The BNP

[magintz]

Yea. It's hard to see that the BNP got in; it's disgraceful but then again fair. They are a legitimate political party and in the words of James Bovard - "Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."

[Andail]

I really do fail to see how white people voting for the BNP or UKIP is any different from black people voting for Obama.

Good gravy, Boyd, this really takes the prize

[Hudders]

I'm not a huge fan of the Polish taking a lot of our jobs.

People say that a lot but I don't get it. They take jobs that nobody else wants to do for the most part; there is a skills shortage in the areas where the Polish are mainly employed, (construction and maintenance trades), and, for the most part, appear to have a stronger work ethic than most British people.

If you personally have lost out in some way to a Polish person, I sympathise with you, but otherwise I don't see a problem with immigrants who are happy to work within our economy.

[Nacho]

Hudders, that' s quite true in a good economical situation. Situation is soooo good that people say: "Hey, I could work in job which requires no skills... But I don't really need it, my dad has money, he can pay a bit to me, I have two rented appartments, the government has money and can pay to me every month... I can wait a bit till I find something I like, or I can go on studying till have the necessary skills for applying for something better!"

When the economy is not that good, that people want the "no skill required jobs". What happens then? That jobs are occuppied by foreign people... Or even worse. That foreign people becomes unemployed, and they start to receive money from the government... Which is seen as non sensible by BNP voters.

*Warning*I am not saying their opinion is the correct one, I am just saying WHICH is their opinion.


On the other hand, there' s something weird about inmigration... I mean, imagine you want to build a golf club... You are three partners who like golf, and you discover that, for building the club, you need 100,000,000 $.

You need to build the terrain, pay to the builders, pay the machines... After the initial investment, you decide that every month every partner will have to pay 100 bucks as a membership fee.

And now imagine one of the partners says "33,000,000 $?!?!?! That' s a lot! I am not going to pay! Golf is not worth of paying that cypher!" and he leaves the society.

And two months after the golf course is done, ather two of the partners paid 50,000,000 $ each, he comes back, and says "Hey... I like golf! May I join in? I will pay that monthly 100 bucks, of course!"

What would you reply to him? Exactly.

Same happens with inmigration... Every society paid a big price for being as it is. Every citizen of that country, or its ancestors paid a price. Wars, revolutions, taxes... Honestly, I don't see fair that everyone can come to my country and have my same rights... As I would never expect to go to a wealthier country than mine and ask for the same rights as every citizen of that place from the first day.

While the inmigrant works (A bit of his work is going for social care, I think is fair he can receive assistance if he pays for it) it' s okay, but if he gets uneployed, many people think he should leave the country... That's what happened when we (Spanish people) emigrated to Germany, we went there with a contract, and when it was over we became illegals.

It's difficult for me to see the logic in people coming here, without contract, and start receiving money from the social care, a social care system that my granddad, my father, my mother, suffered to create.

And what I can't uderstad at all is inmigrats having MORE RIGHTS that the citizens of the country! Here, foreign people have some kind of "Compensative Advantages for inmigrants". I don't know if it' s a way of saying "welcome" or what, but if you are an inmigrant here you have free lenguaje classes, free uneployment (no matter if you worked or not), free social care for babies, advantages for nurseries (You automatically enter into a public nursery if you are foreign... result=public nuerseries have 70-80-90% of foreign kids...) Are we becoming crazy or what???

So... I would never vote for BNP... But I would never dare to say they are stupids, or that their message is not valid, or anti-democratic. It' s a message, period! It's like "the greens". Some of the things they say are so stupid (Some of those parties basically advocate for going back to the middle age...) But some people vote them, not because "they agree 100% with the message" but because they think "maybe having a parliament with 10% of people deffending an extreme message will work for the powerfull people to, at least, make something..."

[Meowster]

Nacho, are you getting immigrants and asylum seekers confused? I'm just wondering. I have no idea about how it works in Spain but your examples sound rather one sided and extreme... as in, I'm sure there must be a reason (whether it's valid or not) that such policies are in place - are they trying to encourage skilled immigrants to come to Spain or something?

In the UK immigrants certainly do not have more rights than citizens, but there is a common misperception (generally by the BNP-voting types I would imagine) that they do. "They come over here stealing our jobs and living off our benefits" = more rights somehow, even though immigrants aren't even allowed benefits unless they have a two year working history here... by which time they've actually earned the benefits they might receive far more than the UK person complaining about it who has lived on benefits their whole life.

Same happens with inmigration... Every society paid a big price for being as it is. Every citizen of that country, or its ancestors paid a price. Wars, revolutions, taxes... Honestly, I don't see fair that everyone can come to my country and have my same rights... As I would never expect to go to a wealthier country than mine and ask for the same rights as every citizen of that place from the first day.

