White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
I lived in Hackney, when I was in the UK. And the country I grew up in was born multi-cultural. I would never vote Reform.
But as a fellow liberal, don’t you worry as I do about the rise of avowedly Islamic political parties in the UK?
I would much rather that people of all religions and none were welcome in all parties.
If Trump and autocracy are the inevitable product of free speech
They are not
They are the inevitable product of disinformation
Possibly. Americans of a persuasion always trot out John Stuart Mill to support their fundamentalist take on free speech. (a) They may misinterpret Mill's arguments. (b) Mill isn't necessarily right. I think a bit of both applies, but it's not the full explanation.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
I lived in Hackney, when I was in the UK. And the country I grew up in was born multi-cultural. I would never vote Reform.
But as a fellow liberal, don’t you worry as I do about the rise of avowedly Islamic political parties in the UK?
I would much rather that people of all religions and none were welcome in all parties.
We'd all rather live in an ideal world, but we don't. You can't wish away difficult issues with idealism.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
I lived in Hackney, when I was in the UK. And the country I grew up in was born multi-cultural. I would never vote Reform.
But as a fellow liberal, don’t you worry as I do about the rise of avowedly Islamic political parties in the UK?
I would much rather that people of all religions and none were welcome in all parties.
We'd all rather live in an ideal world, but we don't. You can't wish away difficult issues with idealism.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
And a huge number of British citizens are non-white, often for several generations. It doesn't make their babies non-British. Take both current and previous Tory leaders for example.
If we are back to only white babies being valid then we are getting into a very bad place.
It sounds like Leon thinks non-white people should be reduced, but also white Irish people should be reduced, which has been tried with some success in British history.
I'm only three-eighths Irish so hopefully I can avoid the cull.
{checks copy of Nuremberg Laws and Nazi racial hierarchies}
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
1500 years?
OK - we see from that that you are keen on the "Anglo-Saxons". But you need to think about the dates a bit more closely. The Anglo-Saxons were non-Christian 1500 years ago.
Or maybe it's just "My Anglo-Saxon, right or wrong"?
As if the territory of the present-day UK was all Anglo-Saxon or all Pagan in 525CE ...
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Those who are encouraging the racists in order to get at one race (usually, but not always, Muslims) should realise that the racists they are emboldening will, if given power, not stop at that one race.
Is anyone here “encouraging the racists”?
Anyone who replies to a post from that Leon, perhaps?
So it's now fascist to speak to Leon then? This is similar to a point I made to Winchy yesterday: you are drawing the bounds of unacceptable behaviour so ridiculously widely that when people are placed outside of it they just shrug.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
This comes back to the failure of our systems and particularly, for want of a better term 'multiculturalism'. Had we followed the Norwegian system of insisting that all new long term settlers adopt Norwegian language and custom, then I think our immigration experience and attitudes would have been very different. As it is we have left it to the individual and, at some point, adopted the idea that advocating British/English culture equates with racism.
Though France is avowedly against "multiculturism" to the point of refusing to keep ethnicity data etc
It's not a matter of "multiculturalism" or not, it's a matter of being welcoming.
Having lived as an immigrant myself (in Australia and New Zealand, possibly the two countries most similar to Britain) I found being a foreigner quite isolating at times. I therefore make a conscious effort to invite immigrant colleagues to dinner. Indeed many years I have had such colleagues for Christmas dinner.
It's a bit difficult to know how else Reeves could have responded, if she was never told anything about the complaint at the time and the bank decided not to take any action about the complaint. The claim about what the "initial stage" of the investigation found - that Reeves "appeared" to have broken the rules - seems to come from a single unidentified source. Isn't it a bit strange that this source, supposedly with "direct knowledge of the probe", couldn't tell the BBC anything about its final outcome, or even whether any conclusion was reached?
It is strange that this anonymous hit job is being pushed by the BBC. I'd expect it of the Mail or Telegraph.
There must be someone fairly senior in the BBC who is pushing this story. They should be named as well as the anonymous source.
If I were Reeves, I would treat it with total disdain.
Going after reporters for reporting things you don’t like?
Have you considered a job at the Trump Whitehouse?
I'm not a Reeves supporter and dislike many of her policies.
But this stinks.
I don't think the leaker is a rival in the Labour Party. It's too much of a coincidence as they would also have to have worked with Reeves in HBOS 15 years ago.
It is more likely that it is a hard core Tory who did work alongside Reeves and has come out with this story, anonymously and unsubstantiated, in order to harm Labour.
Others on here have then made up narratives to support their preferred story of "a thief in cabinet".
The odd thing is that the BBC has lowered its standards by running with this.
I suspect, but don't know, that the BBC reporters concerned think that they are Bob Woodwards. Pathetic.
I see the BBC is on the defensive on this. "However, the BBC has not reported that the case reached a formal conclusion, or that there was disciplinary action."
Not sure it stinks any more than any other politics. Dobbing in Johnson for his parties during lockdown?
The only important questions are, were the allegations true and, if they were, were they serious enough to make the targets position untenable?
In the case of Johnson this seems to be a clear yes to both questions.
In the case of Reeves, I have seen it posted on here and reported in the Times, without apparent challenge, that the whistleblower's claims were found to be substantially true, even if it didn't get to disciplinary action because she left.
So the only question that really then matters is whether they were serious enough to merit removing Reeves from her current position.
I don't know the answer to that one. It is more politics and public mood than a fact based decision.
But to claim it 'stinks' seems to be excusing any sort of bad behaviour no matter how severe simply on the grounds that you don't like whistleblowers.
We don't know that there was bad behaviour.
All we really know is that there is someone with a grudge against Reeves and/or the Labour Party and has made an unsubstantiated claim about events 15 years ago, and this has been taken up by the BBC.
The BBC has spoken to 20 people and seen the report from the preliminary investigation.
It’s not an “unsubstantiated claim”
It wasn't the report from the preliminary investigation. It was the whistle blower's original complaint that the BBC saw.
What did these 20 people say? "Sorry. I don't remember anything about this". Could be anything.
They wouldn’t have published without corroboration. That doesn’t mean she is guilty, but the fact pattern suggests that it was serious enough that there was an investigation (which companies are reluctant to do) and that people remembered it
The trouble is that there seems to be increasingly a feeling that if anyone makes any kind of allegation against anyone, there is almost a presumption that the allegation is true until it is proved to be false. That's not what I was led to believe when I first learned about the rule of law in the dim and distant past.
You're thinking about most criminal law, which generally has the presumption of innocence. (Actually not even all criminal law has the presumption of innocence - in some cases, such as unexplained wealth orders, where the government usually failed to prove its case, rather than upping its game, it reversed the burden of proof, sort of like a five-year-old who can't win fairly.
But civil law has just requires balance of probability - in order words, a 51% likelihood is sufficient. And that's a more logical standard for the court of public opinion. In a criminal trial, the state has the ability to force people to testify, demand evidence, interrogate for hours, etc. and usually has much greater resources than the losers who end up in the dock, so it is right that they are held to a higher standard.
And in the case of Reeves, given the evidence, and her complete lack of any persuasive explanation, I think that the 51% threshold has been more than met.
It seems a bit bizarre to be given a little lecture on the basics of criminal and civil law, concluding with a reference to the "evidence" against Reeves. Perhaps you need to do a bit more research!
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Why don't you read that chapter and learn something new about what Hitler advocated in 1925 on issues of nation, citizenship, and "race" - because there it is, in 1000 words, and it's very clear, and I am saying it's essentially the same as what Leon is advocating now wrt "white babies" and Britain as a white country.
There's one reference to Jews in that chapter, and there are no references whatsoever to "Aryans" or "ubermenschen" and "untermenschen" The chapter isn't about Jews versus Aryans, FFS. Maybe actually read what Hitler wrote before you call the comparison I'm drawing "inept". I'm particularly drawing attention to the notion of non-citizen "subjects".
Perhaps I need to emphasise the date: 1925.
I’ve got a pretty clear idea of what Hitler was advocating in Mein Kampf. Probably clearer than you have.
Even in Mein Kampf, you can find passages that are fairly unexceptionable.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
And a huge number of British citizens are non-white, often for several generations. It doesn't make their babies non-British. Take both current and previous Tory leaders for example.
If we are back to only white babies being valid then we are getting into a very bad place.
It sounds like Leon thinks non-white people should be reduced, but also white Irish people should be reduced, which has been tried with some success in British history.
As one was saying about the grave error American leaders are making by behaving like a gang of drunk fascist thugs. The slow pivot to the very problematic but more reliable China begins.
We often feed off scraps when trying to parse the dry-as-a-bone Chinese MFA readouts
But this from the Wang-Kallas meeting yesterday is super interesting
"China supports all efforts conducive to peace and supports Europe's important role in the peace talks process."
Add this to Wang's comments yesterday in Q&A at MSC
"Some have been saying China is attempting to change the order... Now we don't see much talk of that because now there is a country that is withdrawing from international treaties and orgs, I think in Europe you can feel chills almost every day."
Beijing working the margins here - as fully expected.
With US coming here with a v harsh msg China's offer to work within the current system - however trite - all of a sudden looks more appealing
The US shows no willingness to include Europe in Ukraine peace talks, China take the opposite tack
Europe should be very very careful in dealing with China as a rebound fling now America has gone rogue. They are masters at manipulating the hopes and fears of vulnerable countries to inveigle their way into a position of power and create dependency.
None of the 3 big powers (if Russia counts as one) can be trusted. But China is the smartest.
As for Trump and his cabinet, I wonder if we are all misreading those comments about Ukraine as giving away concessions to Russia before the negotiations begin. No. That assumes Trump is negotiating with Russia on behalf of Ukraine. I think he is at least partly doing the opposite: negotiating with Ukraine and Europe on behalf of Putin. We are the enemy, Putin is the ally.
