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egb_hibs said:
@Keepitgreen I have had a formatting disaster here apologies. Your text in bold as all the quotation lost

Ah here we go again, the old 'I'm just being rational, you're being doctrinaire' routine. Gets the people goin that one.

And yet what follows is frighteningly know-nothing, which cannot come from a rational assessment of the world and it's history, but exactly reflects braindead ideology.

I'm no here to call you or anyone else names. What I'll do though is point out that you're no being 'precise', you're being nostalgic. Nowt wrong with that, but let's not pretend its social science. Let's fire in

Nostalgic for what? It seems to me that it is you who is stuck in a 1990s worldview which is so over.

A decent start that, always good to open on an agreement

Of course not; because 'British ethnicity' is about as real as pure viking DNA or the Loch Ness Monster's bloodline. We've been a genetic ooze mush for hundreds, thousands of years amigo, made up of whoever washed up here, no?

And here begins white supremacist, complacent and conditioned nonsense.

Quite apart from this being inaccurate, it's plucked out of your comfort blanket. I never mentioned race or dna.

Hmm eegie that sounds awfy like the opener 'I'm no talking about race, but..' As far as I can tell, the volume argument pops up every generation. Folk said it about the Irish as you well know? the Indians, the Poles, I could go on.

You could but its unlikely to improve things. Citing historic migration as a comparison screams' I have no idea what I am talking about'. Straight out of doctrine mind you.

People marrying within their community isnt't a refusal to integrate; its just people marrying who they know. Most of Morningside operates on the same principle, and nae ones accusing them of threatening the nation fabric.

Sounds like Brits in Spain, or Scots in the US and Canada who still meet up for Burns Suppers, watch Still Game and import Tunnock's finest? Funny how 'integration' only becomes an issue when the accent points south-east rather than west..

That scream again, even louder

Incompatible with what exactly? Britains worldview is a patchwork stitched from everyone who ever landed here. If we made cutural compatibility a citizenship test, we'd have to deport everyone who doesnae understand cricket. We've managed fine so far. If diversity was fatal, a shit-ton of our towns and cities would've imploded decades ago.

Ooft, that's a helluva leap dude, what, from your neighbours speaking Urdu to the Ukraine war? I'll give you kudos for ambition, if not proportion. Britain's island status has never kept it insultaed btw; if anything it's made us experts at absorbing influences (i.e. stealing them and pretending we invented them)

Oh and the whole 'implanting a homeland' is a bit dramatic is it no? Communities carry pieces of them whereever they came from cos that's just what people do. How can that be a threat when we're surrounded by Polish delis, Irish pubs, Italian chippies, etc?

OK let's get to it. I asked for a serious answer and I'm afraid this stuff isn't.

Please for a moment, even as a thought experiment, accept the proposition that the way you and I see the world, and Irish and Poles, is not universal and it is not innate. Failure to do that is an unconscious white supremacism which does not take the rest of the world seriously and precludes understanding of what is before us.

The 'patchwork' you reference has until yesterday been mostly comprised of relatively (to today) tiny numbers of people from within the same civilisation. Differences in outlook on the purpose of society, how it should be ordered, and where authority lies and so on, are comparatively tiny. And yet still great enough that some of those groups came here specifically because the UK was closer to their own view than places where those minor differences were a source of strife (the Hugenots for example).

Others, such as the Irish, who were at the time moving within the same country, who were ethnically near identical and racially (which I'm not talking about but you seem rooted in) actually identical - and yet they were treated terribly for 150 years due to those minor (again by comparison) differences in culture. Moreover there is still a residue of it today, where volumes were sufficient for elements of distinct culture to maintain - hence the differences between the WoS and the east. In short, volume is hugely important to the integration of even near identical people moving a short distance within an originally single polity and with thousands of years of interwoven history and culture.

Now take what we know from that and consider where we are today, when the country has gone from 95% British - itself a historic low since the Anglo saxon invasion - in the 90s to 70% or so today, and is on course to be a minority in the same time again.

Upon what foundations and from what authority then sit notions including:

- the law and it's legitimacy

- political power and the concept of loyal opposition if things don't go your way

- the ordering of society and the place of the individual in relation to it

- freedoms, rights and obligations

- universal suffrage

- the ordering of the family and the place of women

- relations between the powerful and the weak

These things were carved out in Europe over thousands of often bloodsoaked years and are inseparable from religious and philosophical origins going back further. We exported and imposed them around the world on our travels, but they are not universal and have rapidly unwound in the post colonial era as historic civilisations reassert themselves.

As I say, to be confused on this point is unconscious white supremacism that assumes western ideas are universals waiting to be embraced as others see our light. It is not like that and you need to shed that colonial mindset if you want to understand the world we are moving into.

Which will bring all of the above into question as 'when in Rome do as the Romans do' is met with 'who are now the Romans'? Culture is not merely exotic cuisine and music ffs and our post-imperial complacency is as ridiculous as it is obscene.

Finally, re your cities imploding decades ago: for a start you don't seem to have a grasp of migration, almost all of which has happened over the last 30 years. So we are still in the foothills of all this and we have already had 100+ murders, tens or hundreds of thousands of rapes, our security services largely occupied with keeping things at this level, our arms of state and media conspiring to cover it all up to keep a lid on things, sectarian and identity politics rising, hate crime exploded, teachers in hiding.

If this is nothing to see here, what would something to see here look like?

As for intermarriage being the 'historic means' of integration, aw man, that's surely an 18th century view of sociology. For me the kind of cohesion we need doesnt come from that, it comes from shared schools, shared streets, shared despair at the cost of living..!

Fucking hell dude. Really? How's that working out? You need to get out of the Scottish bubble.

It's all just , I dunno. It's not new this stuff man. Well, there is one thing, maybe how loudly folk insist that its new. Every generation thinks the sky is falling, and yet every generation keeps shit going.

Wrong on every count. It is new, there is no historical precedent outside wars of conquest, and even then not in Europe. Secondly things don't always keep going. Civilisations disappear all the time, indeed it is overwhelmingly the norm. Massive disruptions are more frequent still.

You seem so wedded to something that existed for the blink of an eye that you haven't even registered it's over. You seem to understand change as trivial differences. I'm really not sure you have properly assessed the current world, which tbf is masked in a cloak of nostalgia and midirection by a media and arts which is itself a relic.

Aye but has anyone ever agreed on what Britishness, or even Scottishness is? Arguing about it is a national pastime. I know I'm repeating myself here but every gneration panics that the next is 'losing our values'. The victorians said it about industrialisation, yon 70s folk said it about punk, the Daily Mail still says it about fucking everything. Somehow we keep on trucking though.

Comparing fucking punk to the development of parallel civilisations within Europe rather says it all. Britishness and the rest are so tied up in the things I bulleted above, shared history, shared references in arts, ideas, values that some seem unable to conceive it any more than a fish can conceive of water. Take you out of the water though and you would soon know. These things are BTW, exactly the origin of the Ukraine war.

Agreed; which is why it's worth dropping the braindead idealogy that culture must stay frozen to be considered real. The funny thing about contemporary idealogy is that yesterday's idealogy used to think it was timeless anaw. Spoiler alert; it wasn't.

More tropes from that busted flush of an ideology, which is as insincere as it is frivolous. I can't help noting you don't seem especially comfortable with relatively minor changes in politics and culture bubbling in the US, for example. I do wonder how your agent of change routine will survive what's coming here.

Aye aye. They always are, apparently. Yet somehow the country still wakes up every morning, drinks tea and argues about the same things; albeit in slightly different accents. (I'd be happy to have that as a stab at what Britishness is actually!)

Dude I just don't think Britishness is under threat, it's just evolving like it always has. Cultural change isnae actually dangerous, but cultural insecurity can be. We shouldnt be panicking about this, and instead be looking for ways of improving our lot together.

And more. Britain and Europe are not 'evolving like it always has'. That, i am afraid is objectively false. What is happening today is without historical precedent.

