Do the 1st and 2nd generation immigrants in Edinburgh feel they "belong", or is there growing ethnic conflict in Edinburgh? How do native Edinburghers feel about immigration to their city?
START WITH A SURVEY
We could begin to collect some data on this question by conducting a social survey. Here roughly are some questions to kick off with.
1. Are some neighbourhoods ghettoised?
2. Is there a recent history of gang violence in Edinburgh? Is this down to immigrants?
3. Is there a pb of inequality in Edinburgh?
4. Are the welfare services working effectively to integrate arrivals into the language and culture?
5. If there's trouble, do police and social services have advance information?
6. Is there a pb with resources for meeting immigrants' special needs?
7. Has privatisation or cutbacks slowed any efforts to integrate these new arrivals?
8. Do you feel safe and free, like before mass immigration began? (Need to work on this question... )
CONCLUSIONS
Let's start at the end.
I think the authorities considered immigration a good way to increase their share of the vote and increase the power of the country (= population x wealth) and thus their ascent and their personal power; they considered helping refugees a humane act; they believed - still do - in the innate goodness of mankind and the power of the Liberal melting pot to convert and integrate all people from all over, irrespective of culture, with added value for the nation as a result.
Well that's the positives.
Soon, we'll be seeing these well organised minority groups infiltrating into the tentacles of government itself .. well they already have done in Edinburgh's Labour party....to pursue and impose their minority beliefs.
HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?
I understand the demographic arguments for the decisions of successive govt.s, but they didn't understand the limits of toleration nor the costs nor the risks of their social engineering experiments. They didn't act in the real whole interests of their existing electorates, instead they saw only economic benefits, and not just for "society at large" (ie for themselves).
How did this happen? That's easy to answer. There is no mechanism to make politicians accountable for longer-term costs or risks that materialise.
No thought need be given to Edinburgh's future as a people-with-a-past, and a certain integrity, and coherence, and homogeneity. Instead, authorities seem to make efforts to wipe the past clean or manipulate us by distracting attention with trivial issues. With the result that native peoples have no benchmark and become disorientated.
No thought is given to the ability of native populations to absorb change. No pedal for braking or dosing or buffering change, no chance to take account of the unpredictable side effects of change, manage the risks, the potential spinoffs and downsides.... it's the usual story I'm afraid of unaccountable elites who don't have to live in the buildings they design.
There are no constitutional legal levers on policy. No founding-father brakes. No controls. Nothing to contain or limit excess. This looks like wild hubris leading to our nemesis as a civilisation.
AN EXAMPLE OF A CONSTITUTIONAL BRAKE
The EU, as an example of what a brake looks like, has the 60-3 rule. This rule stops gov.t spending from exceeding tax income by more than 3%. The shortfall comes from borrowing. Public debt is limited by this rule to 60% of GDP. 60-3 - well it's true it is remembered to be forgotten.
Those numbers are not just arbitrary, they are the results of extensive detailed studies by historians and economists. Beyond 60% the excess money borrowed and injected into the economy does not return the investment in full. Go beyond those limits and you are in trouble, benefits will be dwarfed by costs, interest costs may crowd out running expenses in the competition for tax money. We are in trouble today as a result of "profligacy", but cannot take austerity.
Point being that uncontrolled immigration is a destabiliser just as is uncontrolled spending.
ROOT CAUSES
It is always necessary to get beyond the rhetoric, to understanding the underlying deep-down ground-in root causes.
Just like there is no fiscal control brake on politicians spending, so there is no cultural brake on immigration policy. There are simply no brakes on the half-baked ideas and ambitions of these mediocre and self-interested politicians. No brakes means nothing to control lunatic policy.
Even the very idea of a brake doesn't exist in the UK, still less a mechanism to control the behaviour of elected officials outside the urns.
The UK doesn't have a Constution or any way to enact controls on the policies of future govt.s, other than through the ballot box. Instead we have cutbacks and deregulation at home, leaving - in the case of unmanaged immigration - the way open for gangs and networks to take over and to recruit a membership from the very institutions like schools and welfare that are supposed to deliver care to the community.
And we have a focus on foreign wars that divert our resources and our attention from private-sector to public-sector projects. Public-sector projects that, other than infrastructure, bring no benefit, instead that stifle common sense and private initiative.
RESULTS
So in short we believe in innate goodness and democracy (the powet of the people) and we use these tools to control people who work against our interests by using threats and violence and money.
Under-resourced, the authorities cannot keep up with the pace of change and are left running an ambulance service of police action and legal punishment, rather than taking hold of the problem with policy controls and preventive measures. Measures especially for getting the children of 1st and 2nd gen immigrants through to finishing their sixth-form in schools and going on to quality universities, of which Edinburgh once had many.
DESIRED OUTCOMES
To continue the survey...The main thing is do you feel safe, happy and free and are you confident in Edinburgh's future?
We would like immigrant communities to contribute to the economy and welfare of native residents of Edinburgh. After all, mmigrant groups might bring diverse skills, traditions, and an ability to empathise with and care for local communities, fostering a rich and supportive environment for all, including those residents with a memory of how things were. (Frankly speaking, this forlorn hope is an oblique way of saying we, as a civilisation, are f'ed.)
PERSPECTIVE
We seek to keep a perspective on this problem and not feel intimidated by all the foreign faces in the local cafe!
Because immigration is only one of the problems facing the country, alas: internal unrest from excessive immigration and unrest between the cultures is one problem. There are also threats of extinction of our civilization from outside ie from foreign wars. And there is also the paralysis of our whole system and the risk of economic collapse from the debt mountain.
(I'll have to rewrite the end of this article on note of encouragement.)
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