General News Thread

[Jon the Hat]

16 hours ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

Are you English? I always thought I was, never lived anywhere else, but I'm thinking that might not be enough.

 

The deeply contentious debate around what it means to be English - BBC News

 

https://share.google/xvu8YnRZMhLZEDiCt

 

The bit that surprised me was this...

 

The poll suggested that 74% of English people believe that someone can be English regardless of their skin colour or ethnic background.

 

Or to put it another way, 26% believe that non-white people can't ever be English. Which to me is racist and thereby over a quarter of people are racist - which I find surprisingly high. Possibly because the people I choose to spend my time with aren't racist and I wouldn't spend any time with someone who was overtly racist.

 

And the whole St George thing. You know, the legendary Palestinian freedom fighter.  Not sure that all proud patriots would be happy with that. England didn't even exist when he died. The dragon motifs you see are weird too - so you celebrate him by portraying his mortal foe?

 

Apparently, it used to be St Edmund until the 14th century, which would at least make some sense, as he actually was English (though maybe only a second generation immigrant).

 

"But we'll all be speaking foreign!" I hear 26% of you cry. Really? You want English to stay the same? Perhaps we should go back to Shakespearian English, which so many people complain about not being able to understand, despite not being very difficult at all. Nah, sod that, let's go back to Old English - now there's a challenge!

 

Fæder ūre, þū þe eart on heofonum,
sīe þīn nama ġehālgod.
Tōbecume þīn rīċe.
Ġewurþe þīn willa on eorðan swā swā on heofonum.

 

This is a very famous piece of text. Anyone?

Point made, I think.

 

People, and as a result national identity, evolve.

You adapt or you die. Clinging to old traditions is quaint, but not necessary. I mean, we all mourn the loss of vinegar Valentines (sending cruel cards to people you don't like on Feb 14) and bear-baiting, and I'd happily put many a Morris dancer on the ducking stool, but we can create our own traditions that in future times will tell people who WE were and not leave them thinking that we were people from centuries earlier.

 

I find myself wondering - if this country was invaded by a foreign nation, and that nation demanded we adopt all their customs and language, but got the NHS running perfectly, no wait times, less illness, cancer and heart surgery success tripled; brought cheap, efficient transport links, no potholes in roads, well lit streets; put police on the streets, reduced crime by 500%, people felt much safer, shoplifting almost unheard of; cheap gas and electricity with helpful calls centres and prompt attention to any problems, clean water provided by efficient water companies who have help to make the waters of British rivers clean and safe; plenty of affordable housing without stacking people on top of eachother or building on flood plains; pubs, clubs, theatres and cinemas reopening across the land, high streets full of vibrant traders, almost zero unemployment and schools and universities that produced outstandingly talented youth.

 

If all this (of course it hypothetical), I can guarantee you, because they were foreign, and simply because of that, people would rise up and try to get rid of them. England might be crap, but it's OUR crap!

 

Life is strange.

Its a confused concept for sure.  The counter is often made that if you or I as white English born people moved to almost any other part of the world, we would still be seen as English, as would our kids if they were bron to two White English parents.  Its quite a western concept, and to our credit that we largely welcome people from all over the world as being able to become English (or American, or Australian, or New Zealander) in the way that I am not sure you would find in China or India or Japan say.  Would you claim to be Indian if you lived in India, if your kids were born and raised in India?  I think the locals would laugh at you.  Britishness or Englishness (or American, or Australian) is in the main not seen as ethnicity but a belonging.  Which makes it hard to define and easy to pick apart.

[Trav Le Bleu]

2 hours ago, Jon the Hat said:

Its a confused concept for sure.  The counter is often made that if you or I as white English born people moved to almost any other part of the world, we would still be seen as English, as would our kids if they were bron to two White English parents.  Its quite a western concept, and to our credit that we largely welcome people from all over the world as being able to become English (or American, or Australian, or New Zealander) in the way that I am not sure you would find in China or India or Japan say.  Would you claim to be Indian if you lived in India, if your kids were born and raised in India?  I think the locals would laugh at you.  Britishness or Englishness (or American, or Australian) is in the main not seen as ethnicity but a belonging.  Which makes it hard to define and easy to pick apart.

A very fair point. In fact I was thinking on that myself since posting this. I think that it's rarer (at least since the age of colonialism) that white people go to live in non-white countries.

 

Actually, thinking on that colonialism, white people HAVE been guilty of almost wiping out entire cultures when settling in the Americas and Antipodes, though much less so in Africa and Asia.

 

And now I realise I'm thinking from a British point of view. The Spanish actually did wipe out entire civilizations. To the point that we know less about central and southern American civilizations than we do much older ones such as Egypt or Assyria.

 

As you say, it's a confused concept.

