To think if you've escaped a war zone, have shelter and food a wristband is no hardship

[Lj17lj]

I might get slammed but I really don't see the issue. I've went on very expensive holidays and festivals and have to wear a wrist band for weeks on end, its fine. When I go to the steam room in local gym I have to wear a band.

I really can't see the issue. It's not the same as forcing a tattoo on someone.

You can't be serious?

They have dropped this now.

Really? You really can't see the difference between tagging a refugee and choosing to wear a wristband on luxurious trips? Okaaay.

You can't see the issue in stigmatising, opening up to abuse, violence and shame, innocent people who have come to this country because they were unsafe in their own homes? That's ok with you?

You can't actually be comparing it to wearing a wrist band in your local fucking steam room.

And as for the utter fuckwits who see people wearing them and think that the reasonable response it to abuse them....

I'm saying changing the bands is not the solution to the abuse. More time and money is needed in the integration as I doubt no bands will stop this abuse.

Surely they could of just been hidden up their sleeves? It's not like Wales is T-shirt weather for more than a few weeks a year.

I'm with you, OP. If they were issued a paper voucher it could be lost, stolen or traded on the black market. A wristband is a perfectly sensible option and I can't understand why they're so aggrieved. They should be grateful. Lots of people wear different wristbands these days, and they can easily cover it with their sleeve if they're that bothered!

Thanks knees, totally agree. It's just a sensible approach, these new cards will no doubt get lost / damaged as you say.

Christ. Private Eye have a column called Dumb Britain. This kind of remark could have a very happy home there.

Fucking hell

"They should be grateful"

And I'm sure they are but it doesn't mean they should be actually marked out for abuse.

Fucking hell sometimes I'm ashamed to be British.

Are you really thick or just a goady fucker?

Just to be clear, my post is to the OP.

I think the Education Select Committee's suggestion to improve holocaust education is a good one. Judging by this post, there are many who need education about how creeping, insidious injustices led to one of the greatest horrors humanity has ever known.

Gobsmacked and sickened by your comparisons, OP.

Maybe the Jews should have been grateful. After all, that nice wee yellow star really brightened up their outfits.

ARE YOU STUPID?!?!?!

Depends if anyone abuses you or beats you up because of it. That has happened with paper vouchers and a wristband makes you even more identifiable. Or maybe a yellow star would suffice?

Maybe they could be told to sew stars onto their clothes instead OP

It isn't the band that's the problem it's the Othering. You can't integrate people you visibly mark as inferior, and with the rhetoric around immigration at the moment, anything that marks people as immigrants will be a mark of inferiority socially.

OP is a GF.

Maybe we should tattoo a number on their arms, or make them wear an easily identifiable symbol on their clothing so all "proper" people can see at a glance that they are "other".

*scarcasm, lest there be doubt.

Because you chose to use the wristband and it gives you privileges. It marks you as one of the people at the hotel. Not the outcast immigrant.

For perspective, it started not with tattoos but with yellow stars. Surely that was ok.

Maybe the UK should start thinking of ID cards for all with proper I'D instead. It would also make identity theft more difficult.

I see where you're coming from OP but I hardly think you can compare it with wearing a wristband for a weekend at Glastonbury. And neither would I compare it to the Nazi treatment of the Jews- we are helping these people, not persecuting them. And I'll admit I was a bit when I read an article about asylum seekers in Middlesbrough complaining because the front doors were all the same colour on their free houses

Maybe the UK should start thinking of ID cards for all with proper I'D instead. It would also make identity theft more difficult.

No we shouldn't and no it wouldn't.

I don't imagine the wristbands were introduced with the intention of othering, whoever did it was probably just thinking about practicalities.

However it is a fuck up, it's had a horrible impact and the right thing to do would be to apologise unreservedly the minute it became obvious, and change the system to something like cards etc.

I think worrying about them being traded or whatever is stupid; it's not as if there are thousands of people going to get meals there, surely the staff would get to know them quite quickly anyway?

I might get slammed. But you post it anyway.