Having a Daily Mail moment - can anyone help?

[Gotabookaboutit]

OK I am generally in favour of immigration, am from Leicester and love the rich cultural mix- but have recently found myself getting more and more Daily Mail over radicals who live here on benefits, but who see fit to ''slag off'' the western way of life but seem very happy to reap the ''benefits'' both of free speech and social financial support. Even the dreaded ''if its so bad in this country - what the hell are they doing here?'' has gone through my head.

I put my hands up to being very anti religion.

AIBU and need to just see it as media hype over a very small number of highly publicised individuals or do others get the goat as well?

I've never met anyone who said they wanted to bomb anywhere for any reason, religious or not. Obviously I have led a very sheltered life.(?!)

How many complaining radical immigrants living on benefits has the OP actually met? And how does she know they are on benefits? All sounds VERY DM to me.

Some people are irritating, small minded, morons. Sometimes these people immigrate, being an immigrant is not protection against being stupid.

So many people seem so desperate to not appear racist or anti immigration that they forget that people are just people, some are nice and clever and some are ignorant fucks.

No nationality/racial group is free from the ignorant fucks.

Tyelperion - you mean complaining isn't universal behaviour? Is it a specifically Brit characteristic? I never thought of that...

Nah, I think everyone enjoys a good bitch and moan.

vj32 - erh the title does say having a Daily Mail moment but thanks for the insight. There are have been quite a few examples in the papers recently , can't be arsed to find you any, Abu Hanza springs straight to mind oh yes and there was a bomb or two in London a while ago wasn't there ?. I don't know any personally but do know that two of the religious leaders from our local mosque's are very radical and both are on benefits. ( Muslim friends do not go there but it is surprising he numbers that do !

Bolter and wooly, absolutely other countries complain too - but in other countries the manner is quite different, for example in America I find even Americans can't or won't moan in the same way about problems in their own country. Even critical comments are still couched with many caveats that whatever it is is still the best in the world. (I am American but a life-long expat). Even when it is clear that something is much better abroad, there's real difficulty in talking about it - for example, I was talking to some relatives about health care and though they freely profess that the system in the States is completely unfair and a huge percentage of personal bankruptcies are caused by medical bills, their default position was that the US system was the best in the world and just had "some problems".

A British person would start from the default position that the NHS was going to the dogs and would only grudgingly admit that actually their local surgery was relatively convenient, prescriptions were cheap, care (while sometimes hit or miss) is generally of a good standard and they couldn't imagine having to save up money just for the co-payment to see a GP or pay hundreds of pounds each month on medication or having to wait until a child's fever had hit 40c so that you could take them to A&E as there's no money to pay the $100 for a doctor's visit when the fever's still at 38c (this happened to a friend of mine).

Another example: the French moan a lot but without the "typical" and "mustn't grumble" false brightness that the British punctuate their moaning with. Eg: you point out to a French person that it's freezing outside, they agree with you and complain about it being too cold. To a British person, they agree with you and then say "well at least it isn't too hot, last year I nearly fainted on the tube, can't believe it doesn't even have air conditioning" etc.

Other nationalities don't seem to truly get into it and enjoy their moaning - there's a real Eeyoreish character to the UK that I find very sweet (it's also generally why British people find Americans so annoying). But as you can imagine, some immigrants can find British moaning quite confusing and may misguidedly try and join in...

Whenever DH (not British) moans about how rubbish the UK is compared with 'his' country, I feel furious. His country sucks, that's why he left. Can't say anything because I don't want to move there!

Tyelperion I agree completely. My British born husband freely complains about everything without a worry, while I as a dreaded immigrant, am often questioned about how much I like it here (mostly from strangers and medical professionals) with the aim that if I don't give a satisfactory response, I can get questioned on why I bothered to come here. It's ridiculous. If I dare to slag off and/or do not participate in something deemed British, even if many Brits complain about doing themselves, then I'm told that I'm trying to ruin things for everyone (yes, I have been told this - I get so confused by how many British people go on about disliking the stress and over-display of Christmas, but if I as an immigrant go on about the over-display of it or even gasp mention that I am a religious minority immigrant that doesn't even celebrate Christmas, I get told I'm ruining the holiday fun for everyone.)

Gotabookaboutit It's very difficult for an immigrant to get benefits (I've not even been allowed to get child benefit) and the idea of immigrants coming over just for that is a Daily Mail hype. Also, almost all terrorists have been and are home grown and has little to do with personal or parental immigration history.

If you have never actually met any and are just basing your views on what you read in the papers then of course you are being influenced by media hype was my point!! There is no such thing as totally unbiased journalism.

It is annoying people being supported by the state and then complaining, of course it is. But it is also disgusting how OK it is to make incredibly stupid racist comments and get away with it - Michael Gove being a recent example. Interesting that as far as I am aware the national news didn't pick it up - maybe the papers did? But he basically said a Muslim community association couldn't build a mosque because it would over look the Royal Military Academy. When questioned, he unsurprisingly didn't want to explain further and tried to backtrack. And he is Education Minister.

Gotabookaboutit

Have you met these people who say this sort of stuff? Do they say it to your face and in what context? If they do, thats rather rude. DP sometimes has to go down to Leicester to work and he isn't very complimentary about it, sorry!

