General News Thread

[Raj]

12 minutes ago, Free Falling Foxes said:

Unfortunately, yes.

Remember the trouble between Hindus and Muslims in Leicester just 3 or 4 years ago.

Troubles that had their origins in India.

They even chose a time to riot when the country was mourning the death of our Queen.

 

I didn't say folk shouldn't be proud of their roots, just that it identifies them more and more. 

 

In days gone past, it would have been a person's occupation/address that would identify them such as: Fred Smith, a builder from Stretton, has been charged.......

 

It is unhelpful and has sown the seeds of an 'us and them, you're different' culture in too many quarters - in my view.

Common factor....Also Muslims and Sikhs when the muslims were grooming sikh girls in Leicester...common factor AGAIN....

[Samilktray]

Tommy Robinson’s twitter makes for great reading this morning 

[Spudulike]

It would be helpful if those band wagon celebrities stopped using their platform to spout their virtue signalling 'opinions' to further careers. Enough.

[leicsmac]

6 minutes ago, Spudulike said:

It would be helpful if those band wagon celebrities stopped using their platform to spout their virtue signalling 'opinions' to further careers. Enough.

Is there a particular example that's brought this on this morning? Intrigued. 

[Spudulike]

5 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Is there a particular example that's brought this on this morning? Intrigued. 

Going to see Self Esteem at the weekend. She's been wearing 'Palestine' slogan outfits in previous gigs. It's not helpful. I'm very worried about the tensions being stoked.

[leicsmac]

3 minutes ago, Spudulike said:

Going to see Self Esteem at the weekend. She's been wearing 'Palestine' slogan outfits in previous gigs. It's not helpful. I'm very worried about the tensions being stoked.

Ah, I see, thanks. Yes, as you say, division and tension really help no one who needs the help. 

 

Honestly, every time events like this crop up, I'm reminded of the way Terry Pratchett superbly depicted an equivalent in the book Thud.

 

"Now, there were too many dwarfs and
trolls – no, mental correction, the city had been enriched by vibrant, growing communities of dwarfs and trolls – and there was more . . . yes, call it venom in the air. Too much ancient politics, too many chips handed down from shoulder to shoulder."

 

"...It hadn’t always been like this. Things had loosened up a lot in the last ten years or so. Dwarfs and trolls as races would never be chums, but the city stirred them together and it had seemed to Vimes that they had managed to get along with no more than surface abrasions.
 

Now the melting pot was full of lumps again."

 

“...For the enemy is not Troll, nor it is Dwarf, but it is the baleful, the malign, the cowardly, the vessels of hatred, those who do a bad thing and call it good.”

 

He depicted real life matters in a fantasy universe better than almost anyone. Especially the part where the rich and powerful are perfectly fine with stoking such divisions when it serves their own self interest.

[Spudulike]

1 hour ago, Samilktray said:

Tommy Robinson’s twitter makes for great reading this morning 

Twitter X is a cesspit. It's full of sickening antisemitic bile. It has to stop. What has happened to our country?

[st albans fox]

15 hours ago, RobHawk said:

This is the massive problem, Israel Vs Palestine does/should not equate to Jews Vs Muslims. 

 

Of course there's correlation between the two, but I was chatting to a buddy of mine who thoroughly condemned this attack. His point was that mosques are targeted just as much if not.more.in this country so they understood how abhorrent this attack is. And whilst he is very anti Israel, he does not hold that against the Jewish community in the UK. 

 

I can't say this is the view that would be widely shared (I don't know), but surely we should be looking to come together and not sow more seeds of division. 

 

Just had a quick Google and found this straight away: https://didsburymosque.org/a-statement-from-didsbury-mosque-condemning-the-attack-outside-a-manchester-synagogue

Can those who attend mosques advise if they have security guards on duty when they have prayers or events there ? Are the doors to the mosque locked shut during services with someone having to guard the door and unlock to allow people in ?  this has been the case at synagogues and community centres for decades.  also, do Islamic schools have security guards on duty rather than teachers making sure all is in order. 
 

I understand that many mosques are attacked but I believe that it’s the buildings that are targeted away from busy times rather than the people attending. 

 

I think there is a lot of ignorance out there about how Jews have to go about their business  - this is not just the uk.  Most of Europe is the same.   And fundamentally, this feeds into the vast majority isr support that exists within the community. it’s the only country that they know will be a place of safety for them. 

Edited 3 October 2025 by st albans fox

[Zear0]

Still can't get over the nob being called Jihad. 

[leicsmac]

6 minutes ago, Spudulike said:

Twitter X is a cesspit. It's full of sickening antisemitic bile. It has to stop. What has happened to our country?

Elon Musk happened, and allowed neofascists the run of the farm on Twitter in the name of "free speech".

 

WRT the UK, I think it's a matter of record that there's always been prejudices, both institutional and otherwise. Things have gotten better in the last couple of decades, but recent events show how easy for such progress to be lost. 

[bovril]

15 minutes ago, Spudulike said:

What has happened to our country?

Same thing that usually happens to multi ethnic polities as living standards decline and state authority weakens. Britain 2016-2030 will be the subject of loads of books in the future I'm sure. 

[leicsmac]

4 minutes ago, bovril said:

Same thing that usually happens to multi ethnic polities as living standards decline and state authority weakens. Britain 2016-2030 will be the subject of loads of books in the future I'm sure. 

Depends how many literate people there are around afterwards and whether many people will have the time to read them 

[Tommy G]

1 hour ago, Spudulike said:

Going to see Self Esteem at the weekend. She's been wearing 'Palestine' slogan outfits in previous gigs. It's not helpful. I'm very worried about the tensions being stoked.

