You do know that in many places in the US (and elsewhere?) people do actually get to choose their neighbours, or at least have a veto over them.

American condominium boards have to approve new tenants and I think there might be similar arrangements in some streets’ residents committees, plus lots of less overt ways to ensure new neighbours are ‘people like us’.

Not something I like the sounds of, just thought I would mention it – don’t take this comment as any sort of approval of those arrangements.

Landlords don’t possess the right to choose their tenants – they cannot discriminate on the grounds of race, sexuality or religion.

Yes, at base level immigration controls come down to discriminating on the basis or nationality and/or race.

In many areas this choice does exist – at the area level obviously, not the level of each individual and their particular neighbours. Look for example at the current debate in a number of towns and cities at declaring some areas ’saturated’ in terms of student numbers, and not allow new HMOs, or look at the campaign to require planning permission before a house in an overpriced rural village is turned into a holiday home rather than somewhere a family lives.

What’s the “dog whistle”? Martin Wolf is saying that many immigrants have come en masse (presumably he’s referring to those from rural Muslim areas) with backward norms about women’s roles, and that their culture/ideology has come with them, bag and baggage. Whether or not he is right, he is certainly making a clear argument that an opponent should be able to refute, rather than making an underlying unspoken appeal to racist sentiments.

First, Chris, it’s not true that you have “no say” over who moves in next door. You can write to the landlord and say what kind of tenant would, in your view, make a good neighbour. You could even get up a petition of all your other neighbours, if you like. The landlord may or may not pay you any heed – but you still have a say. What you don’t have is a veto. And nor should you.

But at the national level we would have a veto over how much or how little immigration there is. If our democracy were working properly.

Which, of course, on this issue it never has. It’s a commonplace that the non-white immigration of the 50s and 60s would never have got approved in a referendum. And I have fond memories of an early edition of the Independent which carried a letter from South Asian community leaders which called on Mrs Thatcher not to let anyone from Hong Kong into the country but rather to relax immigration controls from the sub-continent.

Liberalism and democratic socialism appeal to basic human instincts when it comes to issues of economics and cultural practice. But when it comes to Martin Wolf’s questions they are of no use whatsoever. (And neither is conservatism, but this is a left-of-centre site.) Because the basic human instinct when it comes to the race question is either to perpetuate a privileged position (if we feel we have one) or, if we don’t, to elaborate a narrative of victimhood. Think of all those white Sarf Efricans who applauded politely as Nelson Mandela took the oath of office whilst throwing ever more valium down their necks. Think of the wrath of Irish Catholic patriots on hearing that Cromwell’s men at Drogheda butchered only male soldiers, not women and children.

An anti-racist position – to which I suppose we all vaguely aspire – has only one flaw, You have to be an angel in order to be an honest anti-racist. Part of the meaning – perhaps the greater part of the meaning – of the Christian concept of original sin or the Buddhists’ maya is that we all retain a fight-or-flight reaction when confronted with the Other.

And the truth is that political responses to the Other don’t work. Or at least, no one has found one yet. Spiritual exercises and/or psychotherapy may give each of us, individually, a chance to overcome fight-or-flight – but political answers to Wolf’s questions? Hull City will win the Premier League first.

Most people don’t want to pay taxes to immigrants, which is what many effectively believe will happen.

Most people don’t realise or care that national borders are arbitrary and that to exclude people from our good living on account of their being born somewhere else is pretty hard to justify morally.

Most people are susceptible to NIMBYism and dog-whistle right-wing politics, which has been allowed to triumph by a complacent – and sometimes, complicit – left.

Most people are receptive to “us vs them” dichotomies and find security in demonising the blameworth other.

Does that about cover it? I reckon it does, really.

Following the “logic” as depopulation can also have an effect (eg making schools or businesses unviable) there should be similar controls on emigration. Presumably we should similarly be consulted by anyone wishing to procreate, for the same reasons.

‘”Such costs are likely to be particularly high when immigrants congregate in communities that reject some values of the wider community, not least over the role of women in society.”

Now, leave aside the dog whistle he’s blowing here.’

I don’t think we can do that. Anyone who thinks that the wider community is lovely and enlightened whereas immigrants are backwards and bigoted hasn’t spent much time in the wider community.

Indeed, Chris – I’m reminded of the hilarious film Hot Fuzz, which, while obviously over-the-top, had a grain of truth to it.

