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Post by PaulS on Feb 25, 2005 17:04:21 GMT
I detest the PC world we are heading for.
The Problem of people being unfairly treated because of their race,religion,sex,sexual orientation etc is something that should be addressed , however common sense should prevail when it comes to so called positive discrimination.
All women selection lists for elections should be illegal! The candidates should be selected one one basis only, that being the best person for the job.
Years ago when I was at collage I was asked to stand for the Students Union as many of my class mates felt that they were not represented by the existing comittee.
I was not allowed to stand for Womans officer(I'm male), Black & Asian Officer (I'm White) ,Disabled officer (I'm Able bodied), foreign student officer (I'm English), single parent (at the time single but no kids) , gay and lesbian officer (I'm heterosexual),
There were two positions that I was allowed to stand for , Professional Studies officer ,a position that I think was created to appease me and to stop me standing for the only other option available Chairman.
Due to the rediculous positive descrimination rules , I as a white, English, able bodied, heterosexual male had NO representative on the SU. I was branded racist, sexist and homophobic when I tried to create some new posts on the comittee , those being a male officer, white officer and heterosexual officer.
If there is one thing that really winds me up its intollerance and prejudice.
We are all human beings regardless of race, religion ,colour of skin, sex etc
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Post by taylorsman on Feb 25, 2005 23:02:58 GMT
Paul you have listed the very things about PC and its ugly sisters "Affirmative Action" and "Positive Discrimination" that I hate so much! In modern Britain it would seem one has to be Un-White, Un-Male, Un-Straight, and even Un-Lawful to get on. Why is it perfectly legal to have a Black Police Officers Association but any Coppers setting up one for White Officers only would be charged with Racism, or one for Homosexual Police Officers but one for Straights would be banned and called Homophobic? Insurance companies can give women a reduction in premiums but if they offered this to men on the grounds of their gender they would be prosecuted. I feel that such measures breed resentment and will in time lead to a backlash against the very people they are meant to help. Paul, more power to your elbow and it is good to meet another kindred spirit!
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ruffashlar
Member
Lodge Milncroft No. 1515 (GLoS), Govanhill Royal Arch Chapter 523 (S.G.R.A.C.S.)
Posts: 2,184
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Post by ruffashlar on Feb 26, 2005 0:54:30 GMT
I've argued this till I'm cyanotic in the face. You only need Black, Asian, Gay, Women's and Foreign officers in any organisation because everyone else is covered by White, Compatriot, Heterosexual and Male definitions. You might as well put White, Compatriot, Heterosexual and Male Officer on everyone else's job description. So for every one special interest group officer, you have at least ten White, Compatriot, Heterosexual and Male Officers.
Spare a thought for Jewish, Transsexual or Mentally Ill people, who have to slum it trying to have their problems addressed by the same White, Compatriot, Heterosexual and Male Officers as the rest of us.
Now, I do have to wonder if the developing nations are contemplating putting a White, Compatriot, Heterosexual and Male Officer in every public organisation. Perhaps they'll arrive at complete integration on the fast track, and miss the PC stage entirely. Maybe.
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Post by taylorsman on Feb 26, 2005 9:54:49 GMT
Ruff. I'll leave you to find "The New Jerusalem" for yourself whatever colour your visage takes on, or if your blood pressure goes through the roof in the process. On PC you are telling your tale to a deaf man as regards me, Paul and possibly others here too. We just ain't buying. As far as I am concerned you take a ticket and stand in line no special cases, no fast track. If a black, crippled, vegan, lesbian who is a member of some obscure religion is the best for the Job or Office then fair play but that should be on her abilities, qualifications and experience, and NOT because of these attributies, and the " White, Compatriot, Heterosexual Male" should be able, in discharging his duties, to do so for ALL those he represents.
I have done so twice as a Local Councillor where the majority of people in my ward did not vote for me or my party and many of those I assisted I knew to be supporters of the other parties. When I got a letter or call for assistance the colour, religion, gender or sexual orientation of the elector was irrelevant, all I was interested in was the validity of his or her case and if I it was within my powers to act or needed to be referred to the MP or some other Agency.
Ruff, we just ain't gonna agree on this, there is no common ground, no chance of a meeting of minds as we are in different camps here and come at the matter from diametrically opposite poles.
Finally, I am intrigued by your use of the quotation from Virgil, put to great effect by Enoch Powell in his famous speech.
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ruffashlar
Member
Lodge Milncroft No. 1515 (GLoS), Govanhill Royal Arch Chapter 523 (S.G.R.A.C.S.)
Posts: 2,184
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Post by ruffashlar on Feb 27, 2005 9:20:16 GMT
He was misquoted.
