Anyway. Thank you for your kind birthday wishes![]()
Anyway. Thank you for your kind birthday wishes![]()
Hap birth wwtl@whl
You used to be everything to me
Now you're tired of fighting
ET finally going home... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1rrglw1nelo
So this guy's tribute is a massive load of unnecessary pollution - great
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxee5rlen55o
I'm trying not to become one of those old racialists, but have to say when I'm dropping the girl off at preschool it does seem that I'm in the minority in terms of having English as a first language.
While I think NQ is silly bristling at how England has changed - countries and societies always change over time - I have to say I can see how the pace of change over the last 50 years has alarmed people.
Some years ago a comedian made be laugh when he said you know you're getting old when you start looking at Daily Mail headlines and think "they're right, there are too many"![]()
My wife is a teacher and has seen that change first hand over the past 15 years at her school where kids from immigrant families are close to forming the majority in some year groups. It also has to be said that her school has also massively improved its Ofsted rating and produced a lot of high achievers.
I don’t think we instinctively like seeing people who don’t look like us in places we recognise, .
We like what seems familiar
There were a Lot of black and Asian kids on the train this morning that didn’t leave the station this morning, This didn’t bother me but the difference I guess was my experience was more than just visual (although I think the fact that they were all quite tidily dressed in school uniforms helped) ….these kids were actually quite polite given they were justifiably worried that they’d miss their exam (long story, basically someone decided to do suicide by train further up the line and it fucked services up).
But get on the bus back home (fuck it not waiting around for hours) and two thuggish looking brown boys get off first and this immediately makes me slightly uncomfortable.
Would I have felt more comfortable if they were white?, possibly. But yeah there were fewer kids that looked like this when I was of school age.
Putting this into the political realm and Farage calling this election the immigration election, the likelihood is that most people who will vote for Reform won’t have had a directly negative experience with a person of colour.
This is not to say it’s a completely false assumption to say that there hasn’t been a lot of downsides to immigration and especially pockets of ghettoisation of the south Asian Muslim variety.
But I think when you see more people that don’t look like you where you live and combine that with them dressing in a way that either looks unfamiliar or threatening…it’s going to set the amgydala off.
In a sane and rational word we’d deal with the actuality of the immigration issue - but it’s kind of easier to short cut and go straight for that visceral reaction to fear of difference.
Last edited by HCZ_Reborn; 11-06-2024 at 01:25 PM.