BBC suspends presenter for calling out government

Post Reply New Topic

What I'm struggling to understand is why people are fleeing the wonderfully all inclusive progressive European Union that the left were so desperately eager to remain a part of, to risk their lives leaving a perfectly safe country to come to the apparently racist, hate filled failing cesspit that is Brexit Britain. That makes no sense, does it? Unless we accept that what is actually going on is well below board, purely serving the interests of criminals and people arriving on false pretences, or that Britain might not have made such a mistake in breaking free of what has been described as "Germany acting as if they had won the war".

Anyway, back to the BBC, I thought this brief passage summed up very well what that organisation has turned into over the last few decades:-

"Match of the Day isn’t, of course, the only show in which this fluff predominates. Presenters often hand over to presenters, like a giggling hall of mirrors. This is all mostly delivered with the overexcited zizz of the latter-day Blue Peter, the mirthless laugh of the children’s entertainer or nursery assistant. Even continuity announcers speak in this pally, overly-bright register, as if they’re about to say ‘Single file, quicksticks, coats on hooks!’"

There are countless reasons, but often its to do with having some sort of connection to Britain. They know people here who they feel safe with, or they know the language and will find it easier to assimilate.

We also, unlike most of the EU, don't have ID cards. That makes it much easier to for them to exist and work undetected.

The bottom line for me, when it comes to migrants of any type, is that we have to grow the f**k up and start behaving like a modern country. We have an international obligation to take a proportion of the world's refugees. We currently fall well below that obligation and we're still whinging about it. Accept that you live in a decent, free country that people are going to want to come to and build the infrastructure to house and process people, assimilate them into society when appropriate and return them from whence they came when they have no case for asylum. And before anyone starts mentioning the cost of doing this, it's been shown that it would cost less than our current system of going 'la-la-la' with our fingers in our ears and then having to put asylum seekers in hotels.

The first step is to create a legal route into the UK's asylum system. There currently isn't one. Even the Home Secretary can't point you to a legal route into the UK for asylum seekers. Hence the criminal gangs plugging the gap.

The small boats crisis is entirely the fault of our government, and actually a consequence of the effectiveness of the measures taken to stop people arriving in lorries. We gave up our right to return people to the EU when we left, nice one. The whole thing is just another result of the chronic lack of government investment.

Something like 66% of the people who come here and claim asylum are approved. By our own standards we accept that they are refugees. Still this narrative of economic migrants persists.

If any government wanted to solve the problem of small boats they could, very easily. But they don't because it whips up ill feeling. Conservative HQ is currently messaging every day about how Labour doesn't want to stop the boats. Well, neither do the conservatives - it's going to be a handy wedge issue come election time. And there are people dying in the channel from their cynicism and it's disgusting and it makes me really angry.




Yeah, that's an opinion I suppose. I think, traditionally, the BBC's role as 'Auntie' to the nation included a bit of a sort of sense of community. Most people like people, and we're living in times of increased isolation. I think, much like social media, there's still a lot of people who get their sense of community from mass media.

That's why I don't really believe that many people would tune in to the MOTD highlights show if it was, as it was last week, 20 minutes of uncommented football. Any more than they'd tune into Top Gear if it was just a live feed from a traffic camera on the M25. The chat, the banter, the camaraderie, the sense of other people sharing your interest and talking about it - that's all important stuff in my opinion.

There are a lot of things wrong here.

Firstly, on what basis do you say that "economic migrants" do one thing and "genuine [refugees]" do another thing? Do you have any evidence, or is this a case of assuming?

Secondly, asylum seekers are not illegal immigrants. The issue is that the government is redefining asylum to be inherently illegal, except as part of very limited schemes for people from Ukraine or Hong Kong (possibly also Afghans who have worked with the government, but I'm not sure whether that scheme is still open). This is at odds with our international commitments to refugees.

Thirdly, in what world does the "crime" fit the punishment? As you say, these are people who have travelled hundreds or thousands of miles to come here, they aren't hurting anyone, they're just desperate to be here. It's just pure sadism, this bizarre idea that we should treat people inhumanely because they're not "one of us".

Finally - this country is experiencing a severe labour shortage. Let's say you're right and some of these people really are "economic migrants". Well - good! We need them! If they had any sense then they'd migrate to a country with a stronger economy, like Germany, but if they're coming here then we should welcome them with open arms. They can be lorry drivers, carers, doctors, construction workers, scientific researchers - whatever. We desperately need more people to support the economically inactive. There can be no "levelling up" of run-down rural areas without productive young people working in the cities to fund our social services. Anyone who is prepared to cross the channel by boat so they can get a job here is likely to be a very productive member of society, not to mention grateful - I can't think why we'd want to turn them away en masse rather than treating them as individuals worthy of respect.

Some good points raised, though we haven't addressed the existing ongoing issues which stretch back to the 1950s in the UK which - following the general trend - will be amplified as the numbers increase, be that 100% the fault of right-leaning Caucasians or otherwise.

We could talk about better education, tackling poverty and so on, though after 70 years - with racism and religious intolerance as prominent an issue as I can ever remember - together with the now popular notion amongst progressives that white people (at least) can never be not-racist no matter what they do or say, I'm not altogether optimistic that we're on the cusp of achieving racial harmony and respect for all faiths and non-believers.

