What has the UK become under the far right influence?

[bert38]

I live in Thanet in the south east corner of Kent, Thanet has Broadstairs, Margate, Ramsgate etc.
I work in Ramsgate and lovely little town with a beautiful Royal Harbour and lovely old buildings.
The town is made up of barbers, nail bars, takeaways and charity shops. The town has a huge problem of anti social behaviour and street drinkers.
If you ignore those, I can speed the whole day working in the town and I would honestly say that English is the least spoken language. If feels like you are abroad.

I went out to pick some litter up, they was a little girl about 6 with her grandmother. The little was quite happy dropping her sweet wrappers on the floor. I started picking up her wrappers she carried on dropping them.
I asked the grandmother if she could stop her. She said something in their language and the little girl started putting her wrappers in my litter bag with a nice smile.
I than left but was curious what would happen once I left so went back about ten minutes later. The area didn't look like I had cleaned it, the little girl was dropping her wrappers again.
I wouldn't dream of dropping litter in the UK or a country i was visiting. By the way the bin was about 20 feet away.
For me its very noticeable when we go on holiday around the UK how other areas have more English speaking people.
It's not hard to see how Thanet nearly had Farage as MP and now the Kent County Council is under Reform control.
Kent and Thanet have more than the fair share of immigrates and locals feel out numbered.

Just another Gordon ramble lol

where i live-the town centre is similar-knackered and run down-and full of drunks and drug addicts who are 95% white...and my council has gone reform and they'll do fuck all to address any of it..aside from a flag policy.

 

[give it to gordon]

where i live-the town centre is similar-knackered and run down-and full of drunks and drug addicts who are 95% white...and my council has gone reform and they'll do fuck all to address any of it..aside from a flag policy.

Yea the anti social behaviour/ street drinkers are mostly white here to. Than we teenagers who wind up the street drinkers try to start fights.

 

[bert38]

Yea the anti social behaviour/ street drinkers are mostly white here to. Than we teenagers who wind up the street drinkers try to start fights.

I think we are witnessing social decay-but largely socio-economic factors-driven by tory austerity, rise of the internet, shit wages etc etc

 

[richardtheref]

I'm struggling-if its def money laundering how are they doing this when there are zero

You don't have a clue how they do it but you know they are doing something untoward. Yeah that makes

You don't have a clue how they do it but you know they are doing something untoward. Yeah that makes sense.

So you know these folks better than me who lives within 200 yards of them

 

[richardtheref]

Do you honestly believe benefits could fund such an expensive lifestyle

No I don't. That was the point. They can afford this lifestyle yet still claim benefits

 

[stonerblue]

Ethnicity is only a very small part of the problem.
The much, much bigger problem is religion and its' credo.
Conflating the two (ethnicity and religious credo) is quite erroneous.
In my world religion serves to give us a moral code and has given us some fabulous buildings. As for the existence of an invisible entity with no physical signs of it ever having existed, well.....
Most religions are welcome in our isles, they are quite discreet and worship their deity peacefully The only exception to this is the Islamic faith which wants to convert everyone to their religion, and will use deadly force (by their extremists) to do so.
This is the unacceptable difference between that religion and every other one.
Even Protestants and Catholics who have had troubles in the past, now 'agree to disagree'.

Nonsense all the way through

 

[The perfect fumble]

It is indeed a bizarre world. Right now we have one working group headed by Dominic Grieve trying to define Islamophobia, in order to frame a new law prescribing what we cannot say about Islam. And another group working on how we can refine our freedom of speech laws so that we can say the things Grieve's lot will tell you you can't.

They should just all fuck off and go to the pub. And leave the rest of us free to say that things like: A wife must obey her husband at all times, and that her vote counts for half of her brother's vote, and that she should get half the inheritance her brother gets, are fucking outrageous and should not be tolerated in the UK under any circumstances whatsoever.

