I thank my good fortune every day. My good fortune comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Fundamental to my sanity are the fact that my parents were willing to screw themselves up financially in order to make sure I got a good education – simply not possible in the state system where and when I grew up; that my education led me to Manchester university where I met some of the best people in the world* and that after I finished my studies I was able to earn and borrow a significant amount of money to spend on traveling around the planet.
Something that never ceases to make me intensely angry is when people who live tiny blinkered lives decide to pronounce opinions about the wider planet and society without having seen much of it. I can safely say that London is one of my favourite cities not just because it is my home town but because I have been to plenty of other places and it is still in my top one. But there are people who have not seen much of the world but still feel able to determine that they know best. I have seen enough that I would not presume to tell another nation that mine is “better”.
For some reason it is the people who have have fewest non-British people in their communities who are most worried about immigration, people who have been abroad least who are most worried about what foreign nations are up to. It depresses me that, given the wealth and travel opportunities at British people’s disposal, so many choose to go on package holidays to gated resorts and avoid all contact with the locals. They want to be able to say that they’ve been to Cuba or Kenya or wherever, but don’t want to be contaminated by their less “sophisticated” cultures.
I’ve just been watching a bit of Rick Stein’s programme on South East Asia. It has triggered awesome memories or my travels and also a sense that the world is such a beautiful place why do we get so bogged down in BS the whole time?
When I walk past the pub on the edge of my estate on the way back from the tube station I sometimes envy the community spirit spilling out into the street. Here are people who grew up together and live together. Here are people who have been going to the same pub for decades who know everyone in there. My closest friends are as likely to be in Bangkok or Sydney or doing some hare-brained trek across the USA as round the corner in London. That doesn’t make for a regular pint.
But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I don’t want to be friends with the people who think they are somehow better just because they are British by birth. I remember many years ago I read a very patronising article in one of the papers saying how the European dream would die because people of my generation would be more loyal to the wider world than to Europe or to Britain as part of Europe. I don’t know if this is true or not, but when I see my friends setting up home abroad or spending a significant length of time away I begin to see this pattern. The best of my generation don’t see any barrier to living and working abroad, to acting as though they are not tied to the country of their birth.
That has to be a good thing, right? Although it does make for a thirsty Blue Eyes…
* and I don’t necessarily mean most likely to be rich and famous (although hurry up J and V) I mean best overall
I agree with you.
But..
why should the people quietly living in this country be forced to change their culture and their lifestyle simply because some liberal politicians have decided so? Especially when those poeple may have fought to keep this country free, their fathers and grandfathers did and their family has been here since before records began and they feel a greater right to be here. If they want to holiday aboroad and never go out of the holiday complex, yet say they’ve been to X and Y, then they should be free to do so. It wouldn’t be my cup of tea and I would sneer along with you in the pub. But I would also understand the feelings and defend the rights and join the objection of those who’ve never left these shores and object to laws we’ve had since the 16th century being swept away in the name of defence against foreigners they let in by the truckload and have no control over.
All change is not good. No change is not good either. Changing to accomodate your guests is polite. But all those people around the world wouldn’t bend over backwards as we have. You can overdo the welcome mat. And I think the more the welcome mat becomes threadbare the more attractive living and working abroad becomes. If this was Utopia, no-one would leave. But any Utopia is like that leafy quiet place you found – invite the whole world to crowd in and it isn’t so attractive, to me. Maybe to you, you live in London. I can’t even stand the ‘burbs.
Hi P, that isn’t the point I was making at all. I don’t disagree with anything you have said. I might have argued with you before about immigration but I have gone off that “free for all” idea because in the short term the rich countries would simply be swamped. I respect the right of any of the countries where my friends have gone to have their own policy on who should be allowed in or not. I tried to emigrate but the country I went to had a policy of only letting me do manual jobs which did not suit me. It made it hard for me but I respected that country’s right to impose conditions on my presence there. All I was saying really in the post is that it’s very exciting for some people to be in a position where they can just decide to upsticks and move abroad.
Thanks, Blue. I didn’t know you’d tried to emigrate. Can I ask to where and would you have kept your citizenship or is it all in the past?
I had this grand plan to move to Australia and never come back. But I found very quickly that a) it wouldn’t be as easy as I hoped and b) my issues at the time had nothing to do with where I lived and everything to do with a deeper dissatisfaction with things.
