Sandwell Council ( they have a poor football team WBA FC, which stands for "We're Bottom Again For Christmas" ). Ban and threaten arrest for any folk who fly the flag of St George on St George's Day.

Same reason same one-sided PC, Racist, dross.

certainly not good.

Ive been lucky to meet the more tolerant Muslims (some are themselves not strict in their practice, while others are, but open mind enough to tolerate others belief - and even a few that would be open to a discussion about Islam - but these are very very small niche group that I just happen to have a chance to associate with due to the nature of my work)

as a general though...much much more needs to be done in educating the mass that they can let others continue in their views and different faiths, and it will not be an offense to Allah.

I know of an incident where a Muslim person working in a shop that has buddha statue in the doorway, was told by fellow Muslim that this was inappropriate and she shouldnt continue to work at the place. she obviously took it to heart and was quite disturbed (prior to the comment being made, I dont think she even gave it much thought). so I reminded her that if she thinks shes walking under buddha statue each time she walks through the doorway, remember that when she goes upstairs to second floor to use one of the rooms for her daily Muslim prayers, shes stepping on top of the buddha statue. she continues to work at said shop today

I think it takes a bit of an open mind, but a lot of someone sharing views from different angle/perspective

Islam considers the prophets of Judaism and Christianity to be real prophets, and as such there is no prohibition in celebrating Jesus's birthday, ie: Christmas

I know many Muslim families in Iran that celebrate Christmas and you can buy Christmas trees at certain shops in Tehran, not to mention the rather large Armenian population in Iran celebrate Christmas but on a different day, I think it's the 4th or 5th of January.

Remember, even some Christians don't celebrate Christmas - it's still Christmas though.

Ah yes, the PC'ers strike again. And again, it rears it's ugly head in the British prison system:

A British prison has decided not to include a crucifix in the décor of its new chapel for fear of offending Muslim inmates.

The ‘multi-faith space’ at HMP Lewes is divided in two sections, according to the Daily Mail.

If it's in the Daily Mail it must be true

Now, the daily mail, that's a nasty piece of work! How could anyone ever read it? Should be re-named the Nazi Times.

Now, the daily mail, that's a nasty piece of work! How could anyone ever read it? Should be re-named the Nazi Times.

I actually saw the article on another news site, and followed a link to the original story. I have no idea how the Daily Mail compares to other media outlets, and it isn't on the list of 10-15 online news sources I normally browse each day.

If you ever get a copy of the daily mail and have a read, you find yourslf realising you're reading it with your mouth open, agog! It's unreal. Dail Mail readers come out with things like: "I wouldn't buy anything Japanese, not after what they did to us in the war!"

Well I've never bought a Porsche or a Ferrari for the same reason.

All right, all right, so I couldn't bleeding afford one...

Now, the daily mail, that's a nasty piece of work! How could anyone ever read it? Should be re-named the Nazi Times.

Lord Rothermere (Daily Mail proprietor) writing in the Daily Mail in 1933:

"I urge all British young men and women to study closely the progress of the Nazi regime in Germany. They must not be misled by the misrepresentations of its opponents. The most spiteful distracters of the Nazis are to be found in precisely the same sections of the British public and press as are most vehement in their praises of the Soviet regime in Russia.

They have started a clamorous campaign of denunciation against what they call "Nazi atrocities" which, as anyone who visits Germany quickly discovers for himself, consists merely of a few isolated acts of violence such as are inevitable among a nation half as big again as ours, but which have been generalized, multiplied and exaggerated to give the impression that Nazi rule is a bloodthirsty tyranny.

The German nation, moreover, was rapidly falling under the control of its alien elements. In the last days of the pre-Hitler regime there were twenty times as many Jewish Government officials in Germany as had existed before the war. Israelites of international attachments were insinuating themselves into key positions in the German administrative machine. Three German Ministers only had direct relations with the Press, but in each case the official responsible for conveying news and interpreting policy to the public was a Jew. "

A telegram from Rothermere to Hitler 1938:

"My dear Fuhrer everyone in England is profoundly moved by the bloodless solution to the Czechoslovakian problem. People not so much concerned with territorial readjustment as with dread of another war with its accompanying bloodbath. Frederick the Great was a great popular figure. I salute your excellency's star which rises higher and higher."

Not much changes, eh?

My word!?!

One of my favorite low key English movies is "The Remains of the Day", set in pre WW2 England and describes the lives of two people "in service" to an aristocratic Englishman who is a Nazi sympathiser.

They taught us in school around 1954 that the longest regular word in English was antidisestablishmentarianism.

on that subject....or similar...

read this in the Sydney morning herald yesterday:

Church and State could be split

THE Archbishop of Canterbury has surprisingly reignited the row over the separation of church and the British state by saying it is "not the end of the world" if the established church were to disappear.

Rowan Williams, the most senior figure in the Church of England, argues there is a "certain integrity" to a church that was free from state sanctions.

His endorsement of disestablishment comes in an interview published in this week's New Statesman.

