Forrin enough for the likes of the Daily Mail. Note how they have him as Scottish when losing and British when winning. He's not proper British like that nice Tim Henman is he?
In my experience the people who are proper anti immigrant would not be Tim Henman's natural fanbase. Basically tennis is not a BNP sport
Nothing would surprise me about Michael Gove. Nothing.
We know he's phenomenally intelligent and hardworking but we also know he's capable of fanaticism and that he's deceptive, manipulative and can't help but sting anyone he works with. We also know he's a prolific smoker and he snorted lots of cocaine in the 90s.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
Immigration is a fantastic thing and has brought us so many talented people. My challenge whenever people put forward a 1st generation immigrant like her as British is to check if they would be happy for her to come to this country now.
She arrived aged 2, born abroad to forrin parents. Aren't they now the exact kind of people that the angry folk want to keep out?
Most immigration discussion is unenlightened because it's so reductive.
Two things can be true at the same time: there are millions of talented people in the world who'd no doubt all make a meaningful contribution to the UK but at the same time the rate and type of admissions also needs to be controlled.
Or, to put it even more succinctly, there exists a middle ground between zero and infinity.
I have £2 on Emma at 130/1 - what do you think of that? It can happen, can't it? Sometimes these young stars emerge from nowhere and women's tennis is very very open atm.
Keep an eye on the SPotY market although she won't win. It will be a footballer if we win Euro 2020 or an Olympian if we do not.
My strategy on the SPOTY market, has usually been to lay whoever just won a title. The market almost always over-reacts to each winner as the year progresses.
This year’s winner will almost certainly be an Olympian, unless young Emma wins Wimbledon!
The olympics though is likely to be lower key due to covid and also the time zone . I really dont want a footballer to win (pro football is not really to my liking) but Raheem Sterling could win (if England win) .
The time zone is going to be a little wierd for the Olympics, but the main events will be on during UK daytime (athletics finals 10am-midday, for example) and someone will pick up a couple of medals and be leading the news for days. We forget how big an event the Olympics is, and just how much coverage it generates both during and after the Games themselves.
We’ll be collectively looking for something to celebrate, after the events of the past 18 months.
Team GB athletics looks the weakest for several Olympics. Have to rely on some medals from poshos doing minority sports.
Nothing would surprise me about Michael Gove. Nothing.
We know he's phenomenally intelligent and hardworking but we also know he's capable of fanaticism and that he's deceptive, manipulative and can't help but sting anyone he works with. We also know he's a prolific smoker and he snorted lots of cocaine in the 90s.
He's a rather tortured soul at heart, I think.
*Lots* of cocaine? Do we know that for sure?
I had him (naively) down as a “did a line or two cos I was hanging with a TV crowd” type.
We're going to need better "cycling" infrastructure as electric scooters become more popular.
The guy who cut my hair this morning told me he is proudly no-vax, no-mask (except at work), and enjoys riding to the salon on his electric scooter (currently illegal).
One would really want him to reveal that before letting him get to work on your hair.
I very much doubt he will get through this summer without catching covid if he is not vaxxed.
I have £2 on Emma at 130/1 - what do you think of that? It can happen, can't it? Sometimes these young stars emerge from nowhere and women's tennis is very very open atm.
Very true, although the kind of outright collapse of the higher seeds that we saw two or three years ago (where I seem to recall the entire top 10 getting dumped out during the first week) has not happened this year. Barty, Sabalenka, Swiatek and Pliskova are all still fighting, and there are a number of other strong prospects in the draw.
So, whilst the Tomljanovic match is obviously eminently winnable for a player who has now disposed of Vondrousova and Cirstea in back-to-back matches, things after that get very sticky. As it stands, one plausible route to victory would entail beating Barty, Kerber and Swiatek, and Raducanu would then become the lowest ranked player ever to win a Slam by a very considerable margin.
That is way too much to expect, but frankly she has already done very well indeed, and to reach the QF and then make Barty work for the win would constitute a magnificent achievement.
Sound analysis. She's only 28/1 now and I should lay back.
But I'm not!
It's all happening this next week. Football's coming home and she's winning Wimbledon.
I think Black Rook is almost certainly correct, but Becker 1985 (the only other wild card winner I can think of) would incline me to hold on to the bet.
We're going to need better "cycling" infrastructure as electric scooters become more popular.
The guy who cut my hair this morning told me he is proudly no-vax, no-mask (except at work), and enjoys riding to the salon on his electric scooter (currently illegal).
One would really want him to reveal that before letting him get to work on your hair.
I very much doubt he will get through this summer without catching covid if he is not vaxxed.
He had it in April. They had to close the salon. He is unrepentant.
I shared this anecdote because i found his attitude so bizarre.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
So because some people are against what they think is too much immigration, without sufficient evidence, your answer is to pretend, utterly falsely, that those people must be against any immigration at all, therefore any immigrant proves them wrong.
I dont think you've taken the moral high road you think you have. Poor justification for a low immigration view isnt countered by pretending those with that view are defeated by the success of an immigrant.
It annoys me since I am in favour of plenty of immigration, and I don't see why its necessary to make up what the other side believes, since it's very rare that you'll find someone who says they are against immigration full stop as you post implied.
Why beat up on an imaginary opponent when the real one can be taken on?
You just help those with a low immigrant stance by doing so.
Nothing would surprise me about Michael Gove. Nothing.
We know he's phenomenally intelligent and hardworking but we also know he's capable of fanaticism and that he's deceptive, manipulative and can't help but sting anyone he works with. We also know he's a prolific smoker and he snorted lots of cocaine in the 90s.
He's a rather tortured soul at heart, I think.
Those who know him well say the self torture these days is that he really doesn't want Brexit to lead to Scottish independence.
He also think/thought Boris Johnson as PM would ensure Scottish independence that's why he knifed him in 2016.
Not sure how he reconciles his behaviour since 2019. Whilst he's confident Boris Johnson won't grant an indyref2 on his watch his behaviour as PM makes independence likely further down the line.
I think his nightmare scenario is that Boris Johnson decides to grant indyref2 in the belief he can win it.
We're going to need better "cycling" infrastructure as electric scooters become more popular.
The guy who cut my hair this morning told me he is proudly no-vax, no-mask (except at work), and enjoys riding to the salon on his electric scooter (currently illegal).
One would really want him to reveal that before letting him get to work on your hair.
I very much doubt he will get through this summer without catching covid if he is not vaxxed.
and he will be perfectly fine if he does and all the better mentally for not obsessing about covid
I have £2 on Emma at 130/1 - what do you think of that? It can happen, can't it? Sometimes these young stars emerge from nowhere and women's tennis is very very open atm.
Very true, although the kind of outright collapse of the higher seeds that we saw two or three years ago (where I seem to recall the entire top 10 getting dumped out during the first week) has not happened this year. Barty, Sabalenka, Swiatek and Pliskova are all still fighting, and there are a number of other strong prospects in the draw.
So, whilst the Tomljanovic match is obviously eminently winnable for a player who has now disposed of Vondrousova and Cirstea in back-to-back matches, things after that get very sticky. As it stands, one plausible route to victory would entail beating Barty, Kerber and Swiatek, and Raducanu would then become the lowest ranked player ever to win a Slam by a very considerable margin.
That is way too much to expect, but frankly she has already done very well indeed, and to reach the QF and then make Barty work for the win would constitute a magnificent achievement.
Sound analysis. She's only 28/1 now and I should lay back.
But I'm not!
It's all happening this next week. Football's coming home and she's winning Wimbledon.
I think Black Rook is almost certainly correct, but Becker 1985 (the only other wild card winner I can think of) would incline me to hold on to the bet.
Boris Becker was absolutely not a wild card, or a qualifier, in 1985. He was the world number 20 at the time. Under the present system he would've been a seed.
For comparison, Emma Raducanu is currently number 338 on the computer.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
So because some people are against what they think is too much immigration, without sufficient evidence, your answer is to pretend, utterly falsely, that those people must be against any immigration at all, therefore any immigrant proves them wrong.
I dont think you've taken the moral high road you think you have. Poor justification for a low immigration view isnt countered by pretending those with that view are defeated by the success of an immigrant.
It annoys me since I am in favour of plenty of immigration, and I don't see why its necessary to make up what the other side believes, since it's very rare that you'll find someone who says they are against immigration full stop as you post implied.
Why beat up on an imaginary opponent when the real one can be taken on?
I think you are getting the wrong end of the stick.
We keep hearing about Romanian car-washes, stagnant wages, and other alleged and unsubstantiated ills. @isam lists them upthread.
I merely point out that Ms Raducanu represents a rather more tangible alternative narrative about the last several years.
Of course, many posters quickly responded as if I was levelling accusations of bigotry, and one particular berk tried to accuse me of racism (using various racist terms).
Forrin enough for the likes of the Daily Mail. Note how they have him as Scottish when losing and British when winning. He's not proper British like that nice Tim Henman is he?
In my experience the people who are proper anti immigrant would not be Tim Henman's natural fanbase. Basically tennis is not a BNP sport
Forrin enough for the likes of the Daily Mail. Note how they have him as Scottish when losing and British when winning. He's not proper British like that nice Tim Henman is he?
In my experience the people who are proper anti immigrant would not be Tim Henman's natural fanbase. Basically tennis is not a BNP sport
Forrin enough for the likes of the Daily Mail. Note how they have him as Scottish when losing and British when winning. He's not proper British like that nice Tim Henman is he?
In my experience the people who are proper anti immigrant would not be Tim Henman's natural fanbase. Basically tennis is not a BNP sport
Forrin enough for the likes of the Daily Mail. Note how they have him as Scottish when losing and British when winning. He's not proper British like that nice Tim Henman is he?
