The hierarchy of hobbies

For anyone that has met me, they would be flabbergasted to learn that I used to teach conversation. Those who can't, teach^[1]. One of the easiest, and classic, of openers to these lessons with new or potential students would be “what are your hobbies?“

Apart from having to explain to approximately 70% of people in Japan that sleeping isn't a hobby, this works in situations where someone has actively come to speak in an informal situation to give them an opportunity to talk about something that they are interested in, and the teacher would be expected to be non-judgemental of their content but entirely judgemental on their delivery. 

I was reminded of this recently when discussing job interviews and being told that this particular hobby question was an interview closer^[2]. 

I said that I really didn't agree with that in an interview and was asked why? 

"It's just an easy question to deal with, anyone can answer it and it works as a nice wind down^[3]. "

Well. It isn't quite as simple as that, is it? It never is. 

We've all heard the stuff about an interview being two way, "the candidate is finding out about the company as much as the other way around" but that isn't really the case. The balance of power in the conversation is usually tilted towards the prospective employer so the point is, "What's the right answer here?" Interviews aren't the same as conversation, they are a dance of negotiation and we all know that each answer is used as a proxy to work out the answers to other questions left unasked. So the dancers are entwined asking, going back to the fundamentals, this:

Do I want this job?
Can they do the job? Will they fit in? 

So what is the right answer? Something that says: I am interesting, I am capable, I'm reliable, I fit your team, I fit the profile of the person you want.

This isn't a conversation, this is an indicator. And what you want to indicate is all of those things without indicating it too much. As an accountant, the last thing you want to show is a surfeit of character, not a problem I ever have. So maybe it is better to be defensive and that is exactly what the answer is. 

Ooh, I do a team sport, that shows I work well in a team and I bloody enjoy it too. 

That's the ideal, is it not? 

But let's have a look at what I could say, feasibly and honestly, using my blog posts here as a guide^[4]. 

Travel

Yep, this is fine. We want those that seem culturally plugged in and this is such a broad idea. Everyone likes holidays^[5] and so this isn't hard to back up. List off a few places etc but not too much detail. 

Film

Is it right to say this? What does someone that likes going to the cinema (and I actually don't particularly like cinemas) say about themselves? I like to sit in the dark and not talk for a couple of hours. Film is a broad medium, what is the commonality in the films I have written about (generally at the more esoteric end of the mainstream) and someone that loves the latest Transformers movie? 

Games

Maybe I'm out of date with this but surely this does not play well with large segments of society. I could list off many ways in which I'm a better person through games but I'm not sure that I'd ever recover from the initial eye roll you just did then when you read that… 

Photos

Is a situation where people create photos in huge numbers going to allow this to be really seen as a hobby? Taking photographs with a dedicated camera, as I do, is really the preserve of a certain mindset now and I'm not sure that is necessarily a mindset people want in the office. Photography is probably an acceptable answer^[6] as I think it has the appearance of being normal and well-adjusted.

Political 

What's the chance of a person interviewing me having similar politics to me or even understanding what being interested in politics even means? I didn't know what it meant a few years ago, but I did know that they might be weirdos. Party politics is probably not a good thing to bring up. The local elements of it have brought me into the community in a way that otherwise seems unlikely and I think this sounds good in this situation as it does not imply a political position… I’d argue being the kind of person that is interested in the community suggests a particular kind of person but this is a safe answer.

Football 

I feel like this is a safe option. Most people like, or feign an enjoyment of, football and it does not seem to have the same connotations that it did when I was younger. There is also a massive range over what being into football means and I don’t seem to like talking to most football fans that much so it may also be a risk.

Being “meta”/Blogging

Does having a blog count? I would not count this as a hobby but it does use up some of my finite time, and there are obviously some things it would indicate about me. But I'd guess a lot of people would argue that it is pretty geeky. It does not feel like a safe answer to me.

Fundamentally, the point is that what I mean and what that indicates to the listener can be hugely different and arguably a risk that isn't worth taking in an interview for a candidate. I'm pretty likely to be drawn into an aside if I get probed and I see most of my time in public as a struggle to ensure that I am not being myself too much so I am quite reticent to be forthcoming in these situations. Once someone is stuck with me, then I might be myself a bit more. Contractual obligation is a beautiful thing.

