I'm not sure I agree that he is the same as Al Baghdadi: I don't think McCain has ever advocated stoning or the murder of homosexuals or the rape and enslavement of women.
No - in that way McCain is not a fundamentalist. But in other ways he is. The very concept of "American exceptionalism" is fundamentalist... This myopic thinking that everything the US does is good, everything that others ("perceived enemies") do is bad... Look at the US today, in Washington you have a museum dedicated to the Shoah - the genocide of the Jews in Europe - nothing wrong with that. But at the same time, there is no museum dedicated to the genocide of American Indians - much closer to home. Why? Because of the fundamentalism that is at the core of the idea of "American exceptionalism."
Thanks. I think all countries have a sort of exceptionalist view about themselves, to a greater or lesser extent. Think about La Gloire and France, for instance.
And all of them turn a blind eye to bits of their own history which don't match the myth, sometimes a necessary myth.
Still, I don't think McCain is to blame. The idea of American exceptionalism, of America as a "shining city on a hill" came from the original Puritan settlers back in the 17th century.
Clifford Longley wrote a fascinating book about 10 years ago tracing a direct philosophical and religious link to the concept of the Chosen People. So much of American symbology draws directly from the British monarchical tradition ... and that is derived directly from the Book of Kings (e.g. much of the Coronation service - down to Handel's Zadok - explicitly draws on the ancient Jewish rites precisely to try and lay calm to the title of the Chosen.
I only want one thing to come out of today. I don't want people to dwell on 10 years of people coping with loss, of broken bodies and broken lives. Or even of extraordinary selflessness, of heroism beyond the call. We should celebrate that every day.
What I would like to come out of today is acceptance that four selfish goons have just spent ten years dead. Not in the company of their allotted virgins. But if their religion has any purpose, then in agonising torment. The first ten years of an eternity of such torment.
And for today to have any meaning, I would want that to be spelt out in every mosque in Friday prayers.
@SkyNewsBreak: Italian prime minister Matteo #Renzi says new #Greek proposals to deal with the country's debt will be put before eurozone leaders on Sunday
@SkyNewsBreak: Italian prime minister Matteo #Renzi says new #Greek proposals to deal with the country's debt will be put before eurozone leaders on Sunday
Don't write a letter when you want to leave Don't call me at 3 a.m. from a friend's apartment I'd like to choose how I hear the news Take me to a park that's covered with trees Tell me on a Sunday, please
I only want one thing to come out of today. I don't want people to dwell on 10 years of people coping with loss, of broken bodies and broken lives. Or even of extraordinary selflessness, of heroism beyond the call. We should celebrate that every day.
What I would like to come out of today is acceptance that four selfish goons have just spent ten years dead. Not in the company of their allotted virgins. But if their religion has any purpose, then in agonising torment. The first ten years of an eternity of such torment.
And for today to have any meaning, I would want that to be spelt out in every mosque in Friday prayers.
I'm not sure I agree that he is the same as Al Baghdadi: I don't think McCain has ever advocated stoning or the murder of homosexuals or the rape and enslavement of women.
No - in that way McCain is not a fundamentalist. But in other ways he is. The very concept of "American exceptionalism" is fundamentalist... This myopic thinking that everything the US does is good, everything that others ("perceived enemies") do is bad... Look at the US today, in Washington you have a museum dedicated to the Shoah - the genocide of the Jews in Europe - nothing wrong with that. But at the same time, there is no museum dedicated to the genocide of American Indians - much closer to home. Why? Because of the fundamentalism that is at the core of the idea of "American exceptionalism."
Thanks. I think all countries have a sort of exceptionalist view about themselves, to a greater or lesser extent. Think about La Gloire and France, for instance.
And all of them turn a blind eye to bits of their own history which don't match the myth, sometimes a necessary myth.
Still, I don't think McCain is to blame. The idea of American exceptionalism, of America as a "shining city on a hill" came from the original Puritan settlers back in the 17th century.
Clifford Longley wrote a fascinating book about 10 years ago tracing a direct philosophical and religious link to the concept of the Chosen People. So much of American symbology draws directly from the British monarchical tradition ... and that is derived directly from the Book of Kings (e.g. much of the Coronation service - down to Handel's Zadok - explicitly draws on the ancient Jewish rites precisely to try and lay calm to the title of the Chosen.
We have to remember that Labour will be facing some of the challenges as the last election; The SNP question and the competence question.
That's true, and recognising I made the mistake of overestimating Labour (and the LDs) and underestimating the Tories this time around, but surely those challenges will have been softened somewhat? Surely? The SNP cannot retain such momentum forevermore, even if Labour are not going to reverse even large numbers of those SNP gains, and after 10 years in power with a new Tory PM who probably won't be as popular (or, and I think this is one of his strengths, unthreatening) as Cameron, and with the memory of Labour's economic failings no longer as vivid, they surely must have a decent chance?
It does make me wonder how Tories in 2005 and Labour supporters in 1992 felt - losing three elections or more has to be really rough, to recognise even if the opposition are not great you failed to beat them.
The most important influence on the next election result will be the performance of the incumbent government. If after 10 years in office things go 'tits up' on the economic front the Tories will be likely to lose several dozen seats making it impossible to continue as a minority administration. Indeed for the latter to be viable I believe the Tories need at least 310 seats in a 650 House of Commons on the basis that the LibDems will not touch them again with a bargepole. Re-Scotland it seems unlikely that the SNP will remain as dominant in 2020 as in the post-Referendum period . All honeymoons come to an end and Labour might have real hopes of regaining up to a dozen of the seats lost in 2015. Labour needs to be clear from the outset that it will not deal with the SNP and also seek to turn the argument back at the Tories by saying ' The only way that the SNP can have leverage over a minority Labour Govt is if you - the Tories - decide to vote with them!'
@SophyRidgeSky: Merkel not sounding as optimistic: "The preconditions for a resumption of an ESM programme are not there"
So the banks are shut till next week?
The Greek economy will not exist by next week if the situation remains the same. The decision for Grexit will have to be taken before Monday, hence the EU summit on Sunday to make the decision.
Obviously the decision and the mechanics of leaving the eurozone is so important that it needs to be decided by all the EU member states.
That means that Cameron will also share in that decision and how it is done, and whether Greece remains as an EU member without being a member of the eurozone (currently Britain's status). For strategic decisions I think that Greece will be allowed to remain in the EU in case of Grexit, just to make sure it doesn't fall in the Russian orbit.
The chance of being caught up in a terrorist incident are incredibly slim - not that that's any consolation to those who are. Ultimately it's very difficult to tackle without potentially making the situation worse.
At least in WW2 the enemy was 'over there' and it was agreed (eventually) that something had to be done. Perhaps we should be viewing IS similarly, but as long as we think there is a sufficient buffer between us and them it's unlikely that we'll do anything of consequence.
I think it's why the Med migrant crisis is potentially catastrophic for any incumbent government. An attack committed by someone born here is one thing; an attack carried out by someone allowed to enter the country from overseas is quite another.
Weren't some of those who tried another attack a couple of weeks after 7/7 people who had been allowed to enter the country from overseas? I may be wrong on this.
I'm not sure that there is much difference between an attack by someone born here but born of parents who came here to - presumably - to make a better life for them and their children and someone just let into the country. In both cases there may be a sense of people turning their backs on the country which has opened its doors to them and their family. if anything the former seems like a greater betrayal.
I'm not sure I agree that he is the same as Al Baghdadi: I don't think McCain has ever advocated stoning or the murder of homosexuals or the rape and enslavement of women.
No - in that way McCain is not a fundamentalist. But in other ways he is. The very concept of "American exceptionalism" is fundamentalist... This myopic thinking that everything the US does is good, everything that others ("perceived enemies") do is bad... Look at the US today, in Washington you have a museum dedicated to the Shoah - the genocide of the Jews in Europe - nothing wrong with that. But at the same time, there is no museum dedicated to the genocide of American Indians - much closer to home. Why? Because of the fundamentalism that is at the core of the idea of "American exceptionalism."
Thanks. I think all countries have a sort of exceptionalist view about themselves, to a greater or lesser extent. Think about La Gloire and France, for instance.
And all of them turn a blind eye to bits of their own history which don't match the myth, sometimes a necessary myth.
Still, I don't think McCain is to blame. The idea of American exceptionalism, of America as a "shining city on a hill" came from the original Puritan settlers back in the 17th century.
Clifford Longley wrote a fascinating book about 10 years ago tracing a direct philosophical and religious link to the concept of the Chosen People. So much of American symbology draws directly from the British monarchical tradition ... and that is derived directly from the Book of Kings (e.g. much of the Coronation service - down to Handel's Zadok - explicitly draws on the ancient Jewish rites precisely to try and lay calm to the title of the Chosen.
@SophyRidgeSky: Juncker: We have a grexit scenario prepared in detail... I am strongly against Grexit but I can't prevent it if Greek gvt don't do what must
@DuncanWeldon: Message from heads of government: this is it. Deal on Sunday or Greece is out.
Merkel is asking for the impossible, so it's out:
Fabrizio Goria @FGoria 4m4 minutes ago * Merkel says Greece will need stronger measures to plug financing gap because of economic deterioration - RTRS
Merkel was already demanding 6% of Greek GDP in cuts and tax rises last week, which was already beyond what the Greek economy could hold back then, much less now.
We've been bombed by better bastards than Islamists. We survived the Blitz and the IRA and others and we'll survive this lot too.
But.
