Foreigners

I didn't see Question Time but, from what has been said about it, I'm quite glad I didn't. I find it quite upsetting to watch these days as there is so much anti-immigrant feeling in the audiences. I find it worrying that throughout Europe there is this increasing scapegoating of immigrants.

Most of the problems we have got are, I think, down to inept governments who instead of ensuring proper regulation of the finance sector actually allowed it free rein to almost ruin the economies of Europe and the USA. I think it is true that these economic problems continue, with the EU, Britain and the US surreptitiously carrying out quantitive easing on a massive scale.

Instead of admitting that the finances of much of Europe and the US are out of control, many of our politicians are willing to go along with the increasingly popular idea that immigrants and foreign workers are to blame for just about everything that is going wrong.

Yup
Housing - insufficient investment in social housing despite increasing demands from all sectors (including our generation who are living longer!) Refusal to regulate the private rental sector so that landlords can get away with charging high rents for overcrowded, increasingly squalid properties with no fear of redress....
Schools - preventing English local authorities from planning any new schools unless they are free schools...
Health - withholding the funding needed to cope with demands of a rapidly ageing population while putting slabs of NHS services in England out to tender, so that someone can make a profit out of them...
The three main things that people worry about - all being damaged, and damaged deliberately. But is it the government's fault? Or the fault of the banking system? No - be cause us powerful people can easily fool people into thinking that the immigrants are to blame. And we're lucky enough to have some powerful ex-pat press barons who will largely do the job for us.

Hartlepool doesn't even like being associated with Teesside, never mind the EU.

Just reading an article about the relatively low number of immigrants in Hartlepool. Not true! Hartlepool, like Middlesbrough, had a large influx of Irish in the 19th century and many people in the area are still descended from them.

Just as an aside: we have a new fireplace. Our SiL asked who was coming to fit it. We told him Mr X and his immediate response was ' X? That's not a Polish name. Are you sure he's up to it?'
He was joking but he also employs lots of Polish staff and he and we can't speak highly enough of them. Mr X? Well he's an old friend of DH otherwise we'd certainly be looking for a Polish electrician.

So agree JessM the trouble is no politicians have been making the case loudly enough. UKIP on the other hand have been shouting very loudly about immigrants. It's all so wrong.

Hartlepool, like Middlesbrough, had a large influx of Irish in the 19th century and many people in the area are still descended from them.

The whole of the North East had masses of inward migration in the 19th century to work in the coalmines and associated heavy industries. But they've not had much since. Which is why, I presume, they are, on the whole, anti-immigration? [sarcastic]

I noted during the run up to the referendum a video in which people were asked about their voting intentions and reasons that quite a large number of people who were quite clearly of immigrant descent more recent than the 19th C Irish (i.e they weren't white) cited immigration as a reason for voting 'out'.

Daphne, Hartlepool isn't in Teesside, it's County Durham.

What a lot of people may feel in Hartlepool and all other places, is not a dislike of foreigners per se, but feeling that immigration generally has gone at too fast a pace and in greater numbers than liked, leading to either a town being changed in some ways and schools and doctors surgeries being over subscribed, ditto any NHS dentist places.

The fact that people are having those feelings about immigration in places where there are No immigrants underlines the fact that it is nothing to do with jobs, schools, or hospitals, or housing - it's to do with right wing propaganda.
Just spent the morning talking to people on streets of a town in one of the lowest-immigration places in UK. (I spoke to one very elderly woman who had continental origins and one man who did not speak English - probably working on a catering outlet. That was it out of 100+). i once stood at a polling booth in the same town, rather bored, reading the electoral roll - not a single name on it that was not UK/Irish) But recent voting in the area reveals a high level of concern about immigration. I rest my case. (for now anyway)

98.6% of the population of Harlepool have English as their first language.
95.6% of the population were born in England.
That's from the 2011 census.
Supports what you say. Jess.

@dj

I know, but it was part of Cleveland for a while (until 1996?) and, boy, did they object?!

I believe Hartlepool is still served by Cleveland Fire and Police services and they don't like it.

Agree with you Jess and durhamjen about the lack of immigrants in Hartlepool. Their dislike of immigrants has absolutely nothing to do with schools and GPs.

Yes, daphne, can't understand that about the fire and police.
Cleveland and Redcar are North Yorkshire.
Maybe that's why Hartlepudlians are confused - they've lost their identity.

No comment

My paternal family comes from Redcar (original fishing family before the invasion of the Irish), but my gt gt gt grandmother was from Hartlepool. The family still think of her as an 'outsider'.

The county of Cleveland existed from 1974 to 1996. Hartlepool was part of it, but it didn't like it, so was moved back to Durham when the county was abolished.

I was born in Hull, which went into Humberside, trying to link it up to Lincolnshire.
Obviously whoever thought that one out had no idea either.
It's a bit like the new boundary changes thinking that one person can represent the whole of the West of County Durham from North to South despite the fact that the Dales run West to East. A lot of snow to traverse in the winter.

Historic counties are all a bit irrelevant these days. I was born in Birkenhead, when it was part of Cheshire, then it became Merseyside and now Wirral is a metropolitan borough.

My comments about Hartlepool were partly tongue in cheek. I still have extended family in Redcar. There's a story somewhere, which I couldn't find when I Googled, about somebody chairing a meeting about race relations in Hartlepool and Teesside. His comment was that it was a hopeless cause, because the authorities couldn't even get the residents of Hartlepool to accept that Middlesbrough isn't foreign.

Anyway, the Hartlepool audience on QT didn't do the town any favours, nor did UKIP's Lisa Duffy for rudely heckling the Polish lady. If that was an example of England at its best, I think I'd go back to Poland.

The North East has the lowest number of foreign-born residents of any area in the UK. Hartlepool has almost the lowest of anywhere, which isn't surprising because there are few jobs to 'take'. Newcastle has by far the highest number of foreign-born residents in the North East and voted Remain in the referendum.

www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/north-east-census-profile/

Saying historic counties are irrelevant to someone from Yorkshire?
Actually, they haven't given South Yorkshire back. Whoever thought of South Yorkshire has no idea what ridings are.

Petition Theresa May to create a South Riding.

DGD1 was asking me about Somerset today; I was trying to think which parts were and are which.
I do wish they wouldn't keep changing boundaries.

Roses, riding comes from the word thriding, which means a third.
There can't be four thirds in Yorkshire, therefore South Yorkshire is impossible.
Apologies to anyone who lives in the fourth thriding.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/22/refugees-calais-too-old-kindness-britain

www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/23/fear-stalks-final-hours-calais-camp

Why is it that the age of refugees seems to be more talked about than the fact that the government has done nothing in the six months since the Dubs amendment was agreed?
We wouldn't be panicking now if the government had been sensible from last April.

Thanks for the post about Yorkshire Ridings dj Them from other parts of the country know nowt about up North. At least we managed to get rid of Humberside. South Yorkshire next?

It's much easier for this gov to keep people focused on immigration whilst they destroy the NHS, schools and housing. The age of refugees is yet another distraction.

Maybe it could be South Farthing?