Laurence Fox is an ignorant, spoilt brat.

[longwayoff]

What is wrong with this fool? Apparently in James Delingpole's podcast, heavy sigh, he criticises Sam Mendes for featuring a Sikh soldier in WW1 film. Ever heard of the British Empire, Laurence? How many Indians died for Britain? AIBU to say LF is being deliberately divisive and provocative and evidently doing his own publicity?

P.S. at the age of 7 my kids misused loads of other words. I should have written them down. Could have used them to drive an agenda-driven podcast about how the words were used too much in modern society. But no, I just (im)patiently explained what the word actually meant. What a fool I was.

People of all racial backgrounds are sexual predators. Hell a member of the royal family is accused of sexually assaulting numerous underage girls and of actively engaging with a convicted pedophile and sex trafficker, and most posters on Mumsnet defend him to their dying breath.

Bloody good point!

People have pointed to Myra Hindley for generations as proof that women are 'as evil as men'.

The point with Rotherham etc is not the ethnic status of the perps, but that action would have been taken sooner against them had they been white. It doesn't cancel out racism any more than the Diet Coke advert cancels out sexism, but it demonstrates what can happen when you put a section of the population beyond criticism.

JamieVardy I can see that now. I've realised that my F was also abusive to my DM. He conned her into believing that he was this loving husband and father when what he was doing was controlling her. He used his Parkinson's to guilt trip her. I think what we didn't understand was that he was still an abuser, he just happened to be ill.

I'm just trying to get the point across that at heart, perpetrators give reasons for what they're doing, but it's all crap. The excuse could be religion or it could be race.

Have you heard him singing? It's pitiful and embarrassing. Brings new meaning to drone......

The thing is I agree with him in a way about incongruity in casting. It is annoying and patronising to stick a token POC into a context they just would not have been in.

I get irritated when historical dramas shoe in a BAME character who, in reality, just would not be there. None of Robin Hood's merry men was black, for example.

It is very unlikely that there would be BAME ladies in waiting or even servants in many historical contexts but they are suddenly turning up and I find it tokenistic and insulting.

Does a liking for historical accuracy make me racist? Maybe it does.

Amanduh thanks for explaining that, I hadn’t seen the film or listened to the podcast and was confused.

He may it may not be a nice person (I don't know him), but he's been quite good at pointing out times when the PC 'emperor' has had no clothes on.

I hate myself for saying this but

• he had a point on QT
• I’ve seen 1917 and I think he does have a point too

BUTTTTTTT

• he’s evidently a knobber
• he’s been scalding and derogatory about his exes
• I feel sorry for his kids that daddy is now the new darling of the alt-right
• I believe he’s having some sort of identity crisis with the shit tatts and the florid LBC-esque language

As I said before there’s a grain of truth in his points but as my granny would say “even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day”.

Info on black British mayor, 1904, in case anyone’s interested.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Glaisyer_Minns

@WeHaveSnowdrops if you're talking about Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, then the BAME character isn't one of the Merry Men, he came back with Robin from the Crusades, where he had been fighting with Richard III. It's implausible, granted, but it's a nice story and makes sense.

What's the betting that Laurence Fox will at some point end up in the jungle on I'm a celebrity, Get me out of here? That might be worth watching actually.

It's pretty sad that there have been at least three threads on here about this one man's personal opinion, yet when the news of yet another grooming scandal came out last week, I couldn't find any discussion about it on Mumsnet (perhaps there were some hidden away in one of the quieter sub-boards).

The grooming scandals have been going on since the 90s with thousands of girls involved. How come there seems to be so much more outrage and vitriol about Laurence Fox's personal opinion than there seems to be about the rape, slavery and mistreatment of thousands of vulnerable girls and the cover-up by various authorities. It's unbelievable.

And as for the Prince Andrew/Epstein scandal, I've read loads about this in the main media over the last couple of months compared to almost zero (or very hidden away) articles about the numerous new grooming cases that are slowly being exposed.

What is the man to do if he has not experienced UK society as being racist? LF has said that there are nasty racists out there, which is true, but the society is not racist. It is on a journey and racism (and all the other isms) were more prevalent in the past, but the situation is very different today. Surely what he is doing is acknowledging that.

I have travelled a lot and lived abroad, as a result have friends and acquaintances from around the world and have seen what could be interpreted as racism from many quarters. I had a Nigerian BF whose mother would not acknowledge me or speak to me because I am white. I had Middle Eastern friends who views on Africans and Asians are unacceptable. The fear and dislike of those different to us is sadly widespread. But on the whole, it is better here than many other European countries; for example, try living and thriving in Hungary or getting a break if you are Moroccan in The Netherlands.

Judging someone or disregarding someone because of race, creed or colour is wrong. If you are a person who does not do that, then it is alien to your experience and I think that is where LF is coming from.

WeHaveSnowdrops

I very much dislike tokenistic characters (there is a show at the moment that is pissing me off because they have cast a BAME actor as a supposedly main supporting character and not actually given the character anything to do. Another (white, male, middle-aged )character of supposed parallel importance is getting all the love from the scriptwriters and they don't seem.to even notice.

But I suspect that a lot of what we think is historically accurate is less accurate than we think! For example, a while back there was a twitter furore over the BBC showing black Roman soldiers in Roman Britain. PC gorn mad, they said

But even I with my paltry Classics knowledge know the Romans explicitly stationed legions from different parts of the empire to oppress/keep the peace in each of their territories, after one time when they didn't and the soldiers decided they didn't want to side with the oppressors over their countrymen. It just always gets written about in popular culture as Italian-born Roman soldiers versus ancient Celtic Britons.

