How England Sees Itself

[Local Authority]

all I'm saying is I lived on a road of feckless benefit cheats until about a month ago and they spent most of their time eyeing me provocatively and ostentatiously smoking. one of them threatened to remove my front door with a hammer lol. so it's hard to want to help them. because for me they represent the entire working and non working poor in this country.

tbh though I just don't like people that much, we should cut the welfare system and start giving more to animal charities.

yeah but you also did live in the richest county for several years, which might have given you a skewed idea of what people on benefits are actual like

also having your front door removed with a hammer is hardly a threat, it'll take enough time for the police to arrive lol

 

[Local Authority]

you shouldn't of slammed your door so much lol, your just as bad as the yobos on your street

 

[Mr. Tea]

also having your front door removed with a hammer is hardly a threat, it'll take enough time for the police to arrive lol

If they can be arsed to show up at all...

 

[Leo]

well they did all have faces like knock off picassos

LOL, good one.

 

[Mr. Tea]

LOL, good one.

It's the Pollocks you *really* have to look out for...

 

[Patrick Swayze]

he also said his son was coming back from afghanistan and he'd waterboard me in a puddle of my own tears

 

[Leo]

he also said his son was coming back from afghanistan and he'd waterboard me in a puddle of my own tears

you lived near some real winners. i think it's safe to say there's usually a difference between poor people and idiots. sometimes they are one and the same, but not largely so.

 

[rockypoppy2]

a lot of people attending the parade would not be dismayed by the rain but delighted by it, I mean it's just so British, isn't it?

Apparently there will be simulated rain at the Olympics opening ceremony on this stage

Also, nurses and chickens to feature according to mock the week.

Its being orchestrated by Danny Boyle so i'm still holding out for it to all be some hilarious piss take, but somehow i think the urge to project a positive image of Britain across the world will mean it ends up as something far more earnest and shit.

 

[Mr. Tea]

he also said his son was coming back from afghanistan and he'd waterboard me in a puddle of my own tears

Pffft...and it was at that point that you finally realized you loved Winston Churchill.

 

[Mr. Tea]

One of Jonathon Meades's standard tropes is how (many of) the English love to delude themselves that the 'real England' is a green'n'pleasantland of bucolic farmhouses and small villages of thatched cottages clustered around stone churches and Jacobean coaching inns, blah blah blah - whereas in reality Britain was the world's first society to have a majority urban population, and only a small minority have lived in a genuinely rural environment since the 19th century.

This probably isn't unique to the UK, I mean the French have this idea of their countryside as la france profonde, but they have a much bigger country with about the same population, so naturally they have a lot more countryside where a bigger %age of their population lives.

 

[Patrick Swayze]

Pffft...and it was at that point that you finally realized you loved Winston Churchill.

yh although for some reason the 6 foot poster of him posing naked, bent over a colonial bar stool and gazing back over his shoulder with that smugly victorious look in his eye, that I hung outside for the jubilee did not go down well.

 

[vimothy]

This is true for white native British people. The New Labour style of multiculturalism placed enormous emphasis on 'the [whatever] community' as far as immigrant groups were concerned, and gave (relatively) huge power and prestige to their unelected leaders. Who are very often religious figures. Hence organizations like the MCB.

That’s an interesting point.

If liberalism is all about the autonomy of the individual, then where does multiculturalism fit in? It seems inconsistent with basic liberal principles, and consistency with basic liberal principles is the sort of thing that people usually place a lot of emphasis on.

It’s clear that this bothers liberals. Earnest types argue about it in the Guardian. So multiculturalism doesn’t look like a first-best solution. It looks like a compromise. But what’s the nature of this compromise and how is it likely to play out?

If we want to remake the world then it makes sense to try to make tactical choices that further that end. Abolishing ethnic hierarchy and the role of ethnicity in life is a goal all liberals agree is worthy. Multiculturalism strengthens weaker groups at the expense of the dominant group. Therefore, in the long run multiculturalism weakens the power of ethnicity over everyday life.

So we can rationalise the inconsistency of this strategy with liberal principles in terms of the end it helps to bring about. If treating people differently based on their ethnicity is wrong, then the fact that we have to resort to exactly that just goes to show how pernicious an influence ethnicity is.

