General Politics Thread

Overall I'm very much in agreement with this analysis of the situation, but I do maintain a slight apprehension when it comes to the British state (and therefore taxpayers) spending millions a day to provide for new arrivals when there are increasing numbers of British citizens being pushed into poverty. It's important to note that it's an economic rather than a cultural concern, I have nothing at all against people from other countries and cultures coming to live here (though it would be quite nice if it was reciprocal, but I think poor people from a rich country emigrating to a poorer, more sparsely populated country where they can perhaps be less poor and afford to own property is generally regarded as imperialism now, and only rich people from the rich counties are allowed to engage in that) but I do think the British government should primarily be here to look out for the British people, rather than trying to solve any other countries' problems (or create them, bear in mind I was vehemently against our involvement in the middle eastern wars and am just as against the billions currently being spent on facilitating Slavs to slaughter each other over clay).

Long time no debate :)

I think we have to decide whether we're a rich country which can afford to house a small number of people in genuine need or a poor country which deserves sympathy for being too pathetic to look after its own, and at the moment we seem to be blaming the former for the latter to avoid having to acknowledge who is really responsible. Rich people with multiple houses sit around pretending that there is moral equivalence in their exaggerated displays of outrage over insignificant nonsense while the people who (inexplicably) voted for them sit around dreading the arrival of their next unaffordable bill. I can't have sympathy for a Britain which throws money around on vanity projects and acts like a big deal on the world stage while its people are literally starving. It's mismanagement, and it makes me angry that the media successfully manages to convince people that their fellow victims are their rivals every single time. They're two sides of the same coin: the working class family exploited by electricity companies and drowning in debt is in the exact same boat as the desperate refugee who sold everything they owned to travel to a country which sells itself as being both wealthy and humanitarian. They're both being let down by the same people, yet the media sells the story that they're in competition and pits them against one another so that nothing ever changes.

To borrow Dave1988's example, why are people in this country angry about asylum seekers living in imagined luxury in temporary accommodation (I am reasonably sure that the people in question would prefer to build lives rather than to live in indefinite limbo in a hotel like lockdown victims while people wave hateful placards outside their windows) for what would cost any sane government peanuts, while individual MPs spend enough public money to rent out an entire hotel for a month on throwaway furniture items for their offices? Why are people angry at needy people getting three meals a day? Convicted UK prisoners get three meals a day too, but the people we specifically threw in jail (via a very expensive court process) for causing harm to others don't whip people into anywhere near as much of a frenzy as scary foreigners. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't personally like all of the people at my local food bank but I'm definitely ok with them all getting three meals a day if they need that. Why can't people stop for a second and direct all of this fury where it might actually have an effect, at the people literally allocating all of the money? I don't get it, but it's clearly happening right in front of my eyes so I can't deny the power of the media.

(Of course, actually processing the asylum claims in a timely manner instead of leaving people in limbo for months/years at a time, to get those people into all of the vacant jobs and social roles that nobody else wants to do would help to solve both problems. All of the money spent on maintaining these backlogs and holding patterns could then be invested on struggling folks who need more help, but actually getting things done doesn't seem to be the British way. It's all about hyper-analysing problems where the answer is already blindingly obvious and dragging them out for months/years so that nothing ever resolves. And of course that's because they don't want it to resolve. A convenient scapegoat is necessary to distract people from the government's useless dithering.)

At what point do we say that the governments of other countries should take responsibility for their people, or that the people should take responsibility for who governs them? If these regimes people are fleeing are so horrible, why do they not topple their leaders?

As I see it, the problem is that we can't solve the problem of other countries going to war with one another or enforcing discriminatory laws because nobody has any reason to listen to us (I certainly wouldn't listen to us). So helping the people most affected by those problems is something of a moral obligation rather than a choice. Morality is a fuzzy thing, but it is something that I personally think is a better use of my tax money than some of the other nonsense that the government fritter it away on. In some cases our country is literally to blame for the underlying situation, too, which I think increases the weight of that moral obligation to help. It doesn't feel fair to take responsibility for the actions of our rich countrymen's ancestors but it's a fact that they caused a lot of systemic damage and it's not fair for anyone involved no matter how you slice it. Sometimes things aren't fair. And sometimes it's our turn to take one on the chin. Meanwhile, the problems within our own country are largely of our own making so while we do have to deal with those too, we have much more power to prevent them from happening if we can figure out how to simply look after our people better in the first place.