I think that an interview is almost inherently (for most situations) asymmetric in terms of the power dynamic and that any element that further puts a candidate under pressure about non-work items isn’t very fair. What does an interviewer do with that information or what is thought to be done with it? I think that is the risk and I would not want to be open to the accusation that I did not hire someone because they had a heartfelt interest in the pottery of the 19th century. But then, you would have to wonder about someone who would say they had that interest^[7], wouldn't you...? 

<sup>1. This is an incredibly unfair assertion, as a phrase. Apart from denigrating a very important profession, there are many instances when you can know what to do but be unable, through ability, physique etc, to actually do it.↩
2. Conversationally, there are basically two types of questions - opened and closed. I used to suggest that closed questions are often good for opening up a conversation as they don't require much thought from the answer but the question needs formulation. The point being that the effort comes from the questioner showing willingness to interact and then adapting the flow of conversations depending on that answer. ↩
3. I may just prefer the wind-up.↩
4. Using only the blog allows this to be self-reflective but is not exhaustive - I don't have posts related to all of my interests.↩
5. "I wish I didn't have vacation time - I have no idea what to do with it. It's like a four-week reminder of what a loser I am." as a character in The Imperfectionists state. Maybe not quite everybody.↩
6. I am not sure that it makes sense for me, personally, to talk of the visual medium.↩
7. Hmmm, maybe it does work as kind of a test of intelligence?↩</sup>

Colorful / カラフル (2010)

Colorful is a somewhat deceitfully named animation by Keichi Hara that was the opening film of the "East Side Stories" touring film programme by the Japan Foundation (London)^[1] . The festival screening schedule is quite nice as it seems to showcase films that have not had wider releases^[2] outside of Japan which is the kind of thing that JPF should be trying to do and for that I applaud them (not literally, unless I am at a screening or talk or something).

Animation may not seem the most appropriate medium for stories about suicide - often used as a way of showing the fripperies of fantasy and being a cheaper way of creating outlandish stories and worlds. "Colorful"^[3] starts off in an otherworld - some kind of limbo for souls where faceless and almost formless beings trudge towards a door. The door would transport them (via train, naturally) to the next stage of life as the almost formless beings are souls without bodies. In fact the viewer is actually a soul as the film starts in a first person perspective which always reminds me of games^[4] and only switches to a more conventional 3rd person after a rather neat story transition. A small, silver-haired boy greets you before you go to the train to explain that you have, through dint of chance, been partially redeemed as a soul and will get the opportunity to drop into the life of another person (a little like Quantum Leap) to help you learn from your own mistakes. The boy, Purapura, acts as a guide when he sees fit so he might give a few background details but not all. Is he an angel? Even he does not seem sure.
You then find yourself in a hospital bed with your "parents" crying at your dead body as you regain consciousness - the first thing you ask for? A mirror of course.
After that, Makoto, for that is the body now inhabited,  is dropped into the family life quite excitedly - he has been resurrected after all. He returns to special meals and talkative parents, everything seemingly fine. Makoto wonders why the boy whose body he know inhabits would have committed suicide if everything was fine. That must mean that everything wasn't fine.

After the first meal, Purapura returns to provide a little more information (initially to explain the house's layout, and where Makoto's room is, for instance) about the situation. Makoto committed suicide a day after seeing something, what was that and why did it cause such a large reaction? After this point, the thrust of the story is that of a "mystery" of finding why.