Perhaps nothing can or should be done about immigration, maybe the solution would be to encourage more of it, though it has been acknowledged there is at least a financial cost involved and I presume nobody is advocating for open borders.

If our chief concern is the welfare of refugees, rather than what they can do for us at the expense of the countries they leave or other nations in greater need of man power, then the refugees will surely be better off enjoying a much brighter future in the apparently less-racist and more forward thinking European Union. If immigration is not a problem and we are in fact advocating an end to border control, then the first country that throws open its' doors to all will become a beacon of indisputable evidence that immigration is an overwhelming positive and the obvious way forward.

This is where the debate on immigration falls short, in my opinion, fueled by a reactionary media and a cynical governing class.

Advocating for humane treatment of people claiming refugee status is not the same thing as advocating for open borders. But at Conservative HQ, at the Daily Mail and Express it is. Even the Telegraph will print that sort of rubbish these days.

The process doesn't need to be complicated. First establish a legal route. Then set up processing centres either in France, or in the UK - but if you do it in the UK there needs to be a way people can get here without paying a criminal gang. Then assess whether people do or do not have a valid claim on refugee status. If they do, give them asylum and whatever they need to get started in the UK. If they don't send them back.

That is humane. That is not difficult. It is also cheaper than doing what we do now. It's a grown up way to deal with the issue. It's not left-wing wokery and it's not right wing neofascism.

It would also have a good impact on our economy. Migrants generate far more in tax revenues than they cost us in welfare. It would address the chronic worker shortages we have. It would balance out our population which is increasing aging and putting undue pressure on our care services.

It is, in short, a no-brainer.

Unfortunately, time and again, it comes up against what amounts to a simple dislike of foreigners and an ingrained suspicion, confirmed almost every day by an awful headline in some sh***y newspaper, that everyone who comes here is trying to take something away from us, whether our jobs, or doctors appointments or our school places, which by the way has a lot more to do with decades of chronic underfunding than any amount of migrants.

Debatable. The most promising analysis I saw said that this was only true of EEA migration, while non-EEA migration was a multi-billion pound net cost to the UK economy. Unfortunately it isn't French hedge-funders crossing the channel in dinghies.

Evidently your experience living in Dorset as a prime example of multi-cultural harmony (or wherever you happened to live prior) is very different to mine, in which case I'm very happy for you. I live and have grown up in the North in a multi-ethnic area and I've seen the problems with my own eyes since I was at school, I don't need to read about it in newspapers. It's more of a cultural thing than race, certain groups were very easy to get along with, others I soon learned to avoid.

I've been forced to move house. If I'm a racist for no longer wanting to be intimidated and fearing for my own safety every time I go out to the shops and for choosing to move to a predominantly white area, so be it, I got my life back again. That doesn't mean this is a typical scenario but it won't be unique, "white flight" is a thing and it isn't triggered by the sight of somebody's skin colour, it's the anti-social behaviour ranging to far more serious issues that leads to people feeling they've had enough.

Of course these problems exist within white communities as well, but you're at a severe disadvantage in being able to do anything about it if you happen to be white and those causing the problems happen not to be, you'll be accused of racism and run the risk of attracting the attention of the entire community, so you have to stay quiet and put up with it, until it breaks you and you have to get out. Probably why there was so much support for Brexit in these traditionally Labour voting areas.

I feel I need to clarify something I wrote earlier when I was tired and unfocussed, alluding to an idea that I knew what I was getting at in my own head but nobody else would have had any clue to what I was talking about, namely the idea that open borders or at least much greater levels of immigration might actually be the solution longer term for the west in the fight against fascism in whatever form that may take. It reads back like pure sarcasm, but it wasn't intended to be.

Recently I was listening to a Muslim podcaster who I happen to share common ground with and like, recognising the problematic nature of the progressive left. He was talking about trying to find a way for Muslims and the "non-woke" (for want of a less clumsy label, which I realise is not a particularly helpful term) to find common ground on which to unite and fight back together.

Nobody has a crystal ball, but as history shows, unlikely alliances are often made and with key western institutions now captured, I wouldn't rule out a scenario of some form of progressive socialism or 'nice modern' western communism squaring up against traditional faith, in which case a welcome mass influx of a particular group would help the fight against tyranny. Granted we could then fall into a form of religious tyranny, but I'd envisage a west very heavily populated by Muslims as resembling somewhere more like Turkey than Saudi Arabia. Who knows.

Food for thought perhaps or maybe something that can easily be dismissed as hysterical hyperbole and conspiracy theory, take your pick, but you can guarantee that the future will not tailor to our own specific personal needs nor will it merely deliver the fore-warned chain of events related to one particular issue if we don't take urgent action now to prevent a doomsday scenario. The future will always throw up surprises driven by consequences we hadn't took the time to consider whilst distracted by waving placards and berating the perceived opposition. The future will not be and never can be all of the people living life in peace as one. So long as anybody is trying to impose that dream, it will always turn into a nightmare.

Welcome to complex systems.