Afghanistan

[mids]

So what have we learned? That the left hate Afghans and Afghanistan, love the Taliban and are more than happy to see the country sink further into the mire by keeping Afghans who could help "lift" their country up in Britain.

[perrykneeham]

Appropriation.

[voice]

Putting aside all the bitter hate filled nonsense from 2 of our resident racists for a second. The real question is why has the UK taken so few?

All those empty promises made to translators, beurocrats educators women from all walks of life about how the UK would take care of them and how they'd be offered safe haven from the Taliban should the Afghan gov fall. And not just the UK, every NATO is just as culpable in abandoning those they promised to get out.

[perrykneeham]

Dunno why we "promised" them that. We should make it clear that there's no deal.

[flatandy]

To be fair, we shouldn't have just promised that those who worked for us would be safe. We should have promised that to everyone.

[mids]

Everyone in the whole wide world? For ever and ever and ever?

[ootlg]

Why do you have such a massive downer on refugees, and immigrants in general?

[mids]

Yeah Andy, tell us.

[flatandy]

Mar 16, 2023 14:56:06 GMT mids said:

Everyone in the whole wide world? For ever and ever and ever?

That's the nature of refugees, really, yes. You are available to everyone. Although historically countries far less able to afford to offer help tend to be the ones who deal with the largest numbers.

[ootlg]

Mar 16, 2023 14:56:28 GMT ootlg said:

Why do you have such a massive downer on refugees, and immigrants in general?

No particular reason then. OK.

[mids]

Mar 16, 2023 14:56:28 GMT ootlg said:

Why do you have such a massive downer on refugees, and immigrants in general?

Your question highlights one of the problems. Immigrants aren't one big mass. Some are better than others. Some good, some not so good. For decades we've pretended that all Immigrants are the same when it's clearly nonsense. It's ruined the idea of immigration. Poor people are being hectored to accept people from poorer parts of the world living next to them when there's no real need for them to be there except in specific, focused cases. I'm surrounded by immigrants at work. All middle class educated people but I know that the bulk aren't like that. I don't have to live near large numbers of fighting aged men, angry that they're not living in paradise and made more angry when the establishment tells them to hate everything about Britain. Poor people do.

[ootlg]

So we're agreed the answer is for the UK to get it's act together and process immigrants swiftly and correctly.

[perrykneeham]

Yep. Ship 'em out immediately.

[mids]

It could have gone so well with just a bit of thought. Indians, Hong Kongers, Taiwans Ugandan Asians- mostly good. Others, not so much although careful selection could have allowed for some to come here. Then we can start on the charity cases. The genuine refugees. The Ukes for example. Then small numbers of carefully vetted others.

[mids]

Sikhs. Mostly good lads.

[mids]

Rod Liddle. National treasure.

"There was a kind of peak BBC Radio 4 moment last week when the network put on a play called Bess Loves Porgy. As you might have guessed, this was a rewrite of Porgy and Bess, the twist being that Porgy was a black, disabled grime rap artist in south London. I hope it went down well with the millions of black, disabled grime rap artists in south London who are listeners to Radio 4.

The network was, in the same week, continuing its serialisation of Georges – ‘Testament’s bold new adaptation of Alexander Dumas’ tale of racial intolerance’. They are absolutely obsessed with racism at R4, in a kind of mentally unhinged manner.

I thought about these two plays while the ludicrous Garygate saga was playing out in the national media – and it made me tetchy and irritable. You see, Gary Lineker is not the point. Georges is the point – and all the other right-on tendentious woke guff this station rams down the throats of its patient listeners. World at One and PM and Today are also the point in the way in which they have covered the government’s plans to stop those boats crossing the Channel.

Scarcely a moment goes by without a reporter emoting about the plight of some Afghan or Albanian refugee queuing up at Calais for his dinghy, or some jackass from an NGO lacerating the government for its ‘cruelty’, or a similar view from someone from the UN or EU. This is another area where Lineker was wrong when he said, in an odiously self-regarding manner, that he would continue to ‘speak up for those poor souls who don’t have a voice’.

Don’t have a voice! They are the only voices we hear. The people who don’t have a voice are the residents of Dover, where an Afghan teenager was recently arrested on suspicion of raping a girl, or indeed the silent majority of the country who want properly regulated immigration, not the free-for-all demanded by the NGOs.

My point is a simple one. What Lineker says about anything does not matter a monkey’s. It is the rest of the output that’s the problem. It’s the stuff we see or hear on air every night of the week. A week or so back, I watched a report on the BBC’s regional news programme Look North about a peaceful protest in Carlisle by residents worried about an influx of refugees into their city. The march was opposed by the usual middle-class ‘anti-hate’ brigade whose views were almost all we heard in one of the most egregiously biased news reports I have ever seen. The people responsible for that kind of yellow journalism are the ones who should be taken off air, not a sports presenter who has swallowed the whole rot and parrots it out for public approval.

