Heading home – mass exodus of immigrants wouldn’t cripple UK
By Ralph Musgrave.
Mehdi Hasan is described by Wikipedia as a political journalist “from a British Indian background”.
In this New Statesman article, he puts forward the truly moronic argument that if every immigrant in employment stopped working for a week, the UK would grind to a halt.
Fair enough, I suppose. But then if everyone with blue eyes and brown hair stopped working for a week, the result would be the same. But we ‘blue eyed, brown haired’ individuals (of which I’m one) don’t jump to the dimwit conclusion that the UK economy, or economies in general, cannot function without people with blue eyes and brown hair.
I assume most readers can work out the flaw in Hasan’s argument for themselves. (So maybe they needn’t read any further.) But for the benefit of those that can’t (probably the many leftie thickos and PC numbskulls who read this website), I’ll spell out the obvious flaw.
To keep things simple, let’s assume that immigrants make up the same proportion of each trade and profession. For example, 5% of plumbers are immigrants and 5% of doctors are immigrants, etc.
Now suppose immigrants all suddenly return to the country they came from. Would there be a shortage of people to do plumbing and doctoring work and all other types of work? Well the answer is “no”, and for the simple reason that if 5% of the population vanishes, or returns to Pakistan or whatever, then demand declines by 5% and for the simple reason that immigrants themselves are consumers of the goods and services supplied by plumbers, doctors, etc, etc.
Doh!! (As our many American readers would say!)
Of course, it is stretching credibility to assume that immigrants make up the same proportion of those employed in every profession: e.g. immigrants are over represented in the restaurant trade, the NHS, and various other service trades. So if immigrants did all suddenly disappear, there would be a temporary problem: there would be a skill surplus in some trades and a skill shortage in others. And it would take time to retrain people in the trades suffering a skill shortage. However, I’m sure we could soon find people to make kebabs and takeaway curries, or even write stupid articles defending mass immigration, for instance!
Or to put it another way, if there had been no immigration over the last 50 years, would there have been any big difficulty in training the requisite number of doctors, nurses, etc?
The answer is no difficulty whatsoever, in my opinion. In fact, this country has been ‘exporting’ doctors and nurses (and various other highly skilled professionals) for a considerable period of time, so the problem isn’t lack of numbers.
In the century between 1850 and 1950 there was virtually no immigration compared to the recent levels of mass immigration, particularly since 1997 when Blair’s ‘New’ Labour came to power.
Yet it may amaze the likes of Mehdi Hasan, Britain still managed to train roughly the right number of plumbers, bricklayers, electricians, teachers, engineers, etc.
Amazing, isn’t it?
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Never mind about British Indian background, why is there not a classification as ‘British English’ background. There are ‘British Somalis’, ‘British Pakistanis’ and for that matter ‘British Samoan’ and lots of others. The fact is because the UK never experienced a period of turmoil like France and Germany so antique forgotten nations like Scotland Wales and for that matter England were never radically regrouped into regions or reconstituted like the French ‘Departements’, and the German ‘Landes’. I am English but would happily for the benefit of the nation see England merged into a new British state with new ‘Departements’ like France or even ‘Landes’ like Germany. As an example, there is no reason why the ‘Highlands and Islands’ should be considered part of lowland Scotland, they could be a separate administrative unit. Other areas in the UK would suggest themselves.
But as this is not going to happen, as an ‘English’ I want to have my identity restored. The English are unfortunately a shallow people but even they will start to recognise their own identity if ‘British English’ became a classification stated in documents and on the Passport. Let those who have declared themselves to be not English be recognised as such. I thank British ethnic groups like British Indians for defining themselves for helping this process by defining themselves. Creating British English will not cause a civil war or some sort of weird atavistic bloodbath; it will simply cause the English to identify themselves to themselves. This would be a good thing for everyone.
