“Why don’t they bother to integrate more ?”

Today’s Radio Five Drive show featured a BBC interviewer (around 25 minutes in, RealAudio for a week) giving immigrants a hard time :

“It would be helpful if they could integrate a little more – why can’t they learn the language ? It’s just lazy, isn’t it ? Why don’t they bother to integrate more ?”

Eh ? I’ve never heard a BBC presenter talk about immigrants like that before.

She meant British immigrants to Spain. Quite different.

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31 Responses to “Why don’t they bother to integrate more ?”

  1. Jack Hughes says:

    This piece says everything you need to know about the BBC.

    It was not even objective or fair – they did not speak to any of the immigrants or try to understand why they do not learn spanish nor try to integrate. Just bash the immigrants.

    No mention of “vibrant” or multiculty, or vibrant multicultural areas.

    Compare and contrast with their normal treatment of immigration when its foreigners coming to the UK.

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  2. Deirdre Gates says:

    Usual twisted stuff. A great many British in Spain are retired/early retired. Over about age 45, you don’t learn a new language to fluency level. This group of people isn’t in Spain to scrounge. They are paying their way and even providing employment.

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  3. Heron says:

    Good point, Deirdre. In fact I think it is people over 25 who are scientifically proven to have difficulty learning new languages. My parents have just emigrated to France, even though at the last time of reckoning their French was poor and they asked me to read and write their correspondence for them. They have, however, been learning the language assiduously both in England, and now in France. They are making every effort to integrate and these efforts are well received.

    Two other salient points that the BBC, of course, omitted from the article.

    1. Both worked in the public services for over 40 years each, and only left Britain because of their total distaste for what the country has become. They felt that Britain was now completely unrepresentative of the British people.

    2. Unlike some of the immigrants we have in Britain, neither will be claiming benefits – one indeed (a doctor) will be working part time – and neither wishes the wholesale destruction of France and its laws.

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  4. Steve B says:

    Cognitive Dissonance – this being the best example of that I have ever seen!

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  5. FTP says:

    Usual twisted stuff. A great many British in Spain are retired/early retired. Over about age 45, you don’t learn a new language to fluency level.

    They don’t need to either. If someone moved to the UK to retire, as long as they knew enough English to buy stuff from shops, pay their bills, etc I don’t think I would care. What trouble are they causing me?

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  6. Abandon ship! says:

    probably hideously white too

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  7. Pete_London says:

    “Why don’t they bother to integrate more ?”

    Because they’re Britons, and British culture is superior. Besides, if it wasn’t for us they’d all be speaking German. Or something.

    Actually, when I spent some time down on the Costas I found it was pretty difficult to learn the language – you ask for a pint of paella in the local lingo, and they reply in English. In the end you give up. Nope, it’s time we got with the European thing and demanded a single European language. Only to be good Europeans, of course.

    Jack Hughes –

    No mention of “vibrant” or multiculty, or vibrant multicultural areas.

    Ah now, this is it. The multiculti fetishists soon change their tune. No talk then of how wonderful it is to hear the different languages while you take your passegiata down the prom in Marbella. There’s no liberal gushing at the choice of world cuisine when the Old Bull and Bush starts offering the Full English in Torremolinos. Well sod’em, they’re only liberals.

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  8. William says:

    Deirdre hits the nail on the head. And I would add that knowledge of the language of the host country is necessary in order to be employable at (almost) any level, especially when one’s native language is either obscure or unknown in international service provision. Not applicable thus to British retirees, who often also invest in property and buy services. Having said that, it is always useful to know the lingo as this better enables one to stay one step ahead of the crafty buggers or to integrate or what have you.

    Having “acquired” a high level of fluency in Dutch during my extended stay in the lowlands, I wish to emphatically deplore the (apparent) absence of a pronunciation department at the BBC. The wealth of errors and blunders in the field of Dutch and certain other foreign languages seriously threatens to rival, or should that be harmonize with, the many shortcomings of BBC journalistic output.

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  9. Cockney says:

    “Why don’t they bother to integrate more?”

    All of the Brits resident in Spain are either on the coast serving abysmal food and dubious alcoholic concoctions to overweight sunburnt Northern English tourists, or inland doing f*** all in the sun, pulling a few scams and ignoring construction regulations. Which surely makes them perfectly integrated with the native population?