The easiest way for them to destroy us as a society is if we let them destroy our society. And the way to do that is to allow those who would limit what we can say to do so, to allow those who want separate enclaves subject to different laws to create them, to allow those who want to be treated as "community leaders" to be treated as such, to allow those who want to limit what their daughters can do and be to have such control etc. That is how a society gets undermined - not by bombs - but by an insidious undermining of our laws and values and ideas for some of our citizens so that there are communities who are here physically but in all important respects are not part of British society and are living according to norms and values so different, so incompatible that it is like having drops of oil in water.
I pretty much agree with that.
Adding to what I said earlier: it is more complex than that because of the difficulties of defining what our values are. Thirty or forty years ago gay marriage would have been unthinkable to all but a few, but now the ideas and concepts are sweeping many countries. Female priests have been in CofE for years now and the world has not ended, and the same will be said for female bishops. We, as a society, are evolving, and so are our values.
The key has to be that our values change, but the law changes to reflect those values (at a time lag), and that law should be the same for everyone.
If we allowed the deeply offensive (to some) Life of Brian, we should allow the deeply offensive (to some) cartoons.
I was surprised how slowly the price on this moved. I was able to reverse my large position against Conservative Majority at good odds even after Swindon North and Nuneaton had shown Conservative outperformance against the exit poll. The pb threads that night make for gripping reading still.
I think I posted a comment after Nuneaton pointing out that fantastic odds were still available on a Tory majority.
The chance of being caught up in a terrorist incident are incredibly slim - not that that's any consolation to those who are. Ultimately it's very difficult to tackle without potentially making the situation worse.
At least in WW2 the enemy was 'over there' and it was agreed (eventually) that something had to be done. Perhaps we should be viewing IS similarly, but as long as we think there is a sufficient buffer between us and them it's unlikely that we'll do anything of consequence.
I think it's why the Med migrant crisis is potentially catastrophic for any incumbent government. An attack committed by someone born here is one thing; an attack carried out by someone allowed to enter the country from overseas is quite another.
Weren't some of those who tried another attack a couple of weeks after 7/7 people who had been allowed to enter the country from overseas? I may be wrong on this.
I'm not sure that there is much difference between an attack by someone born here but born of parents who came here to - presumably - to make a better life for them and their children and someone just let into the country. In both cases there may be a sense of people turning their backs on the country which has opened its doors to them and their family. if anything the former seems like a greater betrayal.
What I'm getting at is that there is talk that some of the Med migrants are from IS - whether that's true or not I don't know - but I'd be angry if we allowed someone in who wanted to carry out a terrorist attack. Okay, so we could end up not letting anyone in ever again, but I think the government should be ultra cautious with the Med migrants. As for those born here all we can do is give the authorities the necessary tools to keep tabs on those that pose the greatest risk.
I think the Greeks would prefer free humanitarian aid rather than economic suicide in order to stay in the euro.
Some of the Greeks who voted No said they were doing it for "Pride and Dignity"
Not sure they meant food parcels
If you had to choose between losing all your money and free food what would you do? Free food and you get to keep the money (or at least most of your money after the devaluation).
The criteria for Greece being in the Euro in the first place were waived by those in Germany and France and Brussels who should have known better - and should now take considerable responsibility for this clusterfuck.
It raises the disturbing question of who else shouldn't they have let in....
The criteria for Greece being in the Euro in the first place were waived by those in Germany and France and Brussels who should have known better - and should now take considerable responsibility for this clusterfuck.
It raises the disturbing question of who else shouldn't they have let in....
Everyone. Even France violated the rules to join the euro. The full list is: Portugal Spain Italy Greece France Belgium
We've been bombed by better bastards than Islamists. We survived the Blitz and the IRA and others and we'll survive this lot too.
But.
The easiest way for them to destroy us as a society is if we let them destroy our society. And the way to do that is to allow those who would limit what we can say to do so, to allow those who want separate enclaves subject to different laws to create them, to allow those who want to be treated as "community leaders" to be treated as such, to allow those who want to limit what their daughters can do and be to have such control etc. That is how a society gets undermined - not by bombs - but by an insidious undermining of our laws and values and ideas for some of our citizens so that there are communities who are here physically but in all important respects are not part of British society and are living according to norms and values so different, so incompatible that it is like having drops of oil in water.
I pretty much agree with that.
Adding to what I said earlier: it is more complex than that because of the difficulties of defining what our values are. Thirty or forty years ago gay marriage would have been unthinkable to all but a few, but now the ideas and concepts are sweeping many countries. Female priests have been in CofE for years now and the world has not ended, and the same will be said for female bishops. We, as a society, are evolving, and so are our values.
The key has to be that our values change, but the law changes to reflect those values (at a time lag), and that law should be the same for everyone.
If we allowed the deeply offensive (to some) Life of Brian, we should allow the deeply offensive (to some) cartoons.
There was a story the other day in the Times about how we had allowed a parallel system of Islamic courts to be set up. They were both backing polygamy and different rights between men and women. That can't be right.
'but by an insidious undermining of our laws and values and ideas for some of our citizens so that there are communities who are here physically but in all important respects are not part of British society and are living according to norms and values so different, so incompatible that it is like having drops of oil in water.'
If Miliband had been elected they would have moved a long way to achieving that, fortunately for the majority,voters saw it for what is was,Miliband in the gutter sucking up for votes in exchange for undermining our values and laws.
The chance of being caught up in a terrorist incident are incredibly slim - not that that's any consolation to those who are. Ultimately it's very difficult to tackle without potentially making the situation worse.
At least in WW2 the enemy was 'over there' and it was agreed (eventually) that something had to be done. Perhaps we should be viewing IS similarly, but as long as we think there is a sufficient buffer between us and them it's unlikely that we'll do anything of consequence.
I think it's why the Med migrant crisis is potentially catastrophic for any incumbent government. An attack committed by someone born here is one thing; an attack carried out by someone allowed to enter the country from overseas is quite another.
Weren't some of those who tried another attack a couple of weeks after 7/7 people who had been allowed to enter the country from overseas? I may be wrong on this.
I'm not sure that there is much difference between an attack by someone born here but born of parents who came here to - presumably - to make a better life for them and their children and someone just let into the country. In both cases there may be a sense of people turning their backs on the country which has opened its doors to them and their family. if anything the former seems like a greater betrayal.
What I'm getting at is that there is talk that some of the Med migrants are from IS - whether that's true or not I don't know - but I'd be angry if we allowed someone in who wanted to carry out a terrorist attack. Okay, so we could end up not letting anyone in ever again, but I think the government should be ultra cautious with the Med migrants. As for those born here all we can do is give the authorities the necessary tools to keep tabs on those that pose the greatest risk.
If we decide to take people from that region, I'd rather take people direct from the camps in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. Those countries have been struggling to cope, and have been acting to varying degrees to cope with the influx.
We can at least partially vet people in the camps (at least better than we can people who have been smuggled), and it may send a message that paying people smugglers will not work.
Perhaps Eu will introduce Premiership-style parachute payments to ease Greece's relegation into a lower division.
Who knows? But Cameron will take part in that decision in how Greece leaves the eurozone and to make sure that Greece post-euro is viable enough that it will not fall into Russian hands.
I can't actually believe that half of all British Muslims see ISIS favourably. That seems like a dodgy poll to me. If its true we have a real problem on our hands.
I think the Greeks would prefer free humanitarian aid rather than economic suicide in order to stay in the euro.
Some of the Greeks who voted No said they were doing it for "Pride and Dignity"
Not sure they meant food parcels
If you had to choose between losing all your money and free food what would you do? Free food and you get to keep the money (or at least most of your money after the devaluation).
Free food. No money to keep!
As Janis Joplin sang: Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose"
@SophyRidgeSky: Hollande: [Greeks] wish to remain in the eurozone so proposals will have to be found tomorrow morning. The whole world must act swiftly.
The criteria for Greece being in the Euro in the first place were waived by those in Germany and France and Brussels who should have known better - and should now take considerable responsibility for this clusterfuck.
It raises the disturbing question of who else shouldn't they have let in....
Everyone. Even France violated the rules to join the euro. The full list is: Portugal Spain Italy Greece France Belgium
Whereas we had to manufacture criteria to stay out!
"First cousin marriages in Pakistani communities leading to 'appalling' disabilities among children
Baroness Flather, a cross-bench peer, says it is 'absolutely appalling' that first cousin marriages in Pakistani communities are leading to 'so much disability among children'"
We've been bombed by better bastards than Islamists. We survived the Blitz and the IRA and others and we'll survive this lot too.
But.
The easiest way for them to destroy us as a society is if we let them destroy our society. And the way to do that is to allow those who would limit what we can say to do so, to allow those who want separate enclaves subject to different laws to create them, to allow those who want to be treated as "community leaders" to be treated as such, to allow those who want to limit what their daughters can do and be to have such control etc. That is how a society gets undermined - not by bombs - but by an insidious undermining of our laws and values and ideas for some of our citizens so that there are communities who are here physically but in all important respects are not part of British society and are living according to norms and values so different, so incompatible that it is like having drops of oil in water.
I pretty much agree with that.
Adding to what I said earlier: it is more complex than that because of the difficulties of defining what our values are. Thirty or forty years ago gay marriage would have been unthinkable to all but a few, but now the ideas and concepts are sweeping many countries. Female priests have been in CofE for years now and the world has not ended, and the same will be said for female bishops. We, as a society, are evolving, and so are our values.
