It seems that the BNP has been making a big effort lately to push their views via the BBC Have Your Say forums. It’s not surprising really, as the forums get millions of page views but you only need ~150 votes for your comment to rise to the top, something any interested group with more than a few hundred members could organise. Come to that, it could just be a single person with lots of accounts and an automated script.
Anyway, time to refute some of the bullshit:
We don’t need “tougher” citizenship tests, we need tougher border control…
We have over 2 million unemployed, why on earth would we need ANY immigrants??
We should :-
1) Remove all illegal immigrants without hesitation.2) Change the definition of Asylum to mean providing a place or safety for as long as it is deemed to be required – NO right to citizenship, ever..
3) If we have a skills shortage, train our own people first…
We are a small island, we need to limit our population..
Slightly Right Of Ghenghis Khan
Why should we need more people when we have unemployed? This is the often touted “we should have 100% employment” argument. It ignores the fact that you are never going to match every person to a suitable job, based on the skills required and a reasonable salary for them to live and look after their family on. It also ignores the fact that if you force people to do shitty, demeaning jobs with no prospects it tends to lead to things like depression (and time of work), as well as driving them to a life of crime. You can’t really have the media, particularly adverts, telling people that they need stuff and should aspire to things on the one hand, and on the other hand tell them they are worthless and should accept their lowly lot in life and bloody well like it.
So, on to point (1). If we knew where illegal immigrants where, we could remove them. Unfortunately, we don’t, and it’s not exactly easy to find out. Plus, it takes years, even in the simplest cases, to decide asylum cases. If you think it’s easy to figure out who is genuine and who isn’t, you need to give Asylum and Immigration a call immediately.
As for (2), you are pretty much guaranteeing that asylum seekers spend their life on benefits, scrounging off the rest of us hard-working Brits if you don’t allow them citizenship. After all, non-citizens cannot easily get a job (in fact, by default there is not even a right to work for asylum seekers). It wouldn’t stop them using public services either, such as being housed (for free, since they can’t work) or getting treatment on the NHS. I suppose we could just kick them into the gutter and let them die quietly, but that goes against my liberal wishy-washy-politically-correct-namby-pamby feelings of compassion towards my fellow human beings.
So, back to the first point again with item (3). Unfortunately, it takes many years to train people to do complicated jobs. Also, people don’t tend to do too well at leaning things they have absolutely no interest in. You can’t just mould people like clay into any shape you want.
I was just saying today how the popularity of Harry Potter gives me some hope that children are still interested in reading, but now I realise that Harry Potter may just be a gateway text for the Daily Mail. Maybe we should ban reading.