February 2, 2024 - 1:20pm
By now the chemical attack perpetrated in Clapham by the Afghan sex offender and asylum seeker Abdul Ezedi has triggered full-throated pandemonium. Ezedi entered the UK on a lorry, had his asylum claim declined twice, was convicted of a sex offence, and was finally granted asylum after claiming to have converted to Christianity. Now he is on the run after throwing corrosive chemicals over a toddler. Not without reason, many are wondering: why was he here at all?
The same anger and bafflement is apparent across the Atlantic, where illegal migrant arrivals in New York were filmed assaulting US police officers, only to walk free without bail and flip the bird to the recording camera. This moment, and the reaction to it, encapsulates a core grievance in the migration debate: a sense that those at the very top and very bottom of society view the social contract with contempt, as something simply to be looted for personal benefit.
At the top end, the private equity practice of buying up well-loved brands and stripping out everything that made them nice in the name of “efficiency” is one version of this parasitic behaviour. Mass shoplifting rendering ordinary shops unusable is an underclass version. Abusing the social contract for clout is also popular on TikTok: the street harasser and home invader Mizzy is one example, as is the American account Barfly, who has garnered 177k followers for videos that depict him preparing meals such as nachos in hotel bathrooms.
What such videos reveal is an exploitative relation to the moral commons, which both presupposes and corrodes shared norms concerning acceptable behaviour. There’s a limit to how many “pranksters” a street culture can endure, before basic norms and expectations change. Similarly, there’s a limit to how many people can drain cooking grease and debris down a hotel sink, before the hotel either puts up its prices or closes permanently.
Uncontrolled mass migration also both presumes on and undermines the social contract. The public outrage at Ezedi’s horrific act underlines a widespread grasp of what is at stake: that is, the uniparty indifference to British citizens’ interests where migration is concerned represents an equally destructive pincer attack on the social contract by those at each end of the social hierarchy.
At the top, business owners and political leaders can dial up migration, while rejoicing at rising GDP, benefiting from rising house prices, or improving their margins through reduced labour costs. At the bottom of the social scale are those — predominantly migrants — for whom there is still upside to be gained from undercutting wages, living jam-packed in slum housing, and disregarding local behavioural norms. In the middle, meanwhile, cluster those still doing their best to uphold something resembling the postwar social consensus.
This consensus held that there exists an in-group — the national family, as it were — through whose efforts, and for whose benefit, the welfare state and social solidarity exist, as do common moral and behavioural standards. This group is now witnessing an assault on that solidarity and those shared standards with mounting anger, as taxes rise and living conditions degrade in the name of what is in effect financial and moral strip mining. The sense of mutiny is now palpable: it speaks volumes that even on Mumsnet, a longstanding bastion of middle-class liberal centrism on most political topics, the thread discussing the attacks has been hidden — presumably for too many robust views on the topic of asylum seekers and incompatible cultures.
And yet it seems extremely unlikely that the Conservatives will survive the coming election, having squandered their majority and public trust on doing the precise opposite of addressing public concern on this issue. It is more unlikely still that the Labour Party will do anything to change course. The British middle class now faces another four years of big business, NGOs, the progressive press and Government virtue-signallers tag-teaming with sometimes-violent migrant opportunists to dismantle the basis for social solidarity. How they will respond is anybody’s guess.
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SubscribeQuite frankly, I’ve become shockingly blasé about these crimes committed by people who should never have been in the country, or should have at least been removed a long time ago.
There’s not a week that goes by without something along these lines happening in Austria or Germany. Be it random knifings, rapes, gang violence or whatever else.
In fact, you learn to associate certain behaviours with certain groups, so that when the papers report on whatever has happened and coyly refer to “young men” – you know what the deal is and you can make your own educated guess as to the origin of the perpetrator.
DIY sister slaughtering and gang rapes? The smart money’s on an Afghan.