The key has to be that our values change, but the law changes to reflect those values (at a time lag), and that law should be the same for everyone.
If we allowed the deeply offensive (to some) Life of Brian, we should allow the deeply offensive (to some) cartoons.
There was a story the other day in the Times about how we had allowed a parallel system of Islamic courts to be set up. They were both backing polygamy and different rights between men and women. That can't be right.
There have been a separate Jewish courts system,the Beth Din, for years. I have never really liked the idea.
If we ban civil matters for Muslims, we should also ban the Beth Din from civil matters such as divorce.
I will leave it to the lawyers to point out the myriad of flaws in such a ban. ;-)
The sad truth is that we may have to move to secular schools and ban all religious teaching to the under 18s. The state of Muslim practices seems to demand that. A sad day but better that than a 1984 type of society.
I am an atheist but even I can see that banning all religious education to under 18s is a complete over reaction. Would you prevent Catholic children from taking First Communion? Or CofE children from attending Sunday School? What about Bar Mitzvahs?
Changing the rules to disrupt the lives of millions of non extremist believers is exactly the sort of over reaction the extremists want.
We cannot just ban the teaching of Islam here. Therefore all religions have to be treated equally.
I'm with Richard Tyndall on this. You can't ban religions. But your second sentence does not logically follow from the first. Where you have A, B and C (items in the same category e.g. food) and C is harmful but A and B are not, a sensible risk assessment would be to get rid of C and leave A and B alone. It is one of the more foolish delusions of our age to elevate non-discrimination as the most important value, especially when discrimination is on the basis of relevant matters and necessary.
and your solution to Islamic terrorists is..... Good night.
I'm not sure I agree that he is the same as Al Baghdadi: I don't think McCain has ever advocated stoning or the murder of homosexuals or the rape and enslavement of women.
No - in that way McCain is not a fundamentalist. But in other ways he is (and others are). The very concept of "American exceptionalism" is fundamentalist... This myopic thinking that everything the US does is good, everything that others ("perceived enemies") do is bad/ evil... Look at the US today, in Washington you have a museum dedicated to the Shoah - the genocide of the Jews in Europe - nothing wrong with that. But at the same time, there is no museum dedicated to the genocide of American Indians - much closer to home. Why? Because of the fundamentalism that is at the core of the idea of "American exceptionalism."
The native Americans were ethnically cleansed on the Trail of Tears but there was no genocide. To even suggest the US did anything similar to the Holocaust is highly distasteful.
"First cousin marriages in Pakistani communities leading to 'appalling' disabilities among children
Baroness Flather, a cross-bench peer, says it is 'absolutely appalling' that first cousin marriages in Pakistani communities are leading to 'so much disability among children'"
The criteria for Greece being in the Euro in the first place were waived by those in Germany and France and Brussels who should have known better - and should now take considerable responsibility for this clusterfuck.
It raises the disturbing question of who else shouldn't they have let in....
Everyone. Even France violated the rules to join the euro. The full list is: Portugal Spain Italy Greece France Belgium
Whereas we had to manufacture criteria to stay out!
Well we were not good europeans, we were nasty englishmen who didn't want to be in the core of europe and rule the world, according to the EU.
I can't actually believe that half of all British Muslims see ISIS favourably. That seems like a dodgy poll to me. If its true we have a real problem on our hands.
We have a real problem on our hands anyway, probably the biggest since 1939. Hopefully the fact that it's ICM saying it not UKIP will wake some of the sleepwalkers up
"First cousin marriages in Pakistani communities leading to 'appalling' disabilities among children
Baroness Flather, a cross-bench peer, says it is 'absolutely appalling' that first cousin marriages in Pakistani communities are leading to 'so much disability among children'"
He sure gets a lot of use out of that axe, he's been wielding it for five years; I think we need a new way to describe making cuts with a clearly pejorative description. 'Osborne takes saw to tree trunk of student grants' perhaps?
If cousin marriage is leading to a large number of unborn victims, we should ban the practice.
Hard to ban domestically, but to exclue cousanginous marriages from abroad should be possible. Though why arranged marriage from abroad is permitted when we have a substantial community of several million domestically eludes me.
Adding to what I said earlier: it is more complex than that because of the difficulties of defining what our values are. Thirty or forty years ago gay marriage would have been unthinkable to all but a few, but now the ideas and concepts are sweeping many countries. Female priests have been in CofE for years now and the world has not ended, and the same will be said for female bishops. We, as a society, are evolving, and so are our values.
The key has to be that our values change, but the law changes to reflect those values (at a time lag), and that law should be the same for everyone.
If we allowed the deeply offensive (to some) Life of Brian, we should allow the deeply offensive (to some) cartoons.
There is, however, a difference between requiring *adherence* to the current law (e.g. the police acting against bigamy) and requiring *support* for the current law (e.g. the police preventing someone from arguing that bigamy should be legal). I don't agree with making it illegal to wear an ISIS flag, or a Confederate flag, or express repellent opinions - the right to say what you think is more important than an obligation to support whatever the law happens to be, and occasionally we will come to think that an opinion is not the repellent thing that was generally supposed - as with gay marriage.
I'd draw the line at behaviour evidently calculated in context to cause a breach of the peace or incitement to hatred - Nazis waving swastikas outside synagogues, racists holding up banners attacking black people, Islamists celebrating killings at a Remembrance Day service, etc. There are borderline cases here which are best left to the courts. But if being British were ever to mean that one had to agree with everything in the law, or with everything that was currently accepted as "British values", an important part of being British would have quietly disappeared.
To be fair, if the grants are going to be replaced by loans that provide the same amount, that doesn't sound too egregious (it essentially sounds like government spending which will be off the balance sheet). I hope the Left don't shriek about this, instead of focussing on tax-credit cuts which actually will result in huge losses of income.
"First cousin marriages in Pakistani communities leading to 'appalling' disabilities among children
Baroness Flather, a cross-bench peer, says it is 'absolutely appalling' that first cousin marriages in Pakistani communities are leading to 'so much disability among children'"
I only know one person whose parents are first cousins and both him and his brother have various disabilities. Doesn't seem fair to condemn children to a lifetime of suffering just because the parents want to embark on some weird incestuous relationship.
There is, however, a difference between requiring *adherence* to the current law (e.g. the police acting against bigamy) and requiring *support* for the current law (e.g. the police preventing someone from arguing that bigamy should be legal). I don't agree with making it illegal to wear an ISIS flag, or a Confederate flag, or express repellent opinions - the right to say what you think is more important than an obligation to support whatever the law happens to be, and occasionally we will come to think that an opinion is not the repellent thing that was generally supposed - as with gay marriage.
I'd draw the line at behaviour evidently calculated in context to cause a breach of the peace or incitement to hatred - Nazis waving swastikas outside synagogues, racists holding up banners attacking black people, Islamists celebrating killings at a Remembrance Day service, etc. There are borderline cases here which are best left to the courts. But if being British were ever to mean that one had to agree with everything in the law, or with everything that was currently accepted as "British values", an important part of being British would have quietly disappeared.
Not often I agree with Nick on political questions, but that is spot-on IMO.
Adding to what I said earlier: it is more complex than that because of the difficulties of defining what our values are. Thirty or forty years ago gay marriage would have been unthinkable to all but a few, but now the ideas and concepts are sweeping many countries. Female priests have been in CofE for years now and the world has not ended, and the same will be said for female bishops. We, as a society, are evolving, and so are our values.
The key has to be that our values change, but the law changes to reflect those values (at a time lag), and that law should be the same for everyone.
If we allowed the deeply offensive (to some) Life of Brian, we should allow the deeply offensive (to some) cartoons.
There is, however, a difference between requiring *adherence* to the current law (e.g. the police acting against bigamy) and requiring *support* for the current law (e.g. the police preventing someone from arguing that bigamy should be legal). I don't agree with making it illegal to wear an ISIS flag, or a Confederate flag, or express repellent opinions - the right to say what you think is more important than an obligation to support whatever the law happens to be, and occasionally we will come to think that an opinion is not the repellent thing that was generally supposed - as with gay marriage.
I'd draw the line at behaviour evidently calculated in context to cause a breach of the peace or incitement to hatred - Nazis waving swastikas outside synagogues, racists holding up banners attacking black people, Islamists celebrating killings at a Remembrance Day service, etc. There are borderline cases here which are best left to the courts. But if being British were ever to mean that one had to agree with everything in the law, or with everything that was currently accepted as "British values", an important part of being British would have quietly disappeared.
Amazing in the current climate that you equate Isis flag w confederate flag and nazi w swastikas outside a synagogue as much worse than Isis flags outside parliament
May be already stated but Newsnight stating that 20 mins ago EU heads of state want a deal and a decision by Sunday or Greece is out of the EURO zone.
Are Greeks allowed to work on Sunday?
Greeks arrived with no new proposals, once again insulting the rest of the Eurozone leaders. The new finance minister arrived with handwritten notes on Brussels hotel notepaper according to ITV. Has no one explained to these game theorists that you cannot bluff if everyone knows your cards?!
Adding to what I said earlier: it is more complex than that because of the difficulties of defining what our values are. Thirty or forty years ago gay marriage would have been unthinkable to all but a few, but now the ideas and concepts are sweeping many countries. Female priests have been in CofE for years now and the world has not ended, and the same will be said for female bishops. We, as a society, are evolving, and so are our values.
The key has to be that our values change, but the law changes to reflect those values (at a time lag), and that law should be the same for everyone.