Church and State could be split

Rowan Williams, the most senior figure in the Church of England,

How on earth anybody can take a guy seriously, with comedy eyebrows like his, is beyond me

Is this Rowen Atkinson, oops I mean Rowen Williams?

The one on the right I am talking about...not the prego one on the left.

Check out this link for Christmas in Iran

http://tehrandaily.wordpress.com/2008/12/2...ight-in-tehran/

My giddy aunt. Or maybe I shouldn't say this as it's disrespectful to my aunt!?!

Probably should have said "Oh my vertically unstable, female sibling of my closest maternal relative".

Started reading this thread a while back then got drawn into the surprisingly long running blitzkrieg in General on the same subject.

Has PC achieved anything?

Well the vehement PC'ers would say yes and point to a greater degree of equality between the races and sexes although the gay community has taken a knock back recently. But a lot of this was underway before the term political correct was ever coined.

And the vehement anti-PC'ers would claim it is eroding our western heritage, blunting our language to a point of blandness and turning us into a people afraid to communicate for fear of causing insult. Well a lot of the erosion of our heritage was happening long before PC came into being. Christmas, a favourite cause celebre for the anti's, lost it's religious meaning for all but a few stalwarts decades ago.

So what has it done? (I'll just take racism, could do the other 'isms but let's keep it short).

Putting aside the obvious it has removed certain words that some may feel racially offensive like blackboard, it's taken away such bedtime favourite songs like "Baa baa blacksheep" and you can't get Golliwog badges with ten stickers off jam jars.

Stupid as we may consider these examples, and I do, do we really consider them to be cornerstones of our society, last bastions of our heritage?

When I passed through my schooling Rasta & Lisa jokes were the mainstream of playground humour. I doubt if my two sons have ever heard any of them. Have they been deprived of a crucial part of their upbringing?

I don't suppose they learnt about the black death in history or that the industrial revolution was centered on the black country or read stories about brave British grenadiers standing firm against the hordes of bloodthirsty natives. But they don't seem to be adversely affected, or not to the extent some would suggest.

So it hasn't really affected our lives to any great extent has it?

But, against that we have the PC extremism we see making banner headlines (I've thrown a few into the fray over in animal farm). Back in the good old days of the real Labour party when women were women and the workers didn't this sort of stuff came out of what was termed the "Loony Left". These people flapped and fluttered around and everyone haad a good laugh, told them to p1ss orf and nothing was done. What kept them, and their loony ideas, in check was a balance in society. These days though only these types seem to want to get involved in local government and NGO's, the mainstream types just want to go home and watch TV, play computer games and redecorate their gazebo.

So the balance has gone and the loony left wing are flapping harder than ever but the bird continues to go in circles.

That's about all it comes down to, give it a year or so and we'll come full circle and they'll find a new fad to occupy themselves. The danger is, and I've experienced this sentiment, that this lunatic fringe are setting back the issue of equality and generating a whole new set of bigots unable to give and take, unable to comprehend the term compromise.

Oh, well time to leave the Bodleian Library and see if there's anything left of civilisation.

PS I didn't take the time to read the whole of this thread so I apologise if I repeated anything.

Time for a rant.....

The way young Harry Wales is being treated by the press and just about everybody who can get a quote in, for minor general banter, some four years ago is nothing short of a disgrace.

The MAN was under Army training for F4$%^k sake. The colleague in question was his FRIEND and he was a Paki !!!! Having served in the military I can assure all that the language used was so tame that the young man deserves credit. He served on the frontline for his country by choice, and is repaid by the same in this manner.

Harry is not a saint, he was just a young man surrounded by the same, in times of great stress ( PC Brigade please own up if YOU have actually been in similar circustances before replying. Having once received a nasty paper cut whilt signing a protest letter, or feeling quite chilly outside Greenham Common does not count ).

On the subject of well educated opinion, while inspecting my troops on Alpha Gate inside the wire of Greenham Common many years ago, a group of the Chelsea Set ( weekend demonstraters, turned out in tweed and hunters, Guardian readers all and awfully PC ), approached the wire and proceeded to launch at me in language which even I can not print here. The crux of their argument was that I was a fascist for not allowing them to storm the camp and be killed by the waiting, highly armed and twitchy American Air Police, guarding rather fine bombs holding up their team, ( the freeish world ) in the cold war.

When they brought my parents into the conversation, I replied well never mind them, I was proud of what I was doing as it allowed them to protest in relative peace without being shot or transferred to a gulag. I thanked them politely for the views and wished them a good weekend. One of them spat in my face, and one from the rear removed a certain female hygene product from her person and threw it at me with howls of anger.

I am sure these people will be in the front line condeming a fine young man and no doubt in the end depriving him of his chosen career, for a few comments taken out of all context ( the " Paki" is well documented as being a firm friend !!!! and the other guy did look like a rag head ). Makes me sick.

Personally I like curry and chips.

The way young Harry Wales is being treated by the press and just about everybody who can get a quote in, for minor general banter, some four years ago is nothing short of a disgrace.