This country shares the same problems all countries in western Europe face and that is an ageing population and declining birth rate and if we're to avoid disastrous decline we have to grow through immigration. This view is shared throughout all wings of the left including the Liberal Democrats and the Greens and it's shared by the Cameron/Sunak wing of the Conservative party.

The ethnic makeup of this country will change and short of fascism that is inevitable and irreversible. Whether this is desirable has never been discussed because without immigration we're simply not viable as a country and no serious party let alone a government dare talk about it in those terms, but the far right do. Farage and Robinson don't exist without dog whistling "great displacement" and boy! They're making hay with it!

Farage and Johnson know how to play this racial angst card, that's how they got Brexit over the line, it's why Farage is riding so high in the polls and it's why he plays the English stereotype of the fag smoking, beer drinking pub bore, a symbol of the England a sizeable chunk of the electorate fear they're losing, and they're right, they are losing it. Farage might lie about most things but he's not lying about that, that England is finished, whatever the future holds it won't look like the past, it won't even look like the present and our politicians must prepare us for that future, but our mainstream politicians are doing a piss poor job of it.

Our resident Mr. Angry believes any discussion on this issue is racist, he is of course wrong as he is on so many things, the angst felt by a relatively homogeneous country to a large influx of migrants in a short space of time is real and is not necessarily racist, much of that fear is unwarranted, stoked up by bad faith actors. But the right wing press, Talk TV and GB News get away with their lies and their fear mongering because the left and the centre right lie big time as well, mostly by not talking about it at all, fucking around with definitions and castigating apostates who raise it as an issue.

Meanwhile the Labour government is proceeding as if the die is cast, which it is, so they must prepare legislation fit for the future and defining Islamophobia is a small part of that, so while no one in government is going to tell the country where it's headed the road is being paved nonetheless.

Think on this, what serious politician is going to tell the electorate....

"The country you love is going to disappear"

But someone serious has to say that and couple it with a plausible upbeat message for the future, and they need to say it soon, because Farage and Robinson say it everyday and they keep saying it coz there's a sizeable audience that knows it's true and it's pissing them off.

 

[Hertzblue]

How do they do it when they have some customers?

They are money laundering operations.
Yes they have some customers, but not many, they probably go through the books, especially if they don't pay cash.
The money laundering angle is, they accept lumps of cash from criminals ( drugs, people smuggling, counterfeit goods etc) and put it through their books i.e they pretend they have far more customers than they have and declare that those make believe customers paid cash , using the criminal money to cover it.
The criminals money is washed through the system , the " barber "takes a cut and repays the criminals their money.
Hope that makes sense.

The government is on to it but have barely scratched the surface , it has got so out of hand.

 

[xmusampa]

Love the countryside, villages, pubs, nightlife, sense of humour, London, our amazing language and City. Plenty about this country is still great.

Agree with all but the London bit

 

[Chippy_boy]

This country shares the same problems all countries in western Europe face and that is an ageing population and declining birth rate and if we're to avoid disastrous decline we have to grow through immigration. This view is shared throughout all wings of the left including the Liberal Democrats and the Greens and it's shared by the Cameron/Sunak wing of the Conservative party.

The ethnic makeup of this country will change and short of fascism that is inevitable and irreversible. Whether this is desirable has never been discussed because without immigration we're simply not viable as a country and no serious party let alone a government dare talk about it in those terms, but the far right do. Farage and Robinson don't exist without dog whistling "great displacement" and boy! They're making hay with it!

Farage and Johnson know how to play this racial angst card, that's how they got Brexit over the line, it's why Farage is riding so high in the polls and it's why he plays the English stereotype of the fag smoking, beer drinking pub bore, a symbol of the England a sizeable chunk of the English electorate fear they're losing, and they're right they are losing it. Farage might lie about most things but he's not lying about that, that England is finished, whatever the future holds it won't look like the past, it won't even look like the present and our politicians must prepare us for that future, but our mainstream politicians are doing a piss poor job of it.

