The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #983
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 31 minutes
Words per Minute
186.44229
Summary
In Episode 983 of The Lotus Seat, we discuss how we shouldn't have to live with the violent consequences of mass immigration, how the media lies by omission, and why we should copy the policies and practices of the Swedish government.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to the podcast of The Lotus Seaters, episode 983. We're nearing that thousand
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for the 21st of August, 2024. I'm your host, Connor, joined by Carl and Beau.
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Today we'll be discussing how we shouldn't have to live with the violent consequences
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of mass immigration, how the media lies by omission, and to Tierkir's record on BLM.
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I'm always good to document examples. It'll be a useful resource for you. Before we jump
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into today's stories, just a reminder, it's a Wednesday, so you get to get a double dose
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of me, you poor unfortunate souls. At three o'clock, I'll be going how the Home Office
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and the various networks of NGOs, including Hope Not Hate, work with foreign intelligence
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agencies and PR firms to gaslight the public over things like the recent Southport riots.
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Hopefully, it should be a useful educational resource to arm yourselves accordingly.
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But, without further ado, so there's been a recent spate of crime, lots of stabbings
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by men, even some women, of no fixed abode in the UK, and you are commanded not to notice
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a pattern here, but what we should know is that we shouldn't have to live like this.
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That this is a choice by a very permissive asylum and criminal justice system to allow violent
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criminals carte blanche to attack innocent people on British streets. And someone who
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has noticed that you don't have to live like this are the Swedes. There is a piece, screaming,
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crying, coping, in our favourite outlet, The Guardian, as of today, that is titled deliciously,
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from open hearts to closed borders, behind Sweden's negative net immigration figures.
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If progressive Sweden can do it, I think this sets a palatable model for other politicians
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in the UK to perhaps take note. Because I have seen suggestions, especially following
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the recent civil unrest, where even YouGov registered 67% of the public thought that
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immigration had something to do with why people were upset, even if they condemned the
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rights themselves. I've seen politicians suggesting we need a debate or even a referendum
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on mass immigration. I don't think there's anything really left to debate here.
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Like, we have the statistics, we have the case studies, we now have examples of countries
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implementing positive policies that we could just copy. So you could just table, ready to
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pass legislation, and put the onus on the government as to why they want this state of affairs to
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continue. Now, the Swedes certainly don't. So I'll just read from this Guardian article and
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really channel the spirit of that meme that Count Dankula responded to me this morning when
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tweeted out this, which is, Lord Jesus, I see what you've done for other people, and I want
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it for me too. So just 10 years ago, the Prime Minister, Friedrich Reinfeldt, asked Swedes
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to open your hearts to refugees, very similar to Angela Merkel's Vyshoffendas. Now the country's
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migration minister is celebrating the fact that Sweden has, quote, negative net immigration,
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with more people thought to be leaving the country than entering for the first time in
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more than half a century. Now, proviso. Some of these statistics may be slightly misleading,
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as Josh will be covering in detail tomorrow, but there are positive trends here because of
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certain policies the Swedes have passed. So it might not be net hundreds of thousands departing,
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but there are certainly things that the UK could do by copying the Swedes. Quote,
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the number of asylum applications is heading towards a historically low level. Asylum-related
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residence permits continue to decrease, and for the first time in 50 years, Sweden has net
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immigration, Maria Malma Stengard announced earlier this month. Sweden's moderate-led government,
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which is supported by the, quote, far-right Swedish Democrats, a popular nationalist party,
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has pursued increasingly restrictive asylum policies, including plans for a snitch law
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that would legally require public sector workers to report what the Guardian call undocumented
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people. Illegal migrants working for the government. That just seems like a very sensible
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thing to do. You are required to abide by the law and inform the government when the law is broken,
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and for some reason, informing the government of law-breaking is deterring asylum applicants.
