The changing face of Britain

[Guest]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20681551

I remember discussing this on the old boards years ago. 2005, maybe?

The warnings over the decades were never heeded. A tragedy indeed.

[MrGongGong]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20681551

I remember discussing this on the old boards years ago. 2005, maybe?

The warnings over the decades were never heeded. A tragedy indeed.

Tragedy ?
Not for Britain at all ......... just look at what the "foreign-born" immigrants have brought

exhibit a: Mitsuko Uchida

exhibit b: (found in this list) http://lso.co.uk/players

exhibit c: the surgeon who saved my life (Mango Lassi as he is a Moslem)

a real tragedy indeed ? Hardly

[amateur51]

I see nothing in the link to suggest a tragedy - perhaps the OP could expand on this?

I live in the London borough of Brent which I see has the highest percentage of people born abroad - it's a nice place to live. London is a extreme case of course, as with most things. It's almost as if London were a country unto itself within UK

[amateur51]

Tragedy ?
Not for Britain at all ......... just look at what the "foreign-born" immigrants have brought

exhibit a: Mitsuko Uchida

exhibit b: (found in this list) http://lso.co.uk/players

exhibit c: the surgeon who saved my life (Mango Lassi as he is a Moslem)

a real tragedy indeed ? Hardly

Well said MrGG!

Did the OP spot the surname of the author of this link?

[Flosshilde]

Tragedy ?
Not for Britain at all ...

Tragedy? Of course it is - it's common sense.

[gurnemanz]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20681551

I remember discussing this on the old boards years ago. 2005, maybe?

The warnings over the decades were never heeded. A tragedy indeed.

I'll pass on your message to my wife that her presence here is a tragedy for the country.

[MrGongGong]

I'll pass on your message to my wife that her presence here is a tragedy for the country.

indeed along with the kipper kings wife

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Where a person is born is immaterial.
What concerns me is that the population continues to increase to a level that is not sustainable in that resources and food need to be imported on a vast scale. There are many people who still think it's their human right to have as many children as they want. I beg to differ.

[Tony Halstead]

Where a person is born is immaterial.
What concerns me is that the population continues to increase to a level that is not sustainable in that resources and food need to be imported on a vast scale. There are many people who still think it's their human right to have as many children as they want. I beg to differ.

Agreed.
Well said, EA!

[Serial_Apologist]

I see nothing in the link to suggest a tragedy - perhaps the OP could expand on this?

I live in the London borough of Brent which I see has the highest percentage of people born abroad - it's a nice place to live. London is a extreme case of course, as with most things. It's almost as if London were a country unto itself within UK

With a consequence that London is now a much friendlier place than it ever was in my childhood in the 1950s. I remember a bloody-mindedness about the place: rude bus conductors and railway staff. it was by no means the rosy sentimental memory presented by my elders and betters to their dying day. I guess those who came from abroad were given the usual stereotype of British good manners and decided that they themselves would be the enactors thereof; the consensus seems to be that multiculturalism has worked in London at least, and probably Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham too from what one hears, if not everywhere. Meeting fellow members of one's own race in Burnley, for instance, and encountering their attitudes on different religions and races, made me feel like I was in a foreign country.

[ahinton]

OK, as a Scot I'm a "foreigner" in England but I've always felt, living both in Scotland and in England, that too great a proportion respectively of Scots and English in my midst was somehow a bad thing. I don't think that it's just because I am a "foreigner" that I think this; I do rather like the idea that most if not all of us are "foreigners" wherever we live, because the diversity helps us to have the opportunity to be better human beings than might be the case were we forced to be without it. I'm not "anti-English" or, God (or someone else) forbid "anti-Scottish" but I get very uncomfortable about living anywhere in which there are insufficient people of different backgrounds, culturally, racially or in any other way, because I would otherwise feel utterly stultified, starved and strangled. Furthermore, if Britain does not have an ever-"changing face", I shudder to imagine what, if anything, its future has any hope of being. What is music without ever-changing melody and without counterpoint? (just thought that I'd toss that analogy in, since we're all members of a board whose principal thrust is music - hope that's OK...)...

[Flosshilde]

Britain has had a 'changing face' for centuries, with new people arriving. In the past it was mostly by conquest.

[Tony Halstead]

Meeting fellow members of one's own race in Burnley, for instance, and encountering their attitudes on different religions and races, made me feel like I was in a foreign country.

BURNLEY:

http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/eq/1979-4_222.pdf

[jayne lee wilson]

A Welsh mother, an Italian father (allegedly), never met either, neither knew the other for long...

Adoptive father from Tranmere, mother from Wallasey.

What does that make me?
The idea of a core culture or racial purity is bizarre and destructive. But population is a serious, politically-neglected problem.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

yep the global population is a seriously neglected challenge as is the climate which is also changing

and so are our values, i am reading Prof Pinker on the growth of decency and the respect for the autonomy of the individual - which in part i take to mean not treating people as members of categories - i am not white british but i am an ageing male, these [age and gender] are not so much categories [can be if you want to make them] but they do denote a state of existence .... britain is a category and the 'nations' in which population is counted are just like money a collective dream ...except that when i encounter the europhobe tendency of the tory party i am convinced i live in a nightmare ....

actually the census is probably more to do with our phobias than any sense of reality .....

that Norwegian criminal was counting people by categories eh?