What culture are we defending exactly?

Are we actually pretending that the English have any degree of tradition ingrained in everyday life?

Stop the refugees, they don’t like Morris dancing!!!

10000000000000 from me and many others

That being significantly more than the population of the earth where have all these “many others” come from?
Current world population

superstar1 – Member

To people on this site I am shameful and guilty.

Nope. I think you are a cheb end and a fool.

When your country, your life and freedom goes arse about tit, and when you’ve all finished crying into your latte, look me up because you WILL need people like me.

Wrong again. Your level of prejudice is never needed.

There should be some sort of prize for superstar’s post:

“What a bunch of self opinionated”
pot/kettle

“Self- righteous”
pot/kettle,

“lefty”
caring about others used as an insult?

” tree hugging”
caring about the environment and the source of the oxygen he wastes used as an insult?

“self satisfied”
now’t wrong in being happy with your opinions and life choices

” cycle riding,” it is a bike forum you diminutive of Richard

“video camera wearing”
relevance? accuracy?

“naïve appeasers”
evidence of naivety or appeasement?

” what sort of responsible parent would do that when Turkey is the nearest Muslim safe country? **** me,” “
well obviously a very desperate one !

“the chav white scum in the UK even take their all inclusive holidays there, so it isn’t exactly a war zone.”
it is in fact a big country it has a active war zone on its border not all Muslims think the same and as with any religion there are some quite big and hostile splits cf protestants /catholics.

“One minute these people are shouting ” death to the infidels” and burning the Union flag and the next minute they are beating a path to the infidels” doorway,”
There is No evidence that the ones shouting death to the infidel are the ones fleeing the nutters in fact quite a lot of evidence to the contrary . Islam is a big religion lots of different people with lots of different ideas. Not all the refugees are in fact Muslim you cant actually tell religion from photos you know.

“They hate our culture, our religion, and our way of life,”
do they says who ? and who are these they about which you speak with such absolute naïve self satisfaction. There are Millions of well integrated people from the middle east and further throughout Europe.

” yet they can’t live with each other, they have been in conflict with each other for a thousand years, long before Bush and Blair. Their religious wars and conflicts have driven them apart,”
ever heard of the crusades ? the Albigensian Crusade ? Bloody Mary, the Spanish inquisition, Northern Ireland etc etc.

“now they are fleeing to predominantly Christian lands”
not the UK then.

“where is the rush to get into countries that are more like theirs in religion and culture? Where is the rush to oil rich Saudi Arabia, or Qatar? Why is no pressure being brought to bear on Muslim states to help these people? Their silence is deafening.”
you Don’t read much or understand much do you there are masses of refugees in the region a issue called geography effects the direction of flight many Muslim states as you seemed to realise earlier would be ambivalent at best murderous at worse.

“We are going to leave a terrible legacy to our children and their children by encouraging the influx of people who will never integrate into our own culture, people who will never accept our way of life and traditions, however eccentric they may seem.”
The absorption and adoption of influxes of people is the very story of “our” culture you diminutive of Richard.

“To people on this site I am shameful and guilty.”
no not at all confused ill and informed yes.

“the politicians expect me to sacrifice my lifestyle and my country.” no they are doing the square root of sod all decent people generally expect you to live up to the values of our country our fathers and grandfathers fought for not try to turn into the sort of racial superiority spouting callous mono culture they fought against.

“The Eurocrats sit in their citadel of corruption and tell me I should compromise my country that my grandfather fought and died for in the name of political correctness, in adherence to a cancerous and self-destructive “progressive” and “liberal” ideology, that spits in the face of democracy and freedom and coerces and bullies people into following its lies and delusions.”
This is lazy ill thought through and repetitive, “political correctness” normally translates as Wheaton’s law, “progressive” means moving forward making progress, “liberal” means free from prejudice or bigotry; open-minded or tolerant, especially free of or not bound by traditional or conventional ideas, values, not exactly a bad thing.

“Am I ashamed? no I am not. “I bet you are not but you should be.

Just been catching up. A few comments.

On Arabian countries. From BBC. Social media activity around the photo has been dominated by Arab nations with a big theme being that they should be doing more, supporting their brothers. A few days ago a number of Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia made it clear the would not take any Syrian refugees. There is plenty of sectarianism behind this as well as counties not wishing to “encourage” revolutions by supporting those who fall victo of civil war having risen up against the government. The Jordanians where heavily critised by the UN last year as they refused to take any refugees from Syria who had previously declared themselves as Palastian Refugees.

