i was told i was not welcome

NMyTree

mammasan wrote:

Wow I didn't realize that the UK had inbred redneck white trash. I thought that was strickly an American phenomena.

I think you'll find that every country around the globe has inbred redneck (insert skin color) trash, who think this way.

Heineken Helen

NMyTree wrote:

I think you'll find that every country around the globe has inbred redneck (insert skin color) trash, who think this way.

no inbreeding going on here :cool:


















quite a few people who look suspiciously like sheep though

Restless Soul

Heineken Helen wrote:

Yep I love that irony about the languages


I'm sure you'll find that Eastern Europeans ARE just as looked down upon as any other immigrant, what kinda jobs do they generally get in Britain? I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that it's similar to here where they get the shittiest most exploitable jobs available. Until recently the Irish got shit over there (and our history relating to Britain is pretty similar) so it's definitely not a colour thing... many Irish in Britain still DO get shit. Also, nobody likes to be told 'you owe us'. There could be something to be said about Irish, Indian whatever nationality who have been fucked up by the Brits moving over there. There WILL be a certain level of bitterness in your attitude. Obviously I'm not saying you were to blame BUT Eastern Europeans won't go there thinking the Brits owe them. I'm definitely not blaming us BUT the thing is in general they don't teach in schools in Britain WHY certain other countries feel about them the way they do. So kids just see immigrants coming in with attitude and thinking they're entitled to stuff and think they're stealing from them. It's surprising how many times I've heard the question 'what exactly did the English do to the Irish?' :rolleyes:

To be honest I do the "they owe us" stance as a defence mechanism against racism lol. I'm not that bitter lol! I quite like Britain except for the weather! You're right about the education system though - they don't teach history accurately. I never learnt anything about the Irish situation in school, let alone about the empire/colonialism etc, until I was older and learnt for myself.

And you're right about the eastern europeans. Some of them do get a pasting in the press etc. The thing about them is that they have a completely different basis for coming here. I mean it's still about jobs and everything like with us but they are part of Europe so have been given those rights by Europe itself. If racists in Britain don't like it they only have Europe to blame for the policy. But it's always the immigrants that have to suffer the fall out at the front line.

Heineken Helen

Restless Soul wrote:

To be honest I do the "they owe us" stance as a defence mechanism against racism lol. I'm not that bitter lol! I quite like Britain except for the weather! You're right about the education system though - they don't teach history accurately. I never learnt anything about the Irish situation in school, let alone about the empire/colonialism etc, until I was older and learnt for myself.

And you're right about the eastern europeans. Some of them do get a pasting in the press etc. The thing about them is that they have a completely different basis for coming here. I mean it's still about jobs and everything like with us but they are part of Europe so have been given those rights by Europe itself. If racists in Britain don't like it they only have Europe to blame for the policy. But it's always the immigrants that have to suffer the fall out at the front line.

it's just that I hear more complaints about eastern europeans here than I would about other nationalities... so I just don't think it's a race thing. I think some people just don't like anybody who's not like themselves.

It's amazing the amount of English who don't know anything about the Irish situation... and wonder what the whole north thing was about... they think we just don't like them

Restless Soul

Heineken Helen wrote:

it's just that I hear more complaints about eastern europeans here than I would about other nationalities... so I just don't think it's a race thing. I think some people just don't like anybody who's not like themselves.

Maybe that's the thing then. Maybe I don't hear it about it as much because people with some racist views about immigration won't mention them to me, seeing as I'm brown-skinned. Maybe its a fear of not being seen to be PC or something.

I knew my old boss had some attitudes about immigrants but he never mentioned them directly to me. I did kind of suspect that he shared his views with some white colleagues about it though. He probably didn't want to be accused of racism or anything I suppose if he said anything to me.

Another former boss of mine from Essex and her friend once went on a drunken rant to myself and two colleagues (one from belfast and one from Barbados) in the pub once about "how we would not be here if it wasn't for her grandfather and the english fighting the nazis" on our behalf. She had a total lack of awareness about the fact that a lot of people from the english colonies (including India, West Indies and Ireland) also helped fight the nazis as part of the british army.

Oh well, that's ignorance for you!

NMyTree

Heineken Helen wrote:

no inbreeding going on here :cool:......quite a few people who look suspiciously like sheep though

Bah...bah...bah.....


But seriously, I used the term inbred as more of way of describing an ignorant, narrow-minded nationalism that has been passed down from generation to generation. Not as a term to describe an identical genetic trainwreck of coupling/breeding.

