Appalling News

I just heard the statement made by the family of one of the murderers from Woolwich. How hard it must have been for them and what courage they have shown in writing that statement. I do have so much sympathy for them and think they must really be suffering.

I don't think we should 'appease' extremists, ever. Extremism is like blackmail. It is an effort to bully people into submission. I think we should be strong in our condemnation of all terrorist acts, whoever perpetrates them, and simply keep on saying that this kind of behaviour is unacceptable. There are no excuses. It is wrong.

It doesn't matter how aggrieved people feel about this, that or the other – butchering innocent fellow citizens is wrong.

For all the talk or racism, the IRA, Windrush, etc. this murder was different. The motivation wasn't anything to do with someone's colour, or political allegiance or sex, it was due to the fact that certain elements of the Moslem community have decided that we, in the West, are decedent and the enemy. That's why 7/7 happened, people born and brought up in this country thought it was required by their faith to blow up innocent people. That's why this innocent soldier was a trophy.

There is nothing racial about this, it's religious or a perversion of a religion.

When I visit Moslem countries, I am perfectly happy to cover my arms and legs and, if visiting a mosque, my head. When I walk in parts of London I don't expect to have to do the same but that how it feels.

There is no comparison to the IRA. Given the situation in Northern Ireland, they had a legitimate cause some would say. What legitimate cause to these radical Islamists have? How do we appease them?

I despair when anyone asking this question is accused of being racist, right wing or a bigot.

And partners stabbing each other in possibly jealous rage is entirely different from a deliberate setting out by three armed people in a car to find an unarmed soldier to savage to death . Has anyone else asked themselves if he might have been spared if he had been a black man wearing Help for Heroes t shirt? This has crossed my mind as they might have thought he was a muslim too. Each man's death diminishes ......

No, he didn't. He was a randomly selected innocent victim.

Obviously all murders are wrong. But this particular victim did nothing to put himself in the line of fire, as it were.

I meant more a 'story' behind how the victims of many murders came to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I read in the Guardian a few days ago that one of the men who murdered the soldier had been sexually tortured in Kenya some years ago and it is alleged that MI5 were trying to recruit him as a spy. In fact, a couple of years ago he took legal action against MI5 for harrassment.

Seems he became radicalised after these experiences.

Oh, and he was also involved in an horrific stabbing incident when he was 16 when a friend was 'cut to bits' by a (white) mentally ill attacker.

I only mention it because there is often a 'story'.

I would like to make it absolutely clear that this in no way excuses or even adequately explains the horrific thing he then went on to do to an innocent man.

Don't get me wrong when I say this Bananas, but whilst I realise the torture and killing of Mary Ann was horrific, hauntingly so at the time, that is what I mean by most murders having a story behind them. The hate killing of a young serving solder on the streets of the UK is something different altogether.

Nelliemosser, I think if we are to digress into racism generally and violence against women it really needs a separate thread. I posted originally because this brutal killing was one that we had never seen the like of before and left everyone reeling.

On immigrants generally, I take someone else's point about how hard it is to start learning a new language well into adulthood. I do remember a while back when southern Europeans would come over to the UK and the older women would wear black and just mix with the family and not learn the language it happens in all communities. I even had one or two more distant branches of my father's family who were a bit guilty of that. Before anyone points it out I also acknowledge that there are British enclaves in say Spain who make no attempt to speak Spanish or integrate.

Whilst I also accept we have racist elements in our country I do also think we are further along the path of integration than a lot of the rest of Europe, with some eastern Europeans holding shameful racist views. One of my closest friends, a black woman of West Indian origin, moved both her and her son from south London to a village in Hampshire when he was a small child, because she wanted to remove him from gang culture when he became a teenager. He was the only black child at the school she sent him to. I asked her once if they had ever experienced prejudice there and she said she hadn't and on the contrary many of his classmates parents would offer to look after him when she was between childminders. She is a very personable character and wins people over very easily so possibly that was down to her.

It's a fact there is still more black on black crime committed than white on black crime, it seems almost a weekly event here in London that we hear of a stabbing of yet another black youth. Lets also not forget that racism works both ways and there have been incidents where a white person has been the victim and what of the girls being groomed by the many men of Pakistani origin what were these if not racist crimes? Any one remember a girl called Mary Ann Leneghan? a fifteen year old, stabbed to death by half a dozen black men and left bleeding and naked in a park in Reading with her friend who was also attacked in the same way but just about survived.

You have to remember that this was a young man who had served his Queen and country well.

It's the complete innocence of the victim that makes some murders seem so unbearable.

Many, probably most, murders have a story behind them.

I mean no disrepect to the family of the murdered soldier, but lets get a perspective here.
I fully accept these killings have security implications.
We have been here before with these terrorist killings. It was the IRA in the 1980s. It is just the focus has shifted from the Republican Northern Ireland alleged Catholics to the extremist Islamists. It is still dangerous though!
Just Google " Man/woman stabbed/beaten to death in uk street!" or
"Woman stabbed to death by partner in UK"
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/man-stabbed-to-death-in-oxford-street-6281673.html

The two women who are killed every week by their partners or ex-partners is often because the woman has left their violent partners, or the men were in a bad mood, or their dinners were late.