His actual words were "Like the Roman [i.e., Virgil], I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood." But everyone persists in calling it the "Rivers of Blood" speech. I'm not here to act as apologist for Powell, a man as stupid as he was innocent, but who rode the blood-dimmed tide to political infamy a whoopin' and a-hollerin' like Slim Pickens; my point is, I know what it is to be misquoted, or rather, to be entirely misunderstood, as if I had said something the complete opposite of what I had actually said.
Powell was a Latin scholar himself, a pupil of A.E. Housman, whose collection A Shropshire Lad rather overshadows these days the fact that, in his time, he was the foremost Latinist in Europe. Housman, another Virgil fan, who doubtless enthused Powell, was given less to the Fourth Eclogue than to the Second, and Powell himself, though refuting the inevitable claims, certainly had all the benefits of a Classical, as opposed to Christian, education. As such he seems to have absorbed Roman prejudices - in Latin, aethiops, an African, is a synonym for a proverbial idiot - but Anglo-Saxon attitudes. Although when he speaks of "the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history ", had he looked a little harder he would surely have observed exactly the same genetic whirlpool two thousand years ago, in Roman Britain.
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Post by taylorsman on Feb 27, 2005 10:09:42 GMT
It is good to read someome who whilst politically opposed still gives the late Enoch Powell credit for his education. Too many on the Left dismiss him as a Right Wing Racist demagogue, as unfair as it was untrue. The man was responsible for many of what were then called "West Indians" now Afro-Caribeans coming to this country in the 1950s to staff the Health Service and had spent part of his Army Service where he rose from the ranks to Brigadier in India becoming a fluent speaker of the main native languages. In the 1950s he rebelled against his own party's line on the killings of Mau Mau detainees at Hola Camp, hardly the response of a Racist.
Your description of Powell as having a Classical rather than a Christian education is of interest and I can accept the point you make, it has a resonance for me. It may interest you to know that Powell was a High Anglican and a Chuchwarden , but some would not consider that to be "Christian".
It is unfortunate that Enoch Powell will be remembered primarily as an Icon of the Racist Right, a position he did not desire and who's adherents he abhored, when there was far more to the man than that, he was far example a large factor in bringing down the Heath Government in February 1974 when until his intervention the Tories looked set to win on a "Doctor's Mandate" during the then Miner's Strike. The endgame of his political career in Ulster as MP for Down South was no Indian Summer, he was never at one with the Tribal and Sectarian Politics of that Province, ending in defeat by some Nationalist nonentity in 1987, with no compensatory Peerage. History will I feel judge him less harshly than currently. I was fortunate to meet him in 1972 and found him to be a charming man, and no mob orator or rabble rouser.
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ruffashlar
Member
Lodge Milncroft No. 1515 (GLoS), Govanhill Royal Arch Chapter 523 (S.G.R.A.C.S.)
Posts: 2,184
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Post by ruffashlar on Mar 1, 2005 8:41:08 GMT
However, I was fortunate enough to meet Jeffrey Archer in 1980, when the only fiction he was producing was in his much acclaimed political potboilers, and he too seemed a very nice man.
Then again, I must have been about twelve at the time, and cannot have been the most reliable of witnesses. At least we have that in common.
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Post by taylorsman on Mar 1, 2005 13:05:09 GMT
I haven't met Archer, I wouldn't want to! I have met quite a few famous people at political meetings etc when I was into that sort of thing, Ian Paisley but also at another meeting Gerry Fitt, Ian Smith of Rhodesia, Ted Heath, the late John Smith, Lord Tebbit, and many others I won't bore you with. I haven't met Chris Mullins MP, I wouldn't want to, you may have, whatever floats your boat as they say, one man's hero is another's villian.
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ruffashlar
Member
Lodge Milncroft No. 1515 (GLoS), Govanhill Royal Arch Chapter 523 (S.G.R.A.C.S.)
Posts: 2,184
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Post by ruffashlar on Mar 10, 2005 12:26:21 GMT
Now here's a funny thing. I was reading the Sunday Times Magazine the other day, which included an interview with Liam Neason, as part of his pre-release publicity for the film Kinsey.
Insofar as PC exists at all, it takes its cues from the struggle for Black civil rights and the concerns of Feminism: the first of these was a response to changes in the labour market after WWII, the second followed publication of the results of a questionnaire conducted during that conflict, the Kinsey Report. In a sense, Kinsey is the godparent of PC, although he himself was not at all what PC would approve of. While some aspects of his work continue to be controversial - such as his interviews with paedophiles - he was working in the near-vacuum of a time when virtually all sexualities were taboo, and there was really no sensible guidance to be found.
Neason himself still has very un-PC Catholic guilt and unresolved issues revolving sex; as well as a rather moving and very simple faith in God and in the Church. Interestingly, however, he says that going to see Ian Paisley work the room was what first made him want to become an actor. He has even expressed interest in playing the orator in a future film, should the project be realised.
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