On “shouting down” some of you should look very carefully at your posting history, we can all make controversial posts – I certainly do – but engaging in playing the man not the ball (used that phrase as its used here often) is prevalent rom many here. It doesn’t bother me as I see it as a sign of weakness in others but it simply sucks the life out of the debate for others.

I see people in the press popping up to offer their homes for refugees, but it’s more than that that’s required – there are the costs of food, medical treatment and that most will wish/try and stay long term. It adds to up to £10’s thousands per person. By providing £900m of aid to refugees the UK is doing it in a cost effective way in a low cost jurisdiction adjacent to people’s homes and closely aligned to their own cultures.

Finally today, a rare event in that I post to congratulate Nicola Sturgeon for highlighting the significant difference that exists between Cameron’s responce and that of the Germans. However in a way I doubt she intended.

Cameroon announces (aditmedly modest) numbers of Syrian refugees will be admitted in a way which protects them rather than exposes them to material dangers. We will take refugees from established refugee camps on the borders of Syria (Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan) who have been selected by the United Nations. We will transport them to the UK safely. Contrast this to Germany’s statement to take all Syrians who arrive legally, suspending Schengen for a day before realising their error and reinstating it trapping many people “en-route” who have no exit/entry visas and are thus illegal. Also encouraging a crazy rush of desperate people wanting to get to Germany before the window closes. The Hungarian President is quite rightly incensed as Hungary has the legal responsibility and the costs of processing people who have no interest of being there, as per the first train to Munich 25% of those people where determined by the Germans to have no prospect of refugee / asylum status, in this case they are returned to Hungary. The wife and two sons who died had been sent money by the Canadian aunt to pay people traffickers. They left the safety of a refugee camp to make an illegal crossing to the EU. I used the word “naive” to describe the German actions but really their actions have been far worse than that.

but engaging in playing the man not the ball

.

Usually I would agree, argue against the argument not the person. However, when someone has articulated views that frankly are foul, they leave themselves wide open. I for one would happily make my comments again as I believe a person who truly holds those views becomes a personification of that offensive view.

A very interesting article by Fraser Nelson is the Telegraph today – here

What I love about the web…is any old Tom can express their views
And the members that are shouting the most are the bleeding heart posse
So if me or anyone else posts something that they don’t like ……oh what a noise you lot make!!
My opinions are mine…..you can’t change it …if it upsets you…well tough

Do I want MORE people from other countries invading English shores….NO
We have too many already
End of……….

For all I know …its probaly a immigrant posting that we should take more immigrants:?

My opinions are mine….

Thank god for that. If they were mine I’d be worried.

The way I see it, this could be a perfect opportunity to counter the present Islamist narrative

The muslims fleeing Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are running away from the representatives of a perverse, corrupted form of their religion, and their nihilistic barbarism. They have seen the true horrors that this ideology perpetrates in the name of their god.

Meanwhile in Europe we have a young, 2nd or 3rd generation, disenfranchised muslim youth that, suitably far removed from the harsh, brutal reality of ISIS looks to it for inspiration and a sense of belonging. It idealises it it a hopelessly romanticised way. Ignoring the bad bits, or somehow seeing it as just. It rejects western values as corrupt.

So maybe we have a chance to reassert that western values can be more altruistic and inclusive by accepting these refugees, and in turn these refugees can put paid, once and for all, to these ludicrously romanticised views of ISIS and their ilk as representative of Islam by exposing to western Muslim communities the true horror of what it is they really represent.

Just a thought

Just close it with that. Nice one binners.

“My opinions are mine…..you can’t change it …if it upsets you…well tough”

If you decide in advance that your opinions are yours and they can’t be changed by argument or information then they are not opinions but dogmatic beliefs. If you want to live your life by unthinking unflinching dogmatic belief then that is indeed tough.

For all I know …its probaly a immigrant posting that we should take more immigrants:?

hands up, yeah, my fore fathers were immigrants. Around 1066 if I remember right.

