the brits didn’t even bother learning the language of all the countries they colonised.
What a modern concept.
Chan eil. Tha Keir Starmer sean-fhòbaidh agus ùghdarrasach.
Tap for spoiler
No. Keir Starmer is xenophobic and authoritarian.
English isn’t the only language on this island, twat.
Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_Kingdom
English isn’t the only language on this island, twat.
As much as I disagree with the policy.
Your argument is not a good one. English is required to be tought to all UK school children. And is the only language that meets that minimal requirement through out the UK.
So as this is claimed to be about integration. (It’s really about winning prejudiced voters).
English is the only language that has that ability.
Honestly. The fact you had to provide a translation. Is the best evidence that English is the language that integrated the UK. Even if the history is a little/lot shitty.
This important issue. Is this makes things harder for genuine asylum seekers and refugees. And is Def against the intent of the Geneva conventions banning on rules for such immigration.
I get you, but English is the only language required throughout the UK because of similarly xenophobic policies in the past.
My argument isn’t meant to be the final gotcha and suddenly Keir will reverse policy, it’s to give another perspective, another point of attack, another reason on top of all the others as to why this is a bullshit policy. A reason not likely thought about by monolingual English speakers.
Gaelic was exterminated through various government policies. Yes it was slowly, naturally, losing to English anyway but instead of allowing a bilingual society to thrive it was stamped out through force, both at the end of a gun and at the end of a belt in classrooms.
Cornish, Welsh, Irish, are all as native a language to this island as English. Why does English get priority? Because of colonial oppression. And this is another oppressive policy. More authoritarian policy from a supposed left wing Labour party. More pandering to racists like Reform.
Why does English get priority?
As you said. All the reasons you said above. Mean no other language is practical for a today government to require.
Any Lang has issues and it’s not fixing an existing problem.
But if our shitty past did not exist. We would have several different nations all choosing their own Lang. And still no real integration. Sorta why English was winning in the first place.
Honestly if any other Lang speaking subgroup of the UK had been the best at being shitty. We would still have a history of a single lang forcing itself on others. No historical UK tribe was pacifists. And muct of what you think of as English now was Normondy/french in origin replacing Saxon English.
Which language would you rather demand 60 million Britains learn to speak to accommodate the incoming millions?
The issue is not that people should speak English the issue is that the debate around immigration is so toxic that that this becomes a dog whistle to hate and opress those who don’t speak English to some imaginary standard.
Its only an imaginary standard because its not been set further than “we should require people to learn some English”.
We have plently of standards in schools throughout the so thats not the hard part.
Now its not anything I would touch because of the level of racists that attach themselves to this “issue”.
Which turned out to be not very big.
Additionally, 1.5% (880,000) could not speak English well, and a small percentage (0.3%, 161,000) of the overall population could not speak English at all.
161k people don’t speak English? That sounds like a solvable problem, as thats not very many at all. The question would be how to identify them, and help them? My personal experience is generally elderly parents who have been brought here by someone acting as a carer, which puts it back firmly in “unsolvable”. If they haven’t already learnt it, and aren’t necessarily here though choice, its going to be a challenge.
Knowing our current government though, it would probably be by copying Trump and sending the military door to door to ask everyone a simple English language puzzle.
