Manx Members Of The Bnp

[The Old Git]

Thats one of the most long winded, badly concieved, and totally illogical posts I've read.

 

That's why I gave up reading his posts a while back.

[Sebrof]

So you don't think work is imposed on people? And because of that you think I am a nitwit? Please explain.

 

Because your brain is apparently incapable of grasping the fact that roofs do not grow on trees. Timber has to be cut down and sawn into beams, tiles have to be manufactured, and the whole caboodle has to be erected.

 

All of that is what is called work. And without it, there is no roof.

 

Work is an imposition, certainly. It is imposed by our own desire to survive, and indeed to live in some degree of comfort. We make a trade-off. By imposing work on ourselves, we are able to buy food to feed ourselves, fuel to keep us warm, and computers to impart our sometimes ridiculous views to others.

 

Most of all I think you are a nitwit because you can't think through the consequences of a proposition - for instance, you claimed shoplifting is not wrong. You clearly can't see that if we all took that view, there would be no shops.

 

It seems to me, Dolch, that you want others to work to give you the roof, the computer, and whatever else you fancy. You sound rather like an old-fashioned capitalist, in fact, living off the sweat of others.

 

Basically, you're an idle hypocrite with sawdust for brains.

 

S

[John]

http://www.manxradio.com/readNEwsItem.aspx?id=28308

[Slim]

Because your brain is apparently incapable of grasping the fact that roofs do not grow on trees. Timber has to be cut down and sawn into beams, tiles have to be manufactured, and the whole caboodle has to be erected.

 

All of that is what is called work. And without it, there is no roof.

 

I think you're over generalizing a touch. While there are people who produce things we need like houses and food and power, most of us work in jobs that society really wouldn't miss at all.

[Chinahand]

Crickey - Slim's sounding like Naomi Klein - Yuck

[Slim]

Crickey - Slim's sounding like Naomi Klein - Yuck

 

That such a bad thing? Like her, I'm not a great fan of the darker side of globalisation, employing Chinese kids to assemble our track suits for a pittance and shipping them round half the world while we all sit back with large salaries and design logo's to stick on them.

[Skeddan]

Immigrants (ie not born here) to the Isle of Man are 52.4% of the population (2006) census.

Immigrants to the UK only account for 7.53% of the population (2001 census).

Freggyragh - I don't think it's 'immigration' which is directly relevant to BNP support; it's 'other' racial ethnic groups. BNP don't mind immigration from places with white British or similar ethnicity - e.g. from Australia. (I don't know about the French or the Italians though). Britons from non-white ethnic groups would be encouraged to depart. 3rd generation Afro-Carribean, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese, and so on are not 'immigrants', but would be considered 'foreign' by BNP.

 

IoM immigrants - I don't have the figures to hand but in IoM the immigrants are principally from the UK. I haven't seen anything about ethnicity of these immigrants, but I would guess there are relatively very few from non-European ethnic groups.

 

pongo is sort of right about scale issues. The relevant thing there is concentration. In some parts of the UK people with non-European ethnicity make up a very high proportion of the local population, in others there are virtually none. A town in Suffolk can be a million miles away from Birmingham or Bradford.

 

Then there are racial stereotypes. African and Indian subcontinent ethnicities are the principal targets. Others, such as Chinese and Korean are often - but not always - seen as more acceptable - hard working etc.

 

A fair amount though is probably better explained by fear stress and perceived threat to way of life. When unemployment rises, cost of living increases, and there is less economic security, then stresses can easily find a kind of instinctive tribalist response. New Maldon has high Korean population, but is affluent area so little racial troubles. If same population was in depressed and deprived area, then they'd be 'taking jobs', 'sponging benefits' and the rest of it.

 

Personally I think that race/ethnicity is often less a factor than cultural differences - which can create tensions, mistrust and stress. Being Anglicised and 'assimilated' probably is a bigger factor than just racial differences (i.e. a bit like the LDS racism of making 'the blacks' like white folk, in which case they might be ok as long as they remember they are 2nd class citizens and an underclass).

