is it hypocritical to believe in a strong welfare state but be against immigration?

Let's see how over populated it is when we move the whole of Sunderland there.

 

There are other places. Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow - they all have plenty of jobs anytime you look.

NO EXCUSES.

Besides there is work they just don't want to do it, that's why recruitment companies are concerned there will be a labour shortage if immigrants stopped coming over due to Brexit.

 

Whole swathes of the population cannot simply up and move across the country, don't be so patently ridiculous. Individually yes people might be able to relocate but on a population level you are making a patently absurd and ignorant statement in total denial of the barriers and logistics involved. As a society we have a duty to look at those issues, examine how they came into being and reduce them where possible. That doesn't mean creating ever increasingly overcrowded population centres full of those who had the means and capability to crowd in, like some modern answer to Victorian London whilst the rest of the country dwindles into helpless poverty, it means addressing the social issues which lead to the uneven distributions of opportunity.

All you are doing here is -painting yourself as a ridiculously elitist figure who completely fails to even understand there are reasons for poverty in society, reasons for social exclusion, reasons for inequalities in provision and uptake

 

No matter what happened to me, I would not become a leech. If I lost my job and couldn't get another in the field after a few months I would take ANYTHING, shit shovelling or whatever. I would move if I had to. Sorry but in my mind there are no excuses. They wouldn't have to all move there are jobs here. Sorry but I will never believe it's OK to be on benefits when there is a single alternative available to you, I will believe it till the day I die.

 

Let's look at why an individual wouldn't move somewhere with better job opportunities.

One thing gets clear very quickly: rents are way higher and living space is in higher demand, so one does not only need to find a job, but first find a place to live one even can afford. The situation is worsened by the real estate speculation plaguing several countries, including (but in no way limited to) the UK.
Looking at London, finding a flat there appears nigh impossible, certainly for an unemployed person.

So, it would be better to first find a job, then find a flat. But to get to a job interview, you'd have to travel, maybe get a hotel room, or at least a bed in a hostel. That all costs money, money one had to spend to even get a chance at landing that job. Considering that these chances, even in a town with relatively high job opportunities, the competition for any job offered is high enough to make it more likely you don't get the job than that you get it. So, even if you pack the whole day with job interviews, it's still a gamble, one you'd have to invest quite some money in, money you don't necessarily have.

And even if you get a job, chances are it's a low-paying one. Because the shitty jobs usually are. Now, with that slightly higher income than when you were unemployed, you still have to find a flat. And chances for that have gotten only slightly better than before.

And this still leaves out leaving behind friends, family and familiar surroundings.

 

I've paid a fuck load of tax into the welfare state in my lifetime and never taken anything out of it, if I lose my job i'll damn well take the benefits until I find a job I want, where I want it.

That's what it is there for. To help people who are looking for work to find it. It makes no sense to take a job below your abilities until you have to. That only reduces your mobility, your ability to look for suitable work, and takes your skills out of the marketplace. If I squandered my abilities and potential and rushed into low paid/unskilled work just to not claim benefits, I'd probably end up being a bigger burden on the state than if I had stuck it out to find a job suited to me. A full time minimum wage job barely even scratches the first tax bracket. Foolish.

 

It's worked fine for me in the past. Keep in mind if it's a shit job they usually don't hold you to a notice period.

You have taken out of it, every had your bin picked up or walked down a street not littered? That happened because of taxes.

 

I think it's pretty obvious what I was talking about. I have never claimed income support benefits. I have used the NHS though, before you start dissecting my original comment any further. My point being, I have paid my way, if I were to choose to take benefits in order to find suitable work, that would not make me a leech.

Bin collections are not part of the welfare state in any case. That's just a service paid for by local taxes, refuse collection predates the Welfare State by a century at least. The Welfare State does not describe any service paid for by taxes. Taxes pay for everything.

Buit thanks for explaining how taxes work. I had NO IDEA.

 

It's a lot easier to advocate that people move to where the jobs are than it is for them to actually do it. I think Sam Kinison had something to say on that general subject.

 

That's fine and I do respect that as a personal stance. What I cannot respect is the attitude that social mobility is readily feasible, that there are no financial or practical barriers discriminating what opportunities are available to people within our society. One cannot reasonably expect millions of people with lower standards of education and limited means can be expected to compete on an even footing with those from a more privileged background. No matter what happens to any given individual we are talking about whole regions whose populations have the dice loaded against them.

This becomes exacerbated when one considers family ties, dependants, disabilities, the consequent mental health issues linked with long term unemployment, the motivational drain and frankly the unfeasability of and financial barriers associated with moving families to more affluent areas in order to chase jobs.

Even if this were somehow made possible the fact remains all you would have done is condense the problem, social inequalities are often made worse within population centres as all the issues which caused them remain, recreating the same patterns on a micro scale. It's no reason the places you mention with high population densities also enjoy localised spikes in crime rates and socio economic issues not seen in more evenly distributed populations.

 

Born and raised on a council estate. But I get your point...

 

Born fuck knows where and raised by social services Now on my fourth degree, after being seconded from NHS forensic services and due to take up a dual academic/management role in a specialist hospital which hasn't been built yet despite my rabble rousing union rep history.

I know it can be done, but we are the exceptions dude. How about a little sympathy for the people who didn't get the breaks?

 

If you are pro strong welfare, you HAVE to be anti-immigration. They cannot exist together in a sustainable fashion for very long.
Now by anti-immigration, I mean anti illegal immigration, where they are allowed to benefit from the welfare.
Immigration where you are required to have a job lined up within a certain time after coming, before you can apply for citizenship is something entirely different.

 

Australia is difficult to legally enter and physically too in that we are obviously surrounded by water. However we do not have the same percentage of illegals that the USA is absorbing!

As for colonisation or invasion, times have certainly changed. It's not very relevant to compare current immigration both legal and otherwise with past settlement.

 

Indeed. In the United States, the system has become more about keeping people where they are and working longer hours for less pay, rather than gaining the ability to rise up the ranks. Upward mobility has decreased in the U.S. (link), and the middle class is starting to disappear (link). We don't have subsidized higher education here, nor a subsidized national health system. Yet you'll hear from our politicians that people who are poor are only there because they're lazy. It's a fool's statement, something usually said by someone who has never had to worry about their next meal, or having a roof over their head.

 

I'm pretty sure that you are kidding.
Where I work, someone told me to never let it out that my father had servants
When he was growing up.
How assigning is that?

 

Except when you see that someone is getting the same paycheck that you are and you see them daily taking extra long breaks and throwing work in the trash, and your boss asks for volunteers to help that same person with their work.
Year after year after year.

 

I here you.
I work for the unemployment office.
I guess my pet peeve is all of the illegals using other people's identities to work here illegally.
But then there are also the ones that steal money from the government. Still getting benefits for unemployment while working.
Ones that know someone else is using their ID but try to claim unemployment benefits on those jobs.