British Politics Thread.

[CoffeeGrunt]

I dunno, maybe we could stop invading the Middle East to start, that might help. ISIS are effectively a direct result of our crappy handling of Iraq. Keeping everyone together in one, massive PoW camp then just releasing them was idiotic, because then everyone's been coordinating and sharing info while they were held there. Once they were released, they were well-enough trained to take over the country after that. Syria's destabilisation didn't help either. We're all for making a half-hearted effort to take down Assad, but without proper handling that's just another power vacuum waiting to happen. Same with the rest of the Arab Spring. Wasn't that great? Just report on some Twitter videos that the entire region is undergoing revolution, but make no efforts to help with the transition and rebuilding of it all.

On top of that, Europe needs a coordinated strategy for this sort of thing. Zones migrants can be held at and looked after while their asylum is processed, with the basic necessities for survival. We need to work out just how many refugees each country can handle, and what share of the influx each country should take on. Organised transport, areas organised for housing, and help integrating them into their new societies.

But the Right Wing wouldn't want us to do that, it's all about Austerity, Austerity, Austerity. Except for Mr Cameron apparently [URL="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/03/uk-seems-relax-pressure-cayman-islands-company-register"]relaxing efforts to get tax havens to help[/URL] with dealing with that [URL="http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Documents/PCSTaxGap2014Full.pdf"]deficit of tens of billions of pounds[/URL].

No no, far easier to harass the [URL="http://www.dsdni.gov.uk/the-cost-of-benefit-fraud"]comparatively miniscule £25 million or so[/URL] from Benefit Fraud/Cheating. The cost of immigration is harder to nail down as it primarily comes from illegal immigration, but even the Daily Mail quotes it as £3.7billion. Hefty, but not even close to how much a little effort against tax evasion would achieve.

Additionally, a fair amount of the cost of illegal immigration is mounting up massive border patrols and arresting people for deportation, which is pretty much what people are demanding yet more of. Oh well.

There's no easy solution or simple answer, but I dunno, the safest one seems to be the one that involves less desperate people washing up on European shores as corpses. Kids or adults, the fact such an event like this is happening en masse is terrible. Do we need corpses washing ashore at Margate before the UK takes note of the problem?

[Psychosplodge]

We simply don't have the infrastructure available. We already have an [URL="http://www.independent.co.uk/money/two-million-cant-afford-to-move-out-of-their-parents-home-9635518.html"]estimated 2 million needing homes.[/URL]

[CoffeeGrunt]

We simply don't have the infrastructure available. We already have an [URL="http://www.independent.co.uk/money/two-million-cant-afford-to-move-out-of-their-parents-home-9635518.html"]estimated 2 million needing homes.[/URL]

That's an issue of house prices, not lack of availability. As someone stuck living with their parents for that exact reason, the cost of living is too damn high to make it worth getting your own place. That said, my parents need my rent money to keep their own home, so everything's just f'd up right now.

The government's too focused with helping buyers, who are obviously going to be older, more affluent people, than the younger people out there. People who want to just rent don't get much in the way of help, at least, not as far as my research has found. Not when I could spend my entire wage and end up with a grotty one-bedroom flat in a crap part of town.

It'd help if they built more houses again, but after the housing crash a few years back they're reluctant to. That article recommends getting a mortgage with your partner or friends, which is fantastic if you have a partner and are certain your relationship is at That Level. Also sharing rent with friends is a quick way to have that friendship erode, which is something I've seen happen a couple of times. :/

[Psychosplodge]

Its a case of supply and demand. The houses are out of reach because there isn't enough of the damn things.
It takes a month for a non emergency appoint at my doctors. Upto 3 for the dentist.
The infrastructure is already strained.

I rented with friends. We weren't friends six months in to a 12 month fixed term. It was hell
and that was for a massively overpriced **** hole.

[eldargal]

We simply don't have the infrastructure available. We already have an [URL="http://www.independent.co.uk/money/two-million-cant-afford-to-move-out-of-their-parents-home-9635518.html"]estimated 2 million needing homes.[/URL]

Technically they have homes, they just don't own them. There is, what, 600,000k refugees in Europe or heading to Europe right now? We could put those up in temporary housing and whatnot while we try and spread them out in more permanent accomdation across Europe/the world.

The reason this is happening now is because the camps in countries neighboring Syria hit capacity a long time ago and started running out of resources. We were told, we did nothing meaningful to help. If we had a coordinated effort to help Syria's neighbours then we wouldn't be in this mess now.

[Mr Mystery]

Well, we can either take in refugees from a situation we're largely responsible for.

Or we can drop the pretence we're anything like a civilised land.

[CoffeeGrunt]

We haven't dealt with the problem until it was long past being feasible to deal with it, yeah.

Its a case of supply and demand. The houses are out of reach because there isn't enough of the damn things.
It takes a month for a non emergency appoint at my doctors. Upto 3 for the dentist.
The infrastructure is already strained.

I rented with friends. We weren't friends six months in to a 12 month fixed term. It was hell
and that was for a massively overpriced **** hole.

It's a chicken-and-the-egg scenario. There's a tonne of demand but supply is being held back because said demand isn't rich enough. Not to mention budget cuts and a generally austere economy making things that bit more tight for people.

Still, many of those things are First World Problems. We can't afford our own homes, but we can afford comfortable homes with our comparatively small families. Our free healthcare takes a while, but it's free, and it's pretty competent most of the time.

It's so much more than any of the people camped out at Calais have ever had. Many of them would be happy with a simple roof over their head that isn't going to be shelled, some basic hygiene and food. Comparatively speaking, giving them a home somewhere with all that would be pretty cheap. No plasma TV or anything, but do they really need that?

Then we try and find work for them, help them integrate into the community. The problem is trying to avoid establishing ghettos where they stay forever poor compared to the world around them. There's no easy or correct answer, but we could be doing a lot more than we are now. We're not even trying to answer the problem...

[Psychosplodge]

No. The people at calias are in a safe country. there is zero reason for them to cross to the UK. If we take anyone they should come from the camps in turkey, because while turkey is technically safe, I think the bits the camps are in are bits we're advised not to visit?

[CoffeeGrunt]

No. The people at calias are in a safe country. there is zero reason for them to cross to the UK. If we take anyone they should come from the camps in turkey, because while turkey is technically safe, I think the bits the camps are in are bits we're advised not to visit?

There's actually a lot that's been revealed in interviews:

- They speak English, and thus want to come here,
- They have family/friends here who would help them integrate,
- The French have basically kept them in a homeless camp, and are dealing with higher numbers of immigrants than we are. The English Channel is really handy for helping us enforce our border,
- At the highest estimates there's about 3000 people in Calais. They're clearly not going anywhere, and that's a pretty small number for Britain to take on,
- And we can't exactly send them back home...

[Filthy Casual]

It's a safe country that's already taken in far more refugees than we have and it's time we stepped up and stopped with this ridiculous island mentality. We can either do that or we close our borders and sit back and watch as more and more people die fleeing a war we helped create.

Borders aren't a real thing, they're a totally societal construct, the whole idea of immigration and the right to reside in a particular country is a very new concept for humans, before then, people could move where they wanted, because you know, we all have as much right as anyone else to live in a particular place.