently from home-grown traditionalists. In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
A vignette
I was running a team. For some reason the team knees up was organised by HR (I forget why)
They proudly announced that we were going to a halal curry shop. Two of the team said they wouldn’t go.
HR went on the war path - who were these two so they could be sacked as racists?
They were Indian Hindus who told a story of how, back in the day, the Muslim rulers of the their state had tried to impose halal etc. To them being told to eat it was cultural imperialism.
HR backed off, discombobulated.
Who was right and wrong here, and why?
I find the creeping normalisation of halal a bit uncomfortable, to be honest. It strikes me as rather less humane a form if butchery than mught be ideal. Though I may be ill-informed here.
Apologies for the clear whataboutery, but halal concerns me much less than the butchery that goes on in mass producing meat for our supermarkets.
What does concern me is anyone from any background who feels so beholden to their cultural roots and/or beliefs that they cannot compromise when compromise is clearly needed.
So in Malmesbury's vignette: HR were wrong for choosing a halal eatery for a culturally diverse team, the two team member who refused to eat there were wrong for equating a slightly ham-fisted attempt by HR to be culturally aware with cultural imperialism, and Malmesbury was definitely wrong for allowing HR to organise the curry.
I didn’t allow them. It was some kind of cost reduction policy (I *think*, was a long time back). Rather than let teams set their own entertainment, centralise it with The Experts.
The two team members were offended by the idea of eating halal. As simple as that.
Did they have the right to be offended?
I must admit enjoying the idiots torpedoing themselves.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
I'd agree that the supremacy of the host country's laws must be fully accepted by incomers. However, you then add 'values', which I don't quite agree with - especially as you cite the importance of free speech in your last paragraph. For example, equality for women, and for gay people, are values that are to some extent are enshrined in law. But there are lots of people in this country who are not immigrants who don't believe in equality for those groups, who don't share these values. yet we tolerate that in the name of free speech as long as it's not unlawful. I don't see why immigrants should be treated differently from home-grown traditionalists. In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
A vignette
I was running a team. For some reason the team knees up was organised by HR (I forget why)
They proudly announced that we were going to a halal curry shop. Two of the team said they wouldn’t go.
HR went on the war path - who were these two so they could be sacked as racists?
They were Indian Hindus who told a story of how, back in the day, the Muslim rulers of the their state had tried to impose halal etc. To them being told to eat it was cultural imperialism.
HR backed off, discombobulated.
Who was right and wrong here, and why?
I find the creeping normalisation of halal a bit uncomfortable, to be honest. It strikes me as rather less humane a form if butchery than mught be ideal. Though I may be ill-informed here.
I believe the majority of the lamb you buy in the supermarket is halal. However, it has been electrically pre-stunned, and that is accepted by the majority of imams as it does not kill the animal (whereas captive bolt stunning often does)
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
What the fuck is continuous mass immigration on the scale of 300,000-1m people a year but “deliberate destabilisation”?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
There is quite a lot you and I would likely disagree about - I'm basically a bit of a wet social democrat - but I think we're more or less on the same page about the scale of immigration. I.e. it's mad. An open door policy on immigration - about 1.2 million in the year ending mid-2023, with a net value of nearly 800,000 even accounting for those going in the opposite direction - cannot be anything other than destabilising. Apart from all the other negatives, out of control population growth entirely defeats the object of Angela Rayner's housing drive.
You would hope that this Government gets that and will put an end to it. I don't expect it though, sadly.
I actually think some in the Labour Party DO get this, but it’s far too late, and too many still don’t get it - or simply won’t
Absent a tech revolution saving us, here’s how this will play out. European electorates - UK definitely included - will vote for increasingly hard then far right parties. These parties won’t just limit or prohibit immigration, they will go much further. They will begin mass deportations of - firstly - illegal migrants and then legal migrants. Millions of people will be forcibly expelled and borders will be guarded with live ammunition
No doubt I will be accused of wishcasting. This is not that. I have two daughters growing up in the UK and Oz and I dearly want them to grow up in peaceful, racially harmonious societies
I simply don’t believe that’s doable. A brutally violent outcome is now unavoidable (absent the saviour machines). It’s so bleak I generally try not to think about it
Professor David Betz of King's College London believes that we are heading towards ideal conditions for civil conflict:
Moreover, it is not simply that the conditions are present in the West; it is, rather, that the conditions are nearing the ideal. The relative wealth, social stability and related lack of demographic factionalism, plus the perception of the ability of normal politics to solve problems that once made the West seem immune to civil war are now no longer valid. In fact, in each of these categories the direction of pull is towards civil conflict. Increasingly, people perceive this to be the case and their levels of confidence in government would seem to be declining even more in the face of the apparent unwillingness or inability of leaders to confront the situation honestly.