If we allowed the deeply offensive (to some) Life of Brian, we should allow the deeply offensive (to some) cartoons.
There is, however, a difference between requiring *adherence* to the current law (e.g. the police acting against bigamy) and requiring *support* for the current law (e.g. the police preventing someone from arguing that bigamy should be legal). I don't agree with making it illegal to wear an ISIS flag, or a Confederate flag, or express repellent opinions - the right to say what you think is more important than an obligation to support whatever the law happens to be, and occasionally we will come to think that an opinion is not the repellent thing that was generally supposed - as with gay marriage.
I'd draw the line at behaviour evidently calculated in context to cause a breach of the peace or incitement to hatred - Nazis waving swastikas outside synagogues, racists holding up banners attacking black people, Islamists celebrating killings at a Remembrance Day service, etc. There are borderline cases here which are best left to the courts. But if being British were ever to mean that one had to agree with everything in the law, or with everything that was currently accepted as "British values", an important part of being British would have quietly disappeared.
So you are in favour of allowing people to publicly support banned terrorist organisations?
Arguably the actions of the man outside of parliament would be illegal under the Public Order Act 1984.
May be already stated but Newsnight stating that 20 mins ago EU heads of state want a deal and a decision by Sunday or Greece is out of the EURO zone.
Are Greeks allowed to work on Sunday?
Greeks arrived with no new proposals, once again insulting the rest of the Eurozone leaders. The new finance minister arrived with handwritten notes on Brussels hotel notepaper according to ITV. Has no one explained to these game theorists thay you cannot bluff if everyone knows your cards?!
It hasn't explicitly failed them yet, so why would they have learned that even if someone has explained it? Until someone actually does call their bluff, they will clearly bluff as hard as they can.
May be already stated but Newsnight stating that 20 mins ago EU heads of state want a deal and a decision by Sunday or Greece is out of the EURO zone.
Are Greeks allowed to work on Sunday?
Greeks arrived with no new proposals, once again insulting the rest of the Eurozone leaders. The new finance minister arrived with handwritten notes on Brussels hotel notepaper according to ITV. Has no one explained to these game theorists thay you cannot bluff if everyone knows your cards?!
Well the troika now insisting on a deal by Sunday and even harsher than the previous offerings have just committed 2 errors in one go. Firstly they have shown contempt towards the democratic will of the Greek people. Secondly they're committed to an even more extreme version of austerity that has already spectacularly failed. Does anyone seriously believe that this will heal the deep wounds between Greece and other eurozone members? Not one bit! At last the Greek people can now see all too clearly that is time to put 2 fingers up to the unholy troika and create a much better hopeful future with a new Drachma and cancel a large part of the debts that have crushed their economy and start over again.
May be already stated but Newsnight stating that 20 mins ago EU heads of state want a deal and a decision by Sunday or Greece is out of the EURO zone.
Are Greeks allowed to work on Sunday?
Greeks arrived with no new proposals, once again insulting the rest of the Eurozone leaders. The new finance minister arrived with handwritten notes on Brussels hotel notepaper according to ITV. Has no one explained to these game theorists that you cannot bluff if everyone knows your cards?!
It doesn't matter if everyone knows their cards, in fact it makes it more amusing. The Greeks know full well the EU lunatic asylum cannot afford to let them leave, so it won't happen.
It seems the French are being lined up to take the political hit in pushing for them to stay in, given they have a left wing government that makes sense. Merkel can protest at home that she wanted to force them out, but it's nothing but political posturing.
The Greeks will stay in to allow the whole ludicrous vanity project to rumble on to the next crisis.
May be already stated but Newsnight stating that 20 mins ago EU heads of state want a deal and a decision by Sunday or Greece is out of the EURO zone.
Are Greeks allowed to work on Sunday?
Greeks arrived with no new proposals, once again insulting the rest of the Eurozone leaders. The new finance minister arrived with handwritten notes on Brussels hotel notepaper according to ITV. Has no one explained to these game theorists that you cannot bluff if everyone knows your cards?!
As much as you might want to crush someone holding 72 off in a poker game, this isn't a one shot game you do have to pay some heed to what will happen in the future... those who cast the first stone. .....yes Greece's behaviour had been far from exemplary but that compares as nothing to the behaviour of the troika. They really are the lowest of the low with no understanding of economic history and all is lessons. Imposing your will by force with no heed to the democratic wishes of the people had ever ended well.
Can somebody give this guy a bloody job. He is totally wasted on the back benches of the Labour Party. He cares, he is knowledgeable and he is willing to say things that very few politicians are willing to say.
May be already stated but Newsnight stating that 20 mins ago EU heads of state want a deal and a decision by Sunday or Greece is out of the EURO zone.
Are Greeks allowed to work on Sunday?
Greeks arrived with no new proposals, once again insulting the rest of the Eurozone leaders. The new finance minister arrived with handwritten notes on Brussels hotel notepaper according to ITV. Has no one explained to these game theorists that you cannot bluff if everyone knows your cards?!
Handwritten notes on a Brussels hotel paper?
Impressive..........Well that pretty much sums up this entire debacle and pretty much sums up how the entire EU project was probably conceived in the first place.
May be already stated but Newsnight stating that 20 mins ago EU heads of state want a deal and a decision by Sunday or Greece is out of the EURO zone.
Are Greeks allowed to work on Sunday?
Greeks arrived with no new proposals, once again insulting the rest of the Eurozone leaders. The new finance minister arrived with handwritten notes on Brussels hotel notepaper according to ITV. Has no one explained to these game theorists thay you cannot bluff if everyone knows your cards?!
Well the troika now insisting on a deal by Sunday and even harsher than the previous offerings have just committed 2 errors in one go. Firstly they have shown contempt towards the democratic will of the Greek people.
No, no no. I have no issue with the idea the troika offer may be stupid, arrogant, self defeating and all the rest of it, but as contemptuous as the EU and its partners often are, a 100% vote from the Greeks that they wanted a better deal would not mean the troika had any obligation to 'respect' that vote and actually offer a better deal, and lacking that obligation cannot in my view have been contemptuous toward it. That might well be a better option, or the lesser of all the terrible options available, but the question of contempt for democratic will doesn't even come into it - the troika haven't had any democratic votes to offer a better deal to be contemptuous of in the first place. In fact, with the money coming from the troika, I would have thought it would more likely be contemptuous toward those providing the money to change tack because those receiving it asked them to, irrespective of the view of those providing it (this is not to say the terms Greece was offered at any stage were fair or not, I really think that question is irrelevant to the question of moral wrongdoing in not doing a deal now, which is what is being done when the 'contempt for democracy' line if used)
There have been a separate Jewish courts system,the Beth Din, for years. I have never really liked the idea.
If we ban civil matters for Muslims, we should also ban the Beth Din from civil matters such as divorce.
I will leave it to the lawyers to point out the myriad of flaws in such a ban. ;-)
What distinguishes a system of arbitration from a gentleman's compromise is that an arbitration award can be enforced as if it was an order of the High Court of Justice made in civil proceedings. The state thus has, and has always had an interest in regulating arbitration. There would be nothing objectionable if, for example, Parliament declared that any arbitration award based on a presumption that a woman's evidence was worth intrinsically less than a man's was void for being contrary to public policy.
Adding to what I said earlier: it is more complex than that because of the difficulties of defining what our values are. Thirty or forty years ago gay marriage would have been unthinkable to all but a few, but now the ideas and concepts are sweeping many countries. Female priests have been in CofE for years now and the world has not ended, and the same will be said for female bishops. We, as a society, are evolving, and so are our values.
The key has to be that our values change, but the law changes to reflect those values (at a time lag), and that law should be the same for everyone.
If we allowed the deeply offensive (to some) Life of Brian, we should allow the deeply offensive (to some) cartoons.
There is, however, a difference between requiring *adherence* to the current law (e.g. the police acting against bigamy) and requiring *support* for the current law (e.g. the police preventing someone from arguing that bigamy should be legal). I don't agree with making it illegal to wear an ISIS flag, or a Confederate flag, or express repellent opinions - the right to say what you think is more important than an obligation to support whatever the law happens to be, and occasionally we will come to think that an opinion is not the repellent thing that was generally supposed - as with gay marriage.
I'd draw the line at behaviour evidently calculated in context to cause a breach of the peace or incitement to hatred - Nazis waving swastikas outside synagogues, racists holding up banners attacking black people, Islamists celebrating killings at a Remembrance Day service, etc. There are borderline cases here which are best left to the courts. But if being British were ever to mean that one had to agree with everything in the law, or with everything that was currently accepted as "British values", an important part of being British would have quietly disappeared.
May be already stated but Newsnight stating that 20 mins ago EU heads of state want a deal and a decision by Sunday or Greece is out of the EURO zone.
Are Greeks allowed to work on Sunday?
Greeks arrived with no new proposals, once again insulting the rest of the Eurozone leaders. The new finance minister arrived with handwritten notes on Brussels hotel notepaper according to ITV. Has no one explained to these game theorists that you cannot bluff if everyone knows your cards?!
Handwritten notes on a Brussels hotel paper?
In this age of reduced smoking rates, could that become the new 'on the back of fag packet' type phrase?
Can somebody give this guy a bloody job. He is totally wasted on the back benches of the Labour Party. He cares, he is knowledgeable and he is willing to say things that very few politicians are willing to say.
Blair told him to think the unthinkable. He did and was to all intents and purposes sacked.
