tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9172766774137902766.post1073707166539213052..comments2023-12-23T09:28:20.869+00:00Comments on The View from Cullingworth: Why everyone is right about immigration...Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9172766774137902766.post-4449893838427673502014-10-30T11:26:22.727+00:002014-10-30T11:26:22.727+00:00I grew up in Armley, Leeds Simon and remember a ti...I grew up in Armley, Leeds Simon and remember a time when it's town centre was an unspiring pit of despair and greyness, with kids ravaging the night (I know; I was one of them) and adults getting drunk on pale swill.<br /><br />Well, the greyness is still there, the kids are still there, and the drunk adults are still there, but so is whole new community shops for the polish and eastern European communities that have set up shop in the local estates and I have to say they have added a positive colour to the area; I don't feel quite so depressed wandering through it from time to time now, nor as threatened; just busied by busy people. Not a bad change to be honest. I'll take it.tomrathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14840757143559617554noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9172766774137902766.post-55456233086634523622014-10-28T19:10:35.857+00:002014-10-28T19:10:35.857+00:00I was sat on the bus and amongst the passengers we...I was sat on the bus and amongst the passengers were two Polish lesbians. And it dawned on me. This is what I'm meant to be living in fear of. This is the alleged existential threat. This, in what may or may not be Michael Fallon's opinion, is swamping me. At least I'd have a good view on the way down...<br /><br />Yes, there are problems assimilating immigrants. And this brings me to the girvance I have. People, right up to Eric Pickles, are hectoring immigrants for not speaking English. And it's a statement of the bleedin' obvious that they should be speaking better English than many of them speak, such as the gentleman who asked me where the post office was earlier on and failed to understand my explanation of where it, in fact, was.<br /><br />But what would you expect when there's so little support for ESOL? It's very difficult to learn a language from scratch, which is why most Britons (including many who live abroad, and shamefully myself) only speak English. We should be offering ESOL and making it compulsory. There should be a recruitment drive and the understanding that students of Polish, Urdu (Stoke "boasts" a significant number of older Urdu monolinguals, whose few interactions with the outside world are done through their children) or whatever can hope for a well-remunerated and interesting career.<br /><br />We are cementing our ties to Poland, a country whose significance on the world stage only grows and which owes a share of its new-found prosperity to the efforts of people who have done their time in Britain. Like the foreign students, we want them having fond memories of us, and not America or Germany.<br /><br />Even those without formal qualifications, you must know enough such men in Bradford whose lives have ended successfully despite apparent lack of promise at first.<br /><br />I don't support utterly open borders because I consider it unfeasible to admit every last person who would come here given a chance. But I want:<br /><br />1. An end to speaking of immigrants as if they were always and everywhere a burdeen.<br />2. The facilitating of integration, especially through ESOL. Because for all the goodwill there is it won't just happen by magic.<br />3. I have in fact forgotten what (3) was going to have been, but I've said enough :)<br /><br />asquithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14246701347539264295noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9172766774137902766.post-50008771747563553102014-10-28T16:37:00.571+00:002014-10-28T16:37:00.571+00:00This is the sort of world we should aspire to and ...<i>This is the sort of world we should aspire to and it isn't served by wanting to stop all immigration now nor is it helped by telling anyone who expresses worries about immigration that they're thick xenophobic racists</i><br /><br />Very difficult to disagree with that statement. All things to all men.Sean O'Harehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09927008607403571290noreply@blogger.com