[Closed] The awful, shocking, terrible, horrible realisation...

But back to the serious subject at hand, I am very worried about the rise of the far right. History tells us to expect this when economic conditions are bad, but I have never lived through it. Maybe I read too many scary books about the Holocaust when I was a kid, but it looks to me like the EDL/SDL are doing the dirty work for the racist policies of UKIP and the SNP. What next, smashing up shops owned my the Muslimists ??

As an interesting aside, I live in a former northern mill town, by a river, which may or may not be the one referred to in the Original Post.

There are areas of this town that are now 100% populated by Asian families. One of these largest areas bordered a rather well-to-do middle class white Christian area - you know, huge Victorian villas, copper beech-lined avenues, that sort of thing.

In recent years, Asian families started buying up these houses so their kids could go to the better schools in the leafy part of town. Now, the vast majority of that area is populated by Asian Muslims, and those schools which were once so sought after, are now exclusively Asian and English is no longer the first language.

And here's the funny thing. Very few of the houses pay council tax. Some of the biggest and highest-yielding properties in the area are exempt from council tax, because the owners claim to have a communal prayer room.

So, the area is going to ruin because the local authority don't have money to spend on improvements. So the remaining white Christian families are all trying to move away from the area. Maybe they're racist, maybe they just don't feel a part of the cultural spirit of the community in which they once felt they belonged. Maybe they want their kids to go to a school where they don't need translators to understand the teacher, or where they'll be taught French or Spanish, rather than Gujarati.

Now there's a glut of properties on the market, and, due to the reasons listed above, only a small percentage of the overall population that actually want to live in that area. Therefore, the houses aren't worth anything like what they were 20 years ago, in spite of the fact that the average prices of housing in the wider area continues to rise in line with the averages elsewhere in the region.

Another way of putting it would be to say that this area is experiencing a drop in property values because of the Muslims, who are taking over. Which, whilst no less accurate, sounds far more inflammatory to a self-righteous middle-class liberal who wants to show off how enlightened he is.

I'll leave that with you, I'm off for some lunch... 😉

and those schools which were once so sought after, are now exclusively Asian and English is no longer the first language.

And here's the funny thing. Very few of the houses pay council tax.

And here's the funny thing. Very few of the houses pay council tax. Some of the biggest and highest-yielding properties in the area are exempt from council tax, because the owners claim to have a communal prayer room.

Curious to know how you know this?

Another way of putting it would be to say that this area is experiencing a drop in property values because of the Muslims, who are taking over.

Of course if you're not too bothered about living around lots of Muslims that's quite a good thing, cos you can buy a nice house for cheaper, (assuming it's accurate). Swings and roundabouts.

I love it that someone who doesn't like Johnny Foreigner taking over their town/area is a 'Bigot'.

Why do you think that some people find mass immigration unacceptable?

If you've grown up in surroundings that you are comfortable in....and they change, why should people not find that disconcerting?

Why is the 'enlightened' view the only acceptable one? Who made you God??

Who are you talking to? The imaginary lefties that control everything?

Sometimes people do not know how to express themselves properly so they rely on their instinct. It does not mean that they are wrong or bigot but merely their way of analyzing information around them.

Based on my experience a place can be completely populated within one or two generations. A bit like the 3rd world example but nevertheless it's human migration and if they have high birth rate then things will change even faster. Then you have the inevitable friction ...

Having lived in several countries around the world, the one thing that marks the UK out IMO is the remarkable levels of tolerance and moderation that mark our culture. Step away from the headlines and look at how different races, religions, nationalities etc are able to get along and, to different degrees of success, integrate with each other. Of course, the UK is far from perfect and we have (growing?) numbers of people who feel disenfranchised especially with the weak state of the economy. They use various excuses to vent theirs frustrations including racist ones. But fortunately, they remain in the minority and the UK is the better for it.

Rather than focusing on the fact that people may get less tolerant as they age, I would prefer to focus on the fact that the younger generation is far more tolerant that previous ones and that bodes well for the future here.

