Election Year or Fear!

[swaledale]

Interesting to see on the TV news last night, two of the three people approached in the vox pop stated (I paraphrase) that there are too many immigrants in their area not prepared to contribute to the common good and just looking for what they can take. ?Bloody right wing gammons? goes the cry from some of our little band, but hang on: both were first generation immigrants, a small sample maybe but my guess is they know better than we do

Ah so now in addition to anecdotes, we learn your views are based on what you guess. That explains quite a lot.

Quelle surprise that SOME of those who were immigrants and benefitted from immigration are critical of SOME current immigrants. I'm sure you recall Gisella Stuart the very pro Brexit Labour MP of German origin, or indeed the Tories very own Kemi Badenoch and before that Rishi Sunak all of whom seemed very keen to be critical of immigration. never mind that well known internationalist Farage who is married to a German.

If we are going on anecdotes, in the same context I can recall a surprising number of women leaders/managers who were very anti improving matters for women at work on the basis it seemed that they had had to put up with discrimination/***ual harassment etc. and saw no reason to smooth the path of those who followed on behind!

I guess its human nature sad though it is, to a) consider oneself to be of higher worth than others similar to you and b) to want equality and fairness of opportunity when its you who is going to benefit, but to seek to deny others the opportunities you enjoyed.

One could also point out it was Turkish immigrants to Germany who were behind the creation of one of the most effective covid vaccines, or that anecdotally the last time I was in hospital for a serious operation the anaesthetist was a Indian immigrant, the nurses from Sierra Leone, Kenya and Poland and very good they all were.