Dickens
Curtaintwitcher
The problem with our country at the moment is that there are too many people who just don't care or haven't the wherewithal to consider the consequences of....unlimited numbers of immigrants flooding into the country......our children being poorly educated.....the increase in crime, etc.
Those who do have the courage to protest are labelled with insults.
People like Farage are
bringing the problems out into the open and giving patriots a voice.
Curtaintwitcher, there might well be those who don't care about the consequences, but I suspect they're more likely to be those who use the issue as a means to rattle the chains of an electorate being bombarded with propaganda about immigrants as the cause of our economic problems in order to cover up the fact that the real cause is years of public services and infrastructure underfunding and cost cutting, coupled with privatisation which results in money being sucked out of the economy.
Obviously, immigration in large numbers is going to add to those problems, but it's not the root cause.
And why do you assume that patriotism is the preserve only of people like Farage?
... and what the heck is patriotism anyway? If I want to see the country, as a whole, become a more equitable nation without the huge wealth gap between the very wealthy and the impoverished, one where everyone gets an opportunity to create a fairly decent life for themselves - not to mention one whose government is respected on the world-stage... does that make me unpatriotic?
Immigration is a problem - but it's a global problem not one that only affects us, and it's going to escalate, and it's not one we can just opt out of. And certainly not one that can in any way be managed by cutting the funding of those government departments and agencies that deal with the nitty-gritty of processing immigrants' claims.
Do you think those of us who want a more temperate debate / discussion on immigration are ignorant of the fact that among those immigrants coming to our shores there will inevitably be criminals, trouble-makers, fraudsters, and those whose staunchly held belief in a culture alien to our own will cause friction? We are aware of these things - Farage is not educating anyone, he's rabble-rousing - attempting to garner support by playing on the fears and insecurities of a nation that is suffering an economic crisis / downturn.
It's quite obvious, if you take a look at the whole picture and consider the number of immigrants - from various nations - living peacefully and working productively, especially in our health services, that the biggest problem that besets the country is not immigrants or immigration - it's 14 years under governments that have focused their attention on keeping the status-quo, looking after, primarily, the interests of their donors, backers and assorted vested-interests at the expense of the majority of the population who've endured the same number of year's worth of austerity, watching the services they rely on diminish to the point where an ever-increasing number of people find it impossible to access them, where taxpayers are funding employers who won't pay a wage workers can live on, where full-time, worthwhile jobs are disappearing to be replaced by the 'flexibility' of a labour force that has to juggle gig-economy / contract work, most of it low-paid, and somehow find affordable accommodation in a high-rent market, where crime is out of control in certain areas and there aren't sufficient numbers of police to even attempt to deal with it...
Immigration is not the cause of these problems. If you put a ring of steel around the whole of our island and ended the arrival of the boats in one swoop - the government would still carry on with its public-spending cuts, privatisation policies, etc... and would then find a new scapegoat for the problems its ideology creates.
Farage knows all this.
So clearly said Dickens. Thank you for putting into words exactly what I feel!
