London Mayor Elections
- Thread starter Guile
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Please tell me that you understand the difference between "do not speak English as a first language" and "do not speak English"? It is quite important. Won't stop the many bigots here of course.
M
Hah - bit of an exaggeration on the 2 weeks thing, but I still think that citizenship should be a requirement for voting in all honesty. I'm sure the Scots will enforce that particular requirement if they ever get independence.
Citizenship suggests that some effort has gone into integrating with that society and therefore having a genuine stake IMO. If people without citizenship were to influence government, then it's likely that they may be long gone by the time the consequences of their voting are realised.
Man of Honour
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I suspect I was over the 160 character limit with my last post, that would seem a very good reason not to use Twitter as a medium for any vaguely serious discussion.
You're right that this is General Discussion so I thought maybe we'd have a bit of discussion about why Somalia probably isn't the best comparator for the UK. I suspect they've got many problems that are more pressing than translation of election materials - the UK is fortunate that it doesn't have many of the problems facing Somalia and despite the views sometimes expressed by various people a coalition government is infinitely preferable to a complete inability to have a central government at all.
I always thought Somalia was cool because they had pirates, until I realised that they weren't the fun loving, swashbuckling types that I'd imagined.
OMG , Somalia was just a random country plucked from the air. Replace Somalia with ANY country lol ......
And your point is still just as dumb.
As is your reply.
Not really , i posed a simple question and as usual i got a simple irrelevant reply.
Soldato
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Playing devils advocate and hypothesising an extreme situation... What would you say if the level of immigration was so high that just their vote for a candidate (not accounting any other Londoner) could win an election? And their interests were exactly the same, help themselves and stuff everyone else? Lets say as an example they all voted for a candidate who would replace every single road sign in London with the Swahili/Arabic/language of choice translation?
Channels exist for immigrants to take maximum advantage of the benefits and services offered in the UK. Immigrants can call up and are told exactly what to say to councils to get them to the top of the housing list, fast track passports, ultimately how to get the best handouts going. [I've tried finding the channel that I saw this on but I can't find it for reference - it was on Sky]. Groups are also persuaded at churches and mosques to vote a certain way. I saw something a while ago highlighting the fact that areas with high levels of certain nationalities that have such power that MPs are elected that have a very narrow agenda (sharia law). My point being that my initial question by example isn't actually a million miles away from potential.
I'm not immigrant bashing by any means, a culture rich in cultures is in itself rich. But someone has to ask the questions (however far reached they seem).
(Lived, educated and worked in London my entire life).
**Just had another look for the immigration advice channel that I'd seen, either it doesn't exist any more or it was a programme that I just happened to stumble upon on with a small time slot. Even so, I wouldn't mind betting that there is very specific and tailored help out there for people who want it.
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Man of Honour
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Ok, let's take this back to the starting point if you think the reply was irrelevant. Why should it matter what other countries do with regard to treating immigrants if what we (as the UK) do is better and we choose to implement these policies? Why should just be aiming for the minimum level that other countries provide? Do we really want to aim for less when we are capable of more?
So in this situation the numbers of voters are so poised that there were say 500,001 immigrants in a ward and 500,000 Londoners* with a purely binary choice of voting (i.e. you vote this politician or that politician) and because of superior numbers the immigrant vote would get their politician elected?
If that's the case then we've come up against one of the "risks" of democracy - the majority wins and that's what we've chosen as a democracy. If there are sufficient numbers of immigrants in any one area and they're likely to be living there a while then why should they not have their needs catered to?
I'm of the opinion that there should be backstops (for want of a better word) and safeguards to ensure that minorities (in this example the non-immigrant Londoner) do not get treated unfairly or disadvantaged. However that will and must act both ways so we need to ensure that we're not treating minorities unfairly now.
*nb anyone who lives in London is a Londoner during residence so it's a bit of an artificial division. It's also extremely unlikely to ever arise in such a scenario but I'm entertaining it for the sake of discussion.
While it would be nice if no-one "worked" the system I think that's simply something that we have to accept will happen - any time one develops a system to help those who need it there will inevitably be abuses.
We should try to minimise them of course but I think it's more important to remember why we implement these systems and don't make it so difficult as to be effectively useless for the people who really need it. If the price we pay for helping out people who need it is that occasionally less scrupulous people will take advantage then that's simply a risk we've got to take - when caught the abusers should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law though.
Out of interest why is a group being told or recommended who to vote for at their church any different to their being told by their trade union or any other group they belong to? I'm struggling to see any realistic difference in outcome.
Because not all British Citizens can speak English to the same standard, and while they may have enough English for everyday life, they may not understand complex manifesto and voting issues written in what is effectively their second language. While more emphasis should be placed on ensuring immigrants have a reasonable standard of English, to deny them legal democratic rights, or the ability to exercise those rights simply because they do not understand the material as presented is not really in keeping with what Britain is about.
As for Balkanisation of the UK, I think you need to focus your efforts on the independence movements in Scotland, Wales and Cornwall rather than London.....