The great exodus
August 2nd, 2009It seems like the great and the good are finding that Britain has lost all of its appeal:
Cory Doctorow has written an article that sums up what is wrong with this country, and his piece chimes with what I have been writing.
Although he is a Candian native, Cory’s family came from the Soviet Union: he asked his grandmother why she didn’t stay there.
I asked her why she didn’t stay, and she shook her head like I’d asked the stupidest possible question. “It was the Soviet Union”, she said. She waved her hand, groped for the answer. “Papers,” she said, finally. “We had to carry papers. The police could stop you at any time and make you turn over your papers.” The floodgates opened. They spied on you. They made you spy on each other. Your grandfather wouldn’t have been allowed to stay – he was Polish, they wouldn’t let him stay with the family in Russia, he’d have to go back to Poland.
There are many people who are simply not going to put up with what is happening in the UK and are either planning to leave or have already left. Many more will fight till the bitter end. This is not just ‘foreigners’, but British citizens also.
Only a total fool, having full knowledge of recent history, would wait around to be ‘Kristallnacht’d’; and of course, if that does not happen, there are an infinite gradation of bad things that can happen beneath that, like the state saying you cannot remove ‘your’ money or your property when you leave. There was a time in the very recent past where the maximum you could take out of the UK was £100. Anyone that does not think this can happen again is insane, especially with the economic chaos that is about to unfold before our eyes. The US has already passed laws that are aimed at stopping americans from leaving – the ‘Hotel California’ laws – what makes anyone think that Britain will not follow them? They follow them everywhere else, so why not there?
Cory then moved to Britain, where he found—as Bella has—that his status here is at the whim of the disgusting, petty, spiteful little cunts in government, responding to the BNP dog-whistle morons who populate this green and increasingly unpleasant land.
Britain is run by disgusting, petty, spiteful little cunts; it is not populated by disgusting, petty, spiteful little cunts. The same Britain that we all remember and loved is still there, as are most of the people who inhabited it; its just hidden under a layer of grime that needs to be jetwashed off.
Britain can be great again. This next election is clearly its last chance; the things that have been done since the Bliar regime are so contrary to everything that is right, if the Tories do not move to undo them, Britain will be lost. I know many people who are going to leave this beleaguered island if the Tories do not clean house. There are only so many chances that people are willing to give a place, and if it does not improve, it is pointless to stay and suffer the indignities of a police state when you can simply get on a train and LEAVE.
People from all over the world have given up on Britain. They do not come here for medical treatment anymore (for example) instead, they fly to Dubai, where they get a high standard of treatment, equivalent or better than what you get in Britain, without having to be treated like a criminal. In the end, when this country starts to wither, as it becomes culturally isolated, they will either have to change their ways or end up being just like a Soviet satellite state; grey, grim, paranoid, devoid of innovation on all fronts, purged of individuals and individuality, freedom-less and inert… like soot, the chemically spent remains of combustion.
A few years later, I was living with my partner, and had fathered a British daughter (when I mentioned this to a UK immigration official at Heathrow, he sneeringly called her “half a British citizen”). We were planning a giant family wedding in Toronto when the news came down: the Home Secretary had unilaterally, on 24 hours’ notice, changed the rules for highly skilled migrants to require a university degree. My immigration lawyers confirmed it: people who’d established residence in the UK for years and years, who’d built businesses and employed Britons here, who owned homes and given birth to British children, were being thrown out of the country, taking their tax-payments, jobs and families with them.
My partner and I scrambled. We got married. We applied for a spousal visa. A few weeks later, I presented myself in Croydon at the Home Office immigration centre to turn over my biometrics and have a visa glued into my Canadian passport. I got two years’ breathing room. My family could stay in Britain.
Then came last week’s announcement: effective immediately, spousal visa holders (and foreign students) would be issued mandatory, biometric radio-frequency ID papers that we will have to carry at all times. And I started to look over my shoulder.
You must do what you think is right of course.
We have spoken about this before; about changing the rules half way through the game:
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Many people came to the UK because the rules were favorable. Now, after settling down, doing good work, bringing prosperity and creativity to the UK, the government wants to change the rules halfway through the game. That is not cricket.
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The financial crowd understands this better than anyone, “… if the rules can change in this way, arbitrarily, unfairly, insanely, then its best to get out NOW before some other, even worse, more insane rules come down the pipeline, locking us in here”. That is why so many financiers have already left and have vowed never to return.
When someone asks you to ‘hand over your biometrics’, which actually means GETTING FINGERPRINTED LIKE A CRIMINAL, it means that a fundamental line has been crossed. With the NIR, once you hand over your fingerprints, YOU ARE IN THE SYSTEM. It doesn’t matter if they issue an ID Card or not, the mobile fingerprint scanners they are going to deploy mean that your fingerprints ARE THE ID CARD.