I think we're further away from civil conflict now than we were in the period 2016-19, when the refusal or inability of a large part of the political class to implement the results of the largest vote in the nation's history, which they themselves had called and promised to implement, meant that the legitimacy of our democracy was under serious threat.
And we're considerably further away than we were in the late 1970s, when tens of millions of days were lost to strikes, rubbish was piling high in Leicester Square, the dead were going unburied and Northern Ireland was being, well, Northern Ireland.
But maybe I'm one of nature's optimists.
Sadly I think you are wrong, people here are mostly top 10% the world as it is works for them. There is growing anger and I am not top 10% I mix with these people daily. I think reform will be tried first then when it doesn't work as it wont then it will become civil conflict...the bottom 50% really don't have anything to lose
Here is an example, people here go on about people like nurses having to use a food bank....fair enough then they go on in other posts going lets just add a couple of percent on income tax....yeah well that person on min wage already struggling is going to have 20£ less each month.....2% extra for most here means I will buy a cheaper bottle of wine
The solution to the increasingly stretched and threadbare state is therefore, amongst other things, expressly not to keep jacking up income tax and national insurance, but to end the excessively lenient treatment of assets. That, and to better target benefits and tax breaks on those who really need it.
An older society is a poorer society, but that would be a lot easier to manage if more of the burden was shifted away from work and put onto capital, and if large quantities of tax receipts weren't needlessly squandered. To return to one of my favourite topics, I care about skint old people having enough to eat, but I'm against propping up the spending power of rich old people with taxation and wealth transfers that erode the living standards of poorer, younger ones. The hikes in taxes on work to raise billions to subsidise the booking of cruise holidays by asset millionaire pensioners must be stopped.
"Waste" is a much-mocked source of additional revenue, but the former Government value for money lead says there's £50bn in fraud alone, and that 2/3 is recoverable. That's not small, and that's before you get to any actual spending.
I really like the Spectator's new SPAFF project that allows you to search for wasteful spending yourself.
I could see a scenario where Trump and Musk help a strong man dictator rise in this country. Most people lets face it are more interested in love island then democracy.
Not really far more vote in general elections than watch Love Island and they are not going to accept Farage imposed on them without a vote. Of course we have a monarch as head of state who commands the armed forces not a president so even if Trump gained the support of the US military to cancel the next presidential election which the constitution prevents him from standing in the same would not apply here
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Those who are encouraging the racists in order to get at one race (usually, but not always, Muslims) should realise that the racists they are emboldening will, if given power, not stop at that one race.
Why do you conflate race and Islam?
Are you saying Islamophobia's okay because you don't see it as 'racist' ?
You can always guarantee the islamaphobia card will be pulled out. Why is it a phobia not to like the pathetic ethics and mental rules of a religion that imprisons women , men can do as they wish biut women are for hiding in the house etc.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Those who are encouraging the racists in order to get at one race (usually, but not always, Muslims) should realise that the racists they are emboldening will, if given power, not stop at that one race.
Why do you conflate race and Islam?
Are you saying Islamophobia's okay because you don't see it as 'racist' ?
I would say that Islamophobia is OK because Islam is a religion and hence an ideology. It's no different to being a socialist-o-phobe or conservative-o-phobe. We are entitled to dislike ideologies we disagree with, and their proponents.
But... of course most Muslims are members of non-white ethnic minorities, so separating it out from racism is tricky
Would you say anti-Semitism is OK because Judaism is a religion and hence an ideology? Or anti-Christian bigotry?
That's the point: it doesn't matter when the asshats with funny moustaches and salutes put you in the cattle wagons to the camp. If you're different - whether you are Jewish, disabled, Roma, black, slav, whatever - then you're in trouble.
Anti-semitism clearly isn't a disagreement with the tenets of Judaism.
Though disagreeing with a basic tenet of Judaism that Israel is land promised to Jews by God is often portrayed as antisemitic.
It's often accompanied by blood curdling cries for Israel's destruction
What about all the times when it’s not accompanied by blood curdling cries for Israel's destruction?
Who cares if you say it's not the promised land?