In my experience the people who are proper anti immigrant would not be Tim Henman's natural fanbase. Basically tennis is not a BNP sport
Buster Mottram says hello.
ha 15 love ! Always an exception that proves the rule!
The Sun sat on the Hancock affair story, releasing it the weekend before the Batley and Spen byelection. The Tories lost the seat by just over 300 votes and as a result Starmer wasn’t pressured to resign. Labour now ambles along with an extremely unpopular leader and no policies
The Corbinistas were clearly banking on a Labour loss in Batley to get rid of Starmer.
Starmer has a big problem now in Angela Rayner. She was clearly “on manoeuvres” last week, but is directly elected as deputy leader and can’t be fired.
I don't think so. Angela Rayner has emerged as a diminished figure following the reports over the past week. She can only scotch the rumours by being ultra loyal now.
Rayner has really screwed up. I think she’s looked on rather suspiciously by front bench colleagues now.
She'll have to get those phone lines uninstalled now.
Bloody voters. Voting Labour and spoiling it all for her.
Do people still “phone lines installed”?
I presume, rather, than Angela is frantically throwing away her “burners”.
I'm just showing my age and reminiscing about the good old days of abortive leadership challenges by the likes of Portillo.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
So because some people are against what they think is too much immigration, without sufficient evidence, your answer is to pretend, utterly falsely, that those people must be against any immigration at all, therefore any immigrant proves them wrong.
I dont think you've taken the moral high road you think you have. Poor justification for a low immigration view isnt countered by pretending those with that view are defeated by the success of an immigrant.
It annoys me since I am in favour of plenty of immigration, and I don't see why its necessary to make up what the other side believes, since it's very rare that you'll find someone who says they are against immigration full stop as you post implied.
Why beat up on an imaginary opponent when the real one can be taken on?
I think you are getting the wrong end of the stick.
We keep hearing about Romanian car-washes, stagnant wages, and other alleged ills. @isam lists them upthread.
I merely point out that Ms Raducanu represents a rather more tangible other narrative about the last several years.
Of course, many posters quickly responded as if I was levelling accusations of bigotry, and one particular berk tried to accuse me of racism (using various racist terms).
The response makes its own argument, really.
Romanian car washes?
She didn't immigrate here from the EU under FOM, which is the debate of the last few years... so what are you talking about?
Grammar School girl though, there's another debate
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
Immigration is a fantastic thing and has brought us so many talented people. My challenge whenever people put forward a 1st generation immigrant like her as British is to check if they would be happy for her to come to this country now.
She arrived aged 2, born abroad to forrin parents. Aren't they now the exact kind of people that the angry folk want to keep out?
Most immigration discussion is unenlightened because it's so reductive.
Two things can be true at the same time: there are millions of talented people in the world who'd no doubt all make a meaningful contribution to the UK but at the same time the rate and type of admissions also needs to be controlled.
Or, to put it even more succinctly, there exists a middle ground between zero and infinity.
You won't last long on Twitter with views like that.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
So because some people are against what they think is too much immigration, without sufficient evidence, your answer is to pretend, utterly falsely, that those people must be against any immigration at all, therefore any immigrant proves them wrong.
I dont think you've taken the moral high road you think you have. Poor justification for a low immigration view isnt countered by pretending those with that view are defeated by the success of an immigrant.
It annoys me since I am in favour of plenty of immigration, and I don't see why its necessary to make up what the other side believes, since it's very rare that you'll find someone who says they are against immigration full stop as you post implied.
Why beat up on an imaginary opponent when the real one can be taken on?
I think you are getting the wrong end of the stick.
We keep hearing about Romanian car-washes, stagnant wages, and other alleged and unsubstantiated ills. @isam lists them upthread.
I merely point out that Ms Raducanu represents a rather more tangible alternative narrative about the last several years.
Of course, many posters quickly responded as if I was levelling accusations of bigotry, and one particular berk tried to accuse me of racism (using various racist terms).
The response makes its own argument, really.
Isn't she Canadian? Or are you implying that I'm somehow not British because my parents weren't born here?
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
So because some people are against what they think is too much immigration, without sufficient evidence, your answer is to pretend, utterly falsely, that those people must be against any immigration at all, therefore any immigrant proves them wrong.
I dont think you've taken the moral high road you think you have. Poor justification for a low immigration view isnt countered by pretending those with that view are defeated by the success of an immigrant.
It annoys me since I am in favour of plenty of immigration, and I don't see why its necessary to make up what the other side believes, since it's very rare that you'll find someone who says they are against immigration full stop as you post implied.
Why beat up on an imaginary opponent when the real one can be taken on?
I think you are getting the wrong end of the stick.
We keep hearing about Romanian car-washes, stagnant wages, and other alleged and unsubstantiated ills. @isam lists them upthread.
I merely point out that Ms Raducanu represents a rather more tangible alternative narrative about the last several years.
Of course, many posters quickly responded as if I was levelling accusations of bigotry, and one particular berk tried to accuse me of racism (using various racist terms).
The Sun sat on the Hancock affair story, releasing it the weekend before the Batley and Spen byelection. The Tories lost the seat by just over 300 votes and as a result Starmer wasn’t pressured to resign. Labour now ambles along with an extremely unpopular leader and no policies
The Corbinistas were clearly banking on a Labour loss in Batley to get rid of Starmer.
Starmer has a big problem now in Angela Rayner. She was clearly “on manoeuvres” last week, but is directly elected as deputy leader and can’t be fired.
I don't think so. Angela Rayner has emerged as a diminished figure following the reports over the past week. She can only scotch the rumours by being ultra loyal now.
Rayner has really screwed up. I think she’s looked on rather suspiciously by front bench colleagues now.
Personally I think she has signalled she wants to be leader which will do her good down the line.
Angela Rayner is not a Corbanista. Nor is it a great surprise that the Deputy Leader wants to be Leader, especially when it is thought the Leader might soon resign.
I have £2 on Emma at 130/1 - what do you think of that? It can happen, can't it? Sometimes these young stars emerge from nowhere and women's tennis is very very open atm.
Very true, although the kind of outright collapse of the higher seeds that we saw two or three years ago (where I seem to recall the entire top 10 getting dumped out during the first week) has not happened this year. Barty, Sabalenka, Swiatek and Pliskova are all still fighting, and there are a number of other strong prospects in the draw.
So, whilst the Tomljanovic match is obviously eminently winnable for a player who has now disposed of Vondrousova and Cirstea in back-to-back matches, things after that get very sticky. As it stands, one plausible route to victory would entail beating Barty, Kerber and Swiatek, and Raducanu would then become the lowest ranked player ever to win a Slam by a very considerable margin.
That is way too much to expect, but frankly she has already done very well indeed, and to reach the QF and then make Barty work for the win would constitute a magnificent achievement.
Sound analysis. She's only 28/1 now and I should lay back.
But I'm not!
It's all happening this next week. Football's coming home and she's winning Wimbledon.
I think Black Rook is almost certainly correct, but Becker 1985 (the only other wild card winner I can think of) would incline me to hold on to the bet.
Boris Becker was absolutely not a wild card, or a qualifier, in 1985. He was the world number 20 at the time. Under the present system he would've been a seed.
For comparison, Emma Raducanu is currently number 338 on the computer.
Fair enough. Have just checked and you’re right. Memory playing tricks on me.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
So because some people are against what they think is too much immigration, without sufficient evidence, your answer is to pretend, utterly falsely, that those people must be against any immigration at all, therefore any immigrant proves them wrong.
I dont think you've taken the moral high road you think you have. Poor justification for a low immigration view isnt countered by pretending those with that view are defeated by the success of an immigrant.
It annoys me since I am in favour of plenty of immigration, and I don't see why its necessary to make up what the other side believes, since it's very rare that you'll find someone who says they are against immigration full stop as you post implied.
Why beat up on an imaginary opponent when the real one can be taken on?
I think you are getting the wrong end of the stick.
We keep hearing about Romanian car-washes, stagnant wages, and other alleged and unsubstantiated ills. @isam lists them upthread.
I merely point out that Ms Raducanu represents a rather more tangible alternative narrative about the last several years.
Of course, many posters quickly responded as if I was levelling accusations of bigotry, and one particular berk tried to accuse me of racism (using various racist terms).
The response makes its own argument, really.
Isn't she Canadian? Or are you implying that I'm somehow not British because my parents weren't born here?
Apparently people who are happy with bankers from Canada becoming British, are all racist bigots for not wanting FOM from Romania.
I get annoyed a bit that immigration debates get dumbed down to "well he or she has won this so thats good etc and he or she is an immigrant "
Tbh If anyone English (immigrant or not ) wins a championship then that's nice. That's about it , its nice for a few moments or perhaps days( if really big champ) for sport fans. If an immigrant doctor or nurse saves your life that's more of a national need and more than nice .
There are valid debates about immigration from both "sides" but to base either side's argument on sportspeople is trivial
I have £2 on Emma at 130/1 - what do you think of that? It can happen, can't it? Sometimes these young stars emerge from nowhere and women's tennis is very very open atm.
Very true, although the kind of outright collapse of the higher seeds that we saw two or three years ago (where I seem to recall the entire top 10 getting dumped out during the first week) has not happened this year. Barty, Sabalenka, Swiatek and Pliskova are all still fighting, and there are a number of other strong prospects in the draw.
So, whilst the Tomljanovic match is obviously eminently winnable for a player who has now disposed of Vondrousova and Cirstea in back-to-back matches, things after that get very sticky. As it stands, one plausible route to victory would entail beating Barty, Kerber and Swiatek, and Raducanu would then become the lowest ranked player ever to win a Slam by a very considerable margin.
