It is not me or gwru who are vandalising statues it is done to cause the reaction it is getting. I have no problem with people protesting I will not be told by millionaire footballers or the showbiz elite how things are unfair they are doing alright out of it. In a few weeks time penshioners could be looking at losing the triple lock state pension. Some reward after being locked away like prisoners in their homes worst deaths and being in hospital I think that will be a tad unfair. Will we hear a peep out of out of them the silence will be deafening.
I am in the pensioners group in Rotherham. Why don't you join us and protest against the triple lock being removed. Get active,if you need help getting there, or when you are there, i am sure we will have people who can help. Don't worry i doubt they will be vandalising statues or urinating on memorial plaques. To stand aside is to take sides. Go for it.
Not sure whether the group have zoom meetings, i doubt they do. I will let you know when things get going again in the Rain building or meetings at My Place.
So BLM whatever you want to call them can vandalise our history. Who fought in world wars for this country not them. Too many do-gooders in this country now. This is England. Our laws. Time to enforce them.
The reason I put 'Without venturing into a racial post' in the OP was to discourage this type of reaction. I should have known better! With even a primary school level of history knowledge, you would know that thousands of Commonwealth troops fought in both World Wars for the freedoms that we enjoy today. You are correct about one thing though - This is England. Probably the most multicultural country in the world which has been a melting pot for invaders/immigrants since the day humans learned to walk. Take a DNA test - you'll be surprised!
This thread is an amazing microcosm of our nation's current malaise. A perfect example of how woke culture is running the show and stifling any voice of dissent. There is no mature discussion here. At first opportunity someone expressing an alternative view was labelled a racist and a call made to deplatform them. This is just as it is in the big world. Out there woke keyboard warriors have their views backed up by debased news organisations such as the BBC with either biased reporting or no reporting at all.
To those so passionate about the incident involving a foreign national in a foreign country that they feel the need to protest, let me remind you about something a little closer to home. In Rotherham, OUR town, ONE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED of OUR children were raped and abused by an organised grooming gang. The police and child services turned a blind eye and allowed this to go on for years. Why? Was it fear of being labelled racist? This horrendous pedophilia turned out to be widespread throughout the whole country. The Government commissioned an investigation but they will not publish the report. Why? No members of the police or social services have been prosecuted for ignoring these rapes and abuse. In Rochdale three of the individuals let out after serving a paltry portion of their sentence have lost final appeals against deportation. The cost to the tax payer for these appeals was £3,000,000. Yet two years later none have been deported. They still live in the same town as their victims.
To be clear. It is not the ethnicity of the perpetrators which is the issue with me. There are good and bad in all peoples. It is the very fact woke culture and the fear of being labelled racist allowed the rape and abuse of children to continue longer than it might have.
Sadly, the woke minority still can't help themselves. At first sniff of dissent, they are still shouting racist and trying to shut people down.
A big part of the problem is division. It shouldn't be about picking sides. Unfortunately a bi -product of democracy is populism and we tend to get what we deserve - weak leaders of all political shades who tend to polarise opinion and stoke division. It should be possible to find a way for us all to be better. Racism is obviously wrong. Vandalism is wrong. Abuse of children is obviously wrong. Environmental damage is wrong. Poverty is not necessary. There is a lot that is wrong that we need to fix but we don't seem capable of helping ourselves.
Gwru was clearly out of order by the way. 'Who fought world wars for this country not them' is an outrageous statement that is as objectionable as it is inaccurate. There is always room for opinion and debate but when people go too far they have to be pulled up.
As I have said my uncle died serving in the 2nd world war my mother also did 5years my dad 4years. I was told by her he would be spinning in his grave with what has happened to this country. I bet when he climbed into that glider on the eve of D day his thoughts were I am fighting for a more multicultural society. As Jim Morrison wrote people are strange.
None stranger than you THMiller. You are very confused in your thinking. In WW2 we were fighting a racist enemy that stood for genocide and their 'pure' race. We were on the side of freedom and were joined in our fight by people of all colours from all over the world. Yet in your mind we were fighting to preserve the culture of the white Englishman. Strange indeed. I would like to put you in a room with a dozen gurkhas and watch you argue your point.