The problem with sensationalist headlines is that they can obscure proper and APPROPRIATE discussion of genuine issues such as levels of immigration, integration and perceived or real pressures on services that come with this.

I suspect that statistically most of this country's social problems are caused by poorly educated white people in the lower classes. I suspect there are far more of these born ever year than there are net migrants. It surprises me that people like rockape aren't also calling for them all to be neutered since their births are currently "out of control" . Or does it not work like that because they are white Britons?

My wife is what the bulk of modern day immigrants are like- from a middle class background and well educated with skills to bring to our nation. Immigration is not necessarily a bad thing. I think most of them are reasonably well off too- her visa was about 2 grand. And she will have had 5 of them before she can stay permanently. You don't hear about them because they look the same as "us" and dress the same.

It is very convenient for the right wing political parties to make immigration an issue by propagating fear of outsiders when the reality is a long way from this. People entering the country on a spouse visa and several other visas are not even entitled to benefits nor a vote.

On the free speech/give 'em rope business:

[url= http://twitpic.com/ctnrw5 ]EDL Newcastle demo - 'Send the black ***** home! (vid link)[/url]

It's like atheist vs religious types arguing, you can't use logic and verifiable facts to defeat nutters.

This.

Facebook does make it harder to the ignore the casual racists.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/experts/article-1678510/Prayer-rooms-fact-or-urban-myth.html

In case you can't be arsed clicking on it, in a nutshell it says the rumour is all bo!!ox.

Now don't panic, I'm no liberal; 20 years in the police knocks that out of you.

I love it that someone who doesn't like Johnny Foreigner taking over their town/area is a 'Bigot'.

Are people "taking over" or just moving to the area? Nobody is saying people who aren't overly keen on immigration is a bigot, but certainly a good sized proportion are. If you say that all muslims are bad for an area, you're a bigot unfortunately. If you say that there is a problem with certain specific people that happen to be muslims, that's a different matter.

Why do you think that some people find mass immigration unacceptable?

Two can play at that game. SOME people find it unacceptable because they have an opinion that is formed from half-baked ideas that have no basis in fact. The UK called out for immigration in the 2nd half of last century to fill jobs and ensure our services kept running. The UK didn't collapse and I'd say we're all a little bit better for coming from a multi-ethnic society. I live in a predominantly single-ethnicity country now and some attitudes are, quite frankly, shocking.

If you've grown up in surroundings that you are comfortable in....and they change, why should people not find that disconcerting?

You can use that argument for everything in modern life. Immigration is one of a million items in daily life that people experience culture shock from. My grandfather never quite got to grips with the idea of the internet but was quite happy with immigration (the eastern European farm workers in the area meant cheaper beer for him as they couldn't afford most pub prices originally). On the other hand, his lack of comfort with the internet and what it meant never spilled over to violence and rioting (he was usually a bit too drunk for that sort of thing).

In case you can't be arsed clicking on it, in a nutshell it says the rumour is all bo!!ox.

Well, I was told by an acquaintance who works for Lancashire County Council in taxation that many of these homes were being registered as premises for religious communities and as such qualified for exemption from Council Tax. I must have misheard him.

council tax is collected by the local councils and not the county council so i would not know about that ...perhaps that is what they told you and you misheard?

The way forward [url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-22689552 ]this[/url] is

...perhaps that is what they told you and you misheard?

Perhaps. Perhaps I also misheard him tell me that nobody dare question it in case they're accused of Islamaphobia... My hearing ain't what it used to be 😉

Oh you brave soul. You are a rock. An island.

You are a rock

Speech impediment, shirley?

From the prayer room link

If people honestly believe neighbours are escaping their liabilities in this way, why not ask your local council for its list of local places of worship. If they are not on the list, they are not exempt.

Therein lies your answer

Actually ocrider, I think herein lies my answer...

A discount for members of religious communities can be granted where a person has no income or capital of their own, is dependent on the community for material needs and where their work is prayer, contemplation, the relief of suffering or a combination of these.