Heineken Helen

Restless Soul wrote:

Maybe that's the thing then. Maybe I don't hear it about it as much because people with some racist views about immigration won't mention them to me, seeing as I'm brown-skinned. Maybe its a fear of not being seen to be PC or something.

I knew my old boss had some attitudes about immigrants but he never mentioned them directly to me. I did kind of suspect that he shared his views with some white colleagues about it though. He probably didn't want to be accused of racism or anything I suppose if he said anything to me.

Another former boss of mine from Essex and her friend once went on a drunken rant to myself and two colleagues (one from belfast and one from Barbados) in the pub once about "how we would not be here if it wasn't for her grandfather and the english fighting the nazis" on our behalf. She had a total lack of awareness about the fact that a lot of people from the english colonies (including India, West Indies and Ireland) also helped fight the nazis as part of the british army.

Oh well, that's ignorance for you!

yep, well there is always the fear of being accused of racism... your first instinct was to presume all this is a race thing until I point out that eastern europeans are just as put down. I know we don't have as many Asians here as there are in London but to be honest when I lived in London I heard more complaints about Scottish people than any other nationality . It's very dangerous to automatically assume that these people simply hate anyone who's not of the same colour..

And lol at your essex friend... that argument is lost on Irish people. The Germans have always been nicer to us than the Brits even when Hitler was in power. And the colonies not only HELPED win that war... we were the front liners.

Restless Soul

Heineken Helen wrote:

yep, well there is always the fear of being accused of racism... your first instinct was to presume all this is a race thing until I point out that eastern europeans are just as put down. I know we don't have as many Asians here as there are in London but to be honest when I lived in London I heard more complaints about Scottish people than any other nationality . It's very dangerous to automatically assume that these people simply hate anyone who's not of the same colour..

And lol at your essex friend... that argument is lost on Irish people. The Germans have always been nicer to us than the Brits even when Hitler was in power. And the colonies not only HELPED win that war... we were the front liners.

I didn't presume it was a race thing. It is a race thing because it was in response to what the OP said (darkcrow).

Heineken Helen

Restless Soul wrote:

I didn't presume it was a race thing. It is a race thing because it was in response to what the OP said (darkcrow).

ah ok, but what I'm trying to explain is that hate is just more obvious when it comes to race. I mean you or darkcrow it's probably obvious that your family didn't originate locally just to look at you. With white immigrants it's not so obvious... but once they hear the accent they hate them just as much, so I wouldn't take it personally :( . It is a shame people like this have to exist but what can be done? How do we change it? And I don't mean those as rhetorical questions... the answers must be out there somewhere

Restless Soul

Heineken Helen wrote:

ah ok, but what I'm trying to explain is that hate is just more obvious when it comes to race. I mean you or darkcrow it's probably obvious that your family didn't originate locally just to look at you. With white immigrants it's not so obvious... but once they hear the accent they hate them just as much, so I wouldn't take it personally :( . It is a shame people like this have to exist but what can be done? How do we change it? And I don't mean those as rhetorical questions... the answers must be out there somewhere

lol its all making my head hurt just to think about it all.

maybe global warming isn't such a bad thing then. Once it wipes the planet of humans and all our stupid problems then the world will be a better place. lol

Yellow Ledbelly

spiral out wrote:

Lol we have a fair few chavs over here, they are probably = to the people from the south in America.

Talk about ignorance. Isn't the last part of your statement the exact same kind of bullshit about which so much you spend so much time shouting down? Sure seems like it to me, because you have thrown a blanket over a large portion of people in the U.S. without knowing anymore than what you've read or seen on TV. I assure you the southern U.S. by no means has a monopoly on ignorant, uneducated idiots.

I am indeed from the south, but I, unlike you apparently, am able to simply ignore ignorance when I encounter it, most of the time. But, your statement struck a nerve with me, especially since it was in a thread pertaining to racism and intolerance and you simply need to know how ignorant and hypocrital you were in that statement. Have a lovely day

Heineken Helen

Restless Soul wrote:

lol its all making my head hurt just to think about it all.

maybe global warming isn't such a bad thing then. Once it wipes the planet of humans and all our stupid problems then the world will be a better place. lol

I actually agree with you. Well not about global warming but it's a strange thought that the quicker man (and woman) is wiped out, the better chance the planet has to repair itself and the better chance that all its other inhabitants have at survival :( . Not that I want to die or want all people to die but this is a sad truth.

Pegasus

Restless Soul wrote:

I'm Indian and see the same sort of attitude around sometimes. It's just pure ignorance if she thinks speaking your own tongue at home is offensive to britain. How stupid. So if she immigrated to spain with her family will she start speaking spanish to her own family because otherwise it would be rude to the spaniards? Will she heck! The british are supposed to be the worst for learning other languages!

