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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • I’d like to recommend The Trojan Horse Affair. Its a limited series and a few years old now, but a a really interesting listen

    Its about the scandal in the UK in 2013, where an anonymous letter ‘exposed’ an Islamist conspiracy in Birmingham schools to radicalise children.

    The investigation in the podcast is helmed by two people; a rookie journalism grad who is muslim, and an experienced white journalist. The contrast in perspectives and emotion between them adds to it

    And yeah it’ll probably make you angry, and for those not in the UK it might key you in a bit on the tensions that do and don’t exist with British Muslims, how they’re viewed and treated by lots of parties here (including the Government)





  • It’s kind of complicated in the UK - parts of both the left and right have issues. Some reasonable, some less so, etc

    Around the same time of the original proposal for National ID, the government lost discs containing the data (including NI numbers and even bank account details) of 25m people, 7.25m familes. They were literally lost in the post. Understandably this made a lot of people sceptical about ‘the government’s ability to protect it’s data’

    It was already an unpopular idea. A lot of this was kind of libertarian-y people, combined and heightened by a post-WWII fear of having to carry ‘papers’ and present them for identification. How reasonable this fear is/was is up for debate, but for better or worse it was a big part of the conversation.

    Then in the years since there’s been more concerns raised: things like the Windrush Scandal. In case you’re unaware, basically a lot of immigrants from the Caribbean who had been here for decades, sometimes nearly their whole lives, and who thought they were Citizens, were apparently not. There were pensioners who lived here since they were kids and who followed all the correct procedures getting deported to places they had never meaningfully lived in.

    Some people say that a National ID would have prevented this - but others say that since the UK is apparently so inept at dealing with this data, it’s just more evidence that we could end up in a system whereby if you can’t get a card for whatever reason, you could face discrimination or even prosecution.

    So yeah I guess it basically comes down to a distrust of the government combined with a British Libertarian mythos

    For what its worth, personally I don’t think a National ID inherently poses any problems that don’t already exist between documentation and our data being collected online etc. But I’ll admit that on a gut level I don’t like the idea, even if that’s a bit irrational

    https://www.ft.com/content/2ec95b9a-4709-11e8-8c77-ff51caedcde6

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/nov/21/immigrationpolicy.economy3


  • So you’ve called me an ‘armchair genius’ twice in that comment - I’m sorry that I didn’t fight in WWI, but I am allowed to discuss the definition of Nationalism. You have no idea about my life or my background (or my chair), so leave that out.

    Sure, Post-Colonial Nationalism as a movement played an integral role in establishing independence from European powers. That doesn’t change the fact that Nationalism is a European paradigm that contributed to the exploitation of these places in the first place.

    The fact that Nationalism opposes foreign influence over ones own country - and therefore is an effective ideology of opposition in regions affected by European exploitation - says nothing about Nationalism’s inherent militarism and codification of heirarichal power.

    So yes look at Nationalism as a factor in establishing independence, but then look at where Nationalism leads after that.

    Lets take Nigeria in the 1960s. Nigerian nationalism helped oust the British, cool, that’s great. Then the Nationalist government inflamed ethnic tensions until Ahmadu Bello was assassinated in a miltary coup, and the following ethnic violence led to Civil War.

    While you wait there for me to talk to “every nation state in the (so called) “3rd World””, maybe do some reading that isn’t an internet definition written by people Just like me (whatever that means…)

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/45341491

    And if you come back to me, do it with argument and not random personal attacks next time, thanks







  • Well, they were British chefs with South Asian heritage who of course were indirectly here because of horrific Imperialism

    But it is British, its very British. Despite what Farage and co want you to believe, we’re a multi-cultural nation and have been for centuries.

    British-Indian cuisine is at this point distinct and diverse enough from traditional Indian cuisine that it is its own thing. And its super widespread - even the racists discuss how shitty they are over a curry