The LinkedIn pitch idea of change is not what we are talking about here, and chat about insecurity is laughable coming alongside discomfort at minor developments so far, and an apparent failure to understand what change is. The latter is utterly linked to fear, which our establishment reeks of, and ever more frantically pumps out it's bromides in response. Fewer and fewer people are taken in by them, but there will always be some ready to uncritically accept what they are told.

You're too smart for that ffs. So I will invite you to think about this anew with a simple question: how many free and democratic societies have existed for long without one civilisation being dominant and the origin of laws and all the above, including what is taught in your shared schools vision. Don't be too constrained by the first bit - if you can find a non tyranny from the pre democratic age that will be a start.

By contrast, you might want to consider which historical examples we have of parallel civilisations not being like the balkans, or Lebanon, or immediately post colonial India (until they separated themselves) or Israel / Palestine, without militarised imperial rule. As different things are different, a downstream question is which societies have tolerated coexistence and what conditions they have attached to it.

It may be scarey to contemplate but seriousness demands it. 'Like chill out dudes, be relaxed with change like me daddio' is 90s birthday card pish. In my experience it often comes from people most uncomfortable with actual change that affects them and doesn't go further than pop cultural trivia. Its also old guy stuff these days, and while none of us can help our age, we can also try not to shake our fists at clouds and be stuck in the platitudes of our youth. They were not serious then and they are dinosaur stuff now.

I am ready for change, real change (which is not the same as relishing it, I'd be entirely happy if your sepia tinged view of Britain was actually real) .

Its coming regardless so it's about what form it takes. Staying pickled in an obsolete 1990s fantasy which didn't survive long enough for its wrappers to come off, while viewing social change as the likes of forms of pop music... is not going to be viable. The time is coming where change agents are going to have to walk the walk.
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Cheers eegie. I tell you what, you always write with conviction mucker!

You’re right that values arenae universal. And aye integration takes time and big shifts can make folk uneasy. Naebody sensible denies that stuff. But to me, that jump yer making from “change is messy” to “civilisation collapse” is a fecking canyon dude. The Britain you've described sounds like a museum exhibit that’s come alive and started scaring the curators!! I just don't think that we're that fragile.

Btw you keep saying this isn’t about race, and ok, I believe you; but it’s still the same structure. Feels like you’ve just swapped blood for civilisation. Is the result no identical? i.e. some folk become permanent outsiders no matter how long they’ve lived here, or what they contribute? I think the idea that democracy or decency are heirlooms passed doon through European ancestry just doesnae hold up. These institutions survived Romans, reformations, empires and world wars (I'll no say punk this time :giggle:) so shirley they’ll manage a few new surnames. Most of what yer saying is unprecedented is just faster than before, and that pace exposes bad policy and inequality, no the limits of diversity imo.

So aye, change can be tricky, but it’s no the fall of Rome man, it’s just Britain doing what it’s always done i.e. borrowing, adapting, arguing, muddling through. Civilisations dinnae die because they get mixed; they die when they lose confidence. We’re nowhere near that, unless you count the Daily Mail comment sections 🤣
 
Keepitgreen said:
Cheers eegie. I tell you what, you always write with conviction mucker!

You’re right that values arenae universal. And aye integration takes time and big shifts can make folk uneasy. Naebody sensible denies that stuff. But to me, that jump yer making from “change is messy” to “civilisation collapse” is a fecking canyon dude. The Britain you've described sounds like a museum exhibit that’s come alive and started scaring the curators!! I just don't think that we're that fragile.
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Fair dos but you are still stuck in normalcy bias I think, ie confusing what we have personally known for the way things are.

You seem to me to be locked into the category mistake I tried to describe last time, conflating minor change that emerge organically within western assumptions, with the end of western civilisational assumptions being the wellspring. We've had occasional disruptions of the latter sort before, and each time so far it has led to apocalyptic violence.

An increasingly authoritarian political order is collapsing across Europe and things barely begun. Societies are unravelling and sectarian politics are emerging. Rapidly aging and dwindling indigenous populations are themselves rejecting the status quo, never mind new Europeans who come from flourishing rival civilisations with entirely different worldview.

I repeat, our view is not a universal it's a particular product of our history. And when I say our view that encompasses compartively piddling differences of left vs right, and the very fundamentals I set out before.

Returning to the UK, a country going from 95% indigenous to less than half in the space of 50 or 60 years, is not merely 'messy change', it is among other things the end of the country as a nation state, something that has never happened before, and the end of those aforementioned assumptions underpinning all. The idea that what comes out the other side resembles in any way the world of elderly white liberals seems quite a stretch. And I put it to you that there are whole swathes of the world in which you would be less enormously relaxed.
Keepitgreen said:
Btw you keep saying this isn’t about race, and ok, I believe you; but it’s still the same structure. Feels like you’ve just swapped blood for civilisation. Is the result no identical? i.e. some folk become permanent outsiders no matter how long they’ve lived here, or what they contribute? I think the idea that democracy or decency are heirlooms passed doon through European ancestry just doesnae hold up. These institutions survived Romans, reformations, empires and world wars (I'll no say punk this time :giggle:) so shirley they’ll manage a few new surnames. Most of what yer saying is unprecedented is just faster than before, and that pace exposes bad policy and inequality, no the limits of diversity imo.
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Is it really in anyway similar to say: I don't like that person because of the colour of their skin versus I don't want to live in a theocracy, caste system, collectivist dictatorship or whatever? I find that a strange proposition.

Democracy absolutely is an heirloom passed down through European history and decency is in the eye of the civilisational beholder.

Democracy absolutely did not survive the things you mention, coming after most of them for a start, and being eliminated by others - requiring catastrophic war to contest that (largely won by another brutal non democracy in the case of ww2). Ideas of decency have changed beyond recognition.

And all of the above comes after the fact that it's surely best to avoid these kind of upheavals to begin with, and the epic slaughter and oppression they entail?
Keepitgreen said:
So aye, change can be tricky, but it’s no the fall of Rome man, it’s just Britain doing what it’s always done i.e. borrowing, adapting, arguing, muddling through. Civilisations dinnae die because they get mixed; they die when they lose confidence. We’re nowhere near that, unless you count the Daily Mail comment sections 🤣
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It absolutely is not Britain doing what it has always done. Laugh at daily mail clichés if you like but it comes over as a defence mechanism which doesn't look that smart amidst hubris and complacency. I've set out why it is nothing like anything that has happened before and you've not engaged with that at all. And it is not opinion it is objective fact in terms of what has happened since the 1990s and looking forward is baked in over the next 30 or 40 years unless the course we are on changes dramatically.

Will it be the fall of Rome? Maybe. It could be many other things too: from Singapore style authoritarianism (pretty likely), to fascist style authoritarianism or other possibilities. One thing it is unlikely to be is a liberal future of any definition.

If you disagree let's hear it - if you could convince me it would certainly be cheering. But that can't be approached seriously from the thought-terminating cliches of progressive dogma or pretending things that are happening are just business as usual.

As above, the liberal order is already collapsing and we are barely out of the starting blocks.
 
egb_hibs said:
Fair dos but you are still stuck in normalcy bias I think, ie confusing what we have personally known for the way things are.

You seem to me to be locked into the category mistake I tried to describe last time, conflating minor change that emerge organically within western assumptions, with the end of western civilisational assumptions being the wellspring. We've had occasional disruptions of the latter sort before, and each time so far it has led to apocalyptic violence.

An increasingly authoritarian political order is collapsing across Europe and things barely begun. Societies are unravelling and sectarian politics are emerging. Rapidly aging and dwindling indigenous populations are themselves rejecting the status quo, never mind new Europeans who come from flourishing rival civilisations with entirely different worldview.

I repeat, our view is not a universal it's a particular product of our history. And when I say our view that encompasses compartively piddling differences of left vs right, and the very fundamentals I set out before.

Returning to the UK, a country going from 95% indigenous to less than half in the space of 50 or 60 years, is not merely 'messy change', it is among other things the end of the country as a nation state, something that has never happened before, and the end of those aforementioned assumptions underpinning all. The idea that what comes out the other side resembles in any way the world of elderly white liberals seems quite a stretch. And I put it to you that there are whole swathes of the world in which you would be less enormously relaxed.