I've lived in Britain all my life and I refuse to be made to feel guilty for living in *their* country because the way I see it Britain OWES us Indians because of what they did to my parent's country for over 300 years. It is my subjective opinion that it's Karma - what goes around comes around. And we don't even do anything that bad. My dad's worked and paid taxes to the british govt for over 30 years and me and my sister have too. This country would not be as developed nor as rich as it became if they hadn't gone out and stripped countries like India of their wealth in the first place. They ruled and slaughtered Indians like nobody's business (and africans too actually along with other european countries).

There's a lot of new arrivals in london now, the eastern Europeans, and I don't see them getting the same attitude from the indigenous brits - maybe because they are largely white? It does piss me off that Britain doesn't "owe" them anything yet they don't get the crap we get sometimes. It's always about colour in the end.

racism works both ways and the last part of your comment is sniffing of it.
and, as I've stated in my comment, Eastern Europeans do get shit too. I've actually seen more xenophobia than racism.

funny how the old immigrants seem to forget and act with the new ones like they were acted upon themselves :rolleyes:

and as Helen says, the 'owe us' attitude is not helping.
their great-grand-parents owe your great-grand-parents probably.
But to a 20 year old, they don't owe you anything since have done nothing.

the 'they're taking our jobs' is such a stupid argument, especially here and now, since most of the immigrants are doing jobs locals don't want to do or even creating them.
Most people that use that argument are really saying 'they're taking our benefits handout' :rolleyes:

I'm not defending one bit the 'bitch' and would have ripped into her had I been a witness! (just ask the people here who know me, they'll give you an idea )

.. but the 'owe me' generation (whatever colour/origin, and it's not just in Britain, I see it in France too) is pissing me off!

Restless Soul

Pegasus wrote:

racism works both ways and the last part of your comment is sniffing of it.
and, as I've stated in my comment, Eastern Europeans do get shit too. I've actually seen more xenophobia than racism.

funny how the old immigrants seem to forget and act with the new ones like they were acted upon themselves :rolleyes:

and as Helen says, the 'owe us' attitude is not helping.
their great-grand-parents owe your great-grand-parents probably.
But to a 20 year old, they don't owe you anything since have done nothing.

the 'they're taking our jobs' is such a stupid argument, especially here and now, since most of the immigrants are doing jobs locals don't want to do or even creating them.
Most people that use that argument are really saying 'they're taking our benefits handout' :rolleyes:

I'm not defending one bit the 'bitch' and would have ripped into her had I been a witness! (just ask the people here who know me, they'll give you an idea )

.. but the 'owe me' generation (whatever colour/origin, and it's not just in Britain, I see it in France too) is pissing me off!

First of all I wasn't being racist about eastern europeans. I was pointing out how they largely seem to be treated differently to us but then again, as already discussed with Helen, a lot of times the racism they receive is not always expressed to someone like me. I see it in the press but not so much in person.

Secondly I never said "they're taking our jobs". (or benefits lol).

I do get your point about the "owe us" comment as I don't believe every 20-year old owes me lol. I'm talking about the country as a whole, and only as a defence mechanism over racism I receive, like if I'm made to feel like I'm not allowed to be here. That was my point.

Heineken Helen

Restless Soul wrote:

First of all I wasn't being racist about eastern europeans. I was pointing out how they largely seem to be treated differently to us but then again, as already discussed with Helen, a lot of times the racism they receive is not always expressed to someone like me. I see it in the press but not so much in person.

Secondly I never said "they're taking our jobs". (or benefits lol).

I do get your point about the "owe us" comment as I don't believe every 20-year old owes me lol. I'm talking about the country as a whole, and only as a defence mechanism over racism I receive, like if I'm made to feel like I'm not allowed to be here. That was my point.

Yeh, I can see both sides. I mean, being Irish, the country owes us a lot too... well an apology would be nice. I don't go with that attitude... but if ever I was told to go back to my own country well they'd better be prepared for my answer. Other countries (eastern europe) wouldn't be ABLE to give that answer so maybe they just take it? It's amazing how far we've come though and grown up. Ireland V England in Croke park this year spoke volumes I believe... one of the most emotional things i've ever seen on tv... I just couldn't believe it. So yeh, whilst sport can often be a dividing factor and a hunting ground for assholes like those gangs I've spoken of... it can also bring us all together in a much nicer way than anything else can.