I think any hope of a reasonably normal relationship with the American government ended with Vance's despicable Munich speech and the knowledge of what is going on domestically. Both the ludicrous hypocrisy of it and that one can no longer treat American institutions, and thus America, as reliable partners. It's an open question whether there will be anything recognisable left, in whatever way the current madness ends.
I agree on China, you have to sup with a long spoon. Russia isn't a great power. It's just a dangerously significant rogue state.
In the case of China, quite obviously there's issues. But it maybe a case of building a relationship based on 'mind your own business and do business' with a more arms length partner who isn't going to try and bully you with threats or openly promote the radicalised far right in your own backyard (even if have form at trying more surreptitious influence).
Quite obviously we'd rather be siding with America 1865-2024 (inc. Trump's first term), but that America's now gone.
You seem to prefer China over the US at this time.
It's not necessary to prefer one or the other, but China isn't the one ripping up treaties, imposing tarrifs on allies and threatening to annex territory.
Key to doing business is finding a partner that can keep its word. America can not be relied on.
This is detached from reality. Has China respected the Joint Declaration or the sovereignty of Philippine waters? Is China not committed to annexing Taiwan? Does China not use a range of policies designed to subsidise its own exporters?
Yes. But these are known knowns. We don't like any of it. But deals can be done around these problems. You don't trust them but they may to an extent be easier to deal as can be viewed as predictable.
No one is saying having to do deals with China is in anyway ideal. But the Vice President of China didn't come over to Munich to promote being nice to neo-Nazis the day Chernobyl was attacked by Russia. While its top oligarch blows up its institutions, interferes in our politics, and the President rips up deals he signed a few years ago after the last time he threw a tantrum, then demands money with menaces over imagined sleights. It's a basketcase at best and well on the road to fascism if you're less sanguine.
This is a country that in the past week or two has attempted to betray us an Ukraine to Putin, threatened to invade a European country and annex Canada. Has halted its aid programmes overnight over conspiracy theories - quite possibly killing hundreds of thousands and stopping some of the world's most important medical trials. That fired the people who look after its nukes, only to try and hire them back, as well as handing all its government data to a bunch of teenage far right internet trolls.
Several of whose top prosecutors resigned a day ago because they refused to drop bribery charges agains NYC's mayor on the understanding he helped ICE agents deport people. That stopped publishing flu case data in the middle of an outbreak.
Oh and that has appointed a known pro-Russia conspiracy theorist as its intelligence chief, and put an anti-vaxxer in charge of its public health. That's of course not the half of it.
You just need to be clear-eyed and reasonable about what is happening in America to see it's not going to be a reliable partner in future if it keeps down the road its leaders seem intent on taking it on.
Which leaves us with a big problem, and one to which the only solution may be to at least be moderately more amenable to the superpower that isn't going to drag us into its own nervous breakdown or fall into fascism.
As one was saying about the grave error American leaders are making by behaving like a gang of drunk fascist thugs. The slow pivot to the very problematic but more reliable China begins.
We often feed off scraps when trying to parse the dry-as-a-bone Chinese MFA readouts
But this from the Wang-Kallas meeting yesterday is super interesting
"China supports all efforts conducive to peace and supports Europe's important role in the peace talks process."
Add this to Wang's comments yesterday in Q&A at MSC
"Some have been saying China is attempting to change the order... Now we don't see much talk of that because now there is a country that is withdrawing from international treaties and orgs, I think in Europe you can feel chills almost every day."
Beijing working the margins here - as fully expected.
With US coming here with a v harsh msg China's offer to work within the current system - however trite - all of a sudden looks more appealing
The US shows no willingness to include Europe in Ukraine peace talks, China take the opposite tack
Europe should be very very careful in dealing with China as a rebound fling now America has gone rogue. They are masters at manipulating the hopes and fears of vulnerable countries to inveigle their way into a position of power and create dependency.
None of the 3 big powers (if Russia counts as one) can be trusted. But China is the smartest.
As for Trump and his cabinet, I wonder if we are all misreading those comments about Ukraine as giving away concessions to Russia before the negotiations begin. No. That assumes Trump is negotiating with Russia on behalf of Ukraine. I think he is at least partly doing the opposite: negotiating with Ukraine and Europe on behalf of Putin. We are the enemy, Putin is the ally.
I think any hope of a reasonably normal relationship with the American government ended with Vance's despicable Munich speech and the knowledge of what is going on domestically. Both the ludicrous hypocrisy of it and that one can no longer treat American institutions, and thus America, as reliable partners. It's an open question whether there will be anything recognisable left, in whatever way the current madness ends.
I agree on China, you have to sup with a long spoon. Russia isn't a great power. It's just a dangerously significant rogue state.
In the case of China, quite obviously there's issues. But it maybe a case of building a relationship based on 'mind your own business and do business' with a more arms length partner who isn't going to try and bully you with threats or openly promote the radicalised far right in your own backyard (even if have form at trying more surreptitious influence).
Quite obviously we'd rather be siding with America 1865-2024 (inc. Trump's first term), but that America's now gone.
You seem to prefer China over the US at this time.
It's not necessary to prefer one or the other, but China isn't the one ripping up treaties, imposing tarrifs on allies and threatening to annex territory.
Key to doing business is finding a partner that can keep its word. America can not be relied on.
This is detached from reality. Has China respected the Joint Declaration or the sovereignty of Philippine waters? Is China not committed to annexing Taiwan? Does China not use a range of policies designed to subsidise its own exporters?
Yes. But these are known knowns. We don't like any of it. But deals can be done around these problems. You don't trust them but they may to an extent be easier to deal as can be viewed as predictable.
No one is saying having to do deals with China is in anyway ideal. But the Vice President of China didn't come over to Munich to promote being nice to neo-Nazis the day Chernobyl was attacked by Russia. While its top oligarch blows up its institutions, interferes in our politics, and the President rips up deals he signed a few years ago after the last time he threw a tantrum, then demands money with menaces over imagined sleights. It's a basketcase at best and well on the road to fascism if you're less sanguine.
This is a country that in the past week or two has attempted to betray us an Ukraine to Putin, threatened to invade a European country and annex Canada. Has halted its aid programmes overnight over conspiracy theories - quite possibly killing hundreds of thousands and stopping some of the world's most important medical trials. That fired the people who look after its nukes, only to try and hire them back, as well as handing all its government data to a bunch of teenage far right internet trolls.
Several of whose top prosecutors resigned a day ago because they refused to drop bribery charges agains NYC's mayor on the understanding he helped ICE agents deport people. That stopped publishing flu case data in the middle of an outbreak.
Oh and that has appointed a known pro-Russia conspiracy theorist as its intelligence chief, and put an anti-vaxxer in charge of its public health. That's of course not the half of it.
You just need to be clear-eyed and reasonable about what is happening in America to see it's not going to be a reliable partner in future if it keeps down the road its leaders seem intent on taking it on.
Which leaves us with a big problem, and one to which the only solution may be to at least be moderately more amenable to the superpower that isn't going to drag us into its own nervous breakdown or fall into fascism.
China doesn't have to "fall into fascism". In pratical terms, though the labels may differ, it has already been there for many years.
The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. They are just another enemy.
If Trump and autocracy are the inevitable product of free speech
They are not
They are the inevitable product of disinformation
I think they are the inevitable product of neglect and scorn.
The American public have been so poorly served by their political leaders for so long that it was remarkably easy for a shyster like Trump with a modicum of native cunning to take advantage of them. The mistake most people make is thinking that this is all about Trump. It is not. Had it not been him it would have been someone equally as dishonest. This is all about a failure of the American social and gvernmental systems over many years. An inevitable failure I would suggest since the system exists to serve the corporations and the rich rather than the 'Average Joe' as the Americans like to term him.
I think there is some merit in that argument
The irony of course is that nobody has greater contempt for the people that voted for him than Trump
He is going to screw them more effectively than any previous President, while demanding praise for doing it
If Trump and autocracy are the inevitable product of free speech
They are not
They are the inevitable product of disinformation
I think they are the inevitable product of neglect and scorn.
The American public have been so poorly served by their political leaders for so long that it was remarkably easy for a shyster like Trump with a modicum of native cunning to take advantage of them. The mistake most people make is thinking that this is all about Trump. It is not. Had it not been him it would have been someone equally as dishonest. This is all about a failure of the American social and gvernmental systems over many years. An inevitable failure I would suggest since the system exists to serve the corporations and the rich rather than the 'Average Joe' as the Americans like to term him.
I think there is some merit in that argument
The irony of course is that nobody has greater contempt for the people that voted for him than Trump
He is going to screw them more effectively than any previous President, while demanding praise for doing it
Like his buddy Putin
Can't disagree with a word of that.
The problem is that people are railing against the almost inevitable result of the very systems and actions they supported for so many years.
Hopefully we'll not have to hear anything more of these self-indulgent idiots:
The family of a British couple in custody in Iran say they are united in their determination to secure their safe return.
Craig and Lindsay Foreman were arrested in January, but news of their detention emerged on Thursday when state-run Iranian media reported they were being held on unspecified security charges.
The couple, in their early 50s, had been on a motorbike trip across the world, and had only planned on being in Iran for five days.
First, I’d note the president did give multiple public statements about Mexico and Canada’s role in the fentanyl crisis. Policy always has a communications element.
Second, the goal wasn’t to hector European allies. I admitted in the speech that many of these censorious impulses derive from bad American leadership, and that has now changed. See, for instance, what we’ve done with USAID.
Third, I don’t think Europe is blameless. And we’re not going to change anything overnight. But reminding both our American and European friends that we have an admin biased towards open debate and expression was worth the effort.
