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.
your hearing is not what it used to be either 😉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
So noone gets a £0 pound council tax rate, agreed?
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
That number is lower than my pinko-lefty estimation. I had it at probably a dozen for the whole town and that was not counting other denominations.
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...
Haven't wasted my time listening to those EDL louts on the video but if he did say that then he is amazingly right.
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.
Yes you have kept yourself to inflammatory and inaccurate ones like this post..I commend your self restraint
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.
yes that is almost definitely the cause of it ...if we just debated it a bit more it would cease. Out of interest does this work with all crimes, all sex crimes or just so called Asian sex crimes ?
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 ?
Well those white folk sure do sound racist to me if they wnt live next door to some Asian.
I would assume you got less white buyers but more Asian buyers as they wanted to live there so swings and roundabouts.
Whilst we are doing unevidenced anecdotes locally the "Asian quarter" is no more expensive than the area opposite despite. It does have less crime, fewer drug dealers and nicer gardens though and i know where I would rather live tbh.
One couple took a massive loss to leave an Asian dominated area due to racist abuse and even having stones thrown at them.
Unlikely IME but it fuels the meme. My mate was one of a few white folk left in an area that became Asian and he loved it. He is still friends with both his neighbours who came to his civil partnership last year. His house went up massively in value as Asians wanted to move to the area so he made a mint from this. He neither experienced racism or homophobia - except from some white working class "chavs" who still lived there.
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.
Whatever 😉
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?
No but that doe snot mean they are not racists 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.