You did not take part in any war or revolution yourself, Nacho, so I find it strange you use that as an example for why immigrants should not have the same rights as you. Also, you are assuming these people came from a less wealthy country - I'm not sure why that's an important detail to you, but I'm guessing you're mixing up immigrants and asylum seekers or something? What about all the immigrants who can speak Spanish and work decent jobs and integrate into society? Then again I don't know Spain that well, maybe that doesn't happen over there so much as it does in the UK.

Also what rights are you talking about exactly, rights to benefits etc?

Additionally... isn't that what being part of the EU is about? I'm sure Spanish people avail of the ability to move freely between EU countries and avail of good levels of support as much as any other EU citizens

IMO the award for the worst and most frequent cases of abuse of the system in the UK go to the UK citizens themselves. There have recently been changes made to the benefits system in an attempt to stop people from living their entire lives on benefits without once getting a job. There are so many cases of very young girls having babies at 15 so they can move out of home and "start their own life", then spend their whole life on benefits and defend themselves by saying "being a mother is a full time job". I once saw a documentary where some guys were standing outside the jobcentre (to the foreign people: where you get your benefits) drinking cheap lager, waiting for their turn to go inside, when the cameraman asked them why they were unemployed. The usual "foreign people tekkin' our jobs innit!" chat occurred, and then the camera said that he had a job for them for £8 an hour picking strawberries. They all turned it down because they didn't want to pick strawberries.

On the other hand, all of the immigrants I know have exactly the opposite attitude. I suppose they're very driven and ambitious people anyway - they were ambitious enough to immigrate abroad for their career in the first place. Hey, I'm an immigrant and I'm working in the worst place you could imagine just to earn some extra cash for my course in September... my UK boyfriend at no point considering lowering himself to that point because he was too proud to take steps backward in his career, if even just for a short while... he would rather have lived on the benefits he felt he was entitled to until he found a new job (which he did, but still I think the attitude is a generally a bad one).

[Hudders]

Provided you're willing to work and contribute to taxes, etc, I don't think anyone has more rights to live in a particular country than anybody else. Diversity is by no means a bad thing.

The three people I work closest with at work are an Indian, a Sri Lankan and a Romanian. All are well educated and skilled and do their jobs as well as any English person could. The reason they got these jobs is because they were the best candidates to apply for the positions, regardless of nationality or race. Which is exactly how it should be.

[Nacho]

Well guys.... Maybe your leaders are sensitive and give to the inmigrants what they deserve... ^_^ My dear president Zapatero gives them more. 

[Akatosh]

Provided you're willing to work and contribute to taxes, etc, I don't think anyone has more rights to live in a particular country than anybody else. Diversity is by no means a bad thing.

The three people I work closest with at work are an Indian, a Sri Lankan and a Romanian. All are well educated and skilled and do their jobs as well as any English person could. The reason they got these jobs is because they were the best candidates to apply for the positions, regardless of nationality or race. Which is exactly how it should be.

To that, an unreserved aye. Location of birth, the amount of melanin in the outer layer of skin and so on are incredibly stupid things to judge people by.

[EDIT: Now with a little more grammar.]

[m0ds]

People say that a lot but I don't get it. They take jobs that nobody else wants to do for the most part;

A statement with no evidence I'm afraid - there is no proof the Brits don't want these jobs.  Just because they're not filled by a Brit doesn't mean the British don't want them, sorry.

[Hudders]

People say that a lot but I don't get it. They take jobs that nobody else wants to do for the most part;

A statement with no evidence I'm afraid - there is no proof the Brits don't want these jobs.  Just because they're not filled by a Brit doesn't mean the British don't want them, sorry.

There's as much evidence for my statement as there is for yours. Yours just has the backing of the tabloids. Papers about how immigrants are contributing nicely to society don't sell very well unfortunately.

[Meowster]

The jobs are there for everyone to apply for. Things such as cleaning jobs, service industry jobs were always minimum wage/low paid even before immigrants started to come here in any significant number. If there are more foreign people in such jobs it just suggests that more foreign people than UK people applied, which is fitting with the UK "I'm not prepared to do that!" attitude. People don't get preference for minimum wage jobs based on whether they're foreign or not. At least that's the way it is in Brighton....

[Renal Shutdown]

Maybe not in Brighton, but there area where my parents live, it's a different story.  There's van loads of immigrants working on the farms for less than minimum wage.  That £8 an hour for picking strawberries is overpaid, and I'd have personally gone for it in an instant.  They're picking cabbages in Lincolnshire for a quarter of that.

Currently, I'm unemployed.  I'm not pleased about it, and I spend most of my time trying to get a job.  Due to past issues, I'm not exactly a great candidate.  I got ill during my A-Levels which meant I couldn't work for 5 or so years*, and then stuck the same cack job for about 5 years, then had nervous breakdown and went into hiding for 2 years.

