On Monday, negotiators from the German federal and state Governments met to hammer out a solution to the migration crisis. The states themselves have been overwhelmed by the flood of refugees, whose numbers exceed all available infrastructure and financial resources. The federal Government – the worst we have had since 1949 – has done very little beyond musing that it might be better at some point to begin deporting those whose asylum applications have been denied. The meeting lasted 17 hours, finally concluding at 3am on Tuesday. The fruit of these efforts was a 17-page agenda item on ‘Refugee Migration: Humanity and Order‘, which underlines what a hopeless political situation we find ourselves in.
Have a taste:
Many people… are coming to Europe and Germany. …
This year… irregular migration from third countries has reached a level that is increasingly increasingly causing problems, particularly in terms of accommodation and integration. Up to September, more than 230,000 new arrivals… have already applied for asylum. The figure for the same period last year was just over 135,000. We can now assume that more than 300,000 people… will apply for asylum in Germany in 2023 as a whole. …
The major increase in irregular migration has significantly increased the challenges for local authorities, federal states and the federal Government. The federal states and local authorities are more and more reaching the limits of what they can afford in terms of reception, accommodation and care. They cannot create additional accommodation indefinitely.
All of this is leading to an overload in many places …
The Federal Chancellor and the heads of the federal states agree that the number of people coming to Germany as refugees must be significantly and sustainably reduced. Clear and targeted measures against uncontrolled immigration that provide quick and effective relief relief and limit the currently excessive influx are therefore needed.
Probably the only meaningful provision in all the words following this preamble is that the federal Government will now provide subsidies to the states of €7,500 per year per asylum applicant. This is nothing to celebrate, and not only because states had asked for more than €10,000. The truth is that nobody cares where the money is coming from; the problem is the migration itself.
In a half-hearted attempt to reduce the attractiveness of Germany to refugees, the agreement proposes delaying their eligibility for social benefits from 18 to 36 months from arrival. It’s unclear this will even be possible, because there’s every chance that the suicidal Federal Court in Karlsruhe (which is responsible for making refugees eligible for benefits in the first place) will find it unconstitutional. Also to make Germany less attractive, the federal Government promises to set up a system whereby refugees will receive ‘benefits in kind’ via payment cards rather than cash. Further on, it promises to “look into” the possibility of processing asylum applications in third states outside the EU. This would massively help, because about half of the new arrivals are denied asylum and then never deported, so I’m glad they’re finally at least thinking about it. Finally, the agreement makes a lot of noise about securing Europe’s outer borders, but to what end is unclear, because all illegal migrants have to do under current EU rules to gain entry is claim asylum. This is why almost all migrants do this. The same goes for the hot air they blow about policing German borders with Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Poland. As Welt explains: “The coalition Government, like its predecessor, has refrained from instructing the federal police to refuse entry to unauthorised arrivals if they claim to be asylum seekers.” In fact almost no self-proclaimed refugee is ever turned away; the police act as a mere welcoming party.
NiUS adds this observation:
What all this is worth can be seen in the protocol declarations at the end of the resolution: Bremen and Thuringia (governed by the SPD and the Left) do not want any switch to benefits in kind [instead of cash] for refugees and have various other reservations, Bavaria and Saxony (governed by the CDU/CSU) are calling for a “fundamental change in migration policy”, and Bremen, Thuringia and Niedersachsen (governed by the SPD and the Left) also reject asylum procedures outside Germany and will only contemplate them if the migrants choose this option voluntarily.
In other words, substantial portions of the Left at the state level remain totally unfazed by the present crisis are still very much full-steam-ahead on vintage 2015 open-borders Merkelism.
How we got started down the path of unmitigated mass migration is clear enough: late-stage liberal universalism fuelled by the absence of international conflict after the Cold War, a sclerotic establishment eager to import pliant political clients and an ageing population worried about impending labour shortages all played their parts. Now that it has gotten out of hand, nobody from Brussels to Berlin can do anything about it, even as their failure to act threatens to destroy them. States really can limit travel and close borders; they did a fine job of both during the pandemic. When it is not an invisible virus they need to stop, but rather millions of foreigners arriving on derelict vessels from the Mediterranean, they are completely powerless.
This piece originally appeared on Eugyppius’s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.