Its pointless to now, after having submitted to violation, leave the UK because they are discriminating against foreigners by compelling them to carry ID Cards. You are already in their system to the exact same degree that you would be had you been made to get an ID Card right now.
Biometric (violating) VISAS are vendor driven garbage. They do not improve border security or stop illegal immigration. There are better ways to issue VISAS that do not threaten the recipient.
Canadians can get six month entry when they come to the UK at any port. It is a mistake to get a VISA if you are a Canadian, IMHO. Everyone has their limits, their pain threshold…
Yes, that’s right. And why should immigrants have to do this? They are easy targets, of course. I am now caught up in a similar situation: I am in a relationship—and have been for some time—and the continuance of that relationship is at the whim of bureaucrats and filthy, disgusting, morally bankrupt politicians and the filthy, disgusting, morally bankrupt morons who elect them.
This is a problem that is similar to stock traders and market timing; when is it the optimum moment to exit the market and cash out? If you leave too early, you might miss out on some market movements. If you leave too late, you might not get out at all.
I have seen, at first hand, the second-rate status accorded to those who want to live and work here, and the callousness with which their situation is dealt with. I have seen the way in which this country deals with immigrants, and I dislike it intensely.
The horror stories from Lunar House are legend.
Every one of these measures was beta-tested on less-advantaged groups before it was rolled out to the general public.
It is, quite simply, a divide et impera tactic and it is one that I, as a positive libertarian who believes that we are all human, find morally repugnant.
Libertarians know all about this. There are a growing number of Libertarians in the west. Sales of seminal individualist works are skyrocketing. If enough people get the message, and the coming collapse will make this more likely, then it is possible that we might get the sort of countries that we desire. By the way, if you have not seen it, see this.
I have constantly pointed out that all of these measures tested on minority “undesirables” will be applied to us sooner or later—and probably sooner.
CCTVs used the be the exclusive territory of bank vaults and prisons. Network wiretapping and censorship began in schools, “to protect children”.
Now, we immigrants are to be the beta testers for Britain’s sleepwalk into the surveillance society. We will have to carry internal passports and the press will say, “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to live here – it’s unseemly for a guest to complain about the terms of the hospitality.” But this beta test is not intended to stop with immigrants. Government freely admits that immigrants are only the first stage of a universal rollout of mandatory biometric RFID identity cards. What happens to us now will happen to you, next.
Even if it were not the case hat what happens to immigrants now will happen to the natives next (Kristallnacht) it is wrong, and you should not put up with it.
Everyone, when they study Germany, wonders, “what would I have done if I was living in Germany then?”. Now is your chance to find out. As we have seen, some people run to legitimize themselves with the state, getting into a marriage at a time other than their choosing, and them to ‘turn over their biometrics’ for the sake of immigration status. Others opt to disappear, or leave or game the system. The ones with nothing to lose burn their fingerprints off and go hard core. There are many different responses to threats.
Of course, everyone with half a brain cell knows that no one would desire to come to Britain as a ‘sponger’ if there was no welfare state. Libertarians abhor the welfare / warfare state because it is founded on stealing. A Libertarian society would be able to accommodate ‘foreigners’ since the state would not be stealing from anyone to pay for the ‘scroungers’. All resentment of immigration would virtually disappear; the only people harboring ill feeling being the racists who have ethnic identity issues.
ID Cards are going to be justified as a way to control the scroungers, and set the world to rights. They are an unintended consequence of the welfare state; something started with good intentions but which has ended up almost destroying Britain.
No, we aren’t seeing people wandering around with yellow stars on their clothing—but we are seeing them forced to get ID cards that we would never wish to carry ourselves. And what do we do?
Nothing.
The conclusion is simple: had the Nazis risen here, we would have not put up any more protest—as our neighbours were taken to the ghettos and then to the death camps—than the Germans did. In fact, we would probably complain less.
As the repulsive general population continue to make shitty jokes about “not mentioning the war”, they are blind to the fact that—had it happened here—they would have been happy to hassle those Jews onto the cattle trucks.
Because, as our own pogrom happens, I hear not a fucking spark from the “great British public”. They are too busy devouring Coronation Street to care.
If this is true, it means that you will have to do what the Doctorowictz family did. Leave, and never come back. This is the choice that you face; you either stay and fight risking everything, or preserve yourself and your wealth and leave. If the British really have degenerated to the degree that you describe, then they are beyond saving. Many people who felt that they owed a debt to this great country, and who fought to help it keep some semblance of sanity, like Doctorow, who in writing that article is contributing to a place that has been his home and which gave him his wife and daughter, are going to have to decide when the time is right to get out before it is too late. If they decide to flee.