That is way too much to expect, but frankly she has already done very well indeed, and to reach the QF and then make Barty work for the win would constitute a magnificent achievement.
Sound analysis. She's only 28/1 now and I should lay back.
But I'm not!
It's all happening this next week. Football's coming home and she's winning Wimbledon.
I think Black Rook is almost certainly correct, but Becker 1985 (the only other wild card winner I can think of) would incline me to hold on to the bet.
Boris Becker was absolutely not a wild card, or a qualifier, in 1985. He was the world number 20 at the time. Under the present system he would've been a seed.
For comparison, Emma Raducanu is currently number 338 on the computer.
And immigrants in the back of lorries jokes...really?
It's appalling how a seemingly easy bit of virtue signalling off the back of successful non-uk-born sportspersons can turn round and bite you in the arse.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
So because some people are against what they think is too much immigration, without sufficient evidence, your answer is to pretend, utterly falsely, that those people must be against any immigration at all, therefore any immigrant proves them wrong.
I dont think you've taken the moral high road you think you have. Poor justification for a low immigration view isnt countered by pretending those with that view are defeated by the success of an immigrant.
It annoys me since I am in favour of plenty of immigration, and I don't see why its necessary to make up what the other side believes, since it's very rare that you'll find someone who says they are against immigration full stop as you post implied.
Why beat up on an imaginary opponent when the real one can be taken on?
I think you are getting the wrong end of the stick.
We keep hearing about Romanian car-washes, stagnant wages, and other alleged and unsubstantiated ills. @isam lists them upthread.
I merely point out that Ms Raducanu represents a rather more tangible alternative narrative about the last several years.
Of course, many posters quickly responded as if I was levelling accusations of bigotry, and one particular berk tried to accuse me of racism (using various racist terms).
The response makes its own argument, really.
Isn't she Canadian? Or are you implying that I'm somehow not British because my parents weren't born here?
I have £2 on Emma at 130/1 - what do you think of that? It can happen, can't it? Sometimes these young stars emerge from nowhere and women's tennis is very very open atm.
Very true, although the kind of outright collapse of the higher seeds that we saw two or three years ago (where I seem to recall the entire top 10 getting dumped out during the first week) has not happened this year. Barty, Sabalenka, Swiatek and Pliskova are all still fighting, and there are a number of other strong prospects in the draw.
So, whilst the Tomljanovic match is obviously eminently winnable for a player who has now disposed of Vondrousova and Cirstea in back-to-back matches, things after that get very sticky. As it stands, one plausible route to victory would entail beating Barty, Kerber and Swiatek, and Raducanu would then become the lowest ranked player ever to win a Slam by a very considerable margin.
That is way too much to expect, but frankly she has already done very well indeed, and to reach the QF and then make Barty work for the win would constitute a magnificent achievement.
Sound analysis. She's only 28/1 now and I should lay back.
But I'm not!
It's all happening this next week. Football's coming home and she's winning Wimbledon.
I think Black Rook is almost certainly correct, but Becker 1985 (the only other wild card winner I can think of) would incline me to hold on to the bet.
Boris Becker was absolutely not a wild card, or a qualifier, in 1985. He was the world number 20 at the time. Under the present system he would've been a seed.
For comparison, Emma Raducanu is currently number 338 on the computer.
Fair enough. Have just checked and you’re right. Memory playing tricks on me.
The Sun sat on the Hancock affair story, releasing it the weekend before the Batley and Spen byelection. The Tories lost the seat by just over 300 votes and as a result Starmer wasn’t pressured to resign. Labour now ambles along with an extremely unpopular leader and no policies
The Corbinistas were clearly banking on a Labour loss in Batley to get rid of Starmer.
Starmer has a big problem now in Angela Rayner. She was clearly “on manoeuvres” last week, but is directly elected as deputy leader and can’t be fired.
I don't think so. Angela Rayner has emerged as a diminished figure following the reports over the past week. She can only scotch the rumours by being ultra loyal now.
Rayner has really screwed up. I think she’s looked on rather suspiciously by front bench colleagues now.
She'll have to get those phone lines uninstalled now.
Bloody voters. Voting Labour and spoiling it all for her.
Do people still “phone lines installed”?
I presume, rather, than Angela is frantically throwing away her “burners”.
I'm just showing my age and reminiscing about the good old days of abortive leadership challenges by the likes of Portillo.
(Auto-complete suggested 'Portishead' btw)
Yes, I also think Portillo.
It’s hard to imagine a time when a leadership bid meant first of all making nice with a BT engineer.
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Nothing would surprise me about Michael Gove. Nothing.
We know he's phenomenally intelligent and hardworking but we also know he's capable of fanaticism and that he's deceptive, manipulative and can't help but sting anyone he works with. We also know he's a prolific smoker and he snorted lots of cocaine in the 90s.
He's a rather tortured soul at heart, I think.
*Lots* of cocaine? Do we know that for sure?
I had him (naively) down as a “did a line or two cos I was hanging with a TV crowd” type.
Michael Gove told Andrew Marr he took cocaine on "several occasions", and it was also reported that he had hosted parties where cocaine was used. The Marr interview is almost certainly on Youtube but I don't have time to look right now.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
So because some people are against what they think is too much immigration, without sufficient evidence, your answer is to pretend, utterly falsely, that those people must be against any immigration at all, therefore any immigrant proves them wrong.
I dont think you've taken the moral high road you think you have. Poor justification for a low immigration view isnt countered by pretending those with that view are defeated by the success of an immigrant.
It annoys me since I am in favour of plenty of immigration, and I don't see why its necessary to make up what the other side believes, since it's very rare that you'll find someone who says they are against immigration full stop as you post implied.
Why beat up on an imaginary opponent when the real one can be taken on?
I think you are getting the wrong end of the stick.
We keep hearing about Romanian car-washes, stagnant wages, and other alleged and unsubstantiated ills. @isam lists them upthread.
I merely point out that Ms Raducanu represents a rather more tangible alternative narrative about the last several years.
Of course, many posters quickly responded as if I was levelling accusations of bigotry, and one particular berk tried to accuse me of racism (using various racist terms).
The response makes its own argument, really.
Isn't she Canadian? Or are you implying that I'm somehow not British because my parents weren't born here?
What is this, non-sequitur Saturday?
You're making a point that doesn't exist. She was born in Canada. She's Canadian. Her parents came from Canada probably a skilled visa route. I'm not sure what it is you're getting at.
My niece, who works in one of the large vaccination centres in the north west, reckons that take up among the younger cohort has been disappointing in her patch.
All these images of queues outside drop in sessions are giving a false impression.
The Sun sat on the Hancock affair story, releasing it the weekend before the Batley and Spen byelection. The Tories lost the seat by just over 300 votes and as a result Starmer wasn’t pressured to resign. Labour now ambles along with an extremely unpopular leader and no policies
The Corbinistas were clearly banking on a Labour loss in Batley to get rid of Starmer.
Starmer has a big problem now in Angela Rayner. She was clearly “on manoeuvres” last week, but is directly elected as deputy leader and can’t be fired.
I don't think so. Angela Rayner has emerged as a diminished figure following the reports over the past week. She can only scotch the rumours by being ultra loyal now.
Rayner has really screwed up. I think she’s looked on rather suspiciously by front bench colleagues now.
Hmm. Not so sure. She now has the anti-Starmer faction coalescing around her, while previously there was no figurehead. She also is canny enough to make it all deniable.
Under current rules, a challenger needs 20% of MPs to back them, and the incumbent is automatically on the members ballot. Only if Starmer resigns is the lower 5% threshold applied. In effect this makes it hard for more than one challenger to be on the ballot.
Rayner is consolidating her position as the Queen over the water.
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
I think both are a problem for social cohesion, which is why I disagree with mass immigration. I dont buy into them both in my personal life - FOM doesnt affect me, I like the bohemian atmosphere when I go to nice places in London, individually Muslims are no better or worse than anyone else. I just dont think its fair on the people it does affect negatively.
I have read what seems to be a similar book called "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe" by Christopher Caldwell
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
Immigration is a fantastic thing and has brought us so many talented people. My challenge whenever people put forward a 1st generation immigrant like her as British is to check if they would be happy for her to come to this country now.
She arrived aged 2, born abroad to forrin parents. Aren't they now the exact kind of people that the angry folk want to keep out?
Most immigration discussion is unenlightened because it's so reductive.
Two things can be true at the same time: there are millions of talented people in the world who'd no doubt all make a meaningful contribution to the UK but at the same time the rate and type of admissions also needs to be controlled.
Or, to put it even more succinctly, there exists a middle ground between zero and infinity.
You won't last long on Twitter with views like that.
Actually to be pedantic i am not sure maths does allow a middle ground between zero and infinity and if such middle ground existed it would also be infinity
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
So because some people are against what they think is too much immigration, without sufficient evidence, your answer is to pretend, utterly falsely, that those people must be against any immigration at all, therefore any immigrant proves them wrong.
I dont think you've taken the moral high road you think you have. Poor justification for a low immigration view isnt countered by pretending those with that view are defeated by the success of an immigrant.
It annoys me since I am in favour of plenty of immigration, and I don't see why its necessary to make up what the other side believes, since it's very rare that you'll find someone who says they are against immigration full stop as you post implied.
Why beat up on an imaginary opponent when the real one can be taken on?
I think you are getting the wrong end of the stick.
We keep hearing about Romanian car-washes, stagnant wages, and other alleged and unsubstantiated ills. @isam lists them upthread.
I merely point out that Ms Raducanu represents a rather more tangible alternative narrative about the last several years.
Of course, many posters quickly responded as if I was levelling accusations of bigotry, and one particular berk tried to accuse me of racism (using various racist terms).