If Trump and autocracy are the inevitable product of free speech
They are not
They are the inevitable product of disinformation
They're the inevitable reaction against building a society based on lies.
We have developed methods where ideas can spread to billions of people in moments, limited only by the prejudices of the owners. Over such a scale, what is a "lie" to one person is a "truth" to another, and things like "fact-checking" become logistically impossible. People used to refer to https://www.snopes.com/ all the time, but now do so rarely. The best we can hope for is some kind of consensus reality, but that will be created and enforced by threats and cancellation, not logic. It is a bad world we are building.
As one was saying about the grave error American leaders are making by behaving like a gang of drunk fascist thugs. The slow pivot to the very problematic but more reliable China begins.
We often feed off scraps when trying to parse the dry-as-a-bone Chinese MFA readouts
But this from the Wang-Kallas meeting yesterday is super interesting
"China supports all efforts conducive to peace and supports Europe's important role in the peace talks process."
Add this to Wang's comments yesterday in Q&A at MSC
"Some have been saying China is attempting to change the order... Now we don't see much talk of that because now there is a country that is withdrawing from international treaties and orgs, I think in Europe you can feel chills almost every day."
Beijing working the margins here - as fully expected.
With US coming here with a v harsh msg China's offer to work within the current system - however trite - all of a sudden looks more appealing
The US shows no willingness to include Europe in Ukraine peace talks, China take the opposite tack
Europe should be very very careful in dealing with China as a rebound fling now America has gone rogue. They are masters at manipulating the hopes and fears of vulnerable countries to inveigle their way into a position of power and create dependency.
None of the 3 big powers (if Russia counts as one) can be trusted. But China is the smartest.
As for Trump and his cabinet, I wonder if we are all misreading those comments about Ukraine as giving away concessions to Russia before the negotiations begin. No. That assumes Trump is negotiating with Russia on behalf of Ukraine. I think he is at least partly doing the opposite: negotiating with Ukraine and Europe on behalf of Putin. We are the enemy, Putin is the ally.
I think any hope of a reasonably normal relationship with the American government ended with Vance's despicable Munich speech and the knowledge of what is going on domestically. Both the ludicrous hypocrisy of it and that one can no longer treat American institutions, and thus America, as reliable partners. It's an open question whether there will be anything recognisable left, in whatever way the current madness ends.
I agree on China, you have to sup with a long spoon. Russia isn't a great power. It's just a dangerously significant rogue state.
In the case of China, quite obviously there's issues. But it maybe a case of building a relationship based on 'mind your own business and do business' with a more arms length partner who isn't going to try and bully you with threats or openly promote the radicalised far right in your own backyard (even if have form at trying more surreptitious influence).
Quite obviously we'd rather be siding with America 1865-2024 (inc. Trump's first term), but that America's now gone.
You seem to prefer China over the US at this time.
It's not necessary to prefer one or the other, but China isn't the one ripping up treaties, imposing tarrifs on allies and threatening to annex territory.
Key to doing business is finding a partner that can keep its word. America can not be relied on.
This is detached from reality. Has China respected the Joint Declaration or the sovereignty of Philippine waters? Is China not committed to annexing Taiwan? Does China not use a range of policies designed to subsidise its own exporters?
Yes. But these are known knowns. We don't like any of it. But deals can be done around these problems. You don't trust them but they may to an extent be easier to deal as can be viewed as predictable.
No one is saying having to do deals with China is in anyway ideal. But the Vice President of China didn't come over to Munich to promote being nice to neo-Nazis the day Chernobyl was attacked by Russia. While its top oligarch blows up its institutions, interferes in our politics, and the President rips up deals he signed a few years ago after the last time he threw a tantrum, then demands money with menaces over imagined sleights. It's a basketcase at best and well on the road to fascism if you're less sanguine.
This is a country that in the past week or two has attempted to betray us an Ukraine to Putin, threatened to invade a European country and annex Canada. Has halted its aid programmes overnight over conspiracy theories - quite possibly killing hundreds of thousands and stopping some of the world's most important medical trials. That fired the people who look after its nukes, only to try and hire them back, as well as handing all its government data to a bunch of teenage far right internet trolls.
Several of whose top prosecutors resigned a day ago because they refused to drop bribery charges agains NYC's mayor on the understanding he helped ICE agents deport people. That stopped publishing flu case data in the middle of an outbreak.
Oh and that has appointed a known pro-Russia conspiracy theorist as its intelligence chief, and put an anti-vaxxer in charge of its public health. That's of course not the half of it.
You just need to be clear-eyed and reasonable about what is happening in America to see it's not going to be a reliable partner in future if it keeps down the road its leaders seem intent on taking it on.
Which leaves us with a big problem, and one to which the only solution may be to at least be moderately more amenable to the superpower that isn't going to drag us into its own nervous breakdown or fall into fascism.
China doesn't have to "fall into fascism". In pratical terms, though the labels may differ, it has already been there for many years.
The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. They are just another enemy.
They are not, but one has to steer nearer to one of Scylla and Charybdis.
Hopefully we'll not have to hear anything more of these self-indulgent idiots:
The family of a British couple in custody in Iran say they are united in their determination to secure their safe return.
Craig and Lindsay Foreman were arrested in January, but news of their detention emerged on Thursday when state-run Iranian media reported they were being held on unspecified security charges.
The couple, in their early 50s, had been on a motorbike trip across the world, and had only planned on being in Iran for five days.
Those 150 year old social security claimants are apparently real people - the age was reportedly a COBOL error, as the tech kids were unfamiliar with the ole code.
The thing that is really telling about this is not that these "geniuses" didn't know about the data types of the various versions of the different COBOL standards, it's that they jumped to the explanation of fraud rather than thinking "why does the same date in 1875 keep appearing?" A mildly intelligent person with access to a search engine ought to be able to figure it out. The DOGE boys appear to be overconfident and not all that clever.
I miss COBOL. Five-nines reliability (up at least 99.999% of the time: downtime about 5mins per annum at most). Write once, run for decades. Jumpers for goalposts. Somebody bring it back, please...
First, I’d note the president did give multiple public statements about Mexico and Canada’s role in the fentanyl crisis. Policy always has a communications element.
Second, the goal wasn’t to hector European allies. I admitted in the speech that many of these censorious impulses derive from bad American leadership, and that has now changed. See, for instance, what we’ve done with USAID.
Third, I don’t think Europe is blameless. And we’re not going to change anything overnight. But reminding both our American and European friends that we have an admin biased towards open debate and expression was worth the effort.
His administration are about as in favour of open debate and expression as George Best was of a quiet night in with a mug of hot chocolate. Or they wouldn't be deleting and censoring vast amounts of reports and data from government agencies that says things they don't like, nor asking scientists to withdraw papers.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
I lived in Hackney, when I was in the UK. And the country I grew up in was born multi-cultural. I would never vote Reform.
But as a fellow liberal, don’t you worry as I do about the rise of avowedly Islamic political parties in the UK?
I would much rather that people of all religions and none were welcome in all parties.
Zia Yusuf is afaik a Muslim, and he is the second most important person in Reform. People of all religions and none are welcome in all mainstream political parties, but whilst they they undoubtedly influence party policy, they do not get to shape the agenda fully, hence the emergence of sectarian parties.
I just wish he’d shave his head tho. This “Mussolini” character. He’s got great political nous and brilliant policies but he looks ridiculous with that tonsure of baldness
First, I’d note the president did give multiple public statements about Mexico and Canada’s role in the fentanyl crisis. Policy always has a communications element.
Second, the goal wasn’t to hector European allies. I admitted in the speech that many of these censorious impulses derive from bad American leadership, and that has now changed. See, for instance, what we’ve done with USAID.
Third, I don’t think Europe is blameless. And we’re not going to change anything overnight. But reminding both our American and European friends that we have an admin biased towards open debate and expression was worth the effort.
His administration are about as in favour of open debate and expression as George Best was of a quiet night in with a mug of hot chocolate. Or they wouldn't be deleting and censoring vast amounts of reports and data from government agencies that says things they don't like, nor asking scientists to withdraw papers.
Also, what’s the cancellation of USAID got to do with freedom of expression?
Vance has sold his soul to the devil. Hopefully he gets his (political) comeuppance in due course.
First, I’d note the president did give multiple public statements about Mexico and Canada’s role in the fentanyl crisis. Policy always has a communications element.
Second, the goal wasn’t to hector European allies. I admitted in the speech that many of these censorious impulses derive from bad American leadership, and that has now changed. See, for instance, what we’ve done with USAID.
Third, I don’t think Europe is blameless. And we’re not going to change anything overnight. But reminding both our American and European friends that we have an admin biased towards open debate and expression was worth the effort.
His administration are about as in favour of open debate and expression as George Best was of a quiet night in with a mug of hot chocolate. Or they wouldn't be deleting and censoring vast amounts of reports and data from government agencies that says things they don't like, nor asking scientists to withdraw papers.
I don't believe that's a fair characterisation of what is happening.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
That's where there's something uncomfortable going on. Yes, Britishness is much better than many national vibes at being in the mind and the soul, rather than the skin and the genes. The correct British attitude to anything more aggressive is the one PG Wodehouse put in Bertie Wooster's mouth - Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?
Trouble is that many people whose families have only recently arrived embody that spirit better than some who can trace their ancestry back generations.
Who is the authentic Briton and who is the aberration?
First, I’d note the president did give multiple public statements about Mexico and Canada’s role in the fentanyl crisis. Policy always has a communications element.
Second, the goal wasn’t to hector European allies. I admitted in the speech that many of these censorious impulses derive from bad American leadership, and that has now changed. See, for instance, what we’ve done with USAID.