Is it really in anyway similar to say: I don't like that person because of the colour of their skin versus I don't want to live in a theocracy, caste system, collectivist dictatorship or whatever? I find that a strange proposition.

Democracy absolutely is an heirloom passed down through European history and decency is in the eye of the civilisational beholder.

Democracy absolutely did not survive the things you mention, coming after most of them for a start, and being eliminated by others - requiring catastrophic war to contest that (largely won by another brutal non democracy in the case of ww2). Ideas of decency have changed beyond recognition.

And all of the above comes after the fact that it's surely best to avoid these kind of upheavals to begin with, and the epic slaughter and oppression they entail?

It absolutely is not Britain doing what it has always done. Laugh at daily mail clichés if you like but it comes over as a defence mechanism which doesn't look that smart amidst hubris and complacency. I've set out why it is nothing like anything that has happened before and you've not engaged with that at all. And it is not opinion it is objective fact in terms of what has happened since the 1990s and looking forward is baked in over the next 30 or 40 years unless the course we are on changes dramatically.

Will it be the fall of Rome? Maybe. It could be many other things too: from Singapore style authoritarianism (pretty likely), to fascist style authoritarianism or other possibilities. One thing it is unlikely to be is a liberal future of any definition.

If you disagree let's hear it - if you could convince me it would certainly be cheering. But that can't be approached seriously from the thought-terminating cliches of progressive dogma or pretending things that are happening are just business as usual.

As above, the liberal order is already collapsing and we are barely out of the starting blocks.
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Firstly chief I take a wee bit exception to you saying I've not engaged with your point on this all being new. I have; I just dinnae accept the starting point. You keep presenting this narratrive of unprecedented collapse but I'm saying it's disruption, and it's disruption within contuinity. You go ahead and call it normalcy bias if you want, but the evidence still says societies evolve more than they fall?

Anyway, I'm trying to be clear that I'm no blind to the fact the world's shifting amigo. And aye democracy does look shaky in in loads of places and that's making folk nervous etc. But shirley that's just politics rather than destiny? I'll say again; every generation seems to think they;re living through this final unravelling kinda thing. It looks like it always feel terminal when yer in it..!

The category mistake's yours btw. You're describing changes in who lives here as if that automatically rewires what the country is built on. These heirlooms i.e. suffrage, law, argument itself, etc, all came from chaos n shit. I donlt think they belong to ancestry. I think they belong to whoever keeps them alive. Again, for me, the UK's problems are inequality, housing, climate, trust in arsehole politicians and institutions. Nowt to do with the alphabet of names on the census!

You've also said this'll end in either authoritarianism or fascism; I'm no buying either of them (thankfully). I think that kind of collapse only happens when folk talk themselves into the belief its inevitable. Unsurprising newsflash: its no. Liberal democracy is defo messy and fragile but it survives, mostly cos people keep choosing it. Calling that 'progressive dogma' doesnae make your apocalypose any more convincing to me amigo.

Like I say, I get that you're seeing decline where I see revolution. I honestly do. But is that no the real constant? Like every generation worrying it's the last adult in the room? To me the truth is probably waaaay duller. The country muddles on, changes shape, end every *&*^ keeps arguing about what it means. The argument is the civilisation..
 
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egb_hibs said:
As above, the liberal order is already collapsing and we are barely out of the starting blocks.
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I've long argued that "multiculturalism" as broadly understood was a 90s dream that couldn't survive the collision with reality.

That's because what it actually described was a Western fantasy whereby the prosperity and stability we enjoyed relied firstly (ironically under a regime we termed "globalism") on most of the globe remaining very, very unequal, and very poor. And secondly, our imports from various parts of the globe, attracted by said prosperity and stability, were also required to, yes, largely assimilate with the culture they were joining -- vibrant foods and inspiring stories etc. obviously excepted. And that meant all the way from not treating women as chattels, to observing the rules around queuing. Thirdly, and relatedly, it relied on the numbers remaining relatively small.

However, the minute you get to a stage whereby it's less "multiculturalism" in terms of this happy blended tapestry, la la la, to something that looks more like the gradual establishment of parallel cultures -- that is, discrete, but living cheek-by-jowl -- then you are going to inevitably have a problem. My personal opinion is that basically, the majority of people (and, crucially, whether they like to think so or not) simply do not like a reality in which their own "way of things" is not considered and treated (at the very least tacitly, if not explicitly) as being if not basically superior (though that's really what it means), then certainly the one that is privileged above all others. And that goes for the incomers too -- so it shouldn't be a surprise that when they establish sufficient numbers they might begin to assert their own way of things a little more vigorously, even aggressively.

Now don't get me wrong -- I'm basically an educated, bourgeois metropolitan, irrespective of my family background, so I'd be delighted to live in the 90s dream. I'm pretty sure most people would. I'm sad that it looks like it's an inherent impossibility. But alas, I must also admit to myself that I'm not mad keen on living in a kind of cultural balkans.

And of course, we are not there yet -- I'm not wailing and gnashing my teeth about a tidal wave of foreigners and civilisation crumbling right now before our very eyes or anything. But it seems to me that the evidence increasingly points to my second scenario definitely looking like the more likely direction of travel, at least as it stands given the hanging on for grim death to the 90s dream, so I'm less apt to blithely think "ah, what a wonderful melting pot it will be" when I think about a couple of decades or so down the line.

And it's just endlessly vexing to me that you can't even soberly make this case without people losing their shit and shouting at you. I'm just so tired of folk equating in effect 'wanting something to be true' with virtue and moral rectitude. Quite apart from anything else, it's an infantile, or perhaps more accurately, adolescent position to take.
 
aggie said:
I've long argued that "multiculturalism" as broadly understood was a 90s dream that couldn't survive the collision with reality.

That's because what it actually described was a Western fantasy whereby the prosperity and stability we enjoyed relied firstly (ironically under a regime we termed "globalism") on most of the globe remaining very, very unequal, and very poor. And secondly, our imports from various parts of the globe, attracted by said prosperity and stability, were also required to, yes, largely assimilate with the culture they were joining -- vibrant foods and inspiring stories etc. obviously excepted. And that meant all the way from not treating women as chattels, to observing the rules around queuing. Thirdly, and relatedly, it relied on the numbers remaining relatively small.

However, the minute you get to a stage whereby it's less "multiculturalism" in terms of this happy blended tapestry, la la la, to something that looks more like the gradual establishment of parallel cultures -- that is, discrete, but living cheek-by-jowl -- then you are going to inevitably have a problem. My personal opinion is that basically, the majority of people (and, crucially, whether they like to think so or not) simply do not like a reality in which their own "way of things" is not considered and treated (at the very least tacitly, if not explicitly) as being if not basically superior (though that's really what it means), then certainly the one that is privileged above all others. And that goes for the incomers too -- so it shouldn't be a surprise that when they establish sufficient numbers they might begin to assert their own way of things a little more vigorously, even aggressively.

Now don't get me wrong -- I'm basically an educated, bourgeois metropolitan, irrespective of my family background, so I'd be delighted to live in the 90s dream. I'm pretty sure most people would. I'm sad that it looks like it's an inherent impossibility. But alas, I must also admit to myself that I'm not mad keen on living in a kind of cultural balkans.

And of course, we are not there yet -- I'm not wailing and gnashing my teeth about a tidal wave of foreigners and civilisation crumbling right now before our very eyes or anything. But it seems to me that the evidence increasingly points to my second scenario definitely looking like the more likely direction of travel, at least as it stands given the hanging on for grim death to the 90s dream, so I'm less apt to blithely think "ah, what a wonderful melting pot it will be" when I think about a couple of decades or so down the line.

