Sunday, January 28, 2007

Interesting Discussion

At Brum Uni Conservative Forum.

I posted the following comment, but I can't see the damn thing. They don't say the blog's moderated and I don't want to lose all that typing, so it can live here for now.


"Britain is undoubtedly a more civilised and harmonious country since the passing of the race and sex equality laws 30 years ago." said Gareth.

"Gareth, as someone who was there 30 years ago, I disagree. " said Tom.

"I’m sorry Tom, but I profoundly disagree with you that anti-discrimination laws have made the position of ethnic minorities worse" said Gareth.

But that wasn't what Tom said, Gareth. He disagreed with you that we are more civilised and harmonious than 30 years ago. I think he's right.

I must admit I can't see much in the way of conservatism in the Conservative Forum, but I can see where David Cameron gets his support from.

Two teensy pointettes. One is that the culture and law of the UK was based on Christianity until very recent times. (Just) within living memory, for example, a divorce or a conviction for a homosexual offence could wreck a public career.

We've jettisoned all that since 1960-odd. Historically this is highly unusual - most societies since history began have been religiously based.

The question is - is this secular, materialist society the wave of the future, of is it a historical oddity due to be sharply and painfully corrected ?

The second point is related. A materialist society will look at the poorest and assume them to be the least successful. But if the poorest do not share this assumption, they may be content to be labelled thus when grants and funding are being handed out, while in no way internalising the view of the materialists. A case in point being the Muslim community, who according to Keith Ajegbo's 'Britishness' pdf will in 10 years time comprise 15% of the workforce. In places like Bradford the Muslim population will have tripled between 1980 and 2010 - and half of it will be under 18. We saw in the recent Lozells disturbances that power on the streets has passed from the Afro-Caribbean community (who, for example, controlled the streets in the Handsworth riots of 20 years back) to the Muslim one. From a non-materialist perspective (or even the materialist perspective of Josef Stalin), this looks like an extremely successful community - and one whose success shows no sign of diminishing.

In the pained Government inquiries which followed July 7, much coverage was devoted to the lack of participation in the workforce of women of Bengali and Pakistani heritage, which was seen as adding to cultural seperation. This seemed to me to miss the point entirely. Those women were working alright - raising children - without creches or nurseries - the way we used to do.

The trees do not grow up to the sky. The past is not necessarily a guide to the future - but it's the best guide we've got. On current UK trends, the secular state is a short-lived phenomenon of transition.

Secularists wishing to combat these trends may find that when push comes to shove, those prepared to die for their faith prove stronger than those for whom death is the end of everything.

One last point, again related. Homosexual activists worried about Christian 'homophobia' should take a look at what happened to the 'sex workers' of Bradford and Balsall Heath more than ten years ago.

Links : Demography :
http://ukcommentators.blogspot.com/2006/12/naught-for-your-comfort.html
http://ukcommentators.blogspot.com/2006/05/from-pole-to-pole.html
http://ukcommentators.blogspot.com/2005/07/absolutely-fascinating.html
http://ukcommentators.blogspot.com/2005/05/swamp-thing.html


Sex Workers :
http://ukcommentators.blogspot.com/2006/01/id-stick-to-attacking-christians-if-i.html

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

One attitude that seems to be held by a lot of people, particularly those under 30, is "Who cares?": "Who cares if Islam becomes dominant in fifty years time?", "Who cares if society is falling apart?", etc.

They don't even seek to dispute that our society is going in the wrong direction, they just don't care. Those two words sum up a lot of what's wrong with society today: the nihilism, the live for the moment attitude, the unutterable selfishness, the unwillingness to even give thought to unpleasant things. The war waged by the liberal left against Christianity for the past fifty years has been the primary, although not the only, cause of this.

Anonymous said...

Very good post,Fulham!

Anonymous said...

In places like Bradford the Muslim population will have tripled between 1980 and 2010 - and half of it will be under 18

It is probably their only hope because so many speak such pitiful English it is difficult in shops to understand what is being said.