Third, I don’t think Europe is blameless. And we’re not going to change anything overnight. But reminding both our American and European friends that we have an admin biased towards open debate and expression was worth the effort.
If you're explaining, you're winning, as nobody ever said.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
That's where there's something uncomfortable going on. Yes, Britishness is much better than many national vibes at being in the mind and the soul, rather than the skin and the genes. The correct British attitude to anything more aggressive is the one PG Wodehouse put in Bertie Wooster's mouth - Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?
Trouble is that many people whose families have only recently arrived embody that spirit better than some who can trace their ancestry back generations.
Who is the authentic Briton and who is the aberration?
I can imagine someone from the Indian subcontinent using Wooster’s turn of phrase. I can’t imagine anyone from Barnsley or Clacton using it. Don’t know what that proves, though.
Hopefully we'll not have to hear anything more of these self-indulgent idiots:
The family of a British couple in custody in Iran say they are united in their determination to secure their safe return.
Craig and Lindsay Foreman were arrested in January, but news of their detention emerged on Thursday when state-run Iranian media reported they were being held on unspecified security charges.
The couple, in their early 50s, had been on a motorbike trip across the world, and had only planned on being in Iran for five days.
Well, certainly unwise. Going on a jolly to Iran of all bloody places was an astonishingly stupid thing to do.
This could very easily turn into one of those cases where the Foreign Office has to spend years trying simultaneously to get them back out again, whilst dealing with furious family members sobbing all over the media about how the Government doesn't care and isn't doing enough.
As one was saying about the grave error American leaders are making by behaving like a gang of drunk fascist thugs. The slow pivot to the very problematic but more reliable China begins.
We often feed off scraps when trying to parse the dry-as-a-bone Chinese MFA readouts
But this from the Wang-Kallas meeting yesterday is super interesting
"China supports all efforts conducive to peace and supports Europe's important role in the peace talks process."
Add this to Wang's comments yesterday in Q&A at MSC
"Some have been saying China is attempting to change the order... Now we don't see much talk of that because now there is a country that is withdrawing from international treaties and orgs, I think in Europe you can feel chills almost every day."
Beijing working the margins here - as fully expected.
With US coming here with a v harsh msg China's offer to work within the current system - however trite - all of a sudden looks more appealing
The US shows no willingness to include Europe in Ukraine peace talks, China take the opposite tack
Europe should be very very careful in dealing with China as a rebound fling now America has gone rogue. They are masters at manipulating the hopes and fears of vulnerable countries to inveigle their way into a position of power and create dependency.
None of the 3 big powers (if Russia counts as one) can be trusted. But China is the smartest.
As for Trump and his cabinet, I wonder if we are all misreading those comments about Ukraine as giving away concessions to Russia before the negotiations begin. No. That assumes Trump is negotiating with Russia on behalf of Ukraine. I think he is at least partly doing the opposite: negotiating with Ukraine and Europe on behalf of Putin. We are the enemy, Putin is the ally.
I think any hope of a reasonably normal relationship with the American government ended with Vance's despicable Munich speech and the knowledge of what is going on domestically. Both the ludicrous hypocrisy of it and that one can no longer treat American institutions, and thus America, as reliable partners. It's an open question whether there will be anything recognisable left, in whatever way the current madness ends.
I agree on China, you have to sup with a long spoon. Russia isn't a great power. It's just a dangerously significant rogue state.
In the case of China, quite obviously there's issues. But it maybe a case of building a relationship based on 'mind your own business and do business' with a more arms length partner who isn't going to try and bully you with threats or openly promote the radicalised far right in your own backyard (even if have form at trying more surreptitious influence).
Quite obviously we'd rather be siding with America 1865-2024 (inc. Trump's first term), but that America's now gone.
You seem to prefer China over the US at this time.
It's not necessary to prefer one or the other, but China isn't the one ripping up treaties, imposing tarrifs on allies and threatening to annex territory.
Key to doing business is finding a partner that can keep its word. America can not be relied on.
This is detached from reality. Has China respected the Joint Declaration or the sovereignty of Philippine waters? Is China not committed to annexing Taiwan? Does China not use a range of policies designed to subsidise its own exporters?
Yes. But these are known knowns. We don't like any of it. But deals can be done around these problems. You don't trust them but they may to an extent be easier to deal as can be viewed as predictable.
No one is saying having to do deals with China is in anyway ideal. But the Vice President of China didn't come over to Munich to promote being nice to neo-Nazis the day Chernobyl was attacked by Russia. While its top oligarch blows up its institutions, interferes in our politics, and the President rips up deals he signed a few years ago after the last time he threw a tantrum, then demands money with menaces over imagined sleights. It's a basketcase at best and well on the road to fascism if you're less sanguine.
This is a country that in the past week or two has attempted to betray us an Ukraine to Putin, threatened to invade a European country and annex Canada. Has halted its aid programmes overnight over conspiracy theories - quite possibly killing hundreds of thousands and stopping some of the world's most important medical trials. That fired the people who look after its nukes, only to try and hire them back, as well as handing all its government data to a bunch of teenage far right internet trolls.
Several of whose top prosecutors resigned a day ago because they refused to drop bribery charges agains NYC's mayor on the understanding he helped ICE agents deport people. That stopped publishing flu case data in the middle of an outbreak.
Oh and that has appointed a known pro-Russia conspiracy theorist as its intelligence chief, and put an anti-vaxxer in charge of its public health. That's of course not the half of it.
You just need to be clear-eyed and reasonable about what is happening in America to see it's not going to be a reliable partner in future if it keeps down the road its leaders seem intent on taking it on.
Which leaves us with a big problem, and one to which the only solution may be to at least be moderately more amenable to the superpower that isn't going to drag us into its own nervous breakdown or fall into fascism.
China doesn't have to "fall into fascism". In pratical terms, though the labels may differ, it has already been there for many years.
The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. They are just another enemy.
They are not, but one has to steer nearer to one of Scylla and Charybdis.
No one really doesn't.
Edit. Do you know how the ancients got around the problem of Scylla and Charybdis? They built a new city in Southern Italy by the name of Sybaris and used a land route to avoid having to go anywhere near the Straits of Messina. Sybaris in turn became the richest, most decadent city in the ancient world. Larger and richer than Athens. Until some buggers burnt it down.
Think outside the box a bit rather than always returning to the same old solutions.
First, I’d note the president did give multiple public statements about Mexico and Canada’s role in the fentanyl crisis. Policy always has a communications element.
Second, the goal wasn’t to hector European allies. I admitted in the speech that many of these censorious impulses derive from bad American leadership, and that has now changed.
Well, in the sense it's change from bad to fucking disastrous, he may have a point.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
That's where there's something uncomfortable going on. Yes, Britishness is much better than many national vibes at being in the mind and the soul, rather than the skin and the genes. The correct British attitude to anything more aggressive is the one PG Wodehouse put in Bertie Wooster's mouth - Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?
Trouble is that many people whose families have only recently arrived embody that spirit better than some who can trace their ancestry back generations.
Who is the authentic Briton and who is the aberration?
I can imagine someone from the Indian subcontinent using Wooster’s turn of phrase. I can’t imagine anyone from Barnsley or Clacton using it. Don’t know what that proves, though.
I don't think anyone would use that language now (if indeed they ever would) but I can imagine similar, perhaps fruitier language about Spode, from any part of Britain.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
That's where there's something uncomfortable going on. Yes, Britishness is much better than many national vibes at being in the mind and the soul, rather than the skin and the genes. The correct British attitude to anything more aggressive is the one PG Wodehouse put in Bertie Wooster's mouth - Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?
Trouble is that many people whose families have only recently arrived embody that spirit better than some who can trace their ancestry back generations.
Who is the authentic Briton and who is the aberration?
I can imagine someone from the Indian subcontinent using Wooster’s turn of phrase. I can’t imagine anyone from Barnsley or Clacton using it. Don’t know what that proves, though.
I don't think anyone would use that language now (if indeed they ever would) but I can imagine similar, perhaps fruitier language about Spode, from any part of Britain.
Hopefully we'll not have to hear anything more of these self-indulgent idiots:
The family of a British couple in custody in Iran say they are united in their determination to secure their safe return.
Craig and Lindsay Foreman were arrested in January, but news of their detention emerged on Thursday when state-run Iranian media reported they were being held on unspecified security charges.
The couple, in their early 50s, had been on a motorbike trip across the world, and had only planned on being in Iran for five days.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
That's where there's something uncomfortable going on. Yes, Britishness is much better than many national vibes at being in the mind and the soul, rather than the skin and the genes. The correct British attitude to anything more aggressive is the one PG Wodehouse put in Bertie Wooster's mouth - Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?
Trouble is that many people whose families have only recently arrived embody that spirit better than some who can trace their ancestry back generations.
Who is the authentic Briton and who is the aberration?
I can imagine someone from the Indian subcontinent using Wooster’s turn of phrase. I can’t imagine anyone from Barnsley or Clacton using it. Don’t know what that proves, though.
The point is the sentiment & the nature of reaction. Not violence, not disgust. Just good natured contempt.
“Scorn and defiance, slight regard, contempt, And anything that may not misbecome The mighty sender, doth he prize you at”
Hopefully we'll not have to hear anything more of these self-indulgent idiots:
The family of a British couple in custody in Iran say they are united in their determination to secure their safe return.
Craig and Lindsay Foreman were arrested in January, but news of their detention emerged on Thursday when state-run Iranian media reported they were being held on unspecified security charges.
The couple, in their early 50s, had been on a motorbike trip across the world, and had only planned on being in Iran for five days.
Well, certainly unwise. Going on a jolly to Iran of all bloody places was an astonishingly stupid thing to do.
This could very easily turn into one of those cases where the Foreign Office has to spend years trying simultaneously to get them back out again, whilst dealing with furious family members sobbing all over the media about how the Government doesn't care and isn't doing enough.