Pegasus

Restless Soul wrote:

First of all I wasn't being racist about eastern europeans. I was pointing out how they largely seem to be treated differently to us but then again, as already discussed with Helen, a lot of times the racism they receive is not always expressed to someone like me. I see it in the press but not so much in person.

Secondly I never said "they're taking our jobs". (or benefits lol).

I do get your point about the "owe us" comment as I don't believe every 20-year old owes me lol. I'm talking about the country as a whole, and only as a defence mechanism over racism I receive, like if I'm made to feel like I'm not allowed to be here. That was my point.

your argument about them getting less shit was based on colour.
But I hear your point about not witnessing it as much as other people might because of PC attitudes. (by PC I always mean hypocritical-PC.. not saying racist stuff to me is not political correctness, it's just right and normal!)

my remark about jobs wasn't addressed to you, I know you didn't say that , but to the general argument racist/xenophobic people ...too many thoughts! got mixed up

yeah..I don't know how old you are, but the 'young' generation (like <25), whote/Black/Asian, whatever, seem to me to have 'I'm owed' mentality that reality grates me.
I'm a firm believer in the Social system, but I don't like scroungers, and the 2 are not synonymous.

Pegasus

Heineken Helen wrote:

Yeh, I can see both sides. I mean, being Irish, the country owes us a lot too... well an apology would be nice. I don't go with that attitude... but if ever I was told to go back to my own country well they'd better be prepared for my answer. Other countries (eastern europe) wouldn't be ABLE to give that answer so maybe they just take it? It's amazing how far we've come though and grown up. Ireland V England in Croke park this year spoke volumes I believe... one of the most emotional things i've ever seen on tv... I just couldn't believe it. So yeh, whilst sport can often be a dividing factor and a hunting ground for assholes like those gangs I've spoken of... it can also bring us all together in a much nicer way than anything else can.

that's Rugby though, don't try this with football .. just got to see Celtic/Rangers!

Restless Soul

Pegasus wrote:

your argument about them getting less shit was based on colour.
But I hear your point about not witnessing it as much as other people might because of PC attitudes. (by PC I always mean hypocritical-PC.. not saying racist stuff to me is not political correctness, it's just right and normal!)

my remark about jobs wasn't addressed to you, I know you didn't say that , but to the general argument racist/xenophobic people ...too many thoughts! got mixed up

yeah..I don't know how old you are, but the 'young' generation (like <25), whote/Black/Asian, whatever, seem to me to have 'I'm owed' mentality that reality grates me.
I'm a firm believer in the Social system, but I don't like scroungers, and the 2 are not synonymous.

I'm not talking about "owed" as in benefits lol. That didn't occur to me. I've worked all my life and intend to. I meant "owed" as in karma. Like Britain did a lot of bad stuff to other countries, so if they don't like us being here then its probably some kind of karmic retribution on them. That's what I meant, see? So if someone says to me they don't like me or my kind to be here, my defence is tough!

BTW I'm thirty-(cough)-six ahem anyway, but if the younger generation think that in terms of benefits/social security that's not where I was coming from at all!

Pegasus

Restless Soul wrote:

I'm not talking about "owed" as in benefits lol. That didn't occur to me. I've worked all my life and intend to. I meant "owed" as in karma. Like Britain did a lot of bad stuff to other countries, so if they don't like us being here then its probably some kind of karmic retribution on them. That's what I meant, see? So if someone says to me they don't like me or my kind to be here, my defence is tough!

BTW I'm thirty-(cough)-six ahem anyway, but if the younger generation think that in terms of benefits/social security that's not where I was coming from at all!

I didn't mean benefits in particular, but a general attitude to society as a whole and 'entitlements'
Karma didn't cross my mind since I'm not superstitious (DON'T get me started!)

and I'm the same (cough) and where I come from (France), even my generation is like that..which is partly why I left..

Byrnzie

darkcrow wrote:

the other day some bitch said that i and people like me should be kicked out of the country (britain) as we were not really "british". i said that i was. i have lived here all my lfie. she said i was not "born and bred" to which i replied i was... i was born in london and have lived here all my life...

she then went on to say that immigrants steal all the jobs and take money away from the country..
of course i argued immigrants are actually net contributor to the uk giving back billions not only in taxes but also in consumer power.
she couldnt develop a proper coherant argument as to why i should not be allowed to live in my country...

oh she also tried to suggest that just because in my house my family dont just speak english but also our mother tounge (punjabi) that we were being offensive to britain on not respecting the country...

it just amazes me how much ignorance is around in this day and age, and how much hate.

Where was this? In a pub? At college? I'm intrigued. Personally I'd have probably spat in her face.