Interesting news topics.

[Merging Cultures]

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/19/albert-woodfox-released-louisiana-jail-43-years-solitary-confinement

[Merging Cultures]

Posted before I finished. It's a shame he got so long in solitary. That was really harsh.

A lot of the comments on the coverage do my head in. Clearly people can't read. People complaining he shouldn't have been in prison because they didn't convict him. He was in prison for 50 years for crimes he had committed.

He may have been falsely accused of killing the guard, while he was already in prison.

But no, they shouldn't keep people in solitary like that.

[digitalalba]

Here's one from the BNP website that won't go down too well.

 

17-year study finds that People prefer their own Ethnicity — No Surprise there, then!

By Jean de Valette

When in 2006 the American sociologist Robert Putnam (pictured) was awarded the Johan Skytte prize, the sociology equivalent of the Nobel Prize, the event drew attention to the work for which he was given this award.

This included a focus on trust within society. Based on 40 different communities across the USA and involving the interviews of some 30,000 people, Putnam’s conclusions shocked left/liberal advocates of mass immigration. Putnam, himself a left / liberal had been so aware of this possible reaction that he had delayed publishing his findings until he felt he had no other option.

Briefly, Putnam found that, all things such as crime and living standards being equal, the more ethnically diverse a community was, the less people trusted each other.

This was true not only of trust between people in different ethnic groups, but within them as well. 

The effects of this decline in trust were wide-ranging; from an individual having fewer friends and there being less likelihood of him or her engaging in voluntary work in the community, to a decline in faith in the political process and in politicians. In general, people were less happy and thought that their quality of life was lower.

Putnam’s results were ignored or pooh – poohed in Britain, despite the evidence of white flight which was often put down to ‘overcrowding’.  

It was said airily that they were valid if at all for the USA, not for other societies, including Britain. The New Labour government produced a report, welcomed by leftists/liberals in the print media and elsewhere, which to no one’s surprise found that social relations in ethnically mixed areas was just fine; everyone got along in tolerant fashion. 

Now here comes a report published in ‘The European Sociological Review’ which seems to lend strong support to the proposition that Putnam’s findings apply at least in good measure to this country as well as to the USA. This other report is the result of a study which took place over 17 years between 1991 and 2009 across England and Wales.

It states what to the unbiased observer has been blindingly obvious from the start; that ‘an influx of foreigners into an area makes existing white residents unhappier’.  

When white people moved out of mixed areas into others where they are among their ethnic kindred, they were happier. Those who remained felt less attachment to those areas.

One bright spot so far as bien-pensant liberals are concerned is that people who move into mixed areas tend to be content. Of course, having deliberately chosen to move in, this is rather to be expected.  

One of the researchers, a Dr Laurence, gives a version of the liberal/optimistic contact theory which Putnam’s work tends to reject.  

This theory says that increased familiarity of ‘the other’ in mixed areas leads to greater understanding and so tolerance. ‘Getting to know neighbours from different groups can go a long way to replenishing short-term dips in cohesion.’  

This idea is true up to a point: greater familiarity does produce greater understanding.

But familiarity and greater understanding is no guarantee of greater liking between ethnic groups any more than it is between individuals. Indeed, it may and often does serve to confirm impressions and to strengthen dislike. There are innumerable examples of ethnic groups living in the same area, including areas in Britain, which cordially detest one and have done so for many years. Northern Ireland, for example. 

That this is the case may well lie behind Putnam’s observation that individuals in diverse areas tend to withdraw into themselves, ie there is less contact between them.  

Such people in Britain are likely to move out of they can.  

Those who do stay on in such areas voluntarily are likely to be the very ones who are more amenable to the new reality, just as those who move into them are likely to be.

And there is of course the point that those who have no option but to stay in them may adopt a resigned acceptance of the situation whilst still preferring to be elsewhere.

The overall conclusion is that mass immigration is a miserable disaster for most ordinary native British people outside the moneyed liberal/left elites.

It has introduced divisions into their country such as have not existed in these islands for a millennium and made millions of them strangers in the areas where they and their forebears grew up.

Such people have then had to put up with the ongoing slander that if they objected to being made miserable in this way, they were ‘racists’. 

Unless there is a radical change in direction, mass immigration is going to see the native British as a minority in their ancestral homeland in the lifetimes of their children now at primary school. 

This ultimate betrayal is the work of the so-called representatives of the people, those who were elected to protect and further their interests, but who have shown themselves to be instead their deceivers and oppressors. 

 

[Mike Oxlong]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35634524

The NHS in England is to offer pregnant women their own "personal budgets", worth at least £3,000, so they can pick and choose the care they receive.

