POLITICS
I don’t usually write anything about Politics, but the
recent elections at which I did vote, seem to me to be setting a trend that
require lots of us who, maybe think differently, to say something.
An Iraqi friend of mine recently said to me, maybe there is
a problem with democracy in that stupid people get to vote; perhaps we should
have an exam before people are given the franchise?
Recently listening to the debate in a ladies’ hairdressers,
waiting for my wife, who had just commented on the problems for the kidnapped
girls in Nigeria, I was staggered to discover from about 10 plus people there,
she was the only one who knew that girls had been kidnapped. They moved on in conversation to various
other world shattering events, but it seemed to me that my wife was the only
one who had a TV that showed any news programmes. The world affairs, local and national
politics seemed at such a low level of interest to them I wanted to scream
argh…
It isn’t that this stuff isn’t out there it is, but as most
of the main three political parties are saying the message has not got through,
perhaps that is because they shy away from the real facts to try and be popular
to those who don’t listen to them anyway.
The big issue over the UK and actually many other European
countries has been immigration, immigration, immigration! There have been lots of rhetoric but not many
facts; Facts that are easily findable, such as:
1.
London, one of the most prosperous European
Cities, owes much of its prosperity to the fact that it is such an
international, diverse city due to immigration.
2.
When questioned
about what percentage of immigrants that go to make up the UK population;
people had wildly wrong numbers, usually way, way too high. In fact out of the
15.4 million refugees in the world currently, due to war, bad government and
the like in 2012 the UK only had 193,510 of these people in the countries that
go to make up the union and that represents just 0.33% of our population, did
you know that?
3.
Over a quarter of our NHS Drs are immigrants,
I did not hear that fact quoted, maybe it was and I missed it. Did you know that? I wonder where we would be
if they all downed tools?
4.
When talking about immigration we don’t talk
about emigration do we? Yet something like 5.5 million British people
permanently live in other countries other than the UK, I wonder how those
countries responded to those immigrants.
5.
Nasty one here, immigrants are 60% less likely
to claim benefits than a UK born person, Oh dear what shall we do about benefit
tourism?
6.
Oh and those pesky EU immigrants, taking all our
funds, did you know that between 1995 and 2011 EU immigrants made a net
contribution of £8.8 Billion more than they gained from being here.
7.
It seems for all the cries, most studies suggest
that immigration has little or no effect on overall employment or British
workers unemployment. I am pretty sure that often immigrants are job creators
rather than job takers, and that they often end up creating wealth and
employment on a grand scale. Think about companies started by immigrants, like
Marks and Spencer’s, Burtons, Mumtaz Khan Akbar turnover £85 million, James Caan Turnover £250 million, you probably know
him if you watch Dragons Den. Sir Anwar Pervez who set up his first corner shop in London in 1963,
expanding to ten convenience stores by the early 1970s and now head of Bestway
which has the second highest turnover of any cash-and-carry in the UK.
8.
14% of
start-up businesses in the UK were founded by immigrant entrepreneurs,
according to a newly released report. The report says that there are 456,073
immigrant entrepreneurs working in the UK who have founded 464,527 businesses
which employ 8.3m people. http://www.workpermit.com/news/2014-03-14/
And just for fun have you ever
been to an ODEON cinema, very British, why call it ODEON I wonder well actually
his immigrant name didn’t seem to have the right ring so he thought up the
acronym ODEON and in case you are wondering what it’s an acronym for, it stand
for Oscar Duetsch entertains our nation.
Very English!
Enough already I hear your cry!
But if we are going to have this debate lets have the other positive side of
what make places like London so prosperous.
Yes there are problems of immigration I have some solutions to that too
if you do not want the people to come and make us richer, but that’s for
another day.
Adrian Hawkes
W.785
Edited by Gena Areola
