I'm a NEO CON!!
polycounter lvl 19
well not really, but it's the first time in my life where I've heard a Tory make any sense at all:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4740633.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4740633.stm
Replies
I hope the British see through his thin veneer of hate.
"Mr Phillips said all citizens should "assert a core of Britishness"."
and what would that be? Eating curries and having a fight?
i think the key words are without integrating into society. don't settle/move here and act like this is [whatever country] and not England. i don't think he means everyone that moves to the UK should drop their culture completely. nor should they only hold onto their original culture and forsake the culture of England. they should accept both, not one or the other.
not that i think he is right or wrong, or wheter or not i agree, i'm just saying that is what i think he is trying to say.
Honestly, try living in London, you'll see sense in this nutter.
being multicultural is fine, just remember that London (population over 7 million) is over 50% non-english born. Again that's fine! good luck to 'em. (population used to be over 8 million in 1950)
However next time you're in the shop trying to buy something, just remember that the staff don't speak english, couldn't give a fuck and look like they would rather spit on your grave than take your money.
Asherr that's exactly what he's waffling on about. People should be made to interact with society when they come to england, not setup microcosms that reject british ways. All pakistanis are still required to travel back to pakistan to get married, they never make a single effort to intergrate properly. Thats madness.
This guy probably wants to keep people in detention centers until they can pour a cup of tea and talk fluently about criket! At least people should be given free english lessons or something. In america people have to swear alligence to the flag, in england people just get given a council house.
If it`s `neo` to criticise that... then hand me my Jack boots, and call me Klauss.
The whole "it's grim up north" is a cover!
Our problem in the U.S is with illegal immigrants. I honestly cannot stand it when foreign people won't learn our language. If you live in the U.S, you had better damn well learn english! If I moved to France or something, I'd sure as hell learn french. But don't get me wrong. I'm not saying they should ONLY speak english. But they surely need to communicate. And sheesh, don't get me started on the tax breaks that these 'ilegals' get.....
/rant
I personally think all language based school should be scrapped, what good do they do?
I don't see it as hating or anything like that, just good hard sense.
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And ministers should consider scraping the Human Rights Act if it stopped them from making Britain as safe as possible.
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Now this sounds real bad (even though I don't know exactly what that the UK's human rights act is).
Anyways, the general idea that there needs to be more integration is definitly true. Here in Germany we also have lots of problems with (mostly) Turkish parallel societies.
There should be at least something like they have in the Netherlands, where everyone is required to do a 2 weeks language course on arrival.
Edit: I also think that there should be an active immigration policy, where you actually try to get the smart people of these countries to immigrate (ok, this could be bad for these countries, because of the braindrain, but still). This way you wouldn't just have the social and economic drop-outs from these cultures (which failed to integrate in their homecountries already... don't count war victimes to these though, they tent to either go back, or integrate well).
My basic idea behind this is, that these 'smarter' people would mediate the cultural society of these immigrants, and prevent radical accumulation.
Just like with natives... imagine to have all the native social and economic drop-outs accumulated in one place, and no real exchange with the rest of society (because of language or in this case other kinds of barriers).
You actually see this in reality happen in parts of rural (former) eastern Germany, where everyone who could has left already because there are no jobs, and the rest is becoming more and more radical (in this case NeoNazis).
There should be at least something like they have in the Netherlands, where everyone is required to do a 2 weeks language course on arrival.
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U.S should follow suite as well. That sounds like a plan.
If you move to a new country it's disrespectful to not try and integrate, but the truth is everyone does it, most especially westerners. I'm not just talking about the folk who work there for 2 years and leave, I'm talking about families 2 generations or longer that i knew in Singapore.
There is the American Club, and the Tanglin Club (british version) These places are safe havens for westerners. The westerners don't really associate with locals. The westerners send their kids to American and British schools, there is no integrations whatsoever.
I lived there for 2 years and the only singaporians that I knew were 'washed' and integrated into 'our' microcosm.
So...though I do agree with you hawken, in that it's disrespectful for a community to set up an isolationist policy in a country that welcomes you in...everyone does it.
I don't know how it is in japan, I suspect it's different given it's unique history and being an old school industrialized nation with a very strong pop-culture and identity all its own that is popular outside it's own boarders... but...in the different countries I've visited/lived in I've seen the paturn I described in Singapore.
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don't get me started on the tax breaks that these 'ilegals' get.....
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The illegals get tax breaks because they will work for dirt. It's an eviolved form of slave labour. The illegals in California scrape the bottom of the working class barrel. They wouldn't be 'able' to stay here or bother to come if they couldn't work.
How many illegal CEO's are there? Probably none. How many illegals are there picking strawberries for much less than minimum wage? Tons. If they didn't work the way they do for almost nothing with zero job security than the cost of living in this country would be even higher than it already is. You'd pay more for the services they provide for cheap.
-R
'White Flight'. It's one of those 'Us and Them' problems. A surge of 'non-white' immigrants moves into an area, typically an old suburban area that's past its economic prime. The old-growth population of 'white' people sees the incoming 'non-white' population as invaders, and they move, creating a pocket of inadvertently non-integrated immigrant population.
This happened in a neighborhood near mine, where there are lots of Asian and South Asian immigrants. I had to ask myself, they're afraid of the hardworking, conservative, quiet Asian families? But then, the white folks who flee are pretty much Hank Hill's stupider neighbors. My town is 'Garland', which is unmistakably like 'Arlen'.