And it's just endlessly vexing to me that you can't even soberly make this case without people losing their shit and shouting at you. I'm just so tired of folk equating in effect 'wanting something to be true' with virtue and moral rectitude. Quite apart from anything else, it's an infantile, or perhaps more accurately, adolescent position to take.
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:10:
 
aggie said:
I've long argued that "multiculturalism" as broadly understood was a 90s dream that couldn't survive the collision with reality.

That's because what it actually described was a Western fantasy whereby the prosperity and stability we enjoyed relied firstly (ironically under a regime we termed "globalism") on most of the globe remaining very, very unequal, and very poor. And secondly, our imports from various parts of the globe, attracted by said prosperity and stability, were also required to, yes, largely assimilate with the culture they were joining -- vibrant foods and inspiring stories etc. obviously excepted. And that meant all the way from not treating women as chattels, to observing the rules around queuing. Thirdly, and relatedly, it relied on the numbers remaining relatively small.

However, the minute you get to a stage whereby it's less "multiculturalism" in terms of this happy blended tapestry, la la la, to something that looks more like the gradual establishment of parallel cultures -- that is, discrete, but living cheek-by-jowl -- then you are going to inevitably have a problem. My personal opinion is that basically, the majority of people (and, crucially, whether they like to think so or not) simply do not like a reality in which their own "way of things" is not considered and treated (at the very least tacitly, if not explicitly) as being if not basically superior (though that's really what it means), then certainly the one that is privileged above all others. And that goes for the incomers too -- so it shouldn't be a surprise that when they establish sufficient numbers they might begin to assert their own way of things a little more vigorously, even aggressively.

Now don't get me wrong -- I'm basically an educated, bourgeois metropolitan, irrespective of my family background, so I'd be delighted to live in the 90s dream. I'm pretty sure most people would. I'm sad that it looks like it's an inherent impossibility. But alas, I must also admit to myself that I'm not mad keen on living in a kind of cultural balkans.

And of course, we are not there yet -- I'm not wailing and gnashing my teeth about a tidal wave of foreigners and civilisation crumbling right now before our very eyes or anything. But it seems to me that the evidence increasingly points to my second scenario definitely looking like the more likely direction of travel, at least as it stands given the hanging on for grim death to the 90s dream, so I'm less apt to blithely think "ah, what a wonderful melting pot it will be" when I think about a couple of decades or so down the line.

And it's just endlessly vexing to me that you can't even soberly make this case without people losing their shit and shouting at you. I'm just so tired of folk equating in effect 'wanting something to be true' with virtue and moral rectitude. Quite apart from anything else, it's an infantile, or perhaps more accurately, adolescent position to take.
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I hope you're no saying I've been shouty with eegie aggie!

I get the nostalgia for the 90s dream. Folk keep talking about it like it was a daft phase, instead of it being (arguably) the first time Britain tried to make peace with what it is. Multiculturism was never about taking the curry and leaving the people! It was an idea that we could live beside each other without needing a culture referee.

And aye we've learned that integration takes work. But parallel cultures arenae destiny imo. They're just what happens where change is happening the fastest, or when systems fail and investment dries up. Most of the evidence I can see still shows folk mixing, marrying and moaning about the same shite inside, ooh what, a couple of generations? I'd say the dream you talk of wasn't that everyone would be the same, it was that differences wouldn't need to feel threatening. Now obvs that is harder than we thought, but its no impossible imo.
 
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paigntonhibby said:
Here's a question for our open borders enthusiasts, give me a successful peaceful multicultural society
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Toronto. That’s what AI reckons anyway. I’m sure folk will be along soon enough to deconstruct that. Will any of them have lived there though?
 
Keepitgreen said:
Firstly chief I take a wee bit exception to you saying I've not engaged with your point on this all being new. I have; I just dinnae accept the starting point. You keep presenting this narratrive of unprecedented collapse but I'm saying it's disruption, and it's disruption within contuinity. You go ahead and call it normalcy bias if you want, but the evidence still says societies evolve more than they fall?

Anyway, I'm trying to be clear that I'm no blind to the fact the world's shifting amigo. And aye democracy does look shaky in in loads of places and that's making folk nervous etc. But shirley that's just politics rather than destiny? I'll say again; every generation seems to think they;re living through this final unravelling kinda thing. It looks like it always feel terminal when yer in it..!

The category mistake's yours btw. You're describing changes in who lives here as if that automatically rewires what the country is built on. These heirlooms i.e. suffrage, law, argument itself, etc, all came from chaos n shit. I donlt think they belong to ancestry. I think they belong to whoever keeps them alive. Again, for me, the UK's problems are inequality, housing, climate, trust in arsehole politicians and institutions. Nowt to do with the alphabet of names on the census!

You've also said this'll end in either authoritarianism or fascism; I'm no buying either of them (thankfully). I think that kind of collapse only happens when folk talk themselves into the belief its inevitable. Unsurprising newsflash: its no. Liberal democracy is defo messy and fragile but it survives, mostly cos people keep choosing it. Calling that 'progressive dogma' doesnae make your apocalypose any more convincing to me amigo.

Like I say, I get that you're seeing decline where I see revolution. I honestly do. But is that no the real constant? Like every generation worrying it's the last adult in the room? To me the truth is probably waaaay duller. The country muddles on, changes shape, end every *&*^ keeps arguing about what it means. The argument is the civilisation..
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OK, I'll reask a question you did not pick up:

What examples from the world today or all of history give you reason to believe that liberal democracy is compatible with parallel civilisations under the same polity? Is there a single example of that working? Is there even a single example where it has not been a disaster outside of militarised rule?

The point I'm arguing you are not engaging with is the unprecedented nature of what is taking place. The twists and turns of European history you keep trying to equate this to are different strands of European thought juking it out. Even then the really disruptive differences of opinion uniformly produced carnage. And what we are looking at now is more of a change than any of them : we are wilfully bringing about a situation where European philosophies and values will not be the basis for things: and that includes the foundations that cause people to choose democracy - and despite your apparent confidence in that continued choice. We are dismantling the very basis of nation states which thus far are the only alternative to empires that history has produced and the only setting for democracy.

You are absolutely right to imply democracy et al came from a millennium of carnage. Why on earth would we sail back out of the relatively safe harbour we have finally docked in?
 
Keepitgreen said:
I hope you're no saying I've been shouty with eegie aggie!

I get the nostalgia for the 90s dream. Folk keep talking about it like it was a daft phase, instead of it being (arguably) the first time Britain tried to make peace with what it is. Multiculturism was never about taking the curry and leaving the people! It was an idea that we could live beside each other without needing a culture referee.
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In other words, it was a daft phase. One reliant on a basically racist assumption that the products of distinctly western history would be so compelling to unenlightened sorts from the rest of the world that they would dump their own cultures in return for Nike trainers, happy meals and porn hub. One that also relied on ignoring all of history, indeed declaring history at an end, with western ideas bringing it to a close / final state. Hubris is not quite a big enough word.
Keepitgreen said:
And aye we've learned that integration takes work. But parallel cultures arenae destiny imo. They're just what happens where change is happening the fastest, or when systems fail and investment dries up. Most of the evidence I can see still shows folk mixing, marrying and moaning about the same shite inside, ooh what, a couple of generations? I'd say the dream you talk of wasn't that everyone would be the same, it was that differences wouldn't need to feel threatening. Now obvs that is harder than we thought, but its no impossible imo.
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What evidence do you see? Would you mind sharing it? It certainly doesn't seem to reflect what is happening in England and on the continent.

As an aside have you spent any time working in English or European cities? Scotland is not a guide to anything as we are basically a land out of time: essentially in a place where most others were back in the 90s and before modernity arrived.
 
egb_hibs said:
OK, I'll reask a question you did not pick up:

What examples from the world today or all of history give you reason to believe that liberal democracy is compatible with parallel civilisations under the same polity? Is there a single example of that working? Is there even a single example where it has not been a disaster outside of militarised rule?

