British culture - Is there any such thing?

[MC Bodge]

How has this thread turned into a standard NP&E thread?

It might as well have its title changed.

[Nomme de Plum]

272BHP said:

Nomme de Plum said:

Suggest you stay there and let the rest of the UK do its thing. We are doing fine and enjoying our culture diversifying to be inclusive of all our immigrants.

But what do we do when our immigrants have no interest in diversity and inclusivity?

Don't they. Could it be that they are made to feel very unwelcome and still receiving racists and religious abuse on an all too regular basis.

As it happens i see the families around me mixing without any issue and joining in our social events from time to time. Do you make similar invitations?

Why is that Brits overseas congregate together, if permanent live in local communes and create a little England with bars etc? Is that acceptable?

I would now say that the Notting Hill Carnival has become part of our Culture much like Glastonbury, Pride week and the Edinburgh Festival. I'm sure there are many more and represent who we are as a nation.

Edited by Nomme de Plum on Friday 16th February 09:19

Edited by Nomme de Plum on Friday 16th February 09:19

[Kermit power]

Kermit power said:

TonyToniTone said:

Nomme de Plum said:

TonyToniTone said:

I wonder what the stats look for grooming gangs?

Feel free to do some research and post your findings.

British-Pakistani researchers have found that 84% of all people convicted since 2005 for the specific crime of gang grooming were Asian.

https://news.sky.com/story/grooming-gang-convictio...

Lots of detail.

Having given this some more thought, I've decided it can be massively simplified...

The only reason that the ethnicity of grooming gangs can be made to look like such a huge issue is because it is such a miniscule issue.

If we assume that on average there are around ten members convicted in each of those gangs, then we're talking about an average of about one single case each year. Given that each of those crimes is utterly abhorrent and extremely serious, it's not going to be at all difficult to find out the ethnicity of the people convicted just from scanning newspaper reports, hence we have that data. Whether there is a racial element or not to those crimes, it's really easy to claim one, based on that ethnicity.

Consider the vastly greater number of convictions for other offences and it becomes completely impossible to attribute a racial element to them because of that vastness. How many groups of white men (or black, or indeed, Asian) have been convicted in that 19 year period for crimes such as people trafficking for prostitution and the like?

Typically, people trafficking gangs also prey on white women. Presumably they do so because more white women are available to prey on? Why, then, do you attribute a racial motivation to Pakistani men preying on white women when they're just as likely as anyone else to be aiming for the easiest target?

All these crimes are repugnant and indefensible, but that's not an excuse to use a tiny number of crimes to try and tar an entire ethnic group with the same brush.

[272BHP]

Nomme de Plum said:

Don't they. Could it be that they are made to feel very unwelcome and still receiving racists and religious abuse on an all too regular basis.

As it happens i see the families around me mixing without any issue and joining in our social events from time to time. Do you make similar invitations?

Mixing with other families is not the issue. Many are also on the face of it upstanding members of communities, hidden from view though many hold quite repugnant views on women's rights, homosexuality, Israel etc.

And there is no apparent fix to this when those views are part of their religious identity.

[crankedup5]

Nomme de Plum said:

crankedup5 said:

Already we have deep fake political announcements courtesy of AI . We have Governments already attempting to be in a position of just how to ‘control’ AI ensuring that=only good comes from the tech’. Bit late and fanciful for that, one MP even announced being ahead of the AI curve, naive at best. I would love to be around for the next ten years.

Deep fake announcements (AI generated) from 'politicians' isn't really going to impact employment numbers. There will need to be some very significant advances before whole sale roles currently carried out by persons disappear.

O you honestly believe what you suggest, I’m very surprised,

[colin_p]

Useful idiots will be useful idiots.

Naive to the extreme and incapable of realising their ongoing folly.

They can't be bargained with, can't be reasoned with. They don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear! And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until everyone accepts their fantasies and delusions.

Better to leave them to virtue signal and happy clap amongst themselves. At least for today, anyway.

[Ashfordian]

Nomme de Plum said:

In 2000 our population was 59M and it is now 68M. Can you make a categoric statement that should that growth have been entirely organic. ie UK families having more children that the situation would be exactly the same as you now assert.

So, you want 200k a year net immigration. Yet, you provide the reality of 400k net immigration a year for the past 23 years.

You again miss the point that making the population bigger is growth only the gullible believe in.

But back to the last 23 years, how has it gone with this continued immigration?

The following quote sums up you population Ponzi loons perfectly, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

[TonyToniTone]

Nomme de Plum said:

Why wouldn't I and 100% is even higher and if you really want to have your stomach churned look at the number of children that suffer sexual abuse with their families. Overwhelmingly male and nearly all white.

It's a very unfortunate fact.