Is it dog whistling to point out that Afghanistan (for example) has quite a different culture to Britain? Of course most people who emigrate make the transition, and leave behind some of the more (what we might consider) backward aspects of their country’s society.
The kinds of things that Ann Jones wrote about in her book Kabul in Winter
http://www.amazon.com/Kabul-Winter-Without-Peace-Afghanistan/dp/0312426593

In it she makes this claim. How true it is I have no idea.

Ninety-five percent of Afghan women are subject to violence: they are bought and sold, beaten and raped, preyed upon and betrayed by their own flesh and blood.

@ Mike (6) – when you say I shouldn’t have a veto over my next-door neighbour but should have a veto over who enters the country, you’re just deepening the puzzle. What sense does it make for me to have no say over something that does affect me – who lives next door – but some say over what I don’t care about – who lives in Derby or Droitwich?
@ Paul (7) – your explanation makes empirical sense. But it, like Mike’s comment, raises the question: why should I regard a law as legitimate when the majority opinion behind it is ignorant, irrational and cruel?
(Incidentally, this brings me to a point which often brings confusion between me and commenters on this site. I regard public opinion as something which should be changed, through force of argument. Others, however, seem to regard it as a fixed datum which politicians should accommodate).

About next door neighbours, what we really needs to worry about is this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/white-workingclass-pupils-are-lowest-achievers-801765.html

Paul Saga (7)

>Most people don’t realise or care that ….to exclude people from our good living on account of their being born somewhere else is pretty hard to justify morally.

But I guess the sane arguments for immigration are not primarily moral, but practical.

There are X Billion people round the world without easy access to clean water – if they all turned up at Heathrow – should we let them all stay !!

If only 100 turn up each year – then yes of course let them all stay.

If it’s 10,000s, or 100,000s or 1Ms… well, humm.

The debate is not the morality of controls, but the practicalities.

Bob B (14)

I don’t see a URL to that Warwick University chap’s study?

Where’s the detail?

Has he compared ‘white working class’ with ‘black’, ‘pakistani’ – without the ‘working class’ breakdown?

What about 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants, should we expect them to become more and more like ‘3rd generation whites’ in performance?

But even given as fact that white working class perform the worst – how do we interpret that?
Does it have any bearing on immigration policies at all?
Does it mean we have a problem with the culture we are promoting, and work to do with that?

Binky (15)

The lack of a backlash against Muslims after the Fort Hood shooting would be great news, wouldn’t it? A contrast to the aftermath of the Danish cartoons.

Some Jihadwatch posters do sound extreme and go way beyond the articles they comment on (a bit like LC then!).

But some raise sensible questions:
> Here’s an especially egregious article from Al-Beeb. Notice the
> repugnant statement: ”The shooting has hit Muslim soldiers at Ford
> Hood hard”. Unbelievable.

Chris (13)

> why should I regard a law as legitimate when the majority
> opinion behind it is ignorant, irrational and cruel

You should treat it as legitimate, but campaign against it.

Maybe follow William Wilberforce’s lead, for example.

It’s called democracy!

[13] Chris, imagine that you’ve been appointed Visiting Professor of Intelligent Economics at the Ivy League campus of your choice. It’s a one-year gig so you want to let your house. How much say in who you let it to should your neighbours have? In other words, you need to apply the Rawlsian Veil of Ignorance. Your position is remarkably like that of the Heath government in 1972 when it found that the country thought we had an obligation to admit the Ugandan Asians Idi Amin was expelling just so long as none of them came to live nearby.

I take your point about public opinion. One of the evidences of the deterioration of politics since the 1960s is that politicians are no longer willing to lead it, as the Wilson government did by providing Parliamentary time for a whole series of liberal reforms. This I think is not unconnected with the decline in MPs reputation – none of the Wilson reforms, from the abolition of capital punishment to the legalisation of homosexuality led to a significant backlash in public opinion. I am not sure that you could do that to-day (although reviving the Royal Commission might help).

More specifically, the voters are I think more fractured – and not only by race – to-day than they were then, when some degree of wartime solidarity remained. An object lesson is provided by Fianna Fail’s decision to cut public sector pensions by 10% thereby hacking off not only public sector workers and pensioners but also those (largely, I suppose, self-employed) who thought them featherbedded – after all, if there could be a 10% cut why not a 25% or even 90% one? FF’s poll numbers went into free-fall.