Edited Sunday at 04:17 by Trav Le Bleu

[Robo61]

8 hours ago, Leeds Fox said:

 

So if the actions of someone who’s been stabbed match those of someone who’s intoxicated… and the person is laying down, in distress, claiming they’ve been stabbed multiple times and saying they can’t breathe, it would be fair to assume they may well have being stabbed. No?

Possibly but it is also not unknown for offenders to claim they have been stabbed when they haven't.  

[filthyfox]

8 minutes ago, Robo61 said:

Possibly but it is also not unknown for offenders to claim they have been stabbed when they haven't.  

That was a real copper cock up.

Have seen the bodycam footage and the search of Novac wasnt thorough enough to see if he had a weapon himself, let alone any stab wounds (the wet and sticky test.

Ex filthy copper talking here.  The standard of Police body searching has gone completely downhill.

Going back some time- how the actual **** did that Custody Sergeant get shot?

Are Police too scared ti do their job because of a two-tier racial system?

I dont know; i left in 2003 before it got stupid.

 

[MaidstoneFox]

Wrong thread

Edited Sunday at 23:05 by MaidstoneFox

[bovril]

15 hours ago, Jon the Hat said:

Its a confused concept for sure.  The counter is often made that if you or I as white English born people moved to almost any other part of the world, we would still be seen as English, as would our kids if they were bron to two White English parents.  Its quite a western concept, and to our credit that we largely welcome people from all over the world as being able to become English (or American, or Australian, or New Zealander) in the way that I am not sure you would find in China or India or Japan say.  Would you claim to be Indian if you lived in India, if your kids were born and raised in India?  I think the locals would laugh at you.  Britishness or Englishness (or American, or Australian) is in the main not seen as ethnicity but a belonging.  Which makes it hard to define and easy to pick apart.

America and Australia are settler colonies though. Neither England nor Britain are. I think one of the reasons Englishness is more contentious these days is that we associate ourselves more with those countries than European nations to the extent that some people actually start to think we're the same - the whole 'nation of immigrants' stuff that has popped up recently and doesn't really fit England at all. But I think the main reason is that we globalized our language and culture to the extent that it stopped belonging to us. And the things that define us as a nation are now so nebulous. And we never got to grips with the end of our empire, we still want to be global, connected to the Commonwealth etc. The Scots and Welsh seem a lot more comfortable being simply a European nation, the English not so much. 

 

Also what you say about the kids of immigrants is not just about vibes. In most countries including the UK a child born to immigrants in that country is not necessarily a citizen. To go back to the first point, we're not America.

[filthyfox]

On 06/06/2026 at 10:40, Trav Le Bleu said:

Are you English? I always thought I was, never lived anywhere else, but I'm thinking that might not be enough.

 

The deeply contentious debate around what it means to be English - BBC News

 

https://share.google/xvu8YnRZMhLZEDiCt

 

The bit that surprised me was this...

 

The poll suggested that 74% of English people believe that someone can be English regardless of their skin colour or ethnic background.

 

Or to put it another way, 26% believe that non-white people can't ever be English. Which to me is racist and thereby over a quarter of people are racist - which I find surprisingly high. Possibly because the people I choose to spend my time with aren't racist and I wouldn't spend any time with someone who was overtly racist.

 

And the whole St George thing. You know, the legendary Palestinian freedom fighter.  Not sure that all proud patriots would be happy with that. England didn't even exist when he died. The dragon motifs you see are weird too - so you celebrate him by portraying his mortal foe?

 

Apparently, it used to be St Edmund until the 14th century, which would at least make some sense, as he actually was English (though maybe only a second generation immigrant).

 

"But we'll all be speaking foreign!" I hear 26% of you cry. Really? You want English to stay the same? Perhaps we should go back to Shakespearian English, which so many people complain about not being able to understand, despite not being very difficult at all. Nah, sod that, let's go back to Old English - now there's a challenge!

 

Fæder ūre, þū þe eart on heofonum,
sīe þīn nama ġehālgod.
Tōbecume þīn rīċe.
Ġewurþe þīn willa on eorðan swā swā on heofonum.

 

This is a very famous piece of text. Anyone?

Point made, I think.

 

People, and as a result national identity, evolve.

You adapt or you die. Clinging to old traditions is quaint, but not necessary. I mean, we all mourn the loss of vinegar Valentines (sending cruel cards to people you don't like on Feb 14) and bear-baiting, and I'd happily put many a Morris dancer on the ducking stool, but we can create our own traditions that in future times will tell people who WE were and not leave them thinking that we were people from centuries earlier.

