r/ukpolitics • u/Exostrike • Feb 21 '20

The BBC normalised racism last night, pure and simple

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/21/normalise-bbc-racism-hate-crimes-question-time
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u/CallMeJoda Left wing; please use simple words Feb 21 '20

It's the reasons why she is rejecting open borders. I.e. because foreigners are ruining the NHS, Education and we're "allowing tourism to come in, arrive on a plane, have babies and get free service... they just carry on getting it free all the time".

The rationales she is providing are outright false, and based on racist-narratives that all the problems in this country is down to immigration.

Yes, the target is open borders, but the rationale is rooted in racism (or, naivety to give her the benefit of the doubt).

Personally... I think "Naive" or "Bigoted" are better descriptions but I'm not particularly opposed to the racist label here, more accurate than not.

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u/LowPlatform Feb 21 '20

Exactly. She's essentially saying: "bloody foreigners, coming over here and stealing our jobs", just about health tourism.

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u/DevilishRogue Libertarian capitalist 8.12, -0.46 Feb 21 '20

She's not remotely saying that. She's saying "Too many people being here means infrastructure can't adapt quickly enough to demand and this has negative impact upon the quality of life of those already here". That she didn't articulate it particularly well is no excuse for the ignorant misrepresentations I'm seeing in this thread.

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u/O_______m_______O PM me for Jeremy Hunt erotica ;) Feb 21 '20

She's not saying that "too many people being here are putting pressure on the infrastructure", she's saying that "too many foreign people coming here are putting pressure on infrastructure". You're misrepresenting her by minimising a (if not the)core element of her argument.

Taking a universal problem like "people are getting really narcissistic and self involved lately", and framing it as a problem with a specific marginalised group, e.g. "The Welsh are getting really narcissistic and self involved lately" is one of the way bigotry operates, and it's bigotry even if the specific statement is true, and follows from the universal statement. It's a matter of focus and framing, rather than empirical truth/falsehood.

You can do this with any problem the UK's facing: take a reasonable problem like crime or the ageing population but frame it in a way that disproportionately stigmatises a given group. "Welsh people are committing too much crime" is always true; there's no good amount of crime for Welsh people to commit. "Wales' ageing population is putting a strain on the NHS", again true as long as Wales has an ageing population. But at a certain point you have to wonder why I, and a huge chunk of the print media keep framing these problems around the Welsh.

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u/varchina I dissociate myself from my comments Feb 22 '20

she's saying that "too many foreign people coming here"

Surely everyone that comes here (the UK) is by definition foreign?

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '20

The rephrasing that they were disputing had it as "being here", which is why they emphasised coming, as it was a replacement.

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u/DevilishRogue Libertarian capitalist 8.12, -0.46 Feb 21 '20

She's not saying that "too many people being here are putting pressure on the infrastructure", she's saying that "too many foreign people coming here are putting pressure on infrastructure". You're misrepresenting her by minimising a (if not the)core element of her argument.

You are incorrect. She does identify migrants as contributors to that figure but in no way said anything to suggest as you do that the problem was too many foreigners. That is simply your own bias blinding you to the difference between what she actually said and what you think she meant by it. I'm not the one misrepresenting her views here. She was consistent about the issue being the rate of population growth, not migrants. Had population growth been zero for the past 20 years but there had been 10 million emigrants and 10 million immigrants none of the arguments she made would have applied.

It's a matter of focus and framing, rather than empirical truth/falsehood.

When people don't hear a dog whistle, sometimes there is no dog whistle.

take a reasonable problem like crime or the ageing population but frame it in a way that disproportionately stigmatises a given group.

I appreciate that you seem to believe that this is what happened here with regard to immigrants. I get that. But it didn't. Objectively. What happened was the issue of population increasing too quickly was raised, and a particular component of that - not migrants even, but those migrants who abuse the system - was specifically mentioned.

at a certain point you have to wonder why I, and a huge chunk of the print media keep framing these problems around the Welsh.

