On BBC1’s Question Time, Professor Mary Beard dismissed stories about the number of migrant workers overwhelming Boston as ‘myths’ and said ‘public services can cope’.
But Rachel Bull, an office manager in Boston, who was in the audience, immediately challenged the Cambridge University classics professor, claiming hospitals and schools are struggling to cope in the Lincolnshire agricultural town.I wonder if Prof Beard muttered 'That bigoted woman...' as she was ushered to the Green Room after the show was over?
No doubt the Left were outraged at this typical 'Little Englander' response to their glorious multicultural diversity project?
Mrs Bull – whose grandparents moved to Britain from Poland after the Second World War – said...Whoops!
...that she is not against immigration, but believes ministers should reconsider allowing Romanians and Bulgarians unrestricted rights to live and work in the UK from December 2013.Pick the bones out of that one!
She added: ‘The problem is we’re not like these politicians or other people on television, we’re on the frontline. I’ve not been to university, I’m just a 35-year-old who spoke from the heart.’I wonder where Prof Beard lives..? Anywhere near the frontline, do you suppose?
Do you suppose she even uses the public services she so fondly imagines can cope?
I caught some of question time this week, the bit that sticks in my mind is this aged hippy witch said that "Only 1% of social housing is let to economic migrants, an infinitesimally small amount".
ReplyDeleteOK, let's put this into perspective, hopefully she'll be gang raped and murdered (painfully) by 7 scumbags.
It would be done by only 0.000001% of the population so can be dismissed as meaningless.
The thing with these people is it only becomes meaningless to the point it begins to effect them.
Obviously a Cambridge classics professor is going to have first hand expertise and experience of this problem.
ReplyDeleteThey have their fingers on the pulse, people. DOn't worry, they are in charge, everything's under control, nothing to see here.
I also imagine that her definition of 'economic migrants' is a very tight one indeed, i.e. immigrants who actually admit to being so.
ReplyDeleteAny who claim to be asylum seekers, no matter how bogus, will not be counted.
The population of Boston is said to be 60,000, with 9,000 migrants. However, this has been a retirement area, so the number of the younger Brit age groups may be only 25 to 30,000. As the 9,000 migrants also will be younger this gives another view of the impact. Add another 10 to 15,000 young migrants and think about it.
ReplyDeleteI doubt if Prof Beard goes as far north as Downham Market; her work is in Cambridge, London and California.
ReplyDeleteIt's worth pointing out that her viewpoint (wrong in every respect, obviously) comes from her particular work which has been international since the 13th Century. Universities have always had foreign exchanges, foreign students and plenty of foreign support labour from the cleaners upwards. For them, it's normal.
The best analogy is that of an international cruise ship which, because it has an international crew, visits all the ports of the world, and has passengers from every country, may grow to have the impression that there is one world and that countries don't matter.
Inviting an official on such a ship to comment knowledgeably on the conditions in rural areas just north of e.g. Marseilles is ridiculous; a less arrogant spokesperson would have kept quiet. Instead of which she foolishly tried to quote a pooched survey and attempted to use the world 'Little Englander' to patronizingly dismiss the person talking.
So much for Mary's feminism.
I wondered who the ghastly, out of touch, bag lady was.
ReplyDeleteFarrage did enormously well given the odds 5-1 stacked against him (the four non-entities and Dumblebod).
Particularly when he nailed the oft repeated lie about the availability of the benefit system to those claiming to those new arrivals who claim to be self employed and looking for work.
I enjoyed her series on Wome and the Wo-mans recently and didn't think AA Gills description of her as having a face for radio very nice - but outside her area of specialism she clearly is a she is a silly old lefty tart living and working in isolation from the real world.....and a couple of thousand years ago too.
ReplyDeleteEverywhere will be the front line soon.Even these lefty out of touch idiots won't have anywhere to hide.
ReplyDeleteJaded
Whatever academic trophies and badges Mary Beard may have, her moral credentials are, to say the least, a little suspect. Writing in the London Review of Books, where leftist academics like to strut, she described the events of September 11 as a “predictable outcome of US actions,” while putting the words terrorist and terrorism in ironic quotation marks. Ms Beard also flirted with the idea that “America had it coming” and likened jihadi terrorism to “extraordinary acts of bravery.”
ReplyDeleteAs you do.
Yes Jaded, but when it all goes tits up, these fuckers that caused it all will fuck off to their Tuscan villas surrounded by their armed protection details paid for with their ill gotten. Those who Stalin termed the "Useful idiots" will be the 1st to have their throats cut with a rusty knife or bludgeoned to death in the streets. So on balance, not a total loss...
ReplyDeleteThe Polish, Lithuanians, Slovenians, Ukrainians, etc, etc, have pretty much all come here to work.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure that this will be the case with the many of the Roma that currently live in Romania and Bulgaria.
"The thing with these people is it only becomes meaningless to the point it begins to effect them."
ReplyDeleteSpot on! And as WoaR points out, it's never likely to...
"I also imagine that her definition of 'economic migrants' is a very tight one indeed..."
Hmm, good point!
"So much for Mary's feminism."
Always a disposable belief when it conflicts with something else...
"...her moral credentials are, to say the least, a little suspect."
I guess that's what makes her the Go To Gal for 'Question Time'.. :/
"The Polish, Lithuanians, Slovenians, Ukrainians, etc, etc, have pretty much all come here to work. "
They also (apart from a bit of shelf space in the local supermarket for strange delicacies) don't seem to change the appearance or character of the areas they settle in.
Would that other groups behaved similarly...
The Polish, Lithuanians, Slovenians, Ukrainians, etc, etc, have pretty much all come here to work.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that's any better.
I was working in the UK when the borders were opened to Poles, and the crotchety old British ladies who cleaned the office disappeared overnight, to be replaced by twenty-something blonde Polish girls. Now, I didn't exactly mind having attractive Polish girls cleaning the office, but I'm sure the crotchety old ladies who were laid off didn't feel the same way.
'Coming to Britain to work' only makes a difference if they're coming to do jobs that would otherwise not be done. If they merely replace an existing worker, they may be more detrimental than someone who comes to live on benefits, because the worker they displace may qualify for more benefits than a new immigrant would... and will now probably vote BNP at the next election.
Note: this evening the story is running of the dramatic real increase in births although nobody can bring themselves to say certain words.
ReplyDeleteInstead, it's all apparently down to older women, British by implication. Nothing to do with anyone else.
A Classics professor?
ReplyDeleteand her qualifications for commenting on this are what exactly ?
"Coming to Britain to work' only makes a difference if they're coming to do jobs that would otherwise not be done. If they merely replace an existing worker, they may be more detrimental than someone who comes to live on benefits.."
ReplyDeleteThat's a very good point. But then, why should the politicians care?
"Note: this evening the story is running of the dramatic real increase in births although nobody can bring themselves to say certain words."
Indeed!
"A Classics professor?
and her qualifications for commenting on this are what exactly ?"
She has the right mindset for the Beeb. And, as usual, she's now claiming victim-hood.