Preparedness for when

GreyQueen

There is always going to be a tension between the very understandable social needs of immigrants to flock together with their countrymen, and the needs to integrate with the indigenous population.

I have friends who are in their forties from south-east asian countries who represent the first generation of their families to be UK-born. One is tearing her hair out because she cannot talk to her mother. Not in the sense that they cannot see eye-to-eye but quite literally.

Friend has English as her only language, Mother has lived in the UK for 50 years but never bothered learning more English than necessary to buy a bit of food off the market. Mother speaks an obscure minority language from the other side of the world, not something you can get a language course on. She literally cannot talk to her middle-aged children, because she made a decision not to teach them her language in their childhood, nor learn the dominant language of the country her family had chose to immigrate into, of their own free will, as economic migrants. Nor can she interact with the rest of society, including the hospital and the GP.

Shoebox Towers has people from most corners of the world. A small minority are people who were granted refugee status (asylum seekers aren't allowed to have council housing, but can apply once their status is formalised to refugee). Some don't speak English very well - one previous next door neighbour barely spoke a word of English, despite having been in the country for years. Lovely man, just couldn't interact very well with the neighbours.

There needs to be an active interplay between the indigenous population and the first generation of the new arrivals, whatever their reasons for being here. With effort and goodwill on all sides, nothing is insurmountable; we've been fertilised and improved as a culture for thousands of years by new arrivals.

Even something as traditonally British as fish and chips. Deep fried fish was first introduced to this country by Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal in the 16th century and spuds come from the New World. My local chippy is most excellent and is run by second generation Italian immigrants. They fry a mean fish............:rotfl:

Frugalsod

GreyQueen wrote: »

armyknife, there was a distopian future novel I read a few years ago, it's title escapes me, where latitudes incl the UK were iced and virtually uninhabitable due to climate change. People were pouring into Africa, trying to cite an African grandparent/ great-grandparent as reasons to be allowed into various countries. It was a sobering thought.

We are ALL from Africa if you go back far enough.

GreyQueen

Frugalsod wrote: »

We are ALL from Africa if you go back far enough.

True, but I don't think you could cite antecedants from 10,000 + years ago when applying to immigrate.

Frugalsod

GreyQueen wrote: »

Even something as traditonally British as fish and chips. Deep fried fish was first introduced to this country by Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal in the 16th century and spuds come from the New World. My local chippy is most excellent and is run by second generation Italian immigrants. They fry a mean fish............:rotfl:

I think chips were originally from Belgium or that region. I live pretty close to an English run chippy but many will go over the hill to the Chinese run chippy which is better and very good.

One of the most popular English dishes is Chicken Tikka Masala which was invented in London and is now exported to India. I think the cultural diversity is excellent as long as we integrate. Actually second generation generally do pretty well overall.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

British people moving elsewhere in Britain are still in our own country and no need to integrate unless we choose to voluntarily - and free to think "Each to their own - them to theirs and us to ours" and there will only be the odd clash by people who haven't spent much (if any) time living elsewhere in Britain and aren't very well aware of how different ways of thinking can be just within our own country. But I do wonder what proportion of immigrants will try to integrate with us and change their thinking to ours?

Of course you got to integrate moving to diff parts of Britain...

To me integration is being part of the local community, and blending in with that's communities/ village way of life.. You can't expect two villages to be the same, or expect city life to be the same as country life..you adapt to your surroundings, which includes people. And the lifestyle

Frugalsod

GreyQueen wrote: »

True, but I don't think you could cite antecedants from 10,000 + years ago when applying to immigrate.

Very true but I will cite Lucy from Africa from 2.5 million years ago though the paperwork might be very murky. They were not good at the paperwork at that time, as it had not been invent until several million years later.

culpepper

Am I missing something? Why is it only EU countries being expected to help the refugees?
Surely the rest of the world can help too??

GreyQueen

Frugalsod wrote: »

Very true but I will cite Lucy from Africa from 2.5 million years ago though the paperwork might be very murky. They were not good at the paperwork at that time, as it had not been invent until several million years later.

It's going to be a bit of a squeeze fitting all her descendants back into that part of the Ethiopia!

Frugalsod

ivyleaf wrote: »

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I read that novel too and I can't remember its name either. I seem to recall the main character was called Saul and he was unable to go to Africa and was now an old man, living alongside a group of feral teens, telling them tales of the old days before the cold came, hoping to amuse them enough to be allowed to share their fire and be given some food and be allowed to live a bit longer.

ETA I think it was called "ICE".

Feral Teens? Sounds like the cast of Made in Chelsea, completely detached from reality.

greenbee

Minor SHTF here - I had to turn the water off last night as there is a tiny leak in some new pipework in the bathroom. Luckily the floor isn't down yet, so I was able to locate the source of the noise (I have batlike hearing...) pretty quickly. And it was on the hot water circuit (mains pressure) so turning off the water at the mains and emptying all the taps stopped the leak. There are damp marks on the kitchen ceiling, but it is still up!

I have plenty of drinking water, but nothing available to flush the toilets with - I will be installing waterbutts shortly! It's also very annoying not being able to do the laundry and cleaning I'd had planned for today (I don't get much done during the week while the builders are here due to the constant generation of dust.

The tap on my rising main has been replaced with a lever, so is easy to deal with, and it's in the cupboard under the sink so easily accessible. However, I need to make sure that the new plumbing has more isolation valves and I know where they are - turning off ALL the water is not really the ideal situation.

Better try calling the builder again. He didn't respond at 10pm yesterday, but I would have expected a response to my text this morning!