Scotland and Wales have their own political structures, and there are differences in terms of things like prescription charges, education fees etc Yet England is denied its own identity, its own referendum, allusions to it made by Gordon Brown were disguised as being about Britishness, when in fact the source was George Orwell talking about England. I do not understand how and why England is denied such a thing, what I do understand is that unless perceptions change, then we continue the juvenile assertion that the white working class is essentially racist, which isn't true, we allow the likes of Nick Griffin to co-opt the feeling and identity for his own gross purposes.
We are, as a people, tolerant and civic-minded, and the notion of being English is not something to be ashamed of, but certainly we need to ascertain whether or not we want to change the debate from something juvenile and dissonant to something inclusive and positive - the immigration debate speaks right to the heart of this, even as I sometimes have proved to me, that it is merely an acceptable way to promote racism without being overt about it. And the media distortion over that, is something that I see time and again.
You can be English and Progressive, you need no other permission than your own.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
Things To Be Scared Of
You should be more scared of the press than the government. Ask Winston Silcott. Ask anyone who has been the subject of stories that had no basis in truth what it is like to have them rip into your life.
The press in this country are an uneasy amalgam of incompetence, laziness, malevolence and expediency. The lies that get propagated, the common assertions that are simply prejudices enforced and enflamed, they ruin people, or betray their memory - I wonder if Mark Speight might have found the will to live had the papers not dug through his life whilst his girlfriend was barely cold. I wonder if there is a child dead or crippled because their parents trusted the stories, unable to detect and disassemble the lies contained therein. There are many whose lives have been damaged by the agendas of daily newspapers.
The paranoia and fear that these papers engender has done more to prevent bold leadership decisions, (and it is important to define these apart from expressing public opinion) We hear how Britain is broken, yet never ask why the cheerleaders for the policies that ruined this country for anyone who earns less than 50k are still on the sidelines, no matter what team is on the field.
If only we had a PCC that had balls, or libel laws that were actually sensibly implemented and enforced.
The press in this country are an uneasy amalgam of incompetence, laziness, malevolence and expediency. The lies that get propagated, the common assertions that are simply prejudices enforced and enflamed, they ruin people, or betray their memory - I wonder if Mark Speight might have found the will to live had the papers not dug through his life whilst his girlfriend was barely cold. I wonder if there is a child dead or crippled because their parents trusted the stories, unable to detect and disassemble the lies contained therein. There are many whose lives have been damaged by the agendas of daily newspapers.
The paranoia and fear that these papers engender has done more to prevent bold leadership decisions, (and it is important to define these apart from expressing public opinion) We hear how Britain is broken, yet never ask why the cheerleaders for the policies that ruined this country for anyone who earns less than 50k are still on the sidelines, no matter what team is on the field.
If only we had a PCC that had balls, or libel laws that were actually sensibly implemented and enforced.
Rise of the Idiots
The idiot is international, it recognises any and all flags, particularly if it can be used to justify the causal racism that is the stock and trade of the newspapers, and of the thriving network of jokes by text that seem to clog up my phone, in particular. My fellow countrymen, some of them are closeted racists, and the sad thing is, its not even an informed or considered opinion that they hold.
Our migration and asylum intake figures are far lower than a great many countries, yet people still persist in perpetuating this tide of immigration still exists, fuelled by the papers, the failure of housing and medical allocation and their own refusal to see that they are being lied to and manipulated, kept afraid, because a nation afraid is a nation that does as it is told.
Your common-variety racism can be pointed out, most people find it distasteful and I know that it is not a set of opinions that would be easily voiced in public, there is still that coyness about outing onself in that regard, but it is the insidious, causal racism that bothers me more. It is like beating up fog, a lie that gets repeated so often that it bears the veracity of truth. I am not racist, consciously but growing up where I did, there is that taint, but it is something that I have innoculated myself against, through education, through acquaintance, through knowledge.
The Facebook groups, the people who say that they will vote for BNP, but aren't racist, the people who pass on the jokes about 'Pakis and Niggers', they will say that they are not racist, but they are reinforcing racist ideas through repetition and through vertical integration. Yet these people deny the essential truth of what makes our country great - its diversity, its ability to blend and celebrate disparate cultures yet still remaining essentially England.