I’m reminded of very stupid woman who wanted to see a “real, vibrant market” - in the worst part of Lagos. When things were really shitty there.
She got her wish. Then complained that her company provided bodyguards *didnt* intervene when a thief got scragged by a mob in front of them.
Donald Trump's greatest accomplishment is convincing his cult to only listen to him. Facts don't matter, pictures don't matter, data doesn't matter, math doesn't count. If he says it and Fox repeats it, it becomes a fact for them instantaneously. No one can breach the wall of BS.
Back to China: one of the common themes of that excellent tome “the rise and fall of the great powers” by Paul Kennedy is that in each period of history where there was a rising hegemon, every geopolitical ruction between the established powers managed to benefit that country and accelerate its rise.
Thus Britain from the mid 1700s to about 1880 seemed to prosper each time the others squabbled, and it even prospered when it found itself involved, as happened during the napoleonic wars.
America from the 1850s onwards kept adding relative power every time the Europeans got into wars with each other. It usually sat back and left them to it, while manufacturing the food, steel and weaponry they needed.
Now China does the same. The Ukraine invasion hands it a supplicant Russia on a plate, and cheap oil and gas. Trump threatens to soften Europe to its charms. The loss of post colonial influence by France in West Africa and Britain in Asia creates a vacuum it’s more than happy to fill.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
Those 150 year old social security claimants are apparently real people - the age was reportedly a COBOL error, as the tech kids were unfamiliar with the ole code.
The thing that is really telling about this is not that these "geniuses" didn't know about the data types of the various versions of the different COBOL standards, it's that they jumped to the explanation of fraud rather than thinking "why does the same date in 1875 keep appearing?" A mildly intelligent person with access to a search engine ought to be able to figure it out. The DOGE boys appear to be overconfident and not all that clever.
I miss COBOL. Five-nines reliability (up at least 99.999% of the time: downtime about 5mins per annum at most). Write once, run for decades. Jumpers for goalposts. Somebody bring it back, please...
First, I’d note the president did give multiple public statements about Mexico and Canada’s role in the fentanyl crisis. Policy always has a communications element.
Second, the goal wasn’t to hector European allies. I admitted in the speech that many of these censorious impulses derive from bad American leadership, and that has now changed. See, for instance, what we’ve done with USAID.
Third, I don’t think Europe is blameless. And we’re not going to change anything overnight. But reminding both our American and European friends that we have an admin biased towards open debate and expression was worth the effort.
MAGA is one big tiresome troll, isn't it. Very fitting for the times.
Hopefully we'll not have to hear anything more of these self-indulgent idiots:
The family of a British couple in custody in Iran say they are united in their determination to secure their safe return.
Craig and Lindsay Foreman were arrested in January, but news of their detention emerged on Thursday when state-run Iranian media reported they were being held on unspecified security charges.
The couple, in their early 50s, had been on a motorbike trip across the world, and had only planned on being in Iran for five days.
Those 150 year old social security claimants are apparently real people - the age was reportedly a COBOL error, as the tech kids were unfamiliar with the ole code.
The thing that is really telling about this is not that these "geniuses" didn't know about the data types of the various versions of the different COBOL standards, it's that they jumped to the explanation of fraud rather than thinking "why does the same date in 1875 keep appearing?" A mildly intelligent person with access to a search engine ought to be able to figure it out. The DOGE boys appear to be overconfident and not all that clever.
I miss COBOL. Five-nines reliability (up at least 99.999% of the time: downtime about 5mins per annum at most). Write once, run for decades. Jumpers for goalposts. Somebody bring it back, please...
You'll get the JVM and you'll like it.
Given the atrocity committed with COBOL I just binned…. It was definitely write only. And completely unmaintainable.
I just wish he’d shave his head tho. This “Mussolini” character. He’s got great political nous and brilliant policies but he looks ridiculous with that tonsure of baldness
So far I’m on to episode 2 - about 1920
NO SPOILERS
That was early Mussolini’s hairstyle, he obviously agreed that Il Duce should be a firm chinned snooker ball. Perhaps the combover rsoles of today (Bibi, Lukashenko etc) should take note.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
I'd agree that the supremacy of the host country's laws must be fully accepted by incomers. However, you then add 'values', which I don't quite agree with - especially as you cite the importance of free speech in your last paragraph. For example, equality for women, and for gay people, are values that are to some extent enshrined in law. But there are lots of people in this country who are not immigrants who don't believe in equality for those groups, who don't share these values, yet we tolerate that in the name of free speech as long as it's not unlawful. I don't see why immigrants should be treated differently from home-grown traditionalists. In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
Can anyone tell me if the rape gang issue is still censored? It does appear to have drifted out of the news agenda so attempts to stifle discussion around it would appear to have done their job.
I suppose we can at least be grateful that we live in a country like Britain where issues are only censored for our own good and not to protect certain political or establishment interests as would happen in much of the rest of the world.
lol
The online safety bill has basically been junked under pressure from Trump. So i would say safe to discuss now.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Those who are encouraging the racists in order to get at one race (usually, but not always, Muslims) should realise that the racists they are emboldening will, if given power, not stop at that one race.
Why do you conflate race and Islam?
Are you saying Islamophobia's okay because you don't see it as 'racist' ?
First, I’d note the president did give multiple public statements about Mexico and Canada’s role in the fentanyl crisis. Policy always has a communications element.
Second, the goal wasn’t to hector European allies. I admitted in the speech that many of these censorious impulses derive from bad American leadership, and that has now changed. See, for instance, what we’ve done with USAID.
Third, I don’t think Europe is blameless. And we’re not going to change anything overnight. But reminding both our American and European friends that we have an admin biased towards open debate and expression was worth the effort.
MAGA is one big tiresome troll, isn't it. Very fitting for the times.
More entertaining than listening to you ramble on though.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
I'd agree that the supremacy of the host country's laws must be fully accepted by incomers. However, you then add 'values', which I don't quite agree with - especially as you cite the importance of free speech in your last paragraph. For example, equality for women, and for gay people, are values that are to some extent are enshrined in law. But there are lots of people in this country who are not immigrants who don't believe in equality for those groups, who don't share these values. yet we tolerate that in the name of free speech as long as it's not unlawful. I don't see why immigrants should be treated differently from home-grown traditionalists. In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
A vignette
I was running a team. For some reason the team knees up was organised by HR (I forget why)
They proudly announced that we were going to a halal curry shop. Two of the team said they wouldn’t go.
HR went on the war path - who were these two so they could be sacked as racists?
They were Indian Hindus who told a story of how, back in the day, the Muslim rulers of the their state had tried to impose halal etc. To them being told to eat it was cultural imperialism.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
I'd agree that the supremacy of the host country's laws must be fully accepted by incomers. However, you then add 'values', which I don't quite agree with - especially as you cite the importance of free speech in your last paragraph. For example, equality for women, and for gay people, are values that are to some extent are enshrined in law. But there are lots of people in this country who are not immigrants who don't believe in equality for those groups, who don't share these values. yet we tolerate that in the name of free speech as long as it's not unlawful. I don't see why immigrants should be treated differently from home-grown traditionalists. In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
A vignette
I was running a team. For some reason the team knees up was organised by HR (I forget why)
They proudly announced that we were going to a halal curry shop. Two of the team said they wouldn’t go.
HR went on the war path - who were these two so they could be sacked as racists?
They were Indian Hindus who told a story of how, back in the day, the Muslim rulers of the their state had tried to impose halal etc. To them being told to eat it was cultural imperialism.
HR backed off, discombobulated.
Who was right and wrong here, and why?
I find the creeping normalisation of halal a bit uncomfortable, to be honest. It strikes me as rather less humane a form if butchery than mught be ideal. Though I may be ill-informed here.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
This comes back to the failure of our systems and particularly, for want of a better term 'multiculturalism'. Had we followed the Norwegian system of insisting that all new long term settlers adopt Norwegian language and custom, then I think our immigration experience and attitudes would have been very different. As it is we have left it to the individual and, at some point, adopted the idea that advocating British/English culture equates with racism.
Though France is avowedly against "multiculturism" to the point of refusing to keep ethnicity data etc
It's not a matter of "multiculturalism" or not, it's a matter of being welcoming.
Having lived as an immigrant myself (in Australia and New Zealand, possibly the two countries most similar to Britain) I found being a foreigner quite isolating at times. I therefore make a conscious effort to invite immigrant colleagues to dinner. Indeed many years I have had such colleagues for Christmas dinner.
Thats nice but im sure your doctor colleagues are rather different to the muslims in bradford and blackburn.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
I'd agree that the supremacy of the host country's laws must be fully accepted by incomers. However, you then add 'values', which I don't quite agree with - especially as you cite the importance of free speech in your last paragraph. For example, equality for women, and for gay people, are values that are to some extent are enshrined in law. But there are lots of people in this country who are not immigrants who don't believe in equality for those groups, who don't share these values. yet we tolerate that in the name of free speech as long as it's not unlawful. I don't see why immigrants should be treated differently from home-grown traditionalists. In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
A vignette
I was running a team. For some reason the team knees up was organised by HR (I forget why)
They proudly announced that we were going to a halal curry shop. Two of the team said they wouldn’t go.
HR went on the war path - who were these two so they could be sacked as racists?
They were Indian Hindus who told a story of how, back in the day, the Muslim rulers of the their state had tried to impose halal etc. To them being told to eat it was cultural imperialism.
HR backed off, discombobulated.
Who was right and wrong here, and why?