Not everyone buys into your idea that we all can live in harmony with each other. I have worked and met with all types of people always polite to them I don't cause them any problems. The bomber in Manchester his family was getting £650 in benefits a week that bomb cost £1000 which we paid for. How do they get that amount of money I and plenty of others who have worked all of our lives get nothing. The problems we have had locally when any one brings these issues up they hide behind the race card. If me and my amigo gwru want to have our little rant and it upsets you so be it.
It doesn't upset me, it saddens me because I've got children and I want a better world for them and theirs. Royston Vasey points a woke culture where he says people cry racist too quickly. Whether we call it racism, intolerance, bigotry, extremism etc doesn't really matter. They are names and labels that are difficult to unpick. Wrong is wrong whatever name it is given and whoever does or says it. I dont seek to excuse the bad and sometimes abhorrent things that people of all creeds and colours do and there are many problems in the world for us to untangle, but as a general principle hate, fear and division can not be the way forward.
I feel i must respond to Royston Vasey's post. He talks about woke culture. I have to admit it's a newish word to me woke, and i had to look up the meaning of it. In its definition it says alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice. Consciously awake. I admit my guilt to sounding out anything i find racist and will continue to do so wherever it rears its ugly head. Smiler, as usual gets his points over in a much better way than i ever could.
Royston goes on to talk about the evil grooming gangs in Rotherham and quite correctly displays his disgust towards them. I have first hand experience of that, and was involved in the first five men who were imprisoned on Nov 4th 2010. I actually did the court report on one of the men who got four years for his part in this disgusting act. I had worked with other members of his family who were disabled and it was felt i had an understanding of the man and did the report.
I am also a member of the party who has over 40 elected councillors in Rotherham. On several occasions i have sounded out how wrong it is to not call for the sackings of any councillor who sat on their hands and did nothing whilst young people were being abused by these perverts. At CLP meetings and Local Campaign forum meetings i have backed calls to remove them. I also have spoken to Chris Read the leader of the council in person and via e/mails asking him to remove the dead wood around him and help the public of Rotherham see we are actively acting to remove these people. I have no influence on what the police have done but feel it was them who are the most to blame. Believing the young girls were worthless and had only themselves to blame and were instrumental in sweeping it under the carpet.
Mine is only one view and i respect others views, but when it is the views of people who have unreasonable beliefs and have an intolerant devotion to ones own opinions and prejudices then i think it is correct to ask them to be removed from a decent minded site like this. To Royston i say get involved and help remove the people you quite rightly are against.
We are in real danger the original message is going to be lost. Taking knees, black power salutes, Mercedes making all F1 cars black and so on isn’t going to do a thing in stopping lunatics dressed as police in the states from killing innocent black people.
I think the straw that broke the camel's back was the Floyd incident in the US and actually got people truly interested in the injustice that people of colour suffer all over the world. The statues thing is calling out the world and especially UK and US for hero worshipping and creating monuments to people that were actually pretty racist in their views and actions, slave traders and such. We can't erase our history and the fact these people existed or that "they lived in different times" but we can now acknowledge what they did and decide to end our support for their actions by removing the public artefacts celebrating their life and actions. It's not going to fix the past but will be symbolic in fixing the future. If I was from a race where I knew my ancestors were beaten, murdered and traded like property then I'd be upset that a statue of the perpetrator had been erected in honour of this person especially if it was still there in this day and age when most of us agree equality of opportunity is of utmost importance. Flag waving and harking back to our war efforts can't be used to justify any racist views - it wasn't just white men that fought and died in WW1 and 2. I personally hate the word woke though, for me it doesn't support the cause just adds another banner to father under.
it is a stupid idea and has nothing to do with racism, BLM is a political organisation in the USA led by marxists and backed by Sorros to create political unrest in the USA. It cannot be compared to the civil rights movements of the 1960's.
The deaths of any person at the hands of the police is totally unacceptable and any such officers should be punished by the law in the strongest way if found guilty in a court.
Now the USA has struggled with race issues since the day it was created and will do going forward, and like a lot of issues poverty is at the heart of the matter and the USA has a large proportion of it's people living in poverty and most of those are non-white.
For me the focus has to be about education for all people to remove the ignorance that drives bigots, we need to look to create a society where equal opportunities are given to all and where people are looked upon for the way they behave and the actions they take as an individual and not for the way they look, their gender, sexuality, religion etc.
