How Salford became Britain’s little Hong Kong
More than 166,000 exiles have fled to the UK in the three years since China’s crackdown. Many have found salvation in areas such as Salford, lured by cheap property and good schools — and they are helping to transform the community
Levin’s idea was that at handover – in fact, he made the suggestion a decade before it – of Hong Kong issue a British passport to every resident – resident, not citizen – of Hong Kong. But that passport be marked “Only good for residence in Liverpool”. Also, turn Liverpool into a free port – the entire city, completely divorced from every governmental intervention other than the basic rule of law and suppression of criminality.
Would have worked better than hading the place over to Derek Hatton and friends, of course.
Importing a new network of drug-selling criminals to counter the existing network of drug-selling criminals. It’s got a certain logic to it, I suppose.
My first f/t job was in Salford, working in juvenile lock-ups and residential homes. I wonder how much it has changed…
As I’ve said before, I’d rather see a million HKers move here than a dozen mohammedans
’…helping to transform the community…’
For the better, I suspect. Not something you can say about other influxes (yes, Roma, I’m looking at you)…
imagine thinking more of these guys and their activities and influence is a net positive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triads_in_the_United_Kingdom
“Found”
No, the British government is actively paying Hong Kongers to move here. The Home Office is spending big on Chinese migration. There’s no sign of “austerity” in their resettlement budget.
Remember when Boris just announced, with no public debate, that we’d be opening the country up to millions of HK residents?
Nearly 40 years previous, the possibility of mass migration from HK and other legacy overseas territories was one of the reasons we passed the British Nationality Act 1981 – a major piece of legislation with plenty of public and parliamentary scrutiny.
But by 2020, our political system had degenerated to the point where the Prime Minister could offer British visas to another 3 million people on a whim, and it wasn’t even the biggest news item that week.
Unfortunately Hong Kong has exactly the same demographic problems England does, so we’re going to end up with even more people of the Wong age.
…. other than the basic rule of law and suppression of criminality
That doesn’t sound much like Liverpool anymore
Brighton would be better, and solve an actually soluble problem. Salford is not soluble without extending and widening the A57(M), which isn’t happening.
I rather like the idea of reconstructing Hong Kong, brick for brick if necessary, somewhere accessible adjacent to the English mainland. It really sticks in Xi’s craw that the greatest city in China was founded by the British. Cool, let’s move it here if you don’t want it.
From personal experience I can vouch for the fact that the ‘Pudlians are doing their bit to combat climate change by reducing the number of cars on the road. To be fair, if said cars are Mercs or Beemers, they’re just doing what the British government habitually does. Offshore the problem…
BiFR – It really sticks in Xi’s craw that the greatest city in China was founded by the British. Cool, let’s move it here if you don’t want it.
I’m not sure creating vast new Chinese influence networks on British soil and in British politics is going to pwn Xi as hard as the British government thinks.
Steve: you have to distinguish between China and Hong Kong. HKers in the UK are getting really riled up about the influx of mainlanders. In my old stomping ground the long-established HK-ancestry community is now swamped ten-fold by mainland students. Just students. Almost a full quarter of the students are mainlanders. Not a quarter of the overseas students, a quarter of the entire student body. It’s got that my UK-resident HK ex-wife is thinking of emigrating.
jgh
You are reminding me of my last trip to Sydney. The number of Chinese quite startled me.
So, despite Abbott the awful, Oz isn’t really any different to the UK.
Steve, for full authenticity, you could actually run it as “one country, two systems”, with passport controls at the newly rebuilt Lok Ma Chau interchange. You just run the Northern line down to Brighton seafront and build New Hong Kong on reclaimed land 100 metres out to sea.
Brighton, being approximately as attractive as Shenzhen (but without the cheap dentists and barely disguised knocking shops), fits nicely.
jgh, our last trip to HK, in November 2019 (you certainly will remember the significance) was so much the better for the almost total absence of mainland tourists.
Other things were less good, but the feeling of having the city to yourself, until dark at least, was priceless.
If you want somewhere else experiencing a Chinese invasion try Chinada*.
*BC and Alta, can’t speak for Sask or the frog bits, but it appears that the chinks have already taken over the government in Ottawa from the French and Quebec is getting a double whammy of MS13 / arab cultural enrichment entering via the US.
I should add, that Vancouver even has it’s own Chinese language TV station.
@Bloke in the Fourth Reich
No need to reclaim land off the south coast when there’s the Isle of Wight. We could even spend your “reclaim” budget on a cross-harbour tunnel below the Solent. Expect it to be finished before HS2.
I know quite a few HK Chinese who have moved to the UK in the past year or so on BNO passports. All decent people vastly better than the hordes of Albanian criminals and bazaar-sweepings that the UK usually gets. Sure, the nation doesn’t actually need any immigrants, or wouldn’t if we changed the benefits system, but this is where we are at. These are decent first-world people unlikely to be a burden.
And they will not be a 5th column for Chairman Pooh; these people are 100% yellow (politically). Any dodgy ones will come in with the students from the Mainland.
My scheme was that every HKer get a visa in return for funding the expulsion of a less welcome immigrant.
Not racist of course: the less welcome would include some people from Central and Eastern Europe. And even some from Ireland.
If we could find some way of exporting indigenous scum I’d welcome that too.
Don’t get upset about a few Chinese move to the UK, it may well improve the place. As Boganboy has noticed on visiting here, Sydney has a large Chinese population about 12% in fact. One of the many things which make this a terrific place to live is that one in eight Sydneysiders are Chinese.
From personal experience I can vouch for the fact that the ‘Pudlians are doing their bit to combat climate change by reducing the number of cars on the road. To be fair, if said cars are Mercs or Beemers, they’re just doing what the British government habitually does. Offshore the problem…
I know that high-end motor thefts are a problem, but my trade contacts tell me they’re usually broken for parts rather than exported (which is expensive and needs a lot of form-filling). The steering wheel being on the right side would be a bit of a giveaway. Different on the continent, where you can lift one from the night-time streets of Berlin and drive it to Minsk by the morning.
I should add, that Vancouver even has it’s own Chinese language TV station.
Mandarin or Cantonese?
There are parts of Vancouver you could be forgiven for thinking you were in China, I’ve been in places where I was the only European and they didn’t bother with an English version of the menu, great food though.
Vancouver also has a higher per person rate of sushi restaurants than most Japanese cities
As a libertarian Scottish secessionist I am always amazed and happy the U.K. government haven’t sunk the SNP by moving lots of HK’ers up to Scotland. A massive Unionist capitalist block in a Frei-stadt (say Aberdeen) might just turn the numbers their way….