I'm not sure I agree that he is the same as Al Baghdadi: I don't think McCain has ever advocated stoning or the murder of homosexuals or the rape and enslavement of women.
No - in that way McCain is not a fundamentalist. But in other ways he is (and others are). The very concept of "American exceptionalism" is fundamentalist... This myopic thinking that everything the US does is good, everything that others ("perceived enemies") do is bad/ evil... Look at the US today, in Washington you have a museum dedicated to the Shoah - the genocide of the Jews in Europe - nothing wrong with that. But at the same time, there is no museum dedicated to the genocide of American Indians - much closer to home. Why? Because of the fundamentalism that is at the core of the idea of "American exceptionalism."
The native Americans were ethnically cleansed on the Trail of Tears but there was no genocide. To even suggest the US did anything similar to the Holocaust is highly distasteful.
No, of course it isn't comparable (different time and context). The Nazis used industrial methods and organization in the 20th century. What they did was unique. There are other terms to describe what happened to the American Indians. It was not one event spread out over a few years but rather a slow process over many centuries... Nonetheless, over the course of 4 centuries, the number of aboriginals in North America was brought down to 250.000 in 1900 from between 2 and 18 million when Columbus landed (there are no exact figures). This was achieved through diseases (some of which were deliberately induced), wars, massacres, displacement (resulting in higher infant mortality and overall death rates), exploitation, etc. My point is it was done right there.
May be already stated but Newsnight stating that 20 mins ago EU heads of state want a deal and a decision by Sunday or Greece is out of the EURO zone.
Are Greeks allowed to work on Sunday?
Has no one explained to these game theorists that you cannot bluff if everyone knows your cards?!
Come to think of it, I don't know that that is true - it seems everyone is now accepting, and should have known at the time (and some certainly said at the time) that Greece could not afford the second bailout terms and never could have, that is to say the current crisis was bound to happen at some point. That action from the creditors presumably let the Greeks know, or suspect at any rate, that even though the other side knew their cards, they would never call a bluff. In such a circumstance, you can even bluff with no cards.
May be already stated but Newsnight stating that 20 mins ago EU heads of state want a deal and a decision by Sunday or Greece is out of the EURO zone.
Are Greeks allowed to work on Sunday?
Greeks arrived with no new proposals, once again insulting the rest of the Eurozone leaders. The new finance minister arrived with handwritten notes on Brussels hotel notepaper according to ITV. Has no one explained to these game theorists that you cannot bluff if everyone knows your cards?!
Insulting is wrong. The Greek leadership is trying to do the best possible thing for their people. But, instead of being game theory experts, they are people with little practical experience.
They assumed, wrongly, that with a referendum in their pocket, the rest of the eurozone would simply fold. When that didn't happen, they were left adrift.
As I said repeatedly last week, the Greeks should have had drachma notes all printed ahead of this week. They should have been ready to offer something, backed by the threat of imminent drachmaisation. Instead, they insisted that 'no' meant everyone else would simply accede to their demands.
Can somebody give this guy a bloody job. He is totally wasted on the back benches of the Labour Party. He cares, he is knowledgeable and he is willing to say things that very few politicians are willing to say.
Blair told him to think the unthinkable. He did and was to all intents and purposes sacked.
Yes, and that was possibly one of the worst decision Blair made (excluding obviously Iraq) and for the country. If Field had been allowed to reform welfare 15 years ago, we wouldn't be in anywhere near the mess we are now in.
I believe if nothing else, it would have set the tone for what welfare should be, something that IDS is battling to do now and is stopped at every turn, by both media, the courts and sometimes his own party. As a result, all he has managed to do is slow down the run away train a bit.
May be already stated but Newsnight stating that 20 mins ago EU heads of state want a deal and a decision by Sunday or Greece is out of the EURO zone.
Are Greeks allowed to work on Sunday?
Greeks arrived with no new proposals, once again insulting the rest of the Eurozone leaders. The new finance minister arrived with handwritten notes on Brussels hotel notepaper according to ITV. Has no one explained to these game theorists that you cannot bluff if everyone knows your cards?!
Handwritten notes on a Brussels hotel paper?
In this age of reduced smoking rates, could that become the new 'on the back of fag packet' type phrase?
At least the plain packaging fag packets have more room on the back for calculations.
I'm not sure I agree that he is the same as Al Baghdadi: I don't think McCain has ever advocated stoning or the murder of homosexuals or the rape and enslavement of women.
No - in that way McCain is not a fundamentalist. But in other ways he is (and others are). The very concept of "American exceptionalism" is fundamentalist... This myopic thinking that everything the US does is good, everything that others ("perceived enemies") do is bad/ evil... Look at the US today, in Washington you have a museum dedicated to the Shoah - the genocide of the Jews in Europe - nothing wrong with that. But at the same time, there is no museum dedicated to the genocide of American Indians - much closer to home. Why? Because of the fundamentalism that is at the core of the idea of "American exceptionalism."
The native Americans were ethnically cleansed on the Trail of Tears but there was no genocide. To even suggest the US did anything similar to the Holocaust is highly distasteful.
No, of course it isn't comparable (different time and context). The Nazis used industrial methods and organization in the 20th century. What they did was unique. There are other terms to describe what happened to the American Indians. It was not one event spread out over a few years but rather a slow process over many centuries... Nonetheless, over the course of 4 centuries, the number of aboriginals in North America was brought down to 250.000 in 1900 from between 2 and 18 million when Columbus landed (there are no exact figures). This was achieved through diseases (some of which were deliberately induced), wars, massacres, displacement (resulting in higher infant mortality and overall death rates), exploitation, etc. My point is it was done right there.
Do you have a source for the deliberate spreading of diseases?
Can somebody give this guy a bloody job. He is totally wasted on the back benches of the Labour Party. He cares, he is knowledgeable and he is willing to say things that very few politicians are willing to say.
Well, he was asked to "think the unthinkable", he did, and then got fired.
@FerdiGiugliano: To sum up: the banks did not open on Tuesday, there was no deal within 48 hours and 'oxi' did not give the Greek government a stronger hand.
May be already stated but Newsnight stating that 20 mins ago EU heads of state want a deal and a decision by Sunday or Greece is out of the EURO zone.
Are Greeks allowed to work on Sunday?
Greeks arrived with no new proposals, once again insulting the rest of the Eurozone leaders. The new finance minister arrived with handwritten notes on Brussels hotel notepaper according to ITV. Has no one explained to these game theorists that you cannot bluff if everyone knows your cards?!
Handwritten notes on a Brussels hotel paper?
Impressive..........Well that pretty much sums up this entire debacle and pretty much sums up how the entire EU project was probably conceived in the first place.
LOL at Tories thinking Frank Field is supporting them.
He says in that very article that he will oppose any tax credit changes if the government don't force employers to make up any shortfall from the cuts.
I'm not sure I agree that he is the same as Al Baghdadi: I don't think McCain has ever advocated stoning or the murder of homosexuals or the rape and enslavement of women.
No - in that way McCain is not a fundamentalist. But in other ways he is (and others are). The very concept of "American exceptionalism" is fundamentalist... This myopic thinking that everything the US does is good, everything that others ("perceived enemies") do is bad/ evil... Look at the US today, in Washington you have a museum dedicated to the Shoah - the genocide of the Jews in Europe - nothing wrong with that. But at the same time, there is no museum dedicated to the genocide of American Indians - much closer to home. Why? Because of the fundamentalism that is at the core of the idea of "American exceptionalism."
No museum, but look at the appalling devastation and poverty that is the Reservation system run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Two subjects Americans do not like to talk about - the slavery aspect of the Civil War and what the US did to the Indians.
It's not just the South that has dirty hands in this - the Missouri Compromise dates from 1820.
LOL at Tories thinking Frank Field is supporting them.
He says in that very article that he will oppose any tax credit changes if the government don't force employers to make up any shortfall from the cuts.
It might surprise you, but not everybody on here is just a Tory, Labour, Lib Dem, etc cheerleader. I value good ideas, people willing to speak their mind, etc etc etc. I don't support one team or the another.
We are in this absolutely ridiculous position where people in work are receiving sometimes huge benefit payments. Many low paid jobs are being indirectly subsidized by the tax payer and also we have the merry go round of taking money to hand it back, all because of Brown and his stupid wheezes.
I don't necessarily agree 100% with Field's suggestions, but his general suggested path of travel is far better than the current situation.
According to the beeb - a deal by Sunday or Greece is out of the euro.
Is Greece about to be the European version of Lehman Brothers?
Yes and like lehman brothers once one goes capital questions who is the next weak link in the chain. Portugal Italy Ireland Spain. ......It looks like we'll get one last final move into the short end of the bond market until the end of September. ....and then comes the cold chill of October. Its all lining up ominously with Martin Armstrong and his economic confidence model pointing out the start of October as the peak in government and rising interest rates from there with all too predictable results in debt soaked economies.
LOL at Tories thinking Frank Field is supporting them.
He says in that very article that he will oppose any tax credit changes if the government don't force employers to make up any shortfall from the cuts.
It might surprise you, but not everybody on here is just a Tory, Labour, Lib Dem, etc cheerleader. I value good ideas, people willing to speak their mind, etc etc etc. I don't support one team or the another.
We are in this absolutely ridiculous position where people in work are receiving sometimes huge benefit payments. Many low paid jobs are being indirectly subsidized by the tax payer and also we have the merry go round of taking money to hand it back, all because of Brown and his stupid wheezes.
So if you oppose tax credits, do you support a big increase in the minimum wage?
