The Food:

Looks to me that this is a partial and scaremongering article based on very selective quotes. I'd say the report is actually saying something along the lines of "racism can be expressed in lots of ways, eg comments about food and culture". Notably, none of the quotes refer to actually liking the food or not.

THe praying:

I'd say this is partial and scaremongering reporting of some incident to which we have no access to many actual facts. Parents fulminate and fume on their children's behalf (no doubt contributing to their children being raised as wimps) but nowhere are we told what happened in the classroom, and nor are we given the teacher's perspective. The Head sensibly says (and I paraphrase) "Fuck off, scumbag journo."

Poor helpless victim

He's on a tag, by the way!

The Gay Story:

What Balb said.

In general, I'd ask anyone responding to this thread to ponder the advice in my sig. It hasn't worked for me, but don't make the same mistake I did. It is neither big nor clever to rattle the chains of the cellar dwellers. Though it can be quite fun!

Ned

Quote from: Ned the Lonely Donkey;224118The Food:

Looks to me that this is a partial and scaremongering article based on very selective quotes. I'd say the report is actually saying something along the lines of "racism can be expressed in lots of ways, eg comments about food and culture". Notably, none of the quotes refer to actually liking the food or not.

I thought it got a bit silly, but to be honest writing these guides is not easy.  I saw on Charlie Stross's blog a post criticising a Scottish one on looking after cats, and out of idle curiosity I went and read the leaflet being objected to and on reading it it seemed to me mostly good advice for people who hadn't grown up with them and so might not be familiar with how different to humans they can be.  It didn't seem to me a terrible leaflet on reading it, if I read this one I might still think it goes too far or I might change my mind and think it's ok, to be honest though it's such a non-story why would I bother.

Quote from: Ned the Lonely Donkey;224118THe praying:

I'd say this is partial and scaremongering reporting of some incident to which we have no access to many actual facts. Parents fulminate and fume on their children's behalf (no doubt contributing to their children being raised as wimps) but nowhere are we told what happened in the classroom, and nor are we given the teacher's perspective. The Head sensibly says (and I paraphrase) "Fuck off, scumbag journo."

Eh, that would have annoyed me.  I went to a very avowedly left wing school and that sort of thing happened all the time, I remember once being formally reprimanded for racism when I reported a bully, as school policy was that we had no bullying and since he was black and I wasn't there couldn't be any other explanation for my report.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, we had a lot of bullying.  Bizarrely, I also got into trouble when I asked that the book Little Black Sambo be removed from the library as it was blatantly racist (I was very left wing myself), fuckers, and I still think that book has no place on the shelves of a school library.

I also got a two day suspension for refusing to dissect mice on the grounds I didn't agree with vivisection, curiously the same duration two other boys got for setting fire to a teacher's car (which was completely torched).  It was an odd school in many ways.

All of which is to say, some schools have fuckwits for teachers or heads.  Most teachers still do their best though, and it's hard to judge any institution on one incident.  The Telegraph wants to portray a particular image of Britain, but my school wasn't representative of anything but one bad school and I doubt this is any different.

You guys missed the chance to kill this thread off. It was teetering nicely. Next we'll have Morrow coming in with 5000 word essays, linking statistics that suit his purpose and nutbars like Jackalope & Gleichman debating your reasoned responses with their xenophobia.

But, for the record, i did try to head it off at the pass. I guess Ian was right. Hell, Ian's normally right.

EDIT: On reflection, this big pot of dumb shouldn't be stirred any further.

Ned

Quote from: One Horse Town;224122I guess Ian was right. Hell, Ian's normally right.

Heh, you're right. I'm out.

Ned

Quote from: One Horse Town;224086Shit. If only we had the basic human right to bear arms, we'd -

"Shit"? Don't you mean "bollocks!"? That's much more British, old boy.

Good piss-take, though. Will no doubt fly over the heads of our cousins across the water, though, anything less subtle than a WWF body slam tends not to be quite taken in.

Quote from: One Horse TownCan't your trusted British friend give you the inside scoop on these stories Gleichman?

Don't worry, I tipped off Thames House to the mole.

Bah, wimps.  

I for one welcome the explanations of how these stories are but the tip of the PC iceberg that will sink our most glorious ship of state.

Here's the part that threw me from the gay guys in the bushes article:

QuoteBristol City Council wants to prune bushes and remove cover from an area known as the Downs to improve the landscape and encourage rare wildlife.