Stop Press: The German state is gearing up to ban AfD, the populist Right-wing party that campaigns on bringing down immigration and is currently polling second nationally on about 22%. The regional chapter in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt has been classified as ‘extremist’ by Germany’s intelligence agencies, which say their spying operations have uncovered evidence of party figures “demonising” migrants by referring to them as “invaders” and “intruders”. Unsavoury, of course. But banning popular parties because its activists (privately) use such terms smacks of bias and overreach – and suggests the German establishment is determined to put down any criticism of its mass migration policies. Saskia Esken, the leader of Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, said that AfD would have to be banned in the event that it is classified as extremist at the national level. Some might have thought that opening the borders to the world to create an ongoing unsustainable situation with no realistic plan to curb it is ‘extremist’. But then, that’s a Left wing policy, and everyone knows that only the Right can be extremist…
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A high-resolution copy of the above graphic would be nice, please.
It may be that to do so would breach copyright. You can download the report that it comes from here and you’ll find the graphic on page 7 of the pdf. It’s worth a read. Particularly as it’s apparently not arguing against Net Zero.
https://ukfires.org/impact/publications/reports/absolute-zero/
By 2050 it calls for:
1) Road use at 60% of 2020 levels – through reducing distance travelled or reducing vehicle weight.
2) Electric trains the preferred mode of travel for people and freight over all significant distances,
3) Zero flying
4) Zero shipping
5) Heating powered on for 60% of today’s use.
6) All appliances meet stringent efficiency standards, to use 60% of today’s energy.
7) Total energy required to cook or transport food reduced to 60%
8) Demand for scrap steel and ores for electrification much higher, no iron ore or limestone.
9) All materials production electric with total 60% power availability compared to 2020
10) Any cement must be produced in closed-loop, new builds highly optimised for material saving.
11) Manufacturing inputs reduced by 50% compensated by new designs and manufacturing practices. No necessary reduction output.
12) All energy supply is now non-emitting electricity.
13) Zero fossil fuels.
And beef and lamb phased out. These people are complete nutters.
Sheep can graze pretty much anywhere in the UK and it benefits the land. Trying growing crops in some parts of the Scottish Highlands and Wales, for example – impossible. Eating meet is good for you. How you cook it may be detrimental, but the meet itself isn’t.
Ah, yes. That has to have been started by 2030 and completed by 2050.
Better get eating, I suppose.
There’s a connection between sheep and lambs?
Someone should tell them.
3) Zero flying
4) Zero shipping
Living on an island will become very, very interesting.
Especially on an island relying on 100% imported food as farming has been abolished because it’s too polluting and not needed. OTOH, the justification for abolishing shipping is that it’s claimed to be impossibe to drive vehicles on water without burning fossil fuel, completely ignoring the fact that world-wide trade existed long before the invention of the steam engine, let alone steam-engine driven ships becoming first technically feasible and then dominant, something which only started to happen around the middle of the 19th century and took until will into the first third of the 20th (merchant sailing fleets were still common until after the first world war).
One could almost believe these people are as clueless as they’re stupid and that they don’ usually coordinate their respective pet projects with each other. Hence, there’s a department for abolishing farming to save the climate and a department for abolishing international trade to save the climate and both pursue their mutually conflicting goals without even knowing about the other department.
Which gets me back to an idea I had a while ago: The whole climate scam is really just a scheme for fleecing the tax paying population without any intention to accomplish what the supposed goals are. By strange coincidence, no amount of emission avoidance exertions in the UK can accomplish a meaningful reduction of global emissions.
I suspect these net-zero nutters are aware of the option of wind-powered sea transport, but refuse to promote it. Why? Because their plan really is for the general population to be restricted to small free movement areas (the 15-minute city), so encouraging travel from our island is a definite no-no. The Channel Tunnel will be so booked up with freight traffic that there won’t be space in the timetables for passenger trains (except maybe for “VIP” transport). And those same VIPs will be the only ones able to own a private yacht and escape.
What will the Maldives do with all their airports?
Of necessity the State became heavily involved in agricultural production during World War 2 and as ever with state intervention is was reluctant to back off. It was state funded agricultural advice and support that heavily pushed the use of chemical fertilisers to boost food production and so it is ironic that it is now the state that is going to increase the price of fertiliser with these eco taxes.