So now, I'm pushing 30, have almost no experience, and only GCSEs as qualifications.  I don't personally care what the job is, I did one that was over-worked, under-paid and labour intensive for years, and I was the only one who'd be willing to do 18 hour shifts, despite not getting proper overtime wages.  I busted my ass for that company doing 4 peoples work because they couldn't afford more staff, and I got crapped on when the management changed.  So crap jobs don't bother me.

I've applied to cleaning jobs, I've applied to laboring ones, I've applied for pretty much anything that I'd stand a vague chance of getting.  Just because some of the losers on the dole don't want to work a shitty job, doesn't mean that no British person does.  I can't blame the immigrants as readily as some areas, as there's just not as many of them up here in the North East.  There is a 2 bedroom house on my street with 9 foreigners (Poles and Turks, I think) living in, and they're all working though.  I think one of those foreigners is a drug dealer, or so I'm told.

Back in London, though, the crappy section of jobs were mostly either chavs or immigrants, and the chavs didn't work very hard, whilst most of the immigrants would actually try to work hard.  The immigrants I worked with had the problem of not being too great with English, so they'd end up screwing up tasks, and making me redo their work again.  The chavs just did stuff slow, so I'd have to finish their tasks for them.  Either way, it meant more work for me.  By the time I left that job, it was me and two other non-chavvy Brits doing a 12 person shift, whilst 4 other people dicked about and made things harder.  (Even if they bothered working, we were still under-staffed).

I think I may have lost my train of thought here.  I've just got home from signing on again, so I'm rather pissed off.  Apologies for coherence issues.

*(The government said I couldn't work, I couldn't even sign on.  Was on Incapacity Benefit for years, because the doctor's were still running tests, and couldn't bump it to a Disablity Benefit.  Which meant I had to get a new doctor's note each month, which was probably more degrading to me than signing on).

[BOYD1981]

I really do fail to see how white people voting for the BNP or UKIP is any different from black people voting for Obama.

Good gravy, Boyd, this really takes the prize

I already explained what I meant by that, but as I'm in a good mood I'll explain it again, a lot simpler this time.
If black american people can and will vote for people whom they believe have their best interests at heart, why can't white british people vote for those whom they think have their best interests at heart?
Got that? Okay, then that's the last thing I'm going to say on that matter because people obviously want to brand me a racist.

[Mr Flibble]

The difference is that Obama isn't a "black supremicist" and the Democrats aren't looking to close America's borders to people who aren't black.

[Hudders]

Employers paying less than the minimum wage are breaking the law. The immigrants that work for those wages aren't to blame, they likely aren't aware of employment regulations and see nothing wrong with the jobs. Their wages go further as they live in larger groups and subsist on cheaper foodstuffs than the average Brit. £2 an hour is enough for them to get by, especially when the job requires no experience, no paperwork and probably not even the ability to speak English.

If black american people can and will vote for people whom they believe have their best interests at heart, why can't white british people vote for those whom they think have their best interests at heart?

The reason people are having trouble with this is because you're lumping together everyone from certain racial groups under a single banner. There are plenty of white people who think Obama has their best interests at heart. there are plenty of black people who don't. You've boiled both situations down to race, but whilst that might be at the heart of the matter when describing the BNP, it's certainly not the case with Obama.

The difference is that Obama isn't a "black supremicist" and the Democrats aren't looking to close America's borders to people who aren't black.

Also, the democratic party doesn't have a "no-whites" policy.

[BOYD1981]

Other peoples' problems with it isn't my problem, I've explained twice now what I meant by it but if you want to keep trying to twist it around with your ifs and buts that's your choice. But you're ignoring the fact that some americans, be they black, white, asian or any other "minority" you want to label people with will have voted for Obama simply based on the colour of his skin. And yes, some will have NOT voted for him for the same reason, and what I'm trying to get at is that both of those things are bad.

[Stee]

Other peoples' problems with it isn't my problem, I've explained twice now what I meant by it but if you want to keep trying to twist it around with your ifs and buts that's your choice. But you're ignoring the fact that some americans, be they black, white, asian or any other "minority" you want to label people with will have voted for Obama simply based on the colour of his skin. And yes, some will have NOT voted for him for the same reason, and what I'm trying to get at is that both of those things are bad.

Agreed.

Its like Big Brother these days when it comes to elections. You had the retarded one (Bush), Now you've got the black one (Obama), next you'll get a woman, then a transvestite.....



In all fairness what did McCain have to offer? Bill Clinton already did the dirty old bastard sleeping with the younger woman. Try something new.

[Hudders]

Other peoples' problems with it isn't my problem, I've explained twice now what I meant by it but if you want to keep trying to twist it around with your ifs and buts that's your choice. But you're ignoring the fact that some americans, be they black, white, asian or any other "minority" you want to label people with will have voted for Obama simply based on the colour of his skin. And yes, some will have NOT voted for him for the same reason, and what I'm trying to get at is that both of those things are bad.