Of course the underlying issues elsewhere need fixing. Of course people should fight for their rights, just as we should (and don't) here. But having seen how hard it is to get anyone here to care about anything other than maintaining a thoroughly broken status quo, I can't blame people who aren't fighters by nature from wanting to flee when the alternative isn't likely to work out for them. It would be different if everyone got to choose their country voluntarily at the start. But they didn't; I'm descended from immigrants yet I enjoy a great deal of privilege in my daily life which I have done nothing to deserve, simply because I got lucky at birth and started out in a country where the government has a harder time in making undesirable people disappear. Until the government stands up and admits that we're an impoverished country that can't afford to take care of its own, I want to believe that reasonable compassion can be extended to all - not just the people that the media considers worthy of our time.

R
 
Not anger... Its dissapointment on what the uk has become... And you do realise they are in 4* hotels and then moved into houses right? That the taxpayer pays for aswell.. But its fine... Ill eventually find a fulltime job and pay my taxes and shut my mouth i guess
 
To clarify @RadFemHedonist I think what I said regarding that issue was that the right to abortion is not something which is in debate here in the UK, the only country we as UK voters currently have a say in. Do I think US women should fight for their rights? Absolutely. Do I think that's my fight? No, no more than I think the fight for women's rights in countries where they are even more seriously curtailed like Saudi Arabia or anywhere they practice FGM, which are all horrible things. I don't think we as British citizens will ever be able to effect change in those places because I don't think it can be imposed upon them, the change has to come from the people in those countries and cultures. To some degree I think everybody, even us, deserves their sh*tty governments because people aren't willing to stand up to them. If they were all of this awfulness could be ended, but it isn't, because we stupidly place trust and power in the hands of people who misuse it.

Overall though, you may be correct that I can be flippant about serious issues, display little empathy and probably deserve none myself. But I don't particularly look for it either, I think generally society and most people are well beyond saving and I'd be happier if I could just go and live in the woods and didn't have to involve myself in it at all until the inevitable freedom of death. In another life where I believed in God I'd probably have made a half-decent monk. But here I am, stuck in the system with you and everyone else having to pay my bills and taxes and either work or convince the system I'm insane in order to stay alive and not in prison, so I get drawn into debates about it. Know that I wish it weren't so and we could all be happy, in our own way and with our own space without interfering in each other’s lives at all.

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@Rui sorry to disappoint on the debate front, but I can't really disagree with any of that. Except perhaps this:

As I see it, the problem is that we can't solve the problem of other countries going to war with one another or enforcing discriminatory laws because nobody has any reason to listen to us (I certainly wouldn't listen to us). So helping the people most affected by those problems is something of a moral obligation rather than a choice. Morality is a fuzzy thing, but it is something that I personally think is a better use of my tax money than some of the other nonsense that the government fritter it away on. In some cases our country is literally to blame for the underlying situation, too, which I think increases the weight of that moral obligation to help. It doesn't feel fair to take responsibility for the actions of our rich countrymen's ancestors but it's a fact that they caused a lot of systemic damage and it's not fair for anyone involved no matter how you slice it. Sometimes things aren't fair. And sometimes it's our turn to take one on the chin.

I'm not really sure anybody has a moral obligation to do anything any more. Perhaps I've just become that cynical, but in a land ruled over by psychopaths and populated mostly with idiots, a horrifying hybrid of tyranny of the majority and oligarchy (something I think your examples would tend to agree with, if not yourself personally) I rather feel like ripping up the social contract altogether.
 
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I can't really disagree with any of that. Except perhaps this:

I'm not really sure anybody has a moral obligation to do anything any more. Perhaps I've just become that cynical, but in a land ruled over by psychopaths and populated mostly with idiots, a horrifying hybrid of tyranny of the majority and oligarchy (something I think your examples would tend to agree with, if not yourself personally) I rather feel like ripping up the social contract altogether.

It's a very personal thing, I guess. I still feel that obligation in my heart, even if nobody is actually compelling me to feel that way and it's a wholly unrewarding way to live. A certain family member of mine recently posted something unfortunate on a certain social media site which I felt was morally repugnant. I mentioned it to my brother; he counselled ignoring it. I talked to my father, he made the same call. And then I found myself wading into the thick of an unwinnable battle against that person's deep-seated prejudices anyway, because I am physically incapable of keeping my mouth shut when something feels wrong. And to my surprise, after three days of debate I managed to persuade them not to share uninformed opinions on that topic again! It makes no difference in the grand scheme of things. That person will still vote for the Conservatives when the time comes. But at least there's one less voice out there making hateful posts about that particular topic now, and the burning indignation inside me is calmer.