It follows that if a property is occupied by 2 adults and one of them qualifies as a member of a religious community a discount of 25% would be given. If both adults qualified as members of a religious community a 50% discount would be given.

Then there's public liability insurance...

Is the abode now "business premises"?

Are separate sex toilets needed?

Has the property been risk assessed: ie have prayer mats been secured to the floor to reduce trip hazards? Will the mezzuin be calling the faithfull to prayer in a muted volume to remove the need for hearing protection? Will guiderails be provided so that women (and fleeing criminals) wearing burkas can find the way to the bar area after prayers?

Red tape minefield, mate. Leave well alone.

Where is quote from please?

Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council. In a reply to a Freedom Of Information request about this very issue.

Are we having a sweep on how many more posts before the thread is closed?

It'll be an absolute disgrace if it is closed MT... Nobody has expressed a remotely racist - or even bigoted - view so far. It's the very fact that there's an atmosphere of fear when debating subjects like this that crimes like the grooming of young girls for sex by older Asian men has gone unchecked.

There's a huge difference between discriminating and being able to recognise and discuss problems. And there hasn't been any discrimination on this thread.

I have quite a few friends,and one family member,who all moved house due to a gradual influx of Asians in the area.
The reasoning went that you sold your house first,normally to Asians,and this would then put off "white" buyers who saw Asians creeping into the area.Less buyers,lower house prices.Racist or economic decision ?
One couple took a massive loss to leave an Asian dominated area due to racist abuse and even having stones thrown at them.
I had a business for over 17 years that primarily dealt with Indians,some of which had come from Uganda.They were hard working and invested in this country but were racist.My wife complained to one Indian boss about his treatment of a worker who was from ****stan.
She was told that the ****stanis really were no better than slaves,and the area that i came from,Bradford,has the worst class of immigrant.In fact they said too many immigrants had been allowed into the UK,but i believe they meant wrong type.
Lets not beat ourselves up about having racists,bigots etc as it extends far wider than the EDL

What joegg says.
The last time I checked the rest of the world wasn't full of nations living harmoniously side by side.
I remember being in a cab with a Jamaican colleague and when he found out that the driver was African and not Caribbean you could have made snow balls the atmosphere was that chilly.

Indians,some of which had come from Uganda

I'm no geographist, but I'm sure Uganda wasn't in India last time I looked.......
Have they moved it?

Indians were kicked out of Uganda by Idi Amin.If you travel to Kenya you'll find Indians control quite a bit of the economy,as they did in Uganda.

Learn something new every day.

[url= https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/49050/response/123596/attach/3/FOI%20Response%2029.10.10.pdf ]I had a quick Google and found the FOI request that you quoted[/url], so a little perspective may be in order....

There is no such exemption in Council Tax legislation that allows a reduction on these grounds and therefore the answer to your question is none. The only reduction that can be given on similar grounds is a discount for members of religious communities and not specifically for prayer rooms alone

A discount for members of a religious community...

I can confirm that there are currently six properties in Doncaster that qualify for a 50% reduction on these grounds

On that note, I'm outta here. Got to play footy with some evil north African muslamic jihadi dudes. Top bunch of lads they are 🙂

Was the uk a nation of immigrants before the fifties? Of course it has has small scale immigration on and off but harking back to the saxons, romans, vikings and normans is maybe taking it a bit far. I would call those immigrants quite well intergrated. The thing is that we need to admit there are issues intergrating a huge number of people into a country, it takes resources and a will to do it. You also need a vision of what a country is, does the notion of a nation state really even exist now? I would say to me the british values i aspire to would be equality between all, scientific rather than religious thinking, mocking authority including religion but also religious tollerance.

I am an immigrant, it is a funny experience. Sometimes you feel intergrated and sometimes you feel like everybody wants to subtly egnore you.

unklehomered - Member

"I'd love to see a mosque being built in Mecca"

And this ladies and gentlemen, and the other pearlers in that video, are why I am a keen fan of free speech...