(Party Member) A breakthrough of just half a dozen British Democratic Party M.P.s would put ‘the writing on the wall’! Some people would see that the British had nearly had enough and would start to leave in droves. The resulting changes in legislation (particularly in respect of benefits) being brought in by whichever party had a majority (they will do anything to try to stay in power) would convince even more to try their luck elsewhere. In France tough legislation over banning the burkha, brought in by the governing party, is totally due to the influence of the massive Front National vote! We must never give up and keep working for a decent Nationalist Britain through the British Democratic Party.
Great item. It is a shame the political elite do not take notice of the real issues about immigration.
Those in authority know exactly what they are doing. The objective is to create a transfer of power and money in their direction. Cheap labour and imported voters.
One of the tricks of the trade even the Labour MP Frank Field pointed out was that if you claim ‘labour shortages’ mean immigrants are needed then what happens if you import some? They themselves create more demand so then the cry goes up that there are still labour shortages! Bring more..
This is a good point but at the same time it is noticeable that the English will not buy a nationalist political product under any circumstances. One could reflect on this but a lot of this rejection of nationalism comes from the English view of themselves, which is moulded by history and the panoply of British historical tradition.
Unfortunately, nationalists are as much responsible for this behaviour as are those opposed to nationalism. Present day nationalists are deeply involved in defending the whole car boot sale of tawdry British traditions.
Anyway there is nothing like a bit of economic hardship to reshape peoples political opinions and one suspects that a lot of this is coming down the road. Will nationalism, as most recognise it today, be there? I doubt it.
I take a different view from Graham.
The British never felt they had to make a song and dance about being nationalistic. After all we ran most of the world and ‘won the war’. Post-war we had an expanding economy and lots of cash to splash out on handouts. Small parties were dismissed as unnnecessary since the existing ones did a good job. Often the former did not help themselves by displaying a rather tacky nationalism in terms of symbols and dress.
But that era is drawing to a close. I would expect two things to happen. As Graham says, a reshaping of opinion. That is already well underway. Immigration, the EU, the institutions and politicians are increasingly discredited. But where I differ with Graham is that I’d expect people to ‘revert to type’ as Powell put it and become once again aware of who they are and who they used to be.
The only thing to disagree with in your reply is that it is full of the romantic attitude to history that has made nationalism in the UK and England very difficult. We did not control most of the world, the post war period was a sad story of declining political influence and more importantly declining share of world markets. Both of which are linked together. We are very nearly a third world country today, but there is a lot we could learn from the third world especially as regards immigration. But try and tell the proud British that they should think third world is sure to raise a lot of hackles. The British are not famed for flexible or quick thinking.
I read in one of the rags that pass for papers these days, that ’employers’, (farmers?) up in the Fens, are threatening to give up producing fruit and vegetables if they are not allowed to import labour from outside the EU. Apparently they don’t even consider employing the unemployed people who live there. Who did these jobs before the immigrants came? Why, the English of course. Now however, the English are being paid to stay at home, so that the farmers can import cheaper labour to keep the prices down.With Tesco importing foodstuffs from all over the world & selling it at rock bottom prices this is hardly surprising.
The English are being by-passed in the name of profit.
I would say that the English are waking up to this and their patience is wearing thin.
As for their awareness of who they are, I suppose that in the past, in ‘days of yore’, they never felt the need to be, they were who they were, an island race, set in a silver sea, and they felt secure in a way that the French can never feel, having a border with Germany. The English always thought that their politicians felt the same as them and were there to support them and defend their way of life. I think that there are now a great many English people who don’t believe that any more. In fact I would go so far as to say there are quite a good number who regard the ‘Establishment’ as the enemy.
The establishment which comprises of political, commercial, industrial, and financial interests come together, and act in their own interests. They meet in groups like Bilderberg and are looking out for their own interests. They see the mass public as trash. They see countries as no more than areas to exploit. That’s why they use the easy come money and media power to pay for pervert politicians, who they know will sell their soul to be a member of their set up club. To a vile treacherous and more often than not sick perverted politician, agreeing to saturate Britain with every non white race does not phase them in the least. That’s why we have to keep exposing them as they attack us, just like the good people have that post on this site. I’m aware of the sacrifice it is to be in their face, but fortune favours the brave.