Our resident Mr. Angry calls any discussion on this issue racist, he is of course wrong as he is on so many things, the angst felt by a relatively homogeneous country to a large influx of migrants in a short space of time is real and is not necessarily racist, but much of that fear is unwarranted, stoked up by bad faith actors. But the concrete farmers and their ilk get away with it because the left and the centre right lie big time as well, mostly by not talking about it at all, fucking around with definitions and castigating apostates who raise it as an issue.

The Labour government is proceeding as if the die is cast, which it is, so we must prepare legislation for the future and defining Islamophobia is a small part of that, so while no one in government is going to tell the country where it's headed the road is being paved nonetheless.

Another thoughtful and considered post. No point in me responding line by line, but I will add a couple of comments.

The first is, it's not helping AT ALL for politicians and the media to label everyone involved in any sort of protest such as the ones we've seen in Epping as "far right", or worse, "far right thugs". In many cases, and certainly this was the case in Epping, what started out was around 300 mainly parents, protesting because they were extremely concerned that a new illegal immigrant had been plonked in a hotel 200m from the local school and within 8 days has been charged with 3 sexual assault offences, at least one of which was on a minor from the local school. I am not a parent, but I can imagine I would have been out protesting as well!

What ensued was first, a load of Stand up to Racism rent a mob people were literally bussed in to counter-protest, and of course, following that and the police getting heavy handed, it got ugly with the usual small percentage of mindless idiots smashing things up and attacking the police. As we have seen many times before. But these idiots represent a small proportion, and to blanketly classify any parent concerned about their child's safety as "far right", is both as outrageous as it is ridiculous. Where was the BBC's labelling of the counter-protesters, also involved in scuffles, as "far left thugs"?

A fundamental starting point for any conflict resolution, is sitting down and LISTENING. Hearing peoples' concerns, showing empathy and finding solutions. Telling people they are far right thugs (with, implicitly no legimate basis for discontent) is idiotic, unless inflaming things futher is the objective.

Second is quite a big subject. Someone I have a lot of time for is Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google. He's one very smart cookie indeed, with brainpower that has enabled him to become one of the world's richest people with a personal fortune running into billions. He's also a renowned philathropist and does a lot of good work helping young people amongst other things. He's majorly into AI, and indeed it was listening to him several years ago that first highlighted to me what was happening in AI with things like GPT2 and then GPT3, fore-runners to GPT3.5 aka ChatGPT version 1.

In an interview recently, the question came up about the impact of AI on job losses. He was careful to differentiate between the short and long terms. In the long term (say 30 years) who knows what will happen. But in the short term - perhaps up to 10 years - he's very positive. His view, based on a deep understanding of AI, economics, psychology (he has a masters in that as well), is that AI will replace many low paid, low skilled jobs, but it will enable more highly paid jobs with people using AI to deliver great value. Like you, he recognises declining birthrates and an aging population, but he is confident that AI will, in the short term at least, save the day. By significantly boosting GDP and personal wealth, and enabling the state to fund the welfare we will need.

I had been firmly of the opinion that, marvellous though AI is, it will put everyone out of work. I'd heard the argument, "people will find new jobs, as we have always done when e.g the car replaced the horse etc", and had found that unpersuasive. My belief was that this time is fundamentally different, because this time, the new tech will be able to do the new jobs as well. Something that has never happened before.

However, whilst I maintain this is true, what I had not reflected upon was that this will only be the case, eventually. In the shorter term, we will need highly paid humans to oversee and control what the AI is doing. It won't be able to do that role itself. So I was encouraged to hear that in Eric's view, over the next decade or so, AI could actually could be our economy's get out of jail card. Conceivably we may not need continued high levels of immigration to grow our economy.