Actual many in the muslim world are up in arms as the Suadi's have knocked many of Mecca's religious sites down as they did not fit with their interpretation of islam and they wanted to build a mega hotel.

Nobody has expressed a remotely racist - or even bigoted - view so far.

It's the very fact that there's an atmosphere of fear when debating subjects like this that crimes like the grooming of young girls for sex by older Asian men has gone unchecked.

went that you sold your house first,normally to Asians,and this would then put off "white" buyers who saw Asians creeping into the area.Less buyers,lower house prices.Racist or economic decision ?

One couple took a massive loss to leave an Asian dominated area due to racist abuse and even having stones thrown at them.

I hear this house prices line trotted out but it is just not true to say the affect house prices [ though it socially more acceptable to pretend it is economics rather than saying you would not live with them as neighbours as that sounds a bit racist]. Again if house prices drop it is because racist white folk wont live there which is hardly their fault.

Sometimes you feel intergrated and sometimes you feel like everybody wants to subtly egnore you.

Indians were kicked out of Uganda by Idi Amin.If you travel to Kenya you'll find Indians control quite a bit of the economy,as they did in Uganda.

Anyone heard much about Fiji lately?

Again if house prices drop it is because racist white folk wont live there which is hardly their fault.

This may be true, but other people's racism is probably of little comfort if you're trying to sell your house and can't.

Is it not the point that people need to get along with each other and we have to work out how. If a large proportion of the population are feeling uncomfortable with where they feel their country is going do you solve it by calling them rasist or bigots?

If a large proportion of the population are feeling uncomfortable with where they feel their country is going do you solve it by calling them rasist or bigots?

The trouble is that most of the people who 'feel uncomfortable with the way their country is going' come out with made-up stories from the tabloids or chinese whispers heard down the pub to support their 'feeling' - and many of them aren't interested in actual evidence that might contradict it.

It's the very fact that there's an atmosphere of fear when debating subjects like this that crimes like the grooming of young girls for sex by older Asian men has gone unchecked.

Unchecked? I could have sworn quite a lot of asian men have been arrested for that recently. How did the police manage to overcome the power of the [i]secret lefties that control everything[/i] I wonder?

Fiji ? Do you mean the recent history of military coups or the period from 1874-1970 when it was a British Colony and 1000s of Indian workers were brought to the island ? Good old British Colonialism and the force for good that was.

If a large proportion of the population are feeling uncomfortable with where they feel their country is going do you solve it by calling them rasist or bigots?

TBH if we deported everyone they disliked they would still be racist and bigots so the problem would not really be solved
what we need to do is educate them so that people can live side by side in harmony say over a cup of tea , some biscuits and a game of football

Grum:

Same kind of issues as sending your ethnic minority kids to a 90% white school I'd imagine (or 99.97% white like my school).

What are those issues then?

I'm well aware of that and I believe that on average immigrants tend to contribute more to the economy than the average UK born citizen, that doesn't mean there are no issues though - in some small communities they have seen reasonably large (as a percentage of the total population of the community) numbers of people come from rural ****stan, for example - often from the same village/area. Claiming there are no potential issues around that is just counter-productive IMO. Some of the problem is obviously just bigoted people who don't like Jonny Foreigner, but I don't think that's all it is.

The issue there is insularity and closed communities. The fact that the people in question are from a different country is not actually the problem.

Immigrantion in itself doesn't cause these problems, because we know there are plenty of immigrants who get along just fine. By all means solve the problems of language difficulties in schools, or insular communities not integrating, but if you want to avoid racist connotations then don't call them immigrant problems.

Molgrips, I'm astounded that someone I thought had more than a modicum of intelligence would ask that question.

Is this an attempt by you to give someone enough rope in the hope that he'll hang himself? Or do you genuinely think that's not a problem?

I'm asking him to clarify his position. It's not a rhetorical question so don't infer that I don't think it's a problem.

I'm a little bit right of centre AND a Daily Mail reader. But five years ago when we moved to Derbyshire and were house hunting one of the things we steered clear of was imm...