 

I also think it would be a mistake to suppose a single profile for BNP supporters. There are probably basic racists and grown-up football hooligans and school bullies, the disenchanted ex-Labour supporters, older ex-Tory supporters wanting a return to a mythic 1950s golden age of national service and respect for authority, the Little Britain vomiting woman type, and some people who want to feel 'national identity' (which Welsh and Scots have far more than the English) and like all that kind of sentiment.

[The Old Git]

Activist. Ex-Conservative and then Lib-Dem councillor, ex-chairman of local Green Party and UKIP member

Minister of Religion. Cert. Ed. Hobbies: steam railways

 

Sounds like a very confused chap!

 

I wonder if this is the same bloke in a Mail article today who also says "he left the BNP because of its racist policies .... I was misled by what they said about themselves"

 

Imagine that

[Chinahand]

Crickey - Slim's sounding like Naomi Klein - Yuck

 

That such a bad thing? Like her, I'm not a great fan of the darker side of globalisation, employing Chinese kids to assemble our track suits for a pittance and shipping them round half the world while we all sit back with large salaries and design logo's to stick on them.

Yeah, she would probably have campaigned to keep these little mites in the peasant villages and fields too.

 

 

 

I'm not a fan of poverty either - I've worked a fair proportion of my life in developing countries and have seen both rural destitution and urban slums.

 

Both are pretty horrible, but by providing jobs and a pool of labour for developing industries slums provide a way out of poverty. It took 200 years for it to happen in the UK (first picture), 100 in the US (second picture).

 

More reecently as investment money no longer needs to be generated locally it took 75 years in Japan and 50 in Korea - China might beat that record - though its still got a long way to go - its poorer than Albania on a per capita ppp basis. I hope so.

 

How people spend money boils down to tastes - if people have a taste for poetry, poets become rich; designer jeans, the makers of designer labels.

 

Its a funny old world, but sneering at people who create jobs to make track suits when its a persons choice whether they buy such things comes over to me as about face. We can get socially superior to people who wear such things, poor brain-washed fashion victims, but the world is complicated. Due to child labour campaigners and Corporate Social Responsibility rules it is rare that children supply goods to multinationals etc (the record in China is very good). Child labour is far more dominant in craft industries where outwork goes into the villages - you are far far more likely to find those types of products in the local flea market on the ethnic stand than in Tescos or with a designer brand. And who buys the stuff from the ethnic stand - the fans of Naomi Klein. Ironic isn't it.

 

Jagdish Bhagwati makes a lot more sense than Ms Klein.

[Albert Tatlock]

I expect actual membership of a political party is an indicator of some sort of what is going on in a country. In terms of party membership the last estimates were:

• Labour 176,891
  
• Conservative 290,000
  
• Lib Dems 64,000
  
• BNP (since release of list): 12,000
  

Labour figures have fallen quite dramatically over recents years from 400,000 at the peak of Blair's popularity, which is probably more of an indication of what has going on in Labour, including supporting the Iraq/Afghan wars. A BNP membership of 12,000 people is not that many, but from these membership figures and the various political polls, I would suppose a figure of 12,000 probably reflects the views of around 1 in 20 or 1 in 30 people overall in the UK.

 

There was a series of interesting documentaries out some months ago on BBC called the 'White Season' which covered some of the issues raised by the BNP and others: such as Enoch Powell's speeches, class, and non-integration of ethnic communities in parts of the UK. What came out was the fact many people are unhappy with major aspects of immigration, particularly the non-integration aspects, that since Enoch Powell's speeches and the repurcussions, politicians have been frightened to speak out, and that there is a view that there has been disproportionate positive discrimination in terms of numbers, education and finance.

 

The hipocracy that abounds in all of this is often shown by the way both Labour and the Conservatives make immigration an issue at many elections i.e. the major party's often don't practice what they preach. A similar thing happened in the Isle of Man elections in 2006, when immigration was reportedly the biggest issue raised on many door steps, got mentioned in manifestos and speeches, and yet has not been acted upon or barely mentioned since - in fact I would go as far to say that voters concerns have practically been ignored.