Forcing someone to eat something they don't want to eat is surely the preserve of sadists. Your HR person isn't fit for the role.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
No reform polls most strongly in areas like kent and essex which are adjacent to areas of big mass immigration. It obviously doesnt poll well in london and birmingham becausecwhites are a minority there.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
What the fuck is continuous mass immigration on the scale of 300,000-1m people a year but “deliberate destabilisation”?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
I'd agree that the supremacy of the host country's laws must be fully accepted by incomers. However, you then add 'values', which I don't quite agree with - especially as you cite the importance of free speech in your last paragraph. For example, equality for women, and for gay people, are values that are to some extent enshrined in law. But there are lots of people in this country who are not immigrants who don't believe in equality for those groups, who don't share these values, yet we tolerate that in the name of free speech as long as it's not unlawful. I don't see why immigrants should be treated differently from home-grown traditionalists. In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
And we should treat those people who do not accept those values on women and gays with disdain and not allow them to dominate either the legal or cultural environment. Yes we have free speech and I do not believe that anyone - whether born in the UK or migrated here - should be prevented from making their views plain. It is why I oppose things like the putative blasphemy laws or the attempts by the authorities to reduce free speech online or at our unversities. But that must not be allowed to drift over into loosening the laws and customs as they are applied to certain sections of society. We all know that fear of offence or of accusations of racism have warped some of our policing practices and we do need to make it clear that this is not acceptable.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
What the fuck is continuous mass immigration on the scale of 300,000-1m people a year but “deliberate destabilisation”?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
Leon Jock in Dallas said something very profound. "No one gives you power power is something you have to take" So it may need a strong man dictator tp abolish parliament and take power. Parliament is a pretty useless talking shop anyway.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
What the fuck is continuous mass immigration on the scale of 300,000-1m people a year but “deliberate destabilisation”?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
Leon Jock in Dallas said something very profound. "No one gives you power power is something you have to take" So it may need a strong man dictator tp abolish parliament and take power. Parliament is a pretty useless talking shop anyway.
Are you volunteering @Leon to be said dictator, Lakes?
I could see a scenario where Trump and Musk help a strong man dictator rise in this country. Most people lets face it are more interested in love island then democracy.
Hopefully we'll not have to hear anything more of these self-indulgent idiots:
The family of a British couple in custody in Iran say they are united in their determination to secure their safe return.
Craig and Lindsay Foreman were arrested in January, but news of their detention emerged on Thursday when state-run Iranian media reported they were being held on unspecified security charges.
The couple, in their early 50s, had been on a motorbike trip across the world, and had only planned on being in Iran for five days.
Posting on Instagram, she acknowledged travelling to the Iran, against Foreign Office advice, and to Pakistan was risky and "slightly scary".
"Yes, we're aware of the risks," she wrote. "But we also know the rewards of meeting incredible people, hearing their stories, and seeing the breathtaking landscapes of these regions could far outweigh the fear."
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
What the fuck is continuous mass immigration on the scale of 300,000-1m people a year but “deliberate destabilisation”?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
Leon Jock in Dallas said something very profound. "No one gives you power power is something you have to take" So it may need a strong man dictator tp abolish parliament and take power. Parliament is a pretty useless talking shop anyway.
Are you volunteering @Leon to be said dictator, Lakes?
Could do worse. At least he understands the issues.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
I'd agree that the supremacy of the host country's laws must be fully accepted by incomers. However, you then add 'values', which I don't quite agree with - especially as you cite the importance of free speech in your last paragraph. For example, equality for women, and for gay people, are values that are to some extent are enshrined in law. But there are lots of people in this country who are not immigrants who don't believe in equality for those groups, who don't share these values. yet we tolerate that in the name of free speech as long as it's not unlawful. I don't see why immigrants should be treated differently from home-grown traditionalists. In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
A vignette
I was running a team. For some reason the team knees up was organised by HR (I forget why)
They proudly announced that we were going to a halal curry shop. Two of the team said they wouldn’t go.
HR went on the war path - who were these two so they could be sacked as racists?
They were Indian Hindus who told a story of how, back in the day, the Muslim rulers of the their state had tried to impose halal etc. To them being told to eat it was cultural imperialism.
HR backed off, discombobulated.
Who was right and wrong here, and why?
Forcing someone to eat something they don't want to eat is surely the preserve of sadists. Your HR person isn't fit for the role.
They had no idea that anyone could object. They had no idea of any issues with halal, either religious or ethical, when I talked to them.
Just ignorant.
I took the team to a Japanese resteraunt which offered a variety of things, including strict vegan. The chef was an artist - he did a dish with courgette that everyone agreed was top notch.
You see, as it happened, there were no Muslims in that team. As team lead, I knew who drank and who didn’t, who could eat what.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
What the fuck is continuous mass immigration on the scale of 300,000-1m people a year but “deliberate destabilisation”?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
Leon Jock in Dallas said something very profound. "No one gives you power power is something you have to take" So it may need a strong man dictator tp abolish parliament and take power. Parliament is a pretty useless talking shop anyway.
Are you volunteering @Leon to be said dictator, Lakes?
Could do worse. At least he understands the issues.
I could see a scenario where Trump and Musk help a strong man dictator rise in this country. Most people lets face it are more interested in love island then democracy.
(Adjusts monocle)
You seemed dashed un-English. Are you one of those chaps who follows that perfect perisher Spode? Poor form, that.
Intetestingly i can confirm cookies observations that Trump is pretty popular in the uk working classes but relatively loathed by the middle classes especially the public sector middle classes.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
I'd agree that the supremacy of the host country's laws must be fully accepted by incomers. However, you then add 'values', which I don't quite agree with - especially as you cite the importance of free speech in your last paragraph. For example, equality for women, and for gay people, are values that are to some extent are enshrined in law. But there are lots of people in this country who are not immigrants who don't believe in equality for those groups, who don't share these values. yet we tolerate that in the name of free speech as long as it's not unlawful. I don't see why immigrants should be treated differently from home-grown traditionalists. In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
A vignette
I was running a team. For some reason the team knees up was organised by HR (I forget why)
They proudly announced that we were going to a halal curry shop. Two of the team said they wouldn’t go.
HR went on the war path - who were these two so they could be sacked as racists?
They were Indian Hindus who told a story of how, back in the day, the Muslim rulers of the their state had tried to impose halal etc. To them being told to eat it was cultural imperialism.
HR backed off, discombobulated.
Who was right and wrong here, and why?
I find the creeping normalisation of halal a bit uncomfortable, to be honest. It strikes me as rather less humane a form if butchery than mught be ideal. Though I may be ill-informed here.
Apologies for the clear whataboutery, but halal concerns me much less than the butchery that goes on in mass producing meat for our supermarkets.
What does concern me is anyone from any background who feels so beholden to their cultural roots and/or beliefs that they cannot compromise when compromise is clearly needed.
So in Malmesbury's vignette: HR were wrong for choosing a halal eatery for a culturally diverse team, the two team member who refused to eat there were wrong for equating a slightly ham-fisted attempt by HR to be culturally aware with cultural imperialism, and Malmesbury was definitely wrong for allowing HR to organise the curry.
I could see a scenario where Trump and Musk help a strong man dictator rise in this country. Most people lets face it are more interested in love island then democracy.
(Adjusts monocle)
You seemed dashed un-English. Are you one of those chaps who follows that perfect perisher Spode? Poor form, that.
If you were a typical example of englishness eg rowing club bore i would disavow my nationality.
Off-peak defence does not really work as a joke. Not here anyway. Maybe if we had some sort of weekdays-only national service it would fit, but we don't.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
I'd agree that the supremacy of the host country's laws must be fully accepted by incomers. However, you then add 'values', which I don't quite agree with - especially as you cite the importance of free speech in your last paragraph. For example, equality for women, and for gay people, are values that are to some extent are enshrined in law. But there are lots of people in this country who are not immigrants who don't believe in equality for those groups, who don't share these values. yet we tolerate that in the name of free speech as long as it's not unlawful. I don't see why immigrants should be treated differently from home-grown traditionalists. In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
A vignette
I was running a team. For some reason the team knees up was organised by HR (I forget why)
They proudly announced that we were going to a halal curry shop. Two of the team said they wouldn’t go.
HR went on the war path - who were these two so they could be sacked as racists?
They were Indian Hindus who told a story of how, back in the day, the Muslim rulers of the their state had tried to impose halal etc. To them being told to eat it was cultural imperialism.
HR backed off, discombobulated.
Who was right and wrong here, and why?
I find the creeping normalisation of halal a bit uncomfortable, to be honest. It strikes me as rather less humane a form if butchery than mught be ideal. Though I may be ill-informed here.
I believe the majority of the lamb you buy in the supermarket is halal. However, it has been electrically pre-stunned, and that is accepted by the majority of imams as it does not kill the animal (whereas captive bolt stunning often does)
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
I think most British people don't care about race, but they do care about values and culture, and extreme forms of religion.
I agree, mostly.
Someone posted upthread that the last two Tory leaders had not been “White British”, and I had to think for a moment who they were referring to.
However, race and culture are decently correlated.
We lack an acceptable way of talking about this. Legitimate cultural concerns without morally unacceptable concepts of racial inferiority.
I think I disagree with you. As I have repeated many times on here before, one of the most English men I ever met was an Indian born in Uganda whose family came to Britain when he was a child as part of the Amin exodus. There is simply no way you would ever have known he was not white English from what he said or wrote. I consider him one of my greatest friends from my time at work. Sadly he suffered severe brain damage in a car accident a few years ago.
But I genuinely believe, based on more than 50 years of friendships and associations, that being culturally British/English has nothing at all to do with race.
I am sorry to hear about your friend. As it happens my grandmother was half Indian, born in Chennai (ie, Madras), which of course makes me 1/8.
I agree that being British has nothing to do with race, and it’s one of the best things about British identity that it can be adopted flexibly.
