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jamesalvarez

This could actually be good but instead it just comes across as a coded xenophobic rant. Wasted opportunity!

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Great way of putting it.

This looks like ragebait.

First 2 things I saw:

- the idea that £100k deposit is needed to buy a house

- some weird stuff about nationwide initiatives and hypothesised awkward conversations with people who might be Muslims.

Maybe I got unlucky?

Sounds more like you live in a better area then he does. And by better I mean with less issues, not richer necessarily.

While I admit that I don't live in the UK, I suspect it's similar to my experience from over the sea in Hamburg. I've recently moved there into a district with >50% migrants for roughly 3 yrs - not really expecting anything as I was still positive about everything.

Finding apartment listings in the online portals explicitly saying they will only allow Muslims was surprising to me, but I ignored it thinking, whatever.

Well, after moving into another apartment in the same area was an eye opener for me.

Really, I'm frankly surprised there are people still in denial how bad it's gotten. Well, not really surprised. I mean I was one of them in 2021.

I knew it was going to be coded from the headline, wasn't sure in which direction. Cheers for saving the click.

I wasn't. It was more a satire on some of the ridiculous stuff in UK political culture and corporate culture.

In it is literally has emails from Linda on total nonsense corporate cringe stuff that I am shielded from because I wfh.

I know right. Folks don't understand that people who come to our countries are also workers whose countries have been destroyed by OUR elites. A bit of solidarity would be healthy, useful and anchored in reality.

Whenever anyone on earth does something bad, it's basically Nick's fault. Nobody except Nick has agency or responsibility. They're all victims, except Nick.

I missed that bit. What did it say?

The first three questions I got were:

- Wishing a colleague a Eid Mubarak, at which the colleague mentions that she's no longer of the faith.

- It's Odd Socks day for Alzheimer awareness. Will you take off a sock? (No -> Linda disapproves.)

- Bring your dog to work day, will you bring treats to work? (No -> it got canceled anyway because of complaints.)

This just sounds like an exhausting attitude to go through life.

It is satire about working in a large corporation in the UK.

Oh no, I got that. It's just satire of the whiny kind instead of actually funny or interesting.

I don't Agree. I got a few giggles out of it. Especially the emails from "Linda", as I literally get those types of emails.

I think generally it was reasonably well done as a novelty joke website that is obviously trying to make a political point. That in itself makes it reasonably interesting IMO.

Exactly. Most HNers here are having a difficult time in telling what is satire these days.

Some of events I swear are straight of Yes Minister or The Office.

Yeah, office life is exhausting

Overblown dog whistles about "celebrate hijab day" or some such made-up nonsense I only hear about in conservative self victimisation fantasies.

There is an option to that question where it has a relatively positive outcome and you have lunch with her and presumable are on better terms afterwards. Which tells me that the author isn't dog whistling at all and it is more a lampooning the weird cringe stuff that you are expected to take part in one of these large corps.

In fact something like this sounds like it comes straight out of office space.

I volunteered at a school. Rather than celebrating Christmas or Halloween, they had to celebrate Diwali because Christmas/Halloween might be too offensive or not inclusive enough. The country has gone mad.

1. I don't believe your framing

2. What's wrong with celebrating Diwali?

3. Why should anyone care? Did anyone stop you from celebrating Christmas with your friends and family?

P.s. according to your post history you have based anti capitalist positioning on the pointlessness of most white collar labor, what happened to make you participate on the wrong side in a meaningless culture war that's just a distraction from the reduction in material conditions of the working class?

Well of course you don’t believe me, it goes against your narrative. But I’m sure someone living in Taiwan knows better than someone British currently in the UK.

Also that is quite an overreach on basic observations that are generally agreed upon and weren't anti-capitalist.

I don't believe you because I live in the UK and the idea that people don't celebrate Christmas is beyond moronic. The shops start doing Christmas stuff the day after Halloween. It's unending Christmas songs for two months.

Tell me you seriously didn't notice this.

Shops != schools. Go to a school, they are brainwashing children.

Shops will do whatever makes them profit, they are not strictly run by the government.

Schools are not strictly run by the government either. Learn how schools work before commenting.

A fair number of my family are teachers so check your facts before trying your lazy assertions.

