Good for you, i,m pleased about that, the op was talking about someone on a bus with their designer shoe clad feet on the seat whilst carrying a designer holdall! Was that you?
No, shoes on seats is one of my pet peeves. The OP also assumed that the fellow had acquired his designer gear on benfit rather than working for them. I was just pointing out that statistically that was unlikely. Indeed, the OP is more likely to be on benefit than the person he was complaining about.
There was a Jewish enclave just round the corner where I was born in the East End. I had one black mate for a short time, we would have been around 14 at the time. Even came to the Fulwell End with us for a couple of months. He was in the Cottage Homes at the time, then one day he was gone just never came back to school. 99% of the racism I heard or saw was always against Pakistanis. I recall one match day walking over the bridge and this huge Sunderland supporter shouted at a guy "You ****ing Pa** bastard **** off home!" The guy shouted back "I'm Indian!" This is not a word of a lie the big guy shouted back "Sorry pal" I also sang along with gusto to "I'd rather be a PA** than a mag!" Total tribal mentality with no thought to the actual words.
Some good stuff and yes cutey, a few miles in those days could be a whole new world and when I started work, in Hartlepool serving my apprenticeship, I grew up very quickly. Someone mentioned a contradiction in no homophobia and being told to stay away from the only gay in the village, yes thats exactly the point, we did not know what gay was so we could not be homophobic. My parents along with many others in our village did what they thought best, they protected us from the outside world by ignoring it and not telling us about it. When the first shop was bought by a asian family it was called the Paki shop by everyone, racist yes but not meant to be, it was what it was and it was racism based on ignorance not hatred. I remember the first black doctor, my mum told me about having a blackie doctor, not racisist but descriptive, its what he was. My point in the post is not to say things were right or wrong, better or worse just to show how my world was in those days. IMO many predudices came not from hate but from misunderstanding, ignorance or a fear of something we did not understand. The problem is of course that what is ignorance say from my parents in those long gone days was hurtful and insulting to the doctor or shopkeeper. Things are far better now, we are better imformed and the world is smaller but we have seen over the past weeks that all the problems are still there.
Absolutely correct, sorry. And as for the link to the stats, below is a link to the link to the stats as of 2009. They take some digesting: http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/3722968/immigration-facts-and-figures.thtml
I bet in the first week that shop opened and the first time Paki was used there was no malice intended in the word Any more than Taffy or Geordie....Ive told you Syd that Im living in Somerset at the moment.....but Im coming back home this year when it all falls into place...Anyway there are isolated villages down here which are striving to stay alive...losing their post offices etc.... Some time back at the time of losing one of these I heard an old girl saying with a passion "What we need round here is a damn good Paki shop...
Love thy Neighbour - whilst containing racist language and insults, Rudolph Walker always came away from the situation with the upperhand, showing that the small minded biggot to be the weaker.
Love Thy Neighbour was in my opinion an horrendously bad comedy show, which relied solely on bad taste racist comments, towards both blacks and whites, for its 'laughs'. Till Death Us Do Part in contrast was far more subtle, and in reality aimed to combat racism and bigitory...The fact that some people saw the Alf Garnett character as a role model, for me just highlights the frightening levels of ignorance that exists in UK society..
I think it says a lot about our main concerns that we have some homophobia, drugs sex and rock and roll in here but its always the racist topic that grabs us, why is that? Is it because its in the news, its visable and all around us, we all have it, it frightens us, it concerns us or we just dont understand it. It must be a strange world being a racist football fan, like the man who has just been done for his twitter comments about the Newcastle team. To be openly racist about Ba, Cissie and the rest then go to the SoL on Saturday to hail his hero Sess. At times life was so much easier in those long gone days of ignorance.