 

[dronefromsector7G]

They are money laundering operations.
Yes they have some customers, but not many, they probably go through the books, especially if they don't pay cash.
The money laundering angle is, they accept lumps of cash from criminals ( drugs, people smuggling, counterfeit goods etc) and put it through their books i.e they pretend they have far more customers than they have and declare that those make believe customers paid cash , using the criminal money to cover it.
The criminals money is washed through the system , the " barber "takes a cut and repays the criminals their money.
Hope that makes sense.

The government is on to it but have barely scratched the surface , it has got so out of hand.

View attachment 163501

I know mate. My point was they pretend to have customers (or more customers). If they had literally none they would just be pretending they did. It’s not like the cops are going to count the numbers going in the shop.

 

[Gorton_Tubster]

This country shares the same problems all countries in western Europe face and that is an ageing population and declining birth rate and if we're to avoid disastrous decline we have to grow through immigration. This view is shared throughout all wings of the left including the Liberal Democrats and the Greens and it's shared by the Cameron/Sunak wing of the Conservative party.

The ethnic makeup of this country will change and short of fascism that is inevitable and irreversible. Whether this is desirable has never been discussed because without immigration we're simply not viable as a country and no serious party let alone a government dare talk about it in those terms, but the far right do. Farage and Robinson don't exist without dog whistling "great displacement" and boy! They're making hay with it!

Farage and Johnson know how to play this racial angst card, that's how they got Brexit over the line, it's why Farage is riding so high in the polls and it's why he plays the English stereotype of the fag smoking, beer drinking pub bore, a symbol of the England a sizeable chunk of the electorate fear they're losing, and they're right, they are losing it. Farage might lie about most things but he's not lying about that, that England is finished, whatever the future holds it won't look like the past, it won't even look like the present and our politicians must prepare us for that future, but our mainstream politicians are doing a piss poor job of it.

Our resident Mr. Angry believes any discussion on this issue is racist, he is of course wrong as he is on so many things, the angst felt by a relatively homogeneous country to a large influx of migrants in a short space of time is real and is not necessarily racist, much of that fear is unwarranted, stoked up by bad faith actors. But the right wing press, Talk TV and GB News get away with their lies and their fear mongering because the left and the centre right lie big time as well, mostly by not talking about it at all, fucking around with definitions and castigating apostates who raise it as an issue.

Meanwhile the Labour government is proceeding as if the die is cast, which it is, so they must prepare legislation fit for the future and defining Islamophobia is a small part of that, so while no one in government is going to tell the country where it's headed the road is being paved nonetheless.

Think on this, what serious politician is going to tell the electorate....

"The country you love is going to disappear"

But someone serious has to say that and couple it with a plausible upbeat message for the future, and they need to say it soon, because Farage and Robinson say it everyday and they keep saying it coz there's a sizeable audience that knows it's true and it's pissing them off.

I think that mostly sums up my thoughts about it. I really hope no one turns that into a racist thing because it just closes down the conversation, which needs to be had.

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

Another thoughtful and considered post. No point in me responding line by line, but I will add a couple of comments.

The first is, it's not helping AT ALL for politicians and the media to label everyone involved in any sort of protest such as the ones we've seen in Epping as "far right", or worse, "far right thugs". In many cases, and certainly this was the case in Epping, what started out was around 300 mainly parents, protesting because they were extremely concerned that a new illegal immigrant had been plonked in a hotel 200m from the local school and within 8 days has been charged with 3 sexual assault offences, at least one of which was on a minor from the local school. I am not a parent, but I can imagine I would have been out protesting as well!

What ensued was first, a load of Stand up to Racism rent a mob people were literally bussed in to counter-protest, and of course, following that and the police getting heavy handed, it got ugly with the usual small percentage of mindless idiots smashing things up and attacking the police. As we have seen many times before. But these idiots represent a small proportion, and to blanketly classify any parent concerned about their child's safety as "far right", is both as outrageous as it is ridiculous. Where was the BBC's labelling of the counter-protesters, also involved in scuffles, as "far left thugs"?

