Tim Worstall

Heavens to Betsy, this really is a massive problem, isn’t it? It can be and often is – for the c.91% who stay put in the UK.
A world population consisting solely of hyper-mobile, atomised, individuals might bring certain economic benefits but these would almost certainly be outweighed by the non-economic disbenefits – eg neurotic dysfunctions, the blandness and superficiality of such a life…. Culture matters: it’s part of our identities.

Chris

I used a road in Australia once without paying taxes. Nothing feels better than stealing from the state!

james higham

..neurotic dysfunctions, the blandness and superficiality of such a life..
What blandness and superficiality? There’s a thing called an aeroplane, should we want and there’s a thing called the internet and blogs.

Out From Under

The problem arises when people enter a country not because they like it and what to contribute to it, but because they hate it and want to bring it down or change the nature of it so that those who used to like it leave (as is the case for many of the 5.5 million Brits). Should such people really be given that opportunity?
“Our tolerance is part of what makes Britain, Britain. Conform to it; or don’t come here. We don’t want the hate-mongers, whatever their race, religion or creed,” Tony Blair

angry economist

Yeh what I want is the luxury that Tim enjoys. The complete freedom to slag off, er engage in constructive debate, about the UK without having to live in it, and put up with its shite weather, up-tight people, pot holes, hoodie swathed teenage yobs, tiny cramped apartments costing 5-10x your annual salary etc….
…when I could lord it up in the Algarve blogging away and watching british TV on me satellite etc!
F*ck it I am going to move abroad too… oh b*ll*x who’s gonna employ me!?

john b

Can we have a sweepstake on the number of people who’ve moved to the UK because they “hate it and want to bring it down”? My guess is that there are more than 10 but fewer than 100 of them…
Tim adds: I’ll offer you Patricia Hewitt as the first then.

dearieme

It seems possible that there are people who move to the UK, either to find work or to live off its welfare state, who then have children who hate it and want to bring it down. No?

Tom Paine

It’s odd how many expatriates bitch and moan about the countries they choose to live in. Brits, despite generations of expat experience, often seem to be the worst. James is, of course, a very honourable exception.
Personally I love to see how others really live and find out how they see the world. It’s particularly interesting to see what people *really* think of England, as opposed to what the morons on Sky News seem to think they think (“NHS the envy of the world” etc.)
As for Paul Ilc and his “neurotic dysfunctions”, “What do they know of England, who only England know?”

Bob B

“What do they know of England, who only England know?”
Try Orwell on England:
“When you come back to England from any foreign country, you have immediately the sensation of breathing a different air. Even in the first few minutes dozens of small things conspire to give you this feeling. The beer is bitterer, the coins are heavier, the grass is greener, the advertisements are more blatant. The crowds in the big towns, with their mild knobby faces, their bad teeth and gentle manners, are different from a European crowd. Then the vastness of England swallows you up, and you lose for a while your feeling that the whole nation has a single identifiable character. Are there really such things as nations? Are we not forty-six million individuals, all different? And the diversity of it, the chaos! The clatter of clogs in the Lancashire mill towns, the to-and-fro of the lorries on the Great North Road, the queues outside the Labour Exchanges, the rattle of pin-tables in the Soho pubs, the old maids hiking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning – all these are not only fragments, but characteristic fragments, of the English scene. How can one make a pattern out of this muddle?”
http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/essay/England/england.html
Or this:
“There is no doubt about the Englishman’s inbred conviction that those who live to the south of him are his inferiors; even our foreign policy is governed by it to some extent. I think, therefore, that it is worth pointing out when and why it came into being. . . ”
http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/6.html

David Gillies

Angry Economist: do you think Tim is unemployed in the Algarve? Do you think I’m unemployed in Costa Rica? Saying ‘fuck it,’ and moving abroad to work was exactly what I did. And with every day bringing me fresh news of the decline of the UK into an authoritarian hell-hole, it more and more seems like the single best decision I have made in my life.
“Yeh what I want is the luxury that Tim enjoys.”
YOU HAVE THAT LUXURY. Tony’s tossers might be cracking down on civil liberties, but the last time I looked the Bundesgrenzpolizei were more concerned with stopping you bringing in too much cheap booze from Calais, not with stopping you moving to more congenial climes.

paul ilc

Tom Paine:
As for Paul Ilc and his “neurotic dysfunctions”, “What do they know of England, who only England know?”
I was not suggesting a culture-bound, little Englandism, nor even criticising the expatriate lifestyle (which I have lived and will live again). I was exposing the grounds of Tim’s dismissal of immigration by hypothesizing about “A world population consisting solely of hyper-mobile, atomised, individuals…”.
All liberals – whether classic or left – underestimate the importance of culture.
James Higham: What blandness and superficiality? There’s a thing called an aeroplane, should we want and there’s a thing called the internet and blogs.
Either you are a brilliant ironist or a myopic philistine.

Not Saussure

“A world population consisting solely of hyper-mobile, atomised, individuals…” would doubtless be a dreadful place, so it’s as well no such thing exists, and nor is it likely to.
I’m not completely sure I’d call someone who moves from one country to another either to work there temporarily — as did I for a couple of years, with every intention of returning home — or someone who emigrates permanently ‘hyper-mobile’; that suggests to me someone who’s constantly whizzing around from one place to another, which I don’t think many people do.
It’s all very well to hypothesise, but to what purpose? You might hypothesise about what would happen if the entire population of London decided to go to see the Blackpool Illuminations on the same weekend, but since it’s not going to occur, what’s the point? The doubtless dire consequences if they all did is no good argument for campaigning to stop individual Londoners from going to Blackpool if they chose so to do. And, now I come to think of it, no one will deny that there are profound cultural differences between London and the north of England, even now. Nevertheless, Londoners and Lancastrians seem to be able to maintain their individual cultures despite free movement between the two places. Ditto England and Scotland or England and the Irish Republic.