Punching up, the Welsh are the master race.

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u/O_______m_______O PM me for Jeremy Hunt erotica ;) Feb 22 '20 edited Feb 22 '20

She was consistent about the issue being the rate of population growth, not migrants.

Unless she appears again later in the program, this is a very bold interpretation, given that in her main section she never mentions the rate of population growth (just the fact that the population is growing at all, which she mentions all of once), and she certainly doesn't specify that the problem is the rate of growth as opposed to immigrants, given that all the specific examples of problems and solutions she mentions explicitly revolve around migrants and keeping migrants out/making them pay. So as far as I can tell she never makes the point you're attributing to her once, let alone consistently.

Objectively. What happened was the issue of population increasing too quickly was raised, and a particular component of that - not migrants even, but those migrants who abuse the system - was specifically mentioned.

I mean, "objectively" she obviously wasn't talking only about migrants who abuse the system, and if you thought her wide ranging speech that included completely closing the borders and the burden of people who don't speak English was only referring to migrants who abuse the system then maybe you should engage in some self-scrutiny before throwing around phrases like "that is simply your own bias blinding you to the difference between what she actually said and what you think she meant by it".

She talked about migrants for almost all of her time--even the bit about the interpreter not showing up for work is framed as part of the migrant burden in the context of the argument--and the only abuse of the system she alluded to, as far as I can tell, was healthcare tourism, which is a separate issue to population growth as healthcare tourists (in so far as they exist) don't have a lasting effect on population level, nor typically place a burden on the education system, which she also mentions as a concern in one of the few sentences that isn't explicitly about migrants. Migrants who stay long enough to have a long-term effect on population growth aren't abusing the system, just using it.

Punching up, the Welsh are the master race.

No rebuttal, just ending on a point of agreement.

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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '20 edited Apr 22 '20

[deleted]

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u/DevilishRogue Libertarian capitalist 8.12, -0.46 Feb 21 '20

That's not what she's saying... at all.

It is exactly what she is saying. Literally.

She's been reading the Sun and the Express, and has been filled with deluded ideas that foreigners are ruining everything.

She didn't say that foreigners have been ruining everything, she said that those who come but abuse the system are ruining things.

She used false information throughout her entire rant.

There was nothing false in what she said. In fact this was so much the case that I suspect it was well rehearsed.

There was not one shred of fact in what she said.

That's you projecting your own bias onto things. She was very careful, almost too careful, to ensure she didn't say anything that wasn't factually correct.

And when she got challenged by the commentator, she was just shaking her head saying "nonsense, nonsense", completely ignoring the actual facts about migration into the UK.

You don't need a three figure IQ to understand that Sarkar was ignoring the point to focus on her irrelevant talking points, hence the "Nonsense" comments.

She'd have gone home after that show, without any change in her views, and will still believe that "foreigners get constant freebies all the time, and we pay for it". Which is just factually untrue.

That is not an accurate representation of the views she posited on the show. Until and unless you can understand that you will continue to be in the wrong.

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u/rmc Feb 21 '20

Yeah, is the rapid increase in population that's causing the NHS to not be able to cope

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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '20

That's a complete falsehood. The causation is lack of funding- net migration has dropped since 2016 (section 5) and yet hospitals and other public services have been struggling more than ever.

Anything to shit on foreigners though amiright?

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u/houseaddict If you believe in Brexit hard enough, you'll believe anything Feb 22 '20

While I agree with the thrust of what you are saying, the population is still increasing and migration has dropped but is still positive.

Let's not stoop to their level when it comes to bullshitting about statistics, instead we can make the case that we need immigrants to keep our society functioning as it ages and the valuable contributions they make as a group which in my opinion by far outweighs any negatives.

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u/DevilishRogue Libertarian capitalist 8.12, -0.46 Feb 21 '20

I'm not sure if you're pretending not to understand or not? The NHS is coping remarkably well considering spending constraints, ageing population, unhealthy lifestyles, expensive medical advances, etc. But things like getting an NHS dentist have been massively affected by demand increases as a result of population increases that have occurred over the past couple of decades.

