Opening up our homes to Ukrainians

BennyD

Sea Urchin Pate
Messages
14,994
Yeah we certainly don't want Le Pen.

Sooo, Omacron is the preferred option, much like their strategic choice in 1940. Tbf, what happens in France has as much relevance to European fortunes as the Germans want. Which do you prefer, syphilis or gonorrhoea springs to mind. I could be nasty towards the french but I won't, I must be mellowing in my old age.
 

lozcb

Member
Messages
12,301
Seems kinda wierd to me , here we have many caring souls wanting to help out as best they can and other people charging to get them out of Ukraine , Yet the Ukranian government are paying £1650 a day for trained SOF to bolster their troops , had several mates in the so called "security sector" go out from South Sudan
 

philw696

Member
Messages
25,114
What amazes me is how people love to hate the French and say really nasty stuff but can't wait to get out here quick enough.
I have been lucky that after growing up in the UK that I have lived and worked in more than one country from Saudi Arabia to now being in France.
I'm a Peace Loving person and really don't like all the vile hatred going on in the World today.
 

fphil

Member
Messages
301
" freely welcoming is that they have no other choice as they have open borders"
"NOT ethnic Ukrainians, who seem to be having a particularly hard time. We should probably be prioritising them to rescue them from the white nationalist cabal that is the EU.
You may have gone a little far with these statements.
The millions of Jews living in Ukraine before the war (where are they?), the Tatars, the Cossacks, the Russian serfs fleeing serfdom, the Greeks, the Germans, the Genoese on the Black Sea, the Poles of Lvov ( Lviv ), Carpathian Hungarians, etc. are ethnic Ukrainians? For Ukrainian nationalists yes.
The crurrent Ukraine territory has long been an open land and a north-south corridor.
 

MarkMas

Chief pedant
Messages
8,795
You may have gone a little far with these statements.
The millions of Jews living in Ukraine before the war (where are they?), the Tatars, the Cossacks, the Russian serfs fleeing serfdom, the Greeks, the Germans, the Genoese on the Black Sea, the Poles of Lvov ( Lviv ), Carpathian Hungarians, etc. are ethnic Ukrainians? For Ukrainian nationalists yes.
The crurrent Ukraine territory has long been an open land and a north-south corridor.

You make a good point about the melting-pot of tribes that is Central Europe.

But when I wrote "... they have no other choice as they have open borders.", I meant that the EU's 1985 Schengen Agreement means that once you have (rightly) admitted a refugee from Ukraine to Poland (without checks due to the urgency and volume) there is no way to stop that refugee from freely travelling to almost anywhere in the EU. So you might as well declare "The whole of the EU is welcoming to the refugees", since it is zero-cost point-scoring.

And when I wrote "refugees from Ukraine who are NOT ethnic Ukrainians" I didn't really intend to include or exclude Jews, Tatars, Cossacks, serfs, Greeks, etc, but my focus was on the darker-skinned people from Asia and Africa who are evidently being treated poorly by some people in Poland, because of the usual European racism.

Which, by the way I think is encouraged by the existence and policies of the EU (I know this is not a widely-held view) because:
  • to be a European trade cartel is intrinsically discriminatory towards the exporters of Africa and Asia;
  • to allow EU free movement within the EU (of people, not labour, as it turns out) gives xenophobes the impression of 'lack of control', 'waves of immigrants' etc;
  • to have porous external national borders at the fringes, and open internal borders exacerbates this xenophobia and transforms it into racism;
  • to attack member-state nationalism while fostering super-state nationalism, encourages the growth or Orbin-style, er, national nationalism, which finds it hard to resist pivoting to racism (unlike Singapore, where ardent nationalism was purposefully used to reduce internal racial tensions);
  • to remove national control of immigration undermines 'historical ties' opportunism (partly based on post-colonial guilt), which allowed, for example the UK to welcome (not universally, I admit) Jamaicans, Ugandan Asians, Hong Kong citizens etc, while allowing Italy (perhaps) to welcome Libyans and Somalis.
 

MarkMas

Chief pedant
Messages
8,795
Something strange is going on. This thread is becoming home to sensible, informed, discussion and some detailed, knowledgeable insights. Not just Daily Mail headlines and cartoons.

Bravo, contributors, and thank you.

Hurrah!!

One way I have found to improve the average quality of the conversations is to use this button a bit:

98667

and then manage to resist clicking on this:

98668



The other thing is that this thread has proved enormously useful:

98669

as long as you don't actually look at it!

As my late mother-in-law used to say, "I love Sainsbury's - it keeps the riffraff out of Waitrose."
 

fphil

Member
Messages
301
A short reply to Mark.
As written one may think it was a no choice to welcome Ukrainian refugies. This is not true.
This is the term "Ethnic Ukrainien" I do not like. Am I an "Ethnic French"? It means nothing except perhaps for these times
Holocaust by Bullets: The Early Collaboration to Wipe Out Europe’s Jews (ushmm.org)
Meanwhile the wikis are updated saying that the "Ethnic Ukrainiens" were occupying the whole territory of the past Soviet Ukraine (and even more). Does it remind you something?
 

