Hezbollah night-vision gear manufactured in Britain

[DanaC]

Oh my....I'm a hippie now? I love the way it all boils down to a personal attack in the end. Our view of the Middle east situation is what it is because we're just too young and stupid and full of silly idealism to know better.

Brilliant.

And what's that crap about our best niches being saturated by immigrants? We're a continent....we have populations shifting about. We attract immigrants and we lose emigres at a similar rate. I don't see how that's saturation. It's just a shifting picture, a society in flux. No bad thing if you ask me. Pretty much the way it's always been. The only real difference now, is that our population shifts come from peacable migration and the odd band of refugees rather than wholescale marauding, invasion and streams of dispossessed.


Incidentally, the figures for Europe as a whole may show a young population, but Britain has an aging one. WE need a little immigration else we're going to be in trouble in a few years.

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Oh my....I'm a hippie now? I love the way it all boils down to a personal attack in the end. Our view of the Middle east situation is what it is because we're just too young and stupid and full of silly idealism to know better.

Brilliant.

And what's that crap about our best niches being saturated by immigrants? We're a continent....we have populations shifting about. We attract immigrants and we lose emigres at a similar rate...

Incidentally, the figures for Europe as a whole may show a young population, but Britain has an aging one. WE need a little immigration else we're going to be in trouble in a few years.

Read the link I posted. The demographic issue isn't "too many young people", in fact, it's quite the opposite. Do you really think the economic contribution gained from your immigrants and birth rate exceeds that lost by emigration and aging? Some authors disagree. In a socialist system you'd better hope so, because somebody has to pay for it all; an increasing number of takers balanced on the back of a shrinking population of makers is very bad news.

Hipppies don't particularly have to be either young or stupid...and "Hippie" is a personal attack only if you hate hippies and choose to take it as such. I can speak with some knowlege about hippies; I used to be one, a long, long time ago. The original hippie culture was an incredible font of creativity, if not of industriousness. Computing technology was particular was profoundly influenced by the counterculture of the '60s.

But someone doesn't become a wannabe because they're overloaded with creativity and originality.