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An oath on British Values?

(619 Posts)
yggdrasil Mon 05-Dec-16 07:34:51

Latest proposal is that all immigrants should be made to take an oath to abide by British values before even coming in to the country.
What would those values be? I doubt you could get much agreement between those of us born and bred here.
England, Scotland, Wales, NI? North, south, east, west?

durhamjen Mon 05-Dec-16 13:07:59

It has always been here.
Anyone watched the Black and British programmes?
David Olusoga introduced a couple. He was talking about when he was a child, and went to where the house he lived in had been, before it was bulldozed.
He had tears in his eyes when he was telling the viewer about having bricks through the windows. He said that they moved eventually, but when he went back there, someone had painted a swastika on the door and said that the NF had won in that house.
Tolerant Britain?

rosesarered Mon 05-Dec-16 13:10:47

One individual did that act djen do not confuse a population of many millions, even in the 1950's and 60's.YES, we are a very tolerant country.

Beammeupscottie Mon 05-Dec-16 13:11:01

People are justly frightened off over-immigration. They are breeding faster than the indigenous British and that is the root of the problem all over Europe. It is the fear of being over-run which is a very valid factor. The British no longer breed big families - will that value be adopted. I think not.

daphnedill Mon 05-Dec-16 13:14:25

@gilly

Thanks for that. I knows that authorities have a legal duty to provide schools places for children in the process of seeking asylum and those already granted refugee status. There aren't that many of them and they tend to be concentrated in small areas - round major airports and ports and places where the government has decided refugees should go.

I'm still surprised that all immigrant children should be given priority and I wonder what's happening in practice. I know for an absolute fact that they don't get priority round here. Refugees do get some kind of priority. There is extra funding available for them and they can, in exceptional circumstances, be placed in a school over and above the Published Admission Number, so they're not taking places form other children. My experience of them was that they tended to move on very quickly.

daphnedill Mon 05-Dec-16 13:18:43

The UK is in absolutely no danger of being 'overrun' by immigrants in our lifetime - unless anybody knows of any plots by Romans, Vikings, Saxons or Normans.

durhamjen Mon 05-Dec-16 13:23:11

Have you watched any of the Black British series, roses?
Have you seen the ones about retired nurses talking about being told to get their big black hands off the patients?

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/30/what-it-means-to-be-black-in-britain-today

durhamjen Mon 05-Dec-16 13:24:50

There's one thing, if all migrants have to sign an oath of integration, it will probably stop immigration overnight.
Then we'll probably have to beg people to come here.

kittylester Mon 05-Dec-16 13:26:10

I haven't become more intolerant though, roses and I am subject to the same numbers of immigrants as others.

I live near Leicester which has benefitted hugely from immigration (Ugandan Asians mostly) and previously I lived in Derby which also benefitted from a whole gamut of immigrants.

Repeating what I said upthread - we need to help immigrants integrate not allow them to be insular. I welcome this report if it encourages fair debate.

gillybob Mon 05-Dec-16 13:27:25

I do have a bit of a problem concerning the "extra funding" *daphnedill. Not just for immigrant children but for all those that "attract" (is that the right word?) that extra money.

Basically it's a bribe to the school. If you take those 3 "looked after" children or these 6 immigrant children you can have an extra amount of money. But if you take Gillybob's grandchildren who live across the road, you get nothing. So the school refuse to take them. I find that quite shocking actually.

daphnedill Mon 05-Dec-16 13:28:58

@gillybob

Offering a place to a black child on the basis of his/her skin colour would be racist, unless procedures had been followed. There would have to be a legal reason for accepting the black child which would have nothing to do with the colour of the child's skin or ethnic origin.

durhamjen Mon 05-Dec-16 13:29:16

Actually, daphne, the Black British series starts with the Afro-Romans at Hadrian's Wall.

gillybob Mon 05-Dec-16 13:31:26

To me, It isn't the colour of the skin that makes this racist. daphnedill The child could be any colour at all as long as it was not English and surely that IS racist.

daphnedill Mon 05-Dec-16 13:33:28

I've just Googled Michael Coe, because I'd never heard of him. As far as I can tell he's a British-born convert to Islam, so I assume he wouldn't have to take any oath.

