I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…

I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…

The people who come up with these things, wether to relieve religious tensions or similar are obviously pillocks. If someone of any religion was that upset by christmas they would not have come to the UK where christmas is definately more of a national holiday than a religious one.

Just to clarify my anger on thsi matter is purely directed at those t*ss pots in government who are so intent on promoting ‘religious tolerance’ that they forget what we really need to achieve is ‘religious indifference’.

And on the indian call centre matter, I dont particularly like ringing indian call centres, many times I have been left frustrated due to lack of communication. I do not however blame this on teh people at the other end of the phone or the businesses who do this. While I would rate a company with british customer service much more highly (After all they are putting the money into a service based on their audience rather than cost) Britain can no longer support the high taxes, high inflation and high cost of living when there are much cheaper alternatives technically a stones throw away.

I shall state my position clearly, and make these my closing remarks:

I overreacted to a certain extent based on the quotes available, though I still stand up for the nub of my argument; that such reports give ammunition to the BNP, and serve no real purpose. I await the full report with interest.

Come on now. If the report had contained the words ‘downgrade’, ‘ban’ or ’scrap’ (all used in the papers) why couldn’t the papers produce a quote from the report using those words, which presumably they must have a copy of. Why was it that the very best they could do was to produce a paragraph that you can only get ‘we want to scrap christmas’ from if you ignore the phrase ‘even if we wanted to’?

Additionally, this kind of invalidates your point that

“In other words I modified my opinion on the basis of a full and frank discussion, as well as the IPPR’s ‘clarification’.”

Because saying ‘oh he says he doesn’t want to ban christmas now’ strongly suggests that despite the full and frank discussion and the clarification you still think that deep down the IPPR does in fact advocate banning Christmas.

“Or what?”

Have you no sense of humour?

Or what?

Now who is acting like a tit?

jai im sorry if you took my comments to mean that i was ‘disregarding’ other individual’s experiences and that racism has not been a significant barrier certainly for many people in the past, and disregarding their efforts/struggles, so apologies for how it came across.

That’s alright, don’t worry; I wasn’t having a go at you in any aggressive or malicious way. In fact I mentioned in post #213 that my own perspective and insights (such as they are) have obviously been influenced by my own subjective experiences (this is common sense), which wouldn’t necessarily apply to everyone, ie.

“No doubt my views have been influenced by my own experiences along with the experiences of people within my professional, family & social circles, but there it is.”

And yes, I agree completely that paranoia and suspicion can frequently trigger the very hostility that one is concerned about — it becomes a vicious circle; however, my points were in relation to hostile and generally prejudiced behaviour exhibited towards Asians by the bigots regardless of how sincere, genuine, and well-meaning the Asian person concerned may actually be in terms of their thinking and conduct.

It’s obviously a complex issue, with a lot of different dynamics and variables involved.

Just don’t cross me again.

“I’m forward looking. You look back to the past.”

I am afraid you are wrong. To go forward you need to know where you have been. Your arrogance is to the detriment of science.

“We know its false because a) the ‘even if we wanted to’ implied they didn’t want to and b) the author of the report said that he didn’t favour banning/downgrading Christmas. The latter point seems rather conclusive to me, unless you’re playing the ‘oh he says he didn’t mean that but we know better’ game, which would be a bit silly.”

Well, he is saying that now on the basis of the media storm, but who knows what the original report actually contained.

“What I was really trying to get at on this point is the way you’ve switched what your accusing the IPPR of doing.”

In other words I modified my opinion on the basis of a full and frank discussion, as well as the IPPR’s ‘clarification’.

jai/jagdeep -sorry hadnt read your comments up above. jai im sorry if you took my comments to mean that i was ‘disregarding’ other individual’s experiences and that racism has not been a significant barrier certainly for many people in the past, and disregarding their efforts/struggles, so apologies for how it came across. ( and jagdeep – of course we all make generalisations!) i guess my point was that generalisations aside, if/when we focus on an individuals’ experience, ( in my opinion) whatever perceptions/prejudices/feelings ( yes sure we all have some somewhere) both individuals/parties have – tend to colour how the social interaction happens and thus the outcome. that was pretty much it. so i guess what my interest is in seeing how that plays out for different people, we all have different bees in our bonnets. im interested in how cycles set up when we harbour suspicious of what others may be thinking or not thinking, and that in turn influences our behaviour with some particular individual, and trying to be reflexive about that, so in order to maximise our agency in that particular interaction. so i’m thinking on an individual level, how we have perceptions, that continue to affect our individual experiences. and i do think that is a valid thing for all of us individuals to think about as we live our lives.

That’s the difference between us. I’m forward looking. You look back to the past.

Philistine.

I’ve got about a dozen books that do that same thing. The Cambridge History of Astronomy is a particularily good and enligtening read. It still doesn’t change the fact though, that Ptolemy’s astronomy, for example, is nowadays nothing more than a historical curiosity.

Oh… ok we’re carrying this on.

“Sorry, which of the quotes are fictional? You might strongly disagree with the interpretation, but it is hardly false.”

But the interpretation of the IPPR piece by the telegraph and yourself, that they favour downgrading/banning/scrapping christmas, actually is false. We know its false because a) the ‘even if we wanted to’ implied they didn’t want to and b) the author of the report said that he didn’t favour banning/downgrading Christmas. The latter point seems rather conclusive to me, unless you’re playing the ‘oh he says he didn’t mean that but we know better’ game, which would be a bit silly.

“It is not so much that people will get fatigue exhaustion, more that people would feel Christmas under threat from the increasing prominence given to other festivals.”

Well we’re into hypotheticals a bit here, but I really doubt that public recognition of non christian festivals would annoy anyone outside of the wingnut 27% of the population. It doesn’t really matter if the 27%ers are unhappy about it because they won’t be happy about anything very much until we’re ruled by a UKIP-BNP junta who are prepared to get rid of all the ‘foreigns’.

What I was really trying to get at on this point is the way you’ve switched what your accusing the IPPR of doing. In the initial post and then in your comments up to 176 you claim the IPPR is demanding that we choose between scrapping/downgrading christmas from a public holiday or celebrating other religious festivals. Then at 176 you start suggesting the IPPR is going to accidentally cause the downgrading of Christmas by encouraging the public recognition of non-christian festivals. That switch struck me as a bit evasive. It seems pretty clear to me that the former would be a considerably more controversial statement for the IPPR to make and had they made such a statement I’d agree you could accuse them of contributing to the demonisation of minorities. They didn’t, however, and even if you really think the ‘downgrade by celebrating non-christian festivals’ will still play into the hands of the BNP (which I don’t), it wouldn’t hurt to acknowledge that it would be to a much lesser extent than if the IPPR had come out and said what you intially claimed i.e. that if we don’t celebrate non-christian festivals, Christmas should be downgraded from a public holiday.

I don’t believe I have led anyone to think that, I certainly haven’t said it. Quite the opposite. I say you dismiss historical efforts too readily on the basis of being ‘rational’.

Here is the challenge: Why don’t you work backwards from your thesis/article and review scientific work over the last 2,000 years? If you do it with an open mind, then I suspect you could easily develop it into a bestseller.

Do it as a blog initially – a bit like that belle de jour lass.

Lets not forget all this blogging etc is still in its infancy. We need a model which is effective in serving its community.

Now that the framework underpinning scientific advances has been dismantled (or should I say privatised) we will no longer pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge but purely as an economic activity. Knowledge is now intellectual property (IP) that comes out of the knowledge economy. In time we shall see that IP will fuel future conflicts.

That aside, it will slowly suffocate scientists and researchers as they become less able collaborate openly, especially across competing economies.