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Agreed, its always the local kids hanging out in gangs being wee arseholes, where as i can only really think of one or two "immigrant" kids round my bit acting like that
That's one of the most honest, straight up posts I've read in a while - fair play to you, and for what it's worth it never crossed my mind that you were voting BNP.
People tend to have a predilection for simple answers, or at least being able to neatly tie-up their opinions on a matter. It's something I've been egregiously guilty of from time-to-time, and it's a hard mould to break out of. It seems it's natural to be a bit uncomfortable with uncertainty, and this can be extended to positions on political issues. I think people who vote BNP get a bit blinded by emotional responses to situations they don't fully understand, however, I don't suspect that if you sat down every BNP voter that you get a 100% stream of nonsensical, irate racism.
I know I've felt strongly one-way on issues before, so strongly in fact that I suspect it'd affect the way I'd vote, only to find that when someone with an opposing opinion has calmly and sympathetically explained why they hold a differing opinion, I've had no option but to change my mind - reasoned, calm logic is very difficult to rail against. Aladdin finds it easier to write-off all people who have voted BNP as racist and/or stupefyingly ignorant. I'm not so sure it's that simple. I guess I just find it hard to see how polemic is likely to change anyone's mind, and suspect in the end it just plays into the hands of the nasty parties, like the BNP.
Sorry, are you expecting us to believe that the head of a school allowed the teaching in a class to be done by a 13-y-o? Breaching several employment laws?
That isn't immigrations fault, is it?
So, the argument there is that a family in a house should get priority over homeless refugees? A family in a free country without real oppression should be given priority over a family from a war torn, oppressive nation?
Why, because they wanted something bigger?
Yes I can but rather than pander to that sense of resentment, it's our job to point out that it's wrong. Someone assumed a level of entitlement that they actually didn't have. Then blame immigrants because they didn't get it.
As you say, some fault here could be aimed at the Govt for not building more social housing, but then there's also personal responsibility. One of the reasons I only have three children is because I cannot afford more, including housing costs.
14% of UK prison population is foreign nationals.
84% of British born prisoners are white
Now, how does that fit with your assertion?
That's 1 prison with a population of approximately 1500. I've visited prisons, and there are far more British people in them, as MOK has said, 85%.
I did say that Wormwood Scrubs might not be representative. Even so, 14% taken over the entire prison population is still a substantial number against the number of immigrants in general.
If you want to prove or disprove lyric's throwaway comments, then you need to compare the percentage of prisoners from a certain "group" with the percentage of said "group" amongst the general population.
If 85% of the prison population are white, and 85% of the general population are also white, then this is proportionate, not disproportionate.
There are of course certain communities that are disproportionately over represented in prisons, and the reasons for this need to be acknowledged and countered, because if the reasons aren’t acknowledged by the mainstream, then this creates a vacuum which the likes of the BNP will quite happily fill.
Hence why the ethnic background in prisons does not exactly match the ethnic background of the population at large.
There is no more to it than that, really.
I agree with you on the issue of housing. I don't see why people who have access to contraception should have less responsibility for the size of their family than those who probably don't. As far as I know councils do have some kind of regulation on the number of kids who can share a bedroom and things like that, but it's often ignored because there is a shortage of social housing. I think that is understandable, but I think the resentment is because there was a time when people were given council houses that were appropriate for their family, before people started buying them and the government stopped building them, so people just started to expect them.
The reason I think it's important that BNP voters can express their opinions is that, apart from the fact that we live in a country with free speech, it enables discussion about the full, complex situation. I think any opinion or emotion that you don't discuss but often think about could change and adapt until it has no basis in reality. If people are able to say "I don't like immigration because..." you can discuss the reason, rather than immigration itself, which is clearly complex and everyone has different experiences of.
To be honest, I hope you don't believe that I used to go into work with my mum at 13, because if you did it wouldn't suggest good things about the modern education system. She was a teaching assistant by the way, so I was helping some 8 year olds with their reading and basic maths, I wasn't teaching a class or anything. The head teacher had no choice about accepting the child from Iraq and wanting to keep exam results as a high as possible. The child did work really hard though, harder than anyone else in the school, and my mum loved teaching him, he was never to blame for the situation and deserved all the extra help he recieved, but so did the other kids.
I don't think "thick" is a good way to describe anyone in a discussion, and in this case it's too simplistic. I'll admit I didn't look at immigration in an intellectual sense when I was younger, but I didn't come from an intellectual background. I don't think it's the same as being thick. The people I grew up with were intelligent, but not really intellectual or academic. Things like newspapers, discussion and the internet weren't part of their lives and, at the risk of sounding stupid, it's diffiuclt to analyse things without being shown how to.
But if I don't vote BNP what else can I vote to save our country from becoming less British?
What concrete evidence do you have that supports your belief that "our country is becoming less British?"
What's your definition of Britishness, and what actual, real life examples can you point to which show that immigration is undermining this?
You see, I think one very important and fundamental element of "Britishness" is toleration, and so a vote for the BNP is a vote which undermines one very important British value.
"fish, chips, cup 'o tea, bad food, worse weather, Mary fucking Poppins..."
And the best thing about that definition is that if the evil immigrations do destroy our culture we can move to Spain, eat fish and chips, watch a mary poppins dvd, drink tea and complain that it's too hot.