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How strange. While the workings behind the government's conclusion of attracted speculation,
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including for the government agency whose figures Stengard's statement was based on,
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the UN High Commissioner for Refugees confirmed the trend. It was surprising, the UNHCR said,
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that while global displacement was at an all-time high, the number of people seeking asylum in
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Sweden was at an all-time low. The statistics show Sweden having a net outflow of immigrants for the
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first time in decades, Annika Sandland, the UNHCR representative to the Nordic and Baltic
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countries, told the Guardian. Stengard claimed,
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Net immigration was evidence that the government's work yields results and that the approach was
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necessary for us to be able to strengthen integration and reduce exclusion. I like how
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the Swedes still frame it in progressive terms. I mean, you need to be very exclusive in order to
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attract the right sort of people that have an affinity for the country and will actually
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assimilate, and not the first and second generation immigrants that I don't know
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I always think it's weird where people come from far-flung corners of the earth, whether it be,
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you know, Bangladesh or Nigeria or wherever, and they think, oh, I know, I'll go to Malmo.
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You know, oh, I know, I'll go to Hull. Like, what? What? It honestly doesn't make any sense.
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I don't know why you would, I don't know, I want to go to, I'm from sub-Saharan Africa.
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What I really want is to live in Sweden. It doesn't, there's no...
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Have you considered the area might be improved by a Turkish barber or a vape shop?
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Well, the answer is, of course, welfare payments.
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That's why they're coming. Let's be honest, let's be realistic about this. They're coming
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because they're being paid. And if they weren't being paid, they wouldn't.
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But still, the places they end up. Like, I get, like, the capital cities.
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I want to go to Europe, and you end up in Vienna. Okay, that makes some sort of sense.
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You end up in Copenhagen, that makes some sort of sense. But like, like I say, Malmo,
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My wife's family, some of them live in Fishguard. And I've said this before, it's like, and yet
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there's refugees there. It's like, there's no way you knew about Fishguard when you were
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living in Congo or Somalia. You didn't know this place existed. So there's obviously been
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a network of NGOs and government interference that has placed you there. This isn't something
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There's just Somalis with a, like Jim Carrey in the Truman Show, dreaming of Fiji, just
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a poster of Port Talbot. A stroke every night. Someday.
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Port Talbot, brilliant. I was thinking of a funny place. It's like, you got it, you nailed it.
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I'm here all week, ladies and gentlemen. So this Anika Sandland at the UNHCR has said
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that exact thing. She's saying, it might not be such a good thing for Sweden as a country
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to have fewer asylum seekers. As well as playing a vital part in the workforce,
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we'll get to that. We'll get to it. Given Sweden's ageing population, making immigrants
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feel welcome was crucial to integration. That explains all the grenade attacks. What we
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know is that successful integration, which this government wants to see, depends on people
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feeling welcome, including the Swedes in their own country. Asylum seeker aid organisations
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and members of immigrant communities told The Guardian that fear over the government's
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anti-immigration policies and rhetoric was to blame, actively encouraging people to leave
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the country or seek asylum elsewhere. We are very, we are contacted by people who are
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very worried about the restrictive regime and thinking about leaving, said one organisation.
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Tobias Hubernet, who's a senior lecturer in intercultural studies at Karlstad University,
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said a reverse from net migration to net emigration would be totemic. And he says, if it is true,
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it's absolutely historic because Sweden has apparently been an immigration country for such
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a long time, basically a hundred years. Is he counting that sort of one stint in the
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forties where they had a bit of an excursion with some Germans?
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Not sure. Was that immigration? But no, I don't think that's true.
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Yes. He also said, if this had happened five years ago, there would have been uproar because
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of the two years, you just give up and accept things. The prospect of tightening restrictions,
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including on visas, citizenship and bringing relatives to the country, has made Sweden
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unappealing, particularly among highly educated people from countries including Somalia, Iraq and
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Syria. For Swedish society, this is a pure catastrophe.
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Yeah. Fewer Somalis, Iraqis and Syrians. What a catastrophe. Now, if anyone is persuaded
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by this man, his name, again, it's Hubernet. Like an Ikea bookshelf, I suppose. Reporting
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from the UK, we have plenty of Somalis, Iraqis and Syrians. Let's see how that's working
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out for us. Well, the BBC decided to report, pretty honestly, on... I know, it's rare.
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On the Channel Boat migrant crossings, and they've got a fantastic graph down here. So
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this is the migrant crossings. At the moment, 2024 is proving to be a record year that's
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tracking and trending to be higher than the record year of 2022, where it's predominantly
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Albanians. And who's crossing at the moment? Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey. Popular holiday.
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destination. Turkey, they're claiming asylum. How can you claim asylum from Turkey? Eritrea,
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Syria, Iraq, Vietnam, Sudan, Albania, Egypt. Others. Yeah. There might be others here.
