Thanks for your input. Actually i found it interesting that you said English as most ethnic Britons say they are proud to be “British”.

In my London borough of Croydon they say that ”Majority of children in Croydon Council care are asylum seekers”
http://www.thisiscroydontoday.co.uk/latestnews/Exclusive-Majority-children-Croydon-Council-care-asylum-seekers/article-848300-detail/article.html

I was just saying how I’d been noticing all these young men (who I think many of are from Afghanistan) hanging about the streets.
They’re young, so it’s perfectly believable that youths over 18 are knocking a couple off years of their age, so that they become minors – and subject to much more benign rules.

ATTAR (An Indian restaurent owner) : No thats a personal thing. Make Englishman out of these boys, that is the highest goal, and not easy. Many English are not worthy of the title.

I was very moved by this sentence. Now think about this. This is an Indian character in a play, speaking about how wonderful the idea of an Englishman is, from which many English Men are even excluded. The play actually made me proud to be English, which no piece of art has ever done. This then is why I find it very worrying why the major newspapers and the BBC said it was racist. There WERE stereotypes, but these stereotypes were making fun of everyone not any one group. In fact they were the stereotypes that I felt any “assimilated” immigrant would gladly make of themselves, in self-deprecating humour. The English were the hardest criticized. All groups were made fun of. Why? Because every ethnic minority (including the “genetic” english) hates the next generation of immigrants. The play stopped at the Somali immigrants who the Bangladeshi immigrants hated! But the point was, ultimately they are assimilated and become English. I was so moved by some of the scenes where there were tender feelings between races made common in Englishness. It was such a FUNNY play as well. I think there is a racist white establishment who find it racist against themselves, but say in the newspapers that it is racist against the ethic minorities in the play. I really can’t understand how any newspaper can print that this play is racist. It is the ABSOLUTE OPPOSITE OF RACIST. Actually, another reason this play made me proud to be English is that I think it is a play that could not have been made anywhere else in the world, because only the English can so unashamedly destroy themselves with criticism.

Chrisantha Fernando

Mind you I can’t always place people when wandering around areas with large numbers of South Asian people. Despite being South Asian myself.

I,m glad to see that it’s not just the Irish that have a sense of humour.

”At least”? They only need to strap huge bombs to their fighter planes.
http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/gaza-attack-mosque.jpg
Maybe there were some Hamas people hiding out in this building. Does that make it OK to blow up the whole street?

Back to the play. So it’s a bit like a Spectator view of things. Is that so surprising that a large part of England doesn’t really understand the reality of a place like ”Banglatown”?
I live about ten miles from it, and have been there often, (not just on Brick Lane itself, but in the back streets and council estates that surround it).
I don’t really understand it either. What’s going on, who is who? Who is British and who might have been living in Bangladesh just last year? I have no way of knowing. (Does it matter anyway?)
Going up and trying to talk to people is very hit and miss, and can be seen as bizarre behavoir.

Just like in West Croydon on London road. There are dozens and dozens (maybe hundreds) of these young men from (I’m presuming) Iraqi Kurdistan, Albania and Afghanistan …. and they just hang out (very publicly) on the street together, and seem now very much at home.
They only seem to interact with each other, and are quite loud and are just always there, standing about outside the shops.
Just yesterday I was in a corner shop next to West Croydon railway station and a few of them were in there haggling a bit over the price of a half bottle of vodka – to which they then retire to the Ladbrooks bookmakers and spend the rest of their sunday afternoon. (And then to the internet cafe where they watch kurdish folk songs on youtube).

Does that sound like a Spectator magazine take on things too?
I reckon it does. But it’s only what I see – as an outsider.
I say outsider as I don’t understand the waves of immigration and migration that are occuring right under my nose. I grew up in that area, but as a local you can be often the last to know what is actually occuring. It was said that there are 400,000 illegal immigrants in London alone. I’m guessing that many of the people I was walking past yesterday are part of that number.
What’s to be done about it I don’t know. Boris talks of an amnesty, but only for long established people. Unless these unaccompanied young men are in the system and being granted political asylum, then the future looks somewhat bleak for them.

I’d like to find out more about them, but don’t really know how. They are the very kind of people that we saw nespaper pictures of in Calais last week.
Young men who have come on long and perilous journeys, just so thay could wash up in a place like West Croydon.

How ”ignorant” is that of me?

He thinks Palestinians are human beings.