As the film progresses, some of the issues that are under the surface unravel and you learn a lot about the family and, more importantly the family interactions. I think it is fair to say that some are a little culturally specific (well the manifestations are - or maybe just seem different cos they have a name) but most are quite universal.
Makoto's homelife was quite difficult for him but he was quite safe there unlike in his school. Ranked 32 in his class of 32, he was not bullied for being clever (or stupid, in fact), he was just bullied. Being beaten and mocked throughout his time when new Makoto walks in and talks, it is quite the revelation. This is something that is shown a few times, how acting in an apparently normal way - interacting with those around him, there is a lot of surprise. Makoto was also a bit of an artist and was a member of the art club so he would go after school and paint (tortured artists maybe?) but he still had no actual friends there - but there was one girl who took an interest in him. And another girl he took an interest in. The story does not play out as any kind of love triangle but it is quite a neat way to introduce some of the ideas of not always comprehending that other people do comprehend you - and others do not.
There are quite a lot of social issues brought up with the relatively small number of characters along with the aforementioned bullying such as extra-marital affairs, "compensated dating^[5]", exam pressure, salaryman lifestyles, sacrifice and of course suicide itself amongst other things. Without wanting to give too much of it away, I won't go into details but it is a fairly dense slice of life depicted. And once those problems remount, Makoto returns to a feeling of depression. The melancholy atmosphere is captured very well and reminded me a lot of Melancholia (2011 film by Lars Von Trier) which is a stark and brilliant depiction of the sadness behind someone's eyes.
The film is not all sad, and Makoto does make some progress towards redemption - a friendship with a classmate, Saotome. I felt that this was also very well realised as they bump into each other in the street and follow the trail of an abandoned (and pretty short) tram line. As they walk along, the excitement of Saotome is clearly infectious for both Makoto and the audience and it really seemed to capture that mixture of nostalgia and imagined sentimentality that comes with retracing footsteps. And the friendship that results is also shown throughout as a simple, and beautiful, one.
As a film, I found it hugely entertaining (I am not sure "enjoyable" is appropriate with the subject matter) and with a strong moral throughout. It is a relatively simple film but it is expertly crafted with real thought into how the characters fit together into the puzzle of the plot and lovely details throughout. I would highly recommend that you watch it if you get the chance. As I said, it does not seem to have wide distribution that it deserves so you really should take the chance if it arises. Somehow...

Trailer here:

<sup>1. I went to see this at the ICA which is a nice venue that few seem aware of. The cinema is not too bad but in this case, I was disappointed at the poor projection. As the film started, the panning was very jerky, though I am aware this is something I notice more than a lot of other people (annoyingly, considering my general eye problems). It also seemed to be at a fairly low resolution and low bitrate in places. It was a very good-looking film in general (not in a showy way at all though) so it was a bit of a shame that those details were not dealt with. I really would expect better from ICA as they are not a purely commercial venture. There was also a Director's Q&A after the event which was interesting as he described some of the production details and the basis for adapting the novel.↩
2. In terms of worldwide distribution, I think a lot of Japanese cinema has hit a bit of a brick wall and it is hard to sell film outside of "type". I was struck, when I initially went to Japan, that the Japanese films that I had seen had not been seen by that many Japanese people I met. The more "extreme" end of the market is not very big in Japan, as it is not here, but it has become almost synonymous with the cinema of the country. Similarly, anime, which is a pretty broad medium in reality, has a relatively fixed market outside Japan and so it can be difficult to get traction for these kinds of films. Contemplative films don't necessarily travel well, but  would guess this would distribute easier if it were French, say. I guess in the same way French horror does not get talked about much.↩</sup>

<sup>3. We all know the word is not spelt like this but the film is titled such.↩
4. The way that the scene itself plays reminded me a lot of the "Ace Attorney" series of games which are essentially adventure/mystery games where you often get talking heads over the top of hand-drawn backgrounds.↩
5. Enjo-kōsai (援助交際) means "compensated dating" and is the act of dating whereby there is some form of "payment" which could be in the form of gifts or cold, hard cash. There has been a long term furore in Japan about this and often involves middle aged men compensating school girls - this seems to be the most common depiction of it though I cannot be sure it is the most common in actuality.↩</sup>

Budapest (day 3)

Rejection, disappointment and regret. I could have stayed in England for that.
This was, essentially, an extra day in Budapest as a result of enjoying days one [link] and two [link] but I did still need to sort out where I was going next and when. I decided on Vienna - and the next morning, which was a train ride away of about 4 hours. I had seen on the Austrian rail website [link] that this could be very cheap but I think I missed the availability so I would have to get a return ticket^[1]. I had wanted to go visit the Parliament building for a tour (in English) which had been recommended to me and so I needed to get the fairly early to book myself in so I thought that I could walk there, via a railway station, Budapest-Nyugati, which was along the 4/6 tramline - and I thought that this would also be a good way of seeing the city at work. It was. It was kind of busy and moving but not too busy. I got the train tickets at the station, and it was a very reasonable price for a flexible return ticket (about €25). The station itself was pretty impressive, even if the international ticket hall was less so.

