Wednesday, 9 September 2015

If you bomb it they will come


So the hot topic of the moment is immigration, but what are the hot talking points in the U.K. lets have a look and answer some of the rhetoric because you know we have the internet and its super easy

Here are some statements i often come across on social media

  • "WE ARE FULL" ( yes in capitals because if people could shout it they would) people use the argument that we have many homeless people in this country and we should first look after them before we let in refugees.
  • In reality we have lots of empty houses in the UK 10 for every homeless family in the UK actually here is the link (housing) see super easy, there is also 1.5 million potential housing availability brown field sites, for people who live near me brown field sites like the abandoned Firbeck colliery that a conglomerate of millionaires are sitting on i assume waiting until the maximum profit can be made (plenty of room) I wonder how passionate people will be about homelessness when the media fad regarding immigration wears off?
  • "We cant afford them we are in a massive recession"
  • The first question that should be asked is why are we in a massive recession, the second is do we need to be and the third and final, are migrants exasperating the situation? So first why are we in a recession, well as we know those pesky bankers caused it, although when the financial crisis first hit the media and government tried to sell us the narrative that we caused it ourselves by borrowing too much, not having savings and taking irresponsible mortgages when in reality it was the pesky banksters betting on derivatives  (banksters). So now we know who caused it (nope not the immigrants) but surely they are perpetuating it? Lets have a look (immigration a double edged sword) wait what immigrants are a net contributor? yep but here is the divisive fact, usually and as in the case in my area economic migrants are low skilled, looking for low skilled jobs in affordable areas, here in lies the problem, this puts the economic migrants in direct competition with indigenous low skilled people, the migrants are prepared to accept lesser working terms because they see the very fact they are living in the UK as part of the package, this means they are undercutting the indigenous people by being prepared to work on zero hour contracts, short term contracts and minimum wage, people bemoan the immigrants for stealing their jobs when in reality the people causing the problem are the companies and government allowing this to happen, ive never heard of a company complaining about low paid migrant workers and as i said previously immigrants are a net contributors so the governments happy, working class people have every right to be angry, just direct it at the right people.


  • "They are just coming here to scrounge our benefits"
  • Well yes there will be some migrants coming to take advantage of our generous and hard fought welfare system, people will always take advantage of such a system but lets not forget the displacement of people in the middle east is largely caused by western military action in said countries, it would be nice in an ideal world to be able to kick back safe in the knowledge that the military intervention is some morally enlightened act of releasing subjugated people and giving them freedom, unfortunately when you look into the money to be made by private companies off the back of this perpetual middle east war it is staggering but also shines a light on one of the many economic reasons we are there.
In summary people have every right to be angry but direct it at the right cause, people have every right to defend the indigenous homeless and homeless veterans but lets keep that moral high ground when the media furore over the immigrants/asylum seekers/refugees has died down, lets not forget no man is an island and it will be someone else's turn to be the villain of the moment, sooner or later it will be you.


Monday, 22 June 2015

Keep calm I have a cunning plan

The west seems to be a little unhappy with certain parts of the middle east, one part it certainly isn't unhappy with is Saudi Arabia, Is there any reason why some western governments have a love affair with a country that is well on its way to smashing its own personal best in beheading. The obvious answer is the black viscous umbilical chord that is oil, another reason can be seen by firstly looking at the world banks data on countries military expenditure as a % of their gross domestic product or in leymans terms how much of their total countries wealth production is spent on their military, scrolling down the list you will see one of these is not like the others, in fact Saudi Arabia spends a whopping 9% of its G.D.P. on its military (the U.K. spends 2% as a gauge) when you consider Saudi Arabia's gross domestic product estimate in 2015 will be 805 billion  You can appreciate that is a lot of cap guns. So Saudi Arabia has a lot of oil to sell, some countries in the west would like this oil, coincidentally these very same countries are very good at building weapons of war and as I alluded to earlier Saudi Arabia wants to spend spend spend on weaponry. At this point I imagine someone somewhere in the west muttered the immortal words of balderick "I have a cunning plan, buy the oil from the Saudis and then sell them loads of weapons to recoup some of that cost.......genius" 

Sunday, 21 June 2015

Cost of freedom?

Most of the main papers both sides of the pond blindly ran The Sunday Times story  and then laughably backtracked after it was clearly an unfounded claim. Not once has any credible evidence been released to show that anything Edward Snowden  did, has in anyway compromised any serving military personnel. What it did do is highlight how deep and far reaching each governments surveillance policies secretly invade our on-line lives. most of the public is either apathetic or ignorant to this information. So the public don't care and the leaks haven't hurt anyone, everyone's happy right? But in these times of deep austerity how much does this surveillance cost us? In the U.K. it costs us 2 billion for our security and intelligence agencies and GCHQ take the lions share of that. But that is dwarfed in comparison to the U.S.A. mass surveillance via the N.S.A. which comes in at a staggering $52 billion. So the question is if this very expensive and very intrusive mass surveillance isn't fit for purpose, what is its real purpose? ( apart from looking at your naked Facebook pics of course), anyone read a good book lately, 1984 maybe.
image credit: http://madmikesamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/edward-snowden-is-both-a-patriot-and-a-traitor.jpg