2. What's wrong with celebrating Diwali?

3. Why should anyone care?

Most neoliberals (your entire political class) would vehemently disagree with the idea that the labor market is as high as 30% inefficiency, least of all in white collar jobs. That's not how they believe capitalism works. In their fantasy, pointless jobs can't exist, or at least not at such a high volume, since the invisible hand of the market would eliminate them.

You are of course right and they are wrong but my point is not many would agree with us.

And it’s actually good. Immigration does not do 30 year olds any favours. It only helps businesses and pensioners.

In the west there are not enough young people to support the elderly, and immigration of young people can help to address this problem to the benefit of everyone.

I see this argument fairly often, but rarely do I see the premises questioned. Why do the elderly need to be supported? Wealth is concentrated in their hands (especially in the UK), while younger generations are struggling to be able to afford housing let alone build wealth. Perhaps society should focus less on supporting the generations who have already accumulated wealth and instead focus on supporting the generations who are starting families.

They need someone to literally care for them. In Germany for example, there are far too few people working in elderly care, and it’s a huge problem if we don’t want them to die of starvation, malnutrition or falling down the stairs with nobody to find them there.

Even wealth can’t magically summon the humans necessary to do that kind of work, robots are no solution for the foreseeable future and I don’t think starting a family is easy if you have to take care of your parents and/or grandparents.

There are far too few people working in elderly care because it pays peanuts. It pays peanuts because immigration increases the supply of workers. With a limited supply of workers and increased demand as more people get older, those jobs would pay well and natives would want to do them. It’s basic economy. It works well in countries that are not a free for all regarding immigration.

That is simply wrong. Social work has always been badly paid, exhausting, and ungrateful.

You’re twisting the past to fit into your contrived narrative of immigrants somehow wage-dumping us, but that’s simply wrong, it’s not what has happened in the EU.

I can go with your gut feeling or I can go with what I’ve seen in the market whilst looking for a woman to take care of elders in my family. Or with what I’ve heard from people in the hospitality and agriculture sectors.

It’s not that natives don’t want to work, it’s that immigrants undercut everybody. Not to mention what they’ve done to the housing sector of course. It’s unlivable. We run a country, not a charity.

Edit since I can’t respond anymore:

You assume two things: that you can’t work for less than the minimum wage (you can, since most elder care work is paid under the table) and that you can have a good life with the minimum wage (you can’t, unless you are okay with truly bad living conditions).

And a country has to prioritise the wellbeing of the natives first. You can’t destroy the lives of the poor and the young natives just to feel better about yourself.

It’s no gut feeling. My mother was a lifelong nurse. Again, I don’t know where you live, but in most western countries there’s a minimum wage preventing people from somehow undercutting other people, that’s not happening. Wages in the care sector haven’t dropped considerably since the first major migrations to Europe happened.

We run a country, true; not a capitalist venture. A country is also built on ethics, and that entails adhering to basic human rights for all humans.

The elderly don’t pay much tax, and they are very expensive to the state. Younger migrants contribute more taxes to fund healthcare and social services and pensions used by the elderly.

But yes, I agree, we need to tilt the scales back towards the young.

No, you mean to the benefit of pensioners.

Plus there are enough people to care of old people. It’s just that immigrants cause such downward pressure on salaries that elder care is not a viable job sector for most.

It helps everyone, migrants pay more taxes than they get out of the system in benefits. Plus they often do jobs that many people wouldn't otherwise

Do migrants do jobs that native-born citizens would not under any circumstances do, or do they do jobs that native-born citizens would not do for the low wages that migrants are willing to accept?

We’re talking about minimum wage jobs, so the low wages are capped at the bottom for everyone anyway. And yes, there’s absolutely "native born" workers that will and do work for minimum wage already.

This really depends on the quality of the migrants coming.

The immigration policies of my home country Sweden has been detrimental for the Swedes.

I live in Zürich and there are a lot of foreigners here. Here it’s not so clear cut if it’s for the better or for the worse.

Regarding the taxation argument. That may have been true in the past (it doesn't account that many of these people stay and then will need to supported when they become elderly) but under the "Boris Wave" immigration boom that is no longer the case.

It doesn't address the other problems such as social cohesion.

>Plus they often do jobs that many people wouldn't otherwise

because the wages are low, why are the wages low? because these jobs have access to an unlimited amount of strikebreakers/migrants willing to do them for those low wages, so the wage stays suppressed and low, instead of allowing market mechanics to bring those wages up

Feature or bug?

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