Nothing lasts forever. And that really is literally true. The Britain that we all loved may well be gone forever… and we were lucky to have tasted it at all. From what I can tell, there are many people who are still The Real British™ they think like the British used to think, they act like the British used to think, and, most encouragingly, some of them are young.
Very encouraging.
On the other hand, we have, The Cancer That Is Killing Britain, the physical embodiment of which can be seen in the shapes of the presenters and talking heads in this clip:
This is, essentially, a battle against Cancer, a biological struggle. Either the body will survive, or the cancer will kill it.
We are encouraged to spy on our neighbours and report their suspicious activity. We can be stopped and searched with no particularised suspicion, and during these searches, police officers can and do examine such things as the books we’re reading and the personal notes we’ve made.
This is all true, and all horrible.
What we have to do is look to history, recent history, to see how it can all end. It is important to say not only the truth about how things are bad, but what can happen to turn it all around.
East Germany is my favorite example:
If the British are anything like the Germans, the ID Card alone will not be enough to force a massive change in Britain. They might be made of stronger stuff… who knows? One thing is for sure; the ID Card, if it is not scrapped entirely, along with the NIR, is just the beginning; the aparatchicks have many new monstrosities planned that will be hinged on the NIR/ID Card. When they roll them out, and they begin to bite, THEN we will see a Poll Tax style revolt in the UK.
The question is, once again, are you going to wait around for everyone to wake up, are you going to cut your loses and get out, or what?
It might take seventy years for Britain and its people to grow a backbone; if you are over thirty, you are not going to see it, that is for sure, and even if you do, the only pleasure you will get is seeing the evil apparatus destroyed on TV while you are on your deathbead.
This country is dead as a free nation—when an article about a fundamentally unimportant subject such as computer OSes can get more comments than anything about civil liberties, it is an indication of the intellectual paucity of our citizens—yes, even the bien pensant of the blogosphere.
OSes are actually VERY important. A free OS keeps you and your information private. In a country where omnipresent surveillance of computers and communications is on the horizon, the free OS is the modern equivalent of an unlicensed photocopier in the Soviet Union. It is a computer under YOUR control doing YOUR bidding, that cannot be hacked into by default under secret arrangements with the manufacturers.
But I digress…
Cory has said that—if nothing changes—he will leave this shithole we call Britain. I don’t know if I can do the same—where is there to go?—but for the very first time, I am seriously considering it.
Even if there is ‘nowhere to go’, which is not the case, wherever you go, if it is the same as Britain police state wise, at least the weather will be better.
I am ashamed and afraid: I thought that I lived in one of the world’s great and tolerant civilisations: over the last few years, I have come to realise that is it simply a gilded cage.
There is nothing to be ashamed of. If you did not make it this way, you are not to blame. You actually did live in one of the world’s greatest and tolerant countries; in many ways, it still is. Britain has just lost its way, and it is not too late for it to change course and restore its former greatness. There are still enough people to make it happen, and believe it or not, you are one of them.
It is why this end to V For Vendetta, desirable though it may be, will never happen.
I wouldn’t be so sure.
There is a reason why that film has struck such a chord with everyone who watches it.
Nor will the people of Britain walk the streets in masks. Our “respresentative democracy” is just a sympton of the greater malaise—the shits in Parliament simply reflect the shits who elected them.
Libertarians know what representative democracies really are, so lets not go there.
For every one person who thinks, and evaluates and tries to be just, there are ten thousand ignorant bigots—repulsive in their stupidity and prejudice—whose voice carries far more weight (ten thousand times the weight, in fact) than that of those who can think. It is why this country is such a fucking shithole—because the filth who live in it vastly outnumber those who are decent.
Cough! cough!:
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And this, I fear, is the problem. This genial idiot is the sort of person who will be the interface between you and the NIR. They will accept anything that is put in front of them; they have no idea of literally any concept of morality or the reality of ‘the other’. They are the people who when told that pressing a button someone will recieve an electric shock, press the button without any hesitation. They are without imagination, human drones, Eloi, animals, sub human, and the worst thing about them is that they have the vote, which means that they have control by proxy over how the world evolves. This is unnaceptable to anyone with even half a brain cell.
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Look out for the yellow stars: the concentration camps will not be far behind. And as their friends and neighbours are carted off to the gulags, then the British people take to the streets.
But it will not be in protest, it will not be to condemn—no, it will be to cheer.
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You can thank your lucky stars that you will not be (t)here to see and hear it.