Cameroon announces (aditmedly modest) numbers of Syrian refugees will be admitted in a way which protects them rather than exposes them to material dangers. We will take refugees from established refugee camps on the borders of Syria (Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan) who have been selected by the United Nations. We will transport them to the UK safely. Contrast this to Germany’s statement to take all Syrians who arrive legally, suspending Schengen for a day before realising their error and reinstating it trapping many people “en-route” who have no exit/entry visas and are thus illegal. Also encouraging a crazy rush of desperate people wanting to get to Germany before the window closes. The Hungarian President is quite rightly incensed as Hungary has the legal responsibility and the costs of processing people who have no interest of being there, as per the first train to Munich 25% of those people where determined by the Germans to have no prospect of refugee / asylum status, in this case they are returned to Hungary. The wife and two sons who died had been sent money by the Canadian aunt to pay people traffickers. They left the safety of a refugee camp to make an illegal crossing to the EU. I used the word “naive” to describe the German actions but really their actions have been far worse than that.

On balance I agree with this (and the linked article above by Fraser Nelson). It’s all very well to shout/tweet ‘something must be done’ and offer to house a refugee, but it completely fails to deal with the underlying issues, and seems to offer some people an opportunity to denigrate others (as seen on the Corbyn and Scottish independence threads as well…)

The government approach to offering aslyum from applications made in the middle eastern camps is self evidently the right answer – if someone can persuade me otherwise then I’m open to the debate, but it would seem incontrovertible that Merkel has created more hardship and suffering through her actions. Likewise, some coordinated support to the border countries of the EU would seem like the logical thing to do, especially given the state of the Greek economy, but that’s hardly the fault of the UK government alone.

So, I’m not surprised people like superstar and cheekyget above get panicked/provoked into responses like his/her posts. You don’t have to be a raging racist to be against immigration policy being made up on the hoof in response to shocking photographs. You can also find the competitive empathy and righteousness on this thread and elsewhere counterproductive, yet still have a deep concern over the human tragedy unfolding and wish for a measured and effective response.

I think people in the secular West under-appreciate how important faith is to your average Muslim, and this in itself can perpetuate cultural misunderstandings. The rejection of Western values is not simply because of perceived Western infringements over the years.
Moderate muslim scholars would reject many recent developments in Western culture as being simply incompatible with Islam: criticising the Prophet, for example, or advocating gay marriage.

My opinions are mine….
Thank god for that. If they were mine I’d be worried.

Noise…….

It does depend on what you see the underlying issue as being .
Is it the log jam refugees in the region, Iraq Jordan Turkey Egypt where their support is underfunded by 50% in the best areas and 90% in the worst and of 3.5 million have already settled. Or is it the destabilised nations and war . Cameron’s prior policy was to focus on talking about the destabilised war zone but the competitively empathetic want him to deal with their perception of the immediate issue. That being that a shed load of refugees who are so desperate that they are not settling in squalid underfunded under resourced camps close to those who would kill them waiting to be “processed” by a bureaucracy that represents those who repeatedly state they wish to restrict immigration. The political reality is that for many reasons a significant number of those people are on the move and clearly sufficiently motivated that a perilous sea or dangerous vehicle is better than the alternative and a significant number of the people of Europe want their politicians to take steps to help and make the lot of the refugees better.
So for the competitively empathetic the underlying issue is not the destabilised nation or war zone that will take years to resolve but the failure to put in place a workable humane solution to the refugee crisis.

The Leader of Liverpool council has written in the New Statesmen that the city will take 100 refugees http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2015/09/we-can-do-more-about-refugee-crisis-and-we-must

A couple of thoughts,

It’s an offer on the basis the Home Secretary provides the “necessary resources” – I assume by that he means footing the bill, ie someone else pays

On a population weighted basis (Liverpool is a city of 2.2m) that’s a UK equivalent commitment of less than 3,000 people.

For me the underlying issue is central to this whole issue is that the poor boy on the beach, and others like him, were killed by circumventing the ‘official channels’ to claim asylum and making their own way into Europe. The official channels may very well operate at a snails pace, but they always do. But ultimately we need to prevent people making the same devastating decisions in making that same journey and putting their lives in the hands of the people traffickers who couldn’t give a toss about their wellbeing and actively take advantage of the situation and court people to make that journey that is just as dangerous as staying in their home towns. We don’t want to be in the unfortunate position of causing as many deaths as we’re trying to save.

