scspkr99 wrote:It was bad enough that for long enough we denied Romanian and Bulgarian people the right to work here we are merely lifting that ban as agreed at the EU and unsurprisingly the Daily Express and the Daily Mail will have us all hiding under our beds from the hordes of Europeans coming to have us off.
As for the Roma, they remain the only group systematically devastated under the sizan that it's still alright to hate.
Well, quite.
It seems about this point in a "deyy took arr bennifiiiittttsss" conversation that one points out that, as an island nation, Britain has historically been enriched time and time again by new blood coming in. The NHS probably wouldn't have survived past a couple of decades without Caribbean and African immigration, our (arguably) national dish exists as a result of Asian immigration and most of the building projects we're relying on to kickstart our economy after its ravaging by the
non-benefit-claiming upper echelons of society will only get completed because of European immigration.
It seems the thing people are most upset about is the loss of entitlement to easy, comfortable incomes that our parents enjoyed - a clean route that so many of them took through University/Apprenticeship, into a new-workers/graduate scheme and onto a career for life, with most able to buy a house to provide for retirement - that's not just an effect of population growth and it's certainly not an effect of benefit claims, British or otherwise. Over the second half of the 20th Century, Britain's power shrunk to much more realistic levels - we're no longer citizens of a country where 40m people can rule 400m because of false technological, military and economic advantage and we have to adjust our expectations to suit. It's no longer our default position to be entitled to a good life at the expense of 10 Indians making up our economic shortfall. However you look at it, Britain HAD to experience a decline over the 20th Century in order for the new economies to make their rise. We're not Germany and we never will be.
Rather than nowaysj's vision of a crumbling future, I see this as a very positive thing for humanity. There is still VAST inequality in our world and with 2nd and 3rd world economies still lagging behind in many key respects, we still grow fat (or perhaps more appropriately now that it's Primark's sweatshops rather than Tate & Lyle's sugar plantations, grow
fashionable) on the toil of disadvantaged brown people which can only indicate there is more slide to be experienced for the established 1st World economies... rather than allowing rich, self-entitled conservatives to turn working man on himself in a never ending war pitting poorest against poorest whilst the richest quietly carry on, we should be
speeding up the global levelling process - our campaigning should be aimed at taking down the enormous caches of wealth the 1st World takes out of the global economy and redistributing through enforcing fair wages and labour practises worldwide.
Of course, conditions where Westerners can still live luxurious lives for relatively little work thanks to mistreated local labour still exist variously around the world - it is perhaps ironic that the closest thing a Briton can find to "the good old days" is probably becoming an Ex-Pat in Dubai or Tanzania.
tl;dr As a nation that has historically had "too much" for many centuries, sliding back to your natural position as a island trading post can feel unpleasant. It's best not to lose perspective on the bigger picture though when looking at economic change - we're humans before Britons, and humanity appears to be progressing as it always has.