A fundamental starting point for any conflict resolution, is sitting down and LISTENING. Hearing peoples' concerns, showing empathy and finding solutions. Telling people they are far right thugs (with, implicitly no legimate basis for discontent) is idiotic, unless inflaming things futher is the objective.

Second is quite a big subject. Someone I have a lot of time for is Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google. He's one very smart cookie indeed, with brainpower that has enabled him to become one of the world's richest people with a personal fortune running into billions. He's also a renowned philathropist and does a lot of good work helping young people amongst other things. He's majorly into AI, and indeed it was listening to him several years ago that first highlighted to me what was happening in AI with things like GPT2 and then GPT3, fore-runners to GPT3.5 aka ChatGPT version 1.

In an interview recently, the question came up about the impact of AI on job losses. He was careful to differentiate between the short and long terms. In the long term (say 30 years) who knows what will happen. But in the short term - perhaps up to 10 years - he's very positive. His view, based on a deep understanding of AI, economics, psychology (he has a masters in that as well), is that AI will replace many low paid, low skilled jobs, but it will enable more highly paid jobs with people using AI to deliver great value. Like you, he recognises declining birthrates and an aging population, but he is confident that AI will, in the short term at least, save the day. By significantly boosting GDP and personal wealth, and enabling the state to fund the welfare we will need.

I had been firmly of the opinion that, marvellous though AI is, it will put everyone out of work. I'd heard the argument, "people will find new jobs, as we have always done when e.g the car replaced the horse etc", and had found that unpersuasive. My belief was that this time is fundamentally different, because this time, the new tech will be able to do the new jobs as well. Something that has never happened before.

However, whilst I maintain this is true, what I had not reflected upon was that this will only be the case, eventually. In the shorter term, we will need highly paid humans to oversee and control what the AI is doing. It won't be able to do that role itself. So I was encouraged to hear that in Eric's view, over the next decade or so, AI could actually could be our economy's get out of jail card. Conceivably we may not need continued high levels of immigration to grow our economy.

If we don’t invest in education the jobs you describe will all be on the list of ‘acceptable immigration due to severe skills shortages’.

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

This country shares the same problems all countries in western Europe face and that is an ageing population and declining birth rate and if we're to avoid disastrous decline we have to grow through immigration. This view is shared throughout all wings of the left including the Liberal Democrats and the Greens and it's shared by the Cameron/Sunak wing of the Conservative party.

The ethnic makeup of this country will change and short of fascism that is inevitable and irreversible. Whether this is desirable has never been discussed because without immigration we're simply not viable as a country and no serious party let alone a government dare talk about it in those terms, but the far right do. Farage and Robinson don't exist without dog whistling "great displacement" and boy! They're making hay with it!

Farage and Johnson know how to play this racial angst card, that's how they got Brexit over the line, it's why Farage is riding so high in the polls and it's why he plays the English stereotype of the fag smoking, beer drinking pub bore, a symbol of the England a sizeable chunk of the electorate fear they're losing, and they're right, they are losing it. Farage might lie about most things but he's not lying about that, that England is finished, whatever the future holds it won't look like the past, it won't even look like the present and our politicians must prepare us for that future, but our mainstream politicians are doing a piss poor job of it.

Our resident Mr. Angry believes any discussion on this issue is racist, he is of course wrong as he is on so many things, the angst felt by a relatively homogeneous country to a large influx of migrants in a short space of time is real and is not necessarily racist, much of that fear is unwarranted, stoked up by bad faith actors. But the right wing press, Talk TV and GB News get away with their lies and their fear mongering because the left and the centre right lie big time as well, mostly by not talking about it at all, fucking around with definitions and castigating apostates who raise it as an issue.

Meanwhile the Labour government is proceeding as if the die is cast, which it is, so they must prepare legislation fit for the future and defining Islamophobia is a small part of that, so while no one in government is going to tell the country where it's headed the road is being paved nonetheless.

Think on this, what serious politician is going to tell the electorate....