Anyway Bradford has decided to become like Gaza with enormous birth rate, no jobs, boarded-up shops, and waiting for rich Europeans to send more welfare and Gap-Year peace activists

Anonymous said...

One answer to the "who cares" brigade is to say OK, you dont care so youll have no objection to shutting down immigration/firing up the deportation process, voting BNP whatever. After all if they "dont care" none of that matters to them.

Then you will find out whether they do "care" and if in fact they do, then its up to them to defend the current set up, which logically is almost impossible to do, without resort to emotional claptrap.

Laban said...

Bradford's a wonderful city. Just not quite as wonderful as it was. A couple of friends of mine have been threatened there by 'the youth'.

Anonymous said...

#1, I don't agree that most people don't care. Its just the way this country is run if a have-a-go-hero gets involved they are the ones the police are more interested in, we are not allowed to care in a way that would make a difference.
And because a lot of violent criminals no longer go to jail for a significant amount of time you'd have to be brave to take them on, either in the courts or on the street.


#2, To quote the British Indian Laban recently corresponded with: "as you will know, when you have children, your whole perspective changes, and you start to think about what kind of world they will grow up in."

Thats why leftists love promoting abortion so much, they want a population than doesn't care about their non-existant childrens future.
A childless population is automatically more liberal/socialist/statist and radical. The feelings of family that would have been used on children get transfered to the state, and with it to other peoples children.

Anonymous said...

Bradford's a wonderful city.

I understand a diet of certain mushrooms can induce such a perception

Anonymous said...

I don't agree that people don't care. There are two problems to grapple with: immigration itself and immigrants already here.

Most people are agreed that immigration should be reduced to an absolute minimum. Problem is that Labour won't do that simply because they need the seats of ethnic minorities to have any power in Parliament. Thus they keep the door open. The Tories can only shut the door (if they feel so inclined). So everytime we get a Labour government - we will get a significant increase in immigration. That is why "welcoming" some of the immigrants to this kind of discussion becomes important. That is why "welcoming" people like "Foxy Brown" becomes important. If Labour starts to realise that permitting excessive immigration will actually cause them to lose votes of the ethnic minoritities - then they may decide in future it is better to control it.

With some of the ethnic minorities we have the problem of what to do with them now they are here. To throw some out because they are the wrong colour would be irrational and make Britain some kind of international pariah. But we do have a problem with certain cultures that have taken to blowing us up on tube trains. Some other cultures are making little or no progress in integration. My belief is that Islam preaches concepts that is in direct conflict with British law and concepts of morality and therefore the religion should be made illegal. No doubt this will provoke a violent reaction - but better now than in a generations time. Those cultures that refuse to integrate (and the primary indication of this should be levels of inter-marriage) should be subject to legislation to "encourage" their integration.

Anonymous said...

So, does it all comes back to demography? I just wonder if we'd be worrying so much about the 'decline of Christianity' and so forth is there wasn't a threat of Islamification from the British Muslim population within.

Anonymous said...

Short answer: nature abhors a vacumn.

Long answer: the advance of Islam is a symptom not the disease. Here's an ideology that teaches that humans are nothing more than slaves of a brutal moon god. All life is misery, but if you present enough blood sacrifices to the moon god, in which case you to go to the celestial gangbang.

On the other hand, the Liberal world view is based upon the idea that we are at a unique moment in human history when now, for the first time ever, a civilisation can get by without the family, a shared narrative, a code of honour, objective truth, a sense of consequences or, well, any of the other 871 things the Left sneers at whenever traditional values are mentioned. Apparently, every civilisation that has existed in the past 5000 years has been a ghastly mistake.

Well, now we've got a chance to test that hypothesis. European sophisticates vs deranged savages.

Oops.

