General Chat

Gas lighting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErtPOyeMqf4

good

Double good - if I'm on the right track. :-S

Quarantine is better than a test upon arrival because a test would not reveal whether one is incubating the virus so the spread could continue.

I'd prefer it if quarantine could have been arranged to be 'policed' 24/7 rather than randomly though. You just can't trust some people.

Rollo, if I'm on the wrong track, tell me as my mind may not be as sharp as a tack today!

poss not
The fascists are all over Parliament as I write

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/jun/13/uk-news-live-patel-warns-of-health-and-legal-risks-at-blm-protests-coronavirus

If you play the clip it relates to a dystopian novel (the man in the high castle) written by Philp K Dick (Blade Runner, Minority Report). produced as a series on Amazon. It is about a US defeat in 1945 and the rise of the Axis powers which ensued.

The term "gas lighting" means taking on other people's problems as your own. Pattel claimed in the Commons that because she was called a p-ki at school she undeerstood today's BAME problem. In a pig's eye she does.

Quarantine of incoming people at the border in case of an epidemic/pandemic only works when the number of people is low - generally at the start or end of the affair. Not at all right now with "R" not short of 1.

Danny Wallace ????
?
@dannywallace

I don't understand.

- Police are protecting a statue from people who want to protect it from people who don't seem to be there.
- Meanwhile the man who stopped us all from having to salute like a Nazi is celebrated by men doing Nazi salutes.

I mean, it's very 2020, but still.
23.3K
12:54 PM - Jun 13, 2020

I am quite a bit older than Priti, but I grew up in South West London and that is where I learnt about the brutality to a certain race - mentioned by Rollo & Priti.

So I believe that people of that heritage DO know what the problem is.

I had not played the clip, Rollo. Having now done so, it reminds me more of Trump than of anyone else.

By the way, Cuomo did not mince his words the other day. I do wish he would run for the presidency with Obama backing him and not Biden because I am ever so fearful that against Biden, Trump will get in for a further term. If that happens will his head ever fit through the White House door?

I have to admit that I had never thought of Patel as one who would be put off her stride by any form of slur or bullying whatsoever but I can not know the experiences of anyone in the BAME group. If she has managed to ignore school slurs, good luck to her; she must have a lot of grit or a wonderful propensity to ignore people.

Incidentally, the Mayor of Middlesbrough has had some stick for speaking about the young, disaffected in Middlesbrough whose deprivations lead them to a downward trajectory. He seems to have been taken to task for saying that he sees deprivation rather than ethnicity as a major concern. His concern is for the deprived, poor, young, (mainly but not wholly) white of his 'parish'.

He has spoken as he found; it does not indicate that he is unaware of the problems facing BAME groups. It does not mean that he is oblivious to what goes on but rather they are not the major deprived group in his town. I don't see how people can be so narrow-minded as to believe everyone should support their one particular cause over all others.

Do you ever get the feeling that the world is becoming less tolerant?

'Democracy is a method of handling differences without bloodshed'.

The world never was very tolerant but it was just about possible in the 50s and 60s to grow up fairly well shielded from the truth about which we could not have done very much anyway. If you were lucky it was a world of Swallows & Amazons, Hornby trains, dolls houses and Palm Beach bicycles, school lessons about a world which would be vanished by the time the children were 20. The teachers though knew about the lack of toleration and fear having lived through it.

I suppose the dam burst with Powell's speech in Birmingham 1968 after which pleading ignorance would hardly fly. The problem today is that attitudes have not moved anywhere near as much as might have been hoped especially amongst top politicians (of all parties) , the police and the teaching profession. A real effort to change only got off the ground 20 years ago which is not long against 300 years of discrimination. We certainly don't have another 300 years to spare. Meanwhile PP is trying to bring the kafala system of slavery into the UK.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pafCuwBBVM8

I’ve experienced racism more than once yet I don’t dislike the UK for that. I blame a minority of backward individuals not the country as a whole. Why should one persons experience of racism hurt less than anyone else’s. Priti Patel was in my opinion right to speak of her experience and it may help some to hear others have experienced the same.

The 50's and 60's without toleration?

My early years were spent in Rusholme, just on the fringe of Moss Side, in Manchester.

Not sure which group discriminated against which but the many Irish, and one Iranian, families in the street would not let their children play with us 'others'

There was also a certain amount of name calling amongst us 'others' over our Religious affiliations. Possible this was caused by osmosis from our parents and could explain why the divide existed between the children

I know exactly what you mean, Alan.

I was born and spent the first few years of my life in inner-city Liverpool but moved to a village in another region when I started school. This was before the Toxteth riots and, although there was colour prejudice, at that time religion seemed to be the biggest divide for most of Liverpool.

From the wonderful variety of life and colours in Liverpool where my family was religiously mixed, to a village where there was barely another colour it was amazing to find that the children called each other 'proddy dogs' or 'Irish cats'. It seemed as though some people needed a weapon to use against each other and, as there was barely anything else, they had opted for religion. This was the fifties, way after the influx from Ireland hit the region but that prejudice had been brought across and passed down from great-grandparents to grandparents to parents to children. I was just surprised that I was never picked on as a 'townie' (but perhaps I was adept at adopting an accent, as are a lot of children).

I spent much of the summer holidays back in Liverpool and I recall an occasion when my Gran told my cousin and me (cousin was RC, by the way) to be careful which way we walked into town. That in itself was strange because I find it difficult to think of anything prejudicial about my Grandmother's behaviour apart from this once but I am not privvy to all of her experiences in life, only a few. I was about 13 at the time and, like all curious teenagers, we went miles out of our way, skirting around the city centre to walk right through that district (Toxteth) rather than take a quicker, more direct route.

Now our family is even more mixed - not only a variety of religions but a mix of colours and race - we still rub along happily. I wish everyone could do the same. LIfe is too short so why spoil your own and anyone else's by being so short-sighted as to be eaten up by prejudice. When one is in a dire situation would he/she turn down a helping hand by a fireman, nurse, doctor, policeman or anyone of another religious persuasion or colour? I think not, any more than those who offer a helping hand would think twice about the religion or colour of those in need.

The current marches and protests seem, to me, to do nothing to help as violence is apparent in both sides. What could start out as a peaceful demonstration can quickly be hijacked by those out to cause more of a civil disturbance. I have no idea of the answer but I think that those in authority would like to retain status quo rather than relinquish a jot of power (and I am not talking about the police here because they are jammed in the middle).

Oh that all factions of society were more tolerant but I still think we have a way to go and, at the moment, I can't think of anyone with a fair solution for an equitable society.

At school we weren’t allowed to discuss other faiths and as teenagers we were told to keep to our own faith. Although if you had money you could mix when young. None of this stopped me being shocked at the brutal beating up of young men from a certain other background ( before Enoch Powell’s speech).
Nor will it stop me being grateful if someone offers to pray to their own gods if I am in need of their prayer.

I agree, names, if any of the Quakers, Buddhists, C of Es or RCs (Edit: and Methodists, so perhaps I ought to have just written Protestants) in my family or others were to offer up a prayer for me and mine, I'd be delighted.

In one of my last part-time jobs (three jobs at the same place, employed by three different entities made one full-time post), the wind-down-easily to retirement one, I had a boss who used to bless me every time we parted. I was always happy about it but at that time, I have to say, I was doing the kind of work that put the heebie jeebies into some of my colleagues; indeed, the person doing it before me hated doing it - or so I was told when a senior colleague asked how I coped with it. With a pinch of salt he guessed. ;-)

I'd never turn down a blessing or a prayer.

(Oops, missed out the non-believers and we have some of those I hold dear.)