As long as you don't think that Palestine should be from the river to the sea - ie no Israel
What about those that say Israel should be from the river to the sea? Does that count as *checks notes* blood curdling cries for Palestine’s destruction?
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Those who are encouraging the racists in order to get at one race (usually, but not always, Muslims) should realise that the racists they are emboldening will, if given power, not stop at that one race.
Why do you conflate race and Islam?
Are you saying Islamophobia's okay because you don't see it as 'racist' ?
You can always guarantee the islamaphobia card will be pulled out. Why is it a phobia not to like the pathetic ethics and mental rules of a religion that imprisons women , men can do as they wish biut women are for hiding in the house etc.
Because not all Muslims believe that. There are plenty of Christian sects that are very repressive of women but no one confuses them with the Church of England or the Methodist.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Those who are encouraging the racists in order to get at one race (usually, but not always, Muslims) should realise that the racists they are emboldening will, if given power, not stop at that one race.
Why do you conflate race and Islam?
Are you saying Islamophobia's okay because you don't see it as 'racist' ?
I would say that Islamophobia is OK because Islam is a religion and hence an ideology. It's no different to being a socialist-o-phobe or conservative-o-phobe. We are entitled to dislike ideologies we disagree with, and their proponents.
But... of course most Muslims are members of non-white ethnic minorities, so separating it out from racism is tricky
Would you say anti-Semitism is OK because Judaism is a religion and hence an ideology? Or anti-Christian bigotry?
That's the point: it doesn't matter when the asshats with funny moustaches and salutes put you in the cattle wagons to the camp. If you're different - whether you are Jewish, disabled, Roma, black, slav, whatever - then you're in trouble.
Anti-semitism clearly isn't a disagreement with the tenets of Judaism.
Though disagreeing with a basic tenet of Judaism that Israel is land promised to Jews by God is often portrayed as antisemitic.
It's often accompanied by blood curdling cries for Israel's destruction
What about all the times when it’s not accompanied by blood curdling cries for Israel's destruction?
Who cares if you say it's not the promised land?
As long as you don't think that Palestine should be from the river to the sea - ie no Israel
What about those that say Israel should be from the river to the sea? Does that count as *checks notes* blood curdling cries for Palestine’s destruction?
I know you're not asking me, but IMV yes. There are nutters on both (all?) sides of that particular conflict.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
I'd agree that the supremacy of the host country's laws must be fully accepted by incomers. However, you then add 'values', which I don't quite agree with - especially as you cite the importance of free speech in your last paragraph. For example, equality for women, and for gay people, are values that are to some extent are enshrined in law. But there are lots of people in this country who are not immigrants who don't believe in equality for those groups, who don't share these values. yet we tolerate that in the name of free speech as long as it's not unlawful. I don't see why immigrants should be treated differently from home-grown traditionalists. In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
A vignette
I was running a team. For some reason the team knees up was organised by HR (I forget why)
They proudly announced that we were going to a halal curry shop. Two of the team said they wouldn’t go.
HR went on the war path - who were these two so they could be sacked as racists?
They were Indian Hindus who told a story of how, back in the day, the Muslim rulers of the their state had tried to impose halal etc. To them being told to eat it was cultural imperialism.
HR backed off, discombobulated.
Who was right and wrong here, and why?
I find the creeping normalisation of halal a bit uncomfortable, to be honest. It strikes me as rather less humane a form if butchery than mught be ideal. Though I may be ill-informed here.
Apologies for the clear whataboutery, but halal concerns me much less than the butchery that goes on in mass producing meat for our supermarkets.
What does concern me is anyone from any background who feels so beholden to their cultural roots and/or beliefs that they cannot compromise when compromise is clearly needed.
So in Malmesbury's vignette: HR were wrong for choosing a halal eatery for a culturally diverse team, the two team member who refused to eat there were wrong for equating a slightly ham-fisted attempt by HR to be culturally aware with cultural imperialism, and Malmesbury was definitely wrong for allowing HR to organise the curry.
I didn’t allow them. It was some kind of cost reduction policy (I *think*, was a long time back). Rather than let teams set their own entertainment, centralise it with The Experts.
The two team members were offended by the idea of eating halal. As simple as that.
Did they have the right to be offended?
I must admit enjoying the idiots torpedoing themselves.
Some experts, dunderheids more like.
“I think the people of this country have had enough of experts with organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong.”
Somewhat under-reported. I’m moderately well read, but hadn’t heard of this.