I am sure these people will be in the front line condeming a fine young man and no doubt in the end depriving him of his chosen career, for a few comments taken out of all context ( the " Paki" is well documented as being a firm friend !!!! and the other guy did look like a rag head ). Makes me sick.

I was seriously tempted to search for a thread we did quite awhile ago, where we discussed the word "Paki" and whether it was a racist term or not.

I did some research and posted a lengthy reply (surprise surprise), which concluded that it is not a racist term, though it has been used in a derogatory manner for years (generations even).

"Pakistan" is actually two words, "Paki" and "stan". "stan" means "land of", so Pakistan means, literally, "Land of the Pakis".

(Note: "Paki" isn't the name of a historical people, but actually an anagram for a collection of peoples from that region, Punjabi, Afghani and Kashmiri.)

So by rights, "Paki" is actually the proper terminology, just as Afghani is for someone from Afghanistan. An Uzbek from Uzbekistan is not an "Uzbekistani", but an "Uzbeki".

PC speak though, now means that you can't refer to people by the terminology they themselves created, for fear of offending them ?

I think, in general, that it is the objectifying of people by referring to them by group trait rather than as individuals that is viewed as negative, though it gets oversimplified in some minds to racism- which isn't what I personally would've classified Prince Harry's remark as. Actually, viewed in that light, the army tries to make people as uniform as possible, which is an inherently inhuman process and will naturally not fit in with liberal ideals.

The Army during basic training does attempt to reach a standard of uniformed acceptance of orders as a matter of necessity. Without it, the Army when push comes to shove, will not function. As to it being inhuman ?

Correct me if I have misread history, but mankind from the earliest recorded times has banded into " tribes " in order to survive. This collectivization, and the need for order within a given soceity, seems very "human" to me.

Apart from being in the army Harry is also a member of the Royal family, a position that keeps him supplied with a never ending flow of privilege, cash, cars, luxury living and bonkable young women.

All that is expected of him in return is to observe a certain degree of political correctness which, at the risk of being shouted down by the anti-PC mob, I will once again describe as basic good manners in public.

The Army during basic training does attempt to reach a standard of uniformed acceptance of orders as a matter of necessity. Without it, the Army when push comes to shove, will not function. As to it being inhuman ?

Correct me if I have misread history, but mankind from the earliest recorded times has banded into " tribes " in order to survive. This collectivization, and the need for order within a given soceity, seems very "human" to me.

Collectivisation and organisation are not inherently uniform. Study egalitarian tribal organisations everywhere- the North American Indian tribes, Australian aboriginal culture, etc. and individuals are not forced to be uniform to the extent that the military requires, by a long, long shot. To that extent, the army dehumanizes- and in fact, in order to fulfill its function of getting people to do the very extreme action of killing other people, it dehumanizes the enemy as well.

I'm not saying that these things are altogether bad- there is a need for armies in our present day society- but that they are not our ideal human existence.

The Army during basic training does attempt to reach a standard of uniformed acceptance of orders as a matter of necessity. Without it, the Army when push comes to shove, will not function. As to it being inhuman ?

Correct me if I have misread history, but mankind from the earliest recorded times has banded into " tribes " in order to survive. This collectivization, and the need for order within a given soceity, seems very "human" to me.

Collectivisation and organisation are not inherently uniform. Study egalitarian tribal organisations everywhere- the North American Indian tribes, Australian aboriginal culture, etc. and individuals are not forced to be uniform to the extent that the military requires, by a long, long shot. To that extent, the army dehumanizes- and in fact, in order to fulfill its function of getting people to do the very extreme action of killing other people, it dehumanizes the enemy as well.

I'm not saying that these things are altogether bad- there is a need for armies in our present day society- but that they are not our ideal human existence.

Point taken.

I work in Saudi and we all call the Arabs "Ragheads". They have an head and they put a rag on it. Don't see the issue really. They probably have many names that they call us and some would probably amount to the same as "infidel". I'm not arsed and just keep on taking the tax free pound

Many TCN's are called "flip flop's" and "Jingley's" etc.

P.S. Is it all right to call a Pakistani, just "Stani" ?

OK, gotta ask. Out of all of you who think terms like Paki, raghead, wop, dago, etc etc etc are perfectly acceptable terms, how many of you dislike being called farang?

Just curious

No problem, I don't find farang offensive.

Kee nok is a worry though.

OK, gotta ask. Out of all of you who think terms like Paki, raghead, wop, dago, etc etc etc are perfectly acceptable terms, how many of you dislike being called farang?

Just curious

There are some words which have offensive connotations, and others which don't, even if they have perfectly innocent sounding origins. It's just the way the words have come to be used over time. E.g. Paki is just short for Pakistan - yet it has come to be an offensive word and so those who are aware of that should avoid using it around people who might take offense. By comparison, "Aussie" is short for "Australian", but is perfectly harmless.

"Farang" is just a harmless nickname that Thais use to mean westerner, so no-one should really dislike being called it.