Parliament
From there, I made my way to the Parliament building (by some measures, thought to be the largest in Europe - it seems the most imposing!) in order to join an English language tour which were scheduled throughout the day, and the first was at 10am. When I got to the Parliament area, I noticed that the whole of the front area, where gardens would be, was dug up and there was a lot of work being done - such that there seemed no clear path to the area. The tram was also not running. The ticket office for the Parliament tours was also sited in a different building which was not too inconvenient to find. What was inconvenient was being told that the tours were already booked out for the whole day. This was less than ideal and I wasn't really sure what to do so I did what I usually do when I am unsure, I walked.

As I mentioned, the city of Budapest is supposedly known as the city of spas, and the most famous of these (that I had never heard of, of course) are the Gellert Baths which are just on the banks. They have an interesting history but that does not really affect the fact that I was inappropriately dressed, so I walked over to the other thing to see in that area - St Gellert.

Gellert Hill
As the Liberty statue is on a rather tall hill, it does require a bit of a winding walk (or bus) but it is through a pleasant park with great views and  a small flower garden. That was  not quite as spectacular as the views from the top and the statues themselves which were amazing. Amazingly windy too, but that is what you get when you are exposed to the elements. There was also a little military display as the fort at the top, Citadella, had been the Nazi stronghold in the 40s and was the last point of Budapest held by them in the Siege of Budapest by the Soviet Army in 1945 as well as a focal point of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. I found the top quite interesting actually with the views and the stories of defiance.

On the way down, I briefly met a couple who asked me to take their photo (or I may have offered, I can't remember clearly) near the actual St Gellert  statue which elicited some mixed feelings - somewhat related to the David Goodhart talk [link] I recently went to about immigration. After taking the photo I asked them where they were from^[2] to which they replied "Scotland".
They didn't do this with Scottish accents, however and so I was a little confused, visibly confused I think as they then said:

"are you having difficulty with our Scottish accents?"

I smiled and asked

"where's your accent from?"

The couple were from Poland and they then walked off to continue their holiday as I did mine. As I walked away, the first thing I thought was how awkward it was to have asked them that, when they said they were from Scotland. That is the type of question I really hate as it essentially is questioning my belonging to Britain (I have started, recently, saying I am from London recently, as opposed to Britain or England. This is accurate and I'm lucky enough that London is well known enough as a city and I feel much more comfortable with that.) but I wonder whether they took it in that way. They must have known I was British at the least, if not necessarily from London from the accent and intonation. I wonder if they also thought that question may make me part of the loud anti-immigrant part of the UK. I mulled this over for a while - at least over the Elizabeth Bridge and back into Vorosmarty Ter - and I see that mull as one of the hazards of solo travel for me. Was that a prejudiced face that I pulled? Ignoring my possible faux pas, I was actually also really gladdened that they felt connected enough to Scotland, and whichever bit they called home, to refer to themselves as "from Scotland". There may be problems with the union where we all felt it wrong to say Britain, but I was really happy that they said that In their Polish-Scottish accents.

Millennium Line to lunch
And with that mixed feeling of awkwardness and warmth, I boarded the millennium line again to go to get some food at a recommended restaurant near the city park (again). I wasn't really sure how to fill my time so I decided to go one stop further then I needed for a little difference. This had the wholly intended side effect of meaning I had the whole line covered.
I'm not sure it was the best idea I've had.

Although the stations are geographically close from the original terminus within the park to Mexikoi, it felt a world away. The station was on the wrong side of the tracks, and the wrong side of the motorway. I had to negotiate a set of train tracks - which most just walked across but I was loathe to^[3]. And then I had to work out how to get to the park. It was terrible urban design but quite instructive to the city's design failings. I still found it quite interesting but I was a bit stuck...
The restaurant, Bagolyvár, was excellent and quite reasonably priced so I was pleased I made the effort.
On Mondays, many museums in Budapest are shut so my visit to the transport museum was thwarted again, by my poor planning.