The response makes its own argument, really.
Isn't she Canadian? Or are you implying that I'm somehow not British because my parents weren't born here?
What is this, non-sequitur Saturday?
Your making a point that doesn't exist. She was born in Canada. She's Canadian. Her parents came from Canada probably a skilled visa route. I'm not sure what it is you're getting at.
Her parents, apparently, are Romanian and Chinese. The very sort that @isam whinges about in between his readings of Douglas Murray, Christopher Caldwell, Enoch Powell etc.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
Immigration is a fantastic thing and has brought us so many talented people. My challenge whenever people put forward a 1st generation immigrant like her as British is to check if they would be happy for her to come to this country now.
She arrived aged 2, born abroad to forrin parents. Aren't they now the exact kind of people that the angry folk want to keep out?
Most immigration discussion is unenlightened because it's so reductive.
Two things can be true at the same time: there are millions of talented people in the world who'd no doubt all make a meaningful contribution to the UK but at the same time the rate and type of admissions also needs to be controlled.
Her parents are rich financiers, so she would get in under current rules. It is the likes of Mo Farah that would be barred.
I have £2 on Emma at 130/1 - what do you think of that? It can happen, can't it? Sometimes these young stars emerge from nowhere and women's tennis is very very open atm.
Very true, although the kind of outright collapse of the higher seeds that we saw two or three years ago (where I seem to recall the entire top 10 getting dumped out during the first week) has not happened this year. Barty, Sabalenka, Swiatek and Pliskova are all still fighting, and there are a number of other strong prospects in the draw.
So, whilst the Tomljanovic match is obviously eminently winnable for a player who has now disposed of Vondrousova and Cirstea in back-to-back matches, things after that get very sticky. As it stands, one plausible route to victory would entail beating Barty, Kerber and Swiatek, and Raducanu would then become the lowest ranked player ever to win a Slam by a very considerable margin.
That is way too much to expect, but frankly she has already done very well indeed, and to reach the QF and then make Barty work for the win would constitute a magnificent achievement.
Sound analysis. She's only 28/1 now and I should lay back.
But I'm not!
It's all happening this next week. Football's coming home and she's winning Wimbledon.
I think Black Rook is almost certainly correct, but Becker 1985 (the only other wild card winner I can think of) would incline me to hold on to the bet.
Boris Becker was absolutely not a wild card, or a qualifier, in 1985. He was the world number 20 at the time. Under the present system he would've been a seed.
For comparison, Emma Raducanu is currently number 338 on the computer.
Goran Ivanisevic.
Was a wild card winner, i think.
This is correct, I believe he was ranked 125 at the time so would've had to qualify otherwise. However, I think that the loss of ranking was due to a lengthy injury lay-off rather than loss of form. As poor Tim Henman, amongst others, would testify...
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
So because some people are against what they think is too much immigration, without sufficient evidence, your answer is to pretend, utterly falsely, that those people must be against any immigration at all, therefore any immigrant proves them wrong.
I dont think you've taken the moral high road you think you have. Poor justification for a low immigration view isnt countered by pretending those with that view are defeated by the success of an immigrant.
It annoys me since I am in favour of plenty of immigration, and I don't see why its necessary to make up what the other side believes, since it's very rare that you'll find someone who says they are against immigration full stop as you post implied.
Why beat up on an imaginary opponent when the real one can be taken on?
I think you are getting the wrong end of the stick.
We keep hearing about Romanian car-washes, stagnant wages, and other alleged and unsubstantiated ills. @isam lists them upthread.
I merely point out that Ms Raducanu represents a rather more tangible alternative narrative about the last several years.
Of course, many posters quickly responded as if I was levelling accusations of bigotry, and one particular berk tried to accuse me of racism (using various racist terms).
The response makes its own argument, really.
Isn't she Canadian? Or are you implying that I'm somehow not British because my parents weren't born here?
What is this, non-sequitur Saturday?
Your making a point that doesn't exist. She was born in Canada. She's Canadian. Her parents came from Canada probably a skilled visa route. I'm not sure what it is you're getting at.
Her parents, apparently, are Romanian and Chinese. The very sort that @isam whinges about in between his readings of Douglas Murray, Christopher Caldwell, Enoch Powell etc.
Her parents were Canadian, again unless you're saying that people born overseas can never be considered the same as the people to the countries they move to.
Nothing would surprise me about Michael Gove. Nothing.
We know he's phenomenally intelligent and hardworking but we also know he's capable of fanaticism and that he's deceptive, manipulative and can't help but sting anyone he works with. We also know he's a prolific smoker and he snorted lots of cocaine in the 90s.
He's a rather tortured soul at heart, I think.
Those who know him well say the self torture these days is that he really doesn't want Brexit to lead to Scottish independence.
He also think/thought Boris Johnson as PM would ensure Scottish independence that's why he knifed him in 2016.
Not sure how he reconciles his behaviour since 2019. Whilst he's confident Boris Johnson won't grant an indyref2 on his watch his behaviour as PM makes independence likely further down the line.
I think his nightmare scenario is that Boris Johnson decides to grant indyref2 in the belief he can win it.
I think a Sindy2 before 2025 is drifting towards a price worth looking at. All quiet on that front right now but post pandemic it'll be back with a vengeance. People seem to assume Sturgeon won't play hardball - she doesn't really want a vote - but I don't buy that. I don't think it's a simple as Johnson says no and that's the end of it. I think there could be some fireworks and drama coming.
Nothing would surprise me about Michael Gove. Nothing.
We know he's phenomenally intelligent and hardworking but we also know he's capable of fanaticism and that he's deceptive, manipulative and can't help but sting anyone he works with. We also know he's a prolific smoker and he snorted lots of cocaine in the 90s.
He's a rather tortured soul at heart, I think.
*Lots* of cocaine? Do we know that for sure?
I had him (naively) down as a “did a line or two cos I was hanging with a TV crowd” type.
Michael Gove told Andrew Marr he took cocaine on "several occasions", and it was also reported that he had hosted parties where cocaine was used. The Marr interview is almost certainly on Youtube but I don't have time to look right now.
Not sure he had much choice on the cocaine question. There would have been dozens of journalists who had seen him on the Columbian marching powder. It was pretty ubiquitous in hack circles of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.
Nothing would surprise me about Michael Gove. Nothing.
We know he's phenomenally intelligent and hardworking but we also know he's capable of fanaticism and that he's deceptive, manipulative and can't help but sting anyone he works with. We also know he's a prolific smoker and he snorted lots of cocaine in the 90s.
He's a rather tortured soul at heart, I think.
Those who know him well say the self torture these days is that he really doesn't want Brexit to lead to Scottish independence.
He also think/thought Boris Johnson as PM would ensure Scottish independence that's why he knifed him in 2016.
Not sure how he reconciles his behaviour since 2019. Whilst he's confident Boris Johnson won't grant an indyref2 on his watch his behaviour as PM makes independence likely further down the line.
I think his nightmare scenario is that Boris Johnson decides to grant indyref2 in the belief he can win it.
Maybe, but I think we both agree Gove would be Gove even without all that.
My niece, who works in one of the large vaccination centres in the north west, reckons that take up among the younger cohort has been disappointing in her patch.
All these images of queues outside drop in sessions are giving a false impression.
Or it's better in some places and worse in others?
My niece, who works in one of the large vaccination centres in the north west, reckons that take up among the younger cohort has been disappointing in her patch.
All these images of queues outside drop in sessions are giving a false impression.
Is it that surprising? After all, all the headlines at the moment are about how cases are going through the roof, but as they are only impacting on the young it doesn't matter.
And further more, getting vaccinated won't even "save summer" and allow them to go on holiday - because by the time they are double vaccinated (+2 weeks) summer will be practically over. It's actually quicker (for eg. France) to get Covid and have a first dose!
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
So because some people are against what they think is too much immigration, without sufficient evidence, your answer is to pretend, utterly falsely, that those people must be against any immigration at all, therefore any immigrant proves them wrong.
I dont think you've taken the moral high road you think you have. Poor justification for a low immigration view isnt countered by pretending those with that view are defeated by the success of an immigrant.
It annoys me since I am in favour of plenty of immigration, and I don't see why its necessary to make up what the other side believes, since it's very rare that you'll find someone who says they are against immigration full stop as you post implied.
Why beat up on an imaginary opponent when the real one can be taken on?
I think you are getting the wrong end of the stick.
We keep hearing about Romanian car-washes, stagnant wages, and other alleged and unsubstantiated ills. @isam lists them upthread.
I merely point out that Ms Raducanu represents a rather more tangible alternative narrative about the last several years.
Of course, many posters quickly responded as if I was levelling accusations of bigotry, and one particular berk tried to accuse me of racism (using various racist terms).
The response makes its own argument, really.
Isn't she Canadian? Or are you implying that I'm somehow not British because my parents weren't born here?
What is this, non-sequitur Saturday?
Your making a point that doesn't exist. She was born in Canada. She's Canadian. Her parents came from Canada probably a skilled visa route. I'm not sure what it is you're getting at.
Her parents, apparently, are Romanian and Chinese. The very sort that @isam whinges about in between his readings of Douglas Murray, Christopher Caldwell, Enoch Powell etc.
Her parents were Canadian, again unless you're saying that people born overseas can never be considered the same as the people to the countries they move to.
I’m only going on what Wiki says. It doesn’t matter, though, to my point.
One day it’s “these people are hanging out in sub-standard slums”, the next it’s “ra-ra-raducanu” and there is a cognitive dissonance there as far as I am concerned.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
Immigration is a fantastic thing and has brought us so many talented people. My challenge whenever people put forward a 1st generation immigrant like her as British is to check if they would be happy for her to come to this country now.
