@earnie I fully appreciate that I was just pointing out one of UKIPs primary appeals to voters

I see the Sun have been up to their normal tricks, drove the guy down in a white van covered in England flags (with Sun logo of course) to get an apology

link

i see the Sun have been up to their normal tricks

I’ll bet some of his friends are black.

There’s so much bigotry on this thread it’s unbelievable. I have no idea whether he is racist or not, or anyone else for that matter, but i’m not going to start assuming people are just because they read a particular newspaper or dress in a certain way.
Maybe it’s ok for the middle classes to judge others this way though and i missed the memo……..as long as they’re white European they’re ripe for judging eh!!

I have no idea whether he is racist or not

This is what he said.

“I don’t care who it pisses off. I know there is a lot of ethnic minorities that don’t like it.”

He is.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11244791/Man-who-lives-at-house-in-Thornberry-tweet-hits-back.html

But if we were not in the EU we can re-negotiate/withdraw from those at will.

We could, but it is not something we have ever done, and would have pretty widespread economic implications and would create potential panic in the financial markets. Therefore it is highly unlikely. Even doing this would be unlikely to significantly effect your targets as much of the planning would survive under existing domestic legislation as currently structured or with a bit of tinkering. Most of their planning is designed to circumvent US rules on controlled foreign companies – getting profit out of subs isn’t difficult.

Fair enough wwaswas – but do we know this about everyone else flying a georges cross?

There’s so much bigotry on this thread it’s unbelievable.

What people have said is what they think when they see flag outside someone house. He has not exactly broken the stereotype now has he and forced us all to back track?

Maybe it’s ok for the middle classes to judge others this way though and i missed the memo

BOOM and there you go doing it yourself there.

EDIT: must type faster/drink brew quicker

do we know this about everyone else flying a georges cross?

Of course we do not know it is a generalisation and it has limits /there will be exceptions. It seems the stereotype has held up to examination in this case so it appears to be broadly accurate. This may be unpalatable but it still remains..

There’s so much bigotry on this thread it’s unbelievable. I have no idea whether he is racist or not, or anyone else for that matter, but i’m not going to start assuming people are just because they read a particular newspaper or dress in a certain way.

That’s very pc of you, but on first impressions I’d say on balance he probably is. That’s not bigotry, that’s just life experience. In the words of Dirty Harry:-

“When a naked man is chasing a woman through an alley with a butcher’s knife and a hard-on, I figure he isn’t out collecting for the Red Cross.”

I find it strange that in ENGLAND people make a bigger deal of St Patricks Day then they do St Georges day.

I’m of part Irish descent. TBH there’s very little about being English born that I’m proud of.

As I keep saying it is shame this has happened and the english need to reclaim the flag

I am quite happy not to reclaim it, the Union flag is far better especially when flying from the prow of one Her Majesties finest grey war canoes, whilst ploughing through the blue and crinkly stuff ensuring the container loads of chinese made junk arrives on our shores safely 🙂

It’s just how it is in some places. I don’t see a George Cross flying from a church steeple and think “racists”, but I do when I see one hanging outside a council house window in Oldham. It’s almost a given I’m afraid.

What is it about council houses that makes people so bloody ignorant and racist ??

Is it all the spam, fags and Jeremy kyle ?

Sausagefingers – so you’d be perfectly content flying a rainbow flag to show the world that you appreciate rainbows? You wouldn’t be concerned that the public in general might get a different message?

“

I’ll bet some of his friends are black”

Listen to yourself your worse than Thornberry, another judgmental ****, you know nothing of the man.

Flying flags just isn’t British.

This place can be so good at times, and so utterly, utterly shite at others.

People try to hold themselves in such high esteem and end up no better than the people they think they are better than. Suppose thats life though, you’d have thought I’d be used to it by 38 wouldn’t you. It’s all very depressing……

yunki – Member

Sausagefingers – so you’d be perfectly content flying a rainbow flag to show the world that you appreciate rainbows? You wouldn’t be concerned that the public in general might get a different message?

