Madmac

I put it down to having to drive on the 'wrong' side of the road here: scares people off. Lol

iaink

That and the fact its a dark frozen wilderness for 6 months of the year.

Madmac

...and when you combine both factors, it's easy to see why the sunshine of the Gold coast beckons to more folk.

SANDRAPAUL

If you begin to pick through the threads of information coming through now you will see some of those with some form of social concern that the net inflow and the degree of outflow as per type is taking the affect of making the rich RICHER and the poor POORER as the low income types are being replaced with even lower income types. The 'Corporates' are having a laugh as if Bloke 'A' won't do there are plenty who will for half the pay even if English is not there first or even second language. No issues with the poor immigrants doing well as far as I am concerned but I have issues with Politicians who claim it is for the good of all. Bollocks is it. This quick influx will create more and more denser Ghetto type areas that I was starting to see coming along in what were 'ordinary' areas. Why Ghetto - because if these people are paid less they can afford less and will end up living in groups in the run down areas...but that is and will spread out to the fringes of the middle classes of Britania. Then it will be 'My God' I did not think 'They' would need to live quite so close to us as that. Quick someone call Tony. Answer comes back that person is no longer available at the above address.

You reap what you sow. And you can only benefit for so long. Controlled 'people movement' should make the world better equiped in the long-run but not if it gets to piss off those that are not being considered who were there first. What is bad though is that those that create the situation can afford to retire quietly to the Caribbean or South of France whilst pontificating on what all the anger in the UK during the period 2020-2050 is really all about.

You might hear them say whilst sipping a vodka martini basking in the warm meditteranean sun 'My God what more do these working class people want - they should feel lucky to be British - is that not enough'.

I could expand on the British work ethics and productivity which perhaps explains much about why the Politicians and large corporates with their greedy shareholders prefer hard working non-english speaking 'foreigners' to the locals. But I keep will that banter for the friends at the Times.

montreal mike

here is a link explaining how they came up with the numbers

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6193494.stm

AnyaT

Quebec pays people to have babies (or used to, not sure if the policy is still in effect) - the amount received goes up with each child, so you might get $500 for the first one but a couple thousand for the third. It has one of the lowest birth rates in the Western world, something like 1.2 kids per family. Various studies have been done on why birth rates decline and they generally find that as women's education levels and access to social programs such as state-supported daycare increase, the birth rate falls irreversibly. Attempting to bribe people into having children has been shown not to work. Consider the US - it has (I think) the highest birth rate of all the Western countries and the least amount of government programming.

dbd33

Didn't Enoch Powell tell us that there would be ghettos and rivers of blood some decades ago? He was wrong then. Why is it different now?

kt0157

Nonsense. The rich have got richer faster than the poor have got richer. I don't see any kids on the streets dressed in rags playing with a hoop and stick. I do see kids with mobiles phones and PSPs, though.

Am I the only one to spot the irony of someone who can't tell the difference between "there" and "their" complaining about people knowing English?

Who owns "The Corporates" then? Our pension funds. And who gets 30% of the profits of "The Corporates"? The Government. Who then spend it on public services (OK, OK, they throw it down the toilet by spending £800M on ads for £40K Outreach Officers and Diversity Awareness Coordinators).

God this is like a stuck record. Every generation whines about this. People were complaining in the 1600s about French asylum seekers coming into Stepney.

Surely do. It's called investing and getting dividends.

Those shareholders are thee and me, my friend. We all win when people get richer. If we took the approach that screwed the large companies, they'd move to another country and we'd lose the jobs as well as the corporation taxes. Then you'd really start to see some poverty.

K.

Tableland

But this policy has worked in Australia and is continuing to do so. And the US birth rate is only high relative to other democracies, and only because of the large number of hispanics in the United States who traditionally have much larger families. In fact, according to demographic projections, the United States will be the first "white" nation where whites will be the minority racial group.

SANDRAPAUL

With respect your points do not place you into what one might call the average person.

Spelling etc....yes, although you point score on such a mute point you again place youself in a certain category. I applogise for not giving a rats arse for making such mistakes here.

Why do people note these things?

SANDRAPAUL

I would have thought with such a wealth of knowledge that you seem to have you would know not to compare today with what was going on in the 60's. Very different climate and totally different outcome.

Bringing into the picture such a horrible man perhaps makes any discussion of the detrimental side of immigration, emigration...whatever, seem as though it is something we must not thing about.

dbd33

I try to ignore such things and don't pick up on typos. "Mute point" however drives me crazy, of course it's mute, it's written on a page innit!

dbd33

How so? I see the same panic over the importation of people who will do lower paid jobs. I suppose the people from the West Indies knew how to play cricket but otherwise it all looks much the same to me.

Souvenir

Mute is a perfectly good word, used in the right context. In the case of debates, I prefer "moot", mainly because it is the correct word.

kt0157

Because it's indicative of education level. When someone thinks that "moot" (adj., having no practical significance, typically because the subject is too uncertain to allow a decision) is spelled "mute" (adj., refraining from speech or temporarily speechless) it indicates that they bunked off school, never read a book that used the word, and pronounce the two words the same way. This means that all their expressed opinions on erudite topics can be disregarded.

K.