The Mayor of Calais

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30613475

We're doomed
On a serious note what baffoon fitted that fence
I thought that the height of a fence, one third was buried

 

Maybe the French secretly wanted it to blow down

 

@noisette47 , out of curiosity, which part of my lengthy post did you disagree with? Were you disagreeing with my statement that I don't like blanket terms for real people, or another bit?

 

Just to balance things out a bit, here's the viewpoint from France. (Thank you @rosietutu )
France has a severe immigration problem as a result of colonising N.Africa and the West Indies. It is mostly but not exclusively centred on the big cities . The official French attitude to these former colonists is that they are French, with the same rights as indigenous French people. That is a very expensive attitude!
The unofficial attitude is one of tolerance as long as the immigrants are 'correct'..i.e. they work for a living or have the means to support themselves and don't try to impose their religion and cultural values on their host country.
Sarko tried to introduce measures to ensure that any immigrant arriving in France 'would not be a burden on the French State'. Not a racist law....it would have applied to all immigrants and was designed to relieve the enormous deficit in the benefits and health budgets. How can that be wrong? He was trying to put France's economy back on an even keel and ensure that people coming in were going to contribute to France, not just take.
The French on the whole don't 'do' charity, either on a personal or a national scale. (There are a few exceptions!) They firmly believe that having and raising a family of civilised, well-brought-up children to be civilised, well-balanced adults who take a pride in their country is what life is all about. Yes, they are insular and protectionist and patriotic...but then, frankly, their country has mostly always been something to be proud of.....probably because of that attitude?
Sorry, @clueless, but I just don't believe that many of the multitude waiting to cross the Channel are true refugees. They are economic refugees. While I don't blame them for wanting to escape to a 'rich' country to benefit financially, the 'rich' countries' governments are steadily becoming bankrupt, so where does that leave everyone??
I wonder how the economies of Australia and New Zealand are? For many years now they've had a policy of restricting immigration to those who will contribute positively to their host country. Good for them!
P.S. Good point @pete, about word getting back. In this day and age, it's not difficult to keep in touch with anyone anywhere in the world

 

Not at all....I think it's important to differentiate between illegal immigrants and true refugees and economic refugees. But I also think that a country's government has a responsibility first and foremost to the indigenous population of that country. When the quality of life, pensions, healthcare etc etc starts to go downhill for people who have contributed to a system all their working lives because the coffers are empty and the infrastructure is overloaded, then it's time to re-evaluate priorities. IMHO.

 

Thanks for the clarification, and apologies if I seemed abrupt. Its just that I have a pet hate of the 'disagree' button when its not backed up with explanation, it feels like the old 'talk to the hand cos the face aint listening' line

 

Sorry....I was cooking dinner at the time and couldn't elaborate

 

I agree, but some times your told to shut up, so cant elaborate.
Not in this thread mind you.

 

Well said @noisette Well the infrastructures are definitely overloaded, health service is at breaking point, so lets re-evaluate and vote UKIP!!!!

 

Shut up Pete

Really Val? Vote UKIP and what?

Watch the country fall apart as all the investors withdraw their money?

Watch the country fall apart as a bunch of bumbling idiots try to run the country with only one policy?

Or worse case scenario, watch as the vote is divided again so we end up with another sodding useless coalition government?

The Tories and the Liberals have had their chance. It wasn't Labour's fault that the banks brought the world to its knees with their greed and they did the best they could under the circumstances, they didn't let a bank fail, which would have had horrendous knock on effects.

It's time to get Labour back into power so they can sort the mess out for all of us, not just the few at the top.

It would be a disaster if we left the EU now and without doing that none of the parties can have any say over immigration to or from the EU.

Labour have admitted that they failed on the immigration policy while they were in power last time, don't hear the tories saying anything like that even though immigration has increased while they've been in, when they promised to cut it.

It's a moot point though as none of them have the power to do anything other than to cut immigration from outside the EU.

And while i'm on my soap box, how come the middle of England is so full of folk from outside the EU that they actually want Sharia law? How did that happen?

 

Oh god, not Wallace, or is it Grommit?
We had, Teflon Tony, Gordon is a moron.

"And while i'm on my soap box, how come the middle of England is so full of folk from outside the EU that they actually want Sharia law? How did that happen?"

Because Teflon Tony opened the flood gates, what is done, is done, and cannot be reversed.

 

There you go then, we're gonna have to live with it and stop saying we're gonna raise the drawbridge now, as everyone is already here,

So Tony Blair let everyone from outside the EU in did he?

 

The infrastructure round here is doing just fine. It is in many parts of the country that I've been too. Ok, there are pockets where it is struggling, but that's largely down to years of very, very bad planning. For example, when I lived in Sheffield, we had one small GP surgery in our whole area, despite Sheffield being the 4th biggest city in the UK. Most of the housing in that area is old, so nobody can say that it was built up and built up in response to overwhelming demand. The largest of the two main hospitals is built on the west side of the city, where there are no major roads to or from it without passing right through the whole city.

But what if you are right? What if the Daily Express is right? The infrastructure is collapsing under the weight of millions of illegal immigrants (and nothing to do with the population boom among 'native' Brits, or decades of poor management of government spending). Will UKIP really step into power and wave a magic wand? They have proven time and time again that they are a bunch of half wits. Their primary goal is to pull us out of the EU, but will they do that in such a way that we still maintain friendships and alliances with Europe? I get the impression that they want to stand on the cliffs over Dover, flick the V's at France, and then instantly isolated Britain. I'm in favour of pulling out of the EU, but I think for it to happen without detriment to us, it will take several years of negotiations, several decades of government spending to rebuilding all the stuff that we've effectively outsourced (our power generation facilities and much of our military capability spring to mind), and lots of discussions among EU business leaders to make sure we can all still trade freely. UKIP have done nothing to convince me that they can do all that, but they've said a lot to convince me that they can't and they'll just blow it and leave us all skint and nationally weak.

 

Same problem here....the Front National would be in like a shot in the next election if the electorate weren't just a bit scared at the prospect of voting in a party that has no experience in running the country and would put off sorely-needed outside investment. BUT if they succeeded in, um, how to phrase this....re-claiming France for the French........would that be counter-balanced by the huge savings made by the Securité Sociale? Whichever government is in power here, the first thing to tackle is the ridiculously top-heavy administrative layer. For example, there is an office to administer state pensions for each and every type of employment That's a lot of functionnaires all on very comfortable salaries, pensions and perks.....
Ditto the NHS. It all started going badly wrong when vast sums were spent on more managers and admin staff than nursing staff and facilities.
IMHO

 

You really think that Ed Miliband is going to sort this country out?? Total joke!!!

Because the Muslims are taking over, slowly but surely, and we are letting them!!