[geeks] Socialized medicine [was Re: nVidia 8800GT for Apple Mac Pro]

[Mike Meredith]

On Mon, 26 May 2008 13:22:31 +0300, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
> Most of the early settlers in the English part of the "new world"
> went there to evade religous persecution. 

Indeed which is why I said "some" were economic migrants.

> moving there. A large portion of them are moslem. From what I read in
> the press there are whole towns that have been taken over, and the
> residents want to institute sharia (moslem) law. 

I *think* that most of the moslem immigrants are from outside Europe.
There's *some* neighbourhoods in some towns that are mostly populated
by moslem immigrants[0]; I somehow doubt the *majority* want to impose
sharia law. That's not to say that they wouldn't live by sharia law,
but that's a whole different thing.

I know quite a few (and work alongside) quite a few moslem immigrants.
The majority are pretty relaxed about their religion; the only one who
is obviously deeply religious (to the extent he won't socialise in
places that sell alcohol) shows no signs of being an extremist in the
sense of insisting that the rest of us should live by sharia law.

There's a certain amount of FUD floating around fed by racists and the
occasional nutter. Incidentally the latest nutter to set off a bomb was
a native apparently radicalised by extremists; perhaps because they
couldn't find an moslem immigrant to radicalise!

During the niqab (full face veil) flap a while back when a UK
politician said he asked women to remove it during meetings, whilst the
media was particularly keen to find moslems frothing at the mouth
because of the impertinence of the man, there were still quite a number
of moslems who reacted along the lines of "hey! fair enough"[2].

(that's a horrible sentence but I'm too lazy to re-phrase)

> Anyone one this list remember the Carter years? 21% mortgages? If
> they get that high again, how many people who have near prime
> mortgages will go under when their payments tripple or quadruple?

I'd left the US by that time and anyway wasn't paying too much
attention to interest rates (being 8 at the time). But I remember 15%
mortgage rates over here ... 'negate equity', widespread house
re-possession, falling house prices, etc. It only lasted 2-3 years.

> It's not. But things will change and they will not change for the
> good. England and parts of Europe are in better shape to weather the
> storm, there is a lot of subsidised housing and government medical
> care.

I'm not so pessimistic about the housing situation here. There has been
some adjustment ... no 100% mortgages and probably a reluctance to give
large mortgages. That will have an impact on house prices, and some
people will lose their homes. But not in the numbers seen in the
1990s ... the mortgage rates are still far too low for that, and the
UK mortgage market never reached the levels of insanity as it
apparently reached in the US.

> I'm sure you are. Most people are blind to the problems around them
> when they don't affect them. I'm in the middle of it, so I am much
> more sensitive to Islamic terrorism, but it has hit the U.S., the
> U.K., etc.

Currently the islamic terrorism (with certain exceptions) in the UK is
at a rather amateurish level with the vast majority being stopped in
the planning stages. It doesn't compare with the efforts of the IRA
(although they weren't quite so enthusiastic on inflicting mass
casualties). I'm sure that will change, but we're currently doing more
harm to our way of life with over the top security restrictions.

> But they are not illegal. They are EU citizens exercising their right

Purely in terms of being free to move to where the jobs are available,
there really isn't a difference between a legal and illegal immigrant.
Well except the illegal immigrant (in the US at least) finds it
_slightly_ more difficult to enter the country.

> Unfortunately many of them have brought with them crime, relegious
> strife, etc. England is nothing like it was 20 years ago, and in some
> places is not recognizable as being England at all.

Given where England was 20 years ago (industrial decline, mass
unemployment, an exceptionally divisive government) I somehow doubt the
changes England has seen are a bad thing. I'm not sure what places you
think are unrecognisable as England.

As to crime, well that's two-fold ... firstly the apparently
uncontrolled youth which is found across the native and immigrant
population. And the changes in organised crime ... drugs trafficking
funding more extreme organised crime such as sex-slaves, and the
excess profits making criminals more inclined to use violence to hang
on to their wealth.

The UK has always had immigration and problems with an extremist
minority of those immigrants. The Special Branch (the closest the UK
has to a political police) was initially setup to deal with the IRB and
later had dealings with the more extreme of the Russian revolutionaries
operating in the UK.

> You could ask. Most of the proprieters of those shops will be able
> to tell you what they sell.

Not the kind of shop you can spend time chatting; too many hoodies
queued up behind with alcopops growling at the delay[1].

> 
> Geoff.

[0]: For example Brick Lane in London which has always been a place for
immigrants.

[1]: I don't know, the youth of today just doesn't have the same style
as in the past. In my day we didn't try to hide behind hoods, and the
poison of choice was vodka not this wishy-washy alcopop rubbish.

[2]: The niqab isn't part of sharia law; it's one interpretation of
sharia law where women (and men) are supposed to dress modestly. It
isn't a "do it or die" requirement and carries roughly the same level
as the requirement to foster understanding in a non-islamic country ...
and the UK has a historical dislike of face coverings given that most
people who cover their faces were up to something criminal. And
headscarves were almost universally worn by British women within living
memory. My fascist granny is rather disturbed by the niqab, but rather
approves of the moslem headscarf.

-- 
Mike Meredith (http://zonky.org/)
 "I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.
There's a knob called `brightness', but it doesn't work." -- Gallagher