Anything involving packs of young men turning up to “talk”, only for it to dissolve into a massive brawl where at least one of them gets stabbed? It’s a tough call, but that’s usually something to do with some halfwit bloke’s honour and then its the Afghans, Iraqis and Syrians who are usually in the running. Place your bets…
It sounds like a perverted drinking game and perhaps I’m skating on thin ice with the commenting guidelines by writing this. But honestly – when you live here and you know that this is something that didn’t happen prior to 2015, you’ve got to find some way to get your head around the issue and what we have landed ourselves with. And if you didn’t laugh – even in a very macabre way – you’d cry.
Other story in the news today: the revelation of the identity of Brianna Ghey’s killers.
I wonder what were the personal characteristics of the killers in this murder of intolerance targeting a innocent young person who chose to live their life slightly differently. I can bet you it’s… oh
Yes, I admit sometimes one’s guesses do fly wide of the mark. When a dismembered body turned up in a canal just outside Vienna this week, I thought “sounds a bit Balkan, that does”. The perpetrator was actually Iranian. My apologies.
Somehow, I doubt Reader’s attempt at ‘what-about’ was aimed at anyone non-white.
Maybe makes one think we shouldn’t rely on our prejudices so much when reasoning. Oh well – we’re only human.
10 years ago I would have said exactly the same thing. But too much has happened in the meantime, my assumptions about crime demographics proven correct far too often. It changes you, and I am not to blame for that shift in attitude. If you still want to argue that I’m somehow morally wrong for this, I suggest you go look at the crime statistics in Germany and Austria since 2015 and specifically those relating to sexual violence where Syrians and Afghans are consistently overrepresented. These trends are real and as a woman I thoroughly resent being made to feel bad about raising my voice about it, however glibly.
There is definitely something in this. Some Afghans, especially, behave in the most aberrant ways, something even recognised by those sympathetic to refugees (https://nationalinterest.org/feature/ive-worked-refugees-decades-europes-afghan-crime-wave-mind-21506)
Thanks for the article link. It was relevant and interesting to consider.
Very interesting post, but article was written nearly 7yrs ago and the EU immigration policy hasn’t changed.
Keep raising your voice, Katherine! We need courageous people like you to stand up, be counted and speak the truths that our Woke World increasingly denies or distorts.
Rationality and racism are often confused – perhaps deliberately to weaponise emotion against reason. Jess Jackson once recorded his relief, when walking down the street and turning that the person behind was white. It is rational to bear crime statistics in mind.
The real problem is the one touched on, that everybody knows there’s an ethnic person involved when details are suppressed in a whole range of stories.
Thus, suppressing details seems pointless.
As soon as it was said to be a corrosive alkali attack, as with acid attacks, you kind of know it will be a South Asian, and it is a consequence of a different attitude to women that explodes when rejected by women, or women reject arranged marriages.
It is what it is.
Not all Pakistanis are child grooming rapists or throw acid about in the faces of women and children,
But constantly delaying giving straightforward details of crimes is a different type of corrosive substance that acts on social cohesion. It’s about time they stopped doing it.
(And, it is obvious he is getting help evading the police from more than just one or two people.)
I’m glad, Mr/Mrs/Ms UnHerd Reader – ie UnHerd Supervisor – that you realise how often your prejudices misguide you.
Prejudices or heuristics? If I call it right most of the time but get it wrong occasionally, I’ll probably stick with that over assuming that any vile act could be committed by almost any type of person. In any case, I didn’t assume that the Ghey case was the work of transgressive migrants as it bore none of the hallmarks.
Is your own reasoning and prejudice part of the solution, or part of the problem?
Your wider point stands. Mary is as ever right. The social contract is broken. Rather than mask the fact, the ruling Remainiac Progressives who have poured acid all over our domestic security and communal bonds for 2 decades are actually mocking us and laughing about it; thank you Lib Dem cretins in the House of Lords and corrupt uppity Irish ‘judges’ overseas. The game is up for the EU/Blair/Cameron New Order of Open Borders, enforced mass migration and rule by unelected regulatory Kommisars & bogus human rights lawfare. The rage at this violation of our laws and traditions is bubbling up. If we are lucky faster events in Europe and the US will trigger the necessary counter revolution above and around us, dragging us belatedly to some safety. But do not expect any of our blind Quisling Progressive politicians to lead us there in an orderly way. They are in the grip of a derangement.
So you’re saying that it is unacceptable to ascribe violent traits to an ethnic group?