I don't have a way to switch off my sense of moral obligation. It's the same reason I always attempt to engage with trolls on this site before dragging them off for punishment. I know I look like an idiot a lot of the time but I can deal with that if there's even a tiny chance of a better outcome. They say that we're supposed to get more comfortable with supporting the status quo as we age but I feel as though my life has had the opposite trajectory thus far. I still want to believe that we can be better.

You may write yourself off as cynical, ayase, but even cynicism, when tempered with intelligence and a genuine interest in respectful discussion, can have a positive effect. I feel your vent posts have encouraged me to educate myself more on some of the highly specific issues we've debated in the past and given me some faith that other people out there aren't slavishly signed up to the official narrative, even if the delivery is different and we vehemently disagree at times. So I'm always grateful to you for speaking your mind.

R
 
Apologies for the late response but it looks like controversy's in today, so let's go.



They can also afford to take breaks from work and immediately receive whatever therapy they like. As someone with experience with this country's sorry excuse for mental health services for average people who can't afford to pay to receive it privately, you'll have to excuse me if I don't shed a tear for those who can just stroll into The Priory.



Be prepared for a bit of a ramble here, since I think this issue goes to the heart of a major problem I have with the current political (and particularly journalistic) climate and its promotion of middle-class social causes célèbre over economics. You see it all the time now, particularly since identity politics caused the implosion of Occupy Wall Street (and was and still is being used by Starmer's Axis Neo Labour to keep hammering the stake into Jeremy Corbyn to make sure he stays down this time) but those convenient coincidences aside, political debate is constantly being shifted away from economic inequality onto issues much further up the pyramid on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. At the bottom is the freedom from want, of being able to house, feed and keep yourself warm without having to rely on charity or live in fear of rent day or the debt collector. That is where the attention and efforts anyone who genuinely believes in equality should be concentrated until we don't have anyone living on the streets and the appalling emergence not only of food banks but of "warm spaces" now where elderly people who can't afford to put the heating on have to go in order to not freeze to death in their own homes. No amount of love is going to fix that (and people working for charity is not the answer, because that's only keeping them poor and more likely to need charity themselves - imho nobody should be working for nothing) it requires investment.


Kind of a different topic from Harry more on a personal level and how is using his position as a semi-powerful royal in 2023. I'm not really expecting any member of the royal family to initiate a sort of economic overhaul as they thankfully have been stripped of these powers.



In terms of migrant boats... Rui covered most of it, but I will add that this "problem" is massively overstated and deliberaly misconstrued by the media and the government. This has been the case for decades now and it's the age-old classic used in countries throughout history.

Look at statistics and see. Right now there is obsession with small boats from France. A tiny portion of overall illegal immigration. This is because the government can hide behind the guise they are targetting them because they actually care about the safety of people in the boats. They do not care in the slightest obviously.

There is also the added bonus that France can be blamed. What proper Englishman would ever decline such an opportunity?

The whole time everybody is fussing and fighting over a couple of boats. Nobody talks about the real issues. Always the tactic used. Maybe having to process lots of migrants is not a problem if we actually had sufficient housing being built in this country. But it is not, and this affects evrybody regardless of migrant status, race, age etc. but yes of course it's not a problem for the rich!
 
@ayase, thankyou for clarifying your intended meaning, I am sorry I didn't give any acknowledgement of your response sooner. I would feedback to you that that's not how you came across at the time (at least to me), but I believe you didn't intend to sound so callous :)

@Rui I wanted to clarify that I'm pro-immigration and believe everyone deserves humane treatment, in case anything I said made you or anyone else here doubt that. (I know you haven't commented on what I said, I just was not sure how I'd come across so am clarifying a bit). I was making the point that it's particularly concerning that people fleeing war and persecution are being treated this way, but I don't wish to give the impression that I have an unwelcoming attitude to immigrants who are not classed as refugees :)
 
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@Rui I wanted to clarify that I'm pro-immigration and believe everyone deserves humane treatment, in case anything I said made you or anyone else here doubt that. (I know you haven't commented on what I said, I just was not sure how I'd come across so am clarifying a bit). I was making the point that it's particularly concerning that people fleeing war and persecution are being treated this way, but I don't wish to give the impression that I have an unwelcoming attitude to immigrants who are not classed as refugees :)

I think it was clear that you were on the side of compassion :)

R
 
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