On the other side, the root cause to this is the spread of ISIL (or whatever they’re called this week) and the civil wars in the ME. This clearly needs to be addressed, because if it isn’t then even the 800k refugees that Germany has announced, and the few thousands of refugees committed by other nations so far will pale into insignificance, because we’re ultimately talking about tens of millions of refugees over the next few years. The whole of Europe just cannot cope with that number, no matter how big and generous our hearts may be. Ultimately taking human emotion out of this it is basically a numbers game and there are limits to the numbers we can support. This is where a global response is needed to finally solve the problems in the ME. Syrians don’t want to leave Syria. Let’s help make is such that they don’t have to leave.

gofasterstripes – Member
Quite an interesting exchange, that.

Oohh … 😯

Something I was thinking earlier, if the Hungarian PM is saying he’s concerned to let so many Muslims in, maybe he’s not only wrong but dead wrong.

What make so sure that you are so right? 😯

If, being positive for a moment, this melting pot succeeds, could it perhaps be a crucial step towards tolerance and the abandonment of the relative importance of such petty differences?

Are you forcing them to melt into one pot?
What if you are forcing people against their will?
What will you do?

I’m not very keen on religion, mostly because it seems to divide so much, but if for whatever reason that was to change that might be a great thing.

You are not keen or you do not understand them? Are you suggesting their drop their belief to adopt your way of thinking/belief whatever …?

Could it form ties that transgress the petty boundaries?

By force? 😮

the root cause to this is the spread of ISIL (or whatever they’re called this week) and the civil wars in the ME.

It’s a bit more complicated than that. ISIS have nothing to do with the 10% from Pakistan or the 6% from Albania, or the 5% from Nigeria and so on. In 2014 10% of asylum seekers in the UK were from Europe.

http://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/migration-uk-asylum

Arguably decreasing poverty in Africa means more people can afford to travel to Europe. People smugglers don’t come cheap.

One of the more intriguing nuggets about the Africa emigration story is that far from fleeing poverty, migrants out of the continent are likely to be relatively well off, and are rarely from the most destitute families.

Data from the UN’s World Migration Report shows that African emigration rates to the OECD countries are strongly related to GDP per capita, and to household wealth, as these migrants are more likely to have the resources to pay for transport to and resettlement expenses in the OECD countries, and are more likely to have the education and other skills required to find jobs there.

Why a richer Africa means more migrants

The muslims fleeing Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are running away from the representatives of a perverse, corrupted form of their religion, and their nihilistic barbarism. They have seen the true horrors that this ideology perpetrates in the name of their god.

Meanwhile in Europe we have a young, 2nd or 3rd generation, disenfranchised muslim youth that, suitably far removed from the harsh, brutal reality of ISIS looks to it for inspiration and a sense of belonging. It idealises it it a hopelessly romanticised way. Ignoring the bad bits, or somehow seeing it as just. It rejects western values as corrupt.

So maybe we have a chance to reassert that western values can be more altruistic and inclusive by accepting these refugees, and in turn these refugees can put paid, once and for all, to these ludicrously romanticised views of ISIS and their ilk as representative of Islam by exposing to western Muslim communities the true horror of what it is they really represent.

I don’t see how us being nice, will change mainstream Islamic narrative in regards to the west. We have helped out for purely altruistic reasons, for example in Kosovo…which has since become more radicalized and less cosmopolitan than it was under Tito.

The only thing that appears to keep Islam reasonably cosmopolitan is a good old fashioned baathist or socialist dictator

superstar1 – Member

….yet they can’t live with each other, they have been in conflict with each other for a thousand years, long before Bush and Blair.

Not only is that comment false but the reverse is true.

For most of the time over the last thousand year there has been a violent conflict going on somewhere in Europe, some extremely nasty and some lasting as long as a hundred years.

In contrast for most of the time over the last thousand year the Middle East has been at peace with almost no conflicts. All that changed when the Europeans turned up.

If you want to lecture people on the Middle East superstar1 then I suggest you research the subject.

Obviously you’ll discover things which completely counter your racist and anti-Islamic views, such as that cities like Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo, were great centres of learning often far ahead of Europe, they were also beacons of tolerance, peaceful coexistence, and international trade, so you might not want to.

BTW superstar1 do you know where that number at the end of your username comes from ?

Here’s a clue :

Arabic numerals or Hindu-Arabic numerals or Indo-Arabic numerals are the ten digits: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. They are the most common symbolic representation of numbers in the world today.