You see there is a very massive difference between saying 100% of the paedophilic rings are white and 84% of grooming gangs are Asian and saying 100% of white males are paedophiles or 84% of Asians are in grooming gangs. I trust you understand this.

Bad and perverted people exist.

Of course I understand this and it should go without saying, the only reason asked the original question because you were dancing on a pin head.

[Nomme de Plum]

crankedup5 said:

Nomme de Plum said:

crankedup5 said:

Already we have deep fake political announcements courtesy of AI . We have Governments already attempting to be in a position of just how to ‘control’ AI ensuring that=only good comes from the tech’. Bit late and fanciful for that, one MP even announced being ahead of the AI curve, naive at best. I would love to be around for the next ten years.

Deep fake announcements (AI generated) from 'politicians' isn't really going to impact employment numbers. There will need to be some very significant advances before whole sale roles currently carried out by persons disappear.

O you honestly believe what you suggest, I’m very surprised,

I've seen many roles disappear over my lifetime through technology advancements. We used to have typing pools and comptometer departments. Payroll departments would have been purely labour driven. Accountancy will, have seen massive changes. Yet here we are in 2024 with only 3.8% unemployment and 1M job vacancies.

Not addressed to you but Whinging seems to be pretty high on the list of British Culture.

[TonyToniTone]

Kermit power said:

Having given this some more thought, I've decided it can be massively simplified...

The only reason that the ethnicity of grooming gangs can be made to look like such a huge issue is because it is such a miniscule issue.

Looks like, miniscule, such weasley words, the reason it was a big issue is because it was ignored and swept under the carpet.

miniscule

INFORMAL
so small as to be insignificant.

[Nomme de Plum]

Ashfordian said:

Nomme de Plum said:

In 2000 our population was 59M and it is now 68M. Can you make a categoric statement that should that growth have been entirely organic. ie UK families having more children that the situation would be exactly the same as you now assert.

So, you want 200k a year net immigration. Yet, you provide the reality of 400k net immigration a year for the past 23 years.

You again miss the point that making the population bigger is growth only the gullible believe in.

But back to the last 23 years, how has it gone with this continued immigration?

The following quote sums up you population Ponzi loons perfectly, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

When did

"I see nothing wrong with 200k net increase into the UK annually maybe even 300K, excluding students. If after graduating some of those students remain then they count toward the total allowance."

Become a wish?

Yes there has been a population increase of 11M either home grown or immigrant. Who would have done the jobs without those people.

I, and my company employed a quite a few whilst having large undergrad and grad training programmes. We employed outwith the UK, Germans, Spanish, French Chinese, American, South Africans Nigerian, Indians Filipinos to list a few. Across all grades including Partner level. We were at the top of the pay league also ensuring our staff packages were second to none.

It seems you would desire to strangle my companie's growth by stopping immigration.

Are you growing your company from only UK born and bred individuals?

[Nomme de Plum]

TonyToniTone said:

Kermit power said:

Having given this some more thought, I've decided it can be massively simplified...

The only reason that the ethnicity of grooming gangs can be made to look like such a huge issue is because it is such a miniscule issue.

Looks like, miniscule, such weasley words, the reason it was a big issue is because it was ignored and swept under the carpet.

miniscule

INFORMAL
so small as to be insignificant.

Nobody is denying that warning signs were ignored but why the concentration just on this rather than the very much larger completely home grown and overwhelmingly white sexual abuse, paedophilia and domestic violence against women. When I say larger I mean larger by absolute numbers and larger as a percentage of the white population. A religious person (not me) may mention splinter and plank.

From my perspective it looks like an obsession based on race/religion.

[Kermit power]

Ashfordian said:

Nomme de Plum said:

In 2000 our population was 59M and it is now 68M. Can you make a categoric statement that should that growth have been entirely organic. ie UK families having more children that the situation would be exactly the same as you now assert.

So, you want 200k a year net immigration. Yet, you provide the reality of 400k net immigration a year for the past 23 years.

You again miss the point that making the population bigger is growth only the gullible believe in.

But back to the last 23 years, how has it gone with this continued immigration?

The following quote sums up you population Ponzi loons perfectly, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

That's a perfectly good quote, but unfortunately it is about as relevant to this discussion as that other famous quote "if music be the food of love, play on".

The government has started to increase retirement age, so that will start to decrease the level of immigration required in future years.

The rate at which life expectancy is increasing has plateaued, so that too will reduce the amount of immigration required.

All you need to do now is find a way to persuade British mothers to start to have 2.1 children each and yes, you could eventually get to the point of needing little or no immigration.

Until you've nailed that birth rate, though, the only insanity bit is repeating over and over again that we don't need immigration and expecting it to be true.

