London riots & The Bird feeder

[Surf01]

I was going to post this in the joke section, but is it actually a joke?

The Bird Feeder

I bought a bird feeder.. I hung it on my patio and filled it lovingly with seed... It was indeed a beautiful bird feeder. Within a week we had hundreds of birds taking advantage of the continuous flow of free and easily accessible food; but then the birds started building nests in the boards of the patio, above the table, and next to the barbecue..
Then came the bird sh * t. It was everywhere; on the patio tiles, the chairs, the table ... everywhere!
Then some of the birds turned mean. They would dive bomb me and try to peck me even though I had fed them out of my own pocket.
And other birds were boisterous and loud. They sat on the feeder and squawked and screamed at all hours of the day and night and demanded that I fill it when it got low on food.
After a while, I couldn't even sit on my own back porch anymore. So I took down the bird feeder and in three days the birds were gone. I cleaned up their mess and took down the many nests they had built all over the patio.
Soon, the back yard was like it used to be ... quiet, serene and no one demanding their rights to a free meal...
Now let's see ....... our government gives out free food, subsidised housing, free medical care, and free education and allows anyone born here to be an automatic citizen.
Then the illegals came by the millions. Suddenly our taxes went up to pay for the free services; small flats are housing 5 or more families; you have to wait 6 hours to be seen by a doctor in an emergency surgery because it is filled with illegal non-tax payers; your child's year 12 class is behind other schools because over half the class doesn't speak English.
Corn Flakes now come in a bilingual box; I have to 'press one' to hear my bank talk to me in English, and people waving flags other than 'The Union Jack' are squawking and screaming in the streets, demanding more rights and free liberties.
It’s just my opinion but............ maybe, just maybe, it's time for the government to take down the damn bird feeder.
If you agree, pass it on; if not, continue cleaning up the sh*t! LOL!

[Surf01]

The post refers to illegal migrants otherwise half my family would have to return to their country of origin. They had to jump through many hoops to get a work visa and had to demonstrate that they had the means to live here by placing a large deposit with Home Affairs. They have to fund theri own housing and also pay council tax etc.

[flounderbout]

Simply adding "because of illegal immigrants" after each of a list of problems doesn't do anything to identify the cause or solution of any of those problems. The above is equally plausible if you add "because of British nationals who have no interest in contributing to society" after each problem, but then the message is a rather different one.

Having said that I can see that if Cornflake boxes were really bilingual (they aren't obviously, but never let the facts get in the way of a good rant), that would result in the collapse of civilised society.

Don't want to prove Godwin's law at this early stage of the thread, but laying the blame for all of society's ills at the feet of a particular section of the populace has been done before... It is a cheap political way of deflecting attention from the failure of the infrastructure concerned. It generally leads to bad shit.

[slobodan]

Just say "Because of the Lawyers"

They are the root cause of all problems.

[Predictable Bob]

Not wishing to cause a ruck but Thrifty's stats mention a 30 million strong workforce - is this accurate cos I thought it was a lot lower than that ...

[Apache]

• £2.54bn is contributed to the economy annually by eastern European immigrants in the UK

And the cost of providing social security in the UK is around £60bn annually. I'm fairly sure that FAR FAR more than £2.54bn of that goes on bogus claimants, lifestyle unemployed etc.

Playing devils advocate here, surely it is better NOT to allow economic migration, and force the UK's own terminally idle to do the jobs the eastern europeans are doing.

In my experience, in general, the migrant workers aren't coming here to fill posts we dont have the skills to fill, they are coming to fill the posts the work-shy brit sees as beneath him / her.

[Sancho]

I totally agree with the OP. We need to ban illegal immigrants once and for all. We need to pass legislation so that they can't come here and, if they do, it's against the law. We need to make it, what's that word? The opposite of legal?.....

[slobodan]

Yeah, and gingers.

[si tate]

And the cost of providing social security in the UK is around £60bn annually. I'm fairly sure that FAR FAR more than £2.54bn of that goes on bogus claimants, lifestyle unemployed etc.

Playing devils advocate here, surely it is better NOT to allow economic migration, and force the UK's own terminally idle to do the jobs the eastern europeans are doing.

In my experience, in general, the migrant workers aren't coming here to fill posts we dont have the skills to fill, they are coming to fill the posts the work-shy brit sees as beneath him / her.