I'm always reading about British history, and I find "Britishness" difficult to define. If I had to come up with something it would be being both neophobic and obsessed with anything new and shiny. The society we have now is a product of centuries of immigration anyway.
Lyric, if there's anything about being British that you value, there's nothing to stop you keeping it a part of your life. I'm fairly certain that not every Brit would value it as much as you do, which isn't to say it's not important, it just means that everyone is different.
Her comment was that the prison is "full" of immigrants.
That only 14% of the prison population is foreign national suggests that comment to be bollocks no matter how you try to spin it.
you missed out seeing a queue and getting in it
Excellent idea ... and don't forget France, where the number of immigrant Brits with poor language skills is now causing problems in schools. In northern France, particularly, there have been local protests from parents of secondary school children ("collège") who feel their own kids are being held back by recently arrived British children. Or what about the Dordoigne, where Brits have taken over whole villages, set up branches of Crabtree & Evelyn and Indian restaurants, and play cricket on the green. Idyllic, I'm sure ... unless you are French!
Whilst the policies and various antics of the BNP have been held up to the court of public opinion and have been verily smote to the ground, the question that virtually no-one is asking is why far-right parties such as the BNP are getting the support that they are (albeit not enough to translate into a parliamentary seat, though under PR they would have won a handful...).
Surely, behind the grotesque tragi-comedy that is the Nick Griffin show, there is a more disturbing trend, not of people becoming more racist or intolerant, but of people becoming so disillusioned, betrayed and sold-down-the-river by the conventional parties, especially the Labour party, that they feel that the only body that best represents their needs are a bunch of right-wing loons.
The London seat of Barking (where Griffin stood) is a great example of this trend. For those not au fait with London, Barking is in the East End (think Eastenders, West Ham, apples and pears etc. etc.) and is traditionally a white-working class area, not desperately gentrified but with a strong sense of community.
Under the Labour government, it has tended to be the more deprived areas like Barking that have received the influx of immigration, so people will naturally feel threatened as they see the make-up of their community change. There is the perception (though I can't find any hard evidence to back this up - merely the vox pops on a couple of articles here and here) that the system is deliberately skewed in favour of non-white, non-British.
Really interesting is this article which confirms my suspicions that a hefty wadge of BNP support used to be Labour supporters who have switched as they feel that the modern Labour party no longer represents the views of the common man. The expenses scandal can't have helped either.
I'm not saying that they're right, nor am I saying that I agree with anything that the BNP preaches. Nor do I agree that Lyric is a great barometer for public feeling (she's admitted her family are benefit swindlers ffs). However, I do know this: I can't possibly hope to understand the attraction to the BNP because my background is completely different to those attracted to them - I'm painfully middle class (albeit a second-generation immigrant myself), privately educated and grew up in lovely rural Hampshire. However, were I working class from Barking, Dagenham, Bradford or anywhere else where the BNP has garnered a large amount of support, I'm sure I would see things in a whole different light.
I spent most of my formative years in Luton - a town with a diverse cross-section of residents. It’s been the focus of a bunch of race/terror-related furore over the past couple of years: the EDL being founded and various high-profile Muslim protests.
Luton is struggling, ex-manufacturing town with high levels of unemployment and low levels of good education. Sections of the town have been almost been partitioned of as being exclusively Pakistani, Indian, Caribbean or largely unemployed white, council estates. Its diverse residents, particularly the younger generations, are very insular in a lot of respects, and you sense a kind of uneasy truce lies over the town, broken once or twice a year by overtly race-related scuffles.
Having grown up and been educated in Luton, it’s pretty easy to see why people develop views like those associated with the BNP. I tend to think of people’s direct, personal experiences as a keyhole though which they experience a small slice of life. Unfortunately, if Luton is the keyhole through which you view life, and you’re not conscious of how what you’re looking at is part of a bigger picture – as Luton’s educational system is prone to leave you – then it’s exceptionally easy to come out with some fairly extreme views that seem to be reasonably backed up by your direct experience.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2010/05/british_jobs_for_foreign_worke.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2010/04/immigration_by_numbers.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2010/05/thinking_cap.html
As far as bnp racism is conserned, well in simple words they are! @lyric please read the definition of racism.
First, as in, top priority.
And we couldn't live there if we wanted to - they all come over here!
In what way aren't you?
I'm sorry, but that comment just shows a level of ignorance and stupidity.
There are 6 billion people in the world, there are over 140 different countries. You can live in any of them. You don't, so why does it matter what happens in those other countries?
The world has billions of people. They wouldn't all fit here.
In almsot every way I can think of, Brits do come first. The main ones I can think of are education and contraception. Most of the time they are the only things you need to control and improve your life.
When people say that Brits "should come first" they usually mean they should have things when they want it. They think they have the right to mess about at school than have a free course in a topic of their choice when they decide they'll put the effort in, while there are people in the world who would give anything for even one year of education.
The point being made was that immigration has always been an issue with some political classes and it isn't just a recent concern.
By the way, my quote comes from 1933. After Hitler's election, when the facist supporting Daily Mail was complaining about the jewish migration which was underway.
Estimates have it at approx 40,000. A further 50,000 from other countires but Italy and Poland mainly.
Why no membership drives for non-white persons?
Why no public change of policy?
You cannot control other persons' thoughts/feelings/attitudes. People won't change their thinking until the BNP persuades people to change.