it’s just a straw man set up in the headline
Well they’re so easy to knock down aren’t they?
A policy that allows more people in from countries with shared cultural
heritage is not racist, or uncommon, or wrong. In fact I think it’s one
of the foundations of the EU’s free movement of people.
That’s a good point. The EU is itself a walled garden of shared ideals.
Ooo, that’s at least highschool level edgy, if not freshman college year edgy.
… “racialised” is something that exist?
New Zealand is 15% Māori, New Zealand prisons are 51% Māori. We’ve grown past fuck all.
And yeah, I agree it’s unfair and counterproductive to take economically marginalised people who have voted for change out of exasperation at their prospects and dismiss them as racist. But you put me in mind of the many Kiwis I’ve met who are “not a racist, but” who like to complain about Māoris “demanding special treatment.” I don’t want to put words in your mouth but I don’t see how you can believe everything’s so fucking rosy and not see Māori activists as “screaming, knee jerk, ignorant carpers” or whatever other cliched, knee jerk insults you like to throw around.
Even the bloody Police Association has stated that institutional racism is still prevalent in NZ. But I suppose they are:
Baaaaa, you dick.
Maybe not necessarily, but it depends. A lot of Australians think they are losing their cultural identity “to the wogs.”
Again not necessarily, but this proposal is about making up for the massive shortfall of seasonal workers that will hit Britain if Brexit goes ahead. So for all the talk of reclaiming British jobs for British people, it turns out the plan will be to give those jobs to foreigners, albeit foreigners who are “more like us.” Is that racist? I guess that depends on if you’re racist or not. I’d say at the least it’s a win for racist people.
The marginalisation/health/crime/unemployment/all the other issues of Maori and Pacific Islanders look better only when you compare it to your next door neighbours over the ditch.
I’m not saying it’s good in NZ or anything even remotely approaching that, more that the same figures for Australia at 3% of the population and 28% of prisoners being Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander are pretty fucking hideous. 
About 3% of the EU is from a non-European background (at least according to wiki). Apparently 19% of Canada’s population is a “visible minority”. Of Australia’s population, 7% are Asian and 1% aboriginal. So, actually, the proposed scheme would give a higher proportion of people from a different racial background the right to live and work in the UK. I wish Cory would bother to do some basic googling before throwing around accusations of racism.
Err …
Is that coming from the Fabians? Corbyn has made similar overtures - which makes sense considering the people that we have to engage with and win over to get in government. Not that I’m comfortable with it.
I do not think highschool level edgy means what you think it means
Of course there is the whole irony of that Johnson, the supposed defender of British purity, was 1) Born in NYC, and 2) the great-grandson of Turkish journalist Ali Kemal.
Yeah, I’m trying to figure out if he/she is insulting me? Saying I’m still in high school?
Clarification would be appreciated from this user.
Look, we need all the Brits we can handle, just to balance out all the 'Mercans that will be moving here after President Trump takes residence in the White Orange House.
Bullshit. Australia doesn’t give a flying toss about the UK, they’ve steered towards China. Which is why they’ve already said there won’t be any preferential treatment or fast-lane treaty. Besides, if you really want to rejoin your long-lost penal colony, you will also get the TTP, which is a worse version of the TTIP you also scaremongered against during the campaign (“EU will impose TTIP!” except it’s actually being killed, mostly because only the UK wanted it).
Let’s be honest, the overwhelming majority of brexiteers voted “to keep 'em out”, there are videos of people admitting as such pretty openly. The whole “let’s rebuild the British Empire” is a veneer of respectability that was added late into the campaign, mostly from “lexit” fringes, and is a complete pipe dream. TBH, it will be revealed pretty soon, when someone will propose to relax restrictions for Australians but not Indians.
Yeah, no MP has ever been willfully stupid. /s
The idea that the main driver behind both Brexit and Trumpism is economic anxiety, hatred of elites, or whatever boogaloo you care to suggest, is popular, but it’s not necessarily statistically supported.
It doesn’t matter how immigration from .au, .ca and .nz would actually play out; these dog-whistles aren’t real policies. Johnson is trading on a knowledge of what his reactionary audience hears when he says those are the people we want. To that uncosmopolitan crowd, Australia in particular represents a fantasy land of 1950s values. (Prior to the mid-1980s, .za would have been on this list too btw). He’s dog-whistling that whatever happens with immigration, this is the picture of society Boris supports. White men in charge, misery-loving protestant work ethic, conformity, strict and powerful government, all that good stuff.
If we end up with lots of black Canadians living in the UK, that’s fine. Brexiters don’t live where the immigrants are anyhow, and the important thing is that they will know their place.
The Guardian-reading mainstream has this delusion that the answer to the populist horrors of Brexit and Trump is to sympathize with the 5% that consists of decent people’s legitimate grievances about immigration. That makes the other 95% invisible, and creates a vast space for racists and misogynists and homophobes and fascists to get together and giggle about how their “new” politicians are finally saying what they’re all thinking, and the lamestream media doesn’t even see it. Tee hee!
The American narrative is mostly about race.
The European narrative is mostly about culture.
And as usual, Britain is somewhere between continental Europe and America.
Usually, when you observe similar behavior from Americans and Europeans, the Americans are more likely to be motivated by racism and the Europeans are more likely motivated by xenophobia.
Of course there is racism in Europe, and there is European-style xenophobia in America.
But most of the time, there are decidedly different flavors.
At least half of what looks like racism in Europe is really xenophobia. As in, from the skin color / looks of this person I can assume with 90% certainty that this person is an immigrant from region X, and with 99% certainty that their parents were from that region. And then, cue the prejudice about how that region’s culture just doesn’t fit with “ours”.
And in this case, the “white commonwealth countries”, also happen to be the “rich commonwealth countries dominated by British-derived culture”.
The xenophobes in Austria are much more likely to accept a black immigrant from America than an “Aryan” immigrant from Iran.
So no, I don’t think this is a racist immigration policy that will backfire. I think it is a xenophobic immigration policy that might even work as intended.
Of course, it is always an option to just pick one particular form of hate and use that as a catch-all term. Racism is as good a term as any for many of those things.
I realise that you’re using ‘elites’ in the common sense of ‘people I don’t agree with’, but don’t you think that Boris is pretty much the fucking epitome of ‘elite’?
(Whilst also having a surprisngly multicultural background, which apparently hasn’t led him to the conclusion that maybe multiculturalism is a good thing)
Pretty sure I know what I said. Commenter’s post about ‘I always go “Good we are too dumb as a species to live”.’ is something a teenager would say.
Are you disappointed in BB? You sound disappointed.
The right wing in the UK were doing it before then.
Who remembers Paul Daniels threatening to leave Britain if Labour won the 1997 election?