Obuda
Budapest is famously made up of the cities on either bank of the Danube - Buda and Pest. Less famously, the formation of the city also included Obuda in 1873 which is on the Buda bank but a little further north. As I had little to do, I thought I'd make my way over and I was glad I did. In terms of sights, the area was quite light, but there seemed to be a huge housing complex around a large park which was almost certainly socialist housing. I have a bit of a soft spot for municipal housing actually as I have a romanticized notion of the care and thought that went into them and the idea that community could flourish there. Anyway, I did really love the multicoloured blocks and the urban parks set around Roman ruins. It was quite a strange mix that brought to mind the way the Barbican (in London) incorporates the Roman "London wall" within it. The ruins at Obuda are of Roman baths but they have built a huge road over most of it which sort of ruins the effect.

Obuda also has a smaller old town which is fairly interesting but it has little more than that - it satisfied my completionist streak though.
Connected up to the northern end of Margaret Island, I walked through the island and mulled some more accompanied by music.
Other than a quick stopoff at the synagogue and a brief interlude at the wonderfully evocative (of spy tales and espionage) area around the Soviet War Memorial at Szabadsag Ter, I didn’t do much more until getting back ready for an early start to Vienna. I'd read some very positive things about Vienna, but surprisingly didn't know of anyone actually visiting(other than an old student, but her level was fairly low and she was just excited to be in Europe). Strange to think of Vienna as the unknown...

Budapest 2013 Day 3 - for album click here

<sup>1. For reasons unexplained, you can only buy one-way tickets to Vienna with a three day lead time, but the return ticket is still very reasonable although you do not need to use the return portion of course.↩
2. In all honesty, I do not remember if I asked "Where are you from?" or "Where have you come from?" - quite different questions in the minefield of identity politics.↩
3. Apparently, walking across train tracks is common across most of the world except in Britain. On this point, I am happy that we are exceptional.↩</sup>

Immigration, race and David Goodhart

I have let some time pass (about a week) to see if I would change my thoughts after a period of reflection - I didn't.

------------------------------------

On my travels, I saw a moderately interesting speaker called David Goodhart [@David_Goodhart]. David Goodhart is one of David Cameron's [@David_Cameron] favourite xenophobes as he somehow believes that he adds some legitimacy to his obvious racism. The reason for this legitimacy is that Mr Goodhart heads up a thinktank that has said it is of the left - Demos. I have a feeling that Cameron may like him for his views and his former school (guess - it is Eton, of course) - though not sure which is more important. Similar to all the (more vocal) people that cross the divide of left to right, he seems to have realised a little late that his "comrades" did not seem to believe in the divisiveness of singling people out for their place of birth/skin colour and attacks the apparently homogenised "left" with the zeal of a born-again evangelist. For some context, this is in the same week as #racistvan[1] stories were in the press and the continuing EDL campaign ran on.

He is touring (this could be rhymed with a leading "h" sound) his anti-immigrant/immigration book at the moment "The British Dream" (named with a deliberate allusion to the American Dream) which has had a mixed reception. The usual suspects have jumped on it as with any debate around immigration - those that are numerate have called it incoherent, those that are in the Right-Wing Press have called it a damning indictment of Labour's open door immigration policy. I sometimes worry at the apparent lack of Venn diagram intersection there sometimes.

This review [link] in the LRB by Jonathan Portes [@jdportes] could be good context. I had not read the book or the review at the point of the discussion. Interestingly many of those that disagreed with him in the last CIF piece I read of his [here] kept calling him Portas - a delightfully subtle way of showing that you had not read the piece or could not handle detail.

The talk was in London (Camden to be a little more precise) and the city, for all its faults, is a diverse place with plenty of differing people and ideas intermingling.

Or so I thought.

