A Horseradish
Tuesday 15th October 2019 11:51am [Edited]
8,475 posts
Quote: chipolata @ 15th October 2019, 6:33 AM
Bit of a cop out giving the Booker to two people, but Atwood is a fantastic novelist (and very funny) and deserves the plaudits.
The media tend to report them because they are far more commonplace - whether you like it or not Brexit has unleashed an ugliness in this country that seems to make it more acceptable to abuse women and minorities. There are, of course, examples from the other side, but they are fewer and farther between. And incidentally, I'm not sure the authorities clamp down on any of the abuse particularly effectively.
The overwhelming majority of people in the UK - I reckon it's 85-90% including me - are not merely supportive of law abiding minorities but strongly supportive and unusually so in global comparison terms. In fact, I can't think of a country which fares as well other than perhaps Norway, the Netherlands and Ireland (although the element of Irish hatred towards the UK diminishes that.). The England match last night was an absolute reflection of this position and I fully welcomed it.
Gareth and the team played a blinder in all ways. Attitudes in Bulgaria are easily dismissed as "just being Eastern Europe" but they are highly prevalent in many other places including Austria, Italy and Spain. With ongoing freedom of movement, expect many more far right voters from those countries here and if Ukraine ever joined the EU then we would probably end up having sooner or later a far right party as at least Her Majesty's Official Opposition if not the UK Government.
When it comes to a desire in 2019 to manage population numbers so as to maintain health and education services and more here, you can't just pretend away the significant multiracial elements in our society or indeed the disabled, people who are not exclusively heterosexual and women if they can still be described as a minority. The wish to maintain adequate services is on behalf of every one of us. But it is patently obvious why extreme elements who are in a tiny minority of those who support Brexit are targeting a few more people from minorities currently, albeit unfairly and disgracefully. It is that they symbolise the very concept of minority, irrespective of their identities, and at the moment the minority in the referendum is dictating via Parliament to the majority in the referendum and having its own way.
Even I have become someone who finds it easy to critique minorities since 2016 in a way that I would never have done beforehand because the concept of minority has been warped by the people who lost the referendum and their representatives, It's anarchic just as Extinction Rebellion is by refusing to heed police warnings and stopping people getting to work and life saving treatment. They have turned me from a one time Green voter into someone who is virtually anti environmentalism because of them. I still deep down support the environment just as I support minorities.
But the undemocratic militancy would have to go before I could ever get back to what has been my lifetime outlook until these years and that sadly isn't going to happen. In short, these people's ways are getting in the way of my instinctive support for good causes and it works on all levels, serious and comedic. I would say that for the first time since the 1970s it is easier now to attempt right wing comedy than left wing comedy because the left has taken leave of its senses..