Also ironic is the fact that it is mixed family farmers that are often best able to maintain soil fertility in a sustainable manner and need less chemical fertiliser input but it is these sort of farms that are being pushed out of existence.
Ah well let’s hope we soon sort out this Ukraine war as we may soon need to buy grain from Russia to prevent starvation.
“… maintain soil fertility in a sustainable manner…”
All fertilisers are “chemical” – cow-shit and urine are made up of chemicals. The whole of life is “chemicals” – we Humans are just big bags of water and chemicals. I blame the schools.
Clearly fertilisers maintain soil fertility in a sustainable manner otherwise there would be no crops.
As a matter of fact, “traditional” methods are not sustainable, which is why, soil fertility could only be maintained prior to modern fertilisers by crop rotation and leaving fields to lie fallow. This greatly reduces the amount of food produced, is inefficient = raised costs = raised prices.
There is always a good reason why we moved from doing A to doing B.
I do have a problem when bureaucrats in suits are telling farmers what is ‘sustainable’. We’ve been farming since the stone age. Do they imagine our farmers are clueless.? Like those TV adverts of charity to donkeys, to ‘teach their owners how to look after them properly’, like they haven’t kept and worked donkeys for 5,000 years. Really..?
The comment about Ukraine. The US has loaned a vast sum to Ukraine, which Ukraine will pay back in land to Blackrock, so in fact we will be buying grain from Blackrock, which I think was the idea all along.
“…in fact we will be buying grain from Blackrock, which I think was the idea all along.”
Yes, indeed. This is what the attack on farmers is all about. They are to be priced (taxed) off the land and the likes of Blackrock will buy it up.
Whoever controls the food supply controls the people. Depopulation in other words.
No, Britain doesn’t find itself there. It put itself there by not caring enough to inform itself about the consequences of Net Zero.
I blame (many of) the voters.
Not a fair comment, only recently has there been a party to vote for that doesn’t support this stupidity.
Being informed about it now, perhaps we will choose a more sensible path. But expect the green blob to fight back.
I take your point that my criticism of many voters may be not fair. Maybe. We still put ourselves here – we didn’t just find ourselves here.
Entirely fair. It isn’t just about voting – it’s about teaching yourself, informing yourself, intelligent thought, being active. There was no Party to vote for to get us out of the EU, but sufficient people created a momentum to drive the issue.
As with Covid, masks, lockdowns, mRNA jungle-juice we have a largely compliant, uninformed population of people who don’t have the sense they were born with.
Yes – as Adam Smith said: there’s a great deal of ruin in a Nation.
It goes back further to 1945 when the “great” British public signed a pact with the Devil – Socialism. In return for worldly goods – welfare state, State-run everything, lots of free stuff – it signed away its soul… independence, sovereignty, dignity, self-reliance and freedom. The ultimate result is to end up in Hell, where we now are.
Don’t mind the allegory.
The most damaging was giving the State exclusive control over the minds of children – mandatory attendance in indoctrination farms from age 5 to 16 (now 18), next control over our medical care to the point where now we must alter our lives to serve the interests of the State via the NHS.
Now we serve pagan gods too – Earth and elements.
How many demonstrations of insanity are required before these people are sectioned?
But there’s this policy of ‘care in the community’…
Some might be interested in this: https://www.soilassociation.org/farmers-growers/low-input-farming-advice/ I’m a member of that organisation, but not a commercial farmer. Another site of interest might be “Harry’s Farm”, which is a YT one. His business is in Oxfordshire, and he often churns out information about Defra and others.
This seems like a strange platform to promote the Soil Association on – this is an extreme environmentalist organisation which wishes to see an end to not just nitrogen fertiliser use, but all other manufactured chemicals in farming.
In other words it wishes to take us back to preindustrial agricultural practices and the endemic famines that entailed.
The Soil Association, and Green movement in general are a central part of the ideological and practical delusions that have led us to a government making efficient and reliable farming increasingly difficult in this country.