I just think it's funny that people on here have suddenly started pushing this "tax credits subsidise employers" line, yet when that logic is followed through by suggesting that employers should then pay much higher wages, those same people often fall back on the same old right-wing arguments about it being "anti-business" or how it would "increase unemployment".
Do you have a source for the deliberate spreading of diseases?
During Pontiac's uprising in 1763, the Indians besieged Fort Pitt. They burned nearby houses, forcing the inhabitants to take refuge in the well-protected fort. The British officer in charge, Captain Simeon Ecuyer, reported to Colonel Henry Bouquet in Philadelphia that he feared the crowded conditions would result in disease. Smallpox had already broken out. On June 24, 1763, William Trent, a local trader, recorded in his journal that two Indian chiefs had visited the fort, urging the British to abandon the fight, but the British refused. Instead, when the Indians were ready to leave, Trent wrote: "Out of our regard for them, we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect."
It is not known who conceived the plan, but there's no doubt it met with the approval of the British military in America and may have been common practice. Sir Jeffery Amherst, commander of British forces in North America, wrote July 7, 1763, probably unaware of the events at Fort Pitt: "Could it not be contrived to Send the Small Pox among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians? We must, on this occasion, Use Every Stratagem in our power to Reduce them." He ordered the extirpation of the Indians and said no prisoners should be taken. About a week later, he wrote to Bouquet: "You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race..."
The Fort Pitt incident is the best documented case of deliberately spreading smallpox among unsuspecting populations, but it likely was not the first time such a stratagem was employed by military forces. It appears that Ecuyer and Amherst proposed the same idea independently at about the same time, suggesting that the practice was not unusual.
Attempts to spread sickness and disease among enemy forces has a long history. The ancient Assyrians poisoned their enemy's water supply, and ancient Greeks poisoned the water supply of their enemy with the herb hellebore, which caused violent diarrhea. In 1340 attackers used a catapult to throw dead animals over the walls of the castle of Thun L'Evêque, causing such a stink that the air was so unendurable the defenders negotiated a truce.
Hard to ban domestically, but to exclue cousanginous marriages from abroad should be possible. Though why arranged marriage from abroad is permitted when we have a substantial community of several million domestically eludes me.
You can't ban specifically "arranged" marriage from abroad, unless you bar anyone from bringing in a spouse from abroad, surely? There is actually a whole spectrum from "conventional Western romantic" ideas of marriage, to the "arranged" type. A lot of modern Western Muslims sit somewhere in between. Some Muslim friends of mine have actively sought a partner themselves (Islamic dating sites have become quite popular), others have left it to their family to trawl for suitable partners but only on the basis that they get to spend time with the potential suitors, and see how well they "click", with no rush to a wedding. Forced marriages are a different issue of course, but I can't see how specifically "arranged" marriages can be banned. No binary distinction.
As for why people do it when there is still a large community here, I think you're missing the dynamics of the marriage market here. For one thing the community is actually lots of subcommunities: "lots of Asians", but fewer from your background (Kashmiri, Sylheti or whatever), from your particular religious denomination, and from your language and to some extent class background.
Suppose a guy or girl in London is, in marriage terms, a "six" or a "seven". That's not bad, but it makes it hard to marry an "eight" or a "nine" in London, and even your options among six and sevens are limited for the reason above*. But back in the home country, the fact that marriage to you potentially entitles someone to come to London to live almost automatically adds two to your score. There are guys/girls who are an 8 or a 9 in Lahore or Karachi who are now available to you - people who would be out of your league in the UK. That's the difference between getting a partner with a university degree, or not; or in the higher ranks, getting a partner with an MBA/MSc rather than just a bachelors. Getting a partner with a profession or business, rather than someone in a lower level job. Getting someone of a higher social status. Among Bangladeshis I know (and presumably among certain classes of Pakistanis) it means marrying into a family with serious ancestral land-holdings (you need to think of these as basically property being held for the long run as it's considered safer than the local currency and banks; for a comparison, imagine in the London dating market the advantage of marrying someone with an extensive buy-to-let portfolio).
* And for another reason that should now be clearer if you got to the end of the post: the 6s and 7s in London who you're in the same league as, also have the option to "marry up" in the old country.
I'm not sure I agree that he is the same as Al Baghdadi: I don't think McCain has ever advocated stoning or the murder of homosexuals or the rape and enslavement of women.
No - in that way McCain is not a fundamentalist. But in other ways he is (and others are). The very concept of "American exceptionalism" is fundamentalist... This myopic thinking that everything the US does is good, everything that others ("perceived enemies") do is bad/ evil... Look at the US today, in Washington you have a museum dedicated to the Shoah - the genocide of the Jews in Europe - nothing wrong with that. But at the same time, there is no museum dedicated to the genocide of American Indians - much closer to home. Why? Because of the fundamentalism that is at the core of the idea of "American exceptionalism."
No museum, but look at the appalling devastation and poverty that is the Reservation system run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Two subjects Americans do not like to talk about - the slavery aspect of the Civil War and what the US did to the Indians.
It's not just the South that has dirty hands in this - the Missouri Compromise dates from 1820.
Andrew Jackson is still on the $20 dollar note despite his forced ethnic cleansing of the 5 tribes on the trail of tears:
LOL at Tories thinking Frank Field is supporting them.
He says in that very article that he will oppose any tax credit changes if the government don't force employers to make up any shortfall from the cuts.
It might surprise you, but not everybody on here is just a Tory, Labour, Lib Dem, etc cheerleader. I value good ideas, people willing to speak their mind, etc etc etc. I don't support one team or the another.
We are in this absolutely ridiculous position where people in work are receiving sometimes huge benefit payments. Many low paid jobs are being indirectly subsidized by the tax payer and also we have the merry go round of taking money to hand it back, all because of Brown and his stupid wheezes.
So if you oppose tax credits, do you support a big increase in the minimum wage?
First and foremost, I support raising income tax threshold, merging of NI and IC on the employee side, thus taking the low paid totally out of tax (not just IC).
Then, yes I would prefer measures that result in people getting paid, than them earn, then fill in a load of forms to get "tax credits" that exceed the tax they paid in the first place.
It doesn't have to be simply a massive increase in minimum wage, I believe that employers should still have some flexibility when "trialing" staff, but there are ways in which employers (especially big ones) can be incentivized into paying better wages for those that they have taken on permanently e.g as Field suggests there are ways we can do this by altering the employers side of NI.
Overall, I would like to see quite a radical change to our tax system in general. NI for starters is totally outdated tax and has no place now that the money doesn't even have an pretense of funding its initial intended targets.
We've been bombed by better bastards than Islamists. We survived the Blitz and the IRA and others and we'll survive this lot too.
But.
The easiest way for them to destroy us as a society is if we let them destroy our society. And the way to do that is to allow those who would limit what we can say to do so, to allow those who want separate enclaves subject to different laws to create them, to allow those who want to be treated as "community leaders" to be treated as such, to allow those who want to limit what their daughters can do and be to have such control etc. That is how a society gets undermined - not by bombs - but by an insidious undermining of our laws and values and ideas for some of our citizens so that there are communities who are here physically but in all important respects are not part of British society and are living according to norms and values so different, so incompatible that it is like having drops of oil in water.
I pretty much agree with that.
Adding to what I said earlier: it is more complex than that because of the difficulties of defining what our values are. Thirty or forty years ago gay marriage would have been unthinkable to all but a few, but now the ideas and concepts are sweeping many countries. Female priests have been in CofE for years now and the world has not ended, and the same will be said for female bishops. We, as a society, are evolving, and so are our values.
The key has to be that our values change, but the law changes to reflect those values (at a time lag), and that law should be the same for everyone.
If we allowed the deeply offensive (to some) Life of Brian, we should allow the deeply offensive (to some) cartoons.
There was a story the other day in the Times about how we had allowed a parallel system of Islamic courts to be set up. They were both backing polygamy and different rights between men and women. That can't be right.
There have been a separate Jewish courts system,the Beth Din, for years. I have never really liked the idea.
If we ban civil matters for Muslims, we should also ban the Beth Din from civil matters such as divorce.
I will leave it to the lawyers to point out the myriad of flaws in such a ban. ;-)
My understanding is that Beth Din courts are subject to English law i.e. any decisions they make must be ratified by and be in accordance with English law.
That does not apply to sharia courts which, certainly in relation to family matters, are wholly inconsistent with English law and which should never be used for criminal matters.
in one cases the religious courts are submitting to the jurisdiction of English law. In the other they are seeking to oust it. There is a difference.
I'm not sure I agree that he is the same as Al Baghdadi: I don't think McCain has ever advocated stoning or the murder of homosexuals or the rape and enslavement of women.
No - in that way McCain is not a fundamentalist. But in other ways he is (and others are). The very concept of "American exceptionalism" is fundamentalist... This myopic thinking that everything the US does is good, everything that others ("perceived enemies") do is bad/ evil... Look at the US today, in Washington you have a museum dedicated to the Shoah - the genocide of the Jews in Europe - nothing wrong with that. But at the same time, there is no museum dedicated to the genocide of American Indians - much closer to home. Why? Because of the fundamentalism that is at the core of the idea of "American exceptionalism."
No museum, but look at the appalling devastation and poverty that is the Reservation system run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Two subjects Americans do not like to talk about - the slavery aspect of the Civil War and what the US did to the Indians.
It's not just the South that has dirty hands in this - the Missouri Compromise dates from 1820.