Sorry Yunki,that’s gone right over my head.
I’ve had some great advice from great people on here but comparing the union flag to the swastika?? Anyone thinking that’s anywhere close to being right is beyond offensive
I’m off #massive flounce

I’m not sure what’s going on here everyone seems to be outraged at something

You can’t even call a racist a racist anymore its PC gone mad !

I’m not bothered about people calling racists, racists. But I am bothered about people calling me a racist if I chose to wave and england flag whilst not being at a football match!

We need jamie to come and Photoshop various flags onto that pic of white van Dan outside thornberrys house
Have him holding a…..
A saltire
A union jack
A swaztika
A rainbow flag
One of those black Islamic state flags
A giant ukip pound sign

And we van see which one is more offensive

Is it all the spam, fags and Jeremy kyle ?

In Oldham it was generally the beer. Some of the characters I came across growing up there probably made the mould for the sort of stereotypes being discussed here. Some people’s idea of a good night out was 10 pints of bitter topped off with a massive deliberate fight – preferably with some ethnic minority or someone from another county. Yes they did happen to live in council houses.

But I am bothered about people calling me a racist if I chose to wave and england flag whilst not being at a football match!

As anyone ever done that though? It’s all about the context in which the flag is displayed. Also when I do see a George Cross flag outside a house in an area where there are well known racial tensions, I make a premise about the owner’s attitude to race, not a conclusion. Quite different things.

Far right groups are preaching hate under the banner of the George Cross.. A significant proportion of people on this thread are distrustful of the very tiny minority who choose to display the George Cross, as a direct result of the actions of far right groups..

Surely the so-called proud ‘patriots’ in this thread, and the PC brigade, should be taking issue with the far right, rather than the liberals and lefties that feel threatened by their actions?

Cougar – Moderator
As for the swastika, that was the symbol of the political party of one Adolf Hitler. Maybe you need to explain why you’re grouping people who display a nation’s flag through pride with the one and only nazi party…
Because it’s a good example of a symbol’s meaning changing over time, presumably. The angled cross has been used by many, many cultures for a very long time, almost always with a positive meaning, before old Adolf got hold of it.

Exactly, there are many societies around the world who use the swastika as part of their religious symbolism, and it’s been found on pretty much every continent, even North America, where it appears on wall paintings as part of the First Nations creation mythology.
It does strike me as very odd that symbols adopted by the far right, even relatively small groups of individuals, are then seen as racist, and that ‘reclaiming’ them is regarded as difficult, even when huge numbers of people display them to show their pride in their own country it’s still held by certain commentators that that majority is quite clearly rascist, but symbols used by the far left are displayed quite openly, are held to be iconic, and nobody bats an eyelid, even when the symbol was used by governments and terrorist groups who slaughtered quite literally tens, maybe even hundreds of millions of their own people, and those of other countries.
I refer to this:

To anyone who suggests that’s nowhere near the same as showing a flag with this:

should talk to survivors of Stalin’s purges, Mao Tse Tung, the Kmer Rouge, Sendoro Illuminoso, Robert Mugabe…

I have a set of patches* on my flying jacket at the mo’ with Soviet iconography, they are crew patches from Leonov, the ship that appeared in 2010: Odyssey Two, which nobody gives two hoots about, but imagine if I used a set of German Luftwaffe patches from a period war film…
* They alternate with a set of Nostromo patches, just for the fun of it.

In Oldham it was generally the beer. Some of the characters I came across growing up there probably made the mould for the sort of stereotypes being discussed here. Some people’s idea of a good night out was 10 pints of bitter topped off with a massive deliberate fight – preferably with some ethnic minority or someone from another county. Yes they did happen to live in council houses.

Born and bred in Owdham, still live there, Moorside area to be precise, its always been a rough town and probably always will, thats what happens when industry drops away leaving several different communities with very little prospect. I do not believe your description paints a true picture, in reality i would say the racial tolerance is fairly balanced across all communities. I think your comments are tainted with a bit of shame/snobbery.

