Thought for today:
"While I do not consider myself to be racist in the slightest nor believe that my track record over the years would contradict this assertion, I do think that we'd serve all new immigrants to this country much better if we allowed them to cross our borders in a manner that facilitates easier assimilation to the British way of life, as well as assuaging some fears of the indigenous population that are realistically held.
In the mid 1940s, my parents and their three eldest children emigrated from Ireland to West Yorkshire. During our earlier years in England we were discriminated against until the day came when 'we fitted in' with our surrounding neighbours and their ways. Let me say now that England is a super country and gave all the Forde family a good education, new council house accommodation, full employment and a standard of living that we would never have received in Ireland at that time, and while I remain proud to be an Irish citizen until the day I die, there is no other country in the world of which I am more proud of than England to which my family owes everything.
While Great Britain has been one of the countries which has welcomed immigrants more than others during the past century, and in particular asylum seekers, to deny that allowing over three hundred thousand new immigrants from mostly Europe into this country annually does not place an enormous strain upon our already depleted housing stock, our overstretched National Health Service and our school places is simply to ignore the facts and to bury our heads in the sand.
The simple truth is that there are much better and fairer ways of managing our immigration situation and of helping these people who are patently in greater need than most of the people already living in Great Britain. We frequently view the problem of space like the overcrowded Indian trains. Namely, if there is possibly any room to squeeze in another, then jump on board. However, even crowded trains, although highly dangerous to ride, don't sink and lose all passengers in the process.
In more accurate analogous terms, our present immigration situation in Great Britain is like a lifeboat that is full to the brim in a sea of drowning people. To add to the lifeboat's burden by taking on more 'than can be safely accommodated' is tantamount to sinking the boat and drowning all aboard it!
Isn't it far better as a nation who cares for all (and by all I mean the indigenous population as well as the immigrant), to increase our overseas aid budget and to ensure that the monies we give to foreign lands goes to helping their needy people and not the greedy and corrupt leaders of some countries? We often boast about the fact that our National Health Service would not survive without the overseas staff that we recruit to manage our health clinics and hospital wards. If that is the case, which I'm sure it is, then more shame on us as a country for using our material wealth too bribe and steal the human assets of a poorer place. Who are we as a nation to take away from developing countries, the cream of their academic crop, especially when their need is greater than ours?
I'm afraid that at the heart of mass migration is mankind's need to perpetually improve one's standard of living. Please note that I am not talking about refugees from abroad whose lives are placed at risk daily and who naturally and rightly seek asylum. There should always be a place in or alongside our life boat for such people. I refer to the economic migrant who isn't starving in their own country, but whose standard of living is less than they desire and infinitely less than ours in Great Britain. I don't blame them from coming here with their families, but I do blame the political and economic system that encourages it or refuses to manage it.
As a young man in my early twenties I recall a wizen looking old man called Malcolm Muggeridge who was a British journalist, author, media personality and satirist. He frequently pontificated on our television screens about the evils of 'consumerism.' While beginning life as a soldier, spy and left wing sympathiser, in later life Malcolm Muggeridge became a forceful anti-communist and a stimulating debater of Catholic theology as well as a religious and moral campaigner. His overriding message at the time (and here we are talking over fifty years ago), was to advocate that we in the prosperous western hemisphere should all learn to live on much less of the earth's resources than we currently do in order that those in the eastern hemisphere do not starve! He said that only in this way could the west enable the distribution of resources in the whole world to be more equitable. He implied that through our overindulgence in the west, we were effectively ensuring that half of the developing world would never have enough to survive.
At the time, I thought old Muggeridge to be bonkers, but now admit that I have come round full circle to hold the view he then expounded. It is 'over consumerism' which is the evil of the west and which eventually leads to mass immigration!" William Forde: May 16th, 2015.
"While I do not consider myself to be racist in the slightest nor believe that my track record over the years would contradict this assertion, I do think that we'd serve all new immigrants to this country much better if we allowed them to cross our borders in a manner that facilitates easier assimilation to the British way of life, as well as assuaging some fears of the indigenous population that are realistically held.
In the mid 1940s, my parents and their three eldest children emigrated from Ireland to West Yorkshire. During our earlier years in England we were discriminated against until the day came when 'we fitted in' with our surrounding neighbours and their ways. Let me say now that England is a super country and gave all the Forde family a good education, new council house accommodation, full employment and a standard of living that we would never have received in Ireland at that time, and while I remain proud to be an Irish citizen until the day I die, there is no other country in the world of which I am more proud of than England to which my family owes everything.
While Great Britain has been one of the countries which has welcomed immigrants more than others during the past century, and in particular asylum seekers, to deny that allowing over three hundred thousand new immigrants from mostly Europe into this country annually does not place an enormous strain upon our already depleted housing stock, our overstretched National Health Service and our school places is simply to ignore the facts and to bury our heads in the sand.
The simple truth is that there are much better and fairer ways of managing our immigration situation and of helping these people who are patently in greater need than most of the people already living in Great Britain. We frequently view the problem of space like the overcrowded Indian trains. Namely, if there is possibly any room to squeeze in another, then jump on board. However, even crowded trains, although highly dangerous to ride, don't sink and lose all passengers in the process.
In more accurate analogous terms, our present immigration situation in Great Britain is like a lifeboat that is full to the brim in a sea of drowning people. To add to the lifeboat's burden by taking on more 'than can be safely accommodated' is tantamount to sinking the boat and drowning all aboard it!
Isn't it far better as a nation who cares for all (and by all I mean the indigenous population as well as the immigrant), to increase our overseas aid budget and to ensure that the monies we give to foreign lands goes to helping their needy people and not the greedy and corrupt leaders of some countries? We often boast about the fact that our National Health Service would not survive without the overseas staff that we recruit to manage our health clinics and hospital wards. If that is the case, which I'm sure it is, then more shame on us as a country for using our material wealth too bribe and steal the human assets of a poorer place. Who are we as a nation to take away from developing countries, the cream of their academic crop, especially when their need is greater than ours?
I'm afraid that at the heart of mass migration is mankind's need to perpetually improve one's standard of living. Please note that I am not talking about refugees from abroad whose lives are placed at risk daily and who naturally and rightly seek asylum. There should always be a place in or alongside our life boat for such people. I refer to the economic migrant who isn't starving in their own country, but whose standard of living is less than they desire and infinitely less than ours in Great Britain. I don't blame them from coming here with their families, but I do blame the political and economic system that encourages it or refuses to manage it.
As a young man in my early twenties I recall a wizen looking old man called Malcolm Muggeridge who was a British journalist, author, media personality and satirist. He frequently pontificated on our television screens about the evils of 'consumerism.' While beginning life as a soldier, spy and left wing sympathiser, in later life Malcolm Muggeridge became a forceful anti-communist and a stimulating debater of Catholic theology as well as a religious and moral campaigner. His overriding message at the time (and here we are talking over fifty years ago), was to advocate that we in the prosperous western hemisphere should all learn to live on much less of the earth's resources than we currently do in order that those in the eastern hemisphere do not starve! He said that only in this way could the west enable the distribution of resources in the whole world to be more equitable. He implied that through our overindulgence in the west, we were effectively ensuring that half of the developing world would never have enough to survive.
At the time, I thought old Muggeridge to be bonkers, but now admit that I have come round full circle to hold the view he then expounded. It is 'over consumerism' which is the evil of the west and which eventually leads to mass immigration!" William Forde: May 16th, 2015.