Apparently, it wasn't as it appeared and we live parallel lives where we pretend to all get along but actually it is all a façade - we are deeply divided on racial lines. He then used a load of statistics that may have been entirely accurate as data points but were not quite supportive of his points as he was using them as proxies to mean something else. And this is so common in immigration debates as you are often using these proxies to talk about people to other people that are ignorant of what they mean. I don't mean this pejoratively (maybe I could have used a better word, the fact I didn't may suggest something), but many people genuinely do not understand households outside of their immediate community. One that annoys me a lot is the use of "first language" or "mother tongue" statistics to point to an idea (and it always seems to be used for that) of a bulk of immigrants that cannot speak English competently, or at a native level. [link]

The statistic that often goes with it, to emphasize the sense of "other" and parallel lives, is households that do not predominantly speak English at home. Needless to say, I fall into both categories. I didn't speak English at home, my parents do not speak English with each other and so English is spoken in my family home only between myself and my sibling. My parents both had "professional" roles in their English-speaking workplaces and myself and my sister have both been through higher education in English-speaking environments - I have even been in gainful employment teaching it.

This writing here may not always be of the highest standard, it may sometimes be incoherent and there might be some problematic sentence structures, but it is clearly at a native level. Isn't it? Or am I labouring under some misapprehension that I can communicate (maybe not effectively, but less a linguistic issue, more communicative...)?

Interestingly, there is census data that captures whether people do not speak English^[2] that could be used directly rather than trying to ascertain from other bits of information.

138,000 (note the UK population is approximately 60,000,000 - so about 0.2%) [link]

And then this "does not speak English" data is actually used as a proxy for something else anyway. But what does it even mean? Is someone who does not speak English now unintegrated and also impossible to integrate? The thrust of these articles is that there are "these people" who live here and don't understand and will not (try to) understand.

Census data is a snapshot in time - it does not show intention and future expectation. It is entirely unclear what happened to those 138,000:

Were they here temporarily and so never learnt English? Did they then learn English? Were they actually mute?

Another statistic, quoted by Goodhart, is about how many people now live in areas where they do not have "white-British" neighbours and this is used as evidence of ghettoization. Again, I do not have two sets of neighbours that are exclusively "white-British". As it happens, I believe one of my neighbouring flats has a couple with a white partner and non-white partner (not sure if they fulfil "white-British" criteria) which would be further "proof" of my ghettoization as I am now in a non-white-British part of town and we have separated ourselves from white people. Goodhart also uses the loaded term "white flight" with gay abandon and when questioned over this, he says that he writes his pieces for a more academic audience which will be aware of the meaning of this and it is not inflammatory as a result. I'm not sure if he genuinely believes that or if he is fully aware of the significance of these words.

I'm not the most opinionated person, and I'm not the least but I could not completely ignore his disregard for the effects of anti-immigrant feeling that regularly spills into racial, and other forms of, discrimination as he spoke of Woolwich and how even though tensions had been raised by his friends in the press, there had been little to worry the Islamic community so I interjected:

"What about the ongoing bombing campaign taking place around the mosques of the country?"[link]

His callous disregard for the loss of life (in islamophobia attacks) and the genuine feeling of fear that people understandably have was remarkable. Given the opportunity to comment, he said something about it not being that bad... And played down the statistics of islamophobic attacks with other statistics. I didn't go back to him on that point but discussing with others later, I did mention that the effect of any terror campaign cannot be captured by the statistics he talks about as people are scared to leave their houses.

He also talked of being in a post-racism world where people of all races were not subject to large levels of racism and were not held back in a meaningful way. Most people disagreed but there was one man, needless to say another white man, who agreed and said that the link between immigration and racism had been broken. He pointed out, as if to prove it, that immigrants from different communities have differing outcomes and that, for example, the Chinese community had higher levels of income and attainment than the "white British". And then, to show his incoherence, as held them up as proof that immigrants themselves shoulder the blame for their difficult circumstances, he also pointed out that they do of course have lower levels of income when compared with those that have similar levels of education... He gave an example of a small business not employing people with different sounding names being entirely reasonable as a small business is like a family and you have to be aware of a cultural fit. It was incoherent, frankly - as it seems he had a conclusion and the facts did not need to get in the way.