The point I'm arguing you are not engaging with is the unprecedented nature of what is taking place. The twists and turns of European history you keep trying to equate this to are different strands of European thought juking it out. Even then the really disruptive differences of opinion uniformly produced carnage. And what we are looking at now is more of a change than any of them : we are wilfully bringing about a situation where European philosophies and values will not be the basis for things: and that includes the foundations that cause people to choose democracy - and despite your apparent confidence in that continued choice. We are dismantling the very basis of nation states which thus far are the only alternative to empires that history has produced and the only setting for democracy.

You are absolutely right to imply democracy et al came from a millennium of carnage. Why on earth would we sail back out of the relatively safe harbour we have finally docked in?
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You're forever saying democracy only breathes European air eegie, but it’s done no bad in plenty places built on different roots. Straight away I'm thinking India, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia (yes I'm counting it lol) feck even Botswana! They’ve obviously got their flaws, no denying that, but so do we. What matters imo is institutions and civic habits, no ancestry?

'Parallel civilisations' isn’t the same as plural societies either btw. Canada, Switzerland and Singapore all manage deep cultural mixes without generals running the joint, and the UK’s been blending tribes and faiths since before it was called the UK.

I know I keep repeating things here but then so are you. The harbour you’re guarding was never a finish line dude; the whole thing is a moving ship. Democracy has survived pretty much every storm so far cos folk keep patching the sails, not because everyone on board looks the same.
 
egb_hibs said:
In other words, it was a daft phase. One reliant on a basically racist assumption that the products of distinctly western history would be so compelling to unenlightened sorts from the rest of the world that they would dump their own cultures in return for Nike trainers, happy meals and porn hub. One that also relied on ignoring all of history, indeed declaring history at an end, with western ideas bringing it to a close / final state. Hubris is not quite a big enough word.

What evidence do you see? Would you mind sharing it? It certainly doesn't seem to reflect what is happening in England and on the continent.

As an aside have you spent any time working in English or European cities? Scotland is not a guide to anything as we are basically a land out of time: essentially in a place where most others were back in the 90s and before modernity arrived.
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There’s plenty of data, eegie; it’s just no on the channels you’re watching. A quick google (and I'll admit I had to do that, but I'd read about it previously, promise!) has yer ONS and University of Manchester studies showing that roughly nine out of ten second-generation migrants in the UK identify as British, and inter-ethnic relationships doubled fae 2001 to 2011. That’s mixing by any definition shirley? The English data on its own tracks almost exactly the same pattern, so this isnae just a Scottish thing.

And aye as for other cities, I’ve never lived elsewhere but I've worked a lot in London, went out with a brummie for about a year, and visited plenty European (and further afield) cities. A cracking 2 weeks trip I had was in Japan anaw. They’re noisy, crowded, sometimes tense, and they function well. Folk work together, marry, argue about rent and fitbaw and politics like everywhere else. That’s what integration actually looks like; it’s never tidy, just normal life with extra accents.

As for Scotland being 'a land out of time' well we’ve defo been called worse 🤣 But if being a decade behind means we’re still optimistic, maybe that’s no the worst timeline to live in?
 
Keepitgreen said:
There’s plenty of data, eegie; it’s just no on the channels you’re watching. A quick google (and I'll admit I had to do that, but I'd read about it previously, promise!) has yer ONS and University of Manchester studies showing that roughly nine out of ten second-generation migrants in the UK identify as British, and inter-ethnic relationships doubled fae 2001 to 2011. That’s mixing by any definition shirley? The English data on its own tracks almost exactly the same pattern, so this isnae just a Scottish thing.
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Don't assume fella. I read widely, rather than seeking out what I want to hear.

To your point: a bit vague to the point of useless in itself. I'm quite sure polish immigrants inter marry (a point I have to note you were poo pooing as a measure of integration when I cited it) but what about Bangladeshis for example - reckon those are comparable? In chunks of England people don't marry outside the clan never mind ethnic group - hence among other things sky high levels of birth defects from cousin marriage.

Identifying as British meanwhile is one thing: how Britishness is defined and by whom, quite another. Read a bit more widely and you will find second and third generation Muslims are quite a bit less amenable to accepting western mores than their first generation parents or grandparents
Keepitgreen said:
And aye as for other cities, I’ve never lived elsewhere but I've worked a lot in London, went out with a brummie for about a year, and visited plenty European (and further afield) cities. A cracking 2 weeks trip I had was in Japan anaw. They’re noisy, crowded, sometimes tense, and they function well. Folk work together, marry, argue about rent and fitbaw and politics like everywhere else. That’s what integration actually looks like; it’s never tidy, just normal life with extra accents.
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Well you'll know then that when numbers grow, mixed communities drop of a cliff. Pakistanis live together, Jews live together etc. I mentioned the potemkin village of eastenders earlier - which is both a trivial and serious point.

Trivial because at the end of the day, it's just a soap, but serious because it's misrepresentation is down to a fear of showing the plebs London as it is now. In the area where it is set, there would be no queen Vic, whites a minority and blacks much fewer still. It would principally be about a Bangladeshi community, speaking Bangladeshi and living Muslim lives, hence no need for a pub (don't know if you went to the Villa tie but the same reason is behind advice we go from brummies to forget seeking a beer in Aston).

If I'm wrong, why don't the diversity obsessed bbc depict that part of the eastend as it is now rather than when the programme started? Are they just racists?

Much the same as Manchester - where every week I used to pass through the site of the subsequent Ariane Grande bombing (which horrified but did not surprise me), Brum as above, nevermind swathes of Yorkshire. It's 'the when in Rome' point I mentioned before. In Scotland which is akin to early 90s England, there is no doubt who the Romans are and no real alternative to following their ways. It is no longer like that in swathes of England and Europe. France is a few steps further down the road than we are, and so have military detachments in synagogues and sometimes churches.

Incidentally, beyond the when in Rome question, obligations change for Muslims in particular. Islam has provisions for accommodating the customs of foreign cultures one may live within. But once you have the numbers, well then you are obliged to pursue an Islamic society. I appreciate the mores of today hate specificity and prefer the bigot's broad brush - but this is, I am afraid, a specific issue that doesn't pertain to poles, afro Caribbean people, Chinese etc. It has defined the history and borders of europe and it's a barrier to peace all over the world where population groups are evenly poised. You also create rival 'centres of gravity' and Muslim people who want to live western lives will be first impacted as the community now exerts a pull against what was once plain sailing.

As for Japan, well the whole country is racist af by your measure as they don't entertain multiculturalism at all. Nor migration until recently, but their dying population has now forced their hand and immediately there has been a swing towards ultra nationalists. The rest of the world don't share our attitudes on this stuff, which were one a virtue but have become pathological
Keepitgreen said:
As for Scotland being 'a land out of time' well we’ve defo been called worse 🤣 But if being a decade behind means we’re still optimistic, maybe that’s no the worst timeline to live in?
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Its just a fact. As of the 2021 census Scotland was 94% white British, where England was 95% in 1991. England is now 70% or less and literally a different country. These headlines are asymmetric in terms of cities vs rural of course. London has gone 80 to 38%, Birmingham 79 to 44%. Everyone laughs like lobotimised hyenas at Ryan who believes a cabal of Jews arranged this. Rightly so on one level but is that more idiotic than pretending it hasnt happened or that it doesn't matter it has happened (while in many cases obsessing over the jews just as much anyway )?

Optimism is not the same as complacency and ignorance of the reality in almost every other western European country

I continue to await a single example from anywhere, ever, that justifies your optimism. Citing a Scotland where the whole thing we are discussing has not happened yet (we are underway post covid) negates rather than supports your point. To wish to be like Scotland rather than Nuremburg is what identifies people as racist everywhere else these days. We are wilfully becoming Yugoslavia - which works fine as long as you have authoritarian rule. Is that what we want?

Finally and as @aggie alludes to, there is little virtue in adopting a position which requires ignoring what is happening in every modern country not to mention a thousand plus years of world history. How can you do that with a straight face? I don't know about you but I think the fact this is a commonplace is down to one thing : fear. Fear of what it implies on one hand, but more than that, fear of admitting one's sense of self is bound up in acceptance of the most obvious (and selfish) hokum.
 