Women will be able to use it to pay for anything from one-to-one midwifery care to home births, the use of birthing pools and hypnotherapy.

The move is part of a shake-up in maternity care unveiled by NHS England to increase the choices women have.

The overhaul is also aimed at improving safety in maternity services.

It has been agreed to on the basis of recommendations from an independent review of services.

This was set up by NHS England in the aftermath of the inquiry published last year into the failures that led to the deaths of babies at the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust.

The review - chaired by Conservative peer Baroness Julia Cumberlege - said it had never been safer to give birth in England, but improvements still needed to be made to ensure care was "world class".

If this comes in I'll be buying shares in Bargain Booze and Scratchcards.

Edited 23 February 2016 by Mike Oxlong

[bovril]

If people are going to start quoting the BNP website can we normal people at least resurrect the chebs thread?

[Webbo]

If people are going to start quoting the BNP website can we normal people at least resurrect the chebs thread?

I know what you mean. I was very tempted to delete it but you know you're going to hear a load a load of crap about victimisation and freedom of speech.. I couldn't read it that well any way on that blue background.

[Finnaldo]

So to summarise that article: some people felt unsafe around people from other ethnic groups and thought their local area was different when there were less ethnic minorities around? Cutting edge journalism from the BNP there, maybe people will stop laughing at them long enough to actually become a political party again.

 

Not sure how old you are digitalabla, but you seem like the kind of guy who'd wanted my kind (White-Irish) to stay out of shops back in the day.  

[digitalalba]

Don't worry kids, "ROBERT D. PUTNAM is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University."

 

This is an interesting read/listen of him

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12802663

 

Delete the truth? What would we fall back on, lies, yikes!

[leicsmac]

 

Delete the subjective interpretation of a study that is in no way absolute truth because every single scientific study involving non-hard/social sciences is open to interpretation? What would we fall back on, lies, yikes!

 

FYP.

[Buce]

Police kill dog by deiberately running it over:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-35644209

[Merging Cultures]

It doesn't look like my 'World News' thread made it over here. So excuse me if these are not necessarily interesting.

 

1. Zambia is starting to import electricity from a Turkish ship docked off the coast of Mozambique. The costs are ridiculous, and it is only 100MW which is nothing compared to the current gap. Then later the same day, I read that we are also going to export electricity to Zimbabwe. Mind blown.

 

2. South Africa is about to explode. I am sure some of you know the #rhodesmustfall movement. They got rid of a statue in Uni of Cape town and tried to do the same at Oxford, that didn't work. There is also the #feesmustfall, which started at Wits uni and secured a 0% increase on uni fees; #outsourcingmustfall, which are trying to stop uni's, especially uni of free state, from using outsourced service companies for cleaning and catering, plus they want to increase the salary of all cleans to at least R10,000 a month (currently GBP656); #openstellenbosch which wants to 'decolonise' and remove 'whiteness' from the university. The protesters, have been destroying uni property, they've broken statues, burnt paintings, smashed windows and burnt out buses and cars. Often this is accompanied by 'struggle songs' which often include lyrics about killing Boers (white farmers) or praising people who have killed them. Students have also worn t-shirts saying 'fvck' and 'kill' whites, and spray painted that over campuses. On Monday night, some protesters disrupted a rugby match which led to violence. A group of white students where trying to prevent the protesters from entering the ground, when a white woman was hit by a lead protester. The men went to defend her and the crowd broke in. They then went on the pitch and were singing a song about a guy who killed two civilians, and smuggled arms to fight against apartheid. Obviously it was good to fight apartheid, not great that two civilians were killed. The song however seems to praise him for killing Boers. This led to white students, and non-students, storming the pitch and fighting. This is only going to help the protesters who claim that all whites are racist and that only whites can be racist. While the incidents have mostly been confined to universities, as MattP has mentioned a few times, the number of white farmers being killed is high. South Africa is a beautiful country, but politicians are seeking to cause division to hold on to power. It is thought the ANC are fuelling the conflicts to create a common enemy so that people continue to vote ANC and not pay attention to how badly they are running the country. Glad I am in Zambia at the moment.

[DillonLive]

Trilobite-like fossils on Mars..

 

http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/637895/Mind-blowing-discovery-Fossils-of-prehistoric-sea-creature-found-on-Mars

[Finnaldo]

Don't worry kids, "ROBERT D. PUTNAM is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University."

 

This is an interesting read/listen of him

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12802663

 

Delete the truth? What would we fall back on, lies, yikes!