She arrived aged 2, born abroad to forrin parents. Aren't they now the exact kind of people that the angry folk want to keep out?
Most immigration discussion is unenlightened because it's so reductive.
Two things can be true at the same time: there are millions of talented people in the world who'd no doubt all make a meaningful contribution to the UK but at the same time the rate and type of admissions also needs to be controlled.
Her parents are rich financiers, so she would get in under current rules. It is the likes of Mo Farah that would be barred.
Are you sure?
Farah and his twin brother, Hassan, were among the six children of British-born Muktar Farah and his Somali wife. Violent conflict in Somalia drove the Farah family from their home in Mogadishu in 1990. The twin brothers and a sister went to live with a grandmother in neighbouring Djibouti. When Farah was eight, however, he was separated from Hassan and sent with two younger brothers to join their father in London. Farah arrived with no knowledge of English but with a love for association football (soccer), which he expected to pursue. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mo-Farah
Lordy, it's tasty on here today. I'm orf to tangle with my Himalayan Giant Blackberry - rather less prickly.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
Immigration is a fantastic thing and has brought us so many talented people. My challenge whenever people put forward a 1st generation immigrant like her as British is to check if they would be happy for her to come to this country now.
She arrived aged 2, born abroad to forrin parents. Aren't they now the exact kind of people that the angry folk want to keep out?
Most immigration discussion is unenlightened because it's so reductive.
Two things can be true at the same time: there are millions of talented people in the world who'd no doubt all make a meaningful contribution to the UK but at the same time the rate and type of admissions also needs to be controlled.
Her parents are rich financiers, so she would get in under current rules. It is the likes of Mo Farah that would be barred.
I have £2 on Emma at 130/1 - what do you think of that? It can happen, can't it? Sometimes these young stars emerge from nowhere and women's tennis is very very open atm.
Very true, although the kind of outright collapse of the higher seeds that we saw two or three years ago (where I seem to recall the entire top 10 getting dumped out during the first week) has not happened this year. Barty, Sabalenka, Swiatek and Pliskova are all still fighting, and there are a number of other strong prospects in the draw.
So, whilst the Tomljanovic match is obviously eminently winnable for a player who has now disposed of Vondrousova and Cirstea in back-to-back matches, things after that get very sticky. As it stands, one plausible route to victory would entail beating Barty, Kerber and Swiatek, and Raducanu would then become the lowest ranked player ever to win a Slam by a very considerable margin.
That is way too much to expect, but frankly she has already done very well indeed, and to reach the QF and then make Barty work for the win would constitute a magnificent achievement.
Sound analysis. She's only 28/1 now and I should lay back.
But I'm not!
It's all happening this next week. Football's coming home and she's winning Wimbledon.
I think Black Rook is almost certainly correct, but Becker 1985 (the only other wild card winner I can think of) would incline me to hold on to the bet.
Boris Becker was absolutely not a wild card, or a qualifier, in 1985. He was the world number 20 at the time. Under the present system he would've been a seed.
For comparison, Emma Raducanu is currently number 338 on the computer.
Fair enough. Have just checked and you’re right. Memory playing tricks on me.
Goran Ivanisovic won Wimbledon as a wild card.
Yes, forgotten about him. But was thinking of Becker as someone who was pretty much unknown going all the way to win. Ivanisovic was very well-known by then - indeed that was a glorious swan song to his career.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
Immigration is a fantastic thing and has brought us so many talented people. My challenge whenever people put forward a 1st generation immigrant like her as British is to check if they would be happy for her to come to this country now.
She arrived aged 2, born abroad to forrin parents. Aren't they now the exact kind of people that the angry folk want to keep out?
Most immigration discussion is unenlightened because it's so reductive.
Two things can be true at the same time: there are millions of talented people in the world who'd no doubt all make a meaningful contribution to the UK but at the same time the rate and type of admissions also needs to be controlled.
Or, to put it even more succinctly, there exists a middle ground between zero and infinity.
You won't last long on Twitter with views like that.
Actually to be pedantic i am not sure maths does allow a middle ground between zero and infinity and if such middle ground existed it would also be infinity
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
So because some people are against what they think is too much immigration, without sufficient evidence, your answer is to pretend, utterly falsely, that those people must be against any immigration at all, therefore any immigrant proves them wrong.
I dont think you've taken the moral high road you think you have. Poor justification for a low immigration view isnt countered by pretending those with that view are defeated by the success of an immigrant.
It annoys me since I am in favour of plenty of immigration, and I don't see why its necessary to make up what the other side believes, since it's very rare that you'll find someone who says they are against immigration full stop as you post implied.
Why beat up on an imaginary opponent when the real one can be taken on?
I think you are getting the wrong end of the stick.
We keep hearing about Romanian car-washes, stagnant wages, and other alleged and unsubstantiated ills. @isam lists them upthread.
I merely point out that Ms Raducanu represents a rather more tangible alternative narrative about the last several years.
Of course, many posters quickly responded as if I was levelling accusations of bigotry, and one particular berk tried to accuse me of racism (using various racist terms).
The response makes its own argument, really.
Isn't she Canadian? Or are you implying that I'm somehow not British because my parents weren't born here?
What is this, non-sequitur Saturday?
Your making a point that doesn't exist. She was born in Canada. She's Canadian. Her parents came from Canada probably a skilled visa route. I'm not sure what it is you're getting at.
Her parents, apparently, are Romanian and Chinese. The very sort that @isam whinges about in between his readings of Douglas Murray, Christopher Caldwell, Enoch Powell etc.
Individual immigration can be a good thing. Her parents moved here from Canada, are wealthy, sent her to a nice school - it is a success story. I dont like or dislike anyone by virtue of their nationality, I wouldn't say I am proud to be English or were Patriotic. But immigration en masse from one culture that changes the make up of towns and cities, or from poor parts of the world that undercuts low waged job security, is bad, and thats all I have ever said
My niece, who works in one of the large vaccination centres in the north west, reckons that take up among the younger cohort has been disappointing in her patch.
All these images of queues outside drop in sessions are giving a false impression.
Or it's better in some places and worse in others?
Perhaps, but I wouldn't expect there to be anything atypical about folk from East Lancashire.
The Sun sat on the Hancock affair story, releasing it the weekend before the Batley and Spen byelection. The Tories lost the seat by just over 300 votes and as a result Starmer wasn’t pressured to resign. Labour now ambles along with an extremely unpopular leader and no policies
The Corbinistas were clearly banking on a Labour loss in Batley to get rid of Starmer.
Starmer has a big problem now in Angela Rayner. She was clearly “on manoeuvres” last week, but is directly elected as deputy leader and can’t be fired.
I don't think so. Angela Rayner has emerged as a diminished figure following the reports over the past week. She can only scotch the rumours by being ultra loyal now.
Rayner has really screwed up. I think she’s looked on rather suspiciously by front bench colleagues now.
Hmm. Not so sure. She now has the anti-Starmer faction coalescing around her, while previously there was no figurehead. She also is canny enough to make it all deniable.
Under current rules, a challenger needs 20% of MPs to back them, and the incumbent is automatically on the members ballot. Only if Starmer resigns is the lower 5% threshold applied. In effect this makes it hard for more than one challenger to be on the ballot.
Rayner is consolidating her position as the Queen over the water.
She is a loser. Unlikemy Labourvwoukd win with her as leader imho.
Nothing would surprise me about Michael Gove. Nothing.
We know he's phenomenally intelligent and hardworking but we also know he's capable of fanaticism and that he's deceptive, manipulative and can't help but sting anyone he works with. We also know he's a prolific smoker and he snorted lots of cocaine in the 90s.
He's a rather tortured soul at heart, I think.
Those who know him well say the self torture these days is that he really doesn't want Brexit to lead to Scottish independence.
He also think/thought Boris Johnson as PM would ensure Scottish independence that's why he knifed him in 2016.
Not sure how he reconciles his behaviour since 2019. Whilst he's confident Boris Johnson won't grant an indyref2 on his watch his behaviour as PM makes independence likely further down the line.
I think his nightmare scenario is that Boris Johnson decides to grant indyref2 in the belief he can win it.
Maybe, but I think we both agree Gove would be Gove even without all that.
He's a Unionist first, a Brexiteer distant second.
Well that's what he told a few of us several years ago.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
So because some people are against what they think is too much immigration, without sufficient evidence, your answer is to pretend, utterly falsely, that those people must be against any immigration at all, therefore any immigrant proves them wrong.
I dont think you've taken the moral high road you think you have. Poor justification for a low immigration view isnt countered by pretending those with that view are defeated by the success of an immigrant.
It annoys me since I am in favour of plenty of immigration, and I don't see why its necessary to make up what the other side believes, since it's very rare that you'll find someone who says they are against immigration full stop as you post implied.
Why beat up on an imaginary opponent when the real one can be taken on?
I think you are getting the wrong end of the stick.
We keep hearing about Romanian car-washes, stagnant wages, and other alleged and unsubstantiated ills. @isam lists them upthread.
I merely point out that Ms Raducanu represents a rather more tangible alternative narrative about the last several years.
Of course, many posters quickly responded as if I was levelling accusations of bigotry, and one particular berk tried to accuse me of racism (using various racist terms).
The response makes its own argument, really.
Isn't she Canadian? Or are you implying that I'm somehow not British because my parents weren't born here?
What is this, non-sequitur Saturday?
Your making a point that doesn't exist. She was born in Canada. She's Canadian. Her parents came from Canada probably a skilled visa route. I'm not sure what it is you're getting at.
Her parents, apparently, are Romanian and Chinese. The very sort that @isam whinges about in between his readings of Douglas Murray, Christopher Caldwell, Enoch Powell etc.