OK, Reader, can we get your opinion?
Next time the system comes across a convicted sex offender who has twice been rejected for asylum, do you think it is the right thing to leave him in the country to keep applying? Or do you think it would be better to expel him? And what, if anything, do you think we should change here?
The “personal characteristics” these revolting killers is, and to lapse into US speak:- WHITE TRAILER TRASH.
Don’t need to say white trailer trash. Trailer trash is by definition white.
News reports that Ghey was a more a target of opportunism rather than intolerance. The killers had a list which Ghey was on, however Ghey proved to be the easiest to isolate.
It’s about numbers though, aggregated statistics. Unless you also believe Maths is racist?
In the dying days of Rome the patricians would send paid agitators from the criminal underclass into the forum and the wine shops to distract the plebs from the rapidly growing wealth divide by fomenting ethnic and tribal conflict.
The behaviour of elites hasn’t changed in 2000 years. They’ve just got better at justifying it.
The posts on this page is starting to sound like that famous sketch where some well off gentlemen try to outdo each other with over the top desriptions of how poor their childhoods were. It would be fun were it not so true and so sad what is now happening everywere in Europe.
Being Swedish, not a day goes by without one or more deadly shootings, often performed by some adolecent getting paid a couple of thousand euros for his troubles. Which he immediately burns by buying designer clothes. Btw, the posh shops in Stockholm has stopped accepting cash since they know it’s blood money coming from murdering gang members.
There is also a big bomb attack more or less every day were civilians sometimes dies and whole houses are destroyed. Usually people living near ground zero get to describe on national media that: ”it was such a huge explosion! I was thrown out of bed!” like it was some sort of natural disaster occuring and not an attack on our society and what this country stands for.
The newspapers are full of idol portraits of the (always) foreign born ring leaders behind this madness and stories of their greviances with each other and how they enlist underage boys to do their biddings from their comfy bases in third rate countries like Turkey or Iran.
Btw, innocent people get killed so often in the bullet storms that we had to invent a new word: ”felskjutning” or ”wrongkill”, as opposed to an ordinary proper kill. Nothing to see here, move on, just another ”felskjutning”…
It’s madness but swedes abide as they’ve always have and so just sitting ringside watching organized crime destroy their country and also being called racists by their new countrymen should they get upset.
But wait, when Israel defends herself against the same kind of people, tens of thousands swedes take to the streets and cry ”genocide!”.
Somewhere I think we deserve to have our country destroyed because we don’t seem to care anymore.
And yet horrible crimes of violence have always been committed, even if you can’t remember them. A quick internet search would verify that. So long as we have an underclass, it doesn’t matter what their ethnic background is, they will be the ones with nothing to lose and in the worst cases will take out their aggression in horrendous ways. We can remove every asylum seeker from the country and never let any more in – and then others, home-grown, will take their place. The ongoing theft committed by those at the top will keep these dynamics in place. It’s precisely the desire of those on top that those in the middle blame those at the bottom of the pile, and do so as a group rather than as individuals. So, for me, comments like yours, while very popular on Unherd, and on one level completely understandable, are not going to solve any problems but rather fall into the trap of stoking the fires of polarisation that are would be controllers love.
Human beings are not interchangeable pawns moving around a global chessboard. Even the radical postmodernists believe that culture shapes who we are.
Over the pond, where I am, this is likely to be the issue that re-elects Trump. A larger and larger number of people have just simply had it with the issues that illegal immigrants are bringing with them. Crime (beyond the initial crime of entering the country illegally), the burden on housing, the burden on communities, the burden on schools.
Aside, from the physical impracticalities of allowing a large number of people who don’t speak the same language as the majority of the citizens in the host nation, the cultural issues are really coming to light. I would say the response of many to October 7th has opened the eyes of a number of people who wanted to believe that importing large numbers or certain groups was not an issue. From the pro-Palestinian marches to the recent Somalia-first comments by Ilhan Omar, even people for whom this was never an issue, are at the least uneasy. People who have always thought this risky, are outraged.
For those of you in Britain, where do you go politically to show dissatisfaction with the status quo? What do you do?