“Where’s the detail?”

“Government figures show only 15% of white working class boys in England got five good GCSEs including maths and English last year. . . Poorer pupils from Indian and Chinese backgrounds fared much better – with 36% and 52% making that grade respectively.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7220683.stm

“Though white children in general do better than most minorities at school, poor ones come bottom of the league (see chart). Even black Caribbean boys, the subject of any number of initiatives, do better at GCSEs”
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14700670

Compare George Orwell writing in 1936:

“The time was when I used to lament over quite imaginary pictures of lads of fourteen dragged protesting from their lessons and set to work at dismal jobs. It seemed to me dreadful that the doom of a ‘job’ should descend upon anyone at fourteen. Of course I know now that there is not one working-class boy in a thousand who does not pine for the day when he will leave school. He wants to be doing real work, not wasting his time on ridiculous rubbish like history and geography. To the working class, the notion of staying at school till you are nearly grown-up seems merely contemptible and unmanly.”
http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/6.html

In places, somethings don’t change.

In Copenhagen, a friend of mine is on her apartment building’s committee.
It’s in the inner city multi-cultural district of Nørrebro,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%B8rrebro

There, I think there is some discussion amongst residents about who is moving in and out of the flats. More so than I think exists in council run blocks of flats in Britain.
I wonder if these ethnic Danes (who I’d guess make up a majority on these apartment committees) should be forced to give up their small bit of ”people power” as I’m sure some of them would prefer a new Danish family moving into a recently vacated flat along the landing, rather than a Somali asylum seeker family.
Of course ther’s no reason for the new arrivals who were from Somali originally, getting right into this building committee thing too, but I’m guessing that that would need a determined effort on behalf of the appartment committee as it already existed, to try to include the new arrivals in the everyday life of a ”community” building.

There’s no reason why it couldn’t work. But it would definitely fail on many occasions (because of the cultural gap and racism).

White flight?

C’mon. 40 per cent of London residents were born abroad, according to this BBC Newsnight report in April last year on why London is different.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7368326.stm

As for me, I was born doing the Lambeth Walk:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oimHJCURbo

Candidates for citizenship must live in Switzerland for at least 12 years, they have to pass tests in one of the official languages of the country, and culture, and those born in Switzerland have no automatic right to citizenship.

The final hurdle is approval by the local community, sometimes at a town meeting.

Perfect. N’est pas?

Since we must have immigration controls … why can’t we make them responsive to the real feelings of the settled majority population? Because that majority are ignorant racist pigs? What does that make you, dear reader?

It is, in any case, mostly not racism that stirs people who resent what is happening to the demographic composition of England. It is a dislike of being taken advantage of and then insulted and abused for it.

Indians and Poles, (mainly Asian) Ugandans, Yanks, Kiwis and Aussies, the French and the Swiss immigrants do not impose an excessive burden on our welfare system, they do not clamour for a realignment of our laws to accomodate their beliefs, they do not attend religious institutions where hatred and murder of the other inhabitants of our polis is preached.

Skin colour is not the issue. Education, along with the ability and the desire to assimilate, is.

It is therefore high time that restricting immigration from Somalia, Pakistan and Bangladesh became an explicit government policy. Everything, from welfare and family policy to control of visas, should be decided accordingly. At the moment, people are inhibited from discussing matters openly for fear of being branded racists or Islamophobes – which completly misses the point.

[25] Do you accept that a white skin is an unmerited privilege?

“they have to pass tests in one of the official languages of the country…

…N’est pas?”

Well that’s you out.

“why can’t we make them responsive to the real feelings of the settled majority population”

Ask a group of turkeys which animals should be traditionally slaughtered for Christmas while you’re at it.

[25] Do you accept that a white skin is an unmerited privilege?

Not in Africa. Albinos are usually slaughtered and their bones ground up for their “magic healing powers”.

http://www.africa-times-news.com/2009/04/albino-african-seeks-spain-asylum/

Bob B @ 23.
Two really good links there. The first one may be just a bit of local news of an evening (bloody cyclists), and the second one is pure pish.
Lambeth Walk? Do me a favour.
Lambeth Walk is one of the places that I as a van/small truck driver have found is a place where you can find a place to park up for an hour when your deliveries give you a gap between them, and you know of nowhere where you can stop in Westminster.
It’s a council estate today, where I’d guess that most of the people who live there would look at this play as being nothing to do with them.
Even the accents have changed.