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  10. Cockney says:

    And there’s nothing more vibrant than Magaluf at 4am I seem to recall from my youth. Everything seemed to be spinning most of the time anyway.

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  11. gordon-bennett says:

    Cockney | 12.12.06 – 1:28 pm

    I expect that they are all fellow Cockneys.

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  12. Alan says:

    These are the ‘immigrants’ which
    Spain (and all of Europe), needs to be really concerned about:

    “At least 11 arrests as Police move
    against alleged Islamic terrorists
    in Cueta.”

    http://www.typicallyspanish.com.news/
    (12 Dec.).

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  13. Alan says:

    Source correction, above,:

    http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/

    (12 Dec.).

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  14. Michael Taylor says:

    Lack of Pronunciation Dept – Results of. . .

    Current folly: the Tata group of companies in India currently trying to take over Corus. BBC pronunciation – “Tatter”. Local Indian / ubiquitous financial industry pronunciation: Tarta, or even Tartar.

    Possible Worst Ever Folly: During overthrow of Indonesia’s President Suharto. BBC pronunciation Suhartu. Indonesian pronunciation: Suhharto.

    I suspect the broadcasting of similarly ignorant / provincial malapropisms will provide a source of continuous amusement for those amused by the BBC’s pathetic reporting standards.

    In a audio-visual medium, correct pronunciation is the equivalent of correct spelling in the print media. No surprise, then, since they will keep recruiting from the Grauniad.

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  15. Cockney says:

    GB – essex surely. Don’t mix your stereotypes.

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  16. amimissingsomething says:

    Michael Taylor | 12.12.06 – 2:15 pm |

    either i’m still missing something – possibly good hearing – or i just heard a newsreader on world service include amongst those attending the holocaust “conference” in iran holocaust “deniers” – pronounced ‘den-yers’

    now i know english pronunciation is very flexible compared to many languages, but this one i’m not at all sure is “received” by anyone!

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  17. Pete_London says:

    Cockney

    essex surely. Don’t mix your stereotypes.

    Too-shay, Cockney. I believe you’re referring to A13 man, that breed of white van driving West Ham supporter who lives in Tilbury and is thinking of upgrading to Basildon.

    Up here in West Essex we tend not to let any old riff-raff stay too long, and the only white vans to be seen are usually parked up by the tradesman’s entrance.

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  18. Pete_London says:

    Well O/T, but it’s most important and people seem to be popping in this thread:

    Neil Herron has a splendid idea:

    BBC Radio 4 Poll … Your help is required
    We want you to suggest a law which you think should be scrapped.

    Which is Britain’s least useful or most damaging law? If possible, be specific. Our panel of politicians (across the spectrum) and legislation experts will sift your nominations to come up with a shortlist of six.

    That shortlist will go to a vote and, on New Year’s Day, we’ll announce the winning – or, more accurately, losing – law. At the very least, we hope, we’ll fuel debate. But we’ll also see whether any politician is brave enough to take the views of Today listeners to the House of Commons.

    Who knows where it might lead? Watch this space.

    Well, Neil has come up with a good’un:

    The 1972 European Communities Act

    …once struck down, will restore accountability to our own Parliament in Westminster. It is questionable whether there will be restoration of sanity but at least then we will be able to sack those who make our laws. Which political party would then ever dare introduce legislation which would have seen a greengrocer take a criminal conviction to his grave for selling a pound of bananas or make it a criminal offence after Janauary 1st 2010 to make any mention of imperial measures?

    Go do your duty. You can shove it up’em here:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/vote/2006vote/index.shtml

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  19. Cockney says:

    might be more amusingly ironic to suggest whatever legislation imposes the need to pay the license fee for TV ownership…

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  20. AntiCitizenOne says:

    Pete_London,

    You really think they’ll listen after recently making the “mistake” of letting the royal-with-a-nice-rear win?

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  21. AntiCitizenOne says:

    Cockney | 12.12.06 – 5:17 pm

    Now THAT’S an idea!