However, the issue is not individuals. The issue is aggregate, mass and rapid cultural change.
Cultural change is not new.
I am the same ethnicity as my parents, grandparents and sons, but we have very different cultures.
I didn't really have any contact with anyone non-white until I went to Medical School in South London. At first it seemed quite alien, but over time it became normality and I cringe now at some of my attitudes to race, religion or homosexuality, though these were fairly mainstream in the Eighties.
It's the same now. It's no coincidence that the strongest Reform polling is in those parts of the country where there are fewest immigrants. It is fear of otherness.
Modern British racists are more culturally racist than strictly by ethnic descent. The number of people who openly object to the Conservative leader on racial grounds seems close to zero, because she sounds exactly like white leaders of all parties. Indeed, the Shadow Cabinet as a whole is impressively diverse in strict ethnic terms.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
All the evidnece shows that you are clearly wrong on this. I accept that culture changes all the time and that is not abad thing at all. But when dealing with and acepting large scale migration as Western Countries are currently doing it is clear that the best way of coping with this is insisting that the set of values and laws held by the host country are the ones that are enforced and have to be accepted by those arriving from elsewhere. Even if that runs counter to their own religious beliefs.
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
I'd agree that the supremacy of the host country's laws must be fully accepted by incomers. However, you then add 'values', which I don't quite agree with - especially as you cite the importance of free speech in your last paragraph. For example, equality for women, and for gay people, are values that are to some extent are enshrined in law. But there are lots of people in this country who are not immigrants who don't believe in equality for those groups, who don't share these values. yet we tolerate that in the name of free speech as long as it's not unlawful. I don't see why immigrants should be treated differently from home-grown traditionalists. In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
A vignette
I was running a team. For some reason the team knees up was organised by HR (I forget why)
They proudly announced that we were going to a halal curry shop. Two of the team said they wouldn’t go.
HR went on the war path - who were these two so they could be sacked as racists?
They were Indian Hindus who told a story of how, back in the day, the Muslim rulers of the their state had tried to impose halal etc. To them being told to eat it was cultural imperialism.
HR backed off, discombobulated.
Who was right and wrong here, and why?
I find the creeping normalisation of halal a bit uncomfortable, to be honest. It strikes me as rather less humane a form if butchery than mught be ideal. Though I may be ill-informed here.
Apologies for the clear whataboutery, but halal concerns me much less than the butchery that goes on in mass producing meat for our supermarkets.
What does concern me is anyone from any background who feels so beholden to their cultural roots and/or beliefs that they cannot compromise when compromise is clearly needed.
So in Malmesbury's vignette: HR were wrong for choosing a halal eatery for a culturally diverse team, the two team member who refused to eat there were wrong for equating a slightly ham-fisted attempt by HR to be culturally aware with cultural imperialism, and Malmesbury was definitely wrong for allowing HR to organise the curry.
I didn’t allow them. It was some kind of cost reduction policy (I *think*, was a long time back). Rather than let teams set their own entertainment, centralise it with The Experts.
The two team members were offended by the idea of eating halal. As simple as that.
Did they have the right to be offended?
I must admit enjoying the idiots torpedoing themselves.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
Er, if you project the numbers then it is extremely likely that white British births will be the minority by 2030, if they are only 56% now. That’s just math
I checked the figures on the ONS website, for births where ethnicity is recorded. The number of white babies in 2022 was 412,000 out of 585,000, or 70.7%.
So maybe white BRITISH is the discrepancy? Or is the original claim bollocks?
A huge number of white people have European or Irish ancestry. Since 2000, the categories of ethnic groups have also expanded enormously.
There’s also a growing number of mixed-race children, too.
I just checked. I think the stat is legit. It is a catastrophe in the making, and very very sad
It’s one reason I travel so much, to be brutally honest. I can’t bear to see what is happening to my country. it’s like leaving a friend with some terminal cancer, better to have the memory of what was, than see what is
And before everyone has conniptions, I favour immigration. You need it to keep genetic variety and cultural dynamism. in moderation it is a really GOOD thing. But we are far beyond “moderation” now
I think you are being a little extreme. But I do understand where you are coming from.
Is Britain still Britain if it “White British” is no longer the majority? Or if Muslims were, say, 25% of the population?
Britain, thankfully, has never been a “blood and soil” type country, and the word British is also mercifully flexible. But nevertheless, there are surely limits beyond which many of the cultural assumptions one takes for granted simply dissolve, with commensurate implications for society and politics.
No, it’s not Britain, as I understand it
in the end a country is its culture and civilization and language and shared collective memory, what it feels itself to be
Mountains and landscapes and rivers and mighty forests are all great, but they do not make a nation. A nation is its people, and for them to prosper, or even exist, some crucial things must be shared
A Britain that is, say, 25% Muslim and 25% Hindu and 25% “other” and the white British - self identified - as the remaining quarter, is not the Britain I know and love. It might be great (I doubt it) it might be a disaster, it doesn’t even matter, it would not be the Britain I grew up in, nothing like it, and I find that deeply sad. And that is where we are heading on these numbers
That’s what I feel. Personally. And yet for some reason saying this is virtually a cancellable offence whereas for any other nation in earth it would be obvious common sense. Would the Saudis allow themselves to become a religious/ethnic minority in their own country? The Afghans? The Poles? The Russians? Anyone??
The first country you reach for is Saudi, where about 40% of the population are non-citizens. In Qatar it's around 90%.
If British should mean white, then non-white people shouldn't be considered British. A statement implies its contrapositive. There's also the assumption that it's okay to classify every person as either white or non-white.
Your position seems to be straight out of chapter 3 of volume 2 of Mein Kampf.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
There's no need to bridle or issue warnings. That chapter in Mein Kampf advocates a setup where the population is divided into citizens (ethnic Germans), subjects (people of other ethnicities who are allowed to live in Germany but who aren't what Germany is all about), and foreigners (citizens of foreign states).
I'm not saying you are "equivalent" to Hitler. I'm saying that your position regarding what makes a nation and what a country's citizenship policy should be is the same as what Hitler advocates in that chapter of Mein Kampf. It is. Am I being unfair?
If that were already considered by almost everyone to be "the natural way of things" and "how things have always been", there'd have been no need for Hitler to advocate it.
The chapter is about 1000 words long. What do you disagree with in it?
Hitler considered that Germans of Jewish, Polish, Sorbish, Wendish, and gypsy origin were untermenschen despite being indistinguishable from “Aryans.”
Those who are encouraging the racists in order to get at one race (usually, but not always, Muslims) should realise that the racists they are emboldening will, if given power, not stop at that one race.
Why do you conflate race and Islam?
Are you saying Islamophobia's okay because you don't see it as 'racist' ?
I would say that Islamophobia is OK because Islam is a religion and hence an ideology. It's no different to being a socialist-o-phobe or conservative-o-phobe. We are entitled to dislike ideologies we disagree with, and their proponents.
But... of course most Muslims are members of non-white ethnic minorities, so separating it out from racism is tricky
Off-peak defence does not really work as a joke. Not here anyway. Maybe if we had some sort of weekdays-only national service it would fit, but we don't.
Off-peak defence does not really work as a joke. Not here anyway. Maybe if we had some sort of weekdays-only national service it would fit, but we don't.
White british births will likely be a minority by 2030. And apparently now Tommy Robinson is being mistreated in jail.
Unlikely given over 80% of the population is still white
White british births are now only 56% of total. No wonder the tpries are in trouble jeez. Bunch of m.r.ns
Wonder where this statistic is from? Because of the various changes (at least 10) to the Immigration Acts in the past 30 years, it would be difficult to look at a baby and decide if it is British or not. You would have to know the precise status of the parents and whether they were British automatically, or were working towards Citizenship or has ILR. All I can assume is that when asked the question, an answer is given which may or may not be legally sound.
Anyway good to see there are more 'British' births as the UK will be needing them. All you need is love, or in Musk's case a test tube.
What is this I keep hearing about Musk and IVF? Is he sex phobic??
I mean, I’m straight myself so can’t comment with 100% accuracy, but a visual inspection, combined with listening to his crap, would suggest the only way he could attract a woman would be to target a small minority through his cash.
There are plenty of women down the MAGA rabbit hole, with plenty of them following the Trumpvangelical ideology of "woman as helpmate" and male headship. Trumpvangelical here being a Machiavellian / imo amoral subset of the American Christian Nationalist movement. I'd be genuinely interested to know how many maintain the ideology when Trump or another 'hero' has had his hand up their skirts.
For example, Musk's current (self-alleged) baby-momma is Ashley St. Clair, a MAGA influencer, and controversialist - like a number of others.
Her book is called "Elephants Are Not Birds", and the blurb runs:
BRAVE Books and Ashley St. Clair partnered to write "Elephants Are Not Birds," a Christian, Conservative children's book that tackles the topic of gender identity. In the book, children will learn that boys are not girls, and Elephants Are Not Birds.
In every BRAVE Book, we partner with people of moral integrity, to teach complex Christian and Conservative values.
Follow Kevin as he learns that even though he can sing, he is not a bird, even if Culture insists that he is. In the back of the book, there are fun games and discussion questions that will help instill the values taught in the story. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elephants-Birds-Brave-Books-Ashley/dp/195555000X
Comments
Sorry, that makes you Celtic.
This is similar to a point I made to Winchy yesterday: you are drawing the bounds of unacceptable behaviour so ridiculously widely that when people are placed outside of it they just shrug.
The mugshot, I mean.
It's not a matter of "multiculturalism" or not, it's a matter of being welcoming.
Having lived as an immigrant myself (in Australia and New Zealand, possibly the two countries most similar to Britain) I found being a foreigner quite isolating at times. I therefore make a conscious effort to invite immigrant colleagues to dinner. Indeed many years I have had such colleagues for Christmas dinner.
