General British politics discussion thread

If it had been a rushed tweet or offhanded comment on radio/tv sure she could get some slack for the reasons you stated but she sat down and thought about the words she put into this letter and then chose to send it and the excuse that it was a first draft is garbage.

As pointed out, people could ride any where legally on the bus in Britain.

You are whatabouting American history so as to excuse Holocaust denial and anti Semitism.

One of the largest Jewish communities in Europe live in her constituency, they have to organize patrols to protect themselves from attacks. Imagine that.

You won't see Abbott or the local labour activists helping at that.

Abbott isn't that sharp a communicator. There is a consistent effort to minimize the Holocaust from many on the Left today. They know denial is a dead end. So just reducing it to just one of these things in history is the current tactic.

No Jewish person would argue that losing 40% of their global population trumps sitting at the back of the bus. It's unedifying and the reverse pity Olympics shouldn't be done.

My point is that it's not a pity contest, 2 wrongs are still 2 wrongs. Don't get distracted from that point by disputing how many died in the Holocaust, wrongly killed, with no justification.

Can you not accept that a lot of people view it that way?

I'm quoting from her letter. And her letter was in response to an article by Tomiwa Owolade . SO nothing about my experience. ( I can only assume you hand't read the letter, or you would know that)

The article was about a report of groups reporting if they have experienced racial abuse in the UK. And a higher percentage of Jewish and Irish people say they have in comparison to African or Asian peoples. So either most racial abuse in the UK is directed at Jewish and Irish people rather than Black and Asian peoples or they are better at reporting it.

Diane Abbot was right to highlight this . I cannot see anything in her letter that is in any way questionable. There is nothing anti Irish or anti-Semitic about her views expressed in that letter.

Are the Irish or Jewish a different race to say the the majority WASP in the UK? If not, can prejudice against them be described as racism? I always thought we were just different ethnics groups further confusion caused by travellers in Ireland being described as a different ethnic group to Non-traveler Irish.

Abbott is only right in that prejudice against the Irish or say Catholics in Northern Ireland before the troubles would not be instantaneous but only would happen once accents were heard or backgrounds/religion were identified.

The "red head" quote is stupid though. It's like something some ejit on Twitter would come up with.

The report wasn't that simple either as it asked people across multiple areas like schools, housing, work. A lot of it made sense based on the different ways the various groups engage with society.

For instance "white Irish" is high in employment probably because that's how most of us engage with society there. Also low with police because obviously it's not as easy to see our irishness. There is also no timeframe as to when the racism occurred (most participants were between 18-65yo) so there are lots of the older Irish in there who probably got it way worse than you would now.

It does have some problems though like "have you experienced some form of racist assault" like can I put in the time a guy in a pub called me Paddy when he went to hit me (the incident was not because of my nationality but Paddy popped up a lot as soon as I had issues with English people)

It was a very interesting study and her response was wrong (not specifically anti-Semitic) but conversations about racism should never be dragged into Lethal Weapon scar comparing territory.

Yes they are by the definition of race. There is still a fair bit of Punch cartoon mentality around the Irish in Britain.

And?

JRM has been the Minister for Brexit prosperity and has come up with feck all.

Well putting "national" at the start of your ideology is being savagely historically naive or just being provocative. And Mogg ain't historically naive.

Wikipedia lists Fianna Fail as National Conservatives 🤣