 

I don't doubt the source, seems like quite the expert in his field, I just don't see how instinctive distrust of others should be used as some anti-immigration stance. We instinctively don't like boring tasks or paying tax, it's a natural reaction to either walk away or confront someone being aggressive but someone in customer services doesn't always have that option.

 

Overcoming natural instincts and acting civilised is part of being a normal functioning human being. If you can't see past a guy's skin colour then it's you that's causing a problem.

 

I can understand having economic doubts over immigration (to a reasonable extent) but some of the language you've used to label immigrants, 'invaders' come to mind, really does come across to me personally who doesn't have that self-control aforementioned.

 

I personally don't agree with religion of any kind, it's outlived it's use other than offer faith to a lot of people which I can fully understand. The difference is that whilst I prefer Britain to be as secular as possible, I'm not gonna hold a Syrian or African guy in contempt for a) having different theistic views to me and b) coming from a country war-torn or impoverished. There's better solutions than letting everyone who comes knocking in as it may help their society as well as our's but hating someone for trying to find a better future for their family is more than a little odd.

[Thracian]

It doesn't look like my 'World News' thread made it over here. So excuse me if these are not necessarily interesting.

 

1. Zambia is starting to import electricity from a Turkish ship docked off the coast of Mozambique. The costs are ridiculous, and it is only 100MW which is nothing compared to the current gap. Then later the same day, I read that we are also going to export electricity to Zimbabwe. Mind blown.

 

2. South Africa is about to explode. I am sure some of you know the #rhodesmustfall movement. They got rid of a statue in Uni of Cape town and tried to do the same at Oxford, that didn't work. There is also the #feesmustfall, which started at Wits uni and secured a 0% increase on uni fees; #outsourcingmustfall, which are trying to stop uni's, especially uni of free state, from using outsourced service companies for cleaning and catering, plus they want to increase the salary of all cleans to at least R10,000 a month (currently GBP656); #openstellenbosch which wants to 'decolonise' and remove 'whiteness' from the university. The protesters, have been destroying uni property, they've broken statues, burnt paintings, smashed windows and burnt out buses and cars. Often this is accompanied by 'struggle songs' which often include lyrics about killing Boers (white farmers) or praising people who have killed them. Students have also worn t-shirts saying 'fvck' and 'kill' whites, and spray painted that over campuses. On Monday night, some protesters disrupted a rugby match which led to violence. A group of white students where trying to prevent the protesters from entering the ground, when a white woman was hit by a lead protester. The men went to defend her and the crowd broke in. They then went on the pitch and were singing a song about a guy who killed two civilians, and smuggled arms to fight against apartheid. Obviously it was good to fight apartheid, not great that two civilians were killed. The song however seems to praise him for killing Boers. This led to white students, and non-students, storming the pitch and fighting. This is only going to help the protesters who claim that all whites are racist and that only whites can be racist. While the incidents have mostly been confined to universities, as MattP has mentioned a few times, the number of white farmers being killed is high. South Africa is a beautiful country, but politicians are seeking to cause division to hold on to power. It is thought the ANC are fuelling the conflicts to create a common enemy so that people continue to vote ANC and not pay attention to how badly they are running the country. Glad I am in Zambia at the moment.

It's all about power through manipulation. The sooner everyone recognises that racism is as rife among blacks as whites the less the chance of manipulation being effective. Some won't of course because it's not in their vested interests.

South Africa might be a naturally beautiful country but I'd doubt there's a country in the world made more beautiful for having people in it. If God really made people he must either have been in a bad mood or he simply wasn't concentrating.

As a prototype, fine, but in earthly terms they should surely have been returned to research and development. With the problems of greed, selfishness and naive thinking to be sorted as a matter of priority but many more besides, especially concerning the brain cells.

Or perhaps it's just that I don't understand the cruel rules of this earthly game and how it should best be played out.

Edited 24 February 2016 by Thracian

[digitalalba]

FYP.

Who were you quoting? And does FYP mean five year plan?

[leicsmac]

Who were you quoting? And does FYP mean five year plan?

Hell no! Mao was a fvcking nutjob.

I was being facetious as I'm sure you are aware, but honestly I think that studies even by supposed experts in any field of social science are open to interpretation.

But Finnaldo above makes my point more eloquently than I can.

[digitalalba]

Hell no! Mao was a fvcking nutjob.

I was being facetious as I'm sure you are aware, but honestly I think that studies even by supposed experts in any field of social science are open to interpretation.

But Finnaldo above makes my point more eloquently than I can.

Even when people, who experience it and are therefor giving us studied fact, tell us?

[leicsmac]

Even when people, who experience it and are therefor giving us studied fact, tell us?