Her parents were Canadian, again unless you're saying that people born overseas can never be considered the same as the people to the countries they move to.
I’m only going on what Wiki says. It doesn’t matter, though, to my point.
One day it’s “these people are hanging out in sub-standard slums”, the next it’s “ra-ra-raducanu” and there is a cognitive dissonance there as far as I am concerned.
Do you support having any controls on immigration ?
Because if you support any restriction on immigration then it then becomes only a question of where you draw the line.
And unsurprisingly people tend to draw the immigration line depending on how it affects themselves.
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Is the Murray-ite / Steyn-ite 'clash of civilizations', 'death of the enlightenment' still a thing? My impression was that it was something of a right-wing fad that rather fizzled out (oddly) when when Trump came along and has now been replaced by moral panics over statues, taking the knee and transgender toilets.
Nothing would surprise me about Michael Gove. Nothing.
We know he's phenomenally intelligent and hardworking but we also know he's capable of fanaticism and that he's deceptive, manipulative and can't help but sting anyone he works with. We also know he's a prolific smoker and he snorted lots of cocaine in the 90s.
He's a rather tortured soul at heart, I think.
Those who know him well say the self torture these days is that he really doesn't want Brexit to lead to Scottish independence.
He also think/thought Boris Johnson as PM would ensure Scottish independence that's why he knifed him in 2016.
Not sure how he reconciles his behaviour since 2019. Whilst he's confident Boris Johnson won't grant an indyref2 on his watch his behaviour as PM makes independence likely further down the line.
I think his nightmare scenario is that Boris Johnson decides to grant indyref2 in the belief he can win it.
I think a Sindy2 before 2025 is drifting towards a price worth looking at. All quiet on that front right now but post pandemic it'll be back with a vengeance. People seem to assume Sturgeon won't play hardball - she doesn't really want a vote - but I don't buy that. I don't think it's a simple as Johnson says no and that's the end of it. I think there could be some fireworks and drama coming.
There will be a vote in the Scottish Parliament formally requesting a referendum, then a vote in the UK Parliament to deny the request. Then what? Maybe a few court cases which will be lost, because the relevant powers are clearly Reserved. Then lots of bluster, but nothing can actually be done about it.
I still think the likelihood of his coming back and winning from this position is very remote (although Federer has been beaten from two sets up twice before at Wimbledon,) but at least he hasn't been steamrollered.
The Sun sat on the Hancock affair story, releasing it the weekend before the Batley and Spen byelection. The Tories lost the seat by just over 300 votes and as a result Starmer wasn’t pressured to resign. Labour now ambles along with an extremely unpopular leader and no policies
The Corbinistas were clearly banking on a Labour loss in Batley to get rid of Starmer.
Starmer has a big problem now in Angela Rayner. She was clearly “on manoeuvres” last week, but is directly elected as deputy leader and can’t be fired.
I don't think so. Angela Rayner has emerged as a diminished figure following the reports over the past week. She can only scotch the rumours by being ultra loyal now.
Rayner has really screwed up. I think she’s looked on rather suspiciously by front bench colleagues now.
Hmm. Not so sure. She now has the anti-Starmer faction coalescing around her, while previously there was no figurehead. She also is canny enough to make it all deniable.
Under current rules, a challenger needs 20% of MPs to back them, and the incumbent is automatically on the members ballot. Only if Starmer resigns is the lower 5% threshold applied. In effect this makes it hard for more than one challenger to be on the ballot.
Rayner is consolidating her position as the Queen over the water.
She is a loser. Unlikemy Labourvwoukd win with her as leader imho.
Perhaps she might get challenged for the deputy leadership... (although historically i think challenging for the deputy leadership was seen more as a way of testing the strength of the leader's position)
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
Immigration is a fantastic thing and has brought us so many talented people. My challenge whenever people put forward a 1st generation immigrant like her as British is to check if they would be happy for her to come to this country now.
She arrived aged 2, born abroad to forrin parents. Aren't they now the exact kind of people that the angry folk want to keep out?
Most immigration discussion is unenlightened because it's so reductive.
Two things can be true at the same time: there are millions of talented people in the world who'd no doubt all make a meaningful contribution to the UK but at the same time the rate and type of admissions also needs to be controlled.
Her parents are rich financiers, so she would get in under current rules. It is the likes of Mo Farah that would be barred.
Are you sure?
Farah and his twin brother, Hassan, were among the six children of British-born Muktar Farah and his Somali wife. Violent conflict in Somalia drove the Farah family from their home in Mogadishu in 1990. The twin brothers and a sister went to live with a grandmother in neighbouring Djibouti. When Farah was eight, however, he was separated from Hassan and sent with two younger brothers to join their father in London. Farah arrived with no knowledge of English but with a love for association football (soccer), which he expected to pursue. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mo-Farah
Lordy, it's tasty on here today. I'm orf to tangle with my Himalayan Giant Blackberry - rather less prickly.
Like Zulu but with straw men instead of the Zulus. They just keep coming.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
Immigration is a fantastic thing and has brought us so many talented people. My challenge whenever people put forward a 1st generation immigrant like her as British is to check if they would be happy for her to come to this country now.
She arrived aged 2, born abroad to forrin parents. Aren't they now the exact kind of people that the angry folk want to keep out?
Most immigration discussion is unenlightened because it's so reductive.
Two things can be true at the same time: there are millions of talented people in the world who'd no doubt all make a meaningful contribution to the UK but at the same time the rate and type of admissions also needs to be controlled.
Her parents are rich financiers, so she would get in under current rules. It is the likes of Mo Farah that would be barred.
Farah's dad is a UK born UK resident.
Though Farah was born in Mogadishu and came to Britain aged 8 to join a father who he hadn't seen for years. The sort of chain migration that right wingers oppose.
The Sun sat on the Hancock affair story, releasing it the weekend before the Batley and Spen byelection. The Tories lost the seat by just over 300 votes and as a result Starmer wasn’t pressured to resign. Labour now ambles along with an extremely unpopular leader and no policies
The Corbinistas were clearly banking on a Labour loss in Batley to get rid of Starmer.
Starmer has a big problem now in Angela Rayner. She was clearly “on manoeuvres” last week, but is directly elected as deputy leader and can’t be fired.
I don't think so. Angela Rayner has emerged as a diminished figure following the reports over the past week. She can only scotch the rumours by being ultra loyal now.
Rayner has really screwed up. I think she’s looked on rather suspiciously by front bench colleagues now.
Hmm. Not so sure. She now has the anti-Starmer faction coalescing around her, while previously there was no figurehead. She also is canny enough to make it all deniable.
Under current rules, a challenger needs 20% of MPs to back them, and the incumbent is automatically on the members ballot. Only if Starmer resigns is the lower 5% threshold applied. In effect this makes it hard for more than one challenger to be on the ballot.
Rayner is consolidating her position as the Queen over the water.
She is a loser. Unlikemy Labourvwoukd win with her as leader imho.
Perhaps so, but that is a different contest to becoming leader.
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Is the Murray-ite / Steyn-ite 'clash of civilizations', 'death of the enlightenment' still a thing? My impression was that it was something of a right-wing fad that rather fizzled out (oddly) when when Trump came along and has now been replaced by moral panics over statues, taking the knee and transgender toilets.
Has there been a PB eruption about the Canadian statue toppling and I’ve missed it? I thought it would be the talk of the steamie.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
Immigration is a fantastic thing and has brought us so many talented people. My challenge whenever people put forward a 1st generation immigrant like her as British is to check if they would be happy for her to come to this country now.
She arrived aged 2, born abroad to forrin parents. Aren't they now the exact kind of people that the angry folk want to keep out?
Most immigration discussion is unenlightened because it's so reductive.
Two things can be true at the same time: there are millions of talented people in the world who'd no doubt all make a meaningful contribution to the UK but at the same time the rate and type of admissions also needs to be controlled.
Her parents are rich financiers, so she would get in under current rules. It is the likes of Mo Farah that would be barred.
I'm not familiar with all of Mo Farah's family background but no doubt there are many Kenyan and Somalian talented runners as well as sportsmen and women who'd like to emigrate but would currently struggle to do so. There are probably lots of talented Korean computer scientists and Azerbaijani entrepreneurs who'd like to do so too.
A line has to be drawn somewhere. That will never seem fair to those who fall on just the wrong side of it but it's essential to maintaining stability and cohesion.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
Immigration is a fantastic thing and has brought us so many talented people. My challenge whenever people put forward a 1st generation immigrant like her as British is to check if they would be happy for her to come to this country now.
She arrived aged 2, born abroad to forrin parents. Aren't they now the exact kind of people that the angry folk want to keep out?
Most immigration discussion is unenlightened because it's so reductive.
Two things can be true at the same time: there are millions of talented people in the world who'd no doubt all make a meaningful contribution to the UK but at the same time the rate and type of admissions also needs to be controlled.
Her parents are rich financiers, so she would get in under current rules. It is the likes of Mo Farah that would be barred.
Farah's dad is a UK born UK resident.
Though Farah was born in Mogadishu and came to Britain aged 8 to join a father who he hadn't seen for years. The sort of chain migration that right wingers oppose.
Not at all, very few people object to children fleeing a terrible civil war, coming to join a parent.
Nothing would surprise me about Michael Gove. Nothing.
We know he's phenomenally intelligent and hardworking but we also know he's capable of fanaticism and that he's deceptive, manipulative and can't help but sting anyone he works with. We also know he's a prolific smoker and he snorted lots of cocaine in the 90s.
He's a rather tortured soul at heart, I think.
Those who know him well say the self torture these days is that he really doesn't want Brexit to lead to Scottish independence.
He also think/thought Boris Johnson as PM would ensure Scottish independence that's why he knifed him in 2016.