In brief their flag represents their freedom from an oppressive imperial power,

It’s not about you! that’s a curiously Anglocentric view of America.

Good thread.

comments are tainted with a bit of shame/snobbery.

And therein lies the whole issue.

Thornberry was a prize asshat for posting that picture, she knew damn well what she was saying, it was a horrid piece of snobbery. “Oh, look at the proles with their flags. How frightful. Take me back to Islington and my organic quinoa immediately, driver!”

To then have the cheek to complain of discrimination against Islington was laughable. To have claimed that she’d never seen a house draped in flags was laughable. Her original claim that she’d never seen a house draped in “British” flags was not only laughable but downright stupid to boot. In short, she was an asshat.

Ed M did well here, I thought, by nipping it in the bud sharpish. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of what she might have intended by her tweet (And I think we all know what she meant!) he did well to get her out.

However, his interview today, when asked what he thought when he saw a white van outside a house, was painful in the extreme.

Sky: “What goes through your mind when you see a white van outside a house?”

EM: “What goes through my mind is respect.”

What? Seriously? I think, “Oh, there’s a white van”, if I think anything at all about it. But to claim that the thing going through your mind is “respect” is silly! Unless he means it in an Ali G kinda way….”Respekk, blud, yagetmefam?”.

Despite that dreadful interview, I still think Ed did the right thing here. Good for him.

t was a horrid piece of snobbery. “Oh, look at the proles with their flags. How frightful. Take me back to Islington and my organic quinoa immediately, driver!”

She was being judgemental about someone who has a number of flags on his house and it would appear with good reason. It had nothing to do with proles in general IMHO it as about people who fly flags outside their house voting UKIP it was oh look racist support UKIP…hardly a revelation or a controversial point I would have thought.

What goes through your mind when you see a white van outside a house?”

Its a pretty dumb question tbh

Its a pretty dumb question tbh

It was, and he should have treated it as such. Should have said, “There’s a white van outside that house”. Not some waffle about respect.

She was being judgemental about someone who has a number of flags on his house and it would appear with good reason.

Isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing? Justifies one’s prejudices so well. She was being prejudicial, and just because it (ex post facto) might suit the narrative you choose doesn’t excuse the action, I feel.

The thing with prejudging is we all do it every day and all the time. Its why no one turns up at your work for meetings dressed like a beach bum or a stoned hippy or dressed as a Nazi. they are only a problem if

1. it is all we do
2. the judgement we reach is massively at odds wih the reality

Neither of these was the case so the “prejudice” holds
TO just go yeah you prejudged him and that is bad [ even though the judgment was correct ] is a but daft.
One of those with prejudice thogh and it depends if the ones you reach are a broadly accurate reflection of reality or not
For example saying all Muslims are terrorists is poor and inaccurate one
As for hindsight if you cannot judge folk from a few pieces of information then you are lacking in some fairly essential life skills. It wont always be correct but first impressions matter

here are some other people fpr you tp practice with

Is it OK if say he’s racist? After all, I’m not in politics.

I can’t believe this thread has gone 6 pages and no one has pointed out the real elephant in the room.It’s not the England/St George flag that’s the issue, it’s the West Ham flag.Thornberry’s clearly a Bushwhacker 😉

“Oh, look at the proles with their flags. How frightful. Take me back to Islington and my organic quinoa immediately, driver!”

There is no evidence that she thought flags hanging from the roof gutter was “typical” working-class, in fact the reason for taking the picture was presumably because of its perceived uniqueness, otherwise there would have been no point in taking it, obviously.

Furthermore she is far more likely to be aware of how “the proles” live by observing her own constituents in Islington. Islington is an undeniably more deprived area than Rochester.

Indeed it is the working-class vote in Islington which makes it a safe Labour seat, and the middle-class vote in Rochester which makes it a (formerly) safe Tory seat.