In Scotland, there are less immigrants and its not much of a problem. I would guess that people here tend to mix integrating with preserving their own culture. My favourite memory of doing the Great Scottish Run in Glasgow - a lot of Sikh people coming out to support the runners and offer drinks.

Some people would be radical and try to cause trouble wherever they went - for them its just a matter of finding the right badge to do it under.

Nijinsky - Leicester at its best is a Multi-Culturalists dream.

There are areas where genuinely as a white person you would not be welcome - I have worked in both areas. It has given me the chance to make friends with a fab mix of people -I have also been called a whore and experienced a lot of probably more sexist than racist behaviour, and did have a friend who was killed in a 'honour' murder. I also know from my Muslim friends that there are people with strong religious views.The number of women wearing Burkers has also gone quite markedly.

But its just the High profile mufti's/leaders who preach terror quite openly and also the ones who heckle the returning soldiers (am very anti the war myself !)- who are happy to have the benefits of living in this country but still condemn us- that really annoy me.

Complaining about the weather - food- m&s - is not really where I was coming from ;P

Gotabookaboutit - apologies, didn't realize you were talking about Muslims in your OP, thought you were referring generally to immigrants slagging off things in the UK. Sorry to derail.

In that case I think Firawla and oldbrigade speak sense - especially in terms of the British born young people sometimes adopting a more radical stance than their parents or grandparents, often as a defensive posture or in an attempt to maintain customs which are not observed as strictly in their grandparents' country of origin.

Gotabookaboutit "I have also been called a whore and experienced a lot of probably more sexist than racist behaviour"

Can you elaborate on this at all, as I find it interesting?

If I didn't know these people personally, but only from reading stuff in the Daily Mail and similar, I would dismiss it as media bollocks.

'I remember the dark days when the IRA used to enjoy bombing the shit out of us. Weird how not many people worry about northern Irish folk. Is it only worrying when the threat comes with a brown face?'

I do worry about NI to the point I'm not going to a wedding there this year as I don't think it's safe. For all the talk of peace the old stuff is still there bubbling away under the surface.

"But how many immigrants living in this country compared to how many bombings carried out by immigrants? They don't all wish to bomb us.

I remember the dark days when the IRA used to enjoy bombing the shit out of us. Weird how not many people worry about northern Irish folk. Is it only worrying when the threat comes with a brown face?"

Indeed.

All the immigrants I know are thrilled to be here and have gone to great lengths. For example a Polish lady I know moved to the UK specifically for her Autistic son as our SN education is so far superior. At first when She told me this I was a bit Dailt Mail why should I be paying for your Autistic son's education, surely that is Poland's responsibility, but then when I actually thought about it, She want's the best for her Child and is being a fantastic Mum by going to these lengths.
I get so cross when I see all my facebook friends putting narrow minded status' about how much the UK is paying out in aid to other countries when we have elderly/mental going without care,etc. My response is usually "arn't we lucky to live in a country where we don't need foreign aid" or "have you actually visited any of your elderly neighbours to see if they need anything"

I am beginning to dislike the English more than the immigrants to be honest......

You're sort of missing my point, scaryteacher. I was talking about percieved threat and for some reason we percieve that we are threatened most by the Muslim community when really if you think about it logically, we've had one major terrorist incident here, perpetrated by Muslims.

We had a fair few terrorist incidents carried out by IRA loons, in our recent history. Yet we don't treat the northern Irish with quite the same suspicion as we do Muslims, yet proportion-wise, we've suffered more death at the hands of the IRA than of Al-Qaeda.

And I'm not bashing the northern Irish either. I think it's RIGHT that we don't treat everyone with suspicion because of a fanatical few. I'm just making a comparison and wondering why we feel so threatened by Muslims.

I'm also old enough to remember the IRA era - I know there was allot of prejudice against Irish people at the time !!!

Nijinsky -can't explain job without being outed in RL - involved allot of contact with women/children in difficult circumstances. Contempt for women- to a degree particularly a professional female was endemic in certain enclaves/parts of the community. Worst were the uneducated/unemployed.

Wormshuffler I totally agree with you.

It's the white trailer-trash in this area that cause grief, not immigrants. You can flame me for the trailer-trash remark too.

Good grief people !!
As far as I recall we are all the same species. Homo Sapiens is aggressive , it's why we rule our planet !! For better or worse .

To make a society members have to come together, accept their differences and live with the decision of the majority. Above all I still believe in the humanity of most and spurn the belligerence of others.

If history has taught us anything it seems it teaches us nothing at all - how very sad.

I'm an immigrant, I attended my British citizen ceremony last week, pledge of loyalty to the Queen and all.

It feel a special irk when I read about naturalised people, and maybe immigrants in general (meaning people who came to the UK as adults) who sabotage the UK (in words or actions) We took a frigging oath of loyalty, most of us on holy books. We chose to be here and promised to do our best.

So if you have gone all Daily Mail, OP, so have I.

marmalade - was talking about percieved threat and for some reason we percieve that we are threatened most by the Muslim community when really if you think about it logically, we've had one major terrorist incident here, perpetrated by Muslims.

Lets not forget about the number of incidents that have been foiled - both from Muslim & IRA. Had intelligence not been so good it could have been a lot worse.

I know there have been foiled cases but they are not many...

Op; YANBU - have you read David Camerons latest on immigration?
( check out today's papers - the Guardian has full text of the speech )

Brilliant stuff -