General politics discussion thread

[Yoghurt]

I'd like a country full of 60 million poles if it meant people like you were put in bags full of bricks and dropped in the sea.

 

Offence intended.

[Chris B]

Hi Happ,

 

It's possible you've missed this post, so I thought I'd repost it.

 

Hugs and kisses.

 

Chris B.

 

PS - I haven't voted Labour since the nineties. Toodle-pip!

 

 

Who says British culture is worthless?

Plenty of people. Mostly Guardian-types or other liberals. It's usually disguised by use of weasel-words but there has been a clear agenda for the past 30 years or more of downgrading traditional British culture and promoting foreign cultures as equal to or better than our home-grown culture that has been exported so succesfully around the world that it has largely been internalized and is often not even recognised as being British.

 

But, again, who? You keep saying 'plenty of people' and 'Guardian-types' and so on, but never actually back it up. The way you're talking about it, it sounds like it's something that is a hugely regular thing - whereas I think it's a typical fear, but not one that can actually be backed up.

 

Oh, and why aren't foreign cultures 'equal to or better' than ours? Why isn't the British cultural legacy the fact that it's been exported world-wide?

 

What do you class as 'indigenous Britons'? How far back do you have to go?

People who have no known ancestry from anywhere other than Britain?

 

Would you go up to Native Americans or Palestinians and ask them how far back they go and question whether they are in fact indigenous?

 

So, you wouldn't include the Romans, Celts or Vikings?

 

Don't you think there were shameful elements of the British Empire? I think there were some advantages to the countries that took part, but (again, looking at things from the Irish point of view, because it's an example I know very well), I can see a lot of disadvantages for anyone that was on the 'colonised' rather than 'colonising' side of the fence.

I don't think the British empire is any more shameful than people in general were at the time. The world was open for the taking and we did as good a job of taking than any other nation. Then we were among the first countries to try and stop the worst excesses of colonialism, we did more than any other country to stop slavery. The likes of China and India today owe a hell of a lot to the British in putting them in the situation where they are becoming the dominant countries in the world. The US do as well.

 

Do many people suggest that it was much other than a product of the times? Surely it's seen as shameful BECAUSE it's a product of the times, and it's the people who wish it was a current situation that are seen as being in the wrong?

[tiger_rick]

I'd like a country full of 60 million poles if it meant people like you were put in bags full of bricks and dropped in the sea.

 

Offence intended.

There's no need for shit like this. Leave it out.

[MinceMcMahon]

Just voted 'Yes' in the Welsh devolution referendum. The polling station was busier than I expected, maybe because it's a lush day!

[Happ Hazzard]

Hi Happ,

 

It's possible you've missed this post, so I thought I'd repost it.

 

Hugs and kisses.

 

Chris B.

 

PS - I haven't voted Labour since the nineties. Toodle-pip!

I haven't voted Labour since the 90s either.

 

An example of British culture being portrayed as "worthless" would be the BBC's "white season" from a few years ago where all working-class white characters were portrayed as stupid/uneducated etc and were all "taught something about themselves" through interaction with ethnic minorities. Patronising middle-class Guardianista bullshit, and guess what? We had to pay for it, whether we wanted to or not. Just as we all are forced to subsidise the Guardian through the public sector and BBC recruitment ads placed in it. And guess what? Working-class British people are almost entirely excluded from those sectors of employment.

 

I would count descendents from the Saxons, Vikings or Celts as being indigenous Brits. If they want to say otherwise, it's up to them.

 

If you go back far enough, everyone is descended from immigrants, except for some people in whichever African country life was first born. But that would mean that such people as Aborigines, Native Americans, Palestinians etc had no right to their land any more than white Europeans do. Which I don't believe liberals would find it easy to accept.

[Chris B]

Hi Happ,

 

It's possible you've missed this post, so I thought I'd repost it.

 

Hugs and kisses.

 

Chris B.

 

PS - I haven't voted Labour since the nineties. Toodle-pip!

I haven't voted Labour since the 90s either.

 

An example of British culture being portrayed as "worthless" would be the BBC's "white season" from a few years ago where all working-class white characters were portrayed as stupid/uneducated etc and were all "taught something about themselves" through interaction with ethnic minorities. Patronising middle-class Guardianista bullshit, and guess what? We had to pay for it, whether we wanted to or not.

 

Surely it depends on what you think constitutes white working class. If they were shown to be educated, would you still think of them as working class?

 

In fairness, the only pieces that I remember about the White Season were 'BNP wives' (which was fairly harshly judged by a lot of viewers, but didn't seem to be representing anything other than the voices of the people involved) and a drama about a young girl converting to Islam in Bradford (can't remember the title), in which the only character explicitly shown to be stupid was also a violent and casual racist.

 

Class is a really difficult thing to define, especially in the modern age. The drama I mentioned showed people in a fairly specifically deprived area, and I think of that as being different to 'working class'. While I'm no fan of his as a politician, I did think John Prescott's documentary about class was pretty well done.