 

[Sectionfive]

This book is quite good if you want to get into it deeper. They had a few good CiF pieces on Breivik a while back

http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/alana-lentin-gavan-titley/crises-of-multiculturalism

 

[vimothy]

I can’t imagine what a book of that sort of stuff would be like, but the article is a good example of what I’m talking about. The authors are in the “people who complain about multiculturalism are racists” camp and not the rival “people who don’t complain about multiculturalism are racists” camp.

They never address the problem, though: Is it universal, or not? If it is, then what does that mean for multiculturalism?

 

[Sectionfive]

It's a bit more then that. The focus is on the notion of multiculturalism as a political football rather then critique of the idea itself. The trust being 'it' can not have "utterly failed" when there was no real commitment to implementation (whatever that may be) to begin with.

They may not come entirely from your perspective but it's an extremely sharp dissection of the rhetoric, groupthink and how it's being adopted by the centre.

 

[Dusty]

Having been lucky enough to live in a few of Englands idyllic tiny rural communities, I can say from experience that the more idylic the location, the stronger the level of racism and fear of other bubbling under the surface.

Which makes the Olympic opening ceremony all the more perverse in my eyes.

 

[craner]

Vim, can you define multiculturalism, as you are using the term? I presume you mean, sprecifically against legal and cultural intergration in some degree, rather than a mono-racial or cultural society?

 

[vimothy]

That's a good question. I guess I'm not using it in a very precise way. Multiculturalism is a name for something we experience, but if I had to try to sum it up in its essence I'd say it's the idea that no culture can be authoritative. Instead, culture is a private matter, one of personal habits and tastes. Important institutions are formal and can be pinned down by the market and state bureaucracies. So it's a kind of shell game.

 

[craner]

I thought you were using it in a precise way. I'm just inching my way into this argument, having not really read any studies or definitions or relevant texts or anything, but let me just try and untangle what you said there, for my own benefit.

You call it "a shell game" -- is this in the sense that the state is now considered a rather formal, legal and economic framework, and borders mark a geograhical space upon and within which a variety of seperate cultural and religious groups can exist? Is it an abstract construct containing seperate communities that may or may not ineract?

As opposed to the state as an organic whole, tying in legal, economic, cultural, religious, constitutional, even racial norms, celebrated and reinforced through religious, cultural and sporting events and celebrations? To which, therefore, all communities are expected to contribute and conform in varying degrees as the price of citizenship, with all the attendant benefits, such as recourse to public funds and legal protection?

Is the state an abstract, non-demonitional space, or a social contract? And without coming over all Bill Cash, is this settled or complicated by the EU ideal, of a central commission-administered federalised post-national space? Does the social contract become a European ideal, non-racial and homogenised, and dependant upon synthetic products and institutions, such as the European flag and integrated European armed forces? Does this fractured, non-national federalism actually reinforce nationalism through regional micro-nationalisms, integration through seperation and succession and emphasis on difference and historic heritage and mythology? Does Europe threaten British nationalism and identity by inflaming and reinforcing English, Welsh, Scottish, Cornish "nationalisms"? Is this progressive or regressive? Are Welsh and gaelic progressive causes or forces? What does Bradford mean?

To go back to your original definition -- is it individuals or groups or communities whose "personal habits and tastes" are outside the sphere of the state? Is that state no longer a national entity, in this sense, but just a repository for atomised groups and individuals? In that case, if the state whithers away, or states are not formally distinguished except by ecomomic and legal arrangements, does identity go back to smaller units, i.e. regions, religious ghettoes, and indivdiuals? Does this not further undermine legal norms and jurisdiction? Does it increase the likelihood of conflict and xenophobia? Is multiculturalism not a "melting pot" or a varied, mixed, colourful, mutually enhancing and interactive social model, but a fractured and potentially or actually dangerous and hazardous arrangement, undermining the centralised state and leading to a Hobbesian nightmare?

Is multiculuturalism still the melting pot it was sold as, the relativistic social space, dissolving identity, social cohesion and cultural agency? Has it worked in this way? Does it lead to harmony or conflict? What is the model, the Orthodox and atheist Jews in Golders Green and Hendon or the Hasids of Stamford Hill? The Indians or the Pakistanis?

 

[craner]

The New Labour style of multiculturalism

This was Mr. Tea's curious formulation, in regard to their ignorant and mistaken nomination of "Muslim leadership" in the UK -- which was, in fact, a Tory mistake to begin with, merely reinforced by the likes of Jack Straw. What was the "New Labour" style of multiculturalism, how does it differ from other "styles", and what are they?