Friday, September 14, 2007

Queen's English 'innit

Interesting statistic in Private Eye this week. The government are proposing that all migrant workers should be able to speak English to a standard of GCSE grade C or above. They estimate that 36.8% of immigrants would fail this.

Compare this to the 47.8% of students in the UK who did not pass GCSE English at grade C or above.

Maybe we need a little less headline-grabbing and a little more joined up thinking when tackling both immigration and education?




12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Agree with you Scully.

This is another example of how the Labour Government is obsessed with targets and stats, leading to headlines, rather than outcomes and real results.

David Cameron has certainly got this one right by saying immigration/migration is too great and has shown concern for the burden this is placing on our services, and will look at sensible ways to reduce excessive immigration.

What we need is a responsible and steady reduction in immigration/migration coupled with far greater integration of our existing immigrant and migrant community.

People coming into Britain must speak the language, accept the way of life, and its values of tolerance, respect and liberty. The Conservatives have now robustly stepped up to this challenge.

For a politician criticised for political immaturity this is a mature stance rather than the sensationalist approaches of Labour, the wishy-washy Lib Dems, hopeless UKIP and the vile bigotted BNP.

Anonymous said...

listening to some of the garbage I hear from kids these days you have to have a translator to understand it.

Anonymous said...

My god that's rich coming from Cllr Scully, who represents a party that were the original lot that started mass immigration back in the early 50's!

Since then we've had Heath selling us down the river over Europe, and expanded EU allowing us no control over our borders, and only just now Cameron bleating about uncontrolled immigration when parties like UKIP have made it a solid plank of their manifesto since their inception.

Typical Scully and the Tories jumping on the bandwagon when it's too late. Gutless.

Unknown said...

Edmund, This is desparate stuff which is hard to take seriously. Since I was 6 when Heath lost the General Election I wasn't really in a position to influence Conservative immigration policy at the time.

Many older UKIP members were members of the Conservative party in the 50s and throughout the Heath administration. These people may have been better placed than a primary school child to have effected any change in approach.

When you consider that the Conservatives are too soft on immigration, you think that we are wrong. When you think that we are being tougher, you still think that we are wrong. It is exactly this type of muddled thinking that means that the only successful result that the handful of UKIP members in Sutton can acheive will be to return two LibDem MPs and a Labour government.

I really don't mind political debate but I hope that your standard of debate, if you want to continue will be raised away from petty name-calling.

Anonymous said...

It is rather telling that Edmund is keen to crticise someone elses' politics but isn't so forthcoming with a ready alternative.

If he fancies himself as somewhat of a political animal (as I imagine that he does) then he should be able to criticise another view and then posit one of his own. As it stands it seems that he has precisely the Ukip mindset which is a slavishly negative appraisal of everything and anything.

I guess that's one of the advantages of being in a no-hope party that will never be in a position to deliver on its promises.
To suggest that immigration is an issue which the Tories have only just leapt upon is patently inaccurate. This issue has been a mainstay of Conservative politics throughout successive elections (for better and worse), how on earth this can be a bandwagon I'll never know.

And Scully, at the tender age of 6 you really should have single handedly stopped Teddie from joining the common market. You took your eye off the ball, old son! Lol

Anonymous said...

Ok, Mr Stuart Courtney. Do you deny that it wasn't the Tories who allowed immigration to start in the 50's? Do you think that a leading tory Enoch Powell was actually wrong when he delivered his "rivers of blood" speech? (now there was a tory with real guts unlike the paperweights around today. Do you deny that Philippa Stroud is more worried about "asylum seekers" and "immigrants rights" than those of the indiginous population? Why haven't frustrated Tories who know deep down that we are being damaged by the EU left the party? Precisely because they are fed false promises by Cameron in perpetuity that raises their hopes.

A failed party for a failed country. The only way forward is to leave the EU - YOU know that, SCULLY knows that - but none of you have the balls to admit it.

Anonymous said...

Edmund, a couple of points for your consideration. In my opinion Enoch Powell has been much maligned by our liberal elites and his notorious Rivers of Blood speech comprehensively misunderstood. If that speech was bereft of Powell's romantic rhetoric it would essentially be no different to the recent (& belated) admission by that quango of quangos the Commission for Racial Equality.

Its also important to remember that Powell was a proponent of immigration in the Windrush era from parts of the Commonwealth and Empire, but of course this was prefaced by a sense of shared British values/traditions which were intended to bind people of all races and not to divide them.

Id therefore make the point to you that Enoch Powell was talking about clumsy and ill thought out immigration rather than immigration per se.

Finally you describe Britain as a "failed country" - if you've given up, why do you care, and why are we having this dialogue?

Anonymous said...

My meaning of a "failed country" is the state we are in now under Labour. But you have to admit that Cameron really hasn't come out with decisive policies that true Conservatives are calling out for.

If only the Tories could bring themselves to not only attack Labour on their numerous failures (and the Lib-Dems locally as well), but put into place lower taxes, real tough policies on crime, and a halt to immigration they may be showing a bit better in the polls. I'm as disappointed as probably you are deep down, but I don't intend to keep flogging a dead horse by pretending to support the "tories" who quite clearly are not going to win either the general election, when it comes, or I fear the local one.

The Lib-Dems are a little bit too clever for them.

Unknown said...

David

You talk about "flogging a dead horse" but then you keep on banging on about a party that polls at less than 1%. Now call me Mystic Meg, but I think that it is a racing certainty that UKIP won't be winning either the general election or the local one.

Anonymous said...

Cllr Scully - is that a misprint? My name is Edmund not David.

Unknown said...

Edmund Wallcarpets: Edmund now, Walter Wallcarpets elsewhere on the blog, David at home. You will read elsewhere that only one person was on the blog when you left 7 comments under two pseudonyms. Why not debate the issues rather than continuing with schoolboy pranks?

Anonymous said...

I'm rather confused as a newcomer to this blog. Isn't it a bit late for Cameron to be calling for controlled immigration? Wasn't it the Tories who started this in the early 1950's.?

Isn't Cllr Scully a bit late in pulling up the drawbridge and trying to confuse readers here by quoting a plethora of aliases?

Seems to me that Cllr Scully and the Tories are clutching at straws and are being rather desperate now an election seems to be looming by jumping on yet another bandwagon and calling for "controlled immigration"

All rather pathetic in my view.