Andrew Jackson is still on the $20 dollar note despite his forced ethnic cleansing of the 5 tribes on the trail of tears:
Indian reservations are still rather desolate and degrading places.
Speaking of the Cherokees, the eastern band has avoided the dead hand of government handouts and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and has achieved success in the casino and home loan businesses.
Hard to avoid the poetic justice of this - getting revenge by taking money off the pale faces....
LOL at Tories thinking Frank Field is supporting them.
He says in that very article that he will oppose any tax credit changes if the government don't force employers to make up any shortfall from the cuts.
It might surprise you, but not everybody on here is just a Tory, Labour, Lib Dem, etc cheerleader. I value good ideas, people willing to speak their mind, etc etc etc. I don't support one team or the another.
We are in this absolutely ridiculous position where people in work are receiving sometimes huge benefit payments. Many low paid jobs are being indirectly subsidized by the tax payer and also we have the merry go round of taking money to hand it back, all because of Brown and his stupid wheezes.
So if you oppose tax credits, do you support a big increase in the minimum wage?
I just think it's funny that people on here have suddenly started pushing this "tax credits subsidise employers" line, yet when that logic is followed through by suggesting that employers should then pay much higher wages, those same people often fall back on the same old right-wing arguments about it being "anti-business" or how it would "increase unemployment".
Something I never quite understood. Why didn't Brown just increase the minimum wage massively rather than Introduce and give out tax credits so masses of the electorate had a vested interest in him and Labour remaining in power
I agree that for arranged marriage a British passport is a definitd advantage.
It is a way of monetising emigration, as are many student visas. It would be more honest for the UK government to flog them directly and pocket the cash.
There's also a reason for the family thing - aside from sheer family tradition, and the convenience of matching the same cultural/religious/linguistic background, it actually makes a lot of sense. If you bring someone from over there back over here, and they cheat on you or walk out on you after they've got their citizenship sorted, you're pretty screwed. If that person is actually a member of your own family, then by walking out they would be walking out on their own family. Much stronger disincentive. Even for comparisons which aren't that stark, there are a lot of trust and financial reasons to want to marry in a family (c.f, European royalty) - we now think of it as taboo, and for good reason (c.f. European royalty), but if you come from a background where it is seen as "normal" then it doesn't seem like such a weird or outlandish thing to do.
I think a lot of people who know of the theoretical genetic risk of cousin marriage rationalise it away by the fact it isn't very large in absolute terms (which is true; it's relatively much more risky than not marrying close family, but in absolute terms the risk is still fairly small; in a country which had high child mortality anyway it would pretty much be a rounding error - c.f. European royalty - but in a modern Western society it does seem like quite a pointless risk to take) and that it is mitigated in part by the fact they are likely to have children at a much younger age than their Western counterparts.
To be fair, a lot of people who are on their high horses about all these weird Asians coming over here with their weird ways and harming their children by doing so (and that harm is a very valid point and really deserves public health action) rationally also ought to be getting exercised about all these weird white British people who have started adopting the weird and entirely biologically unnatural lifestyle of putting off having kids until an age which makes it riskier for all concerned. Isn't doing our demography any good either from an economic point of view. But that's a thorny issue encompassing everything from the housing squeeze to younger people, to work/life balance and the cost of childcare, to how we deal with "professional aspiration", the idea of career as an alternative to family, and how any changes could be made without making it all horrifyingly patriarchal (sod university, get back home and breed, young ladies!).
[Random aside: as an adult education lecturer I taught many young women in their late 20s or early 30s, who had had kids in their early 20s, or more often late teens, and were finally deciding to sort out college then get a degree and a professional career now that their kids were safely away at school. They then figured they could get several decades of full-time career in, without further interruption for kids. In many ways this seems more sensible than the expensively-educated career women who give it all up in their mid or late 30s when they "beat the clock" and find a family man, and who never go back to their main profession.]
Comments
And all of them turn a blind eye to bits of their own history which don't match the myth, sometimes a necessary myth.
Still, I don't think McCain is to blame. The idea of American exceptionalism, of America as a "shining city on a hill" came from the original Puritan settlers back in the 17th century.
Clifford Longley wrote a fascinating book about 10 years ago tracing a direct philosophical and religious link to the concept of the Chosen People. So much of American symbology draws directly from the British monarchical tradition ... and that is derived directly from the Book of Kings (e.g. much of the Coronation service - down to Handel's Zadok - explicitly draws on the ancient Jewish rites precisely to try and lay calm to the title of the Chosen.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3588017/Americans-are-the-chosen-people.html
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chosen-People-Shaped-England-America/dp/0340786574
It will obviously build up over time - full saving won't come in for 18 years - not sure what the £1.4bn is referring to.
Anyway, it should be a popular move.
BREAKING: Renzi: Greece has until Sunday to make last proposals for full European Union summit.
So on Sunday the full EU summit will make the decision for Grexit then.
Don't call me at 3 a.m. from a friend's apartment
I'd like to choose how I hear the news
Take me to a park that's covered with trees
Tell me on a Sunday, please
So the banks are shut till next week?
Clifford Longley wrote a fascinating book about 10 years ago tracing a direct philosophical and religious link to the concept of the Chosen People. So much of American symbology draws directly from the British monarchical tradition ... and that is derived directly from the Book of Kings (e.g. much of the Coronation service - down to Handel's Zadok - explicitly draws on the ancient Jewish rites precisely to try and lay calm to the title of the Chosen.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3588017/Americans-are-the-chosen-people.html
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chosen-People-Shaped-England-America/dp/0340786574
Interesting stuff - food for thought. Thanks and good night to you all!
The decision for Grexit will have to be taken before Monday, hence the EU summit on Sunday to make the decision.
Obviously the decision and the mechanics of leaving the eurozone is so important that it needs to be decided by all the EU member states.
That means that Cameron will also share in that decision and how it is done, and whether Greece remains as an EU member without being a member of the eurozone (currently Britain's status).
For strategic decisions I think that Greece will be allowed to remain in the EU in case of Grexit, just to make sure it doesn't fall in the Russian orbit.
I'm not sure that there is much difference between an attack by someone born here but born of parents who came here to - presumably - to make a better life for them and their children and someone just let into the country. In both cases there may be a sense of people turning their backs on the country which has opened its doors to them and their family. if anything the former seems like a greater betrayal.
Clifford Longley wrote a fascinating book about 10 years ago tracing a direct philosophical and religious link to the concept of the Chosen People. So much of American symbology draws directly from the British monarchical tradition ... and that is derived directly from the Book of Kings (e.g. much of the Coronation service - down to Handel's Zadok - explicitly draws on the ancient Jewish rites precisely to try and lay calm to the title of the Chosen.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3588017/Americans-are-the-chosen-people.html
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chosen-People-Shaped-England-America/dp/0340786574
That looks very interesting. Thanks Charles; I've just ordered a copy.
Fabrizio Goria @FGoria 4m4 minutes ago
* Merkel says Greece will need stronger measures to plug financing gap because of economic deterioration - RTRS
Merkel was already demanding 6% of Greek GDP in cuts and tax rises last week, which was already beyond what the Greek economy could hold back then, much less now.
Adding to what I said earlier: it is more complex than that because of the difficulties of defining what our values are. Thirty or forty years ago gay marriage would have been unthinkable to all but a few, but now the ideas and concepts are sweeping many countries. Female priests have been in CofE for years now and the world has not ended, and the same will be said for female bishops. We, as a society, are evolving, and so are our values.
The key has to be that our values change, but the law changes to reflect those values (at a time lag), and that law should be the same for everyone.
If we allowed the deeply offensive (to some) Life of Brian, we should allow the deeply offensive (to some) cartoons.
Not sure they meant food parcels
Free food and you get to keep the money (or at least most of your money after the devaluation).
It raises the disturbing question of who else shouldn't they have let in....
Even France violated the rules to join the euro.
The full list is:
Portugal
Spain
Italy
Greece
France
Belgium
'but by an insidious undermining of our laws and values and ideas for some of our citizens so that there are communities who are here physically but in all important respects are not part of British society and are living according to norms and values so different, so incompatible that it is like having drops of oil in water.'
If Miliband had been elected they would have moved a long way to achieving that, fortunately for the majority,voters saw it for what is was,Miliband in the gutter sucking up for votes in exchange for undermining our values and laws.
We can at least partially vet people in the camps (at least better than we can people who have been smuggled), and it may send a message that paying people smugglers will not work.
But Cameron will take part in that decision in how Greece leaves the eurozone and to make sure that Greece post-euro is viable enough that it will not fall into Russian hands.
I can't actually believe that half of all British Muslims see ISIS favourably. That seems like a dodgy poll to me. If its true we have a real problem on our hands.
As Janis Joplin sang: Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose"
Baroness Flather, a cross-bench peer, says it is 'absolutely appalling' that first cousin marriages in Pakistani communities are leading to 'so much disability among children'"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11723308/First-cousin-marriages-in-Pakistani-communities-leading-to-appalling-disabilities-among-children.html
* Greek PM tsipras says aims for "final exit from the crisis" - RTRS
He'll have a final exit alright.
But at least Grexit will finally solve the fundamental problem of the Greek economy, after Grexit the reforms might produce results for a change.
If we ban civil matters for Muslims, we should also ban the Beth Din from civil matters such as divorce.
I will leave it to the lawyers to point out the myriad of flaws in such a ban. ;-)
Good night.
The native Americans were ethnically cleansed on the Trail of Tears but there was no genocide. To even suggest the US did anything similar to the Holocaust is highly distasteful.