Basically make some (excellent) self deprecating comedy and moan about the (awful) weather until something changes
The Social Democrats are promising to pause immigration for a generation: https://sdp.org.uk/
The only way any of this changes, and it’s doubtful even then, is for the people who push for and support these policies to be impacted by them. Every day there’s a “why was he even here?” story and as quickly as it is published, it is just as quickly remanded to the memory hole.
The idea that illegals – illegals, not even home-grown criminals – can assault cops and be released without bail speaks to intent on the part of those running the system. They mean for the chaos to occur, they mean for civil order to unravel; let it happen long enough and the taxpayer will accept just about anything to make it stop.
Again, this will only change when some DA is carjacked and beaten, or when his/her kids are attacked, or something else unpleasant. The US border situation is intentional. The view toward crime is intentional. The stoking of further division, because we don’t have enough, is intentional. Yet, the people behind these things are more likely to be re-elected than not.
The people who support them are impacted by them. Most immigrants are normal people just going about their daily lives and living alongside everyone else. What you’re calling for is for the majority of the population to be attacked by extremists until they agree with your own extreme views.
Are you going to argue against more things I never said? I didn’t call for “the majority” of anything to be attacked. As it is, that’s already happening while you’re conflating legal immigrants with illegals.
It’s the people who make the laws but are immune to the consequences who need to be affected. Unless you’re okay with more stories like those Mary cited.
I don’t even know where to start so I won’t.
Start by reading the story and asking why this is allowed to happen.
I understand, it’s all a little too complicated for you.
And for you, apparently.
It is your support for massive immigration that is extreme.
If you want to see an extremist, look in the mirror.
Satan, via his minions like Soros and schwab, Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Fink, have bought the politicians. Bought the Deep State.
Not just the postwar contract is dissolving but the entire westphalian nation-state arrangement is on its last leg. Digital technologies clearly killed it and Its complete dissolution might take a few hundred years. As MH used to quote “there’s no progress but only tradeoffs”, so let it rest in peace. What is more worrying is that the only alternative reality on the horizon is the digital autocracy Brave New World style. The sanitized World State of a rigid social/physiological hierarchy vs. a wild,chaotic and powerless Savage Reservation
Also wealth inequality destroyed the social contract. Why am I paying so much tax to subsidise early retiree boomers with hundreds of thousands of pounds in wealth?
We paid for your education and we made sensible saving decisions for our retirement.
Private healthcare then?
When can I expect your payment for my university fees?
Pensions pots were a one way bet with all that state-derived QE money. Nothing sensible about it.
In one comment you remark how migrants can’t be held accountable for an increase in crime, then in the next you blame an entire previous generation for your high taxes and tuition fees.
I’m not criticizing you here, just highlighting something that all of us to do to some extent. What’s important is to question our own ‘self-evident’ beliefs and why we find it acceptable to attack one group, but protect another.
QE money and pension pots- zero connection between them.
Why should anyone else pay your uni fees ?
Dreadfully sensible of you to be born into an era of free universities, well paid apprenticeships, jobs for life, final salary pensions, economic booms and affordable housing … precisely how is a young person supposed to make these wonderful saving decisions on a graduate salary in the low £20k range whilst paying back their student loan and spending 40% of their income to rent a flat share with a stranger? I’m sure you’ll have the answers for the youth of today
I didn’t go to university. I paid for everything, including my children’s education (some grant alleviation for 3rd level).
Who are precisely the people you are NOT subsidising.
You have, however, impoverished your own generation by importing millions of migrants, sending housing costs into the stratosphere.
Wealth inequality is a direct and inevitable consequence of having wealth. It is the price of progress. And freedom. The only way to have absolute equality of wealth is when there is no wealth at all.
When will the dreamers on the left ever understand ? There simply is no possible world where there is wealth, absolute equality of wealth and freedom (we have several thousand years of evidence on this now).
So which of these three objectives are you going to sacrifice, given you cannot have all three ?
A rather crude definition of wealth inequality that seems designed to send boomers to sleep with a trouble free conscience.
Polarization of wealth is a far more instructive metric e.g. what happens to a society when the top 10% of wealthy are more than 10 times richer than the average.