Just been watching the news, all those poor people fleeing persecution in Hungary, where they were being forced to register for asylum, oh, the horror. 😥

seems like quite a few are happy to stay in Hungary

Strange – 28 EU nations, and the graphs only show a few of them, and another non EU one 😕

…all those poor people…

…oh, the horror…

Just every so often, you remind us how you and your likes actually think. Don’t stop, eh?

I was thinking ‘I wonder what ninfan would be posting if this was the 1930s and Jews were fleeing Germany, including to the UK?’

Ninfan is so predictable I think we all know the answer.

Also how strange that in those 9 countries the UK is the 2nd least popular destination for migrants it’s almost as if we have next to no risk of being swamped.

In contrast for most of the time over the last thousand year the Middle East has been at peace with almost no conflicts. All that changed when the Europeans turned up.

Apart from the 11th century Turks invasion, the 13th century Mongol invasion, and the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in the 15th and 16th century.

Then a bit further west there was the Barbary pirates who captured and enslaved over a million Europeans between the 16th and 19th century resulting the first and second Barbary wars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War.

Here’s the 2008-2012 EU asylum applications. The Uk doesn’t look too bad.

I was thinking ‘I wonder what ninfan would be posting if this was the 1930s and Jews were fleeing Germany, including to the UK?’

And pray tell exactly what are similarities between Hungary in 2015 and Germany in the 1930’s?

Do you get that?

They’re not fleeing Syria, they are fleeing Hungary – an EU nation, where, as point of entry into the EU, they have to register for Asylum.

Look at it this way – if Germany, UK, and the rest of the EU said they were only going to accept refugees who had registered in Hungary and been processed through official channels – do you think there would be a couple of thousand walking down the motorway towards Austria now?

The leader of Hungary is staunchly anti immigration, as are a great deal of the population.

I bet it would be a splendid place to settle as a refugee.

But hell, as long as it isnt isis they should be **** thankful.

And pray tell exactly what are similarities between Hungary in 2015 and Germany in the 1930’s?

There aren’t any, it’s not Germany, it’s not the 1930s, and they’re not Jews fleeing persecution.

I’ll repeat what I said…….I was thinking ‘I wonder what ninfan would be posting if this was the 1930s and Jews were fleeing Germany, including to the UK?’

Ninfan is so predictable I think we all know the answer.

Do you get that?

Irc you do realise 2012 was 3 years ago don’t you ?

And it doesn’t show any relationship to the size of the country.

1.8 million Syrian refugees in Turkey is a lot, but 1 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, which a population of 4 million compared to Turkey’s population of 75 million, puts a different perspective on the matter.

UNHCR says refugees should be relocated from Hungarian refugee camps but hey don’t worry Ninfan knows better 😥

Conditions in Hungarian Refugee Camps

ernie_lynch – Member

superstar1 – Member
….yet they can’t live with each other, they have been in conflict with each other for a thousand years, long before Bush and Blair.

Not only is that comment false but the reverse is true.[/quote]

Ernie … Really? 😆

For most of the time over the last thousand year there has been a violent conflict going on somewhere in Europe, some extremely nasty and some lasting as long as a hundred years.

😆 Really! Getting interesting now …

In contrast for most of the time over the last thousand year the Middle East has been at peace with almost no conflicts. All that changed when the Europeans turned up.

😯 Really? Peace on earth and all that?

If you want to lecture people on the Middle East superstar1 then I suggest you research the subject.

So what have you research that makes you so sure there were peace on earth and all that?

Obviously you’ll discover things which completely counter your racist and anti-Islamic views, such as that cities like Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo, were great centres of learning often far ahead of Europe, they were also beacons of tolerance, peaceful coexistence, and international trade, so you might not want to.

Yes, they have to be tolerance or else head would be separated from body.

You want to argue against the Mongols? (am referring to the timeline long long ago … )

Your ancestors would probably not survive and you would not be born if it was not for Dracula (my hero Vlad the Impaler) fighting off the invaders knocking at the gate of Europe … even if you survive the Mongols you would probably have to bow to the mighty Mongols and kiss their feet!

Ya, research that Ernie …

How many refugees are Saudi’s, Emirates etc taking in?

What about creating some kind of “Israel” type land where migrants could go.
With an ends justify the means type ethos.Zero tolerance for anyone opposing it.

Tight to a coastline or mountain range which could be easy defended…..
The initial government could be UN ……
Some EU Manufacturing tasks could be given to it to get it up and running.