The rise of Islam is just a litmus test, proof positive of the essential hollowness of the Liberal ideal of multicultural, omnisexual intellectuals discussing trends in post-modern architecture over the lattes. If you can't even inspire people more than a schizo nonce from the 7th century, man, you really suck.

Anonymous said...

Rise of Islam? Well lets not get toooo overheated. 1.6million Muslims compared to 41Million Christians in the UK and 8million aetheists. They've got a long way to go yet - but here are quite enough of them to cause us a big headache.

Anonymous said...

ryan, the average age of British people is much older than Muslims, so those figures do not tell the story at all.
If you want to know the future of this country you need to know the demographics of those at primary school age, and the relative rates of immigration & emigration.

The rate of change of this country is phenomenal.

Anonymous said...

The increasing presence of Islam in Britain certainly exacerbates the problem. Indeed, the growth of Islam is the biggest problem this country, and the whole of western Europe, faces today.

However, it is also true that at the present moment in time Muslims only make up 3% of the total population. Yet they somehow seem able to push the other 97% around as much as they like, and to raise themselves to the status of a privileged group in society. If the majority population had any backbone, they would not stand for this. However, having largely abandoned such antiquated notions as right and wrong, etc, and being trapped in a morass of live for the moment nihilism, they steadfastly refuse to do anything.

So the problems associated with rapid demographic change are certainly fed by the problems associated with the war on Christianity, and other traditional values. In its turn, demographic change often undermines traditional values, and we become trapped in a vicious cycle, from which most of us lack the inclination to remove ourselves.

Laban said...

The government-backed document on Britishness estimates that by 2017, 15% of the workforce will be Muslim. Take a drive, say from the Hawthorns to Solihull and that seems a reasonable figure.

Anonymous said...

fulham, the figures are not 97% vs 3%, that may be the figure for the whole of the UK but certainly not for England of which is only 87% 'white'. Most of the 8-9million 65+ are 'whites' who literally don't have much backbone left!

Its not about numbers, its a question of who those numbers are. Old people rarely have the will to fight and don't have the ability anyway.
Throughout most of history it is young men who define a society, they have the strength, desire and agression to set the agenda.

Anonymous said...

Between the 1991 census and the 2001 census the number of Muslims increased by 60%. At that rate of growth the number of Muslims would reach parity with non-Muslims in 70 years time.

However, even these figures could be misleading. We have over the last 10 years imported 1.2million Catholics from Poland and a further 350,000 from France. The government assures us that most of these will be returning to their homelands but personally I doubt it.

We also have to be careful to appreciate that not all people listing themselves as Muslim are likely to be practicing - many will live secular lives just as 98% of Anglicans and 75% of Catholics lead secular lives. Without knowing how these figures stack up it is difficult to tell what percentage of young Muslims men have been seduced by the lapdancers at the Spearmint Rhino into turning their back on religion, for instance.

Without greater detail it is currently impossible to be sure if there really is some kind of demographic threat to Britain from Islam - perhaps there is. I don't, however, need much detail to see that there is a threat from the 10% of Muslims that think its fine to blow up people on public transport.

Anonymous said...

Ryan - Im sure you will find plenty of muslim lads happy to ogle the birds down at Spearmint Rhino and whats more to knock up a white girl. When the time comes though they marry a muslim girl and have muslim children.

If theyve sown their wild oats amongst the white population, thats great for them, the white population now contains a few more of their genes and few less of ours. Their gene pool otoh remains intact. If they do marry the white girl she will at least nominally become a muslim and her children will likely be raised muslim.

Keep donig that for enough generations and our population will look more and more theirs from a genetic population. Theirs will still be theirs.

You will have to look very very hard to find any muslim girls marrying out, what with threats of being killed and all.

The point is muslim girls only marry muslims, whatever muslim boys do on the side.

Anonymous said...

To throw some out because they are the wrong colour would be irrational and make Britain some kind of international pariah.....

My belief is that Islam preaches concepts that is in direct conflict with British law and concepts of morality and therefore the religion should be made illegal.

