Anyone Agree With Vinnie?

[youngmafbog]

Link for the lefties

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/vinnie-jones-claims-immigration-has-made-england-unrecognisable-and-not-the-country-i-grew-up-in-8795617.html

Link for the righties
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2409481/Vinnie-Jones-brands-England-completely-unrecognisable-European-country.html

I think he does have some points and lets face it our weather is awful

[Octavius]

Zeuhl "It is interesting that people's perceptions of a deterioration from an ideal tend to coincide with their own life-stages."

Yes, most notably the perception in downhill trend seems to start at the end of the good years when all the education and youthful partying is done, you find a job and a partner, settle down and starting a family - to the good old life of work, responsibility, financial woes and getting old.

[Ric.ror]

Oh doctorb your opening a can of worms there

People like Vinnie Jones would make me ashamed to be English if I was

[emmie]

sadly the capital has become the dumping ground of the worlds poor, if sp thinks that south London still looks the same, better take another look.
by the way the vile Heygate estate is being demolished, wonder if the cretins who daubed the whole estate in grafitti will be moving into any of the new properties when they go up. Or will they be private dwellings, and out of the reach of most ordinary folk.

[doctordb]

Friends of mine moved to cyprus over ten years ago because 'ingerlund wunt wot it used to be'. With the cypriot pound they could eat out for a tenner each and they paid hardly any taxes. they had a pool and their pension was as fat as the kleftiko. they couldn't care if they ever saw england again.

They are now trying to sell up at a big loss and come back as Cyprus aint wot it used to be.

[emmie]

it actually looks worse than this.

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://blackcablondon.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/heygate-construction.jpg&imgrefurl=http://blackcablondon.wordpress.com/tag/heygate-estate/&h=417&;w=640&sz=42&tbnid=_eFiPhG1p_conM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=138&zoom=1&usg=__RScAbZNDxLqNElL72AECM1Dpo1k=&docid=x7MwIGurwBJdKM&sa=X&ei=ePglUp6mM8nIhAeyjoFg&ved=0CEwQ9QEwBQ&;dur=581

[doctordb]

He's Welsh ric.ror :)

[pixie373]

Doctorb, my mum has friends who have done exactly the same and now wanting to come back. (might be the same people :-\)

[emmie]

same with Spain, it's not so much things ain't wot they used to be, it's that there are massive problems, unemployment for one thing, and property prices not moving, add in social unrest, and bad deals for British abroad, i can see some having to return to UK

[emmie]

you don't say, are other large cities any better, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester,

[doctordb]

Pixie, I feel sorry for them but I also remember how much they slated England at the time of leaving and for years after. Unfortunately on their return they won't have half the standard of living they would have if they'd stayed.

[emmie]

and strangely many seem to want to come here, no matter if you were to tell people of the massive problems facing the capital. If you are poor, chances are you will get some help, if you are middle income you will be picking up the tab for the poor, if you are rich, you won't care, because your money will protect you from the rest.

[pixie373]

No, ours were fairly smug about the great way of life in Cyprus, but will struggle financially to move back.

[emmie]

i think that would be a big problem for most British moving back to blighty, not just the changes but the currency value, your pound gets you almost nothing, 5 quid a jar of coffee maybe? and then of course where will they be able to live, buying a place is now out of reach of many. Renting will be as tough, welcome as they say to the real world.

[sp1814]

emmie

Spookily - I used to live up the road from the Heygate estate (in the Aylesbury) and I assure you that it was as scummy in the 70s as it was in the 80s, 90s and now.

The deterioration set in, in the late 70s when Lambeth started moving 'problem' families into the estate.

But my point about London 'looking' the same was about the racial profile, rather than the look of the housing stock. The mix of black, white and Asian hasn't changed. When I go to visit my mum or sister, who still live in the area, the people I see, and the accents I hear are identical to those I witnessed in the 70s.

[jno]

sadly the capital has become the dumping ground of the worlds poor[i

Up to a point. Poor immigrants go to towns and cities all over the place. It's the world's [i]rich] who flock to London. I can hardly step outside my front door without tripping over an oligarch. I wonder if they're the ones Vinnie's complaining about, though?

[sp1814]

I think Zeuhl has made a very good point. I'm a child of the 70s, and my memories of that period were of rubbish housing (we had a place with cockroaches, occasional rats and an outside lavvy), little money, no holidays (first foreign trip I took was when I was about 22), power cuts, unemployment etc etc.

Because I don't remember the 'golden age' of the 50s, my reference point is that of a pretty miserable, grey, failing country of the 70s.

Compared to that, I feel like we've shot up to the stars.

I suppose it's down to personal perception...

[Quizmonster]

YMB, you say, "And anyway America was founded on immigration so no one should have a problem," as if the whole concept of people moving across the globe had nothing to do with us, apart from the last half century or so.

Weren't the Angles and Saxons immigrants here, then? And what about the Romans...I won't ask what they ever did for us...and Vikings who settled here, too? Vinnie Jones is a manifest plonker!

[sp1814]

jno

Good point. We've also become a magnet for the world's rich...and the gap between London house prices, rents and salaries is moving further and further ahead of the rest of the country, which suggests that the average London is getting richer, rather than poorer.