[chrispmartha]

272BHP said:

Nomme de Plum said:

Don't they. Could it be that they are made to feel very unwelcome and still receiving racists and religious abuse on an all too regular basis.

As it happens i see the families around me mixing without any issue and joining in our social events from time to time. Do you make similar invitations?

Mixing with other families is not the issue. Many are also on the face of it upstanding members of communities, hidden from view though many hold quite repugnant views on women's rights, homosexuality, Israel etc.

And there is no apparent fix to this when those views are part of their religious identity.

Many ‘indigenous’ (not really a word i ise but it gets used here) people hold those views too

[Kermit power]

TonyToniTone said:

Kermit power said:

Having given this some more thought, I've decided it can be massively simplified...

The only reason that the ethnicity of grooming gangs can be made to look like such a huge issue is because it is such a miniscule issue.

Looks like, miniscule, such weasley words, the reason it was a big issue is because it was ignored and swept under the carpet.

miniscule

INFORMAL
so small as to be insignificant.

Sorry, did you actually have to go and look up the dictionary definition of "miniscule" to understand what it meant?

There have, according to your own document, been fewer than 300 people convicted of gang grooming offences in the past 19 years.

In comparison, over 6,000 people were convicted of sexual offences against children in 2022 alone, and total sexual offences is far, far higher again.

That's not trivialising the suffering of the individual grooming gangs, but it is still an absolutely miniscule number in comparison.

To give you an analogy, do you remember Wootton Bassett being made Royal Wootton Bassett to thank them for coming out to line the High Street over the course of a number of years to honour the several hundred dead British service personnel whose coffins were driven through after repatriation from Iraq and Afghanistan? Of course each and every one of those soliders' deaths would have absolutely destroyed their own families' lives, but I'm sure you'd agree that they represented a miniscule number compared to the 19,240 British soldiers killed just on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, never mind WW1 as a whole?

As for the notion of grooming gangs being brushed under the carpet, you can't seriously say you've remained oblivious to the whole "there's no point telling anyone because they'll believe me, not you" line of so many from Jimmy Savile through to school teachers, politicians and multiple members of the Catholic clergy, can you? There are people who've got away with hideous crimes like that across all groups in society.

[Ashfordian]

Nomme de Plum said:

When did

"I see nothing wrong with 200k net increase into the UK annually maybe even 300K, excluding students. If after graduating some of those students remain then they count toward the total allowance."

Become a wish?

Yes there has been a population increase of 11M either home grown or immigrant. Who would have done the jobs without those people.

I, and my company employed a quite a few whilst having large undergrad and grad training programmes. We employed outwith the UK, Germans, Spanish, French Chinese, American, South Africans Nigerian, Indians Filipinos to list a few. Across all grades including Partner level. We were at the top of the pay league also ensuring our staff packages were second to none.

It seems you would desire to strangle my companie's growth by stopping immigration.

Are you growing your company from only UK born and bred individuals?

The reality, rather than your bubble (which is where your are blinkered from reality), is that companies have used immigration to suppress UK salaries. I know personally of companies that did/do this, even only advertising said roles abroad in cheap wage countries. And this was for senior technical roles, well into the 40% tax bracket, even at the suppressed rates.

Then there is the reality of minimum wage payers who did the same, suppressing UK salaries with cheap foreign labour, and exploited the benefits system to pick up the tab.

But yes, in your world we need Ponzi population growth, as it has worked so well for the previous 23 years...

[Nomme de Plum]

Ashfordian said:

The reality, rather than your bubble (which is where your are blinkered from reality), is that companies have used immigration to suppress UK salaries. I know personally of companies that did/do this, even only advertising said roles abroad in cheap wage countries. And this was for senior technical roles, well into the 40% tax bracket, even at the suppressed rates.

Then there is the reality of minimum wage payers who did the same, suppressing UK salaries with cheap foreign labour, and exploited the benefits system to pick up the tab.

But yes, in your world we need Ponzi population growth, as it has worked so well for the previous 23 years...

Immigration has made the UK a better and wealthier place over many decades. Some of those immigrants do jobs UK workers refuse to do particularly in the care and service sector.

I see nothing wrong with having to compete for a role. We do it at the company level for contracts of whatever type and we do it at the personal level. Nothing stops a person being better than the competition.

Is it not ironic that people expect fierce completion for goods and services but have an aversion when they have to compete themselves. That sounds very left wing to me.

The only result from not having competition is a gradual degradation of expertise and professionalism. We should never let this happen.

We are short of Doctors nurses care workers and many other positions remain unfilled. Hospitality has struggled to keep going partly due to lack of staff.

I hope xenophobia never becomes part of British Culture and we continue to welcome people into the UK and help others that are oppressed in their own countries.