Bob

(19)
I’d asked you for URLs of the source and detail of your earlier post – and instead you provide URLs to two new and seperate newspaper pieces.

Can I ask again, for “a URL to that Warwick University chap’s study?”

Thanks

“Can I ask again, for ‘a URL to that Warwick University chap’s study?’”

To what did the Warwick Uni study relate?

I might have to google for it but then you could do that.

Damon @28:

The site of the original Lambeth Walk was redeveloped after WW2.

What matters about the song is its lyrics, which reflect a certain enduring spirit of the borough – and btw the musical from which the song comes – Me and My Girl – is even older than I am but only just.

I have to disagree with the comment by Fellow Traveller regarding landlords. Who really checks what policies and criteria landlord use in taking on tenants? Even the very large landlords?

Recently, in documents I obtained under a Subject Access Request, I discovered racist comments about my wife and children by one of Central London’s largest landlords who appear not to like Pakistani’s or Asians in their midst – and certainly not as tenants of the Estate.

In response to a Race Questionnaire the same landlord has disclosed that of 500 ‘directly managed’ tenancies (ones that they have full control over) they have no Asian tenants whatsoever. And this is 2009! Could that be mere coincidence?
But there is more. The same landlord supplied information on the ethnicity of their employees. Guess what? Out of the 45 employees they gave details of, a whole 42 of them are ‘white’. Of that, 40 are white British. Is that representative of London’s ethnic make-up? Could that be another mere coincidence?

What of the substantial ethnic mix of London’s population? There is no door with a notice displayed. But the message to those looking for jobs with this landlord seems to be one of ‘Whites only’ (but only if you are British, with a couple of exceptions).

For those wanting to live in Central London on a property of this Landlord’s Estate the bias is going to be that you are in if you are British, North American, or European. In particular, if you are ‘Asian’ – no chance. Don’t even try!

I’m left wondering whether these figures and possible policies are a feature of other major London or British landlords….

Bob

See your 13 for the newspaper URL you gave – but there is no link to the Warwick Uni chap ’s source report – that’s the info I’d asked for.

I’m stumped to think of where any of that Lambeth Walk kind of community might be still existing in Lambeth. Streatham, Brixton, Stockwell, Vauxhall?

I think that culture once exsited, but became extinct.
http://oregonstate.edu/dept/humanities/Newsletter/2000-spring/images/lambeth-walk.jpg

It’s as dated as the film To Sir With Love. Everything has changed.

Pol (32)

You wrote:
“In response to a Race Questionnaire the same landlord has disclosed that of 500 ‘directly managed’ tenancies (ones that they have full control over) they have no Asian tenants whatsoever. And this is 2009! Could that be mere coincidence?”

Be careful, because statistics may well mean that in a city like London with X million residents and Z hundred big landlords, that a run of 500 ‘asian free’ tenants is to be expected.

So to answer your question: based on what you’ve written, yes it could be just coincidence.

Did I misunderstand your post – it seemed like it was your landlord in question, and your own family have had racist issues there and are therefore not white, but then you say the landlord has no non-whites…so errr… it’s not your landlord?

Do correct me on that.

Just Visiting – and Jimmy

The landlord in question inherited us on the revision of a headlease. Asian – in the general meaning of ‘South Asian’. The landlord has assumed my wife and children to be Pakistani.

Sorry guys – ‘revision’ should say ‘reversion’.

Pol, I assume this is a private sector landlord rather than one providing social housing?

Interesting, I notice that Labour Baroness Uddin rents her pepper corn rent 4 bedroom house in London from a public housing association.