 

Yep. Even then. It's based on anecdotal, human-experience evidence that may or may not be true for every circumstance where that situation is repeated and so can be interpreted in a variety of ways. You can say the same for every single study in a social scientific field - be it economics or sociology - everything is subjective, despite the best efforts of people to attempt to paint it black or white.

 

The only sciences with verified, every-time-true fact are the "hard" ones.

 

The speed of light in a vacuum being 300 million metres per second is a verifiable studied fact. 'People preferring their own ethnicity' is not.

Edited 24 February 2016 by leicsmac

[digitalalba]

Yep. Even then. It's based on anecdotal, human-experience evidence that may or may not be true for every circumstance where that situation is repeated and so can be interpreted in a variety of ways. You can say the same for every single study in a social scientific field - be it economics or sociology - everything is subjective, despite the best efforts of people to attempt to paint it black or white.

 

The only sciences with verified, every-time-true fact are the "hard" ones.

 

The speed of light in a vacuum being 300 million metres per second is a verifiable studied fact. 'People preferring their own ethnicity' is not.

 

No one is saying that everyone prefers their own ethnicity. In fact, the report allows for those who don't mind what anothers ethnicity is, and, when those who do are 'unfortunate' to experience it, they cope as best they can.

But, if you're suggesting that humans don't/cannot prefer their own kind, then you are silly to say the least.

Indeed, we as city fans prefer our 'own kind', we wouldn't dream of supporting f****t or D***y, or any other group. If you did a study, probably 90% or more of football fans would 'prefer their own'. It's part of our human genetic make-up to believe in discrimination, to recognise the difference between one thing and another. The freedom to chose what we deem good or bad.

Edited 24 February 2016 by digitalalba

[Webbo]

No one is saying that everyone prefers their own ethnicity. In fact, the report allows for those who don't mind what anothers ethnicity is, and, when those who do are 'unfortunate' to experience it, they cope as best they can.

But, if you're suggesting that humans don't/cannot prefer their own kind, then you are silly to say the least.

Indeed, we as city fans prefer our 'own kind', we wouldn't dream of supporting f****t or D***y, or any other group. If you did a study, probably 90% or more of football fans would 'prefer their own'. It's part of our human genetic make-up to believe in discrimination, to recognise the difference between one thing and another. The freedom to chose what we deem good or bad.

You seem to be trying to intellectualise your own prejudice. Nobody can force you to like anyone you don't want to, we get it. Now can you give it a rest because nobody cares.

[digitalalba]

killjoy

[Finnaldo]

No one is saying that everyone prefers their own ethnicity. In fact, the report allows for those who don't mind what anothers ethnicity is, and, when those who do are 'unfortunate' to experience it, they cope as best they can.

But, if you're suggesting that humans don't/cannot prefer their own kind, then you are silly to say the least.

Indeed, we as city fans prefer our 'own kind', we wouldn't dream of supporting f****t or D***y, or any other group. If you did a study, probably 90% or more of football fans would 'prefer their own'. It's part of our human genetic make-up to believe in discrimination, to recognise the difference between one thing and another. The freedom to chose what we deem good or bad.

 

There's a difference between preference and disliking. You may have a preference to other white people but that doesn't mean you can't be friends with people of a different ethnicity or religious view, again that's the difference between being a civic, functioning member of society and being prejudice.

 

By your reasoning Freud's theory that you instinctively want to bang your mum would continue through to adulthood. In reality, humans have a social filter that realises this is a terrible idea with social consequences. Research only provides  a basis for a theory and anyone who slaps out some research and says this proves that simply can't provide a credible theory.   

Edited 24 February 2016 by Finnaldo

[digitalalba]

There's a difference between preference and disliking. You may have a preference to other white people but that doesn't mean you can't be friends with people of a different ethnicity or religious view, again that's the difference between being a civic, functioning member of society and being prejudice.

 

By your reasoning Freud's theory that you instinctively want to bang your mum would continue through to adulthood. In reality, humans have a social filter that realises this is a terrible idea with social consequences. Research only provides  a basis for a theory and anyone who slaps out some research and says this proves that simply can't provide a credible theory.   

The study isn't about prejudice and/or dislike, it's about human need, requirement. It's a bit like when you're born and the desire to drink your mother's milk (I did try to think of another phrase ). It's about our genetic make-up, what gears us to believe in something over another.

 

It is terrible, but consider this, Jesus is loved by billions, yet in his day, paedophillia was only frowned upon.

 

Dare you sit with f****t fans?

[Rincewind]

I thought in his day it was  taught.

[digitalalba]

I thought in his day it was  taught.

Who/what, Jesus and paedophillia? Possibly, he was a bi-sexual communist.