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  22. Pete_London says:

    AntiCitizenOne

    Not at all, but you one must keep up the good fight. The last time liberals tried this kind of thing was the Icons of England fiasco. They made the mistake of allowing the great unwashed to nominate their own icons, instead of choosing a list themselves. What came out on top? Fox hunting.

    Whoops! Can’t have that now, can we? Thousands voted for fox hunting, only for the icon to mysteriously turn into ‘Fox hunting and the ban’. My contempt for liberals knows no bounds.

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  23. Anonymous says:

    From Niall and Biffa at Nufc.com…
    “Premiership: Never mind the BBC b*ll*cks. Often fertile ground for coxy submissions, the BBC website has once again been compiled in the bar by the look of it.
    “Just to confirm for anyone bewildered by their Chelsea v Newcastle preview: The game is a 7.45pm kickoff not 8pm. It’s at Stamford Bridge not the JJB Stadium We didn’t lose at home to Wigan – we won We didn’t lose at West Ham – we won. We haven’t won one away game – it’s two. We don’t have a player called Craig Ramage. It’s not Roeder’s 50th birthday – he’ll be 51.”

    Accuracy — it’s what we do.

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  24. archonix says:

    Abandon ship!:
    probably hideously white too

    More a sort of brown fading to reddish-pink, I’d have thought…

    Anyhoo, my aunt and uncle of good, northern stock have gallivanted off to Spain – for the air, one assumes, and not the cheap wine – and are now in the process of getting a divorce they should have got 20 years ago, by all accounts. He being the typical retiree, with a dog and a love of beer, she being a teacher of biology and such like; both passable in spanish. She’s got a job teaching english as a foreign language somewhere in northern morroccop. He just drinks beer, potters about and makes himself good company with the locals.

    I shoild go visit some time…

    Anyway, my understanding is, apart from the divorce, they’re fairly typical of the type that go out there. They’ve worked their lives, and they’re willing to keep on working once they get to their “dream location”.

    The BBC doesn’t know its arse from its elbow. When they’re unable to be accurate about British immigrants to southern spain, how can we trust them on anything else?

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  25. Ted Schuerzinger says:

    Damn you, Cockney! Did you have to beat me to the punch? 🙂

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  26. Alan says:

    Back to immigration and the BBC.

    We don’t get anything like this from the BBC; this is the beginning of a ROD LIDDLE piece in ‘The Spectator’:-

    ” Apparently almost a million British citizens have left the country since 2000, to live somewhere
    else. Last year, according to the Office of National Statistics, 380,000 people left Britain, of whom abour 200,000 were British citizens. At the same time, though, 565,000 immigrants arrived in Britain, the overwhelming majority from the Indian
    subcontinent (largely Pakistan and
    Bangladesh).

    ” These facts were reported as if they were entirely unrelated. Nobody
    dared to venture that there was perhaps a very direct and even causal relationship between the record numbers of British people leaving the country and the record numbers of non-British people coming in.” ( Rod Liddle, ‘The Spectator’,
    11 Nov.).

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  27. Robin says:

    The piece also used words like invasion, ghettoe,annoying, lazy,not very good example.

    Its up to the Spanish if they want to live with this, although it`s one spin off of being in the EU.It doesn`t mean we have to put up with it here.

    Another point is that if the majority of expats aren`t going to Anglosphere countries, they are making a British identity in the other countries, proving we aren`t Good Europeans.Better we were out of the EU.

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  28. anon says:

    Fascinating that no mention is made of Tuscany or Provence. I wonder why?

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  29. UK Daily Pundit says:

    Vote for the BBC Lefty of the Year at http://the-daily-pundit.blogspot.com/

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  30. abc says:

    “These facts were reported as if they were entirely unrelated. Nobody dared to venture that there was perhaps a very direct and even causal relationship between the record numbers of British people leaving the country and the record numbers of non-British people coming in.”

    The same type of exodus was reported in the Netherlands about two years ago after massive immigration.

    http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=19&story_id=18295

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  31. Anonymous says:

    Just wait until you see the rush to get away from Blairs Big Brother ID Card Police State, which means the Govt will have access to our Bank Accounts………and any future radical Islamic UK Government will have a list of all the Infadels, their crimes, and who should be “for the chop”………..

    Last one out, switch off the lights

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