Disorder in Leeds

But what did you see? Was it all a mirage. Were they members of the Far Right?

"If the Harehills Riot was mostly powered on this occasion by Roma and not people from the sub continent, then Farage is partially wrong on the detail but not on the fact."

Wrong on the detail and the facts.

And he tweeted it out.
He saw something, jumped to a conclusion and spread it out to his followers.
For some reason.

I saw a bunch of migrants laying down the law to the police and the social services.
I saw a bunch of migrants destroying public property
I saw a bunch of migrants refusing to obey the law of this land.
I saw a community spokesman come along and say that taking the children-that kicked it all off-was systematic racism.
I saw a group of people who looked and sounded as if they came from the sub continent join in alacrity.

Everything like this is political.

If a red Ford Fiesta crashed into your car and you gave the details to police and insurance, would you think your insurance provider was being unreasonable if they refused your claim as the Ford Fiesta was maroon, not red?

You would be jumping up and down, yelling that it was a fucking Ford Fiesta.

If the Harehills Riot was mostly powered on this occasion by Roma and not people from the sub continent, then Farage is partially wrong on the detail but not on the fact.

It is not racist, We have to move away from this mind set, although I think it is too late.

This aged well

Why mention that it is a white working class area - surely the fact that they are white is as "irrelevant" as you say the race of the Roma family is?

I didn't see the politics of the sub continent being played out on the streets of Leeds.

Did you?

So Farage saw the Harehills riots and he decided to "say what he saw" in a tweet - and came up with the politics of the sub continent being played on the streets of Leeds.

What was he seeing?

This is Britain, the world's softest touch.

We've been weak on law and order since the days of Thatcher.

Ok. What did you see then when you saw them burning buses, making bonfires, smashing a police car and chasing off the police for no reason, other than the Social Services wanted to take some children for their own safety?

Do please put it in context.

If they are refusing to eat let them…tthey are trying to blackmail SS !

Good luck to them it doesn’t work that way here …if you don’t like the laws then leave and go to a country where you do abide by the laws of the land …

People will rightly say that Brits who go and live in Spain and refuse to learn Spanish, live in Brit enclaves, behave badly in tourist resorts etc, are bad. Why are some people so reticent to label the same behaviour by non-British groups in the UK as equally bad? I mean, I'd say even worse as typically the Brits in Spain don't form voting blocks based around overseas conflicts this country isn't involved in, and I'm sure don't get the gently-does-it treatment from authorities there, but if you're going to condemn Kevin in Barry's English Pub in Magaluf you should at least be consistent.

Here's another thought:

Think before you tweet.
Ask yourself to think critically.
Do you understand what is going on, have you got the context,what biases are you applying?

People see what they want to see. And if you have a prominent platform, you have to be very careful when you tweet stuff - because words can have an effect.

Have you ever watched Catchphrase? One of the presenters used to encourage contestants to, 'Say what you see'

We really do have to start to move away from the mindset that prohibits us from saying negative things about migrant communities when they are actually behaving in a negative way.

That is not racist.

It would be racist if Farage entirely made up the fact about the riots in Harehills-they never happened and he said it for badness. Instead, on Friday night, they were all at home watching telly, reading and looking after their children. The only people on the streets of Harehill were people going about their lawful business.

That would not be on and he should be castigated but he didn't make it up did he. They were not going about their lawful business.

But when people see shit behaviour carried out by migrant groups and say it was bad behaviour carried out by migrant groups, no-one should be afraid of saying that. Sadly, they are though.

More comments from a local community leader:

'The mother and father are refusing to eat until they get their children back. We are fully supporting them. We believe it was an injustice that can be rectified by the authorities if they revise the case. Which they have promised to do.'

Does this mean that the community leaders are fully supporting them in their hunger strike?

Surely the best way to support the family is to help them engage with social services and follow the usual process in such situations. No one is going to return children to an environment that warranted their removal because of protests and hunger strikes. At least, I would hope not. It all seems a bit mad.