Tim,
Once more…how many times is it we’ve been round this block? three? Four?
The people referred to in this article will more likely than not be financially independent. That means that they, like you, will not be crowding the low skilled locals out of the job market, depressing wages by 3-4% for every 10% increase in immigration (Borjas, ‘The Labour Demand Curve is Downward Sloping’ 2003) or diplacing them altogether –
http://www.express.co.uk/news_detail.html?sku=862
The local authorities where they are going will not be compelled to hold remedial language classes for their children (Clackmannanshire has had to spend an extra £50,000 this year alone to provide such a service for the Polski nipperskis) and they will most likely not comprise 75% of all TB, HIV and malaria diagnoses in their final destinations, as migrants currently do in England, Wales and Northern Ireland –
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6150610.stm
In addition, they’ll probably be quite well-behaved – they’ll not, for example, behave like ‘A’ (Somali rapist), Su Hua Lia (Chinese killer), Angela Miller (Thai brothel-keeper), Pedro Frota, Robert Lincoln, 18, and Sofian Majera (Portuguese, Jamaican and Rwandan armed robbers), Ndricim Kapica (Kosovar killer – real bastard – mowed down Douglas Richardson, an 83 year old WWII veteran who was trying to cross the street on a mobility scooter) or Thu Van Nguyen (Vietnamese murderer – bottled Billy Gregory in the neck for looking at him the wrong way).
I could go on, believe me…
In respect of emigration of the elderly being described as the solution to some kind of ‘demographic timebomb’, I would refer you to Bertolt Brecht’s poem ‘The Solution’, written in the wake of the East German uprising of 1953 –
“After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?”

paul ilc

Not Sassure:
Tim was taking a swipe at Migration Watch. He was hypothesizing about a world in which Individuals, people, you know, mere citizens, deciding on their own, where they’d like to live. My concern is that this could lead to a decultured, deracinated, bland, global culture…and the purpose of my hypothesis was to draw this out.
Freedom of movement is a good, but fortunately it admits of degree: absolute freedom of movement for everyone would be an almost unmitigated disaster. The key point is how to get the balance right, but Tim seems to be advocating the removal of all restraints.
Btw, actually, hypothesizing about “what would happen if the entire population of London decided to go to see the Blackpool Illuminations on the same weekend” could be useful: thought-experiments often are.

Marcin Tustin

“Martin”, I object to your racist and misleading picture of the British. There is no reason to believe that we are trail other nations in abnormal psychology, or in the skills of organisation and bloody-minded unpleasantness required to become an organised criminal. Our migrants can hold their own against any other nation in the field of international crime!

Marcin,
On the whole, I really couldn’t care less what you think; as a wise man once noted, a useful working definition of ‘racist’ is anyone who’s winning an argument with a liberal.
I am unqualified to debate matters of psychology; however, I do have considerable professional experience of the criminal justice system, and am well aware that Brits commit crimes.
The criminality of Brits is not in dispute, as anyone who’s come out of a consultation in the cells at Inverclyde District Court with their clothes stinking of someone else’s urine can attest (I hope they’ve tarted it up since I was there last); the issue is where the offences are taking place.
If you have examples of Brits committing sex offences in Poland as regularly as Poles commit them in Britain (Kamil Krawiec, Thomasz Stepniowski, Thomasz Rupinksi, Sylwester Dymowski, Josef Zygmunt Kurek), or of Brits are committing crimes of dishonesty in Romania as regularly as Romanians are committing crimes in dishonesty in Britain (Nicolae Cretanu, Adriana Cretanu, George Titar, Cornel Tirnaveanu, Lucian Carabgeac, Vornicu Florin, Florin Ursu, George Antaluca; I’ll throw you in Dominic Mailat, a Romanian rapist, for free), show the evidence – don’t patronise anyone by shouting ‘racist!’, waving the diversity wand and walking away.
It’s too late for that stuff now.

Tim Newman

If you have examples of Brits committing sex offences in Poland…
I can give you an example of a Brit who bribes policemen in Russia.
Tim adds: I raise you one. A Brit who has bribed a Prime Minister in the CIS.

angry economist (Glenn Athey)

Tim N,
Go for it.
British citizens who commit crimes overseas get the same treatment as foreigners committing crime in the UK –
http://theblackmuseum.blogspot.com/2006/03/note-from-curator.html

Hi David – I was actually taking the piss rather than being truthful! The UK, is not really an authoritarian hell-hole. Many expats are very scathing about their home country, and I guess one can take the external media view of the world just a bit too seriously. Being in the UK and walking on the streets around here you see things a bit more realistically. Plus being in Britain, there’s a healthy wit and scepticism about politics and events – not being here you may miss out on this.
In truth – although I’d like to live and work abroad in the next 5 years, I’d like to do that for positive reasons – experience, new challenges, improve my quality of life. If I can do that, great. But I’ll have to work hard I know.
Interestingly, on Sunday I was having dinner with a pal, and with both our partners who are non-British and engaging in a whinge-fest about Britain – they slagged off the British concept of quality of life. i.e. we put up with shite infrastructure, shite streets, small houses,etc. Whereas in their home countries they simply wouldn’t accept or pay for what we do.

Tim W.,
This is probably a bad choice of verb, but your last comment was, shall we say, arresting…
Before you and Tim N. talk yourselves into being witnesses in Russian corruption enquiries, would you mind e-mailing as many details as you feel able to give about the persons you referred to and I can then have a poke around?
Do a bit of Google detecting?
Tim adds: If I can just make clear: My actions were not a crime in any jurisdiction.
I would suggest that neither of you raise the stakes any higher without speaking to your lawyers first.