I would prefer for football to look more at how it can use its wealth and community influence to help educate people and create opportunities for the less fortunate and if that means focusing in one area first to try and make a difference great, but a token gesture of kneeling down in support of a political movement is pathetic and pointless and I will never voluntarily kneel to anyone.
you cannot believe that racism is just a colour issue and always against people of colour by whites. What about all the race hatred within individual African countries, or between pakistan and India, the treatment of muslims by the chinese and the slave trading of white east european girls by people of all colours. The slave trade is not dead it happens today and our current political leaders do nothing to stop it. Making one group hate another for whatever reason cannot be good in anyway and if we do stand we need to stand together a truly diverse people against the true evil in the world the elite 1 % that use us all like cattle for their own ends, that fund and support hateful groups to attack other people just because they look different or pray in a different church. At the same time as this happens they have used the pandemic to move around 20% of wealth from the wests middle classes and working classes into their bank accounts, they use foundations and charities to avoid tax and manipulate and control the media. As our own liberties are being eroded they keep making us turn against each other. The child abuse scandals of the rich and famous via epstein and others, is the tip of the iceberg we need to open our eyes and see what is being done to all of us and we to start saying no. Our journalists don't investigate anything anymore, they are have their education funded by corporate sponsored universities the ones that do gather information and show how our governments committed horrendous war crimes and tortured and threatened with a life time in prison. We cannot affect the USA and how screwed up it is but we can all as individuals help each other and stand up for all humans against the evil tyrants that milk the world dry of its resources and treat the people of the world as canon fodder in their wars. We all stand together or we all fall together.
At the same time as this country was in the slave trade business, the same 'establishment' at that time treated fellow citizens as animals. Sending children up chimneys, women and kids worked in the pits. Children and women 'slaved' underground often in complete darkness, 10hrs a day. Children as young as 4 years old were employed in the mills of Lancashire and West Yorkshire, many not living long enough to reach adulthood. Filthy working conditions and disease ridden, overcrowded homes many families living in squalid cellars with no sanitation or drinkable water. TB was a working class killer together with diptheria, typhoid, cholera, dysentery. Most didn't get any education and couldn't read or write and like my great grand parents were illiterate. And even I remember when growing up in 1950s Rotherham, would often see elderly people short in stature with horrific bowed legs from having had rickets due to malnutrition as children. This then was our country and if your ancestors where working class, these were the conditions you and I were spawned from.
I don't offer this as a comparison to slavery, though the only difference is our ancestors' souls were not owned, but to make the point that all those in the world who were bellow a certain standard in society were treated as little more than animals, sub human and dispensable whether they were black, Jewish or white working class we all have a horrific history and a pedigree born from avarice of mill, plantation and pit owners . Thank heavens for the men and women who were enlightened enough to campaign against all the above who helped to deliver change we all now enjoy.
It appears to have become a standard feature of every Premier League game - everyone taking a knee in the form of a choreographed ritual. Without venturing into a racial post, I'm just interested to know what the crowd reaction would be - if there was one of course. There are strong feelings on all sides of this issue but players are currently in very safe territory with no chance of an adverse crowd reaction. Such a demonstration at NYS might legitimately be met with a counter-claim that young white female lives matter, in light of relatively recent events. Personally, I'd rather footballers, like all other celebrities, would stay out of such issues.
To be honest I think the above describes the status quo very accurately and I totally concur with the final sentiment.
Sadly, at the start of last weeks game, Rotherham United players and staff all made a gesture. I expect they will do the same tomorrow before the first league game of the season.
To TS: For the owner of a business which is heavily dependent on customer goodwill, to allow your employees to perform a gesture which hacks off a good proportion of your customers is not particularly good practice. You claim to be a man of the community so you will be quite aware of what happened, what was covered up and what continues to be covered up. It strikes me as incredibly insensitive of your employees not to be aware of the feelings of many in the town. The only thing your customers really have in common is support for the club. They most certainly do not share the same political or ideological opinion. It is beyond me why you should allow your employees to perform gestures at work which will undoubtedly be divisive and cause resentment to a good proportion of your customers.
I can't be the only one who thinks the world has gone mad. I would like to think my football club provided a sanctuary from the nonsense continually thrust upon us by those with dubious intent. Can we please have a football club without ANY ideological gesturing.