He sounds like a thorougly unpleasant character with violent tendencies. He was prosecuted under British law for assault. His 'defence' that he was offended by the teenager's behaviour in public wasn't accepted, so what's the problem? The fact that he's now converted to Islam made absolutely no difference to the application of the law.

daphnedill Mon 05-Dec-16 13:42:46

It really isn't all immigrant children! It's a tiny percentage of the number of children in UK schools. They are not given priority over your grandchildren. Do you have any evidence that any 'looked after' or refugee children have been admitted to the school you wanted your grandchildren to go to?

In my experience, schools fight tooth and nail not to take 'looked after' children. LAs have very little control over school admissions these days and will tend to place the children in schools where there are places (ie the unpopular ones) rather than in oversubscribed schools. There has to be a very compelling reason to place any child in a school which is full.

Schools admissions criteria only apply at the beginning of the school (ie age 5 and 11). If a statement names a particular school (which is very rare) the school has a legal responsibility to take the child before any others. Mid year admissions are dealt with under different rules. If a LA has a number of refugees, it will almost certainly allocate them to schools with places.

daphnedill Mon 05-Dec-16 13:43:19

So you would refuse Scots, Irish and Welsh? hmm

thatbags Mon 05-Dec-16 13:51:41

In answer to the OP (haven’t read the entire thread), I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask people who come to live here to agree to accept the universal liberal (small L!) values of western society, things like gender equality, freedom of and from religion, accepting the rule of law and that it applies to everyone equally, and so on.

I wouldn't like to have the task of working out exactly how such an agreement would be phrased, but in principle I don't see anything wrong with the idea. #wheninRome

Riverwalk Mon 05-Dec-16 13:54:58

It's interesting Jane10 that you describe Moslems as 'Islamic immigrants' but Sikhs, Jews, Hindus & Chinese, as 'people'.

Also, you say it's from your personal observations - do you live in an area with all these different people?

Anya Mon 05-Dec-16 13:57:10

Not sure about the Scots and Irish, but the Welsh for sure!

looks round quickly to check Anniebach is nowhere to be seen

durhamjen Mon 05-Dec-16 13:58:36

Surely the school problem, gillybob, is not one of immigration, unless you count English people who have moved into the catchment area as immigrants.
All schools should have a policy of children living in the catchment area given first choice. The problem is the school's entrance policy, not immigration.

Anya Mon 05-Dec-16 13:58:54

Is it perhaps Riverwalk that these are the current surge of immigrants while the others are sort of settled into our culture.

Anya Mon 05-Dec-16 13:59:21

Perhaps 'embedded' into our culture.

durhamjen Mon 05-Dec-16 14:03:28

Surely if they were embedded into our culture, this discussion wouldn't be necessary. It won't be just Moslems that will have to sign this, all the EU migrants would as well, from Scandinavia, Spain, France, etc.

gillybob Mon 05-Dec-16 14:08:19

I think maybe you have misunderstood my point daphnedill Or else I am hopeless at explaining (which is probably more to the point).

The admission policy states that the school cannot go over the admission figures except in exceptional circumstances.

The exceptional circumstances are;

a) In the case of looked after children.
b) In the case of immigrant and refugee children when directed to do so by the LEA

In other words they can find places for children who attract extra funding.

gillybob Mon 05-Dec-16 14:10:03

Oooops missed the second part daphnedill I would assume there would not be places for Scottish, Welsh or Irish children either unless they had immigrant/refugee status. I should have said children from the UK.

Anya Mon 05-Dec-16 14:11:36

I wasn't talking to you DJ I was answering a specific question from riverwalk