How to torch 220 billion euros https://www.siliconcontinent.com/p/how-to-incinerate-220-billion-euros In the depths of the COVID pandemic, with the ECB committed to keeping sovereign spreads low and the EU fiscal rules suspended, Italy launched what would become one of the costliest fiscal experiments in history. Prime Minister Conte announced that the government would subsidize 110% of the cost of housing renovations. The “SuperBonus,” as the policy was called, would improve energy efficiency and stimulate an economy that had barely grown in over two decades. Consumers would face neither economic nor liquidity constraints:
In the construction sector we will introduce a Superbonus for the home: everyone will be able to renovate their homes to make them greener. You will not spend a penny for these renovations. (Giuseppe Conte, May 13, 2020).
The state would pay homeowners 110% of the cost of renovating their properties through an innovative financial mechanism: rather than direct cash grants, the government issued tax credits that could be transferred. A homeowner could claim these credits directly against their taxes, have contractors claim them against invoices, or sell them to banks. These credits became a kind of fiscal currency – a parallel financial instrument that functioned as off-the-books debt (Capone and Stagnaro, 2024). The setup purposefully created the illusion of a free lunch: it hid the cost to the government, as for European accounting purposes the credits would show up only as lost tax revenue rather than new spending.
The SuperBonus created the conditions for what Draghi's Minister of Economy Daniele Franco called “one of the largest frauds in the history of the Republic ” (Capone and Stagnaro, 2024). Contractors often inflated renovation costs; for instance, a €50,000 project might be reported as €100,000. The bank would purchase the €110,000 tax credit at near face value, enabling the contractor to pocket the difference, sometimes sharing it with the homeowner. At times, no work at all was carried out, in which case, invoices for non-existent work on fake buildings were a perfect tool for organized financial crime. Fraudulent credits could then be resold multiple times in an unregulated market of state-backed tax discounts. In 2023, authorities estimated that such fraudulent activities had cost taxpayers €15 billion.
By 2024, it was clear that the lunch was, of course, anything but free. Builders were going around offering to pay people money to renovate their houses. A scheme initially budgeted at €35 billion will end up costing Italian taxpayers €220 billion…
If you believe civil war is going to break out in Britain in the next 5 years you are probably an Islamophobe.
The theoretical underpinning of the argument is that the state is losing legitimacy in the eyes of the majority population group whose position in society is being downgraded, so that doesn’t follow.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
What the fuck is continuous mass immigration on the scale of 300,000-1m people a year but “deliberate destabilisation”?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
There is quite a lot you and I would likely disagree about - I'm basically a bit of a wet social democrat - but I think we're more or less on the same page about the scale of immigration. I.e. it's mad. An open door policy on immigration - about 1.2 million in the year ending mid-2023, with a net value of nearly 800,000 even accounting for those going in the opposite direction - cannot be anything other than destabilising. Apart from all the other negatives, out of control population growth entirely defeats the object of Angela Rayner's housing drive.
You would hope that this Government gets that and will put an end to it. I don't expect it though, sadly.
I actually think some in the Labour Party DO get this, but it’s far too late, and too many still don’t get it - or simply won’t
Absent a tech revolution saving us, here’s how this will play out. European electorates - UK definitely included - will vote for increasingly hard then far right parties. These parties won’t just limit or prohibit immigration, they will go much further. They will begin mass deportations of - firstly - illegal migrants and then legal migrants. Millions of people will be forcibly expelled and borders will be guarded with live ammunition
No doubt I will be accused of wishcasting. This is not that. I have two daughters growing up in the UK and Oz and I dearly want them to grow up in peaceful, racially harmonious societies
I simply don’t believe that’s doable. A brutally violent outcome is now unavoidable (absent the saviour machines). It’s so bleak I generally try not to think about it
Professor David Betz of King's College London believes that we are heading towards ideal conditions for civil conflict:
Moreover, it is not simply that the conditions are present in the West; it is, rather, that the conditions are nearing the ideal. The relative wealth, social stability and related lack of demographic factionalism, plus the perception of the ability of normal politics to solve problems that once made the West seem immune to civil war are now no longer valid. In fact, in each of these categories the direction of pull is towards civil conflict. Increasingly, people perceive this to be the case and their levels of confidence in government would seem to be declining even more in the face of the apparent unwillingness or inability of leaders to confront the situation honestly.
I think we're further away from civil conflict now than we were in the period 2016-19, when the refusal or inability of a large part of the political class to implement the results of the largest vote in the nation's history, which they themselves had called and promised to implement, meant that the legitimacy of our democracy was under serious threat.
