Shutting up shop...

I’m still not ready yet to pass judgement on Jeremy Corbyn’s ascension to the leadership of the Labour Party. Plenty of others are doing a great job of that, so I’ll keep my powder dry until I see the whites of his eyes. Oops, I said whites... like a great big nasty racist. Right now I’m rather more engaged by seeing the strife which is rife through much of Europe. Oh yes, we’re back on the migrant crisis, but actually it’s the bizarre logic behind Angela Merkel’s throwing open – and then hastily re-closing – Germany’s borders to one and all that’s got me thinking... again.

Here’s the apparent rationale behind the come one, come all policy: Germany has an ageing population; its indigenous birth rate, in common with many full developed countries, is only at replacement level or just below, so as people live longer, the average age increases and with it the cost of providing health care, pensions, etc. falls on a proportionately smaller percentage of the population. Accepting without challenge that an economy must only ever grow and can never be allowed to shrink or stabilise, the argument is that they need more economic activity in the younger half of the population.

And somehow that is going to be achieved by importing Eritrean goatherds is it? Or Somali stick-sharpeners, Ethiopian khat-heads, Sudanese soap-dodgers or any of a host of others in the brown-rainbow diaspora? This is a very special kind of diversity, where everybody looks and sounds the same, because nobody can tell who is Syrian and who isn’t any more. This intelligence is from the migrants themselves.

But forget the casual racism there and focus on the economic argument. If you want to boost your economy you first look to train up your own; you know where you are with your own. Or at least you should because, brought up in the family firm, as it were, UK Plc, they ought to already know what is expected of them. But, in the short term yes, you may need to bring in skilled, fully-trained outsiders. It’s a win-win. They take up the slack, you pay over the odds for a while and in the meantime everybody gets to experience a little extra in their lives. Cooperation, genuine cross-cultural enrichment, possibly even lifelong friendships. And then we hand over the reins to the new generation and everybody lives, happy ever after.

Except something has gone horribly wrong. Necessary, as-required, skilled immigration has become, in the minds of the politicos, synonymous with opening the doors to anybody regardless of their talents. And this new underclass, if not going straight into the black economy, is seized upon by mass employers of menial labour. We are still crying out for and need to look further afield for the talent but we are denying entry into base-level work for our own underclass, which we have put out to early grass, retired straight after ineffective schooling, ruminant remnants, grazing the welfare system for survival.

Fortress Europe - it's the only answer

Spin boys, spin. Tell ‘em the immigrants pay into the national pot, even if the tax credits they receive exceeds the tax they pay. Even if the combined VAT on all their outgoings is still below the cost of housing them, educating their children and keeping the NHS afloat. Spin and spin again that immigration is not only good, it is essential to support the lazy indigenous racists. And totally ignore the fact that those who actually do pay the bulk of the tax, those who actually do support the system are working longer hours into older age to support the broods of children born to those migrants, muslims to a man, who are here in the service of another calling altogether. Wake up, Europe. It’s time.