I think you exaggerate the comparison, Tim. I do have criticisms of UK, but value its broadly liberal ethos. I don’t like its class system and the way, through financial chicanery and feeble regulation of its distribution, wealth has been able to buy privilege, power, and class has morphed into
a system of social stratification that has some features of feudalism.
I don’t like the UK’s submission to and collusion in US hegemony abroad on spurious grounds of freedom and democracy.
I understand that Brits, as an ‘island people’ have an inward-looking disposition as well as a taste for discovery and conquest, not often matched by the sensibility required to value other cultures and peoples as they deserve.
We haven’t been living in France long enough to have discover whatever ugliness you seem to find distasteful; but I am old enough to find in the Normandy town and countryside we’ve chosen enough strong echoes of community fellowship, graceful good manners and hospitality; and a restful homogeneity and uniformity that compares very favourably with the restless individuality and competitive a acquisitiveness of my homeland, as it has now become.
BTW my reference to your supposed skin-colour was only to point out the limitations of your experience of UK racism, in my opinion. I stand by that, and I can’t think what it was that upset you. White people may face insults at the hands of non-whites. Some might see it as well-deserved retribution for remembered insults, and much worse, at the hands of an oppressive master-race.
There is a serious side to all of this.
Apart from viewing the burqua as a symbol of male domination and an affront to other women, we have now to put up with security checks and restrictions on our liberty because of terrorism, which is mainly Muslim inspired and yet these women, or whoever they might be, walk around hiding their identity.
Hi Jane… you raise a valid point in that who knows who anyone is… when all that is visible is a pair of eyes.
Whatever is being worn, balaclava/scarf/helmet etc etc… if it covers too much of the face it can be quite disconcerting. Nothing racist in my comment just my thoughts in general…
I have to sympathize with that Jane, but I do think Bo’ is a disgusting, performer, using this to ‘i’ts’ political advantage, because all that will result, will be a surge of sympathy, from ‘some’ mulims, even non muslims, (those who love to demonstrate, about, 'anything, it’s a day out, innit) rushing out to demonstrate, and the R Wing opposing, all generating a cause for a fat ???p
Not being argumentative, Stella, but most people whose faces you see on a general walkabout, you don’t know who they are, do you? Does that worry you?
When you see someone in a burqa, you can safely assume its a woman. Why should you doubt that, unless you’ve read somewhere that terrorist suicide-bombers sometimes disguise themselves as women? Is that realistically likely?
If you have occasion to speak to burqa-clad woman, might you be able judge from her voice something of her disposition towards you? After all, you often speak to people you can’t see, or may not know, on the 'phone.
What or who is filling you with unnecessary alarm, and more precisely, why?
Hi Peter… Sadly over a period of some years, I did experience a few unnerving situations involving folk who were making trouble… they did not want to be identifiable on CCTV or by passers by… so they covered up their faces…
That has left me preferring to see folk as they are… no matter who they are… just being able to see and recognize in another human being that they are not deliberately hiding …
They aren’t hiding their identity, Jane, any more than you do when you walk round the town. Your face is not your identity. They are covering their face, for reasons they do not have to explain to you, any more than you have to reveal your identity to an unauthorised stranger.
This is not quibbling about words, it’s about dispelling myths and not accepting the propaganda of fear-mongers like Johnson and Trump.
I agree to some extent, with Jane Pete’, we live in a society where facial expression, can convey a huge amount, as well as words. When I worked in Saudi, visited lots of places, with the Merch’ N’ where they had, to me, strange cultural differences, I accepted and abided by them, obeyed their rules, not a problem.
I see no reason why others should not, if they would like to visit, live in, a country with another culture should not be prepared to accept the same attitudes/rules, if required.
And you can’t assume that a woman wearing a face-covering is hiding, from you, or from the world, Stella. Other folk are not bound to behave in line with your assumptions about what motivates them to cover up. If you feel uncomfortable, that is not their doing. It’s down to you, your ideas, your history, perhaps your upbringing. We do not have the right, in a free society, to impose our fears on the perceived motives of others. To do is to criminalise the legitimate and intrinsically harmless choices of others.
No-one has ever been harmed by a burqa with a woman inside it, minding her own business.
Peter, I have been brought up in a society where folk smile/scowl or not… at one another. … recognize one another on sight (or not)…close-up or in the distance. The colour of the hair, the turn of the head, the angle of the jaw… whatever it takes…
That is what I have experienced from the day I was born… I am not “assuming” anything bad if someone chooses to cover their face… but it can be disconcerting… and certainly depends on the circumstances.
There is no law that proscribes dress in most developed western democracies. It is hard to see what the basis for legislation might be. As I’ve pointed out to Jane and to Stella, no burqa with a woman inside it has ever caused harm to another person. So where are the grounds for banning it as an item of dress?
It is fatuous to suggest that it causes fear, or that it offends public decency, or incites unrest. This is just fear-mongering, of the kind incited by Johnson.
Anyone with authority to establish the identity of a burqa-wearing person can lawfully do so, and may lawfully see that person’s face, and or conduct a search of their person. Anyone who suspects that a burqa–wearing person has committed a crime, or intends to do so, may carry out a citizen’s arrest.
People must feel free to go about their lawful business dressed to suit themselves, and without hindrance. That’s the society I want, a free and just one, free of prejudice and free of manufactured fear.
I do respect your opinion and your cultural heritage, Stella (and much else besides). But in the northern hemisphere the vast majority of people live in bustling towns and cities, where you will encounter 20-200 total strangers for every familar face you see. They say that the average person will see more new people in half a day than a person 150 years ago would meet in a life-time.
I used to take my wife to Wood Green in North London to her hairdresser’s salon. It is one of the most culturally diverse parts of the UK… More burqas than you could shake a stick at. More burqas than red double-deck London buses. No-one turned a hair. Burqas pushing push-chairs, burqas buying spinach and rhubarb. Burqa queuing for prescriptions in Boots the Chemist. Burqas at the cash-points. Burqas trailing grizzling toddlers or bored teenage daughters in crop-tops.
We all have to get real. This is 2018. The world is on a hinge, we can stand aside and let it open or get our toes trapped and a black eye.
It’s taken dozens of posts but finally we get to the essence of what Johnson was trying to do which was start a conversation about the Burka and the reasons for wearing it. Unfortunately his choice of words to get his point across has yet again torpedoed the message and been seized upon by the media etc, his continual ‘foot in mouth’ gaffs ought to convince most intelligent people that he should not get anywhere near No. 10 but only time will tell.
To my mind it is not the place for a politician to be clumsy in speech and mocking.
They are impressionable and should be fully responsable for what they say and do.
I am not “assuming” anything bad if someone chooses to cover their face… but it can be disconcerting… and certainly depends on the circumstances.