If her sentiments were as you suggest then “take me back to Islington and my organic quinoa immediately, driver” wouldn’t make any sense. Far more sensible would be to insist to her driver that she wasn’t going back to Islington.

If this is snobbery as you claim Flashheart then it’s clear that New Labour simply aren’t anywhere up to your standards.

But anyway Flashheart, since you have made an untypical foray into a political thread can I ask you how you feel about the real story to come out of Rochester, not this trivial side issue, ie, the Tories losing one of their safest seats in the country ? How do you feel about that ?

It is interesting how many non working class types think it was snobbery towards the entire working class- FWIW how many working class folk have a drive and a garage ? Not up north anyway- rather than a pretty obvious dig of look nationalists [ polite for closet racist i think] vote UKIP.
Hardly a stunning revelation either

Listen to yourself your worse than Thornberry, another judgmental ****, you know nothing of the man.[/quote]

Well nothing apart from what he’s been quoted, and indeed a general judgement based on how he looks. Maybe the latter is being judgemental, but what do you think the chances are that he doesn’t conform to the stereotype and is a left wing vegetarian pacifist – though we then come back to what he’s been quoted as saying which tends to confirm the initial impression.

Not that such a comparison with Thornberry is particularly damning – not if you’re not a politician. Her tweet was politically unwise, but not otherwise particularly offensive apart from to the professionally offended.

This is a difficult one. I would not have put a post on social media of a strangers house with an identifiable reg plate from a van. Seems intrusive. She should have known better. Having said that, the Sun seem to have wheeled out the person in question who on balance appears a bit unsavoury.
On balance I feel a sense of injustice towards Thornberry. Resignation/sacking seems like Millibands way of trying to bring potential UKIP voters on board rather than doing his job properly to tempt people to vote labour by fair means.

“Oh, look at the proles with their flags. How frightful. Take me back to Islington and my organic quinoa immediately, driver!”

That doesn’t make sense. the idea that Islington is all organic quinoa is just nonsense spouted by people who have never been there (provincial paperclip salesmen, for example). Islington has the greatest disparities of wealth and poverty within the same ward anywhere in the UK. there’s a huge council estate within a couple of hundred metres of where she lives (if I’m roughly right about where she lives). there are tons of people who live around her that fly English flags when there are big footy tournaments.

it might be because I’m snobby myself but I don’t think her tweet was in the sense of “look at these horrible scruffs”, but more in the sense of “here I am door knocking in what’s obviously a UKIP v Tory dogfight over immigrants and now I have to try to convince a St George’s flag-flying white van man to vote Labour #hopeless #fml”.

PS her own constituency is one in which the middle class increasingly votes Lib Dem or Green and the working class don’t vote Labour en bloc. depending on how spectacularly Clegg can alienate those who voted for his party before, she might keep her seat again, but you’ve got to think she’s right to feel hopeless…

it might be because I’m snobby myself but I don’t think her tweet was in the sense of “look at these horrible scruffs”, but more in the sense of “here I am door knocking in what’s obviously a UKIP v Tory dogfight over immigrants and now I have to try to convince a St George’s flag-flying white van man to vote Labour #hopeless #fml”.

So sterotyping and judgemental then. Do white van men/St George’s flag flying individuals not vote for or consider voting for labour ?

So sterotyping and judgemental then. Do white van men/St George’s flag flying individuals not vote for or consider voting for labour ?

I’m guessing that you have done very little canvassing, if you had you would be aware that the visual presentation of a property can provide an excellent indication of the occupants likely voting intentions, the length of the drive to the front door is a good example.

People politically stereotype themselves, you don’t have to do it for them. And it’s only judgmental if you believe that there is a correct and an incorrect way to vote.

Never is there enough time to speak to every voter in an election campaign. Sometimes it’s not worth wasting time on no hopers when you can concentrate on your precious time on activity which is more likely to get you a positive result.

The person in question is not a Labour voter. If that was Emily Thornberry’s assessment then she was correct.