I suspect 50% of people with a Palestine flag wrapped around them have no idea what they are supporting or understand the history, but instead its just the right thing to do in front of their mates and social media.

[Sampson]

40 minutes ago, Spudulike said:

Twitter X is a cesspit. It's full of sickening antisemitic bile. It has to stop. What has happened to our country?

On one hand you had people on the left cancelling people for making mistakes and jokes and dredging up old posts from years ago which made people feel like they couldn’t make mistakes or change their believes anymore (which caused a lot of people to feel understandably cornered and go in defence mode, see someone like JK Rowling as an example of that)
 

On the other hand you have that massively unpatriotic snake oil salesman Farage on the right who’s spent the past 15 years getting unheard of tv and media coverage never having a single good word to say about the country  and who whips up people with absurdly negative things acting as if the country is some Mad Max anarchist hellscape to make everyone feel constant fear in order to get power.

 

Then I think social media like Twitter and Facebook have exacerbated this problem because it’s something humans have never had to deal with before and because everyone is anonymous and I think a lot of us (myself included) are addicted to the drama and anger, because we just browse when we’re bored and want to feel any kind of emotion and angry debate every we massively exaggerate and say things we wouldn’t dream of saying in real life 15 years ago give us that fire in the belly and in the brain.

 

Brexit and Covid also played massive roles too because they also dominated the airwaves and were very shit times that lasted years for many of us.

 

All these things have in common that they’re made people feel fear and dejection, it’s very hard to find hope anymore in the country and the world. Just my 2 cents anyway.

Edited 3 October 2025 by Sampson

[bovril]

10 minutes ago, Tommy G said:

I suspect 50% of people with a Palestine flag wrapped around them have no idea what they are supporting or understand the history, but instead its just the right thing to do in front of their mates and social media.

That is probably true and this is a bit of whataboutism but the same is true of English "conservatives" who strongly support Israel, which I've always found a little strange although I realise a lot of them just copy what the American right do. 

[Tommy G]

3 minutes ago, bovril said:

That is probably true and this is a bit of whataboutism but the same is true of English "conservatives" who strongly support Israel, which I've always found a little strange although I realise a lot of them just copy what the American right do. 

Probably - I'd say I'm centre right and take the view its just a complete nightmare over there and we need peace, I think people can take a middle ground on the whole situation.  

[danny.]

2 hours ago, Spudulike said:

Going to see Self Esteem at the weekend. She's been wearing 'Palestine' slogan outfits in previous gigs. It's not helpful. I'm very worried about the tensions being stoked.

Support act Bob Vylan?

[fox_up_north]

35 minutes ago, Tommy G said:

Probably - I'd say I'm centre right and take the view its just a complete nightmare over there and we need peace, I think people can take a middle ground on the whole situation.  

Largely of the same opinion. Many experts and diplomats have tried but it seems they can't leave each other alone. I can't understand how people can't just say "I'm going to worship this god over here, you do yours over there and I'll see you on Thursdays at the market"

[Foxdiamond]

34 minutes ago, Tommy G said:

Probably - I'd say I'm centre right and take the view its just a complete nightmare over there and we need peace, I think people can take a middle ground on the whole situation.  

Wanting to take the middle ground is laudable. An inconvenient truth for some is that according to MI5 the most significant terrorist threat to the UK is from extreme islamist groups or individuals.

[bovril]

7 minutes ago, fox_up_north said:

Largely of the same opinion. Many experts and diplomats have tried but it seems they can't leave each other alone. I can't understand how people can't just say "I'm going to worship this god over here, you do yours over there and I'll see you on Thursdays at the market"

You think that people being ethnically cleansed from their own ancestral lands should be like "yeah cool mate you do you"? 

[leicsmac]

5 minutes ago, fox_up_north said:

Largely of the same opinion. Many experts and diplomats have tried but it seems they can't leave each other alone. I can't understand how people can't just say "I'm going to worship this god over here, you do yours over there and I'll see you on Thursdays at the market"

It's all so needless.

 

And not only that, but also inimical to our progress and survival as a civilisation and species. 

 

2 minutes ago, Foxdiamond said:

Wanting to take the middle ground is laudable. An inconvenient truth for some is that according to MI5 the most significant terrorist threat to the UK is from extreme islamist groups or individuals.

A further inconvenient truth is that those groups and individuals, while a big threat in terms of incidents caused, are among the furthest away from actually achieving their political objectives and causing their brand of lunacy to be institutionalised in the UK. Other groups with similar nefarious aims are, sad to say, rather closer. 

 

I guess it comes down to whether the beholder thinks the individual incident or the less common but eventual monolithic and absolute threat is more dangerous. 

[Foxdiamond]

7 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

It's all so needless.

 

And not only that, but also inimical to our progress and survival as a civilisation and species. 

 

A further inconvenient truth is that those groups and individuals, while a big threat in terms of incidents caused, are among the furthest away from actually achieving their political objectives and causing their brand of lunacy to be institutionalised in the UK. Other groups with similar nefarious aims are, sad to say, rather closer. 

 

I guess it comes down to whether the beholder thinks the individual incident or the less common but eventual monolithic and absolute threat is more dangerous. 

Not sure if they have political aims other than to hate and kill and quash tolerance 

[lcfc278]

10 minutes ago, bovril said:

You think that people being ethnically cleansed from their own ancestral lands should be like "yeah cool mate you do you"? 

Where in the comment have they implied that?

[bovril]

Just now, lcfc278 said:

Where in the comment have they implied that?

They implied it is a conflict that comes from disagreements over religion, which it's not

[leicsmac]

2 minutes ago, Foxdiamond said:

Not sure if they have political aims other than to hate and kill and quash tolerance 

My point exactly. And other groups are rather closer to institutionalising such ideas in the UK in their own image than they are.