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egb_hibs said:
Don't assume fella. I read widely, rather than seeking out what I want to hear.

To your point: a bit vague to the point of useless in itself. I'm quite sure polish immigrants inter marry (a point I have to note you were poo pooing as a measure of integration when I cited it) but what about Bangladeshis for example - reckon those are comparable? In chunks of England people don't marry outside the clan never mind ethnic group - hence among other things sky high levels of birth defects from cousin marriage.

Identifying as British meanwhile is one thing: how Britishness is defined and by whom, quite another. Read a bit more widely and you will find second and third generation Muslims are quite a bit less amenable to accepting western mores than their first generation parents or grandparents

Well you'll know then that when numbers grow, mixed communities drop of a cliff. Pakistanis live together, Jews live together etc. I mentioned the potemkin village of eastenders earlier - which is both a trivial and serious point.

Trivial because at the end of the day, it's just a soap, but serious because it's misrepresentation is down to a fear of showing the plebs London as it is now. In the area where it is set, there would be no queen Vic, whites a minority and blacks much fewer still. It would principally be about a Bangladeshi community, speaking Bangladeshi and living Muslim lives, hence no need for a pub (don't know if you went to the Villa tie but the same reason is behind advice we go from brummies to forget seeking a beer in Aston).

If I'm wrong, why don't the diversity obsessed bbc depict that part of the eastend as it is now rather than when the programme started? Are they just racists?

Much the same as Manchester - where every week I used to pass through the site of the subsequent Ariane Grande bombing (which horrified but did not surprise me), Brum as above, nevermind swathes of Yorkshire. It's 'the when in Rome' point I mentioned before. In Scotland which is akin to early 90s England, there is no doubt who the Romans are and no real alternative to following their ways. It is no longer like that in swathes of England and Europe. France is a few steps further down the road than we are, and so have military detachments in synagogues and sometimes churches.

Incidentally, beyond the when in Rome question, obligations change for Muslims in particular. Islam has provisions for accommodating the customs of foreign cultures one may live within. But once you have the numbers, well then you are obliged to pursue an Islamic society. I appreciate the mores of today hate specificity and prefer the bigot's broad brush - but this is, I am afraid, a specific issue that doesn't pertain to poles, afro Caribbean people, Chinese etc. It has defined the history and borders of europe and it's a barrier to peace all over the world where population groups are evenly poised. You also create rival 'centres of gravity' and Muslim people who want to live western lives will be first impacted as the community now exerts a pull against what was once plain sailing.

As for Japan, well the whole country is racist af by your measure as they don't entertain multiculturalism at all. Nor migration until recently, but their dying population has now forced their hand and immediately there has been a swing towards ultra nationalists. The rest of the world don't share our attitudes on this stuff, which were one a virtue but have become pathological

Its just a fact. As of the 2021 census Scotland was 94% white British, where England was 95% in 1991. England is now 70% or less and literally a different country. These headlines are asymmetric in terms of cities vs rural of course. London has gone 80 to 38%, Birmingham 79 to 44%. Everyone laughs like lobotimised hyenas at Ryan who believes a cabal of Jews arranged this. Rightly so on one level but is that more idiotic than pretending it hasnt happened or that it doesn't matter it has happened (while in many cases obsessing over the jews just as much anyway )?

Optimism is not the same as complacency and ignorance of the reality in almost every other western European country

I continue to await a single example from anywhere, ever, that justifies your optimism. Citing a Scotland where the whole thing we are discussing has not happened yet (we are underway post covid) negates rather than supports your point. To wish to be like Scotland rather than Nuremburg is what identifies people as racist everywhere else these days. We are wilfully becoming Yugoslavia - which works fine as long as you have authoritarian rule. Is that what we want?

Finally and as @aggie alludes to, there is little virtue in adopting a position which requires ignoring what is happening in every modern country not to mention a thousand plus years of world history. How can you do that with a straight face? I don't know about you but I think the fact this is a commonplace is down to one thing : fear. Fear of what it implies on one hand, but more than that, fear of admitting one's sense of self is bound up in acceptance of the most obvious (and selfish) hokum.
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Morning

Ach eegie, yet again, you’ve built loads of sweeping claims out a handful of grim anecdotes! The census numbers yer loving quoting show ethnic variety, not the end of the country. As I said, over 90% of everyone in that same census still identifies with a British national identity. And, enclaves arenae new; buy they do fade as people move, marry and mix, which the data already shows is happening.

The idea that muslims are 'obliged' to pursue an Islamic state is a fringe fantasy btw; its just no how millions of British muslims live their lives. Scotland’s no a time capsule, England’s no Yugoslavia, and demographic change isn’t destiny; it’s just the latest chapter in the same messy, democratic story.

Anyhoo, think I've probably said my bit now. Time will tell which story holds up. I’m betting on the boring one where we keep muddling through.
 
egb_hibs said:
I don't know about you but I think the fact this is a commonplace is down to one thing : fear. Fear of what it implies on one hand, but more than that, fear of admitting one's sense of self is bound up in acceptance of the most obvious (and selfish) hokum.
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Unsurprisingly, I think this is basically it. The catastrophic obliteration of any number of shibboleths which such an admission would entail is simply too much to contemplate.
Keepitgreen said:
Time will tell which story holds up. I’m betting on the boring one where we keep muddling through.
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Indeed it will. I can't (and don't) rule out your predicted outcome -- I am not a soothsayer, after all -- but suffice to say I'm very, very much less certain of it. There's simply not enough evidence that points toward it being likely, at least not to my mind, anyway. Hopefully we're all still congregating here in 15-20 years time, and we will see what transpired!
 
Keepitgreen said:
Morning

Ach eegie, yet again, you’ve built loads of sweeping claims out a handful of grim anecdotes!
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No I have not. Unless you can provide an example which you have so far declined to do, AFAIK there is not a single example of liberal democracy pertaining in the conditions we are heading into. As well as the whole world as it is now, I'm referencing all of history too.

That is more than a handful of anecdotes. So also is the upending of political orders and growing social strife all across the western world. So also is citation of places from Lebanon to Yugoslavia that were in the demographic state we are heading to. That would once have included much of the middle East as well, but less so now non Muslim populations have been largely purged or annihilated.

You haven't provided a single example, never mind a handful, in response.
Keepitgreen said:
The census numbers yer loving quoting show ethnic variety, not the end of the country. As I said, over 90% of everyone in that same census still identifies with a British national identity. And, enclaves arenae new; buy they do fade as people move, marry and mix, which the data already shows is happening.
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I will note once again your citation of measures of integration you ridiculed when I first brought them up. The census does indeed show ethnic diversity within the population - a process going on across Europe that is both historically unique and against the wishes of Europeans.

The census shows that in 1991 Britain was 95% British. That was itself a precipitous drop from 99.9% in the 1950s, the state that had pertained for near a millenia despite your suggestion that today's changes are just things as they have always been.

Since 1991 it's now about 70%. If this continues - and in fact migration has increased massively since the 2021 census - Britain will be minority British by the 2050s or 2060s. That will be a much reduced minority by the end of the century, while projections exist which suggest Muslim majority sometime in c21.

None of this is new news. As I have posted at various times throughout pretty much the entire lifespan of the board, the UN was projecting in the mid 90s that Europe would need to be majority first or second generation migrant by mid c21 if already unsustainable welfare systems were to not get more unsustainable.

I was howled at by the facts-allergic 20 years ago while it was still largely projection. As those projections have been borne out howling has reduced to a smaller core ideologically opposed to facts. This reflects the country at large.

So we are left with a process that was first denied now well underway, and ideologues have fallen back to a) it's just migration as it has always been - which is objectively and demonstrably false and to a ludicrous degree, and b) assurances it will all be swell that rely on a rejection of history in favour of it will be swell because I want it to be, and c) also depend on underlying assumptions the world will recognise the superiority of a self-extinguishing Europe.