The arguments about the housing being allocated are untrue - essentially the Homeselect scheme is not streamed in the same way that those seeking asylum are housed, in truth, a great many asylum seekers are housed in detention centres. The reason why the waiting lists are so long, is that huge amounts of council properties were sold off to tenants, I am sat in one right now, I didnt consider my social responsibility, I was twenty and about to start a new career in the Navy, I wanted somewhere permanent to call home. This isnt an investment opportunity, this is my home. But all of those houses have, by necessity, made for a much smaller pool of resources to allocate, so its not the fault of people coming here, for the most part, to either work as is their right under the EU, as they have jobs and rent privately.
They are taking all our jobs - No they are not, they are taking whatever work is available, seeing as we enjoy a higher standard of living than some of our EU counterparts, they come here to work, some of them are exploited, paid less than the legal minimum wage or treated as indentured servants because of a language barrier. Its you who are being exploited, causal racist, by the businessmen and landowners who would prefer to pay EU workers because it is cheaper, not because of racism or cultural concerns, but because it costs less! The labour market being made 'flexible' in order to allow for free movement of manpower, the destruction of our manufacturing base, none of those were invented and implemented by anyone other than white men and women who wanted to keep what they had swindled and keep on doing it.
Martin Luther King was most famous for his work on racism, but I think that what got him killed was his desire to find common cause with the truth that poverty transcends race, and that white and black poor people have more in common than you might think, and it is that dissonance, that exploitation that carries on today, denied by idiots, propagated by those intelligent enough to know its untruth, but desperate to maintain their own wealth and influence.
Our migration and asylum intake figures are far lower than a great many countries, yet people still persist in perpetuating this tide of immigration still exists, fuelled by the papers, the failure of housing and medical allocation and their own refusal to see that they are being lied to and manipulated, kept afraid, because a nation afraid is a nation that does as it is told.
Your common-variety racism can be pointed out, most people find it distasteful and I know that it is not a set of opinions that would be easily voiced in public, there is still that coyness about outing onself in that regard, but it is the insidious, causal racism that bothers me more. It is like beating up fog, a lie that gets repeated so often that it bears the veracity of truth. I am not racist, consciously but growing up where I did, there is that taint, but it is something that I have innoculated myself against, through education, through acquaintance, through knowledge.
The Facebook groups, the people who say that they will vote for BNP, but aren't racist, the people who pass on the jokes about 'Pakis and Niggers', they will say that they are not racist, but they are reinforcing racist ideas through repetition and through vertical integration. Yet these people deny the essential truth of what makes our country great - its diversity, its ability to blend and celebrate disparate cultures yet still remaining essentially England.
The arguments about the housing being allocated are untrue - essentially the Homeselect scheme is not streamed in the same way that those seeking asylum are housed, in truth, a great many asylum seekers are housed in detention centres. The reason why the waiting lists are so long, is that huge amounts of council properties were sold off to tenants, I am sat in one right now, I didnt consider my social responsibility, I was twenty and about to start a new career in the Navy, I wanted somewhere permanent to call home. This isnt an investment opportunity, this is my home. But all of those houses have, by necessity, made for a much smaller pool of resources to allocate, so its not the fault of people coming here, for the most part, to either work as is their right under the EU, as they have jobs and rent privately.
They are taking all our jobs - No they are not, they are taking whatever work is available, seeing as we enjoy a higher standard of living than some of our EU counterparts, they come here to work, some of them are exploited, paid less than the legal minimum wage or treated as indentured servants because of a language barrier. Its you who are being exploited, causal racist, by the businessmen and landowners who would prefer to pay EU workers because it is cheaper, not because of racism or cultural concerns, but because it costs less! The labour market being made 'flexible' in order to allow for free movement of manpower, the destruction of our manufacturing base, none of those were invented and implemented by anyone other than white men and women who wanted to keep what they had swindled and keep on doing it.
Martin Luther King was most famous for his work on racism, but I think that what got him killed was his desire to find common cause with the truth that poverty transcends race, and that white and black poor people have more in common than you might think, and it is that dissonance, that exploitation that carries on today, denied by idiots, propagated by those intelligent enough to know its untruth, but desperate to maintain their own wealth and influence.
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