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Just Egypt. Yes. None of these countries are at war.
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Nope. Nope. You're right. Yeah. Literally none of them are at war. Oh, maybe, maybe the
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Sudanese. Are the Sudanese engaged in some sort of... It's a completely failed state, isn't
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it? Yeah. It's an endless... Like Somalia, it's just an endless... Hey, don't be racist.
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You can't notice. Cultures are equal. Okay. Maybe we'll leave Sudan out. But like, hey, there
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aren't that many Sudanese, apparently, coming over there. But like, how do we get... Again,
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people go on holiday in Vietnam. Like, none of these places are being invaded by a foreign
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power. Also, how many bloody Afghan interpreters did we apparently use?
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Isn't places like Vietnam and Cambodia, that's because Indians use them as slaves in this country?
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Quite possibly. I don't know. When there was this, like, slave problem in Leicester, it was
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that Indian people, they were, like, using Vietnamese people as slaves. I didn't know
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that. I wasn't aware. I see... As part of it. Yeah, Afghanistan, I mean, are you kidding
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me? Come on. So the stats read out as of the 12th of August, so about a week ago now, 18,467
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people across the channel in 2024, more than the same period over the previous four years.
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In 2023 as a whole, only, only, 29,437 people came in small boats. A big drop from 2022, where
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we saw 45,755, the highest number since figures were first collected in 2018. Since 2018, more
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than 130,000 people have come to the UK by breaking in via the channel. In the year ending March
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2024, Afghans were the top nationality, crossing the channel, making up just a fifth of all
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small boat rivals. Iranians were 12%, and Turkish nationals were 11%. Slightly different from
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2023, when Afghans were, again, the largest number of asylum seekers, 9,307. The next biggest group,
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7,400 people, came from Iran, followed by Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.
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Why the hell would you, no, just get on a plane from those places?
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Well, because if you've got on a criminal record, we do actually turn you away sometimes.
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If you come on a boat, you definitely won't be turned away. Also, I think a lot of these
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people, dare I say, dare I suggest, are just lying that they're Afghani. Because of the
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Afghan war and the invasion, if you say that, then it pulls on our heartstrings of the people
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in the border force. Those people claim they're Turkish when they're actually Syrian and things,
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Are you suggesting there's some sort of giant coral reef of discarded documents at the bottom
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of the channel, where we could authenticate whether these people are from Afghanistan.
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Mysteriously, they arrive on our shores without any documentation proving that. That would
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I never thought of that giant reef. Eventually, there'll be an actual causeway linking France
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One of the dinghies will just be punctured like the Titanic-style iceberg by all of the
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But fortunately, we know that diversity brings great things like food groups, sure. I'm sure
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all of these people, the sort of people that the Swedes are now losing out on, are massive
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economic contributors, right? We couldn't be losing out on Iraqis and Somalis, could we?
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Well, let's look over to far-right conspiracy outlet, the Centre for Policy Studies, to see
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who's claiming social housing in the country, just as a reminder. At the top there, we've got
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something like 72% of Somalians in the UK are on taxpayer-funded housing. Why are we...
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Look at Africa total. Is that more than... Is that half of them?
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A third of all of the Africans in Britain are being paid to live here by the taxpayer.
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Iraqis, those very profitable peoples, over a third as well. Bangladeshis.
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North Africa. Why are any of these people... I'm of the opinion that someone born overseas
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should not be entitled to taxpayer benefits at all, ever in their life.
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Maybe if they conduct some sort of act of great service, like they spent 20 years in the military
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or something, I could, you know, find it in my heart to give an exception for.
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But, like, this is just preposterous. Absolutely preposterous.
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I think every single foreign ball national that isn't working should be deported.
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Or at least, even if they're not deported, okay, they don't get access to the benefit system,
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The reason I'm against just deporting them if they don't have a job
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is because we'd have to pay for their plane tickets too.
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I think if you just withdraw benefits from them, then they are either forced to seek a job,
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or if they go and work in the dark, criminal, underground economy,
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then of course we have the pretext to deport them then.
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It would be very unfair if you're between jobs to be deported.
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But if you were a criminal, of course you should be deported.
