I refer you Igor’s posting.

It is also worth repeating the whole paragraph rather than picking abit out and taking it out of context;

“It is no use pandering to those who are dickheads – regardless of where they are, who they are, what colour they are, what size they are or whatever. A dickhead is still a dickhead and needs to be told they are dickheads. Pandering to them only encourages them in their ignorance and stupidity and does them and society no favours.”

The logic of your line of argument is that working class people like myself who do not think in this way cannot be properly working class.

Nick,

The logic of your line of argument is a race to the bottom where one set of workers are played off against another set of workers to reduce wages and conditions.

It’s also a simplistic dichotomy – either you are for or against both. Which does not adequately represent the compleity of the system(s) under scrutiny.

I agree about the foolishness of eroding the British manufacturing base, we’ve essentially cut ourselves off from being a world leader in future productive leading industries.

But the distinction you make between free market globalisation, by which I think you mean trade, and immigration is false. British workers paid at the national minimum wage (or any wage which they are likely to accept) cannot produce labour intensive goods like textiles at prices which are competitive on world markets. Moving the factories over to Eastern Europe or bringing Eastern Europeans over here to work in the factories is, economically, almost the exact same thing. There are social advantages and disadvantages to both, but they are two sides of the same coin. It makes little sense to be rabidly for one and against the other. You can be for both, in which case you have to put up with the wrenching social dislocations that they will cause (which is fine as far as The Economist et al are concerned) or you can be against both (in which case you are pretty much supporting a set of corporatist policies).

No, it’s racists he’s talking about, that is obvious to most of us. Some may be working class, but since when was the working class one uniform mass possessing the same opinions and living in the same conditions?

This is the English working class you’re taking about. Tell me, were they always dickheads, or was it only when they started disagreeing with you ?

As for eugenics, sign me up please, don’t want to start wearing nappies again with all the drugs that keep u alive.

Otherwise known as the ‘lump of labour fallacy’. It’s nice to see New Labour’s new economic policy for these new times in action.

The argument is that in order to pander to a specific group of people amongst us who think those they consider to be “non-british” – which to be blunt does not necessarily include descendents of people who have settled here – are taking all the “British” jobs of real “British” people (i.e. white, at least fifth generation) immigration should be curbed.

In this way, the logical conclusion of the argument is that the self-defined “real British” will then be able to find proper jobs and unemployment will disappear overnight because the number of immigrants “pinching our jobs” will no longer be over here to do it.

Lets test this shall we. How many jobs have disappeared from the UK as result of immigration into the country and how many have gone as a result of being transferred out the country through the holy writ of globalisation and the Free Market?

Well I know the sure that during my working life we’ve lost millions of jobs in mining; steel production; shipbuilding; trawling/fishing; car manufacture; engineering; manufacturing; tool making; etc. etc. Even technology jobs are being transferred abroad – and that’s not just call centre work but high tech. stuff too.

This would have been brought home to anyone watching last weeks TV documentary about the railway enthusiasts who took 17 years to build a new working steam engine. Quite a bit of the work had to be done outside the UK because the skills and experience shop has shut down and been transferred aboroad in the name of the free market capitalism.

The reality and the evidence is that the cause of most of the employment problems are not the result of immigration into the UK but the transfer of jobs out of the UK as a result of our political and business classes blind faith based fixation with free market globalisation.

But lets not let evidence based arguments muddy the waters. It would not do to question this faith based idolatry. Nor, apprantly, would it do to tell certain people and groups of people who are wrong that they are wrong and why they are wrong. Far easier for the political and business classes to pander to ignorance and superstition by stooping down to this level and scapegoating fellow human beings.

What next I wonder. Focus groups are dissatisfied with having to walk up hills because it makes them get out of breath, lets tell them that we will abolish the laws of gravity.

Focus groups unhappy that the sea is too cold when they go to the seaside in the the UK (because being people who don’t like foreigners and who want to keep British jobs in Britain for British people they surely would not go out of this country for their holidays), lets agree a policy of suspending the laws of physics and thermodynamics for two weeks a year.

Dickheads up in arms about their favourite foods being too full of calories making them fat, idle and stupid, lets pander to their ignorance and mardiness and tell them we are going to do away with chemistry and chemical reactions altogether.

Seems to me there are two choices here. One the one hand we could abandon evidence based reality altogether. Forget about the scientific method of analysis. Dump two thousand years of empirical practice. Jettison the lessons of the enlightenment. Go back to creating policies, ways of acting and reacting to the world around us based on faith, shamanism, superstition, mumbo jumbo, ignorance, prejudice and pandering to the lowest common denominator.

We could go the whole hog. One month we could burn witches. The next month we could string up travellers and gypsies. The following month we could throw anyone with a skin pallor the wrong shade of dusky into the sea. The month after that we could deport single mothers to Pluto (what do you mean it’s not doable? we’ve abolished the laws of physics remember). After that we could send all the feckless, workshy and non-hardworking families to the Gulag for their own good because as we all know “work makes you free”. Dependent upon which set of scapegoats the Mail and the NotW are targeting at any one time.

And the beauty of it is that when we’ve done that we can start all over again until there is no-one left in the country except Mail and NotW readers and a few dickhead politicians prepared to pander to them.

On the other hand we could stick to reality, the scientific evidence based approach to policy making and continue to apply the lessons of two thousand years of history and experience.

It is no use pandering to those who are dickheads – regardless of where they are, who they are, what colour they are, what size they are or whatever. A dickhead is still a dickhead and needs to be told they are dickheads. Pandering to them only encourages them in their ignorance and stupidity and does them and society no favours.

If they want to go off and vote for the BNP let them. Once their fellow dickheads get elected and face having to do some real work and confront the realities of elected office and of life they will soon change their minds and their votes.

Becuase this particular member of this particular focus group will not be voting for any politician at any level and of any party who panders to this kind of dishonest, racist, bigoted, and ignorant section of our society.