Not sure how he reconciles his behaviour since 2019. Whilst he's confident Boris Johnson won't grant an indyref2 on his watch his behaviour as PM makes independence likely further down the line.
I think his nightmare scenario is that Boris Johnson decides to grant indyref2 in the belief he can win it.
I think a Sindy2 before 2025 is drifting towards a price worth looking at. All quiet on that front right now but post pandemic it'll be back with a vengeance. People seem to assume Sturgeon won't play hardball - she doesn't really want a vote - but I don't buy that. I don't think it's a simple as Johnson says no and that's the end of it. I think there could be some fireworks and drama coming.
There will be a vote in the Scottish Parliament formally requesting a referendum, then a vote in the UK Parliament to deny the request. Then what? Maybe a few court cases which will be lost, because the relevant powers are clearly Reserved. Then lots of bluster, but nothing can actually be done about it.
The problem for UK/Westminster politicians is there's no real good way of undermining the strength of the SNP in Scotland.
Shower Scotland with cash and it creates resentment in England, and the Scots take the message that the best way to benefit Scotland is continuing to vote SNP and give the impression of flirting with Independence.
Don't do so, and the SNP are able to nuture and build up the grievance culture about how the UK is 'holding back' Scotland.
Short of the SNP imploding, i'm not sure how that situation is resolved - short of another SINDY referendum that votes to stay in the UK.
The Sun sat on the Hancock affair story, releasing it the weekend before the Batley and Spen byelection. The Tories lost the seat by just over 300 votes and as a result Starmer wasn’t pressured to resign. Labour now ambles along with an extremely unpopular leader and no policies
The Corbinistas were clearly banking on a Labour loss in Batley to get rid of Starmer.
Starmer has a big problem now in Angela Rayner. She was clearly “on manoeuvres” last week, but is directly elected as deputy leader and can’t be fired.
I don't think so. Angela Rayner has emerged as a diminished figure following the reports over the past week. She can only scotch the rumours by being ultra loyal now.
Rayner has really screwed up. I think she’s looked on rather suspiciously by front bench colleagues now.
Hmm. Not so sure. She now has the anti-Starmer faction coalescing around her, while previously there was no figurehead. She also is canny enough to make it all deniable.
Under current rules, a challenger needs 20% of MPs to back them, and the incumbent is automatically on the members ballot. Only if Starmer resigns is the lower 5% threshold applied. In effect this makes it hard for more than one challenger to be on the ballot.
Rayner is consolidating her position as the Queen over the water.
She is a loser. Unlikemy Labourvwoukd win with her as leader imho.
Winning ...
Well, in the sense of winning a majority, Labour cannot win without a significant comeback in Scotland. I don't know if they can solve that problem.
But, in terms of winning the seats back in the Midlands/North of England, Rayner is likely to be better than a metropolitan lawyer from the South of England, like SKS.
In terms of actually running the country as PM, SKS is likely to be better than Rayner.
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Is the Murray-ite / Steyn-ite 'clash of civilizations', 'death of the enlightenment' still a thing? My impression was that it was something of a right-wing fad that rather fizzled out (oddly) when when Trump came along and has now been replaced by moral panics over statues, taking the knee and transgender toilets.
Is a transgender toilet one of those annoying ones where the seat falls down as soon as you let go of it?
Russia reports 697 new coronavirus deaths, the biggest one-day increase on record, and 24,439 new cases, the highest since January
They have just 90% of our cases.
We have just 4% of their deaths.
Someone might be asking Putin for their vaccine money back.
What am I saying......
I think we must be the only country in the world testing school children. And even worse, using lateral flow tests. To pick up asymptomatic cases. Or worse.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
Immigration is a fantastic thing and has brought us so many talented people. My challenge whenever people put forward a 1st generation immigrant like her as British is to check if they would be happy for her to come to this country now.
She arrived aged 2, born abroad to forrin parents. Aren't they now the exact kind of people that the angry folk want to keep out?
Most immigration discussion is unenlightened because it's so reductive.
Two things can be true at the same time: there are millions of talented people in the world who'd no doubt all make a meaningful contribution to the UK but at the same time the rate and type of admissions also needs to be controlled.
Her parents are rich financiers, so she would get in under current rules. It is the likes of Mo Farah that would be barred.
Farah's dad is a UK born UK resident.
Though Farah was born in Mogadishu and came to Britain aged 8 to join a father who he hadn't seen for years. The sort of chain migration that right wingers oppose.
Not at all, very few people object to children fleeing a terrible civil war, coming to join a parent.
I still think the likelihood of his coming back and winning from this position is very remote (although Federer has been beaten from two sets up twice before at Wimbledon,) but at least he hasn't been steamrollered.
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Is the Murray-ite / Steyn-ite 'clash of civilizations', 'death of the enlightenment' still a thing? My impression was that it was something of a right-wing fad that rather fizzled out (oddly) when when Trump came along and has now been replaced by moral panics over statues, taking the knee and transgender toilets.
Has there been a PB eruption about the Canadian statue toppling and I’ve missed it? I thought it would be the talk of the steamie.
Nothing would surprise me about Michael Gove. Nothing.
We know he's phenomenally intelligent and hardworking but we also know he's capable of fanaticism and that he's deceptive, manipulative and can't help but sting anyone he works with. We also know he's a prolific smoker and he snorted lots of cocaine in the 90s.
He's a rather tortured soul at heart, I think.
Those who know him well say the self torture these days is that he really doesn't want Brexit to lead to Scottish independence.
He also think/thought Boris Johnson as PM would ensure Scottish independence that's why he knifed him in 2016.
Not sure how he reconciles his behaviour since 2019. Whilst he's confident Boris Johnson won't grant an indyref2 on his watch his behaviour as PM makes independence likely further down the line.
I think his nightmare scenario is that Boris Johnson decides to grant indyref2 in the belief he can win it.
I think a Sindy2 before 2025 is drifting towards a price worth looking at. All quiet on that front right now but post pandemic it'll be back with a vengeance. People seem to assume Sturgeon won't play hardball - she doesn't really want a vote - but I don't buy that. I don't think it's a simple as Johnson says no and that's the end of it. I think there could be some fireworks and drama coming.
There will be a vote in the Scottish Parliament formally requesting a referendum, then a vote in the UK Parliament to deny the request. Then what? Maybe a few court cases which will be lost, because the relevant powers are clearly Reserved. Then lots of bluster, but nothing can actually be done about it.
The problem for UK/Westminster politicians is there's no real good way of undermining the strength of the SNP in Scotland.
Shower Scotland with cash and it creates resentment in England, and the Scots take the message that the best way to benefit Scotland is continuing to vote SNP and give the impression of flirting with Independence.
Don't do so, and the SNP are able to nuture and build up the grievance culture about how the UK is 'holding back' Scotland.
Short of the SNP imploding, i'm not sure how that situation is resolved - short of another SINDY referendum that votes to stay in the UK.
The entire relationship is deeply toxic. Only divorce fixes that now. The near-half of the Scottish population that wants out and keeps voting SNP ad nauseam is hardly likely to stop.
I don't know why she gets bigged up. She may know her way thro Labour's ranks, bit there's a hell of a lot of difference in becoming LOTO and becoming PM. The list of LOTO's who did not become PM is considerable since the 60s. George Brown... Foot...Kinnock Smith(died) Hague Howard Harman.. twice Miliband Corbyn... Starmer?? BY comparison Rayner is a minnow in a v big pool.
I see the anti-migrant posters really don’t like it up em.
It was the sheer scale of it (10%!) the lack of democratic consent and meaningful mitigation (house building, retraining, schools/infrastructure investment etc) that was the problem for me.
Up until a few years ago, I didn’t see it as much of a problem. I was wrong.
Controlled immigration should have been a good thing. Our uncontrolled approach between 2004-2016 was a bit of a disaster.
I used to post stuff like you. I now see it as a mistake. It’s an attempt to remove immigration from the political debate. That’s wrong. Immigration is a profoundly political question that should be openly discussed.
I don't know, maybe telling Leave voters that we might have a pretty immigrant with a Romanian sounding name reach the second week of Wimbledon would have made them forget about the pressure on their wages, job security, social harmony, school places, hospital waiting lists and so on
Immigration - me and you both know - was key to Leave winning and there are 2 aspects to it. They overlap but are different. You buy into both.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Is the Murray-ite / Steyn-ite 'clash of civilizations', 'death of the enlightenment' still a thing? My impression was that it was something of a right-wing fad that rather fizzled out (oddly) when when Trump came along and has now been replaced by moral panics over statues, taking the knee and transgender toilets.
Has there been a PB eruption about the Canadian statue toppling and I’ve missed it? I thought it would be the talk of the steamie.
Emma Raducanu - half Romanian, half Chinese - is one of those immigrants PBers love to complain about.
No, I don’t mean *her*, they protest.
I think you need to work harder on your trolling, unless you genuinely believe people who want to restrict levels of immigration (and its not a subject I care about, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned) actually want to have zero immigration at all. Otherwise your trolling attempt doesn't work, since it has to bear some relation to what people actually complain about.
I don't think anyone cares about the background of their sport stars though, even if they snuck in illegally - so just see all migrants, legal and otherwise, as potential olympians and don't risk sending anyone home.
Two or three times a week we have a little masturbatory sub-thread on how awful immigration has been over the last few years, reducing skill levels, repressing wages and increasing house prices.
Said conversations are never able to cite any actual evidence for their claim.
Ms Raducanu is a fetching riposte to such drivel.
So because some people are against what they think is too much immigration, without sufficient evidence, your answer is to pretend, utterly falsely, that those people must be against any immigration at all, therefore any immigrant proves them wrong.