Another metric is what percentage of GDP growth is paid to workers. That ratio has plummeted over the decades.
The Boomers broke the intergenerational covenant, Building Society demutualization in the UK was one of their evil deeds.
I think you’ll find that these boomers were paying into a national insurance system from when they left school (many at age 14/15). But to be clear, you are not paying so much tax for “these boomers “ you’re paying the tax for a socialist welfare system and a socialist health service. In fact two thirds of government spending is on these two socialist policies.
I do wonder if the activist-priest who confirmed Ezedi’s “conversion” to Christianity can live with his sins.
Is it a sin to baptize? Are the sacraments activism? Was the priest who baptized me an activist for having done so, and should he regret it? Why or why not? Do Christians reasonably expect their baptized coreligionists not to sin?
Indeed, it is entirely the fault of the official who was foolish enough to place any value on the actions or beliefs of a priest.
Cheap shot at priests.
But as – thanks to Christian-haters like you – the country will soon be Muslim, your time is running out.
The church lost its congregation all by itself by becoming irrelevant and silly. Nothing to do with hate.
I think the Archbishop of Canterbury is all for the islamification of this country. That is certainly the impression he gives.
Perhaps we might expect them not to throw acid on someone.
It has been made clear by some who know the man in question that he is not a Christian but one who got baptised in order to have evidence to fight off deportation.
Hmmm. What happened to my comments this morning? How much more per year/month does Unherd want in order for me to comment without being modded. Actually I might pay a little more to see all the modded comments.
Prefer it if you just people posts appear in real time though. Let someone flag it if it’s that bad.
In my experience, unless your post was particularly heinous, it will eventually be posted. I think some algorithm flags it until an actual person comes to review it.
Yes Julian – but you are not a full conspiracy loon as some of us are – so likely your posts are fundamentally sound – or at least stick within the velvet ropes.
Occasionally I trip and fall over the ropes 😉
I don’t think that’s a bad thing necessarily. Sometimes we need to state or type out an extreme view so that others can criticize, argue, and show us that we might be wrong.
Normally I’ve forgotten about it by then.
What is the criteria. I wonder? Is it a certain word, does the post contain links to pyramid schemes, is the post overly boring? Perhaps typos or grammatical errors? The latter probably explains a lot of mine…
Excellent point Caty – let there be a dark corner where it tells you – after you read some T&C, – all about how you may be harmed, corrupted, or have your Purity of Essence damaged by reading what is inside, and then get a box to check saying you understand the risk – and Then you get the banned posts left in the comment chain – but they appear in purple so you understand they are beyond the pale.
I would check that box and risk my potential psychological harms…
I am game for this arrangement.
Tory MP Caroline Noakes, some Labour MP woman and Kirsty Wark discussed this on Newsnight last night. Except they didn’t. They quickly dismissed the asylum angle as uninteresting and instead focused on “microaggressions” that successful women like them face in daily life.
The Uni-party and the MSM living on a completely different planet. Let them eat cake!
Do I hear the rumble of the tumbril in the distance?
Yes – I hear its wheels clattering across the cobbles… but the thing is – it comes for us, at their direction.
“they quickly dismissed the asylum angle as uninteresting and instead focused on “microaggressions”
Of course they did. And the wreckers and haters will be having a gleeful laugh about that; thinking “these fools really do deserve to die.”
“You don’t understand the narcissistic/psychopathic; they feel that anyone stupid enough to fall prey to their machinations deserves what they get””
Jordan Peterson
It’s not the “British middle class” who are the primary victims of all this. It’s the British working class.
No, it’s both!
Curiously enough the working class have been faster to understand than the nominally smarter middle class (on whom the impact is simply more delayed, but equally inevitable) !
”At the top, business owners and political leaders can dial up migration, while rejoicing at rising GDP, benefiting from rising house prices, or improving their margins through reduced labour costs”
No – this is not it – No one believes good comes from this, NO one believes prosperity comes from this.
This migration is all 5th generation warfare to destroy the West.
These migrant boats and convoys are not Trojan Horses the enemy built to get their soldiers inside to destroy our civilization. These are Cicero’s ”The enemy is within the gates” – – And the great Pogo quote, ”We have met the enemy, and he is us”.
