Is no statue safe?

[Cadiz Seagull]

"Deeply offensive" gravestones being removed from Rottingdean Church

https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/18519499.rottingdean-church-remove-deeply-offensive-gravestones/

Very unaceptable language these days but in wide use when the stones were first erected

 

[pastafarian]

Hostile environment seems like an unnecessarily bad phase for this. Sounds like they meant it as a dog whistle?

To me that everything you said it's just checking people are allowed to do the things they're trying to do. Which seems like a common sense policy of law enforcement.

The windrush scandal good beyond that, that was incompetence, likely a bit of racism thrown in, and target setting (which I think the public would have much less support for)

I don’t see a hostile environment towards illegal immigration as dog whistle. It was after all a phrase first coined by Labour in their policy of fines for employers of illegal immigrants as they attempted to have a hostile environment policy on people working here illegally. It is as you say though just common sense.

The public have indeed taken a dim view of The Windrush debacle, but as you acknowledge and the poll indicates, it is a separate issue from the hostile environment on illegal immigrants despite hostile environment practices inadvertently affecting a group of people it was not designed or intended to be for. The Windrush group are not illegal immigrants.

This. White Britons have to do that too. It's like asking if someone should be credit checked as part of a mortgage application.

British people are other colours as well as white..

 

[Springal]

http://twitter.com/HelenJMacdonald/status/1272790032244490240

[emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

Brits are still overwhelmingly supportive of the Hostile Environment policy on illegal immigration despite The Windrush fiasco.....They dont appear to be jolly cross about it....although a minority are.


"However, the approach that has led to such problems for the Windrush generation – the policy often described as the "hostile environment" – still has overwhelming public support. In principle, seven in ten (71%) support a policy of requiring people to show documents proving their right to be in Britain in order to do things such as taking up employment, renting a flat, or opening a bank account. Just 15% oppose this. Asked about specific situations, 82% think people should have to prove their right to be in the UK before accepting a job, 79% before registering with a GP and 74% before renting a home."

View attachment 124947

"In other words, just because the public think the government's handling of the Windrush generation has been poor, it doesn't follow that they have stopped supporting the policies that caused those difficulties."

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2018/04/27/where-public-stands-immigration

I wasn't commenting on te rights and wrongs of a "hostile environment". I was answering someone who stated there is not a racism issue in this country. Your post merely emphasises that there is.

And in terms of comment, it disgusts me, but then nobody will be surprised by that.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

I see , so you're endorsing black on black murders,
Right on bro !
Regards
DF

I do not see how my post could be seen as endorsing black on black murders.

Personally I do not endorse violence at all in any situation, the colour of anyone's skin being irrelevant.

 

[Acker79]

Couple of days late with this, but an interesting article from 'the secret barrister' about the new bill promising 10 years in prison for damaging war memorials:

The government’s response to the protests of the past week followed a predictable pattern. Step 1: A flurry of headlines promising: “Violent protesters face jail within 24 hours”, optimism unencumbered by any understanding of the law, procedural fairness or how Covid-19-struck criminal courts are operating in practice. Step 2: Announce longer prison sentences for something.

That something is apparently low-value criminal damage of war memorials, which, according to 125 Conservative MPs, is not being punished severely enough. So it was that backbench demands for a new offence carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years’ custody filled the Sunday press, with MPs vowing not to “stand idly by as our democracy is dismantled in this way”.

Seemingly sympathetic to the proposition that spray-painting a statue portends the dismantling of democracy, the government has thrown its weight behind the proposals, with the home secretary, attorney general and justice secretary all said to be supportive. What came as perhaps more of a surprise was the opposition joining the chorus. No doubt wary of falling into a populist-shaped elephant trap, the new shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, hitched Labour’s wagon to this nonsense, telling Sky News that he would “support the government in creating a new specific offence of protecting war memorials”.

The notion that a “new specific offence” is required to prohibit damaging war memorials betrays fundamental misunderstandings of what the law currently says. The Criminal Damage Act 1971 provides a maximum sentence of 10 years’ custody for the offence of criminal damage, and applies to all property, including statues and war memorials. Where a statue is a listed building, a further offence, carrying a maximum sentence of two years, is available under section 7 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990.

