The argument at the time was that our infrastructure wasn’t being expanded enough to cope with the influx.
When 1 million Poles and another million Eastern Europeans coming into the UK in one year, the concern was that we really needed to invest in more schools, buses, housing etc and THEN let people in.
Edit: I can see how the argument I was presenting could be conflated with the idea that immigrants = parasites.
That isn’t true in my experience.
My experience being that I am in fact an immigrant and of all the people I know in England, the only ones who haven’t used the welfare system tend to be immigrants, commonwealth in this case because that’s who I know.
Everyone I know who has used welfare has beenBritish
So a couple of elementary schools in Oregon are having the names of the schools changed. Apparently they were named after someone named Lynch. And Lynch Wood and Lynch Meadow and Lynch Elementary Schools have been deemed insensitive. In two cases the name Lynch will be dropped completely and in the third the name will be changed to the Patrick Lynch School.
Nelson, for all his faults, served the British people. The Confederates were traitors. Putting up a statue for a traitor is a mistake. If you make that mistake, you should correct it by taking the statue down.
In England, Guy Fawkes is not forgotten despite a lack of statues. He is remembered in effigy. If Charlottesville wants to remember Lee, they can burn his effigy too.
I dont disagree with destroying those US memorials. I’m just pointing out some stupid liberals who seem to have only learnt that statues=bad, the word lynch=bad, the surname Lee combined with the first name Robert=bad from all of this.
Don’t confuse stupid liberals, of which there are plenty, with corporations trying to manage their risk portfolio. ESPN would probably force all of their employees to rename themselves Donald Trump if somebody offered them 50 Billion dollars to do it.
The ACLU have already responded with mea culpas. Posting picture of a white toddler and suggesting it might be a part of the future=white supremacy. For real.
On the other hand its probably better to go with a white toddler and only risk some twitter complaints instead of a black toddler which would have risked death threats and maybe a few fire bombings.
Ok, I support the ACLU. And I will respect their determination to defend odious speech.
But honestly, I can understand the negative reaction to their advertisement. White supremacists specifically pledge to secure a future for white children. They constantly emphasize that their actions are protected by the First Amendment. And here comes an ad about the future, with a white child literally cloaked in the First Amendment.
You could replace “ACLU” in that ad with “KKK”, and it would still make perfect sense. That’s a messaging problem.
I think it was less bad timing or bad messaging and more bad staging.
The picture simply isn’t framed or “propped” in a way that makes it obvious what the focus ought to be. The “Free Speech” message on the kid’s outfit is probably meant to be the central theme, but it’s such a small element with muted colors that it’s probably the fourth or fifth thing that your eye will settle on after the toddler, the flag, the beanie-baby, the hair, and maybe the railing.
The caption sucks too. What, exactly, do the ACLU folks want in the future? Free kids? White kids? Kids who will doubtless start chewing on a splintery flag-stick the second you turn your back on them? Beanie-babies?
Like I said, I think they were playing on a meme from back in March, which wasn’t a good idea in the first place. I have a feeling this was intended to be cute and funny. And frankly, I thought it was (in the context of the meme), but like Telefrog’s thread titles, if you don’t know the context, they don’t make a damn bit of sense, and @magnet’s point about the messaging is well made.