"The country you love is going to disappear"

But someone serious has to say that and couple it with a plausible upbeat message for the future, and they need to say it soon, because Farage and Robinson say it everyday and they keep saying it coz there's a sizeable audience that knows it's true and it's pissing them off.

Look at how they shut Abbott down. Now I’m very near the bottom of her fan club but, if she can’t say what she said without any possibility of some serious curiosity from us all, then Robinson and Farage will be the only voices in town. They must love Starmer as he’s a far bigger asset for reform than either of them…

 

[Chippy_boy]

If we don’t invest in education the jobs you describe will all be on the list of ‘acceptable immigration due to severe skills shortages’.

I agree. We need to stop buying in cheap labour and encourage British people to do the work, via improved education and wages. It would have a double whammy, reduced immigration = reduced demand for and pressure upon public services. And getting more people in work means reduced welfare payment, AND increased tax revenues.

It simply must be a core strategy for the next decade.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Nonsense all the way through

No, not really.

 

[richardtheref]

I know mate. My point was they pretend to have customers (or more customers). If they had literally none they would just be pretending they did. It’s not like the cops are going to count the numbers going in the shop.

We have a pizza/kebab shop that has literally only been open 2 days in the last 18 months or so. However, go on Companies House and according to last years accounts they made over £100k profit

 

[Postman Pep]

This country shares the same problems all countries in western Europe face and that is an ageing population and declining birth rate and if we're to avoid disastrous decline we have to grow through immigration. This view is shared throughout all wings of the left including the Liberal Democrats and the Greens and it's shared by the Cameron/Sunak wing of the Conservative party.

The ethnic makeup of this country will change and short of fascism that is inevitable and irreversible. Whether this is desirable has never been discussed because without immigration we're simply not viable as a country and no serious party let alone a government dare talk about it in those terms, but the far right do. Farage and Robinson don't exist without dog whistling "great displacement" and boy! They're making hay with it!

Farage and Johnson know how to play this racial angst card, that's how they got Brexit over the line, it's why Farage is riding so high in the polls and it's why he plays the English stereotype of the fag smoking, beer drinking pub bore, a symbol of the England a sizeable chunk of the electorate fear they're losing, and they're right, they are losing it. Farage might lie about most things but he's not lying about that, that England is finished, whatever the future holds it won't look like the past, it won't even look like the present and our politicians must prepare us for that future, but our mainstream politicians are doing a piss poor job of it.

Our resident Mr. Angry believes any discussion on this issue is racist, he is of course wrong as he is on so many things, the angst felt by a relatively homogeneous country to a large influx of migrants in a short space of time is real and is not necessarily racist, much of that fear is unwarranted, stoked up by bad faith actors. But the right wing press, Talk TV and GB News get away with their lies and their fear mongering because the left and the centre right lie big time as well, mostly by not talking about it at all, fucking around with definitions and castigating apostates who raise it as an issue.

Meanwhile the Labour government is proceeding as if the die is cast, which it is, so they must prepare legislation fit for the future and defining Islamophobia is a small part of that, so while no one in government is going to tell the country where it's headed the road is being paved nonetheless.

Think on this, what serious politician is going to tell the electorate....

"The country you love is going to disappear"

But someone serious has to say that and couple it with a plausible upbeat message for the future, and they need to say it soon, because Farage and Robinson say it everyday and they keep saying it coz there's a sizeable audience that knows it's true and it's pissing them off.

Why I left the left chapter whatever verse who really cares any more.

You can bang on about Mr Angry all you like but you are both in denial with your interpretations of "identity politics" .

 

[Bournemouth Blue]

I’m quite glad I am 70 and a half, i fear for the future if our children and grandchikdren

 

[johnny crossan]

I’m quite glad I am 70 and a half, i fear for the future if our children and grandchikdren

I've been around a long time too, travelled in a lot of places but even now nowhere else I'd like to be - waiting for all the ex pats to tell me I've not seen their choice of abode ;-)