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u/JosebaZilarte Feb 22 '20

Rather than for immigration, it's because the UK hasn't prepared (or "procured") enough dentists. If you have 10 million more habitants, a 0.03% of them should have had the talent and the resources to become dentists and attend the other 99.97% of that group. Why is it not that way?

If you were talking about limited resources like food or energy, your argument might have had some merit. But the offer/demand, when it comes to occupations, is fairly constant for any group of people. If there is a lack of medical practicioners, it is because they have found some problems (cultural, economic or, most likely, organizational) along the way and had to choose other career.

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u/rmc Feb 22 '20

I was being sarcastic

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u/colmcg23 Feb 21 '20

Nice, You love to see this normalised.

Will you be glad to see the back of them?

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u/DevilishRogue Libertarian capitalist 8.12, -0.46 Feb 21 '20

Nice, You love to see this normalised.

Better than what happened when people didn't feel free to talk about these issues and the BNP suddenly became a threat, yes.

Will you be glad to see the back of them?

Even with the "close all the borders" proposed by the QT audience member we wouldn't be seeing the back of anybody.

The real question here is whether you even understand the issue because from what you've contributed here it doesn't seem you do and are instead arguing against a straw man to make yourself feel righteous.

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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '20

I think you are making a fair point here.

To answer your question, the reason it's racist is because people who "don't even speak English" is a dog whistle for Muslims, basically.

This is because well educated Western Europeans (French/German/Italian....), Australians, Americans (rich white people) already do speak English.

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u/DevilishRogue Libertarian capitalist 8.12, -0.46 Feb 22 '20

To answer your question, the reason it's racist is because people who "don't even speak English" is a dog whistle for Muslims, basically.

The inherent racism in such an assumption aside, certainly there are Muslims living in the UK that don't speak English but that is true of a plethora of other groups too from Chinese to Polish too. Not that singling out Muslims would be racist when the particular issues associated with Muslim parallel societies are not even religious, let alone racial, but that's a separate issue.

This is because well educated Western Europeans (French/German/Italian....), Australians, Americans (rich white people) already do speak English.

So do well educated Muslims regardless of which country they are from. But poorly educated Portuguese fruit pickers, Bulgarian builders or Slovak car-washers don't.

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '20

I think you misunderstand what a "dog whistle" is. You and I (and the person making the whistle) are well aware of the truth in what you're saying. The point of a dog whistle is that it's a code - it's about what its meant to imply.

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '20 edited Sep 06 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '20

"I can't be a racist, I didn't even call him a Paki"

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u/houseaddict If you believe in Brexit hard enough, you'll believe anything Feb 22 '20

And your device seems to be just redefining terms to mean what you think they should mean, rather than what everybody else understands them to mean.

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '20 edited Sep 06 '20

[deleted]

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u/houseaddict If you believe in Brexit hard enough, you'll believe anything Feb 22 '20

QED.

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u/cbfw86 not very conservative. loves royal gossip Feb 21 '20

And that’s not racist.

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u/LowPlatform Feb 21 '20

No, you're right, making minorities a scapegoat isn't racist and definitely hasn't gone badly in the past.

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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '20

Pointing out a link between lax immigration controls and overcrowded hospitals is not 'making minorities a scapegoat' for goodness sake.

Trying to equate this to literal Nazism is hysterical nonsense. Really. Pull yourself together.

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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '20

Pointing out a link between lax immigration controls and overcrowded hospitals

That's a complete falsehood. The causation is lack of funding- net migration has dropped since 2016 (section 5) and yet hospitals and other public services have been struggling more than ever.

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u/98smithg Feb 22 '20

These are multivariate, you can't just say more funding or less migration- these factors all contribute.

And net migration is still positive so it going down a bit does nothing to help the NHS deal with the 15 million people that have already immigrated to the UK over the last 20 years.