Magnus asks him

“Which of these Ronnies was a Great Train Robber?
Ronnie Barker,
Ronnie O’Sullivan,
Ronnie Biggs,
or Ronnie Corbett?

“I refuse to answer” says Paddy. “Why” asks Magnus. “What do you think I am, a fucking grass?”

You’re not wrong there chief.

Starvation thirst? Really? come on. So it’s not as bad as in East Congo – so why get your knickers in a twist?
Is that what you’re saying Marvin?

I think the key to this (and is something I’m sure wont be resolved on this website – as it’s gone mainstream) is the ”anti-semite” claim to anybody who criticises Israel’s actions.
I have Jews in my wider family, and …. so what? It means nothing – apart from .. culture and history – which makes life more interesting.

I am new to this website, but I can’t believe that the ”Israel = Jewish” thing hasn’t been done to death already.
I’m sure it has, and my personal opinion is that the kind of opinion that I showed in those ”Jokes” in the Jewish Chronicle a few posts back, and that website that Marvin put up (of Israeli war humour) – are really barbourous.

”I am NOT surprised they’re driven to mocking the media reports of them, even if it seems rather tasteless.”

Im not SURPRISED either, having spent a month backpacking in Israel in the year 2000. Before the bombs started going off.
I thought it was a screwed up place even then, when it was quiet.

I have argued against the word “genocide” myself .. still you really seem to have an “oh well” attitude towards the Palestinian people? Maybe no one has died from starvation or thirst but they sure have died from other things. Where in what laws of nature is it a positive thing when a population increases 40% in a decade? especially when that increase is mostly inside refugee camps? It has already been acknowledged here taking sides at this point in the game is not acceptable and that goes for the die hard, uncritical supporters of Israel too. The entire argument is becoming a total fallacy.

I dare you to call me antisemitic now.

Just your hoping isn’t going to make it happen.

There was recently a play at the Royal Court in Sloane Square by a young British/Pashtun girl called Alia Bano which ripped the covers of young British Muslim life with such brilliance and authenticity that the critics went into raptures.

And how long do you think that play lasted? About three weeks. Don’t get me wrong – so good was its word of mouth that it was sold out solid but the day I went there was nary a brown face in the audience. So you can go and patronize Richard Bean (which I have pointedly refused to do because I have seen his previous work and that too is full of unmitigated bigotry) but you would do much better promoting someone like Alia Bano.

So why not bring her work to the Rich Mix for example? Or the Brady Centre or Oxford House or any other number of East London venues. But I suppose that’s really not going to happen.

More on Alia Bano here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alia_Bano

There is no genocide in Gaza. The average life expectancy is 72. Nobody has died of starvation or thirst. The population has increased by 40% in a decade.

Only antisemites lie and claim that the Israelis are commiting a genocide. Why? Because you hate the state of Israel, full stop. Faced with such hatred, on all sides, globally, I am NOT surprised they’re driven to mocking the media reports of them, even if it seems rather tasteless. At least they are not strapping on bombs to their bodies and detonating at media outlets to express to frustrations.

”Nausating Robert Fisk” is obviously a whole different discussion. (To me those words words remiind me of this right wing American oaf called ‘Charlie Woolf’ who used to do the weekend overnight slot on Talk Sport radio).

Back on topic … aren’t many mosques (like the Birmingham Central Mosque run by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Naseem)…
open for criticism??

Maybe the East London Mosque near Brick Lane too??

How distorted was that ‘Policy Exchange – Newsnight’ report where they ….. ”visited 100 mosques and Islamic institutions and said they found extremist books available in a quarter of the survey sample.”

They produced some dodgy receipts …. which is fair enough to pull them up about.
Does that mean that ”unsuitable material” is not widely onsale at mosques (like on stalls outside the big one at Brick Lane – whether sanctioned or otherwise)??

I don’t know if Pickled Politics has done all that ”Saudi Korans and books” stuff.
Actually, I’m sure you have. Is it benign? Just a minority thing? Something for Richard Littlejohn to get worked up about – and therefore ignored?

Everyone knows now that if you dare issue even the mildest complaint about bigotry of any kind you’re a humourless scold acting on behalf of the PC mafia, who are the biggest threat to freedom of speech we’ve ever encountered, so shut your face, sunshine, and act nice or we’ll go after you in the name of free speech.

Or is it just that you can dish this sort of nasty shit out, but you can’t take it?