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It's also reasonable, like, because, like, you know,
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okay, someone's come over and they're working, and they're working very hard, blah, blah.
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But, like, the company they're working for goes under
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because of various labour policies of increasing VAT or something like that, right?
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That's not their fault, you know, just to grab them, deport them.
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It's, you know, no one's going to agree with that.
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You know, we're not going to just give you a free house
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and so it just seems like a perfectly sensible policy.
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I would find it baffling if I moved to, I don't know,
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And the Ghanaian state was like, okay, well, we'll give you a house.
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It's like, yeah, and here's some benefits so you don't go hungry.
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And we just expect at some point you might get a job.
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Well, it's indefinitely allowing you to live in Ghana,
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make sure you're fed, and you've got your bills paid for.
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And would I spend all my day at the beach in Ghana?
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Why would I do any, like, contribute to the economy?
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Well, just note that a nation that's not on here,
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a nation with very low immigration, very high productivity,
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the Japanese, there's, like, no Japanese people
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that different populations with different cultures
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But maybe it's just the British system that's causing this.
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Can I point out that there are more Germans than Kenyans
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Well, speaking of a sort of Germanic slash Nordic country,
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So we were sort of on the other side of what they're
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watching the riots from their perspective, saying, oh my
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So everyone was surprised that these deep wells of
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feeling exist in the country from what are essentially
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And so, the response, though, the response is so
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government saying, well, there's no legitimacy to any
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of this, we're going to hunt you down, we got, I'm
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deeply saddened and depressed that a minority of
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protesters became violent towards police officers in
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Not the, we're going to get you, from, what's his name,
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Mark Rowley, the majority of Sunday's protests were
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peaceful, but in the evening, there were disturbances
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Right, okay, so mostly peaceful protests, right.
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Again, the complete tonal shift and difference between
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Happen to remember cops, again, physically running away
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And after that, the Met came out and instructed their
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police officers that they were at liberty to take the knee
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well, the violence is not acceptable, but I stand with
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Because George Floyd took a belly full of fentanyl.
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But eight girls getting stabbed, he didn't say that.
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This vital cause was badly let down by a tiny minority
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Again, the same thing could be said about the Southport
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Exactly the same thing could be said, but it's not being
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I mean, for this one, in the London one, 135 arrests were made,
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and like I said, 27 police officers were injured.
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I mean, Priti Patel, who was, of course, the head secretary
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but a lawless minority of protesters turned to violence.
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The thugs and criminals responsible are ready to be brought to justice,
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She was really busy at the time letting millions of new migrants in,
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I decided to, you know, do various sort of time slices
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I tweeted out, has anyone been prosecuted from this?
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So the first thing that came up was the fact that in Northern Ireland,
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14 suspects from the rioting, from the Black Lives Matter protests,
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We're at luxury to do it, and we're not going to do it.
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because I guess they must have prepared in advance for this sort of thing,
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He was supposed to face up to 18 months behind bars,
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but the judge decided to give him a two-year conditional discharge
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Yeah, I didn't need to set fire to the Cenotaph when I was 19.
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Yeah, but I think that's the way they're looking at it.
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But, like, people say, oh, sometimes I say fifth columnist on Twitter.
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Some people say, commies, usually say things like,
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that's ridiculous, that's hyperbole, that you've gone way too far with that.
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But it's not, it's literally exactly what it is.
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and then you use that as an example to riot and set fire to a flag at the Cenotaph,
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anyone who might not know, a memorial to our war dead...
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I think, I don't know if I'd call him a fifth columnist,
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because I think that ascribes to him far more intellect and agency than of which he's capable.
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But what I think this represents is the total failure of the ability of the state
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to bring these people onto the narrative of why being British is a good thing, right?
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If you're some 19-year-old kid, you feel you're trapped in Britain,
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The British state is evil and doesn't represent you,
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and the fact that the society that that represents is worthy of being burned down,
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which you would symbolically do by burning down the flag,
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that's a massive failure that we should be talking about.
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We're not going to show him that there's a hard border on that, right?
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I think you're ascribing too much intellect and agency
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I agree, and he should have been punished, right?
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There was, of course, a massive amount of disorder
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with a BLM activist with their fist in the air.
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I mean, I don't really care about Edward Colston.
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It's literally like nails on a chalkboard to me.
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18 protesters were jailed for violent disorder.