25 minutes ago, swansont said:

I think there used to be a divide between Normans and Saxons across the pond. I wonder why that’s not still a thing.

There still is between the Celts and the Saxons.

It's called the River Tamar.

14 minutes ago, studiot said:

There still is between the Celts and the Saxons.

It's called the River Tamar.

A river across a pond?

2 hours ago, geordief said:

Even the continents migrate.

In human relationships,I think jealousy is (can be?) a function of insecurity.

It is a pitiful emotion when it feeds on itself but that is where we are.God help us.(Elon won't)

I think it's just simple inability to tolerate change. There's a name about it in psychology, Need for Cognitive Closure, NFC/NFCC.

2 hours ago, swansont said:

The issue is not inherently white vs brown/black, it’s inside vs outside. You pick what constitutes”inside” and everybody else is outside. In this case it’s skin color, but that’s not always the case.

In the US, similar things happen. New York City had Little Italy and Irish neighborhoods. Other nationalities settle(d) in groups, too, in various parts of the country. Immigrants tend to congregate, with others of a common language and culture - the very thing that the insiders are leaning on to exclude the outsiders.

I think there used to be a divide between Normans and Saxons across the pond. I wonder why that’s not still a thing.

It is not skin colour, but cultural: the language, the script, e.g. on the shop fronts, the dress, the mosques. You are right of course. We have had a Chinese area in Soho for decades. It has become an accepted part of the London scene and where everyone goes for good Chinese food. But these things take time, for the previous inhabitants to adjust, move out or die, and for the incomers to start to smooth off the rough edges by adapting to some degree to the ways of the new host country.

Islam is particularly tricky right now as there happens to be a movement towards more rigid observance of its cultural codes, notably the way women are allowed to dress. So rather than becoming integrated, some muslim communities appear ever more intent on being alien. (One has a bit of that in Stamford Hill with Ashkenazi Jews, but that's on a very small scale by comparison).

But there you go. Britain had an empire, got rich on the backs of the colonised peoples, taught everyone English..... and now, surprise surprise, the previously colonised people come to Britain! One can hardly argue it is unfair.

47 minutes ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

I think it's just simple inability to tolerate change. There's a name about it in psychology, Need for Cognitive Closure, NFC/NFCC.

Would that imply that thrill seekers or people with an appetite for new experiences in general might tolerate a partner's interest in other people more easily(ie not be prone to jealousy)?

Stick in the muds and dullards addicted to routine more so inclined?

Too many variables to say?

On 8/8/2026 at 12:57 AM, sethoflagos said:

Time was we just left you lot to the tender care of Albert Pierrepoint, if they'd managed to evade the end of a bayonet (great British tradition). Oh, I do miss the old days.

I really enjoyed the line in that wiki, "Pierrepoint knew from an early age that he wanted to become a hangman..."

😄

8 minutes ago, TheVat said:

I really enjoyed the line in that wiki, "Pierrepoint knew from an early age that he wanted to become a hangman..."

😄

Richard Attenburgh starred in Rillington Place.

Thought "gravitas" was a bit of a double tumble.

With a name like that his family may have had previous experience with Madame Guillotine.

Edited 11 hours ago11 hr by geordief

28 minutes ago, geordief said:

With a name like that his family may have had previous experience with Madame Guillotine.

The family were from Huddersfield! 😂 (where I lived for twenty years)

Mind you, it was only a few miles from the site of the Halifax Gibbet on which the Paris Guillotine is said to be modelled.

Spent many a fine evening in Gibbet Street - though more for an excellent nearby curry house rather than historical site-seeing.

1 hour ago, geordief said:

Would that imply that thrill seekers or people with an appetite for new experiences in general might tolerate a partner's interest in other people more easily(ie not be prone to jealousy)?

Stick in the muds and dullards addicted to routine more so inclined?

Too many variables to say?

Probably not. Need for Closure is a cognitive trait that makes people more likely to seek definite answers to questions. Such people are more dogmatic and more prone to in-group/out-group bias relatively to more open-minded people who tolerate ambiguity and complexity better.

Believing that immigrants do have their problems but their causes are complex and multicausal requires tolerating nuance. For some people a simple binary of white = good, non-white = bad is just easier to hold mentally.

Edited 10 hours ago10 hr by Otto Kretschmer

3 hours ago, exchemist said:

It is not skin colour, but cultural: the language, the script, e.g. on the shop fronts, the dress, the mosques. You are right of course. We have had a Chinese area in Soho for decades. It has become an accepted part of the London scene and where everyone goes for good Chinese food. But these things take time, for the previous inhabitants to adjust, move out or die, and for the incomers to start to smooth off the rough edges by adapting to some degree to the ways of the new host country.

Are they threatening to kick out the Germans, French, Russians, etc.?

38 minutes ago, swansont said:

Are they threatening to kick out the Germans, French, Russians, etc.?

One might observe that the UK is 'the end of the line'.

You mentioned integrated minorities in New York.

You didn't mention that they had a whole 3000 miles of a continent to disperse into.

West of the UK is 3000 miles of Atlantic Ocean.

One might also have expected at least some of these immigrants to have dispersed throughout Europe.

The asylum convention require the seeker to seek in the first free country they reach, not the last.

Edited 8 hours ago8 hr by studiot

1 hour ago, studiot said:

One might observe that the UK is 'the end of the line'.

You mentioned integrated minorities in New York.

You didn't mention that they had a whole 3000 miles of a continent to disperse into.

I’m not sure how that’s relevant to the point I was making, but part of it was that minorities are often segregated from the existing society, not integrated. Even when they went past NY, they tended to do it.