I've been listening to the Lord's debates on the Rwanda bill. The Lords are exemplyfing what is and I hope remains part of British Culture. Integrity and Justice and adhering to conventions that we ourselves helped create. That to me is the essence of being British.

I hope the Government's proposals are roundly defeated or amended substantially as currently they are very anti British in nature.

[ZedLeg]

Ashfordian said:

The reality, rather than your bubble (which is where your are blinkered from reality), is that companies have used immigration to suppress UK salaries. I know personally of companies that did/do this, even only advertising said roles abroad in cheap wage countries. And this was for senior technical roles, well into the 40% tax bracket, even at the suppressed rates.

Then there is the reality of minimum wage payers who did the same, suppressing UK salaries with cheap foreign labour, and exploited the benefits system to pick up the tab.

But yes, in your world we need Ponzi population growth, as it has worked so well for the previous 23 years...

The way to fix that is to set the minimum wage higher, not stop immigration.

[Kermit power]

ZedLeg said:

Ashfordian said:

The reality, rather than your bubble (which is where your are blinkered from reality), is that companies have used immigration to suppress UK salaries. I know personally of companies that did/do this, even only advertising said roles abroad in cheap wage countries. And this was for senior technical roles, well into the 40% tax bracket, even at the suppressed rates.

Then there is the reality of minimum wage payers who did the same, suppressing UK salaries with cheap foreign labour, and exploited the benefits system to pick up the tab.

But yes, in your world we need Ponzi population growth, as it has worked so well for the previous 23 years...

The way to fix that is to set the minimum wage higher, not stop immigration.

To be fair, stopping immigration will also fix it, just so long as you don't mind a country where only the wealthy can afford such ridiculous luxuries as healthcare, consumer goods, haircuts, non-diy plumbing and so on.

[QJumper]

Kermit power said:

Nomme de Plum said:

As to falling birth rate I've never said economics would not make any difference but the evidence indicates that it is the education and autonomy of women along with easy access to birth control ( the pill) which has been the main factor in driving down the birth rate. It 's been seen in the UK and other developed economy and also in developing nations. Anecdotal I know but I see a number of young people here in their early 30s who are now either on child 2 or 3 so the economy is not putting them off.

That's one side of it. The other side is that alongside women getting that access to education, autonomy and contraception, they also got access to things like their own bank accounts and not having to stop work once they got married.

That's all well and good, of course, but it was combined with loosening of restrictions on mortgages, so maximum borrowing went over time from 2x the husband's salary only to ludicrous levels of 10x combined salaries in some cases. The net result of that was that in the course of about 3 generations, women went from not being able to work once they'd married through briefly having the choice to work or not then ending up in the position now where the overwhelming majority can't afford not to work, and many have to choose between kids and buying a house.

I know very, very few people with a single child. Lots with two, and a fair few with three or more. But also huge numbers with none at all. It seems that once you do start having kids, you likely have much the same sort of family size as your parents or grandparents would've had, with the lack of babies problem coming from so many people not having them at all.

From what I can see, it's a mixture of the economy putting people off, as well as women choosing to defer settling down and having children while they pursue a career. Of course some (many) of the latter hit their thirties and forties still single, and then struggle to find a suitable partner.

Contraception, birth control, easy access to abortion, and equal opportunities and pay, have certainly led to more freedom and choices for women, which is a good thing. The unforeseen consequences of those choices are that many women now have to work, where previously it was a choice. The shift in social dynamics that equality brought also means that women are encouraged to compete with men, as individuals; whereas the previous goal in society was for men and women to co-operate, in pursuit of a family.

It's not just women's choices though, but men's too. Contraception has enabled women to pursue sex more freely, meaning that men have to offer less for it. Previously a man had to commit to at least a relationship, if not marriage, in order to get sex, whereas now it's freely available on a decent first date. Couple that with the ease of divorce, mostly initiated by women, and there's little incentive for men to get married, let alone have kids.

As for sustainable population growth numbers, it's also worth noting that in 1960, there were around 14k abortions in the UK, whereas today it's around a quarter of a million. Most of these are through choice rather than health reasons. Now choice is a good thing, but often that choice is either due to financial hardship or pursuing a career, rather than not wanting a child. If there was better support for women in this regard then we'd likely not have to import so many people.

Ultimately freedom of choice is a good thing but, without any understanding of the unforeseen consequnces, it's not an informed choice, and one that often leads to regrets.These freedoms have certainly provided many benefits for women, but the resulting choices have also boxed them into a corner of circumstances that have tempered those benefits with a matching level of disadvantages. It has led to a series of societal changes that have resulted in not only a declining birthrate, but a division in society. A division in which men and women's goals and desires are no longer aligned, but often at odds with each other.