And we're considerably further away than we were in the late 1970s, when tens of millions of days were lost to strikes, rubbish was piling high in Leicester Square, the dead were going unburied and Northern Ireland was being, well, Northern Ireland.
But maybe I'm one of nature's optimists.
Sadly I think you are wrong, people here are mostly top 10% the world as it is works for them. There is growing anger and I am not top 10% I mix with these people daily. I think reform will be tried first then when it doesn't work as it wont then it will become civil conflict...the bottom 50% really don't have anything to lose
Here is an example, people here go on about people like nurses having to use a food bank....fair enough then they go on in other posts going lets just add a couple of percent on income tax....yeah well that person on min wage already struggling is going to have 20£ less each month.....2% extra for most here means I will buy a cheaper bottle of wine
Indeed pb is generally a bubble of the well off upper middle class with the odd super rich or too thrown in.
Somewhat under-reported. I’m moderately well read, but hadn’t heard of this.
How to torch 220 billion euros https://www.siliconcontinent.com/p/how-to-incinerate-220-billion-euros In the depths of the COVID pandemic, with the ECB committed to keeping sovereign spreads low and the EU fiscal rules suspended, Italy launched what would become one of the costliest fiscal experiments in history. Prime Minister Conte announced that the government would subsidize 110% of the cost of housing renovations. The “SuperBonus,” as the policy was called, would improve energy efficiency and stimulate an economy that had barely grown in over two decades. Consumers would face neither economic nor liquidity constraints:
In the construction sector we will introduce a Superbonus for the home: everyone will be able to renovate their homes to make them greener. You will not spend a penny for these renovations. (Giuseppe Conte, May 13, 2020).
The state would pay homeowners 110% of the cost of renovating their properties through an innovative financial mechanism: rather than direct cash grants, the government issued tax credits that could be transferred. A homeowner could claim these credits directly against their taxes, have contractors claim them against invoices, or sell them to banks. These credits became a kind of fiscal currency – a parallel financial instrument that functioned as off-the-books debt (Capone and Stagnaro, 2024). The setup purposefully created the illusion of a free lunch: it hid the cost to the government, as for European accounting purposes the credits would show up only as lost tax revenue rather than new spending.
The SuperBonus created the conditions for what Draghi's Minister of Economy Daniele Franco called “one of the largest frauds in the history of the Republic ” (Capone and Stagnaro, 2024). Contractors often inflated renovation costs; for instance, a €50,000 project might be reported as €100,000. The bank would purchase the €110,000 tax credit at near face value, enabling the contractor to pocket the difference, sometimes sharing it with the homeowner. At times, no work at all was carried out, in which case, invoices for non-existent work on fake buildings were a perfect tool for organized financial crime. Fraudulent credits could then be resold multiple times in an unregulated market of state-backed tax discounts. In 2023, authorities estimated that such fraudulent activities had cost taxpayers €15 billion.
By 2024, it was clear that the lunch was, of course, anything but free. Builders were going around offering to pay people money to renovate their houses. A scheme initially budgeted at €35 billion will end up costing Italian taxpayers €220 billion…
It's almost the opposite of the UK where we underinvested and now need to spend 10x.
Comments
A 23-year-old man randomly stabs 5 passersby in southern Austria, killing 1, police say
Or to put it another way: the US’s superior economic performance is not in spite of its trade deficit, it’s because of it. The negative impact of “net imports” on GDP is absolutely swamped by the value of work created by distributing and selling imported goods. For the most extreme example of this, see Greece in the run up to the Global Financial Crisis.
Happily, in my part of the world... *drops deer*.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/02/15/uk-chagos-islands-deal-reparations-mauritian-politician/
Very helpful to the government narrative....
An immigration tribunal judge ruled that Konrad Makocki, who has nine convictions, had a close enough relationship with his nephew for his deportation to be a breach of his right to a family life under article eight of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Nawraz Karbani, the judge in the matter, said his teenage nephew would suffer a “disproportionate” impact if he was deported even though Macocki had “struggled with alcoholism”, been convicted of violence and was subject to a domestic abuse restraining order to prevent him approaching his ex-partner.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/15/violent-polish-migrant-deportation-blocked-human-rights-law/
Surprise anybody gets deported ever.
An actual solution.
@realDonaldTrump
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30m
He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.
===
L'État, c'est moi.