I dont think you've taken the moral high road you think you have. Poor justification for a low immigration view isnt countered by pretending those with that view are defeated by the success of an immigrant.
It annoys me since I am in favour of plenty of immigration, and I don't see why its necessary to make up what the other side believes, since it's very rare that you'll find someone who says they are against immigration full stop as you post implied.
Why beat up on an imaginary opponent when the real one can be taken on?
I think you are getting the wrong end of the stick.
We keep hearing about Romanian car-washes, stagnant wages, and other alleged and unsubstantiated ills. @isam lists them upthread.
I merely point out that Ms Raducanu represents a rather more tangible alternative narrative about the last several years.
Of course, many posters quickly responded as if I was levelling accusations of bigotry, and one particular berk tried to accuse me of racism (using various racist terms).
The response makes its own argument, really.
Isn't she Canadian? Or are you implying that I'm somehow not British because my parents weren't born here?
What is this, non-sequitur Saturday?
Your making a point that doesn't exist. She was born in Canada. She's Canadian. Her parents came from Canada probably a skilled visa route. I'm not sure what it is you're getting at.
Her parents, apparently, are Romanian and Chinese. The very sort that @isam whinges about in between his readings of Douglas Murray, Christopher Caldwell, Enoch Powell etc.
Her parents were Canadian, again unless you're saying that people born overseas can never be considered the same as the people to the countries they move to.
I’m only going on what Wiki says. It doesn’t matter, though, to my point.
One day it’s “these people are hanging out in sub-standard slums”, the next it’s “ra-ra-raducanu” and there is a cognitive dissonance there as far as I am concerned.
Do you support having any controls on immigration ?
Because if you support any restriction on immigration then it then becomes only a question of where you draw the line.
And unsurprisingly people tend to draw the immigration line depending on how it affects themselves.
I do.
It seems pretty straightforward there must be kind of limit on a country’s ability to absorb immigration, although how to work that out I don’t know.
But I am keen to remind the comfortable PB consensus that ALL the evidence suggests
- East European immigrants were averagely more skilled than native employees - EU (inc East European) migration increased both productivity and average GDP per capita - The effect on U.K. workers was largely (though admittedly not universally) to improve their wages as they were able to “move up the ladder”.
One also notes the astonishing contribution to culture, food, arts etc, esp in London.
The data on house prices also suggests that EU migration was NOT a significant contributor to inflation, at least relative to many other factors.
To the extent there were strains on infrastructure etc I rather blame govt fiscal policy rather than the immigrants themselves.
Comments
We know he's phenomenally intelligent and hardworking but we also know he's capable of fanaticism and that he's deceptive, manipulative and can't help but sting anyone he works with. We also know he's a prolific smoker and he snorted lots of cocaine in the 90s.
He's a rather tortured soul at heart, I think.
https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/decision-document/2021 Austrian Grand Prix - Summons - Car 77 - alleged driving unnecessarily slowly (Turns 9 and 10).pdf
Vettel is in line for a big grid penalty, a birthday present from the stewards.
Gasly did very well, again.
Do we know that for sure?
I had him (naively) down as a “did a line or two cos I was hanging with a TV crowd” type.
I shared this anecdote because i found his attitude so bizarre.
I dont think you've taken the moral high road you think you have. Poor justification for a low immigration view isnt countered by pretending those with that view are defeated by the success of an immigrant.
It annoys me since I am in favour of plenty of immigration, and I don't see why its necessary to make up what the other side believes, since it's very rare that you'll find someone who says they are against immigration full stop as you post implied.
Why beat up on an imaginary opponent when the real one can be taken on?
You just help those with a low immigrant stance by doing so.
He also think/thought Boris Johnson as PM would ensure Scottish independence that's why he knifed him in 2016.
Not sure how he reconciles his behaviour since 2019. Whilst he's confident Boris Johnson won't grant an indyref2 on his watch his behaviour as PM makes independence likely further down the line.
I think his nightmare scenario is that Boris Johnson decides to grant indyref2 in the belief he can win it.
No? Then fuck off @Gardenwalker
For comparison, Emma Raducanu is currently number 338 on the computer.
We keep hearing about Romanian car-washes, stagnant wages, and other alleged and unsubstantiated ills. @isam lists them upthread.
I merely point out that Ms Raducanu represents a rather more tangible alternative narrative about the last several years.
Of course, many posters quickly responded as if I was levelling accusations of bigotry, and one particular berk tried to accuse me of racism (using various racist terms).
The response makes its own argument, really.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7706857.stm
Edit - beaten to it, No_Offence Al served an ace.
(Auto-complete suggested 'Portishead' btw)
She didn't immigrate here from the EU under FOM, which is the debate of the last few years... so what are you talking about?
Grammar School girl though, there's another debate
Thank goodness you will never have to resort to a “substandard squat” and be accused - against the economic evidence - of driving down wages.
Labour MP @BenPBradshaw says Starmer “must sack” members of the shadow cabinet who are briefing against him
#Newsnight"
https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/1411082580347310082
Tbh If anyone English (immigrant or not ) wins a championship then that's nice. That's about it , its nice for a few moments or perhaps days( if really big champ) for sport fans. If an immigrant doctor or nurse saves your life that's more of a national need and more than nice .
There are valid debates about immigration from both "sides" but to base either side's argument on sportspeople is trivial
Was a wild card winner, i think.
It's appalling how a seemingly easy bit of virtue signalling off the back of successful non-uk-born sportspersons can turn round and bite you in the arse.
It’s hard to imagine a time when a leadership bid meant first of all making nice with a BT engineer.
The money side. The perception that tons of people "coming over ere" were depressing wages at the bottom end, creating housing shortages, stressing public services.
The identity side. Dislike of difference in appearance and attitudes. This sentiment - if the person feeling it wishes to endow it with some detached gravitas - is often expressed as "Multiculturalism doesn't work."
The modern bible for this view - which is code for "Muslims and the West don't mix" - is Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe." I recommend this if you haven't read it.
Whereas you just carp from the sidelines
My niece, who works in one of the large vaccination centres in the north west, reckons that take up among the younger cohort has been disappointing in her patch.
All these images of queues outside drop in sessions are giving a false impression.
Under current rules, a challenger needs 20% of MPs to back them, and the incumbent is automatically on the members ballot. Only if Starmer resigns is the lower 5% threshold applied. In effect this makes it hard for more than one challenger to be on the ballot.
Rayner is consolidating her position as the Queen over the water.
I have read what seems to be a similar book called "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe" by Christopher Caldwell
Me, I *am* a migrant. I’m sticking up for my people.
And further more, getting vaccinated won't even "save summer" and allow them to go on holiday - because by the time they are double vaccinated (+2 weeks) summer will be practically over. It's actually quicker (for eg. France) to get Covid and have a first dose!
It doesn’t matter, though, to my point.
One day it’s “these people are hanging out in sub-standard slums”, the next it’s “ra-ra-raducanu” and there is a cognitive dissonance there as far as I am concerned.
Farah and his twin brother, Hassan, were among the six children of British-born Muktar Farah and his Somali wife. Violent conflict in Somalia drove the Farah family from their home in Mogadishu in 1990. The twin brothers and a sister went to live with a grandmother in neighbouring Djibouti. When Farah was eight, however, he was separated from Hassan and sent with two younger brothers to join their father in London. Farah arrived with no knowledge of English but with a love for association football (soccer), which he expected to pursue.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mo-Farah
Lordy, it's tasty on here today. I'm orf to tangle with my Himalayan Giant Blackberry - rather less prickly.
This is peak pb.
Well that's what he told a few of us several years ago.
Because if you support any restriction on immigration then it then becomes only a question of where you draw the line.
And unsurprisingly people tend to draw the immigration line depending on how it affects themselves.
I still think the likelihood of his coming back and winning from this position is very remote (although Federer has been beaten from two sets up twice before at Wimbledon,) but at least he hasn't been steamrollered.
My Japanese wineberry is flowering.
A line has to be drawn somewhere. That will never seem fair to those who fall on just the wrong side of it but it's essential to maintaining stability and cohesion.
We have just 4% of their deaths.
Someone might be asking Putin for their vaccine money back.
What am I saying......
Shower Scotland with cash and it creates resentment in England, and the Scots take the message that the best way to benefit Scotland is continuing to vote SNP and give the impression of flirting with Independence.
Don't do so, and the SNP are able to nuture and build up the grievance culture about how the UK is 'holding back' Scotland.
Short of the SNP imploding, i'm not sure how that situation is resolved - short of another SINDY referendum that votes to stay in the UK.
Winning ...
Well, in the sense of winning a majority, Labour cannot win without a significant comeback in Scotland. I don't know if they can solve that problem.
But, in terms of winning the seats back in the Midlands/North of England, Rayner is likely to be better than a metropolitan lawyer from the South of England, like SKS.
In terms of actually running the country as PM, SKS is likely to be better than Rayner.
Or are those feminist toilets?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/architecture/diana-statue-proves-britains-public-art-atrocious-low/
It seems pretty straightforward there must be kind of limit on a country’s ability to absorb immigration, although how to work that out I don’t know.
But I am keen to remind the comfortable PB consensus that ALL the evidence suggests
- East European immigrants were averagely more skilled than native employees
- EU (inc East European) migration increased both productivity and average GDP per capita
- The effect on U.K. workers was largely (though admittedly not universally) to improve their wages as they were able to “move up the ladder”.
One also notes the astonishing contribution to culture, food, arts etc, esp in London.
The data on house prices also suggests that EU migration was NOT a significant contributor to inflation, at least relative to many other factors.
To the extent there were strains on infrastructure etc I rather blame govt fiscal policy rather than the immigrants themselves.