The very same one that employs:

* Faruque Uddin—Housing Officer

* Abdus Uddin—Assistant Maintenance Officer

* Ala Uddin—Vice-Chair [of the Board of Management]

If governments had set an assimilation policy requiring immigrants to lean the language, history, customs, practives and culture of this country , then there would have been less resitance immigration. Immigrants should have been told that they would have to drop any customs and/or culture not compatible with British ones and British customs, practives and cultures would always take precedence . This would have helped immigrants assimilate and reassured white people that their culture was not being swamped. Consequenly there wuld have been no change of Christmas to Winterval Lights, ending of Christmas Nativity Plays or removal of Easter celebrations. Immigrants would be told that any enmities should be left at the border. So if your are Palestinian, Arab or Muslim , no anti-semitism. Welfare payments should be re-examined and entitlement should include assessing previous payment of tax and national insurance contributions by individual and/or family. Welfare payments for immigrants should be such that they are not more generous than any other EU country.
The aims are to support the immigrants assimilation into the country as quickly as possible in order to prevent ghettos be created and prevent Britons who have lived in this county for decades feeling recent immigrants are getting a free ride.

This is a naive article. Isn’t Mr Dillow aware that in many countries outside of the western world the ownership and long term rental of property by aliens is in fact strictly controlled? Take for example Thailand were aliens are not allowed to own property other than condos – and then the floor space within the block owned by aliens must not exceed 40%.

This is perfectly normal and they are perfectly entitled to enforce such controls – it is a matter for them.

John Lennon.. Imagine etc.. the thrust of your argument is very clear but about as logical as “I am the eggman”.

“…we make a fetish of the state”, presumably you believe the Tibetans make a fetish of their ‘state’?

What I don’t follow from this “imagine there was no country” position and promotion of mass immigration is why you think that something positive is being created by relocating groups of people from Asia and Africa to Europe? Shouldn’t the intelligent, young and ambitious Pakistanis stay in Pakistan and work to develop their own society and economy? What good comes from them abandoning their homeland and migrating to the densely populated UK?

Off topic, but I remember a Denis Norden clip of an Australian current affairs show that got wind of a man selling his house in the local paper who had stipulated “No Asians.” The reporter stormed round and doorstepped the bemused ocker and demanded to know how he justified this statement.

“Well, er, they’re lazy,” reporter shook his head at this backward thinking man
“Er, they’re greedy; they take your money” more head shaking
“And you have to tidy your house when they call,” reporter stops shaking his head

“Er, what?”
“Yeah – they take 2% of your house value for doing bugger all.”

The reporter suddenly realises there’s been a typo.
“Oh, AGENTS!”

As a white european I have been refused entry to japanese bars and restaurants in Bangkok. What is amusing is that the japanese doormen say “no foreigners” !

The Thai tourist officials in a recent article on this issue in Thailand simply said that entertainment venue managers had every right to set their own door policy.

As a trainer-wearer I have also been refused admission to clubs.

Probably because they have a fear that being an uncultured gaijin you’re probably going to steal their women, infest the club with your insidious ways and simultaneously take their jobs and claim benefit that their ancestors worked for.

Are they right?

@ donut
“Are they right?”
Well I am certainly a gaijin or farang/gringo/ honky or whatever other term of racial abuse you care to call me.
Your question suggests you are racially prejudiced and as for the stupid comment about claiming benefit – of course no benefits are available to aliens in east asia.

I used to be a right on liberal with an open mind welcoming by new brown faced next door neighbours, giving them lifts at all times of the day or night, doing their garden when they were sick even chasing off muggers when they were attacked, but what I didn’t realise that they thought it was fair game to STEAL my mail. I confirmed what was happening by putting an item of my mail in their letterbox and seeing how soon they brought it round to me, I am still waiting since last November ( 08). When in Rome etc otherwise it’s the BNP for me.

Alright, gaikokujin, then. Feh.

And I’m pretty sure that Japanese nightclubs don’t have a welfare state.

The point I was trying to make was that did you think the club owners had a right to keep you out, based on the past and potential actions of other gaikokujin – did you think that was fair?

If so, is it fair to apply the same blanket bans to potential immigrants (a word now tinged with as much venom as those you mentioned – my grandmother could use the term ‘coloured gentleman’ and you could practically hear the burning cross)

“I confirmed what was happening by putting an item of my mail in their letterbox and seeing how soon they brought it round to me, I am still waiting since last November ( 08).”

Well it obviously wasn’t important, then. I’ve thrown away tons of circulars addressed to other people. Have I turned my entire road into racists because they didn’t receive their Capital One application form?

It was bank statements, credit card statements, job rejections and hey, breavment cards addresed to my wife after loosing her dear mother.
We take two steps forward in this country and then another set of incomers takes us three steps back.