America isn’t the only place where immigration is now an extremely hot issue. In Britain, it’s threatening to destroy the Tory party. On Thursday another parliamentary defector to the UK Independence Party, which is anti-immigration and anti-EU, is fighting for a very safe Tory seat. The Tory candidate is busy pandering to the worst xenophobic impulses in the electorate … and could still lose. Massie despairs of the pandering:
Consider these extracts from her own election leaflets: “I wanted to bring the prime minister to this constituency to show him that uncontrolled immigration has hurt this area. I told him we need action, not just talk.”
And: “Most people I know here have worked hard their lives, played by the rules and paid their fair share, but we sometimes struggle to access the services we need because of uncontrolled immigration. Others don’t feel safe walking down the high street of our town.
I suppose this is just another example of no-one ever being allowed to talk about immigration. I don’t know if it counts as progress that we’ve moved on from Oh My God, Muslims! to Oh My God, Roman Catholics from Eastern Europe! but there you have it.
The president is taking a huge gamble tomorrow night.
Today, we tackled the gender debate again – here and here. Whatever my own position, we hope we’re airing plenty of points of view from all sides. On marriage equality, I bemoaned increasing polarization and incivility. A deeper dive on the foul murders in Jerusalem yesterday is here. Why vaping is now as cool as blogging was in, well, 2007. And why drilling has indeed brought gas prices down, whatever some liberals say. Plus: the strange phenomenon of the Welsh Jihadist.
The most popular post of the day was Lumbersexuals: The Triumph Of The Bears; followed by What To Think Of Bill Cosby?
Many of today’s posts were updated with your emails – read them all here. You can always leave your unfiltered comments at our Facebook page and @sullydish. 16 more readers became subscribers today. You can join them here – and get access to all the readons and Deep Dish – for a little as $1.99 month. Gift subscriptions are available here. A newbie writes:
For first time I can recall, I can’t get to the “Read On” content without subscribing. So I will subscribe. Is this a new policy? I hadn’t encountered it until today (and I was on the Dish yesterday). I was completely surprised. One thought is that it forces my lazy ass to sign up. The second is that you are confident in your business model and you’re upping the ante requiring us voyeur readers to pay if we want to see anything beyond the “Read On” button. Sneaky, but effective.
I guess we need to tighten up the meter a bit.
See you in the morning.
The Dish 