English Racial Purity

 General  No Responses »
Dec 132006
 

You often find the far right making ridiculous claims about the virtues of the ‘anglo-saxon’ race and assuming that the modern English people share those virtues. They use this as a justification for being hostile to modern immigrants as though the English race is something special that needs protecting. It is curious that these people are so ignorant of the history of the English people given they are so proud of it.

Nothing wrong with being proud of being English and of being proud of English history … I’m both. But please lets put to rest this idea that we English have any kind of racial purity.

The name for these collected islands is “Britain” which originates from the original “Brython” being the Celtic name for these islands. For many centuries, the Celts had these misty isles to themselves, but then the Romans arrived and stayed for a while. Of course it was not only Romans who came but many people from all over Western Europe who had some reason or another to visit our islands. Then they left, except of course they did not really … at the very least they left many reminders of their visit, including not only Roman civilisation (which many of the Celts readily adopted and modified) but intermarriage is never as rare as people think.

We mistakenly believe that all the Celts up sticks and moved to Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and Brittany once the Angles and Saxons started arriving, however that is very unlikely. Sure many Celts moved to those places, but most probably stayed right where they were and stayed peasants under different landlords.

The concept that the ‘anglo-saxons’ were a single people is similarly mistaken … they were Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (at least … we do not know for sure that there were not others as the Romano-Celts had tried hiring mercenaries from wherever they could find them and many of those stayed). Although the three named tribes were probably pretty close, they were still distinct people.

Then of course we had the Vikings, raiding, raping, and eventually settling. And then the Normans (of course being Vikings who had settled in Normandy) turned up and threw the Anglo-Saxon royalty out on their ear.

Then far more recently we had a world empire (by far the largest the world has ever seen) where we had people from all over the world visiting, staying, and intermingling.

These are just the big waves of immigration. Many smaller waves of immigration have happened throughout our history. Almost everybody in England will probably have a mixture of Celtic, Anglo, Saxon, and Viking blood with a small pinch from almost anywhere.

Channel 4 recently had a TV programme about DNA testing of a random sample of English people to test what their ancestry was … and the results indicated that most had very mixed backgrounds. Not really much of a surprise given our history.

The idea that the English have any kind of racial purity is ridiculous and that is a good thing. We should celebrate that we are a mongrel race, because that is what we are and if we have any kind of greatness it is because it is what we are. It is our mixture of backgrounds, and influences from all over the world that has given us greatness.

So if anything modern immigration is a good thing because it gives the English people more of what made us great.

Prostitution And The Ipswich Serial Killer

 General  No Responses »
Dec 132006
 

There is currently what appears to be a serial killer on the loose (hopefully that is out of date before I finish writing this) in the Ipswich area targeting prostitutes. Why prostitutes ? Who knows what goes through the mind of a deranged killer, but one possibility is that prostitutes are relatively easy targets.

Frankly the current laws on prostitution in the UK are creating this situation. Whilst prostitution is not in itself illegal (something that many do not realise), the UK does seem to go out of the way to make prostitution as dangerous as possible. Because brothels are illegal, prostitutes are driven onto the streets (except of course for illegal brothels where women or men are kept as sex slaves); because soliciting for trade is illegal prostitutes have to keep their activities relatively discreet making some measure of safety by formalising things more difficult.

The moral minority who want to get rid of prostitution should realise that the attempt to get rid of prostitution by legal sanction is a complete failure. Whilst there are still women desperate enough to do almost anything to get money … frequently to feed a drug habit, prostitution will survive no matter how dangerous it becomes. And using the law to make a serial killer’s job easier is less moral than prostitution itself.

Ideally brothels should be legalised and sited in locations of existing late night activity … where nightclubs are located. Prostitutes should be encouraged to form worker’s co-operatives to run these brothels and the brothels should be inspected regularly. Not only would this make it far more difficult for a serial killer to prey on prostitutes, but would allow additional services for prostitutes … drug rehabilitation publicity and help for example. Legal brothels would also make it far easier to crack down on the kind of places that keep sex slaves … itself something that is well worth making a few sacrifices to stop.

I would far rather live next door to a brothel than make women work the streets and allow sex slavery to continue, and no I don’t visit prostitutes.

At the very least it is time for a brothel in Ipswich whilst this serial killer is still free … asking prostitutes to stop working for a while is not practical unless we are going to take care of their addiction to drugs at the same time!

Slavery

 History, Politics  No Responses »
Nov 272006
 

The UK prime minister has just released a ‘statement of regret’ for Britain’s participation in the slave trade which is fair enough … after all slavery was and continues to be a crime against humanity. Some are calling for him to go further and issue a full apology and hand out reparations, which is where things get a little tricky.

The history of slavery is a little more complicated than just excessively greedy British merchants sailing to Africa, seizing millions of Africans and dragging them across the Atlantic to live and die in atrocious conditions. For a start, many of those merchants bought their slaves from native slave traders who had been in business for many years already.

In Africa it was common for African tribes or nations to enslave prisoners of war (a common practice in many other parts of the world) and sell those slaves on to slave traders who would them take them East or later West for resale. As many if not more slaves were sold East to Arab slave traders as were sold West to European slave traders.