The small ratio of inter cultural marriages (which is smaller still for certain cultures) is at the margins in respect of the central point: British law, values, politics and all the rest I mentioned above come from more than a thousand years of common history (and a much longer still religious and philosophical inheritance), fighting and killing and arguing our way to it.

That will be deleted in the course of a single lifetime. To fail to grasp that this is not business as usual is, and can only be, testament to the ideological bombardment we have been subject to for decades. As I said before, fewer and fewer people are convinced by the tissue thin lies and manufactured reality it is based on. But there are always true believers.
Keepitgreen said:
The idea that muslims are 'obliged' to pursue an Islamic state is a fringe fantasy btw; its just no how millions of British muslims live their lives.
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Did you pluck this off your 'how I'd like things to be' guide to reality, or are are you dismissing Islamic teaching as a fringe fantasy? There are 50+ Muslim majority states in the world, and only one considered a free society by Freedom House. That is Senegal and even then it is not freedom as western women, gays or minorities would recognise it.

That is of course because Freedom house measures by western standards. Societies are shaped by the demos within them and Muslim counties reflect their heritage: full blown Sharia is not the only measure of that. Where polities do not have a dominant culture, whose values prevail is the subject of volatile contestation, and these tend to be highly unstable and violent places or under authoritarian rule.

Future Britain will be shaped by Pakistani, Somalian, Nigerian etc worldviews, and rightly so in a democracy. Political parties have already sprung up to further this process.

I would contend you have little idea how Muslims live their lives in Muslim dominated areas. You also seem to have little grasp of how community exerts influence on people. Of course there are Muslims, and in particular ex Muslims, who wish to adopt western ways that the West is increasingly rejected. They will be first to suffer.

I'd also point out that you echo generations of deluded lefties and liberals who have ended up swinging from cranes.

Keepitgreen said:
Scotland’s no a time capsule,
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What is it about facts that you have trouble with? I have just explained that scotland is quite literally a time capsule in this area. It's demographics in 2021 resemble English demographics in 1991 before any of this started and when England had no related problems. That, my dude, is a fact.
Keepitgreen said:
England’s no Yugoslavia, and demographic change isn’t destiny; it’s just the latest chapter in the same messy, democratic story.
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Here we go again. I've just shown, and once more empirically, why this is not the same old story at all.

As for Yugoslavia, we are creating Yugoslavian type demographic conditions. That's also a fact. How it turns out who knows, but you have so far not produced a single example from anywhere ever, to suggest it turns out to be anything like what we have known. And there's a good reason you haven't done that, isn't there?
Keepitgreen said:
Anyhoo, think I've probably said my bit now. Time will tell which story holds up. I’m betting on the boring one where we keep muddling through.
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We are not telling equivalent stories.

I am laying out the facts of history and current population change which disprove claims from your post truth narrative. In terms of the as yet unevidenced future I am referencing all of the world today and in the past in terms of partial precedents, and am pointing to developments of our day that mirror them and coincide with the things I am flagging as concerns. You are responding with more post truth narrative including refusal of objective facts.

This is surely the result of politically correct propaganda with which society has been carpet bombed our entire adult lives. What else could explain such a disdain for facts, and reality and the fully human agency of non white Europeans.?

Time will indeed tell, but given the evidence I would suggest that leaders pursuing the post truth view are undertaking possibly the most irresponsible experiment in history. Should daydream believers prove not to be correct we then face disaster and with no way out.

I rather think betting the fate of hundreds of millions on a fantasy worldview that flies in the face of facts and the evidence of history is not only imprudent but possibly the most extreme example of ideological fundamentalism yet recorded.
 
GORDONSMITH7 said:
Switzerland?

BIG G
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If only the differences between German, French and Italian cantons was the measure of things. And if only we had a shared interest in the management of nazi gold to hold it all together! Although even with those tiny differences they are still in cantons aren't they?

Having spent many months working there it is peak Europe. No tensions between the Italians and Germans I worked with, and the whole place was a model of the technocratic dream.

But the portents were there, indeed I had to go full Scottish on a bam abusing young Muslim girls. What really struck me there is that I had to do it. Not a single Swiss intervened, they all turned their heads away or remained paralysed by an intrusion into their sterile utopia.
 
egb_hibs said:
I rather think betting the fate of hundreds of millions on a fantasy worldview that flies in the face of facts and the evidence of history is not only imprudent but possibly the most extreme example of ideological fundamentalism yet recorded.
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Aw dude, it’s the same pattern every time. You flood the page with half a dozen claims, call them facts, move the goalposts when one’s challenged, and finish by diagnosing everyone else as brainwashed. You pick the one community that fits your story, ignore the rest, and turn disagreement into proof of your own realism. It’s no debate, it’s theatre fella.

I’m no playing the part any more. People reading can see the difference between discussion and domination, and this has drifted well into the second as per. So you fire in and keep writing essays if it helps amigo; I’m out this thread with my sanity intact!
 
Keepitgreen said:
Aw dude, it’s the same pattern every time. You flood the page with half a dozen claims, call them facts, move the goalposts when one’s challenged, and finish by diagnosing everyone else as brainwashed. You pick the one community that fits your story, ignore the rest, and turn disagreement into proof of your own realism. It’s no debate, it’s theatre fella.

I’m no playing the part any more. People reading can see the difference between discussion and domination, and this has drifted well into the second as per. So you fire in and keep writing essays if it helps amigo; I’m out this thread with my sanity intact!
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Quite right @Keepitgreen, save your breath and time son.

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BIG G
 
Keepitgreen said:
Aw dude, it’s the same pattern every time. You flood the page with half a dozen claims, call them facts, move the goalposts when one’s challenged, and finish by diagnosing everyone else as brainwashed. You pick the one community that fits your story, ignore the rest, and turn disagreement into proof of your own realism. It’s no debate, it’s theatre fella.

I’m no playing the part any more. People reading can see the difference between discussion and domination, and this has drifted well into the second as per. So you fire in and keep writing essays if it helps amigo; I’m out this thread with my sanity intact!
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Naw. You can't tell the difference between facts and you would prefer to be the case.
I have no interest in dominance, but I do get frustrated by the post truth approach and I'm not granting wishful thoughts equal weight as evidence. All the things I have claimed as facts are facts. All the things I have shown as evidence are evidence. You haven't provided any contrary evidence and you haven't shown how census based facts are false.

The one community I have given emphasis to is the biggest issue by a million miles, as the history of Europe and elsewhere makes abundantly clear, and because it is the most material example of the parallel civilisations point. This just one aspect of the problem but it's a significant one.

As said way above this doesn't pertain with poles or afro Caribbean migrants nor Chinese in practice. That said if we were headed to a very large minority and eventual majority of chinese communists, Hindus, Orthodox Jews or whatever, then the country would come to reflect them. But we aren't. Even without that issue you still have disintegration of the nation state, and the basis for law, and welfare and the rest.

Anyway, yes let's call it quits it's a totally pointless discussion, I'm talking from evidence and you are asserting what you would like to be so. We'd all like it to be nice, but the braindead ideology of the day could lead us somewhere that isn't nice at all.
 
GORDONSMITH7 said:
Switzerland?

BIG G
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GORDONSMITH7 said:
Switzerland?

BIG G
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hmmm, I think the French ,German,Italian and Romansh populations were there already, having said that all 26 cantons are of Western European culture , all nominally of the Christian faith. They do have immigration , mostly from the same cultural background as themselves. None of their cities are being changed beyond recognition. The Muslim religion is 0.05%
It looks like Switzerland does work , none of the four main populations are too culturally divided for it not to work although there have been a couple of wars between Protestant [ those damn protestants] and Catholic cantons.
So in my summing up , you right in part ,it does work but, and it’s a big but, the difference is the multiculturism wasnt artificially introduced, it was already there.
And they haven’t had huge populations from completely different cultures and religion slowly taking over their major cities
 
Romanian groomer on trial for 10 rapes has been offered £1500 tae leave the UK.
Fuckin scandalous.
 
paigntonhibby said:
hmmm, I think the French ,German,Italian and Romansh populations were there already, having said that all 26 cantons are of Western European culture , all nominally of the Christian faith. They do have immigration , mostly from the same cultural background as themselves. None of their cities are being changed beyond recognition. The Muslim religion is 0.05%
It looks like Switzerland does work , none of the four main populations are too culturally divided for it not to work although there have been a couple of wars between Protestant [ those damn protestants] and Catholic cantons.
So in my summing up , you right in part ,it does work but, and it’s a big but, the difference is the multiculturism wasnt artificially introduced, it was already there.
And they haven’t had huge populations from completely different cultures and religion slowly taking over their major cities
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As a minor point, Switzerland's muslim population being recorded as 0.05 actually means it's about 5% - they had a big push for immigration from Turkey in the 70s, plus various waves of assorted ex-yugoslavians (famously Kosovans, who seem to have been universally great at fitba) fleeing from Serbia getting all genocidey in the 90s.