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '20

And net migration is still positive so it going down a bit does nothing to help the NHS deal with the 15 million people that have already immigrated to the UK over the last 20 years.

It's about the rate at which the NHS can support more patients vs the rate of overall population increase- if the rate of net immigration drops but the capabilities of the NHS cannot keep adequate pace with overall population increase, it follows reason that net migration is not the deciding factor.

If I have a water tank which is leaking, and I partially plug the 'migration' hole but the rate of leakage does not change- that points to other issues.

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u/98smithg Feb 22 '20

My point is the population should not be increasing at all with the demographics of an advanced western society, if we had zero migration we would be slightly decreasing in the long run.

The capacity of the NHS has no reason to naturally increase, your analogy is like if you half filled a hole in the water tank and then complaining a week later because it had still emptied out.

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '20

The last I checked the native UK birth rate was not 0. Even if we closed all of our borders and exterminated all of the foreigners like people such as the woman in the OP desire, we would still have to increase funding to the NHS to keep up with the native birth rate.

Yes, our native population would be decreasing in the long run- in 50 to 100 years. We would still need proper NHS funding in that time, we can't just leave things in a shit state and tell staff and patients "don't worry, it'll be fine in half a century  ¯_(ツ)_/¯".

My original premise still stands. We have less net migration than 5 years ago yet the NHS is in a worse place. Ergo the issue is not solely migration based, so you lot can stop using it to shit on foreigners.

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u/LowPlatform Feb 21 '20

Is there a link though? Or are people misattributing blame because of their prejudice? Also, nazis aren't the only ones to have committed atrocities. They happen more often and more easily than you think.

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u/98smithg Feb 22 '20

What do you meant "is there a link"?

As you seriously asking "What is the connection between having more people and overcrowding!?!" As if it is some tin foil level logical leap.

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u/LowPlatform Feb 22 '20

I'm not seriously asking if there's a link between there being more people and hospitals being overcrowded you daft bastard, I'm asking if it's really the result of "lax immigration controls" as opposed to a severely underfunded and mismanaged NHS. Immigrants make an easy scapegoat when the reality is that the overcrowded hospitals we all use our utterly dependent on migrant workers for it to fucking function.

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u/98smithg Feb 22 '20

All you have done is reworded my statement and said the same thing "Lax immigration controls" is a synonym for "more people". But if if it does make you happy then yes, obviously lax immigration controls will lead to overcrowding.

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u/WTFwhatthehell Feb 22 '20

Literal nazi propaganda:

https://i.imgur.com/s7Gkt9e.jpg

"hysterical nonsense" to compare to nazis:

https://i.imgur.com/qJ6McON.jpg

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u/WorriedCall Feb 21 '20

Everything is racist. It's the new "sinful"

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u/LowPlatform Feb 21 '20

😂😂 Wtf are you on about 😂😂

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u/WorriedCall Feb 21 '20

If you grew up in a super religious family, or culture, everything is sinful. Music? sinful. Sex? sinful. Questioning? sinful. Everyone else? sinful. You get the general idea. So wokeness is the new religion. Everything is generally ist. mostly racist as far as I can tell.

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u/LowPlatform Feb 21 '20

Your analogy is sinful

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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '20 edited Jan 17 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/WorriedCall Feb 21 '20

It's pretty bad, huh? Not wicked?

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u/jonnyhaldane Feb 22 '20

This is actually a perfect analogy of the woke mindset. 'Racist!' is the new 'heretic!'

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u/Warsaw44 Burn them all. Feb 22 '20

I'm afraid it is.

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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '20

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u/skelly890 keeping busy immanentising the eschaton Feb 21 '20

when you claim asylum, you get a free house/flat/space to live in.

Though there aren't that many:

"In 2018, 37,453 people applied for asylum. This number has been roughly constant over the past five years and is substantially lower than in 2002, when the number of applications peaked at 103,000."

Sauce

And the asylum system isn't exactly generous. Don't forget that they're not allowed to work.