Well that makes more sense than your original statement.

[Huw Dawson]

Who would I rather have in my country. A man who has traveled half way across Europe, learned a foreign language to survive here and has the drive to want to better their life...

... or the man who believes that, because he views himself as "better" than the immigrants - which has to happen for him to then think he deserves more than the immigrants - he has the "right" to a job.

A migrant worker is the greatest economic event that can happen to a country. It brings in new wealth, new ideas and new people. There cannot be grounds to distinguish between the man who has been here two weeks and the man who has been here all his life. If anyone cannot find a job, it is their own fault. Unemployment - cyclical or structural - can only be resolved by the actions of the unemployed. When somebody says "I'm unemployed (in a non-frictional way) because of somebody else", in all but a tiny amount of occurences that is merely because they do not want to change their lives to get that job. Jobs are always there, somewhere. The migrant workers did the obvious thing - moved to where there are jobs. Why can't the unemployed Brit do that?

- Huw

[Renal Shutdown]

I'd actually tipped Hilary for the top spot before the campaigning started, and no doubt she'd have got votes purely on the fact that she's female.  People can't help but feel an affinity or a dislike of a certain politician, regardless of what policies they're waving about.

And McCain appealed to loads of people, as he's Republican, he's white, he's ex-military (i think), he's experienced.  The Americans have that whole College voting system thing going on, and a first past the post dealie, too.  The number of actual votes weren't that far apart for most states that I watched, but the system meant that Obama won.  (California for example has 55 college votes, and if 51% of the people vote Obama, he then gets all 55 in the college section.  Too be honest, as far as democracy goes, it's a pretty daft system).

As for the Black/Obama and White/BNP issue. 

Obama's not a Black Panther or anything like that, he's probably the best thing that's happened to America in years, but you can't say that he didn't get votes based on the color of his skin.  A large part of his campaign was getting the minorities to actually bother voting.  It's great that they took part, but if Obama was white, would the campaign have been as effective?

But still, their were minorities that voted for him based on policies and not skin color, because they thought that out of the options of McCain and Obama, Obama would be the most sympathetic to their wants and needs.

The same can be said of the Brits, some people would have thought that the BNP offered the best policies, in regards to how they felt Britain should be represented in the European Parliament.  They're likely sick of Labour, have bad memories of the Tories, and didn't like the other options.  Logically, they then pick the BNP.  If they didn't, wouldn't they just be lumped in with the rest of the people who couldn't be bothered to vote?

Also, Yuffie's mentioned Brighton quite a few times.  It's a lovely place, I saw her there a while back.  And in the weekend I was there, I was also almost involved in a race-related scuffle.  (Some drunk chav moron insulted me, I ignored him, he then insulted a swede and I saw red).  That said, Brighton's still a laid-back, multi-national, multi-racial area, so I'm assuming I just happened upon a rare incident.

The votes for the BNP weren't from Brighton, though.  They were from up north.  I'm currently living in the North East of England, and to be honest, I've not actually seen that many people of ethnic origins.  There's the Chinese takeaway, the Indian takeaway, the Kebab shop, and a guy in a cornershop who I'd guess has an Indian grandparent.  I can't actually remember the last time I saw a black guy.

There was a few mentioned in the area from before I was here, and they weren't exactly nice guys.  I can see they weren't a fair representation of that skin color, but the situations polarised the community against them.   Suppose for example, you take 3 people from a place, and they all share the same traits, it's logical to assume that it's a common trait.  100% so far, so what's to say it's not the norm?  Sure, it could be that you meant the only 3 albino midgets to ever live there, but that's quite an unlikely statistic.  Even if proved false, you're likely to greet each new person with 'Oh, you're taller than I expected'.

The extremes naturally stick in peoples' minds for longer than the average.  It's not great, but if someone's had a bad incident with a person of minority, that incident will be far more prominent in their minds than the rest of the folk they meet.  In multi-racial areas, if there's a bad person it's likely only just one guy in a thousand, up here if there's a bad guy, it's more like one in five.

There's also the fact that the already polarised community will then perpetuate the myth that all the people of his color are bad, and until they're proven otherwise, they'll raise their kids believing it too.  (My friends with racist parents are usually far more racist than those with laid back parents, both here and down south).

So yes, they're likely racist, and they voted BNP, but honestly, it's not entirely their fault.  If no-ones said to them 'hey! that's racism! and it's bad! you're parents were wrong!' can you really blame them for voting that way?  It's all well and good people condemning racism, but are they going to try and educate the racists? Or are they content to sit on their high horses and just pass judgement on them?  Isn't that just hypocrisy and yet more discrimination?

..learned a foreign language to survive here..

That's not always the case.
And where would you suggest the unemployed Brit move to?