 

Just as we all are forced to subsidise the Guardian through the public sector and BBC recruitment ads placed in it. And guess what? Working-class British people are almost entirely excluded from those sectors of employment.

 

I know people who work in the BBC, and I spent years working in the public sector myself. I've not seen any evidence of working-class British people being 'almost entirely excluded'. Unless you mean in the sense that they lack the qualifications for skilled work, but complaining that unqualified people are excluded from jobs which they're not qualified for would be a remarkably stupid argument, so I don't think that's what you're saying.

 

I would count descendents from the Saxons, Vikings or Celts as being indigenous Brits. If they want to say otherwise, it's up to them.

 

I'm pretty sure that most people who say that there are almost no indigenous Brits wouldn't class those as being indigenous. That's kind of the point of being indigenous.

 

If you go back far enough, everyone is descended from immigrants, except for some people in whichever African country life was first born. But that would mean that such people as Aborigines, Native Americans, Palestinians etc had no right to their land any more than white Europeans do. Which I don't believe liberals would find it easy to accept.

 

There's no hypocrisy there, though. Nobody is saying that Aborigines etc should be allowed EXCLUSIVE rights to their countries, and nor are people saying that anywhere else.

[Kenny McBride]

Are you seriously saying that white people are excluded from the BBC? REALLY? Count the black and brown faces hosting any show on BBC radio or TV. If you take out the Asian Network, it's overwhelmingly white and middle class. I'd be willing to bet that apart from the people cleaning the buildings, the BBC is not as ethnically diverse as any of the areas it has its biggest offices.

[The King Of Swing]

And yet the same people will still blindly support Labour in everything they do and claim that they are the party for the normal working-class Briton today. Unbelievable really. It's got to the stage where it is worse than religion. No evidence will ever be good enough to change their mind.

What people? Are you talking about anyone who posts in this thread?

I don't know. Are there any Labour voters in here? Or people in favour of mass immigration?

 

I'm working class and voted Labout in 1997 and have not voted for them since and I'm in favour of immigration if done right.

 

The people who blindly vote Labour are no different to the people who blindly vote Conservative, the morons who will continue to vote Lib Dem even after they sold out or even the people who vote BNP well the ones who could stay out of the pub long enough to vote for Big Nick's crew anyway.

[Chris B]

Are you seriously saying that white people are excluded from the BBC? REALLY? Count the black and brown faces hosting any show on BBC radio or TV. If you take out the Asian Network, it's overwhelmingly white and middle class. I'd be willing to bet that apart from the people cleaning the buildings, the BBC is not as ethnically diverse as any of the areas it has its biggest offices.

 

He specified working class, though. He's muddying the waters by linking racism and class-ism.

[Kenny McBride]

Well then it's fundamentally racist. Excluding working class people means excluding a greater proportion of ethnic minorites than white people, since the higher up the social scale you go, the whiter it gets.

 

Actually, I do believe that the BBC has an irritatingly liberal slant to to it on most subjects, but that's a quite different issue from whether or not it's anti-white or anti-working class.

[Happ Hazzard]

The BBC has employment quotas to fulfill for just about every demographic, but working-class white men are not included in any kind of quota for the BBC or any other institiutions that I know of. Unless you count prisons or the armed forces.

[Chris B]

The BBC has employment quotas to fulfill for just about every demographic, but working-class white men are not included in any kind of quota for the BBC or any other institiutions that I know of. Unless you count prisons or the armed forces.

 

That doesn't mean that they're excluded. Quotas almost never mean that they have to overwhelmingly employ a certain kind of person.

 

Also, is 'class' EVER actually on anyone's employment quotas?

[Loki]

Well then it's fundamentally racist. Excluding working class people means excluding a greater proportion of ethnic minorites than white people, since the higher up the social scale you go, the whiter it gets.

 

Actually, I do believe that the BBC has an irritatingly liberal slant to to it on most subjects, but that's a quite different issue from whether or not it's anti-white or anti-working class.

 

If it's any consolation, Kenny, the BBC is routinely accused of being pro-liberal, pro-conservative and pro-labour. So it's probably getting the balance about right, it's just whenever the BBC portrays an opinion with which you disagree, it's natural to feel it's therefore biased against your beliefs.

[JNLister]

Just as we all are forced to subsidise the Guardian through the public sector and BBC recruitment ads placed in it.

 

Paying for an advertisement in a newspaper is a commercial transaction. It's the complete opposite of subsidization.

[Kiffy]

Just as we all are forced to subsidise the Guardian through the public sector and BBC recruitment ads placed in it.

 

Paying for an advertisement in a newspaper is a commercial transaction. It's the complete opposite of subsidization.

 

Point being we pay the license fee, which bbc then uses in part to advertise in the guardian. It's not quite the opposite of subsidization, but it's a pretty fucking tenuous description of it. To be fair.