He's completely out of control now, as predicted by any sentient being.
Good luck everyone!
To my disappointment, they rebooked it in 2024. Fortunately for me, in Autumn 2024, the restaurant closed down because a vegetarian restauarant which by definition rules out the meals 90% of people want is a stupid idea.
I may revive my Ron Swanson avatar.
You would hope that this Government gets that and will put an end to it. I don't expect it though, sadly.
For the remainder, we are confident that, by working with the council, we can mitigate any significant cost impact by sending alternate, compliant vehicles into the city whenever possible.
https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/emergency-vehicles-charged-enter-bath-9939782
I am sorry we can't come and put that fire out at the moment all our compliant fire engines are currently busy.....
And if you do, how do you want this "Islamophobia" to be punished?
To what extent they still exist is unclear.
Let me tell you just scrolling the online groups and other Taiwanese media…the reaction to TSMC being pushed into a JV with Intel is 10 times stronger than the Trump tariffs. People are legitimately outraged that Taiwan is being so blatantly stripped for parts and the reaction of our leaders is so flaccid to such a blatant violation.
Tariffs are one thing. They can be passed on. But technology transfer? Taiwan is being asked to open the kimono and to keep a smile on our face while it’s being done.
https://x.com/AngelicaOung/status/1890505708183114014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKQlQlQ6_pk&t=22s
In fact, some of the smartest critics of Islam, Islamism and - e.g. Christopher Hitchens - are/were the opposite of phobic about Islam and in fact fascinated by other cultures. Even Hitchens' famous 'Londonistan' piece criticising the mollycoddling of extremist Islam is admiring of an older generation of Muslim Brits for whom it was as much alien, newfangled claptrap as anyone.
Also, there are two possible variations - one is that a different practice is tolerated, another is that an existing practice is compulsorily replaced. I would be extremely reluctant to accept the latter, but I'm more relaxed about the former.
For example, what do we feel about cultures expecting women to wear headscarves? That used to be the norm in Britain (my aunt would never go out without covering her head with a scarf), and wasn't AFAIK seen as particularly oppressive, any more than the expectation that men should wear trousers. It's intolerable to conceive of it becoming generally required again, but if it's part of a particular culture, is it unacceptable for women who decide to be (or remain) in that culture? Rather, we should expect that cultures are freely chosen and deviations from it are tolerated - not that everyone adopts whatever culture happens to be currently dominant.
Similar confusion happens when, for example, the majority of Iranians in California are Christian, or Westerners run up against the full social complexity of Indian society. Take them to Nagaland.
I had a similar issue that required careful navigation when I ran an interdenominational lunch group / prayer group at my workplace for 5 years.
That national organisation - the only one that existed supporting around 300 groups in the UK - was founded from within the Independent Evangelical sector (as the War Time Christian Union in 1942 approx), and was strongly and narrowly Evangelical enough that Roman Catholics were not allowed to be formal members by policy of the national organisation. The policy stated that RCs needed to be "saved".
Equally my workplace group had existed since 1956 (this was 199x), so I was not about to create a huge fuss whilst I sought to make the group more open to all and more visible. Creating a group of 4 people meeting once a week in a room is easy; doing things like running a magazine in a workplace is far more challenging.
The Ecumenical Movement has been developing principles around how to deal with such circumstances since it started at the Edinburgh Missionary Conference in 1910.
Being on the "secular" side of the sacred-secular divide was interesting - it means that there were all sorts of people, removed from the Church situation, and my contacts list was around 100 individuals with known church affiliation. But they were in the habit of relating in terms of "work", not often in terms of "thinking about work using their faith".
In the event, I adopted a policy of saying the traditioaln "grace" - "in the name of the Father, the Son etc" which is in everyone's Bible, and a set of emphases from a book about ecumenism written by George Carey. So, a policy of identifying by the centre, and not by defining edges.
For the team event, I would aim to do similar.
Politically, you'll note that the sectarians of whatever stripe - whether Yaxley-Lennon, Jenrick, JD Vance, or Islamists drive wedges and create division to drive hostility and division, not dialogue and respect.
Lying about the "other" is easy to get away with if you succeed in driving wedges by talking to your target ethnic group. Jenrick going to an ethnic area of Birmingham to create his film about dirty immigrants with rubbish in the streets, whilst saying nothing about his Government, and him personally, having shredded resources for local authorities, sticks out a mile.