I know Britain has a very long tradition of managed stewardship, but what the hell kind of "rare" wildlife is encouraged by a lack of undergrowth?  The famously exhibitionist Bristol Hedgehog?

It's interesting you should say that, gleichman. I was just thinking about Slavoj Zizek's essay Multiculturalism: The Cultural Logic of Late Captialism, and here you appear to illustrate a few of its core tenets.

QuoteIt is as if we are witnessing today the ultimate confirmation of Freud's thesis, from Civilization and its Discontents, on how, after every assertion of Eros, Thanatos reasserts itself with a vengeance. At the very moment when, according to the predominant liberal ideology, we are finally leaving behind the "immature" political passions (the regime of the "political": class struggle and other "out-dated" divisive antagonisms) for the post-ideological "mature" pragmatic universe of rational administration and negotiated consensus, for the universe, free of utopian impulses, in which the dispassionate administration of social affairs goes hand in hand with the aestheticized hedonism (the pluralism of "ways of life"), — at this very moment, the foreclosed political is celebrating a triumphant comeback in its most archaic form of pure, undistilled racist hatred of the Other which renders the rational tolerant attitude utterly impotent. In this precise sense, the contemporary "postmodern" racism is the symptom of the multiculturalist late capitalism, bringing to the light the inherent contradiction of the liberal-democratic ideological project. Liberal "tolerance" condones the folklorist Other deprived of its substance (like the multitude of "ethnic cuisines" in a contemporary megalopolis) — any "real" Other is instantly denounced for its "fundamentalism", since the kernel of Otherness resides in the regulation of its jouissance, i.e. the "real Other" is by definition "patriarchal", "violent", never the Other of ethereal wisdom and charming customs. One is tempted to reactualize here the old Marcusean notion of "repressive tolerance", reconceiving it as the tolerance of the Other in its aseptized, benign form, which forecloses the dimension of the Real of the Other's jouissance.

Of course, I'm pretty sure I know what your preferred method of resolving that contradiction would be.

So if I read that correctly, Droog, you are accusing Gleichman of being a liberal!  

edit: never mind.

Quote from: Edsan;224104Man, news like these make me wonder if I choose the wrong country to immigrate to.

Maybe I should give Canada a try...

In Canada the news sources that published those articles could well be brought to court for hate crimes as MacLean's was (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Steyn#Canadian_Islamic_Congress_human_rights_complaint). In the end it was a year's worth of harrasment as the case was dismiss. But that it was brought at all is frightening.


Much the same problem in France, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigitte_Bardot#Politics.2C_controversy_and_legal_issues. At least she didn't end up in jail. Yet.

I'm passing over many cases where the people involved were less famous. As I said, the rule of PC is basically found everywhere.

Quote from: walkerp;224144So if I read that correctly, Droog, you are accusing Gleichman of being a liberal!  

A liberal-democrat, with the classic tension between liberty and equality. He sits at the same table as jhkim, and they argue over the rational administration of social affairs.

Quote from: Balbinus;224112Again, I hadn't heard of it, sounds credible enough but it's an isolated incident which from the look of it drew general condemnation.  That said, the Daily Mail is not a trustworthy news source, the Telegraph is right wing but a serious paper, the Mail is not above omitting key facts or relevant details, I wouldn't trust anything in it.

That's the sort of information I wanted from you. I'm wasn't familar with the Daily Mail.

Here's the same report from the Telegraph:

Quote from: Balbinus;224112Edit:  Got that last one, it's just a picture of the guy smiling.

Here's that same article from the Telegraph.

He has reason to be smiling, I would if I was him.

Quote from: Balbinus;224112Edit 2:  I lost my comment on the gay story, that one's probably true, reading it more carefully I see it's a gay rights group arguing for the undergrowth to remain while the police and local authority regard their conduct as criminal and plainly lack sympathy with the argument.

I think the reason it 'got national' in your words is that the gay group is question is part of (or employed, I can't tell- which is why I asked here) the City Council- and that the project was immediately postpone upon their simple objection.

Quote from: Balbinus;224128Bah, wimps.  

I for one welcome the explanations of how these stories are but the tip of the PC iceberg that will sink our most glorious ship of state.

As I recall Balbinus, it was you who expressed approval of the changes in the UK over the last few decades- saying the the death of traditional British culture was a good thing.

So I don't think we need to explore that side of these articles.

Edit: I'm more interested in who and how people will effectively support or excuse the events in those articles. No surprises yet.