No only joking. What we didn't want was a house in our street to have a flagpole with an England flag in the garden.

What are those issues then?

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

The issue there is insularity and closed communities.

That's part of it yes, but not the whole story - part of it is as I said that some people come from areas which have what is by our standards extreme levels of poverty, low education standards, religious fundamentalism, and social conservatism with little knowledge or understanding of concepts we value like equality and human rights. Quite a lot of people like that coming to a struggling ex-mill town is likely to cause issues. That's not to remotely suggest we should send them all home, or that all immigrants are stupid or backward - just like I'm not suggesting all white working class people are racists.

There's a danger of trying to defend deeply illiberal attitudes on the name of liberalism though.

This is at least my view from having worked in some of these areas and spoken to many people who have lived and worked in these communities for many years, who are about as far from being Daily Mail readers as you can imagine.

if you want to avoid racist connotations then don't call them immigrant problems.

I believe I used the word issues not problems. And I don't think there are any racist connotations to what I said. There's clearly loads and loads of immigrants who don't fit the picture described above.

Fiji ? Do you mean the recent history of military coups or the period from 1874-1970 when it was a British Colony and 1000s of Indian workers were brought to the island ? Good old British Colonialism and the force for good that was.

Yes, that's the one.

Not a loaded question. Just haven't seen much of the situation there lately.

*goes googling

"Racist" and "bigot" are strong words and a little over used by some on this forum.

I'm an immigrant and don't automatically assume that people who have issues with me are racist. Some occasionally come out with things I consider xenophobic but calling them racists would be an exaggeration.

To be racist it has to be based on my race not just my status as an immigrant, religion, origin or accent. When I've be called a "white don't-want-to-be-banned-for-swear-filter-avoidance", that's racist.

I was lucky enough to visit Fiji in the interim period when it had just started self governing and before the coups. Lovely people beautiful place but some crushing poverty, not helped by kicking out economically active groups of people and spending more money on the military (most of whom train in the British Army, as an aside). Good example though of what can happen when two communities absolutely do not mix, and one eventually outnumbers the original. Sad consequences.

Wow. Not sure I have ever seen so much disagreement sprout from essentially the same moderate standpoint. I guess fora breed heated debate, even when everyone essentially agrees.

This thread is restoring my faith on STW though. We really are a painfully fair, over educated, middle class (slightly Trotskyite) bunch. I'm welling up with it all. 😉

jambalaya - Member

@quartz - the UK Border control (therefore ONS) don't know how many immigrants we have, people come in on education visas or as holiday makers from the EU and elsewhere and just stay illegally. We don't track this, we don't know whether they leave.

Completely wrong. We do track student visas very tightly- in fact, the constant politically-led tightening of student visas has put huge pressure on the further education sector, as it's now a major deterrant on foreign students paying to study here. Getting a visa is harder and it's more expensive. Every year, we lose students who have every right to study here but just haven't managed to jump through the right hoops in the right timescale- this costs us hundreds of thousands of pounds in lost fees and in costs. Once here, attendance is tracked and reported, working is restricted, police registration is required for Tier 4 visa holders. Right to remain has also been restricted. And we track when they leave (which, in the overwhelming majority of cases, they do without being asked)

Ironically, as a result of these excessive and constantly changing rules, the UKBA hasn't been able to keep up to date with enforcement so there is usually a substantial backlog of tens of thousands of expiring/cancelling T4 visas which [i]could[/i] involve overstaying students, though in reality the number which actually do will be a fraction of that (as that backlog includes legitimate visa extensions, ongoing conversions from visitor visa to student visa or from student visa to working visa, and accidental overstays in the process of being fixed).

This is all idealogically led to "cut immigration"- they've targeted the softest and largest immigrant group, students, as it's so easy to cut back and make headlines, despite the fact that this is a hugely succesful UK industry worth billions. If you took away international students tomorrow, many (perhaps most) UK universities would fold and the quality of teaching and research would be hammered. It would cost us influence on the world stage (since the UK is the world's second-biggest educator of foreign students, british graduates are everywhere), it'd hurt education for UK citizens, and it'd actually achieve ****-all since students overstaying or breaching visas is actually a very small problem, made absolutely irrelevant by the immense benefit gained from foreign students.