What upsets the campaigners is that where the value of criminal damage is under £5,000, it is treated as a summary-only offence (triable only at the magistrates’ courts) and carries a maximum sentence of three months. So where an unlisted memorial is defaced but the remedial cost is low – say removing spray paint – a lengthy spell behind bars is unlikely to follow.

The “solution”, we are told, is either to amend the Criminal Damage Act or to pass new legislation – the desecration of war memorials bill – allowing the maximum of 10 years to apply, irrespective of the value of the damage (and, in the case of the new bill, there need not even be any damage caused). In their fervour, few of the protagonists seem to have realised that the proposed narrow definition of “war memorial” would exclude most of the statues and monuments that have captured recent headlines – neither Colston’s nor Churchill’s statue, nor the memorial to PC Keith Palmer, would qualify for protection, for instance. Nor has it occurred to them that most acts of damage or disrespect to monuments are caused in the context of wider, more serious offending, for which lengthy custodial sentences are already available.

But even more troubling is what such an escalation in sentencing powers would represent. While in practice the maximum of 10 years would rarely, if ever, be imposed, the new cross-party consensus appears to be that displaying disrespect – not even quantifiable damage – to an inanimate object is worthy of a higher maximum sentence than inflicting grievous bodily harm, violent disorder, affray, theft, carrying knives, acid or offensive weapons, voyeurism, upskirting and causing death by careless driving, to name but a few offences that cause tangible harm to real people. It would inject criminal sentencing, which already suffers from wild incoherence and inconsistency between offence types, with another dose of gratuitous disproportionality.

What disappoints most is that the criminal justice system is in desperate need of unified political attention. The system, already on its knees pre-Covid-19, is in tatters. The backlog of cases in the crown courts has soared above 40,000 due to year after year of cuts to court sitting days. A lack of police and CPS resources means that it typically takes over a year to charge many cases, with victims, witnesses and the accused then subjected to a further wait of at least a year for a crown court trial date.

Publicly funded lawyers, starved of government financial assistance, are going to the wall. We still have Chris Grayling’s “innocence tax”, whereby the government refuses you legal aid and, when you are acquitted, refuses to fully reimburse your legal fees, leaving you thousands of pounds out of pocket for having been wrongly accused. And, bringing the conversation back to where attention should rightly be focused at this time, the 35 recommendations in the 2017 Lammy review into the treatment of BAME individuals in the criminal justice system are, three years on, yet to be implemented.

Yet somehow, our elected representatives have surveyed the wreckage of the criminal justice system, and considered the burning social injustices dragged into the spotlight by the BLM protests, and have concluded that the priority – the first piece of bipartisan criminal legislation they should pass – is one seeking to protect the feelings of concrete. Our country deserves better.

(emphasis mine)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/15/uk-black-lives-matter-protests-statues

 

[METALMICKY]

"Deeply offensive" gravestones being removed from Rottingdean Church

https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/18519499.rottingdean-church-remove-deeply-offensive-gravestones/

Very unaceptable language these days but in wide use when the stones were first erected

Better bloody well leave this guys headstone well alone or I'll be along to defend it!

 

[sydney]

http://twitter.com/HelenJMacdonald/status/1272790032244490240

[emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]

how blessed are you to have been raised in gods country......you have no idea do you...

 

[carlzeiss]

Christopher Columbus currently having a rough time in the USA . Should have stayed at home .

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/us/protests-statues-reckoning.html

Reconsidering the Past, One Statue at a Time

From Virginia to New Mexico, protests over police brutality have brought hundreds of years of American history bubbling to the surface.

 

[lawros left foot]

Cecil Rhodes statue coming down at Oriel College.

 

[symyjym]

I do not see how my post could be seen as endorsing black on black murders.

Personally I do not endorse violence at all in any situation, the colour of anyone's skin being irrelevant.

I don't blame you or others for not understanding this core issue because the sentiment of BLM seems perfectly reasonable on the surface. Of course no one wants to see racism.

However not all of the black community support BLM because recent cases like that of Oluwatoyin Salau goes unnoticed and it's an uncomfortable truth that BLM doesn't help or tackle the problems within the black community and they are still suffering.

So no, you are not directly endorsing black on black violent crime and murders, just helping to cover the issue up unwittingly. There are many from the black community who are speaking out but it is not covered in the media and they don't really care about the statues either, it's just a token gesture from white people involved in BLM and other groups jumping on the bandwagon for their own agenda.