Excellent post, and not just because it shows that the world doesn’t come to your bedroom just because you’ve got broadband [as I think some believe]. You’ve also let travel teach you about yourself. Even Socrates had to travel to Delphi to learn the maxim; ‘Know thyself’. I’ve met more than my fill of people who yak on about Guatemala/Tibet/Sudan/fill in as applicable and it seemed to have taught them less than a weekend in the pub with the Times Atlas.
My issues are all to do with where I am and if I were half a world away I would be as happy as a sand boy. I know this to be true. But as you say the process is long and I wouldn’t know where to start?
It seems that a century ago we had the freedom to move more than we have now with the benefit of high speed transport and flushing toilets on board.
I’m concerned about immigration and I live in Slough – one of the places with the highest level of immigrant population in the country. To be honest, BE – I think you are wrong in what you say. I think you are basing that opinion on the understanding that it is mostly white enclaves that have voted BNP while areas with large numbers of immigrants tend to vote for parties which support high levels of immigration – but what would you expect? Areas with large numbers of immigrants are hardly likely to vote for anti-immigration parties – but that doesn’t mean that those non-immigrants who remain in those areas are entirely happy with the situation.
On the flip side, the people who tend to favour multiculturalism tend to live lives which are largely unaffected by immigration because they have money. Money buys you the best houses in the best locations with the best schools – and to those people immigration means cheap servants and more choice of restaurant. For those of us who live in areas where immigrants are streaming in we have to worry about whether we can get a place in the school of our choice for our kids, whether they will be able to get decent jobs and whether they will be able to find homes in the place of their birth. Those are real concerns for millions of people living in areas being swamped by immigration – and not just by people with white skin.
The BNP are non-existent in Slough, but there is considerable anti-immigrant feeling – not least from established immigrant communities who are pretty fed up with the situation.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1812940.ece
“”A Sikh with a strong Indian accent lent credence to what that Polish woman said when he told me “there are too many immigrants in Slough”.”
The pressures placed on those communities for housing, school places and jobs are immense – and they will cause tensions within a community which will lead to fractures and, eventually, conflict. London is unique because the need for cheap servant labour means that those pressures are somewhat alleviated – but outside of London things are very different.
Stan sorry to sound bad tempered but can you please read my reply to Philipa? This post isn’t about immigration it is about my friends who have emigrated.
Blue said ‘That doesn’t make for a regular pint.’
I have to agree with you, having travelled,worked and made friends around the globe, I now find that currently my best friends are scattered around the globe , Matt in Tokyo , Roxanne in Philly , Shaun in Singapore , that’s not counting the diaspora in the UK, of which the closest to me is in Buckinghamshire, then Hitchin , Worcester, Bristol, Dundee.
I’m happy for all of them , but it does make it hard to organise a quick pint on a Friday night.
Oh, I didn’t think you were being bad tempered, I just missed your point at first. I thought of emmigrating to the States after visiting for a while. Because when I got home the UK seemed so aggresive. Only after living abroad for a bit did I notice the difference.
I got your point, BE – but you also made another point – “For some reason it is the people who have have fewest non-British people in their communities who are most worried about immigration” and that infuriates me because it just is not true. It is a standard liberal progressive lie which I expect to hear from lazy people who just regurgitate things they hear because it suits their mindset. I didn’t expect to hear it from you.
For what it’s worth, I believe Britain is better than any other nation in the world – thanks mostly to its location (an island warmed by the gulf stream, free from significant earthquake or volcanic activity and with a pleasant – if somewhat damp – climate that does not suffer from the extremes of heat, cold or humidity that other parts of the world do. It’s also fortunate to have a developed culture formed over centuries by tradition, history and shared experience which has also managed to avoid the extremes which have been prevalent in other parts of the world.
This does not mean I think Britons are the best people in the world – we have our share of arseholes just like everywhere else does – but it does mean we are amongst the luckiest. I don’t care about skin colour – never have – but I do care about my country and I don’t want to see it turned into the sort of despotic shithole that I’ve had the dubious pleasure of visiting over the last 30 years or so by the crock of shit known as “multiculturalism”. I don’t mind managed immigration – but anyone who comes in should be prepared to accept what we are and what we do or fuck off back to whereever they came from. THAT is the default position of most nations and the only sensible one for any nation which wants to remain as one nation to have.
“This does not mean I think Britons are the best people in the world – we have our share of arseholes just like everywhere else does…”
We do seem to elect a higher proportion of them to high office though (connecting this post up with BE’s latest one)…