Bizarrely the practice is actually more common than it used to be.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-23183102
Goodnight.
Osborne takes axe to student grants to find £1.6bn savings by @tamcohen #budget2015 http://t.co/YKhIs6J083”
I'd draw the line at behaviour evidently calculated in context to cause a breach of the peace or incitement to hatred - Nazis waving swastikas outside synagogues, racists holding up banners attacking black people, Islamists celebrating killings at a Remembrance Day service, etc. There are borderline cases here which are best left to the courts. But if being British were ever to mean that one had to agree with everything in the law, or with everything that was currently accepted as "British values", an important part of being British would have quietly disappeared.
Are Greeks allowed to work on Sunday?
Arguably the actions of the man outside of parliament would be illegal under the Public Order Act 1984.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-33424607
http://www.glamorgancricket.com/tickets/index.php#.VZxMaxNViko
It seems the French are being lined up to take the political hit in pushing for them to stay in, given they have a left wing government that makes sense. Merkel can protest at home that she wanted to force them out, but it's nothing but political posturing.
The Greeks will stay in to allow the whole ludicrous vanity project to rumble on to the next crisis.
By Frank Field....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/politics-blog/11720057/Budget-2015-Gordon-Browns-tax-credits-monster-must-be-slain.html
Can somebody give this guy a bloody job. He is totally wasted on the back benches of the Labour Party. He cares, he is knowledgeable and he is willing to say things that very few politicians are willing to say.
Impressive..........Well that pretty much sums up this entire debacle and pretty much sums up how the entire EU project was probably conceived in the first place.
http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/hunting/girl-arrested-over-bollocks-to-blair-shirt-68779
No, of course it isn't comparable (different time and context). The Nazis used industrial methods and organization in the 20th century. What they did was unique. There are other terms to describe what happened to the American Indians. It was not one event spread out over a few years but rather a slow process over many centuries... Nonetheless, over the course of 4 centuries, the number of aboriginals in North America was brought down to 250.000 in 1900 from between 2 and 18 million when Columbus landed (there are no exact figures). This was achieved through diseases (some of which were deliberately induced), wars, massacres, displacement (resulting in higher infant mortality and overall death rates), exploitation, etc. My point is it was done right there.
Is Greece about to be the European version of Lehman Brothers?
They assumed, wrongly, that with a referendum in their pocket, the rest of the eurozone would simply fold. When that didn't happen, they were left adrift.
As I said repeatedly last week, the Greeks should have had drachma notes all printed ahead of this week. They should have been ready to offer something, backed by the threat of imminent drachmaisation. Instead, they insisted that 'no' meant everyone else would simply accede to their demands.
I believe if nothing else, it would have set the tone for what welfare should be, something that IDS is battling to do now and is stopped at every turn, by both media, the courts and sometimes his own party. As a result, all he has managed to do is slow down the run away train a bit.
Do you have a source for the deliberate spreading of diseases?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33434497
Hard to take these jokers seriously, but in Athens the lunatics have taken over the asylum.
He says in that very article that he will oppose any tax credit changes if the government don't force employers to make up any shortfall from the cuts.
No museum, but look at the appalling devastation and poverty that is the Reservation system run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Two subjects Americans do not like to talk about - the slavery aspect of the Civil War and what the US did to the Indians.
It's not just the South that has dirty hands in this - the Missouri Compromise dates from 1820.
We are in this absolutely ridiculous position where people in work are receiving sometimes huge benefit payments. Many low paid jobs are being indirectly subsidized by the tax payer and also we have the merry go round of taking money to hand it back, all because of Brown and his stupid wheezes.
I don't necessarily agree 100% with Field's suggestions, but his general suggested path of travel is far better than the current situation.
I just think it's funny that people on here have suddenly started pushing this "tax credits subsidise employers" line, yet when that logic is followed through by suggesting that employers should then pay much higher wages, those same people often fall back on the same old right-wing arguments about it being "anti-business" or how it would "increase unemployment".
It is not known who conceived the plan, but there's no doubt it met with the approval of the British military in America and may have been common practice. Sir Jeffery Amherst, commander of British forces in North America, wrote July 7, 1763, probably unaware of the events at Fort Pitt: "Could it not be contrived to Send the Small Pox among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians? We must, on this occasion, Use Every Stratagem in our power to Reduce them." He ordered the extirpation of the Indians and said no prisoners should be taken. About a week later, he wrote to Bouquet: "You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race..."
The Fort Pitt incident is the best documented case of deliberately spreading smallpox among unsuspecting populations, but it likely was not the first time such a stratagem was employed by military forces. It appears that Ecuyer and Amherst proposed the same idea independently at about the same time, suggesting that the practice was not unusual.
Attempts to spread sickness and disease among enemy forces has a long history. The ancient Assyrians poisoned their enemy's water supply, and ancient Greeks poisoned the water supply of their enemy with the herb hellebore, which caused violent diarrhea. In 1340 attackers used a catapult to throw dead animals over the walls of the castle of Thun L'Evêque, causing such a stink that the air was so unendurable the defenders negotiated a truce.
http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/spring04/warfare.cfm
As for why people do it when there is still a large community here, I think you're missing the dynamics of the marriage market here. For one thing the community is actually lots of subcommunities: "lots of Asians", but fewer from your background (Kashmiri, Sylheti or whatever), from your particular religious denomination, and from your language and to some extent class background.
Suppose a guy or girl in London is, in marriage terms, a "six" or a "seven". That's not bad, but it makes it hard to marry an "eight" or a "nine" in London, and even your options among six and sevens are limited for the reason above*. But back in the home country, the fact that marriage to you potentially entitles someone to come to London to live almost automatically adds two to your score. There are guys/girls who are an 8 or a 9 in Lahore or Karachi who are now available to you - people who would be out of your league in the UK. That's the difference between getting a partner with a university degree, or not; or in the higher ranks, getting a partner with an MBA/MSc rather than just a bachelors. Getting a partner with a profession or business, rather than someone in a lower level job. Getting someone of a higher social status. Among Bangladeshis I know (and presumably among certain classes of Pakistanis) it means marrying into a family with serious ancestral land-holdings (you need to think of these as basically property being held for the long run as it's considered safer than the local currency and banks; for a comparison, imagine in the London dating market the advantage of marrying someone with an extensive buy-to-let portfolio).
* And for another reason that should now be clearer if you got to the end of the post: the 6s and 7s in London who you're in the same league as, also have the option to "marry up" in the old country.
Two subjects Americans do not like to talk about - the slavery aspect of the Civil War and what the US did to the Indians.
It's not just the South that has dirty hands in this - the Missouri Compromise dates from 1820.
Andrew Jackson is still on the $20 dollar note despite his forced ethnic cleansing of the 5 tribes on the trail of tears:
http://www.cherokee.org/AboutTheNation/History/TrailofTears/ABriefHistoryoftheTrailofTears.aspx
Indian reservations are still rather desolate and degrading places.
Then, yes I would prefer measures that result in people getting paid, than them earn, then fill in a load of forms to get "tax credits" that exceed the tax they paid in the first place.
It doesn't have to be simply a massive increase in minimum wage, I believe that employers should still have some flexibility when "trialing" staff, but there are ways in which employers (especially big ones) can be incentivized into paying better wages for those that they have taken on permanently e.g as Field suggests there are ways we can do this by altering the employers side of NI.
Overall, I would like to see quite a radical change to our tax system in general. NI for starters is totally outdated tax and has no place now that the money doesn't even have an pretense of funding its initial intended targets.
That does not apply to sharia courts which, certainly in relation to family matters, are wholly inconsistent with English law and which should never be used for criminal matters.
in one cases the religious courts are submitting to the jurisdiction of English law. In the other they are seeking to oust it. There is a difference.
http://www.cherokee.org/AboutTheNation/History/TrailofTears/ABriefHistoryoftheTrailofTears.aspx
Indian reservations are still rather desolate and degrading places.
Speaking of the Cherokees, the eastern band has avoided the dead hand of government handouts and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and has achieved success in the casino and home loan businesses.
Hard to avoid the poetic justice of this - getting revenge by taking money off the pale faces....
;-)
I agree that for arranged marriage a British passport is a definitd advantage.
It is a way of monetising emigration, as are many student visas. It would be more honest for the UK government to flog them directly and pocket the cash.
I think a lot of people who know of the theoretical genetic risk of cousin marriage rationalise it away by the fact it isn't very large in absolute terms (which is true; it's relatively much more risky than not marrying close family, but in absolute terms the risk is still fairly small; in a country which had high child mortality anyway it would pretty much be a rounding error - c.f. European royalty - but in a modern Western society it does seem like quite a pointless risk to take) and that it is mitigated in part by the fact they are likely to have children at a much younger age than their Western counterparts.
To be fair, a lot of people who are on their high horses about all these weird Asians coming over here with their weird ways and harming their children by doing so (and that harm is a very valid point and really deserves public health action) rationally also ought to be getting exercised about all these weird white British people who have started adopting the weird and entirely biologically unnatural lifestyle of putting off having kids until an age which makes it riskier for all concerned. Isn't doing our demography any good either from an economic point of view. But that's a thorny issue encompassing everything from the housing squeeze to younger people, to work/life balance and the cost of childcare, to how we deal with "professional aspiration", the idea of career as an alternative to family, and how any changes could be made without making it all horrifyingly patriarchal (sod university, get back home and breed, young ladies!).