1 hour ago, studiot said:

West of the UK is 3000 miles of Atlantic Ocean.

One might also have expected at least some of these immigrants to have dispersed throughout Europe.

Haven’t they? It’s not like this is the only place that has an anti-immigration stance. I’ve read about similar sentiments in Germany (AfD) and France (National Rally). The Fidesz only just lost power in Hungary

According to the Wikipedia article, Germany, France, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium and Ireland have a higher percentage of immigrant population than the UK

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_immigrant_and_emigrant_population

I know that in the US, polls have shown that people overestimate the fraction of the population that belong to various subgroups (Muslim, Jewish, transgender, Asian, etc.) I wonder if that same effect is going on here - people perceiving more immigrants than there actually are.

https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/41556-americans-misestimate-small-subgroups-population

3 hours ago, swansont said:

Are they threatening to kick out the Germans, French, Russians, etc.?

Yes. Remember, that’s what Brexit was all about. Although culturally, Europeans are obviously far closer so easy to assimilate.

Edited 5 hours ago5 hr by exchemist

1 hour ago, swansont said:

According to the Wikipedia article, Germany, France, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium and Ireland have a higher percentage of immigrant population than the UK

You should compare population density, not population directly.

Only Belgium (of those mentioned) has a higher pop density than the UK, which is already heavily overcrowded.

We can't feed the people we have already got.

And you didn't address my last point at all.

Edited 4 hours ago4 hr by studiot

17 hours ago, CharonY said:

My overarching question is basically why do cultural changes have such an outsized emotional impact compared to other things which potentially affect your life more directly (positively or negatively)?

IMO it is because that is the narrative people are fed every single day by the mass media and these days that includes unverifiable online sources.

28 minutes ago, studiot said:

You should compare population density, not population directly.

Why?

@swansont seems to be making a perfectly valid point.

53 minutes ago, studiot said:

You should compare population density, not population directly.

I gave the results based on percentages, not raw population. You said “One might also have expected at least some of these immigrants to have dispersed throughout Europe.” and I confirmed that they, in fact, have done so. Several counties have taken in more, relative to their “native” population

53 minutes ago, studiot said:

Only Belgium (of those mentioned) has a higher pop density than the UK, which is already heavily overcrowded.

We can't feed the people we have already got.

And you didn't address my last point at all.

That “the asylum convention require the seeker to seek in the first free country they reach, not the last.”?

I didn’t see how it comes into play. Please explain how it’s relevant.

National 'suicide' is what results from ethno-nationalists getting what they want. Or what they think they want. It isn't a well thought out position and those doing it the fiercest are not showing themselves to be competent. Not to govern and keep prosperity and peace within a mixed society - and few nations are or have ever been actual monocultures.

A unified monoculture was and is more myth than reality - I suspect more a consequence of prior more apartheid-like societies; differences aplenty but kept apart.

Those promoting it now are mobilising grievance and resentment without much real consideration of social complexity and the unintended consequences of their policies - which are simplistic and unrealistic. Being so susceptible to alarmist fears and simplistic solutions they are susceptible to being played. Press those hot buttons and the ability to take in information and think things through goes out the window.

I think simplistic policies to enforce imaginary monoculture done hard - intended to enforce more homogeneous (and supposedly better) society - will rebound to exacerbate social divisions and make tensions worse, effectively forcing people to fall back on their ethnic social links to find a sense of belonging.

17 hours ago, exchemist said:

I do think we need to be aware of the emotional effect of radical change on the people directly affected when neighbourhoods change so rapidly over the course of a generation. I am sure this is one of the chief sources of support for these new far-right parties.

As for what the prescription is to deal with it, I think there is not much to be done apart from controlling further immigration and then waiting for time to assimilate the minority communities. They will gradually adopt the "western" way of life of their adopted country (which has its attractions for Muslim and Hindu women especially!) and intermarriage. But there will be many bumps in the road.

I would agree that addressing that sentiment is politically important if you want to have success. As a matter of fact, in contrast to the fantasies OP has, controlling and restricting immigration has been a key point across the political spectrum by now. In Europe it is a center issue for decades now, and Brexit is in part driven by that. Trudeau’s and Biden’s overcorrection of immigration after COViD-19 to kickstart the economy cost them politically quite dearly.

But there is another dimension I would like to address. A big issue I have with that argument is, as I mentioned before, it is almost entirely emotional and thereby not really objectively addressable. It is not, for example an economic argument, where one could pull economic data and simply align immigration goals with it. And what is even worse, the exclusion is eventually treated as an virtue all by itself, from which there is only a little step to demonize the others to further that virtue.

The most neutral way I can express the issue is that folks are upset that parts of the country are not pandering to their sensibilities and needs. But this has two issues. First, it kind of ignores the other forms of exclusion, which could be way more consequential. For example, even if the vendor is advertising in Turkish, I likely can walk in and buy things. In contrast, I cannot simply walk into a country club, which is likely going to be far more exclusionary, even if they speak a language I am more familiar with.

There is also the corollary- if all spaces have to pander to the sensibilities of the majority, it suggests that minorities are not allowed to create similar spaces if they are different.

I think much of these issues can be resolved simply by engaging with each other, rather than by wielding political power. Unfortunately most are more content to just argue in inflammatory fantasies, such as OP in this case.

There is also a whole issue in terms of the implications of the term assimilation. I.e. the implied suggestion that one is only accepting of otherness, if it remains invisible. That of course is a goalpost that has been used consistently to penalize minorities and is ultimately an unattainable goal for many, especially with features that are not easily erasable. I.e. it is often not enough to speak the language (even accent free) and engage in local activities. The best one often can hope for is to be one of the good ones as the endpoint of assimilation.