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In F2 at the mo.
Too scared to go into F3 without my Dad – and he’s dead!
:lol:
@anc wrote:
She’s stuffing herself with a bamboo creation! :lol:
That sounds quite unpleasant!
:shock:
pet poodle which was
@cherriepie wrote:
@rogue trader wrote:
when u come to uk chezzer,are you coming near to any place i live,i will put you up
Awh! Haha I’m in London for a day or two and mainly Cardiff :)
Awfully sweet of many of you to offer! I’m going to cosy it up in a hotel though!! yay
xx
Is Cardiff ready for you?
:shock:
@cherriepie wrote:
@momentaryloss wrote:
@cherriepie wrote:
Oh God, just come in and join the chat ffs.
OK. Anything you say.
Wow, wife trained you well :P
No that was my mother!
I was merely responding to your assertive tone.
Oh and, for the record, with regard to my wife, I don’t do everything other women tell me to do – you’re just so bossy, it’s less trouble to go along with what you say!
:wink:
What is interesting is repressive regimes in the Middle East have all sorts of religious and secular bases for their existence.
The Arab Spring, just like any revolutionary movement, has many groups involved in it. One of the reasons for it’s relative lack of success (unlike the Eastern European uprisings after the fall of the Berlin Wall) is precisely that there is no common basis except the desire for less political repression.
There is no central organisation and no supreme leader and, although some groups wanted to return to “true” Islam are included in those groups, there is no common understanding between them as to what that means. As I alluded to in my previous posting, Sharia Law extends from moderate systems, where the main differences from our system are in terms of things like financial matters, all the way to discriminatory systems with brutal punishments, often for women and the poor.
It is very easy for us to assume that any involvement of Islam in these groups is threatening. Some groups are certainly extreme but none of the most extreme groups have succeeded in taking control. Indeed if they wish to take part in a pluralist democracy which protects it people, who are we to judge? We welcomed dialogue and political power sharing when the IRA agreed to laid down their arms, before they had actually disarmed.
The subversion of these revolutions by extreme groups however is a real possibility – just like in 1917 a largely moderate and peaceful Russian Revolution was seized by the Bolsheviks who were original the minority in their own party. This guaranteed the success of the Revolution but also resulted in years of bloody civil war.
This then is the real risk. We should be careful however not to overplay it. The more extremist Islamic response gets lots of attention because it is extreme, easy to explain and make good pictures.
The majority who are moderate do not make good news – just like the extreme Christian right in the United States make good news in the Middle East, and help fuel Middle Eastern distrust of the West.
Great debate on this one.
This article made me think very hard about a number of things. The reason why was that this story was the centre of the news for a number of days, on the BBC, ITV, Radio 4 and all the newspapers, tabloids and broadsheets. There were discussion programmes and editorials all talking about the cultural aspects of the crimes.
The comment and discussion overwhelmingly focused on what is was about Muslim men from the sub-continent that made this type crime so prevalent in the UK. The assumption was that it was far more common (per head of population) than white men doing the same thing.
Turns out that is not really true. Most abused girls are white. Most abusers are white. Most people in the UK are white. These things all go together.
Gangs of men who know each other have committed these terrible crimes. How such sick individuals get together surely varies and sometimes people’s friends will all be one race. No surprise there.
Most people on JC would presumably wish that we were all “one people under the sun” and all lived and played together nicely. Some believe that if we talk about prejudice, it makes prejudice all the more likely to happen.
Whilst I can see that point of view, it was not the JC Boards that raised this. It was days of media coverage which skewed all of this. At the same time similar crimes by gangs of white men only received the briefest of attention.
The lack of balance, as others have pointed out, was in the media, not amongst our good friends here.
That media bias was exactly what the article was about.
It’s fairly easy to stay within the law with regard to race, disability etc.
Some people absolutely do cry foul when they are themselves antisocial or when they are being excluded for a reason other than race, sexual orientation and so on. It is I suppose natural that many people should focus on these cases rather than countless others where people are discriminated against. Companies holding up their hands and agreeing compensation when they have done the wrong thing without it going to court or tribunal never reach the papers.
The only thing I disagree with is that it is easy to use the law to gain redress. It’s all very well when someone has their head kicked in by people calling them a “black b*stard”, however when someone is constantly belittled and cut out at work, making them miserable, harming their career prospects, or worse, losing their job, you have to be a very strong person sometimes to stand up to it.
If you have done a certain job for years in a specialist area, you know that standing up to your bosses can mean that you are never able to find another job like that again. This doesn’t just happen because of discrimination as defined by the law but there is also case law to prevent people being bullied and harassed at work whatever the reason.
The truth is that the law in theory protects everyone from bad behaviour but getting it to work can be very difficult. For all the high profile cases where people cry injustice because they think it is political correctness gone mad, there are many many people sitting miserable, their lives ruined by small minded people who only like mixing and working with their own.
There are lots of big hearted, fair minded people out there but, just because there are, that doesn’t mean that everyone gets a fair crack at the whip.
Even with the extreme stuff such as terrorism, how quickly we forget that white Christians have been responsible for incredible atrocities across the world and the deaths of millions of people right on our doorsteps. Once again it’s not that extremists who call themselves true Muslims should not be opposed at every turn, it’s just that we should not see all Muslims the same way.
To go right back to the point of thread, it is not helpful for people, even if they are “victims” to see themselves as such because then they lose control of their own situation and can only be “rescued”. Of course there are also the official legal “victims” of slips, trips, falls, accidents etc. who sometimes need their compensation, but are sometimes just taking money out of everyone else’s pockets by making companies and public bodies give them inflated pay outs.
For everyone’s sake let’s all not be victims, but have some generosity for those who suffer at the hands of others, and for whom it is still too raw for them to move on.