 

In other words whatever the rights and wrongs of it all, there are clearly many people from all walks of life that are unhappy with the direction the UK has gone in the last few decades, and are unhappy with the emphases placed on a minority of the overall population. They get mixed messages when all party's stoke things up periodically, yet the same party's seem to have a silent agreement to do nothing about it or the issues raised - hence the vacuum filled by the BNP. Whilst immigration it is not a racist issue on the island, it is more of a cultural issue and a financial issue in the making because of the higher proportion of outsiders being allowed to settle here and outnumber, outprice and outbuy the locals, as well as the large number of elderly immigrants.

 

Addressing these things, whether the issues are racist, cultural, or about resources, by simply saying 'it is wrong to think that way' is no long term solution IMO, though it seems to be the only one on offer for racism at the moment - and so what we may have to face up to is the fact that there isn't actually a solution to racism, only that it will possibly diminish after a great deal of time, which, when you actually think about it, has been happening over the past decades in the UK.

 

On the island the growing immigration issue is not about racism it is about resources, and on the island if we don't face up to unlimited immigration, especially in terms of the 27% of the population that are now over 65 (compared to 15% in the UK) this is going to become a major issue - most likely coming to the fore when Alan Bell does his next few budgets and many families find they are faced, not least, with major cut backs in health and social care provision. We could have learned much from the divisions that have occurred and are occuring in the UK, though it seems we are choosing not to, at the expense of many young families here who are the taxpayers who will be expected to pay these additional costs, who may get little benefit in return, and who may never be able to afford their own house if this pattern continues. That IMO is also a political vacuum in the making.

[jimbms]

Just been listening to the Radio 4 news.

 

"The list has now been removed from the internet"

Is that right? So what about the 18 copies on bit torrent sites or the 11 copies on middle eastern blog sites this morning?

[Slim]

How people spend money boils down to tastes - if people have a taste for poetry, poets become rich; designer jeans, the makers of designer labels.

 

Sure, I'm just saying that you don't need poets or designer jeans to put a roof over your head. It's the difference between wants and needs I guess.

 

Re: Globalisation and exploitation of developing countries, I won't argue that there are benefits and it's helping those countries improve quality of living. But it's also hindering them too. By paying shit wages and exporting quality goods, isn't it keeping them down rather than helping them up? I'd rather we produced our own quality goods for a price that discouraged the wastefulness of our modern lifes and China produced their own too. Simplistic perhaps, but I hate the buy cheap at the environments and third worlds expense and throw away mentality.

 

Edit: Give Jim a coconut someone

[John]

We all need what we don't want and want what we don't need

 

This BNP subject is shooting way off the subject.

 

Maybe a thread about modern society and the wrongs and rights would serve a better purpose.

 

I have read on IOM Online that there will be a story in the Manx Independent about an Ex BNP Member receiving threats.

 

The backlash has began and people will use it as an excuse to inflict violence upon others.

[thebees]

Awe LDV, lots of the time when I read your posts I have Ragged Trousered Philanthropist moments, Socialism is such a lovely romantic idea but the practicality of it, it is sadly lost in human nature. I'm not rich enough to be a true socilaist but I like to think I do my best, the company I work for is small and un-greedy and I like to help people whenever I can.

[Freggyragh]

As my daughter is half Indian, I have no problems with people of 'other races' and I have a set of political views that are certainly 'left of centre'

 

The BNP is a legitimate political party and although most find it's views abhorrent, they have a right to be heard. That's the downside of what we call democracy.

 

The very existence of a political 'party' that proposes racial discrimination and deportation on the grounds of 'ethnic impurity' is a threat to you, your family and your society. Europe has been through all this before you know. The individual members of the bnp I do feel sorry for, most of them seem to be a bit deluded and and probably didn't put much thought into what they were doing when they handed over the cash. I hope they come to their senses. I wonder though, does anyone see a conspiracy in all this? Maybe Griffin was seeking to 'purge' the party?