And the latter obviously won't make us a pariah.

Anonymous said...

We also have to be careful to appreciate that not all people listing themselves as Muslim are likely to be practicing - many will live secular lives just as 98% of Anglicans and 75% of Catholics lead secular lives. Without knowing how these figures stack up it is difficult to tell what percentage of young Muslims men have been seduced by the lapdancers at the Spearmint Rhino into turning their back on religion, for instance.

Two points Ryan

1. The perpertrators of 9/11 visited Spearmint Rhino equivalents in the weeks before the attack so I wouldn't guess anything from that behaviour.

2. In a conflict, the two opponents tend to squeeze out the middle. People are obliged to choose sides whether or not they intended to at the beginning. There is a wonderful quote that captures this concernng the Spanish civil war but I was unable to locate it. Basically, very few people saw themselves as fascists or communists in 1935 but by 1939, you had little choice, the moderates had been squeezed out.

It's well to remember that Bosnia and particularly Sarajevo was frequently declared a multi-cultural model in the early 1990s. I could say the same about pre Nazi German attitudes to Jews. The point is that a little humility is in oorder for by those people who assume that it will all turn out fine.

Anonymous said...

You could of course be correct that ALL muslim men stick wwith Islam - in which case its a pretty powerful culture and maybe we are batting for the wrong side? ;-)

But seriously, what little anecdotal evidence I have suggests that many people born into Islam reject it. Apart from my own personal knowledge I know of no statistics that would otherwise prove this one way or the other. Anybody that can help out?

I would point out that unless the native peoples all emigrate to Australia (in which case we probably won't be worrying about dear old Blighty) the population of the UK would have to be at least 120million for the Muslims to achieve parity (and this is assuming that we have insignificant Christian immigration, which is not the case right now) - and this is a rather more immediately alarming thought than Islamic hegemony. Long before we need to concern ourselves with the prospect of Sharia law we would need to deal with the problems of over-population.

Anonymous said...

With regard to the issue of conflict, once again it is difficult to be sure how things would pan out. Sectarian strife was never so simple in Ulster. "Moderates" were able to exist - they simply didn't take part in the violence (but did little to stop it). The two sides did not split along purely religious lines. As I have said elsewhere I expect that continued Islamic militancy will bring us to a NI style situation. But outright war might also be a possibility, since this time the conflict would be on the mainland, and even the liberal left aren't too keen on people blowing up their tube trains. Either way I think conflict is likely to happen sooner rather than later as the Muslims haven't the wit to wait until they are better organised and more numerous.

By the way, I think we are unlikely to become an international pariah because we deal with Islam in a robust manner. The same issues occur everywhere in the developed and developing world.

In common with most blogs, there is too much navel gazing over the problem itself here, rather than what might be the solutions to it.

Anonymous said...

quote: "UK would have to be at least 120million for the Muslims to achieve parity."

No.

The birth-rate in Scotland is 1.5, England 1.8.
Even though we have grown as a population that is because of rising life expectancy, the numbers of young 'native' Brits is actually declining.

Its the school age population you need to look at to see the future of Britain.
Already thats at 30% minority if I remember correctly, compared to 12% of the general population.
There were reports a few month go about a push to 'diversify' the school governors because of the rapidly changing demographic..

The problem is 'natives' (and the West in general) are experiencing a kind of reverse

Population Momentum

where by we have an abnormally small proportion of young people.
Muslims are the other way they have a much higher than average proportion of young people.
The effect will be a rapidly changing demographic those root cause started with the low white birth-rate from 20-30+ years ago.

Anonymous said...

With respect Ryan, dealing with Islamists in a robust manner is hardly the same as banning the religion.

I'm interested in your Ireland parallel. It has certainly been true that moderates have dominated in the past, although the fact that the UUP has been eclipsed by the DUP and SDLP by Sein Fein suggests that something is happening now to drive out the middle. I'd be interested to know why you think that is and how that supports your argument.