As some of our GNrs sadly know, some people get killed for no obvious reason such as being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We should never never let the tide of revulsion at this particular killing overwhelm those other senseless killings that happen in our country. Most do not make massive headlines.

Two woman a week in the UK. People whose skin is the wrong colour. Remember that awful term Paki Bashing?
Stephen Lawrence. Damilola Taylor and far too many more! So it goes on and on in an endless waste of lives.
Most UK murders have no claims to religious or political idealism.

Gosh NellieM no-one could possibly take offense at that! I think we are all empathic people on here, trying to see both sides of every question.

But no-one can really make sense of what happened to Lee Rigby. We can talk about religion, race relations and ethnicities till the cows come home, but the lad was murdered in cold blood, and nothing can excuse or even explain that. It seems like it was a conspiracy to murder a local soldier, so as far as I'm concerned that was an act of treachery and terrorism.

I think the murderer himself will go to prison and not see freedom until he is a very old man, if ever. I think the others in the conspiracy, if it was one, will also get extremely long sentences. That will be justice.

I have just re-read my previous post. I think the expression I used about someone of a different skin colour, "Stick [ing] out like a sore thumb" might seem to be offensive. That was not my intention I was purely using those words as a common turn of phrase.
I meant that anyone who obviously looks very different and in a minority to those around them could feel particularly vulnerable.

My apologies to anyone who found that turn of phrase insensitive.

Having moved away recently from our multi-ethnic capital city to a small commuter town I sometimes miss the mix of people I would be with in shops etc. There is a buzz living in a big metropolis where people of many different background mingle..and they do. But I have been upset by the attitude of some close friends who feel that because I am no longer in London my life is narrower and that my neighbours and new community will be bigots and racists. There are people locally who probably are bigots and racist but there were in Sth London too!
They say their kid's families could not move out of London because the grandkids are mixed race and they would find it difficult. I understand what they mean but if they, as an intelligent and capable family , don't feel able to move into a predominantly white area how are we ever going to integrate more widely?? Think that is a bit weedy when you think how hard the Windrush passengers and others struggled to make a positive life here against huge (mainly London) racists!

Given the general anti immigrant rhetoric in Britain I would feel terrified if I was, say an immigrant from the Indian subcontinent.

Unless I was well educated and of good social status I would probably be a woman with very little independent status in my own family and possibly completely illiterate in my own language. I have been dragged off to cold hostile foreign country with no consultation, and have to face a very different culture. I have possible never been allowed or encouraged to go out alone.
Added to this my basic skin colour would make me stick out like a sore thumb. In those circumstances I would only want to stay with the people I could communicate and feel safe with.

Language learning is best done when very young. I think most peoples brains lose the ability to do this so effectively during their teens.

A lot of British ex pat in non English speaking countries are fairly bad at not mixing in with the local population.

britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=684721
And thats expats themselves saying this.

I wondered about starting a new thread too, jings, but the discussion of the whys and wherefores are inextricably linked with what happened to Lee. I have not forgotten him at all and I doubt if others have.

I wonder if we should have left this thread with dizzyblondes post of Thu 23-May-13 19:35:01.

The poor man has been forgotten.

Perhaps we should have had a separate thread to put our views across.

Good article, Bags - thanks. There are quite a few terrorists in UK high security jails, separated from other offenders and who have been coming out of prison to probation supervision with very tight parole licence restrictions. Religion tends not to feature highly for many of them. In probation hostels, there is an obligation to provide privacy for Muslim prayer and sufficient access to a local mosque (in the company of a Muslim member of staff or under police surveillance, if necessary). Few take up these opportunities. Some of them describe themselves as 'curry Muslims' meaning that their access to the food they prefer is all they are concerned about. That, and the fact that they are alive and don't want other offenders to find out about their offences.

Not wishing to nitpick, but not all those who fail to learn English refused to do so. Some people, especially older people, and especially those not literate in their own language, just can't manage it. It is really very hard learning a foreign language as an adult. Women at home, surrounded by people speaking their native language, just don't always get the chance to learn. Their husbands, going to work, have a much better chance.

I am not "suggesting" anything JessM just merely pointing out how sad it is that areas of the country have become alien to a lot of people. I do not agree that "UK people are unfriendly........" at all. I facts I would say exactly the opposite and to suggest that someone would move house rather than live beside an "immigrant family" is nothing short of ridiculous.

I totally agree Sel the American immigrants became proud Americans who speak English. There are obviously people in this country who spend their time plotting against Britain (which makes me wonder why they choose to remain here) and even more who still refuse to speak English.

I think we're the worst people for not integrating when we relocate to other countries and just expect everyone to speak our language. Having said that, we drove through parts of Wolvehampton a few weeks ago and, for quite a long time found ourselves not seeing anyone of English descent; I have to be totally honest with everyone [including myself] and say I found it very unnerving. Then again, I love the way that other countries have enriched our society; look at how we dress these days and curry has become our favourite national dish.

Here's another good article, by Azeem Ibrahim in The Scotsman

Sel, if integration has worked so well in the USA, how is it that Spanish is a majority language in some - mainly urban - communities and is rapidly overtaking English in many other areas?