The Classics professors on twitter weighed in on the side of the BBC, and it died a death, but I wonder how much else of social history has been simplified to 'we woz all white back then'.

JamieVardysHavingAParty

Is your argument that no-one says stuff like that in front of 6/7 year olds or that no-one would have said anything like that in front of this 6/7 year old?

I am saying that I doubt that many children aged 6 or 7 have heard their friends or parents say to someone else, "you don't belong here because you are not white" - you are saying that most children of that age have heard those comments - suggesting that white people in the UK are inherently racist - this assumption (as I understand it) is what LF is annoyed about.

Having just read that 1/3 of teachers in Wales stated in a survey that they were not confident of being able to recognise racist behaviour in the classroom (the report was looking at Upper KS2 - Years 5 and 6) - then you have failed to convince me that 'white' children aged 6 or 7 understand the definition of being 'racist' - or have even been taught that specific word at school.

I repeat again "At seven my kids had been taught a slightly more advanced definition of that.

In which case -- why do Nike and Gillette etc. feel the need to 'teach' 'adults' about racism/sexism in their adverts? Maybe LF objects to being treated like a seven year old?

@MrsBethel

How's that for reading comprehension?

Pretty poor, I'd say.

I just think he’s not very bright - he’s said something that got him some attention and so he’s running with it - it’ll bite him on his arse further down the line

I am saying that I doubt that many children aged 6 or 7 have heard their friends or parents say to someone else, "you don't belong here because you are not white"

Does it have to be those very specific words now? No other kind of overt racism counts?

you are saying that most children of that age have heard those comments - suggesting that white people in the UK are inherently racist - this assumption (as I understand it) is what LF is annoyed about.

So Mr Fox is being professionally offended then. Or shite with numbers. Never go into the legal profession. You'd make a terrible defence solicitor.

Imagine we have 100 random children, and they are divided into classes of 25. They go to school with each other 5 days a week, in termtime.

Children repeat what they hear at home. Each class has one, maybe two, children from racist families. That is, as a percentage, 4-8% racist. By the end of the year, most of them could have heard racist language.

Now if you want to conclude that everyone in Britain is racist, go ahead. It's your opinion. But the rest of us, if we should hear or say that most people have been exposed to racist language, wouldn't make that logical leap. We stick at that statement, and later seek out to determine whether it is due to a set of people making regular racist comments. We don't assume it means the whole of Britain is on a rota to make one racist remark a year or that anyone is claiming that there is a rota.

This is not Quantum Leap and I am not Ziggy.

Having just read that 1/3 of teachers in Wales stated in a survey that they were not confident of being able to recognise racist behaviour in the classroom (the report was looking at Upper KS2 - Years 5 and 6) - then you have failed to convince me that 'white' children aged 6 or 7 understand the definition of being 'racist' - or have even been taught that specific word at school.

I imagine that meant they are not confident they can identify all racist behaviour. It doesn't mean teachers don't have a clue what is going on when Jimmy calls Raj that word that Jimmy's dad always uses when he sees Sadiq Khan on TV.

No doubt he's the kind of person who complains about Doctor Who on twitter and the recent trend in adverts to show more diversity.

You don't hear them getting outraged about child marriage, or the fact that abused women and girls are then blamed for the abuse they suffer. You don't hear this outrage about so-called 'honour killings'.

I don't think that's true at all. I think that's something that concerns a lot of people who might also share his views. The specific issue of the grooming gangs is just in the news at the moment because of the police chief admitting that fear of being called racist stopped them from adequately investigating...it fits exactly into his argument. That doesn't mean he doesn't care about any of the issues you raised.

P.S. In which case -- why do Nike and Gillette etc. feel the need to 'teach' 'adults' about racism/sexism in their adverts? Maybe LF objects to being treated like a seven year old?

Never seen the ads, so not commenting.

And as for the Prince Andrew/Epstein scandal, I've read loads about this in the main media over the last couple of months compared to almost zero (or very hidden away) articles about the numerous new grooming cases that are slowly being exposed. You've probably also read loads about his nephews not getting on, their wives not getting on and all sorts of other stuff about his family but you've probably read very little about all the other squabbling families in the UK. Not about race in that case, it is about Prince Andrew being high profile and lots of people being interested and far fewer wanting to read about the taxi driver in Rotherham.

On the other hand over the last few years we've heard alot of about men of Pakistani ethnicity abusing girls but very little about white men doing the same. I live on the south coast and it was well known this was going on, not round taxi drivers but happening round the arcades, a magnet for lots of kids. It warranted a little coverage in local paper but not seen anything in the national papers. Can't imagine why as I don't think the guy in Rotherham is any more interesting than the one on the south coast.

Iforsorrow . It warranted a little coverage in local paper but not seen anything in the national papers Was the little coverage about the arrest or trial of these white men?

A little bit about both in a paper that is for our town, only comes out once a week. I don't think it made the front page even here. I knew a foster mother for one of the girls, 14 with a baby, she was told she couldn't stop her going out to meet these men. She was white so were they. Obviously not race but I think there was a class issue, girls from families that often had problems anyway.

By the time it was dealt with I think the 14 year old would have been mid 20s. I don't know what happened to her. Foster mother couldn't cope so the girl moved on. FM said she was told men were queuing to have their turn with her and she just couldn't continue to do nothing. I think it caused issues with social worker who insisted it was the girl's right to go out and make her own decisions.