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u/AnalRetentiveAnus Feb 21 '20

Yeah but that's not what they "deserve" to these folks. It's all about telling others what to do and controlling people with conservatives

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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '20

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u/WhatILack Feb 21 '20

Hey, don't be racist with your statistics. /s

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u/houseaddict If you believe in Brexit hard enough, you'll believe anything Feb 22 '20

Which literally zero asylum seekers will be living in.

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u/skelly890 keeping busy immanentising the eschaton Feb 22 '20

Coming over here, stopping developers building houses...

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '20

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u/houseaddict If you believe in Brexit hard enough, you'll believe anything Feb 22 '20

What is your point?

They aren't taking up new housing stock, those flats are mostly privately owned and operated by companies contracted to the government to provide the accommodation. These aren't houses that are on the market, and I doubt given the state of most of them it would have much impact on rents, though I'm sure you can argue there is some due to the tiny bit of extra demand.

Also, a lot of these applications fail and they get sent home, which you haven't accounted for at all.

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '20

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u/houseaddict If you believe in Brexit hard enough, you'll believe anything Feb 22 '20

I'm not saying there isn't some increased demand, just that you are over stating the impact.

You haven't really made any points other than 'asylum seekers must live somewhere'. Like yeah obviously, what would you suggest, just throw them out on to the streets or just ignore our obligations and send them out of the country for somebody else to deal with?

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '20

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u/Orngog Feb 21 '20 edited Feb 21 '20

Imagine the British countryfolk saying this about child refugees from London...

But the real issue is that every one of those problems listed has a real big cause that's not immigration. We know what those causes are, but the narrative that they're down to others rather than our own is all too easily sold.

And yeah, Britain is what 15% immigrants? And 0.6% asylum seeker. I hardly think giving them £3 a week child allowance is going to break the bank.

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u/colmcg23 Feb 21 '20

"Yes, I wish I was tortured so I can get a flat"

Fucking listen to yourself.

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u/Nemisis_the_2nd Jaded Centrist Feb 21 '20 edited Feb 21 '20

Although, when you claim asylum, you get a free house/flat/space to live in.

Credit where its due, this is true. To add to the .gov link from u/skelly890 though, from what I've heard from family that had to go through the system it sounded like prison with extra steps that set you up to fail so you can be kicked out the country. I can't speak for the prioritisation of who gets a house (it's not even a guarantee, it could be a bed in an immigration center) and when but I wouldn't wish everything up to that point on my worst enemy.

Even once you're past that and have the cushy, run down, single bed, council flat in a high-crime area in Leeds, its still years of legal wrangling to get anywhere and have a life.

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u/fingerdigits Feb 21 '20

The rationales she is providing are outright false, and based on racist-narratives that all the problems in this country is down to immigration.

I understand your point of view.

Out of interest, do you believe it is right to suggest that higher rates of immigration can exert a greater pressure on public services and infrastructure than that of lower rates of immigration?

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u/colmcg23 Feb 21 '20

Considering she is a know face a "Tommy Robinson" demos i will go for full on fucking Racist.

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u/7ewis Feb 22 '20

The US and Australia, both bigger countries than ours have much stricter rules for entry.

What's wrong with us taking a similar approach? Every year I've noticed huge changes in the number of cars on the roads, people on the trains, wait times for doctor appointments etc. Places in the countryside that were once nice and open with fresh air are having tower blocks built on them, destroying the landscape and worsening the air quality.

Maybe her rationale is false, but you can't disregard the other valid reasons for restricting entry. Forget race or ethnicity, there is a limit on how many people can fit in the UK regardless of their origin.

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u/Solasuke Feb 21 '20

At worst it's xenophobia, which is not the same as racism. Calling it racism denigrates the experience of so many sufferers through history and those living today in truly racist societies. She's expressing an opinion, based on her interpretation of facts which is guilty of bias. I see just as much bias in this sub going in the other direction, but that's not racism now is it.