 

I find myself wondering - if this country was invaded by a foreign nation, and that nation demanded we adopt all their customs and language, but got the NHS running perfectly, no wait times, less illness, cancer and heart surgery success tripled; brought cheap, efficient transport links, no potholes in roads, well lit streets; put police on the streets, reduced crime by 500%, people felt much safer, shoplifting almost unheard of; cheap gas and electricity with helpful calls centres and prompt attention to any problems, clean water provided by efficient water companies who have help to make the waters of British rivers clean and safe; plenty of affordable housing without stacking people on top of eachother or building on flood plains; pubs, clubs, theatres and cinemas reopening across the land, high streets full of vibrant traders, almost zero unemployment and schools and universities that produced outstandingly talented youth.

 

If all this (of course it hypothetical), I can guarantee you, because they were foreign, and simply because of that, people would rise up and try to get rid of them. England might be crap, but it's OUR crap!

 

Life is strange.

DNA test suggests that i am English....

Or at least a good cobbling of pre 1100AD invader types that match what English actually is.

 

Also, humourously, cousins on both sides are confirmed as my cousins...  therefore i also have no doubt as to my parantage!

[Spudulike]

10 hours ago, filthyfox said:

DNA test suggests that i am English....

Or at least a good cobbling of pre 1100AD invader types that match what English actually is.

 

Also, humourously, cousins on both sides are confirmed as my cousins...  therefore i also have no doubt as to my parantage!

It would therefore be very unlikely that you are not related to a certain King in our Cathedral.

[Lionator]

The complete breakdown of relations between Poland and Ukraine is wild to see. 

[filthyfox]

1 hour ago, Spudulike said:

It would therefore be very unlikely that you are not related to a certain King in our Cathedral.

And if I am related to THAT King,

I would be related to ALL Monarchs

"BOW DOWN, PEASANTS!!!"

[Jon the Hat]

55 minutes ago, Lionator said:

The complete breakdown of relations between Poland and Ukraine is wild to see. 

Ukraine seems to be deliberately winding the Polish up, but not sure what possible benefit they could get.

[Lionator]

25 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

Ukraine seems to be deliberately winding the Polish up, but not sure what possible benefit they could get.

There’s one thing winding them up, there’s another thing naming your prized special forces battalion after a group that ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Poles. But yes it’s all a bit weird, Ukranian nationalism is a bit weird but I suppose it’s not worse than the alternative.  
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia_and_Eastern_Galicia

Edited 14 hours ago by Lionator

[davieG]

Reminds me of this

 

[bovril]

20 minutes ago, Lionator said:

There’s one thing winding them up, there’s another thing naming your prized special forces battalion after a group that ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Poles. But yes it’s all a bit weird, Ukranian nationalism is a bit weird but I suppose it’s not worse than the alternative.  
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia_and_Eastern_Galicia

Kind of hard in Europe to name something after a historical figure and not gravely offend your neighbours, I'm just thinking about being Irish and walking round any British town centre...

[Jon the Hat]

10 minutes ago, bovril said:

Kind of hard in Europe to name something after a historical figure and not gravely offend your neighbours, I'm just thinking about being Irish and walking round any British town centre...

There is historical naming, and then there is pissing off your neighbour, who happens to be one of the strongest NATO forces in Europe at a time when you need all the help you can get.  It is very very weird.

[davieG]

11 minutes ago, bovril said:

Kind of hard in Europe to name something after a historical figure and not gravely offend your neighbours, I'm just thinking about being Irish and walking round any British town centre...

There were some good signs

 

[bovril]

2 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

There is historical naming, and then there is pissing off your neighbour, who happens to be one of the strongest NATO forces in Europe at a time when you need all the help you can get.  It is very very weird.

yeah it's bizarre

[Jon the Hat]

3 minutes ago, davieG said:

There were some good signs

 

I am impressed with myself that I recognised where that was given I haven't been in Leicester City Centre for about 25 years.

[davieG]

1 minute ago, Jon the Hat said:

I am impressed with myself that I recognised where that was given I haven't been in Leicester City Centre for about 25 years.

Gone now of course.

[Jon the Hat]

23 minutes ago, davieG said:

Gone now of course.

When I checked I see it is a Cafe Nero.  Obviously, everywhere needs more coffee shops.  

[Robo61]

On 07/06/2026 at 10:11, filthyfox said:

That was a real copper cock up.

Have seen the bodycam footage and the search of Novac wasnt thorough enough to see if he had a weapon himself, let alone any stab wounds (the wet and sticky test.

Ex filthy copper talking here.  The standard of Police body searching has gone completely downhill.

Going back some time- how the actual **** did that Custody Sergeant get shot?

Are Police too scared ti do their job because of a two-tier racial system?

I dont know; i left in 2003 before it got stupid.