Scaf

Member
Messages
6,512
Do be honest I don’t give a flying fig about the history or politics of this war, I am still going to open my doors and welcome a mother and her child who are fleeing the war zone.
I’ll leave the rest to the politician’s- they can always be trusted to do the right thing :confused:
 
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MarkMas

Chief pedant
Messages
8,795
A short reply to Mark.
As written one may think it was a no choice to welcome Ukrainian refugies. This is not true.
This is the term "Ethnic Ukrainien" I do not like. Am I an "Ethnic French"? It means nothing except perhaps for these times
Holocaust by Bullets: The Early Collaboration to Wipe Out Europe’s Jews (ushmm.org)
Meanwhile the wikis are updated saying that the "Ethnic Ukrainiens" were occupying the whole territory of the past Soviet Ukraine (and even more). Does it remind you something?

I think you are still misunderstanding me (and I hate to be misunderstood).

Yes, Poland had a choice whether or not to open its border with Ukraine to allow refugees to cross. And they should be congratulated and supported for doing so. But my point is that once the refugees are in Poland, the lack of border controls within the Schengen Area mean that most other EU states have no ability to control whether refuges then travel to those countries. Which is fine, if that is what they want, but you can make the case they are not being generous, humanitarian or flexible, but just making the fact that they have no choice about their open borders sound like active support.

98695

My use of the term 'ethnic Ukrainians' was clearly not appropriate, and has rightly been questioned by you. I was being coy and failing to just say 'black people'. It is not my intent to make this a discussion about Central European ethnicity, but I was just trying to say that news reports suggest that people with a dark skin colour (whether immigrants to Ukraine from Afghanistan, or PhD students on academic placements from Uganda) are being discriminated against at the border and in refugee facilities, and should be offered better support.

You are welcome to start a conversation about Ukrainian ethnicity, of course, but that's nothing to do with me, or what I was (clumsily) trying to say.
 

BennyD

Sea Urchin Pate
Messages
14,994
What amazes me is how people love to hate the French and say really nasty stuff but can't wait to get out here quick enough.
I have been lucky that after growing up in the UK that I have lived and worked in more than one country from Saudi Arabia to now being in France.
I'm a Peace Loving person and really don't like all the vile hatred going on in the World today.

I know you are having a go at me but tbf I really like France, it’s a lovely country, but I really don’t like the french. The mutual distrust between this (once) great and them has been going on for over 1000 years and shows no signs of abating on either side. It has been said that you can only trust a frenchman as far as you can throw him, using his tail. Personally, I’ve found it’s best to just embrace the animosity, you know where you stand, and my belief in that has been strengthened by my occasional interaction with them, Les filth in particular. I also have a distinct dislike of Russia, China, North Korea, India and I’m not overly keen on Germany and America, but I’m sure you think they are all a credit to the Global community. Universal love and World Peace is a myth and will never happen, but crack on if thinking it will makes you feel better.
 

BennyD

Sea Urchin Pate
Messages
14,994
You’ve bought into it, I haven’t. You won’t convince me and I’m not trying to convince you, so best we leave it at that.
 

Nayf

Member
Messages
2,734
It's the French people that make France the lovely place it is.
In my 8th year with Ms French and 4th year living here and been made to feel very welcome indeed.
I went to Retromobile recently and went armed with little more than Google Translate and good intentions. Expected sniffiness and angst - especially in Paris - but was warmly received. Much like everywhere else in the world, really.


You get out what you put in. Warmth, humility, empathy is generally rewarded - airport security excepted - and if you go in like a cun+, you’ll get treated like one.
 

philw696

Member
Messages
25,114
I went to Retromobile recently and went armed with little more than Google Translate and good intentions. Expected sniffiness and angst - especially in Paris - but was warmly received. Much like everywhere else in the world, really.


You get out what you put in. Warmth, humility, empathy is generally rewarded - airport security excepted - and if you go in like a cun+, you’ll get treated like one.
Couldn't agree more :)
 

Scaf

Member
Messages
6,512
Ok so good news on the Visa front.
The family now have visa’s / permission to travel letters. They will now plan a journey from **** - literally from the East, across to Lviv and then to Poland. Once in Poland we can help organise flights or trains over to the U.K. and safety.We hope We hope will be with us by the end of the month, but travel across Ukraine is very difficult and unpredictable.
This was yesterday morning’s gift from **** - landing
250 metres from their home. Thankfully in adjacent farmland and I am assuming unexploded

98841
 
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Felonious Crud

Administrator
Staff member
Messages
21,013
Ok so good news on the Visa front.
The family now have visa’s / permission to travel letters. They will now plan a journey from **** - literally from the East, across to Lviv and then to Poland. Once in Poland we can help organise flights or trains over to the U.K. and safety.We hope We hope will be with us by the end of the month, but travel across Ukraine is very difficult and I predictable.
This was yesterday morning’s gift from **** - landing
250 metres from their home. Thankfully in adjacent farmland and I am assuming unexploded

View attachment 98841
incredible work, Sam.
 

Scaf

Member
Messages
6,512
Thanks Adam
I don’t envy them the journey, it’s a 12 hour drive to Lviv in normal times in you own car, so with limited trains and buses I imagine that leg of the journey will be a nightmare.
As far as we can make out Lviv to Poland is more organised and predicable as is Poland to the U.K..