Just parking the starvation of their population for a moment, because while aware of the fertiliser tax, I noticed for the first time that this import tax will also hit cement. Well excuse me, but having prevented the domestic production, because it won’t be possible under net zero rules, where will the scumbag socialists get the materials from to replace the windmills that will have exceeded their operating life after 15-20 years. How are they going to manufacture these things without plastic and metal and what will they mount them on?
And where will the money come from to pay for them once the UK finishes up with a worse credit rating than north Korea?
According to page 13 of the UK FIRES pdf (page 23, as printed)
There you go. Mud huts. At least it’s not caves.
Looking forward to see how successful those options will be supporting windmills in the North Sea
Bamboo eh?
I didn’t know we grew bamboo in the UK.
Loads of it is grown in Lincolnshire for making fabric. I haven’t seen any grown to construction sizes though.
Thanks. I never knew.
I suppose it’s useful for a growing panda population.
In Hong Kong, bamboo and ropes are used to construct scaffolding for high-rise buildings (more then then floors). OTOH, the people living there are a lot¹ smaller and lighter than we are, so, it’s unclear how transferable this technology is.
¹ With my 5’6″ and just under 11 stone, I’m slightly undersize for a European man but positively among the giants in Hong Kong.
What sort of properties will we build without cement? Mud huts? Oh, err…
The eco socialist buffoon Starmer just told us at COP29 that he doesn’t want to tell us all what to do? What was that? Some kind of Freudian slip? —–Telling people what to do is what the entire absurd GREEN movement is about.—-You cannot eat meat, you cannot eat Dary, you cannot drive a Petrol Car, you cannot fly in Planes, you cannot cannot cannot cannot cannot……………Is there anything that we can do? –YES SHUT UP, and if you don’t shut up we will trawl the internet, find you, and then we will force you to shut up.
It is very pleasing, albeit the topic is not, that Chris Morrison has arrived at the position I have been espousing for at least two years, probably more.
“One of the original founders of Greenpeace, Dr. Patrick Moore is in little doubt about what will happen if hydrocarbons are removed from food production. He recently told Fox News: “If we ban fossil fuels, agricultural production would collapse. People will begin to starve, and half the population will die in a very short period of time.”
My usual shorthand is depopulation.
Oh look, some interesting job ads.
I see T. Bliar wants another grifting traitor.
Professor Tim Wilson thinks Agenda 2030 is reasonable and all the arguments against it are conspiracy theories!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qLinJHRUpI&t=1s
I can’t believe that this catastrophe will come to pass. Surely once international travel is restricted, and food is in short supply, people will rise up and take care of these fanatics, by looking for the nearest lamp post. If the indigenous population won’t rise up, I’m pretty sure the new Britons will.
Oh wouldn’t it be lovely to see the likes of Kneel and Thieves being dealt with by rampant ROPers?
Indeed! I wonder if Starmer has made a rod for his own back.
You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But the government are always trying new approaches, trying to push right up to the boundaries, how much will these idiots take? Like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park.
I too would imagine that more recent arrivals would be the least likely to abide by the rules being imposed from above. I don’t think it’s racist to suggest that, there are a host of reasons why it might be the case.
However, perhaps there will be some sort of ‘two-tier’ system brought in to prevent disorder. Maybe those who are members of ‘historically marginalised’ communities who have not experienced the opportunity to rack up much of a carbon footprint in the past, would get an extra allowance – they can set their heating at 18 degrees C.
However, perhaps there will be some sort of ‘two-tier’ system brought in to prevent disorder. Maybe those who are members of ‘historically marginalised’ communities who have not experienced the opportunity to rack up much of a carbon footprint in the past, would get an extra allowance – they can set their heating at 18 degrees C.
Wouldn’t surprise me.
https://youtu.be/-k_ZvwxU0bg?si=7BDHp-sG5QnXaiCO
The bowler hat farmer warning us to stock up.
“Death cultist”! An excellent catch all phrase for the current government. We can all go to hell in a handcart and when it all becomes too much the euthanasia bill is getting its second reading on 29th November! May God help us all!
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Sounds like it is time for the British voter to say no, that have had enough. What kind of gov’t would pursue starvation of their people? Has GB gone completely mad?
We need this front and centre on the DT as a minimum. I’d be interested to know what if any relationship Toby & Co. have with them. Hopefully a good one. Decibels are needed at this stage and the DT seems like a good place to start.