 

I have seen the footage and have said all along that the officers here made mistakes and should clearly have acted more swiftly on the victims cry for help.  I fail to see though where this is evidence of 2 tier policing,  the officers had been notified of a crime being committed and acted on that information in the initial stages as most would have expected them to have done.  I can't comment on the searching aspect as I am not and never have been a copper,  far too stressful for me,  as it is for the vast majority many of whom believe that they would always get it right no matter how difficult the situation they found themselves in.  I see nothing in the video that suggests the officers were not dong their best,  unfortunately that is sometimes not good enough in terms of consequences,  as we have all found in our working and home life I am sure.  

[Jon the Hat]

6 minutes ago, Robo61 said:

I have seen the footage and have said all along that the officers here made mistakes and should clearly have acted more swiftly on the victims cry for help.  I fail to see though where this is evidence of 2 tier policing,  the officers had been notified of a crime being committed and acted on that information in the initial stages as most would have expected them to have done.  I can't comment on the searching aspect as I am not and never have been a copper,  far too stressful for me,  as it is for the vast majority many of whom believe that they would always get it right no matter how difficult the situation they found themselves in.  I see nothing in the video that suggests the officers were not dong their best,  unfortunately that is sometimes not good enough in terms of consequences,  as we have all found in our working and home life I am sure.  

Was the call not for a stabbing?  

[davieG]

52 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

Was the call not for a stabbing?  

I believe it was racial abuse by the perpetrator or his cohorts of the stabbing 

[Lionator]

4 hours ago, Jon the Hat said:

There is historical naming, and then there is pissing off your neighbour, who happens to be one of the strongest NATO forces in Europe at a time when you need all the help you can get.  It is very very weird.

Yeah basically all foreign aid gets into Ukraine from Poland and yet here they are doing what they did 

[leicsmac]

Interesting, if dark, Internet find here, summing the current situation up:

 

The biggest existential threat facing humanity at present is the perfect storm. A confluence of malign events that undermine everything at once. 

 

The principal elements would be: 

AI systems that have no ethics or agency, no preferences even, put in service to a dangerous agenda…good soldiers in effect. The capability to hasten a fascistic agenda and no moral scruples about doing it. It’s not the AI to blame… it’s their ownership and capture. 

 

A political system that leans ever more perilously close to abandoning the post war democratic consensus in favour of blunt dictatorial power. Most nations are one bad election result away from signing away their democracies to the far right. 

 

Environmental concerns about ever widening planetary damage for which both harms are amplified by the above. 

 

Then throw in Wars that generate unplanned for destabilisations elsewhere. The Middle East destabilisations led to migration surges which in turn generate political destabilization for third parties like EU member states which in turn lead to far-right political gains and democratic erosion. 

 

Even when nations agree on a shared problem we don’t have organisations capable of problem solving to scale.

 

The UN seems increasingly toothless. 

 

We also have a disinformation crisis. Journalistic standards are collapsing. Largely factual journalism is being overwritten by social media slop and an ever enlarging lumpen economically ignored and disenfranchised, undereducated, class are actively promoting said slop. 

 

This is civilisational collapse. If we can’t even begin to agree on what is going wrong or how to create effective dialogue and mechanisms to fix it we aren’t going to succeed in preventing it happening. 

 

I hesitate to get proscriptive because that’s a conversation that should involve everyone but I’d venture this much: Ever widening wealth inequality and short termist neoliberalism is not ultimately sustainable without allowing mitigating  unsexy progressive reforms that really mitigate. Even conservative Prime Ministers historically were not blind to the need to socially engineer to mitigate against the destructive outcomes for left-behind communities when a dynamic capitalist development is allowed full sway. 

 

We have to spend more time anticipating consequence before it consumes us. If we can’t even name the risks how do we build a consensus towards fixes? We currently appear to be trying to fight a multi-dimensional fire storm with a series of disconnected wooden buckets and we’re running out of forests. It really won’t do. 

 

There are historic examples of States offering interventionist solutions that broadly speaking worked, broadly better than leaving everything to the irrationality of the markets. The Norwegian wealth fund,  FDR’s New Deal, the NHS under Attlee, where genuinely structural reforms happened within democratic legitimacy, albeit under intense pressure but without systemic collapse either… radical in content but constitutional in method. Shrugging and looking away isn’t going to get the job done. 

 

Then there is the power of Activism too. It asks a lot of the individual and States generally distrust activists as potential disruptors and law breakers. Historically in the UK, the quickest route to getting a Christmas tree stamped on your file at MI5 was to get a reputation as an activist. But not all forms of activism are equal. Campaigning to keep local communities cohesive and say keeping your local library open is not the same as a moron destroying an irreplaceable work of art by throwing paint at it. Discernment matters. 

 

The perfect storm is not so much an act of God as an act of abdication; the only thing more dangerous than the fire storm is our refusal to admit we might be the ones holding the paraffin and matches.