However, they can fiddle immigration stats by simply reducing the number of students entering the country- as most graduating students leave the country, you can create a short-term imbalance by admitting fewer this year, as you'll have more exiting from 2-4-6 years ago when numbers were higher. Of course, this won't last, because in 2-4-6 years, you'll have less students leaving as less arrived! But for the duration of their administration they can say "Look! Less net immigration!" and in a few years when the false fall vanishes they can say "Look! The new guys have let immigration rise!" Nobody believes that cutting student immigration is beneficial in any other way but sadly the government have set immigration targets which they'll be unable to meet without doing this.

But do tell us more about this, you seem well informed.

Rusty - which Northern ex-mill town is your reference?

Burnley would be my guess.

Rusty - which Northern ex-mill town is your reference?

Don't know him, but I reckon it's Burnley.

Junkyard,i actually know the people who were racially abused and pelted with stones by Asians.I helped them move house when they had had enough of the area.
I'm sorry that the facts are unpalateable for you and that you readily dismiss as "pub talk" opinions and experiences from other contributors of this forum.

But do tell us more about this, you seem well informed.

That's not likely to happen, seeing as he was banned for being Fred earlier today.

It can't be Burnley, he states it has a perfectly integrated British Asian community...

@ Cougar- that was Jambalaya's quote, not Quartzfred's.

Bury

Its elementary my dear Watsons

@ Cougar- that was Jambalaya's quote, not Quartzfred's.

Ah yes. As you were.

Can't be Bury either...

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

Of course not, I just want it spelled out, it all sounds a bit 'isn't it obvious?!'

Junkyard,i actually know the people who were racially abused and pelted with stones by Asians.I helped them move house when they had had enough of the area.

So is that an immigration issue?

It is Burnley I believe, or somewhere near there.

molgrips - my school, which was almost exclusively white, was pretty racist. We had to have a special assembly when a black kid came to our school to warn us not be racist towards him. I'd be surprised if a school with the opposite ethnic mix didn't have some of the same issues in reverse. Plus the issues Junkyard mentioned.

I'd be surprised if a school with the opposite ethnic mix didn't have some of the same issues in reverse.

Hmm, seems unlikely to me.

Molly. whilst the forum needs folk who question you have taken this to extremes here IMHO

I'm sorry that the facts are unpalateable for you and that you readily dismiss as "pub talk" opinions and experiences from other contributors of this forum.

I explained why i thought what I though and IMHO there is little mileage to be gained by us repeating this unless you can offer some proof that they were racially abused by Asians to the point they were driven from their home for a loss or you can prove house prices drop because asians buy homes. I doubt this happens but if it does could you show how it is their fault rather than racist white folks fault for not wanting to live there. If you cannot prove any of this shall we leave it there then? without getting personal?

offer some proof that they were racially abused by Asians

It's them immigrant neo-nazis, innit.

Here's one shortly after arriving at Heathrow :

[img] [/img]

I'd be surprised if a school with the opposite ethnic mix didn't have some of the same issues in reverse.
Hmm, seems unlikely to me.

Why?

Molgrips, it can and does happen.

When I arrived in multi-cultural Brum aged ten, I was not Asian enough for some of the Indians and ****stanis, nor English enough for some of the whites. I couldn't bloody win. I also was attacked for somehow upsetting some of the Asian children - attacked by some of the white children. Even better some of the white children were at most second generation immigrants...

Also I was lambasted for being both a toff and a Cockney. You couldn't make it up!

There was no racism at my 99% white school- all the non-white pupils were either Razaks or Nazirs and they were all either massive or mental. I think this is a good model.

I experienced zero racism in my previous 99.9% white populated school in Surrey. I was simply accepted as me...