I totally agree with your last comment, I left school with very few GCSE's but got a job non the less packing fruit & veg 6 days a week for £60. That was a number of years ago & now I'm self employed & doing great although it's not been an easy ride & I've worked damn hard to get here. Today's unemployed won't work as they think a cleaning job or whatever is beneath them & if they did take the job they would want £1000 a week after tax.

[si tate]

Yeah, and gingers.

Are you not being a bit gingerest there mate.

[slobodan]

Are you not being a bit gingerest there mate.

When have you ever seen a ginger pull their weight.

Lazy, all of them.

Gingers should be denied benefits.

[flounderbout]

Forced labour eh? Interesting.
I guess a mass forced labour campaign designed to eliminate unemployment would need some sort of slogan.
What about "Work sets you free"?
Hmm. Sounds better in German...

[si tate]

When have you ever seen a ginger pull their weight.

Lazy, all of them.

Gingers should be denied benefits.

I think your confusing gingers with GGT's.

[Apache]

Forced labour eh? Interesting.
I guess a mass forced labour campaign designed to eliminate unemployment would need some sort of slogan.
What about "Work sets you free"?
Hmm. Sounds better in German...

An unusually 'yoghurt-knitting-tree-hugger' outlook today

I'm sure I don't need to explain that I mean benefits scroungers and the 'not getting out of bed for that!' brigade, not the genuine claimants such as those who are unable to work through ill health etc, and I'm sure you know that no-one here is advocating a return to the policies of 1930s Germany.

Just think... we could look after our elderly and disabled far better if the idle, baby popping, uneducated dossers were told they either take the job, or they get food stamps and sod all else?

I honestly don't see anything wrong with forcing those who can work but choose not to, to pay their way in society. I don't think there's a right minded person who would want a large element of society to claim from working folk's tax £££s in order to sit on their ar5e all day, just because the system allows it.

[flounderbout]

An unusually 'yoghurt-knitting-tree-hugger' outlook today

I know I was just feeling impish.

Personally I believe that the burden of the welfare state is intolerable. It exceeds our entire tax take for christsakes. How is that sustainable? But it is increasingly a matter of concern that people would rather blame the problems on an essentially unrelated issue - i.e. immigration, and so a section of society who is pretty much unrepresented and unheard, rather than address the real issues. Finding scapegoats is easy when times are hard, and somewhat facetious references to the 1930's aside, such scapegoating tends to have serious consequences, not least in the rise of extremist groups. It is no coincidence that the emergence of far right groups across the continent as serious political forces has occurred in conjunction with the financial meltdown across the Eurozone.

To try and suggest that immigrants (whether legal or otherwise - the distinction is usually lost in the minds of the sort of people who perpetuate this stuff - see Sancho's excellent sarcastic post above) are wholly or substantially responsible for the current state of affairs in this country (or for that matter elsewhere in the EU) is a) completely unsupported by the evidence and b) irresponsible.

It is Daily Mail scaremongering at its worst.

Of course there are asylum seekers who play the system and take the ####, and there are immigrants who are engaged in minor and indeed major criminal enterprises. But they are a tiny and indeed trivial minority. The overwhelming majority of immigrants both legal and illegal, and particularly those from Eastern Europe, are net contributors to the economy, and do not rely on benefits. Welfare scrounging is not uniquely a "home-grown" British problem, but it is to a great extent.

As for conflating the issues of extremist Islam and the anti-British attitudes of some of our youth with the issue of immigration - they are nothing to do with each other. Many of those who are bound up in extremist Islam are British, not immigrants. Unless you want to start going down the BNP route and saying that all "non-British" ought to go home ("non-British" being code for white - otherwise it is a wholly meaningless term), then immigration has nothing to do with that problem.

So yes, as someone who feels like I pay a lot of tax at every turn it ####es me off that most of those taxes are ####ed away on undeserving gits. But I don't believe that the root cause are Polish, or Romanian, or Pakistani gits. Most of the gits are from generations of British families who have never worked, and never understood the need to work, because they get paid for not working.

And, though it would be nice, you can't "force" them to work. Nor am I convinced that it is realistic to simply shut off the benefits tap (superficially attractive though that is), since there would be a meltdown.

So don't get me wrong, I am no bleeding heart liberal. But trying to blame our problems on immigrants is bollox of the first order IMHO.