These are, as Salty Cracker, calls them ‘People Bombs’ which our own Elites have brought in to destroy us.
The Middle Class and Working Class are to be destroyed so that the Elites may rule the rabble left from their treacherous destruction of Western Enlightenment civilization.
The Elites, through the Deep State and Uniparty they own, have decided they would rather rule over a destroyed society than not be able to rule over successful one. So they destroy ours.
Because the Western elite are stupid enough to believe that the immigrants will obey them and be law-abiding.
Or that their gated communities will protect them from global social disaster.
This. This is the confoundingly obvious endpoint. Somewhere in the future the people who support this will pay the price for it. It will encroach into their comfortable middle class bubbles and Kirsty Wark will be thrown from the BBC rooftop yelling on the way down some crap about being an ally, herself being from an oppressed group too. Of course it’ll be too late for everyone by that point.
Just as predictable are the mental somersaults they’ll perform to argue that it’s not them but the ‘far right’ who are to blame.
Yes the far right bogey man. The monster that BBC claims is behind all the UKs problems. BTW the latest progressive definition of far-right is anyone right of Gordon Brown.
If the state can’t remove a convicted sex offender whose asylum application has been rejected twice then the asylum system is obsolete. We may as well declare an open door policy and save ourselves the cost of legal fees.
I thought 2 plus 2 equalled whatever you FEEL on any given day.
”We may as well declare an open door policy and save ourselves the cost of legal fees.”
what do you mean by ‘May as well?’
In Canada, mass immigration has driven prices up so high most young people are unable to own. Rents are at a historical high. Polls are showing that it is driving young people to wake up earlier to the failings of progressive and left wing ideology. It is also creating a larger pool of political talent.
Plus Canada has at least one competent conservative politician -Pierre Poilievre – able to confront these issues without grovelling. Unfortunately we don’t.
Perhaps it is all part of the “you will own nothing but you will be happy plan”?
Spot on!
Who woulda thunk it? 40 years of economic and social liberalism leads to fraying of social contract……predictable, regrettable and irreversible
Nothing is irreversible. Think longer term.
I think it was about 1600-2000 years for the better insights and ideas of Ancient Rome and Greece to fall apart and then bear fruit again so don’t hold your breath.
”The British middle class now faces another four years of big business, NGOs, the progressive press and Government virtue-signallers tag-teaming with sometimes-violent migrant opportunists to dismantle the basis for social solidarity. How they will respond is anybody’s guess.” Absolutely nails it. The end game, which is approaching, will not be pretty.
It’s likely to be Collapse more than blood and violence.
The Collapse will wreck the lives of people like UnHerd Reader, though the poor B doesn’t realise it yet
What a pressure cooker release to read what I have been fermenting on for some time now. Mary has absolutely nailed what we are witnessing right now. I reside in Australia and it sure as heck ain’t any better here either I can tell you. The hypocrisy and absolute lunacy of political affairs and decisions right now beggars belief. I keep telling myself to hold centre and breathe but one could be forgiven for wishing for a “beam me up Scotty” moment to gather myself and loved ones up to beam me somewhere else. But here I am.
I am fed up with the lot of it.
As I said to a dear person the other week, I am sick of shtick,
I AM a white female, a WOMAN, not a chest-feeder, I live and reside in Australia, 2 of my ancestors were on the first fleet as convicts, I will not continue to cop abuse and hatred for being so. I personally don’t give a damn what colour you are, what religion or non-religion, I don’t give a ‘rats razoo’ what sexual identity you profess to be or how the hell you enact that (please make it behind closed doors though and not in my face because I have had it with that, and make sure ITS LEGAL), I don’t care where you come from either – or who you profess to be –
what I do really give a damn about is that you BEHAVE LIKE A DECENT HUMAN BEING. If you are not, then NO IDENTITY or MONEY STATUS should protect you! END of story.
I have had a lifetime of self-flagellation and self-loathing on some scale – call it inherited status amongst other things. Well be damned. Enough is enough. They can stick their shtick!
Thankfully their is a growing chorus of voices speaking the same. Lets hope that that can gather force.