Karly Kingsley
@karlykingsley
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13h
The U.S. Defense Secretary can’t even figure out what dumb college kids know - you put vodka in a Poland Spring bottle and you call it water. We’re all dead.
Absent a tech revolution saving us, here’s how this will play out. European electorates - UK definitely included - will vote for increasingly hard then far right parties. These parties won’t just limit or prohibit immigration, they will go much further. They will begin mass deportations of - firstly - illegal migrants and then legal migrants. Millions of people will be forcibly expelled and borders will be guarded with live ammunition
No doubt I will be accused of wishcasting. This is not that. I have two daughters growing up in the UK and Oz and I dearly want them to grow up in peaceful, racially harmonious societies
I simply don’t believe that’s doable. A brutally violent outcome is now unavoidable (absent the saviour machines). It’s so bleak I generally try not to think about it
Everyone who knows me sees me as a realist, some even a pessimist. With that in mind, you’ll understand the weight of what I’m about to say:
I believe we’re on the brink of uncovering a dark legacy in this country that’s been hidden for far too long.
If you’re struggling to grasp how your ex government could do such things, my advice is to either brace yourself or go hide until someone saves you.
I truly think the dam is breaking, and regardless of how it unfolds, real change is coming. Those at the federal and state levels should be preparing to lose sleep—it’s about to go mainstream.
1:02 PM · Feb 13, 2025
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201.6K
Views
https://x.com/news_barron/status/1890023866304721086
https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/civil-war-comes-to-the-west/
Moreover, it is not simply that the conditions are present in the West; it is, rather, that the conditions are nearing the ideal. The relative wealth, social stability and related lack of demographic factionalism, plus the perception of the ability of normal politics to solve problems that once made the West seem immune to civil war are now no longer valid. In fact, in each of these categories the direction of pull is towards civil conflict. Increasingly, people perceive this to be the case and their levels of confidence in government would seem to be declining even more in the face of the apparent unwillingness or inability of leaders to confront the situation honestly.
Other employment groups have less rights. In quite a lot of Federal stuff there is extensive use of contractors who can be fired without notice.
This Mauritius thing could be his retirement plan. I think he knows his political career is past saving, and I don't think he ever cared about the UK. All he's got left now is to make pots and pots of money.
And we're considerably further away than we were in the late 1970s, when tens of millions of days were lost to strikes, rubbish was piling high in Leicester Square, the dead were going unburied and Northern Ireland was being, well, Northern Ireland.
But maybe I'm one of nature's optimists.
That's the point: it doesn't matter when the asshats with funny moustaches and salutes put you in the cattle wagons to the camp. If you're different - whether you are Jewish, disabled, Roma, black, slav, whatever - then you're in trouble.
Such hatred is not just about race or religion: it's about people daring to be different. The other.
(That is somewhat simplistic, but seems to me to have some basis.)
In philosophical / ideological thought, there is a distinction between "positive" and "negative" secularism, which is essentially exclusive and inclusive.
Similarly, if you dig into campaigning by Humanists UK and the NSS, they sometimes do a soft-cop hard-cop act.
Here is an example, people here go on about people like nurses having to use a food bank....fair enough then they go on in other posts going lets just add a couple of percent on income tax....yeah well that person on min wage already struggling is going to have 20£ less each month.....2% extra for most here means I will buy a cheaper bottle of wine
The country has enough problems as it is without completely stuffing it from top to bottom with people, and for those people to end up having increasingly vehement differences of opinion about basic social mores as well as public policy.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/15/david-starkey-the-monarchy-is-fading-into-irrelevance/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/15/europe-will-not-take-part-in-us-russia-talks-ukraine-kellogg
As long as you don't think that Palestine should be from the river to the sea - ie no Israel
An older society is a poorer society, but that would be a lot easier to manage if more of the burden was shifted away from work and put onto capital, and if large quantities of tax receipts weren't needlessly squandered. To return to one of my favourite topics, I care about skint old people having enough to eat, but I'm against propping up the spending power of rich old people with taxation and wealth transfers that erode the living standards of poorer, younger ones. The hikes in taxes on work to raise billions to subsidise the booking of cruise holidays by asset millionaire pensioners must be stopped.
For people who complain about Muslims wearing 'headscarves' (especially Niqab), it's an icon that lets them generate an easy hate-narrative against a group they can identify and "other". It's exactly the same process as skin colour, which is identifiable, whether 'pakis', 'n****rs', 'wops', 'greasers' or whatever.