As he wrapped up, questions were sought and dealt with in groups. Of course I had questions but I reiterated my point about the on-going bombing campaign (and islamophobic murder before Woolwich [link]) and also tried to explain how difficult it is when people talk of a post-racist world when you then suffer any form of discrimination.

When a lot of people tell you something does not exist and then it happens to you, it can be a tricky one to process. If racist abuse does not happen, then why did it happen? Is it something special about me?^[3]

I asked about the statistical work he had done to control for the conclusions he was making. He spoke a lot about bogey-areas around London and levels of migration, immigration, employment engagement etc. in order to show how immigration had affected those areas. I simply asked him what he had done to control for the fact that urban areas will often be home to a younger, more mobile population and that in order to isolate the effects of one cause, you should isolate the others as much as possible. I wanted to know how much less integrated and successful were these immigrants than other people with the same level of income, savings, educational attainment etc etc. As he was an ex-journalist for the Financial Times, I did expect some level of numeracy and understanding of raw data.

As he dealt with the answers in groups, he ignored the substance of my question and spoke of other statistics. It was really frustrating.

I found the disregard for the difficulties that immigrants, and the children of immigrants faced to be quite disheartening actually, as if the fact that they were inconvenienced by having worse outcomes, suffering racist abuse and discrimination was not a problem.

To be fair to him, he took more questions than he had to (extending the time) and also came to the pub afterwards to talk (and even offered me a drink). In all honesty though, his viewpoint was fixed which is understandable as he has done the research and looked into it with the methodologies he believes in (I don't agree with the methodology but the raw data is fine).

What some people always say is "the public wants less immigration so it is not a party political point - democracy has spoken".

I think this is a little disingenuous.

Firstly, democracy is not the simple matter of counting votes and doing what more people want. This is the simplistic way that it is initially taught so that people can conceptually understand but democracy is also about enfranchising people - recognising them so that they can effectively be part of that democracy. That is why you have minority rights in democratic nations and those minorities are treated equally (to a greater or lesser extent) to allow them to be empowered and involved. Democracy only works if everyone is given a voice before the vote.

Secondly, what anyone wants is based on what they know - or more accurately, what they think are the facts on the ground. It is a simple (input - process - output) loop but if the inputs are false, it is difficult to see how you would get the right output (except by pure chance). What the population think is the case and what actually is the case can be vastly, vastly different to each other. [link] So they want less immigration than what they think is happening. Which is what we have right now -  significantly less immigration than they think is happening..

What does that mean? Should we ignore the concerns of people who see one thing happening which they associate with something else? I think this is the real question of democracy in the modern age actually.

I don't know how widely thought of the concept of "materiality" is but basically, deal with the big problems first. And don't guess at the problems, actually find out what they are.

If there is a problem with housing, it probably isn't immigration that is causing it (it might be a factor but you need to look into the causes), it is probably housing policy.

If there is a problem with education, it probably isn't immigration that is causing it (it might be a factor but you need to look into the causes), it is probably education policy.

If there is a problem with employment, it probably isn't immigration that is causing it (it might be a factor but you need to look into the causes), it is probably employment policy.

^{1. It may not have been racist had it been targeted in areas other than those with large brown-skinned communities exclusively. And had translation services for languages other than Indic ones. It was, and it didn't.↩}

^{2. This type of census data is quite weak anyway (it may be higher than 138k - or lower) as it is self-assessment... The global economic situation should have taught you to be wary of self-assessment and self-regulation. When I lived abroad, I'd have said that I was unable to speak the language were I asked in a form - but they could have asked me that question in that language and I would have understood.↩}

3. I have been fortunate about direct racial abuse and can only remember one instance in recent years in the UK that was directly at me and I was flabbergasted. But part of the reason for that is that you do not have a defence mechanism and it is all the more shocking for that. I have not been particularly affected by it and the vast majority of people are entirely liberal about it.

I don't know how successfully I have "integrated" into British society but I have tried and it is not made any easier by that feeling of anxiety and discomfort that some of this chat engenders in me. I'm not an idiot, I know I am treated a little differently but it is offensive to suggest otherwise, frankly. Victim-blaming is an all too common occurrence at the moment and it needs to be checked.↩