Immigrants....Years ago we were used to Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants. In France we'd read about EU immigration but not experienced it. Back in the UK the builders sent several workers to our new house. Couldn't quite place the first one's accent. Russian? No. Polish? No. Bulgarian! And when another builder came round, he sounded a bit similar. You must be Bulgarian, I said. No. Albanian! Oh the changes here post-war. From '48 to '62 the UK saw a wave of immigrants from Britain's imperial family. 500,000 arrived, mainly from the Caribbean, India and Pakistan. In Mirpur you earned 50p per week, in Wolverhampton £33. A no-brainer. Everyone thought they were here just temporarily, but it eventually turned the UK multicultural. And now the latest EU wave. After 2004 it was impossible for the government to control numbers, so Brexit was born. My conclusion? We must all learn how to deal with neighbours of a different culture.
...Hence the new published edition of my non-fiction book Pensioners in Paradis: French Notes from a Broad. How did Him indoors cope with dealing with a different culture? And how did the French cope with him? Now available for pre-order: click on the image on the right.
Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts
blog extra 21 August 2015
Some readers would like to hear my comments re the current immigration fiasco. Seeing Ms. May and M. Hollande fiddling while Calais burns is the last straw really. As with all important issues, you can only see the whole of Mount Sinai if you view it from a distance, so here goes. What exactly is the problem and why has it flared up now? The world has long had its inequalities. However, modern technology has exacerbated them by showing all the 'have nots' exactly what life would be like in a richer country. If I lived in war-torn Syria, for example, I too would want to move to 'richer', now peaceful Europe. However, just picture the atlas if everyone actually did that.......Europe would be so crammed with people, life would be impossible, and the whole of Africa would be empty of people! So, my solution? NATO/EU/and all other global welfare institutions should convene an urgent conference, pool resources and immediately start modernising the impoverished Third World by sending in task-forces. It's important they don't hand money over to corrupt leaders (who would use it to fund more artillery) but via equipment, food, housing materials, clean water and modern facilities - not just for isolated villages but enough for the whole country. That to me would be the first step. I'm sure people would far rather stay in their home countries once improvements and peace were introduced. Comments welcome!
20th November 2008
That woman with the je ne sais quoi - you know, Carla la magnifique - has been in the news again. The imminent arrival in the White House of someone with an African Muslim name has prompted a new campaign for racial integration, supported by the President's wife.
Under the Obama (or Bob the Builder!) slogan "oui, nous pouvons" (yes we can), the manifesto points to the "cruel contrast" between France's racially divided society and the lesson of inclusion that came from the US. Bruni says that she loves multi-ethnic France and that it is time to "help the elite to change". The Obama election has spurred young descendants of non-white immigrants to drop their given names - which their parents gave them to help them integrate - and claim new ones from their Arab/African backgrounds.
Names are a serious matter in France. Until a reform in 1992, parents could only register their babies with prénoms that were on an official list. Even now, to change a first name, you have to file a request with the local prosecutor's office and often argue your case before a judge. But now the trend in which Louis, Laurent or Marie want to become Abdel, Said or Rachida has connotations directly contrary to the French desire for integration of all immigrant groups.
And my opinion? If you choose to live in a different country from your own, do as the Romans do.
Under the Obama (or Bob the Builder!) slogan "oui, nous pouvons" (yes we can), the manifesto points to the "cruel contrast" between France's racially divided society and the lesson of inclusion that came from the US. Bruni says that she loves multi-ethnic France and that it is time to "help the elite to change". The Obama election has spurred young descendants of non-white immigrants to drop their given names - which their parents gave them to help them integrate - and claim new ones from their Arab/African backgrounds.
Names are a serious matter in France. Until a reform in 1992, parents could only register their babies with prénoms that were on an official list. Even now, to change a first name, you have to file a request with the local prosecutor's office and often argue your case before a judge. But now the trend in which Louis, Laurent or Marie want to become Abdel, Said or Rachida has connotations directly contrary to the French desire for integration of all immigrant groups.
And my opinion? If you choose to live in a different country from your own, do as the Romans do.
8th November 2008
The French are no different to others around the world in harboring resentment for years and years, sometimes deep within themselves. Take last Tuesday. Thirty people were arrested and three police officers wounded after a protest against European immigration policy turned violent in the French city of Vichy. This was the town that was the shamed capital of France's horrific WW2 experiences, and locals have never forgotten that time.
The world tries to move on, and indeed brave organisers tried to reinvent the town by hosting its first international conference there since the war so that they could shake off their wartime stigma and become a popular spa resort once more. But several busloads of militants had other ideas, with many linking current French policy to that of the pro-Nazi past.
I have often thought that too much of what happened during WW2 has been airbrushed away by nations (especially Germany) who wish only to forget what happened and to move on to what is happening today. What they fail to realise is that by pushing all those wartime attrocities into a locked compartment - things that changed families' lives for ever - people can never be free of the memory.
My solution would be to hold an international conference, but not one on immigration. My proposed agenda would be to confront all the international issues that arose in the years immediately preceding WW2 and trace the individual events that happened, one by one, that led to what happened in that fateful holocaust. It's never one thing, but many - sometimes coming together by chance - that cause eventual disaster. Having a megalomaniac at the helm of a non-democracy is one!