In addition, the pirates of North Africa had their own slave trade by seizing Europeans from sea or land and selling them into slavery in their own markets. Whilst not of the same scale as the outgoing trade from Africa, it still counts as a crime against humanity for each of the estimated 1.5 million victims. Including a number of US citizens … the Barbary Pirate attacks on US ships was the chief reason why the US Navy was started.

In fact slavery or similar states (serfdom, enforced contractual slavery, etc) has been so widespread that there are very few parts of the world that did not have slavery at some point in the past, and probably very few of us who do not have slaves as ancestors.

So when we talk of reparations for the crime of slavery, who should pay ? And who should be paid ? It is not an easy question to answer. Of course Britain is included amongst the group of debtors, but do we get credit for the amount of efforts Britain made to abolish the slave trade ? And what about the other slave traders … other Europeans, Arabs, and Africans ?

Photography: Return To Arundel

 Photography  No Responses »
Oct 062006
 

On Wednesday (kind of late to post this, but as nobody reads it anyway, who cares?) afternoon I returned to Arundel and more specifically Swanmore Lake to make some images there. Just walked around the lake with a short detour along the long trail north.

It seems my memory of the place had been distorted by time, and the low level of water in the lake was a bit of a shame but I may have come up with some good images (they haven’t been processed as yet). Unfortunately I missed the dramatic sky that was on show on the train back … an oil slick spreading across the sky, white clouds highlighted against huge black clouds and small black clouds highlighted against whispy white skies.

And I managed to damage my foot again … am I jinxed ?

Jack Straw and The Niqab

 Politics, Religion  1 Response »
Oct 062006
 

Jack Straw (the UK politician) has recently written an article on Muslim women wearing the Niqab (the full face veil) which has drawn a certain amount of attention. I don’t think he meant any more than to start a discussion and point out certain effects that the Niqab has on conventional British society. I am certainly not going to say that Muslim woman cannot wear anything they want … that’s a personal decision for them to make. I have no more right to decide that for them, than they do to decide I should wear something other than jeans.

However there are a few things that come to mind on this subject …

Wearing The Niqab In Public

Before going on to discuss the real issue here, I will mention something else … the Niqab is widely perceived as being a symbol of the Islamic tendency to repress women’s rights. Now I know that isn’t the case, but it is perhaps something that needs to be emphasised more — that it is a freely made choice made by the women who wear it. Perhaps Muslim men could consider wearing it ? After all if modesty is a worthy trait in Muslim women, surely it is also worthwhile for Muslim men ?

Now for the real issue here, and I’d like to emphasise that it is a minor thing.

Historically in UK society, nobody conceals their face (except in extreme weather) unless they are intentionally hiding their identity with some nefarious purpose in mind. The groups of people who conceal their face include medieval outlaws, highwaymen, thieves, bank robbers, the KKK, and Muslim women!! Now of course it is ridiculous to say that Muslim women conceal their faces because they’ve got some evil inclination, but at an unconscious level it does come across as just a little sinister.

Of course if a Muslim woman is deeply convinced that the Niqab is essential, she should carry on wearing it. But if a Muslim woman is not quite so sure and undecided, it may be worth considering this when making her decision.

Wearing The Niqab For A Face-To-Face Meeting

When we communicate, part of the communication is the spoken language and part is body language … mostly found in the face. If you doubt this, just dip into any book on basic psychology and check … it will be there. Anyone who has communicated online in the same manner as they would do when speaking to someone will have encountered situations where their communication has been mis-interpreted because of the lack of body language.

In a society where people are not used to people choosing to cover their face, conversing with someone who does is off-putting. Covering the face comes across to the rest of us as “I don’t want to communicate with you” and could be considered to be impolite … as impolite in fact as asking someone to to remove the Niqab.

Muslim women who wear the Niqab in public should at least consider removing it to talk to someone who may not be a Muslim. Wearing the Niqab is about maintaining a certain level of modesty in the presence of strange men; removing it to talk to a Muslim man could be considered to be immodest, but nobody who is not a Muslim would consider it so … look around you at what other women in our society wear!

After all there are many Muslim women who don’t consider wearing the Niqab to be necessary, and suggesting to them that by not doing so makes them less a Muslim, and perhaps immodest to boot could be a little dangerous! For a multi-cultural society to function smoothly, we need to be considerate of each other’s cultural backgrounds and patterns of behaviour, and that goes both ways.

This is not saying Muslim women should remove the Niqab when talking face to face with someone, just that they should consider it and perhaps explain why they wear it (after all not everybody knows).

Hysterical Reactions

Judging by the way that some leaders of Muslim society react, anyone would think that Jack Straw had suggested that women wearing the Niqab should be stoned in the streets, or fined! Jumping up and down, screaming “Islamophobia” at someone suggesting that one aspect of Islam may not be helpful in the UK is hardly a moderate reaction. In fact it is a very unBritish reaction and grates on the nerves.

Something more like “I don’t think Jack Straw understands how deeply we feel about the Niqab” or “That’s interesting, we should think about that” come across much better to the British people.

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