A revealing view of the world from Hemlock in the Gweilo Diaries
I’m happy with the Neocons’ broad analysis: the superiority of anglo-saxon political and economic philosophies is self-evident. Simple anglo-saxon (as it happens) empiricism suggests the whole world would be a better and safer place if it shared the values of the US, the UK or Australia. There’s a reason people lock themselves into containers or sail in leaking ships to get into these countries.
The world would be a fairly boring place if that ever happened. Incidentally, why is Australia in the list and not Canada?
I say that the world would be a better place if we still had the British Empire – that would put Johnny Foreigner in his place
The issue that interests me here is immigration. The number of so-called “asylum seekers” wanting to come to the UK is a hot political issue, and the Labour government seems to be responding to this by doing it all it can to make their lives more difficult. One of the issues in the recent Californian election was illegal immigrants, and John Howard boosted his popularity just before last election by being tough on immigration. Closer to home, in the years leading up to the handover of Hong Kong, the British government disgracefully refused to offer Hong Kong citizens the automatic right to emigrate to the UK.
Why do governments that apparently believe in freedom and the market economy feel so threatened by immigration? Experience tells us that people who want to give up their homes and family and travel thousands of mile and start a new life in a foreign country are usually the most enterprising and hard-working. Some countries (Ireland historically, and Italy currently) are very worried by the loss of the brighest and best, and there is clear evidence that this is damaging to the economy.
One of the problems facing Britain and many other developed countries is that the population is getting older. This is caused by the combination of increased life expectancy and lower birth rates. The ratio of working people (paying taxes) and retired people (drawing a pension) will change quite dramatically, and could have a serious impact – the state pension is funded from taxes, and to top that up people will withdraw money invested in the stock market. So what does Britain need? More working people who will pay taxes, save money, and invest in the stock market. Where could they come from, I wonder?
Ordinary Gweilo 
2 responses to “WASP view of the world”
I “concur” with you…for many years freedom of movement between countries have made them prosper and wealthy. We have seen the rise and fall of empires, nations and especially cities due to this. From history, once they start to limit movement, which transpires that that are content with life, the decline commence. This is the very reason for my move from London to Hong Kong in Feb 04, in my view, UK is becomming such a “Nanny State”…the Tories may not have enough to win it this time, but with the rate Blair is going, next election be the end of Labour.
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Very good analysis on ageing population.
Starting from Japan and then the other developed countries, this is becoming a serious problem.
US is also on the list. Have you read the book “The World In 2020”? If not, I will try to find out reference for you.
Cheers!
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