Those who come to live in the UK from other cultures are very likely to follow their natural impulses to stick to the familiar, this means they won't be exposed to the wider culture and will not be properly integrated. If we want immigration to work for the good of the country then we will have to arrange things such that people from other cultures are incentivized to integrate with our norms and values.

BUT, is it the case that some other cultures are antithetical to British culture and there can be no integration?

It's thrown up an interesting spot light actually. We all know about different cultures and different values and practices, esp between western cultures and elsewhere.
We expect people from similar western backgrounds to all treat our dc roughly to the same standards, held to those standards by law. ( I don't mean the western are necessarily better off or better loved but in terms of smacking, leaving dc alone, expecting older people children to help and so on) Obviously we have awful exceptions where we children are treated badly.
I remember reading years ago about issues in a northern town between British /Asian families and Lithuanian or somewhere like that and the difference in how the children were treated and the eastern Europeans had lots of sw involvement just because they had different expectations and standards.
There were also a racial tensions because the Lithuanian had not had as much exposure to immigration as the UK has due to being trapped behind the iron curtain.

When I was a young teen some of my friends went to work in those Romanian orphanages. They were very prominent in the news and I remember gathering up old clothes and toys to send.

He was being racist
He saw something and jumped to a conclusion
An incorrect conclusion but since when did that stop him.

No it does not come as a news flash, I think you may have misunderstood. I never used the term Asian, or implied it, nor I think any group for that matter. Perhaps you could explain.

I just said the article in the Guardian was interesting (as it related to the pressures). My own family is happily multicultural including a couple of the other ethnicities you mention.

I would say the enlargement of the EU certainly massively increased the issue of rough sleeping in London.

Well, why are you pretending that you didn't?
Answers on the back of a postage stamp please!

Also, how do you know Farage knows nothing about Leeds?

There has been a small amount of disturbance in the UAE related to Bangladeshis protesting about the political situation in Bangladesh. Unlike when this happened in London, it has been made clear that damage to public and private property and street disturbances will not be tolerated. Punishments will be severe and the police do not back off.

Yes - we knew what he meant.

Wading in on a part of the UK he knew nothing about and tweeting to enflame things.

Well the Guardian uses the term British Pakistani. It may come as a news flash but there are many Asian groups who are not involved - Indians, Sri Lankans, Chinese etc.

This is a problem we have built up ourselves. Look around the world and all the major causes of wars and conflict. You are not in our group / gang / culture call it what you will. (Of course conflicts are largely about power, but the group is the rallying cry)

The ideal is we just don’t care and get on wonderfully, and that works to some extent, especially when ingrained cultural norms and rules are similar, or can be understood and accepted. But as our wonderful poster of Italian origin points out there are deep blood roots to your culture and that is where loyalties often primarily lie. It is just human nature.

Are we saving people from conflicts /poverty, or with mass immigration are we just importing the conflicts as the separate communities build up and some want to build their own culture on their own patches of the UK, and are ready to fight for their own strong rules of acceptability, that may be quite different, and cause conflict with various other groups and our laws and social norms.

Do we for example set UK foreign policy on what is right for this country, or what the noisiest group living here but with strongest affiliations to other countries, cultures, religions dictate. Look at the recent riots and fighting in London over Bangladesh. How much resource is all this conflict consuming and who is paying for it at what cost to essential services.

In some ways this must be most distressing to immigrants that have through the toil and tribulations of years, settled, established and integrated within our communities as valued members of our society. Also to those newer immigrants who just want to fit in and make a life here.

The Guardian article from 2018 is interesting.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/03/roma-tire-shouldering-blame-boiling-pot-communities

What should we call that demographic? I agree, it would be better to use the precise term. after all, it wasn't Chinese people behaving like twats.

i HATE the term Asian. There are 4.7 billion Asians in the world. It’s actually quite a specific demographic who stood up at the elections and were screaming about Gaza.

I am half Indian and that side of my family do not want to change Britain. They see themselves as British whilst being proud of their Indian traditions.