Even in Mein Kampf, you can find passages that are fairly unexceptionable.
Your comparison remains inflammatory and inept.
No one is saying having to do deals with China is in anyway ideal. But the Vice President of China didn't come over to Munich to promote being nice to neo-Nazis the day Chernobyl was attacked by Russia. While its top oligarch blows up its institutions, interferes in our politics, and the President rips up deals he signed a few years ago after the last time he threw a tantrum, then demands money with menaces over imagined sleights. It's a basketcase at best and well on the road to fascism if you're less sanguine.
This is a country that in the past week or two has attempted to betray us an Ukraine to Putin, threatened to invade a European country and annex Canada. Has halted its aid programmes overnight over conspiracy theories - quite possibly killing hundreds of thousands and stopping some of the world's most important medical trials. That fired the people who look after its nukes, only to try and hire them back, as well as handing all its government data to a bunch of teenage far right internet trolls.
Several of whose top prosecutors resigned a day ago because they refused to drop bribery charges agains NYC's mayor on the understanding he helped ICE agents deport people. That stopped publishing flu case data in the middle of an outbreak.
Oh and that has appointed a known pro-Russia conspiracy theorist as its intelligence chief, and put an anti-vaxxer in charge of its public health. That's of course not the half of it.
You just need to be clear-eyed and reasonable about what is happening in America to see it's not going to be a reliable partner in future if it keeps down the road its leaders seem intent on taking it on.
Which leaves us with a big problem, and one to which the only solution may be to at least be moderately more amenable to the superpower that isn't going to drag us into its own nervous breakdown or fall into fascism.
The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. They are just another enemy.
The irony of course is that nobody has greater contempt for the people that voted for him than Trump
He is going to screw them more effectively than any previous President, while demanding praise for doing it
Like his buddy Putin
The problem is that people are railing against the almost inevitable result of the very systems and actions they supported for so many years.
The family of a British couple in custody in Iran say they are united in their determination to secure their safe return.
Craig and Lindsay Foreman were arrested in January, but news of their detention emerged on Thursday when state-run Iranian media reported they were being held on unspecified security charges.
The couple, in their early 50s, had been on a motorbike trip across the world, and had only planned on being in Iran for five days.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c626p6pz7xlo
https://x.com/jdvance/status/1890760676282601590
First, I’d note the president did give multiple public statements about Mexico and Canada’s role in the fentanyl crisis. Policy always has a communications element.
Second, the goal wasn’t to hector European allies. I admitted in the speech that many of these censorious impulses derive from bad American leadership, and that has now changed. See, for instance, what we’ve done with USAID.
Third, I don’t think Europe is blameless. And we’re not going to change anything overnight. But reminding both our American and European friends that we have an admin biased towards open debate and expression was worth the effort.
Haddaway and shite you’re a bunch of gusset-wetting girl guides. I’m going to watch Sky Atlantic’s “Mussolini”
It’s rather good. The hero is brilliant. Some hardcore Italian journalist. Apparently it’s all true - can’t wait to see what happens to him
So far I’m on to episode 2 - about 1920
NO SPOILERS
Vance has sold his soul to the devil.
Hopefully he gets his (political) comeuppance in due course.
https://x.com/MattCartoonist/status/1890803761980817886
aggressive is the one PG Wodehouse put in Bertie Wooster's mouth - Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?
Trouble is that many people whose families have only recently arrived embody that spirit better than some who can trace their ancestry back generations.
Who is the authentic Briton and who is the aberration?
https://www.gg.ca/en/media/news/2025/message-majesty-king-national-flag-canada
But they are not invited to the peace talks...
This could very easily turn into one of those cases where the Foreign Office has to spend years trying simultaneously to get them back out again, whilst dealing with furious family members sobbing all over the media about how the Government doesn't care and isn't doing enough.
Edit. Do you know how the ancients got around the problem of Scylla and Charybdis? They built a new city in Southern Italy by the name of Sybaris and used a land route to avoid having to go anywhere near the Straits of Messina. Sybaris in turn became the richest, most decadent city in the ancient world. Larger and richer than Athens. Until some buggers burnt it down.
Think outside the box a bit rather than always returning to the same old solutions.
They could have travelled Turkey/Azerbijan/Caspian and avoided Iran entirely.
“Scorn and defiance, slight regard, contempt,
And anything that may not misbecome
The mighty sender, doth he prize you at”
She got her wish. Then complained that her company provided bodyguards *didnt* intervene when a thief got scragged by a mob in front of them.
@donwinslow
Donald Trump's greatest accomplishment is convincing his cult to only listen to him. Facts don't matter, pictures don't matter, data doesn't matter, math doesn't count. If he says it and Fox repeats it, it becomes a fact for them instantaneously. No one can breach the wall of BS.
c.f. BoZo and Nigel Fucking Farage.
Thus Britain from the mid 1700s to about 1880 seemed to prosper each time the others squabbled, and it even prospered when it found itself involved, as happened during the napoleonic wars.
America from the 1850s onwards kept adding relative power every time the Europeans got into wars with each other. It usually sat back and left them to it, while manufacturing the food, steel and weaponry they needed.
Now China does the same. The Ukraine invasion hands it a supplicant Russia on a plate, and cheap oil and gas. Trump threatens to soften Europe to its charms. The loss of post colonial influence by France in West Africa and Britain in Asia creates a vacuum it’s more than happy to fill.
The difficulty arises when someone sounds different and has different cultural assumptions. Some of them really don't matter - who really cares whether curry is more popular than 30 years ago? Other assumptions - e.g. the role of women - matter more, though they themselves change over time. If immigration is limited the changes are mostly towards the British tradition, and thus comfortably viewed by Brits. If immigration is large-scale, that may be different. We shouldn't assume that our traditions are necessarily better, but it's certainly less comfortable to challenge them.
To some extent this is best handled by accepting that there are different cultural traditions, and one may prefer one or another, and supporting the right of individuals to change without necessarily assuming that they *should*. It's a subtle business, unsuited to slogans and instinctive reactions.
https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/flag-canada-history.html
Just look at that horror with the French fleur-de-lis added! Got to the final three too.
Best just hope the PM doesn't idly suggest they might have been spying...
Perhaps the combover rsoles of today (Bibi, Lukashenko etc) should take note.
Like
The rights of women and minorities, free speech, animal welfare (I pick that one particularly for you Nick) and the supremacy of local laws must be enforced. Cultural relativism of the type you advocate here simply does not work. The comparison between Norway and Sweden is instructive here.
UAE 4 KSA 0
In short - I don't think you and Nick are as far apart as you suggest.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
I was running a team. For some reason the team knees up was organised by HR (I forget why)
They proudly announced that we were going to a halal curry shop. Two of the team said they wouldn’t go.
HR went on the war path - who were these two so they could be sacked as racists?
They were Indian Hindus who told a story of how, back in the day, the Muslim rulers of the their state had tried to impose halal etc. To them being told to eat it was cultural imperialism.
HR backed off, discombobulated.
Who was right and wrong here, and why?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
Posting on Instagram, she acknowledged travelling to the Iran, against Foreign Office advice, and to Pakistan was risky and "slightly scary".
"Yes, we're aware of the risks," she wrote. "But we also know the rewards of meeting incredible people, hearing their stories, and seeing the breathtaking landscapes of these regions could far outweigh the fear."
Just ignorant.
I took the team to a Japanese resteraunt which offered a variety of things, including strict vegan. The chef was an artist - he did a dish with courgette that everyone agreed was top notch.
You see, as it happened, there were no Muslims in that team. As team lead, I knew who drank and who didn’t, who could eat what.
You seemed dashed un-English. Are you one of those chaps who follows that perfect perisher Spode? Poor form, that.
What does concern me is anyone from any background who feels so beholden to their cultural roots and/or beliefs that they cannot
compromise when compromise is clearly needed.
So in Malmesbury's vignette: HR were wrong for choosing a halal eatery for a culturally diverse team, the two team member who refused to eat there were wrong for equating a slightly ham-fisted attempt by HR to be culturally aware with cultural imperialism, and Malmesbury was definitely wrong for allowing HR to organise the curry.
The Matt cartoon you posted a couple of days back also did not work because we have no border with Russia.
https://x.com/MattCartoonist/status/1890091766675644539
Matt is probably our greatest cartoonist but either he is having an off week or he should stick to domestic whimsy.
BREAKING - Starmer hands another £12m in aid to Mauritius, run by Navin Ramgoolam’s Labour Party Government, despite huge Chagos surrender giveaway
Telegraph
The two team members were offended by the idea of eating halal. As simple as that.
Did they have the right to be offended?
I must admit enjoying the idiots torpedoing themselves.
But... of course most Muslims are members of non-white ethnic minorities, so separating it out from racism is tricky
Countries have invaded other countries without sharing a border.
There was a small country that did this on a worldwide basis for quite a while. Their whole business plan really. Can’t quite remember the name.
For example, Musk's current (self-alleged) baby-momma is Ashley St. Clair, a MAGA influencer, and controversialist - like a number of others.
https://tnj.com/who-is-ashley-st-clair/
Her book is called "Elephants Are Not Birds", and the blurb runs:
BRAVE Books and Ashley St. Clair partnered to write "Elephants Are Not Birds," a Christian, Conservative children's book that tackles the topic of gender identity. In the book, children will learn that boys are not girls, and Elephants Are Not Birds.
In every BRAVE Book, we partner with people of moral integrity, to teach complex Christian and Conservative values.
Follow Kevin as he learns that even though he can sing, he is not a bird, even if Culture insists that he is. In the back of the book, there are fun games and discussion questions that will help instill the values taught in the story.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elephants-Birds-Brave-Books-Ashley/dp/195555000X