There are plenty of testimonies from the black community out there but I will not post them on NSC, or links to stories on NSC anymore because I will be removed from the threads and be accused of racism which is well clear of the mark if you knew me.

It will all become clearer later down the line for anyone who is oblivious, or wilfully ignorant, to it all now.

I would not be surprised if I am removed from this thread for this comment anyway.

 

[Saunders]

Reconsidering the Past, One Statue at a Time

.

Starting with statues built in the last 10 years, 20 years , 30 years or all built 50+ years after. Still think they are waiting for 100 years to pass before we get the public Thatcher statues.

Edit I know they have tried already.

 

[Hugo Rune]

And now Rhodes will go Oxford Uni announce.

There is nothing that the Gammon mob can do to stop this!

 

[Eeyore]

And now Rhodes will go Oxford Uni announce.

There is nothing that the Gammon mob can do to stop this!

The FAIRY is on to the FOOTBALL LADS right now.

The OXFORD FIRM won't put up with this. They love DURAN DURAN

 

[The Clamp]

Rhodes. A homosexual and a racist. That’s gonna confuse some.

 

[Prettyboyshaw]

A poster in a window of a flat in Hove 'Decolonise our Curriculum' .

Okay lefty, shall we just pretend anything non pc these days didn't happen and just start the history books with....'In the Beginning there was a Coffee shop, occupied by gender fluid homo sapiens that were born offended on others behalf and that god (am I allowed to say that) had bestowed ,Apple Macs.

We are supposed to learn History, not just pretend they didn't happen.

 

[maltaseagull]

A poster in a window of a flat in Hove 'Decolonise our Curriculum' .

Okay lefty, shall we just pretend anything non pc these days didn't happen and just start the history books with....'In the Beginning there was a Coffee shop, occupied by gender fluid homo sapiens that were born offended on others behalf and that god (am I allowed to say that) had bestowed ,Apple Macs.

We are supposed to learn History, not just pretend they didn't happen.

A lot of the statue removal is, in my view, stable door stuff.

We do need to ensure that the real history is taught and not just the sanitised aren't we wonderful version.

I do wonder about the motivation of some of the peoples actions.
The headstones in Rottingdean have been there since 1962 yet only this week has the church considered them offensive, Hypocrisy. How many churches were funded by wealthy people who made their fortunes at the expense of other peoples suffering but were considered "good christians"
Perhaps these should be removed ?
How many devout muslims are taught about the Arab muslim slave traders who supplied the European slave traders?

 

[Acker79]

A poster in a window of a flat in Hove 'Decolonise our Curriculum' .

Okay lefty, shall we just pretend anything non pc these days didn't happen and just start the history books with....'In the Beginning there was a Coffee shop, occupied by gender fluid homo sapiens that were born offended on others behalf and that god (am I allowed to say that) had bestowed ,Apple Macs.

We are supposed to learn History, not just pretend they didn't happen.

Erm... no. You know that phrase 'history is written by the winners' - essentially the empire wrote the history book and so don't mention the horrible (and entirely non-pc things) they did. 'Decolonise our curriculum' isn't about removing history, it's about exposing the true history. Warts and all. It's about showing all the non-pc things that we did that have impacted on society, relationships between countries and religions and races. All of it.

 

[cunning fergus]

A lot of the statue removal is, in my view, stable door stuff.

We do need to ensure that the real history is taught and not just the sanitised aren't we wonderful version.

I do wonder about the motivation of some of the peoples actions.
The headstones in Rottingdean have been there since 1962 yet only this week has the church considered them offensive, Hypocrisy. How many churches were funded by wealthy people who made their fortunes at the expense of other peoples suffering but were considered "good christians"
Perhaps these should be removed ?
How many devout muslims are taught about the Arab muslim slave traders who supplied the European slave traders?

Well, given that the big man himself was a slave trader, I suspect that its only a matter of time before the history healers will turn their attention to the Islamic texts to require removal, to save the young impressionable Muslim minds from the evils of their prophet.

I will definitely be tuning in for that episode.

 

[A1X]

We are supposed to learn History, not just pretend they didn't happen.

Then let's ensure it's properly learned. Warts and all. Not the whitewashed version currently presented.