Sometimes you have to confront a festering boil, even one that has been fermenting for over 60 years, and probe deep within to see how it happened before lancing the boil once and for all. A quick clean cut. At a stroke then we learn to recognise how atrocities happened so that they may never happen again. Then, and only then, can proper healing take place.
The world tries to move on, and indeed brave organisers tried to reinvent the town by hosting its first international conference there since the war so that they could shake off their wartime stigma and become a popular spa resort once more. But several busloads of militants had other ideas, with many linking current French policy to that of the pro-Nazi past.
I have often thought that too much of what happened during WW2 has been airbrushed away by nations (especially Germany) who wish only to forget what happened and to move on to what is happening today. What they fail to realise is that by pushing all those wartime attrocities into a locked compartment - things that changed families' lives for ever - people can never be free of the memory.
My solution would be to hold an international conference, but not one on immigration. My proposed agenda would be to confront all the international issues that arose in the years immediately preceding WW2 and trace the individual events that happened, one by one, that led to what happened in that fateful holocaust. It's never one thing, but many - sometimes coming together by chance - that cause eventual disaster. Having a megalomaniac at the helm of a non-democracy is one!
Sometimes you have to confront a festering boil, even one that has been fermenting for over 60 years, and probe deep within to see how it happened before lancing the boil once and for all. A quick clean cut. At a stroke then we learn to recognise how atrocities happened so that they may never happen again. Then, and only then, can proper healing take place.
19th September
Ever since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden to search for a better life, man has moved around the planet. In today's world, due to vast inequalities in opportunity, work and wealth , this movement has reached epidemic proportions. The trouble is, with no-one to manage this enormous switch of manpower, anomolies occur.
This week the Office of National Statistics in Britain reported that the number of people living in England is now 400 people per sq km and rising rapidly, already quadruple that in France, where we live. But, as you will have read this week, England has taken its position as the most crowded country in Europe at exactly the same time as economic recession has taken hold. So, what on earth can be done? Not every one can desert their country (as we have done!). People's personal circumstances have to be right to contemplate that.
Of course, the British government is trying, at last, to do something about immigration. But everyone is yelling at them: 'it's 40 years too late!'. You only have to go up in a helicopter and look down at such a tiny island to realise that there are far too many people living there. There's no room to breathe. Now, I'm no expert on population density nor on mobility - although I've certainly tried the latter. But, it seems to me that globally there needs to be a group, be it the UN or similar, who can set up work opportunities in countries that have vast tracts of sparsely-populated land - like parts of Africa/Asia/S. America - offering 'carrots' of work opportunities for people to move from over-crowded places to set up homes in these new areas.
But for me and him indoors? After three years, we have never regretted our move to France. It may not have been for work that we moved, but it certainly has produced a better life. Our new home, though modest, is our veritable Garden of Eden and we wouldn't willingly go back to our former crowded island for all the money in China.
This week the Office of National Statistics in Britain reported that the number of people living in England is now 400 people per sq km and rising rapidly, already quadruple that in France, where we live. But, as you will have read this week, England has taken its position as the most crowded country in Europe at exactly the same time as economic recession has taken hold. So, what on earth can be done? Not every one can desert their country (as we have done!). People's personal circumstances have to be right to contemplate that.
Of course, the British government is trying, at last, to do something about immigration. But everyone is yelling at them: 'it's 40 years too late!'. You only have to go up in a helicopter and look down at such a tiny island to realise that there are far too many people living there. There's no room to breathe. Now, I'm no expert on population density nor on mobility - although I've certainly tried the latter. But, it seems to me that globally there needs to be a group, be it the UN or similar, who can set up work opportunities in countries that have vast tracts of sparsely-populated land - like parts of Africa/Asia/S. America - offering 'carrots' of work opportunities for people to move from over-crowded places to set up homes in these new areas.
But for me and him indoors? After three years, we have never regretted our move to France. It may not have been for work that we moved, but it certainly has produced a better life. Our new home, though modest, is our veritable Garden of Eden and we wouldn't willingly go back to our former crowded island for all the money in China.
17th September 2008
In writing this daily blog I try to embody some of the cultural and political bonds that link Britain and France. As such I like to think I'm a sort of modern-day Alistair Cooke, who all those years ago used to broadcast via his weekly BBC radio programme 'Letter from America'. He was born in Manchester in 1908 but became a US citizen in 1941. Of course back in 1946 when Cooke first started broadcasting across the globe, he could have had no idea of the technological revolution to come. Nor could he have had any inkling of the difficulties oldsters like me would have in trying to communicate globally from my humble abode here in rural France, aeons away from the BBC expertise that Cooke could call upon. How to find out the French word for some of the keyboard symbols like @ or # ? These sort of things are never in my French:English dictionary. And you all know what happened when him indoors went to buy a computer mouse yesterday! But, petit a petit, little by little, we get by. By chance, I have now discovered that the # symbol is called dieze in French. When I'm trying to decipher an incoming phone message, the French telephone operator leaves her dratted recorded message: '...if you want this, tappez dieze......' So, voila! That's one problem solved. Of course, all of these are the trivial problems of a new immigrant to these shores, but what of the future? Will the current appalling economic and immigrant problems endemic in Britain bring more and more British to France? If so, let us hope that, like Alistair Cooke back in 1946, they learn to integrate by adopting the new culture, despite all the consequent hysterical comedy situations that engenders. After all, by reading my blog every day, you'll have gathered that I should know.
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