There is valid critique of the way some groups use Niqab etc around critique of eg Salafi or other traditions, and Muslims will willingly debate it (talk to some), but when it is used as a hate-lever for politics that must be rejected and resisted.
But headscarves can also are also be cultural. An ex-Restoratonist (New Frontiers stream - founded by Terry Virgo ie Calvinist) turned Anglican Evangelical Anglican I knew observed that not only was she expected to wear a headscarf to church, there was a box of SPARE headscarfs kept at the door in case any of the women forgot to bring their own.
The cultural DNA there is that Terry Virgo the founder of that stream of House Churches was from a Brethren background.
The first Pioneer church is not Christ the King in Brighton founded in ~1975 as "Coastlands", and they have 1500 linked churches worldwide now.
I find that quite peculiar
- religious anti-Semitism: that's the belief that Jewish religious teachings are heretical and you see that across the Muslim world though with the collapse of Christian belief it's mostly dead in non-Muslim Europe. It's also rather difficult to follow it given how similar Jewish, Christian and Muslim teachings are, so better religious education has delivered a serious blow to it.
- socialist anti-Semitisim: the fantasy that Jewish capitalists are conspiring to screw over the Christian working class. Oddly descended from the medieval belief that Jews are inherently usurers, even though they were usually banned from doing much else
- right-wing anti-Semitism: the belief, directly contradicting the above, that Jews are all Communists or Anarchists, because of the huge overrepresentation of Jews amongst the Bolsheviks, though of course it was their oppression under the Russian Empire that caused this
- racial anti-Semitism: the weird belief that Jewish genes are somehow different and a menace to the non-Jewish gene stock.
None of these are to be confused with anti-Zionism, objection to the constitution of an avowedly Jewish state of Israel on Palestinian land over the last 150 years, though of course people can be both anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic.
So anti-Semitism is a complicated phenomenon.
I really like the Spectator's new SPAFF project that allows you to search for wasteful spending yourself.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/spectator-project-against-frivolous-funding/
And I hate to remind you that the Catholic church in particular is rather anti-woman, and always has been.
I've just looked at the article under the "inmates" headline and it's "prisoners", not "inmates", throughout
I’m moderately well read, but hadn’t heard of this.
How to torch 220 billion euros
https://www.siliconcontinent.com/p/how-to-incinerate-220-billion-euros
In the depths of the COVID pandemic, with the ECB committed to keeping sovereign spreads low and the EU fiscal rules suspended, Italy launched what would become one of the costliest fiscal experiments in history. Prime Minister Conte announced that the government would subsidize 110% of the cost of housing renovations. The “SuperBonus,” as the policy was called, would improve energy efficiency and stimulate an economy that had barely grown in over two decades. Consumers would face neither economic nor liquidity constraints:
In the construction sector we will introduce a Superbonus for the home: everyone will be able to renovate their homes to make them greener. You will not spend a penny for these renovations. (Giuseppe Conte, May 13, 2020).
The state would pay homeowners 110% of the cost of renovating their properties through an innovative financial mechanism: rather than direct cash grants, the government issued tax credits that could be transferred. A homeowner could claim these credits directly against their taxes, have contractors claim them against invoices, or sell them to banks. These credits became a kind of fiscal currency – a parallel financial instrument that functioned as off-the-books debt (Capone and Stagnaro, 2024). The setup purposefully created the illusion of a free lunch: it hid the cost to the government, as for European accounting purposes the credits would show up only as lost tax revenue rather than new spending.
The SuperBonus created the conditions for what Draghi's Minister of Economy Daniele Franco called “one of the largest frauds in the history of the Republic ” (Capone and Stagnaro, 2024). Contractors often inflated renovation costs; for instance, a €50,000 project might be reported as €100,000. The bank would purchase the €110,000 tax credit at near face value, enabling the contractor to pocket the difference, sometimes sharing it with the homeowner. At times, no work at all was carried out, in which case, invoices for non-existent work on fake buildings were a perfect tool for organized financial crime. Fraudulent credits could then be resold multiple times in an unregulated market of state-backed tax discounts. In 2023, authorities estimated that such fraudulent activities had cost taxpayers €15 billion.
By 2024, it was clear that the lunch was, of course, anything but free. Builders were going around offering to pay people money to renovate their houses. A scheme initially budgeted at €35 billion will end up costing Italian taxpayers €220 billion…
This won’t lead to civil war. It will mean that Reform type people will enter power, to some degree.
Which will make things worse.