I am grateful to Mary for writing.
Heaven help us all.
Brilliant!
This is what you get when you erode society down to the dumb liberal ‘social contract’. Society constructed on a superficial transactional basis; ‘just sign here on the dotted line…even if you don’t believe in any of the terms and conditions’.
Excellent article.
Moving out to semi-rural Befordshire has been the making of Mary Harrington. It’s very hard to see some of these things for what they are if you live in a city or university town – I know from my own experience.
But more and more people are now seeing things for what they really are and starting to talk about it.
I fell at the first intellectual fence reading Mary H’s article.
In the white space between two paragraphs the article jumps, from her understandable anger about the consequences of immigration, to a generic leftie swipe aimed at asset stripping private equity.
If Mary had intentionally constructed a challenging water jump sort out feeble thinkers, then I will fess up, my cerebral horse got confused by the expanse of water, whinnied and unseated its owner into the drink.
I first heard the term “asset stripping” as a teenager in the 1970s long before anyone talked about “private equity”. They are different things and the confusion introduced undermines the impact of the article.
As to the concluding despondency about “another four years of big business, NGOs, the progressive press and Government virtue-signalers tag-teaming”, I would like to make a positive prediction.
If voters utterly destroy the Tory party at the next general election then the newly elected Labour Government should comprehend that within 5 years the Labour Party risks the same fate if it continues the Uni Party policy on immigration.
Good points.
“Asset stripping” and “private equity” aren’t the same. But they can and sometimes are combined. Some of us may remember Hanson Trust from the 1980s (where are they now ? apparently it was itself Heidelberg Cement in 2007 !) which was a public company and did asset stripping possibly with some PE type stuff.
To be fair, Mary’s never claimed to be an economic expert. You can’t do it all.
My response is to not bring kids into the world.
This country, in 20 years time, will be utterly horrendous to live in and nobody deserves the pain of being brought into it.
The West is finished economically, politically and socially.
You might be depriving the future of a freedom fighter who will rescue civilization.
Our communist education system and the rate of our replacement is too great. It’s over.
You are far too pessimistic.
Just remember that the Soviet Union had a real communist education system and tried to replace their people – not with immigrants but with their socialist utopian ideal of people in their case (and the people they didn’t like and refused to change were ‘liquidated’ or put in gulags). It eventually collapsed under the inefficiency and corruption. The people in those countries are now in the opposite wave of the cycle to us.
The current madness will eventually run out of steam in the UK and correct itself. But we should do what we can to accelerate the process.
The soviets didn’t replace themselves with people from the third world.
That is the key difference. Russians kept their traditions alive in the private realm. But even our privacy has been hollowed out by media.
Pleasingly robust! The remarks on private equity are too narrow. Rewarding the mundane management of ordinary large companies through financial engineering – notably via debt inflated earnings per share – is significant. See AllIn – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUuEE2jmP2c
Why does opinion on illegal migration always suggest the ‘rich’ want them? Yes, Soros, Schwab and Gates, I’m sure they want them, but does anyone really believe business leadership is rubbing their hands together at the thought of an illiterate, low IQ, overly sexed and overly violent illegal joining the ranks at Shell or Lloyds? Hardly. Literally nobody wants them except those trying to bring in digital ID and surveillance states, because with enough of an influx of criminal, violent, rapist idiots, we’ll end up begging to be chipped and surveiled for our ‘safety’.
Many immigrants are legal and well behaved. They work hard for little money and are not party to the narcissism and entitlement of the indigenous people. Thus the bosses get the benefit of the good while we suffer the associated down side of the feckless and criminal element the accompany them.
Quite so. An unholy alliance of postmodernists and corporate raiders is laying waste to society and has a its institutions in its grip. We are beginning to see huge civil unrest in Europe and North America from those who are both ignored yet expected to pay. New civil wars seem on the way. Can the new establishment create WWIII in time to stop this backlash?
“By now the chemical attack perpetrated in Clapham by the Afghan sex offender and asylum seeker Abdul Ezedi has triggered full-throated pandemonium.”
Wow. And not an “alleged” in sight. Are people really beginning to say what they know to be true, without pretending that they do not really know it after all?