Example of the bad: On the other side of town is the White Flight Nightmare neighborhood. My wife had an extended gig as a reading tutor at their school and saw it up close. This is an upper-middle-class development of spacious brick homes maybe fifteen years old. The people who live there are consistently Anglo, but the elementary school of 500+ kids is almost entirely African-American and Hispanic. Literally 99%. You can count the white kids in that school, seriously, on one hand. Where are all the kids of the people who live there? Private schools. The low-income apartment neighborhoods that feed the non-white kids in from the other side became a problem. The bad discipline and behavior problems that you get from low-income families became something that the white parents didn't want to deal with, so they simply extracted their kids. The faculty at that school run it like it was the State Pen, and treat every kid there as a problem waiting to happen. Which is an environment that naturally makes problems happen even more.
Example of the good: On the other hand, my kids' school is undeniably integrated. Strangely integrated, like Sesame Street integrated. My kids have classmates named Taylor, Sierra, Corazon, Duy, Harjat, Rahniyah, and Nnamdi, and I like it that way. Freaking half the world is represented. My kids have to be taught what prejudice is, because it's hard to draw lines of color when everybody is a different one. The teaching staff there is positively charged, dedicated to making the school a happy place, and it works. My wife, in fact, is starting her new teaching career there this week.
So what it comes down to, I think, is give and take. If you are going to allow people into your country, you have to give them the opportunity to integrate, otherwise they'll hole up and be afraid of you angry natives. Try being NICE, instead of a chickenshit paranoid for a fucking change, and see what happens. Sorry if you think I'm being LIBERAL, but if liberal=nice then I guess I am.
I don't know about other countries with more than 2 centuries of history, I'm a mutt of questionably mixed European bloodlines. But the United States is supposed to be a country where you can come on in and be yourself, bring your music and your food and your religion, 'cause we got some of that too. We don't HAVE a national identity, strictly speaking, because it changes every 50 years or so. And a lot of the natives of this half-century were the immigrants of the last. Or perhaps you missed the white-on-white racial violence in 'Gangs of New York'?
Last bit of the rant: While I was at the birthday party of the daughter of our Mexican neighbors, I noticed there were lots of 6-8 year old girls of Mexican background named things like Jennifer, Chelsea, Brianna, and in one striking example, America. Now, if that's not self-integration, what is?
/jzero
If I were thrown into another country knowing this was my new home, I'd respect that and at least speak the language.
Its a two way street.
I think we can logically agree that the first choice is the best to pass on our values. Thats what these people see, and we must accept before we start whining about them integrating into out society.
-R
That being said, I prefer the melitng pot of assimilation to multi-culturalism, bnecause multi-culturalizm balkanizes society.
Scott
Good point. So what about the opposite? Should Westeners integrating into oh say Iran have to go to Iran schools and follow Iran traditions as far as how men and woman are treated?
Its a two way street.
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If an American woman were to visit a middle-eastern land where the culture does not allow women to expose most of their body, I'd hope she would not walk through the markets wearing a halter top. And vise versa, middle eastern women are free to wear as little as they like here in American. Because middle-eastern women are hot...um, i mean, you know...from wearing all those clothes. Simple rule: if you don't like the traditions, don't live there.
Simple rule: if you don't like the traditions, don't live there.
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What if that area provided you more opportunities with finance? Opposite Rule: One should not have to give up their heritage unless its against the law in a new country.* :P
*Sometimes laws are morally meant to be broken (IE Jim Crow laws).
The bloke taking the orders spoke to the chef in turkish. A drunken woman from Dewsbury screams "What are you saying? You're in my country now, talking english you black bastards! What are you saying abut me?"
My guess is that they wern't saying anything about her initially. But hopefully afterwards they spoke in their own language to say "Be careful who you give that Kebab to, thats the one I put glass in"
If you respect your hosts you respect their customs and such.
Respect doesn't always make sense, but tons of things make no sense unless you grow up with them. Most young people have little-to-no respect....and that's to be expected. I don't particularly like ciggarette smoke in my house, so i would expect people not to smoke in my home...but if I was a guest in someone elses home, or car, i wouldn't expect them to follow my rules in their space.
Pretty simple.
-R
personally i found there was lot of problems with cultural tensiuon in and around Leeds. But so far ive not really felt anything bad in scotland , where being english im probly a good target for the odd bit of abuse.
I come from an upper middle class background and i also had to integrate here as well from a spanish speaking nation, and one of the reasons i integrated quite well was in part because of the language programs available when i started school in this country, despite having a shitty educational system in Louisiana they had a remarkable program of assisting non english speaking students integrate well, i went to school learned english so well i didnt even retain an accent, if it wasnt for this i wager i wouldnt speak english as well and my knowledge of english helped me to assist my parents in learning the language too.
then i move to texas, and i go to their schools and they dont have shit in terms of english programs,ive attended well funded and crappily funded schools and they dont have the programs as there were in Louisiana and i would think it be a better idea to have them in texas,children learn language better and they help their parents to learn it too,granted there are people who dont want to integrate at all but youll find that in every country, alot of people are willing to learn but dont have the means.
Also would it kill Americans to learn a second langauge? learning a second language helps you commnicate with others still getting aquainted with the language and help them master it better.
this world is becoming smaller and smaller through communication and frankly i dont see people in this country preparing themselves linguisticly.
im gonna be moving to the netherlands soon and it will be my 2nd time ill have to learn a new language and culture but thankfully they teach the dutch to speak english in school so when i get there and im still learning dutch there will be people who can communicate with me in english and help me correct any type of mistake i make while trying to learn while trying to speak the language which i imagine will make it easier for me to learn dutch.