It is hard not to feel a little sorry for the BBC director-general, Tim Davie, who I think does recognise a certain bias within his corporation’s output and has been quietly making an effort to do something about it. He miscalculated over Lineker, as I suspected he would.


The clever thing to have done would have been to have issued a statement distancing the corporation from Lineker’s asinine comments but supporting his right, as a freelance, to say what the hell he likes. And then, because he persists in embarrassing the BBC and is not remotely worth his salary, sacking him when his contract comes up for renewal, stating that the intention is to ‘take the programme in a different direction’. They did that with poor Sue Barker – why not Gary? He is a capable presenter, sure, but not much more than that.

The problem Davie had is that almost the entirety of the BBC staff entirely agree with the jug-eared crisp-seller – that’s the point, again, Tim – and it was pretty obvious that nobody would be prepared to step into Lineker’s shoes to present Match of the Day. And so the awful man was made a martyr and – because, like Emily Maitlis, he believes his Twitter feed – thinks the entire British public is behind him. It most definitely is not. Although a majority – me included – probably believe he should not have his freedom of speech compromised.

How to deal with big names on huge freelance salaries who keep saying stuff? Let them. It makes no odds in the end. The BBC in particular has long had problems trying to constrain its supposedly valuable big stars and the simple answer to the problem is that it should cease from doing so forthwith. When a furore occurs, all the corporation would have to do is to issue a short statement to the effect that this was a case of an individual speaking and does not reflect the views of the BBC as a whole (even if it patently does).

Given that Davie is now to re-examine the strictures over who can say what and when, may I propose a radical solution? Never mind adjudicating between the freelancers and the staffers – allow all who work for the corporation the freedom to say whatever they want, whenever they want. Let’s hear exactly what they have to say. Open the views of the individuals who work for that rather bloated old behemoth to the general public.

The old mantra, much beloved by the former director-general Tony Hall, that when individuals enter Broadcasting House they should ‘hang their political opinions up on a coat hanger’ was always either naive or disingenuous, one or the other. We are all the sum of our opinions and beliefs and we can no more jettison them than we can rid ourselves of our own DNA.

Yes, journalists may try to be even–handed, but the bias is always there – in the story selection, in the choice of interviewees, in the tone of voice. So henceforth, let’s be open about that – then we will have an honest view of what, in general, the BBC stands for politically."

www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-shouldnt-bbc-staff-express-opinions/

[perrykneeham]

Mar 16, 2023 17:07:39 GMT mids said:

Sikhs. Mostly good lads.

And lasses. Pitch in, keep their noses clean. Like a drink.

[Repat Van]

Mar 16, 2023 14:21:53 GMT voice said:

Putting aside all the bitter hate filled nonsense from 2 of our resident racists for a second. The real question is why has the UK taken so few?

All those empty promises made to translators, beurocrats educators women from all walks of life about how the UK would take care of them and how they'd be offered safe haven from the Taliban should the Afghan gov fall. And not just the UK, every NATO is just as culpable in abandoning those they promised to get out.

The UK takes so few because the government is full of “resident racists” who are also trying to appeal to resident racists in the population.

[Repat Van]

Mar 16, 2023 15:14:54 GMT mids said:

Mar 16, 2023 14:56:28 GMT ootlg said:

Why do you have such a massive downer on refugees, and immigrants in general?

Your question highlights one of the problems. Immigrants aren't one big mass. Some are better than others. Some good, some not so good. For decades we've pretended that all Immigrants are the same when it's clearly nonsense. It's ruined the idea of immigration. Poor people are being hectored to accept people from poorer parts of the world living next to them when there's no real need for them to be there except in specific, focused cases. I'm surrounded by immigrants at work. All middle class educated people but I know that the bulk aren't like that. I don't have to live near large numbers of fighting aged men, angry that they're not living in paradise and made more angry when the establishment tells them to hate everything about Britain. Poor people do.

The irony in this piece from somebody who frequently views immigrants as “all the same”. You literally categorise them all as not being decent people and “angry fighting aged men” (what on earth is a “fighting aged man - at what age does male violence stop?) based on nothing but your own xenophobia and selective racism. You also seem to have a very classist approach to deciding who is decent and who is not.

Of course immigrants aren’t all the same. They’re humans and individuals. And humans aren’t all the same. You’re saying nothing in saying that. Nobody had ever pretended otherwise.

And as for “poor people being hectored to accept those from the poorest parts of the world” it’s actually the poorest of the world who are doing the lion’s share in providing refuge to those in need.

[Repat Van]

Mar 16, 2023 16:47:23 GMT mids said:

It could have gone so well with just a bit of thought. Indians, Hong Kongers, Taiwans Ugandan Asians- mostly good. Others, not so much although careful selection could have allowed for some to come here. Then we can start on the charity cases. The genuine refugees. The Ukes for example. Then small numbers of carefully vetted others.

And yet “immigrants aren’t all the same….”