I experienced zero racism in my previous 99.9% white populated school in Surrey. I was simply accepted as me...

They probably had the special assembly too. 😛 Good to hear though.

I went back to my home town at Christmas several years after leaving and was briefly having a drink with some old school acquaintances when one of them actually started telling me how Hitler wasn't such a bad guy and he was just trying to do what was right for his country at the time, blah blah blah. 😯

I can't quite believe that wrecker knew nothing about Idi Amin and the expulsion of the Ugandan Asian population! That's very recent British history, I've even seen it mentioned on TV within the last couple of months or so.
Is our education system [i]that[/i] fubared, or is talking about such aspects of our history frowned on for getting too close to the 'immigration' question?
And I've realised my understanding of 'shibboleth' is wrong, I always thought it meant;

[b]shibboleth[/b]
a manner of speaking that is distinctive of a particular group of people,
motto, slogan, catchword, shibboleth
a favorite saying of a sect or political group

I did a phone interview with a chap from Bangalore for a computer programmer job. He was bright, enthusiastic, easy to talk to and knew his stuff. Chances are quite good we'll hire him and bring him over to the UK. Is this wrong? Will Rusty's friend be cross with me?

...made-up stories from the tabloids or chinese whispers heard down the pub.

Racist.

😉

On the house selling issue, sad to report, there are people who will be swayed by their preconceptions. When my parents sold their house to a brown-skinned family, in a leafy suburb of Cramond (itself a posh-ish suburb of Edinburgh), our next door neighbours came round and berated my mother for bringing down the tone of the neighbourhood!

My mum is half Chinese 😀

Racist.

🙂

I just Wikipedia'd it - never knew it's an expression that 'contains an implied racist stereotype'. You learn something (is racist) every day. 😛

For a dissertation I followed up work regarding different types of prejudice within different cultures and supported the findings of the parent research - although to lower statistical significance (c95%). Let no-one tell you that all groups cannot be prejudiced... I was able to: -
- identify that a proportionately larger population is more likely to be more sophisticated in it's articulation of prejudice towards other groups
- the more recent the large-scale immigration of individuals from a particular culture had occurred, the more likely that they are to be prejudiced in their attitudes towards other cultures
- in terms or articulation in prejudice of higher or lower sophistication, broadly individuals from Afro-Carribean cultures were least likely to display attitudes of prejudice, then individuals from white-European cultures and finally individuals from cultures originating on the Indian sub-continent

Obviously, there were significant caveats on my research but still...

It can't be Burnley, he states it has a perfectly integrated British Asian community...

Correct, I'm afraid. Burnley has a very polarised population of embittered white working class and resentful Asians. Asian gangs control parts of Burnley and on two occasions I've experienced them in action intimidating white people who happen to have strayed into their area.

Thirty years of travel to Africa and sub-continental Asia has shown me that there's no love lost between the two races. This has got me wondering how moderate Asian Muslims must be feeling about last week's murder in Woolwich where a huge muscular testosterone-fuelled African, a former devout Catholic who had "converted" to Islam, slaughtered somebody in the most public and casual way possible in the name of their religion. No wonder they rushed to disassociate themselves from him.

jamj1974 - I was also attacked at school fairly regularly, despite everyone including me being white.

Kids always fight in schools. If it's not race it's something else, isnt' it? So is it really an immigration or race issue?

Are there any studies into incidence of violence in schools compared to ethnic diversity, adjusted for socio-economic factors? If not, there should be.

There was no racism at my 99% white school

Why am I NOT surprised by ^that^ lil snippet...

And the OP becomes null and void by associating 'Northern ex-mill town' and 'perfectly integrated British Asian community'.

If you think this is true then you need to remove your head from up your arse.

Ignorance is indeed alive and well.

Kids always fight in schools. If it's not race it's something else, isnt' it? So is it really an immigration or race issue?

FFS molgrips - racism has nothing to do with race? Ok then. 😕

There was no racism at my 99% white school

Why am I NOT surprised by ^that^ lil snippet...

I don't understand what point you're trying to make.