Generally it's got far more 1st/2nd gen immigrants than the UK, particularly in the big cities. They remain, however, well-integrated
 
egb_hibs said:
No I have not. Unless you can provide an example which you have so far declined to do, AFAIK there is not a single example of liberal democracy pertaining in the conditions we are heading into. As well as the whole world as it is now, I'm referencing all of history too.

That is more than a handful of anecdotes. So also is the upending of political orders and growing social strife all across the western world. So also is citation of places from Lebanon to Yugoslavia that were in the demographic state we are heading to. That would once have included much of the middle East as well, but less so now non Muslim populations have been largely purged or annihilated.

You haven't provided a single example, never mind a handful, in response.

I will note once again your citation of measures of integration you ridiculed when I first brought them up. The census does indeed show ethnic diversity within the population - a process going on across Europe that is both historically unique and against the wishes of Europeans.

The census shows that in 1991 Britain was 95% British. That was itself a precipitous drop from 99.9% in the 1950s, the state that had pertained for near a millenia despite your suggestion that today's changes are just things as they have always been.

Since 1991 it's now about 70%. If this continues - and in fact migration has increased massively since the 2021 census - Britain will be minority British by the 2050s or 2060s. That will be a much reduced minority by the end of the century, while projections exist which suggest Muslim majority sometime in c21.

None of this is new news. As I have posted at various times throughout pretty much the entire lifespan of the board, the UN was projecting in the mid 90s that Europe would need to be majority first or second generation migrant by mid c21 if already unsustainable welfare systems were to not get more unsustainable.

I was howled at by the facts-allergic 20 years ago while it was still largely projection. As those projections have been borne out howling has reduced to a smaller core ideologically opposed to facts. This reflects the country at large.

So we are left with a process that was first denied now well underway, and ideologues have fallen back to a) it's just migration as it has always been - which is objectively and demonstrably false and to a ludicrous degree, and b) assurances it will all be swell that rely on a rejection of history in favour of it will be swell because I want it to be, and c) also depend on underlying assumptions the world will recognise the superiority of a self-extinguishing Europe.

The small ratio of inter cultural marriages (which is smaller still for certain cultures) is at the margins in respect of the central point: British law, values, politics and all the rest I mentioned above come from more than a thousand years of common history (and a much longer still religious and philosophical inheritance), fighting and killing and arguing our way to it.

That will be deleted in the course of a single lifetime. To fail to grasp that this is not business as usual is, and can only be, testament to the ideological bombardment we have been subject to for decades. As I said before, fewer and fewer people are convinced by the tissue thin lies and manufactured reality it is based on. But there are always true believers.

Did you pluck this off your 'how I'd like things to be' guide to reality, or are are you dismissing Islamic teaching as a fringe fantasy? There are 50+ Muslim majority states in the world, and only one considered a free society by Freedom House. That is Senegal and even then it is not freedom as western women, gays or minorities would recognise it.

That is of course because Freedom house measures by western standards. Societies are shaped by the demos within them and Muslim counties reflect their heritage: full blown Sharia is not the only measure of that. Where polities do not have a dominant culture, whose values prevail is the subject of volatile contestation, and these tend to be highly unstable and violent places or under authoritarian rule.

Future Britain will be shaped by Pakistani, Somalian, Nigerian etc worldviews, and rightly so in a democracy. Political parties have already sprung up to further this process.

I would contend you have little idea how Muslims live their lives in Muslim dominated areas. You also seem to have little grasp of how community exerts influence on people. Of course there are Muslims, and in particular ex Muslims, who wish to adopt western ways that the West is increasingly rejected. They will be first to suffer.

I'd also point out that you echo generations of deluded lefties and liberals who have ended up swinging from cranes.


What is it about facts that you have trouble with? I have just explained that scotland is quite literally a time capsule in this area. It's demographics in 2021 resemble English demographics in 1991 before any of this started and when England had no related problems. That, my dude, is a fact.

Here we go again. I've just shown, and once more empirically, why this is not the same old story at all.

As for Yugoslavia, we are creating Yugoslavian type demographic conditions. That's also a fact. How it turns out who knows, but you have so far not produced a single example from anywhere ever, to suggest it turns out to be anything like what we have known. And there's a good reason you haven't done that, isn't there?

We are not telling equivalent stories.

I am laying out the facts of history and current population change which disprove claims from your post truth narrative. In terms of the as yet unevidenced future I am referencing all of the world today and in the past in terms of partial precedents, and am pointing to developments of our day that mirror them and coincide with the things I am flagging as concerns. You are responding with more post truth narrative including refusal of objective facts.

This is surely the result of politically correct propaganda with which society has been carpet bombed our entire adult lives. What else could explain such a disdain for facts, and reality and the fully human agency of non white Europeans.?

Time will indeed tell, but given the evidence I would suggest that leaders pursuing the post truth view are undertaking possibly the most irresponsible experiment in history. Should daydream believers prove not to be correct we then face disaster and with no way out.

I rather think betting the fate of hundreds of millions on a fantasy worldview that flies in the face of facts and the evidence of history is not only imprudent but possibly the most extreme example of ideological fundamentalism yet recorded.
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I was going to read this post but I’ve got a hospital appt. at 9am 🤣
 
FTJT said:
As a minor point, Switzerland's muslim population being recorded as 0.05 actually means it's about 5% - they had a big push for immigration from Turkey in the 70s, plus various waves of assorted ex-yugoslavians (famously Kosovans, who seem to have been universally great at fitba) fleeing from Serbia getting all genocidey in the 90s.

Generally it's got far more 1st/2nd gen immigrants than the UK, particularly in the big cities. They remain, however, well-integrated
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Think you're getting your decimals and % mixed up. 0.05% is a lower value than 0.05.
 
FTJT said:
As a minor point, Switzerland's muslim population being recorded as 0.05 actually means it's about 5% - they had a big push for immigration from Turkey in the 70s, plus various waves of assorted ex-yugoslavians (famously Kosovans, who seem to have been universally great at fitba) fleeing from Serbia getting all genocidey in the 90s.

Generally it's got far more 1st/2nd gen immigrants than the UK, particularly in the big cities. They remain, however, well-integrated
Click to expand...
The Swiss have banned both face coverings and the building of minarets via referenda. The largest party by vote share and parliamentary seats would be called far right over here.

Switzerland does indeed have a very high proportion of migrants, 85% of whom are from Europe. That will include Kosovans, but also lots and lots of bankers and other rich 'anywheres'. And also down the ranks, the international workforce that keeps their temples of lucre running. Anecdotally this matches what I observed working there for six months. I was surrounded by Germans and Northern Italians.

This was a good few years ago mind, but back then walking around felt more like walking around Edinburgh (except everything worked!) than multicultural cities in England or Germany (which I was going between at the time). I saw very few non white faces: as above, one of the few times I did they were being racially abused, which I had to deal with as none of the Swiss lifted a finger.

Switzerland has been accused of systemic racism by the UN and the ECHR has condemned it for racial profiling.

For many reasons, I am not sure British liberals would want the UK to resemble Switzerland. It's certainly less liberal than the UK, though that is the case of every country in the world, pretty much.
 
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