(i know i probably am) To be disapointed that whilst at my local shopping parade all around me were foreign.

[MAMAZON]

I don't want to start a UCM type thread but it just struck me how prety much everyone i saw at the shops earlier was foreign.

no one seemed to be speaking English at all.

a polish good shop is opening here soon and i am interested to see a more extensive range of food than the meagre polish section in tescos

eastern europeans seem interestingly good users of the local pool ive noticed

it does amuse me when particular places are mentioned on threads just because it is so bizarrely arbitrary

sd lol at bicester which is really quite a small town and finsbury park being used as examples of anything representative

but i guess no more or less so than any other random place

and interesting to see that shorty is so mebracing of the views of her south african colleagues rather than her polish ones.....

the only huge row about race i have been literally stuck in the middle of was on a singles weekend a few weeks ago when we had a group meal and the perfectly pleasant south african guy started a very controversial discussion which led to a blistering and bitter row of very long held robust views with me trapped in the corner by the two protagonists

it was not very nice as they kept trying to bring me in and unlike when people post on mn i couldnt escape

blahb;ahb;ah ramble

I grew up in a very mixed, inner city area of London and lived a stone's throw from Finsbury Park for a few years, Shorty, and I think you are talking absolute bollocks, sorry. Dress it up any way you like. You've got serious prejudices that you haven't faced up to. You're the sort of person the BNP love. The racist who doesn't think they're racist.

well it may or may not be a good shop i meant food shop

And if you were racially abused, you should have reported it to the police@Shorty. Tarring everyone with the same brush because you've been shouted at by one 'foreigner' is simpleton behaviour.

and always a fatal error in any kind of discourse like this to say anything like and i am not a racist my best friend/husband is black/gay etc

because it undermines your argument strangely enough

lol@zippi. Yep. To me, it screams 'I have issues with race and am in denial!'.

I'm sorry but LOL @ 'No I am using Patios to prove a point'

LOL at zippi muttering on to herself...

I used to live in Finsbury Park. I was a kid there. I am Irish. People used to complain about us coming over here and having all these bloody kids and nicking the jobs. Then loads of Cypriots moved in and we all comp[lained about them coming over here and nicking all the jobs. Then West Indians came and that pissed the Cypriots off. Then it was.... oh screw it I can't remember who was next.
I moved to Oxford to get away from all that malarky and you'll never guess what happened. Just moved to Guildford and my new cleaner is Polish.

Fuckers. I blame the Irish

"places such as Frinsbury park and other estates and tell me you do not feel uncomfortable or unsafe in these areas tell me that not everywhere you look there is not one English person"

"never said that either the fact of the matter is Finsbury Park is not full of English people"

"Yeah I have lived in Finsbury Park and this is not about blacks or whites. Obv alot of you are not grown up or open minded enough to view other people's opinions maybe if you look at the bigger picture you will see my point"

Nope, still can't see your point.
It seems very much like your point was people in Finsbury Park not being English making you feel unsafe, but then you changed your mind and just don't feel safe in Finsbury park, but have no reason why, and it isn't to do with foreign people so I have no idea why it would even have been brought up on this thread.

Oh, well.

MRSMattie When was the last time you went to Finsbury park??? On a real If it makes me a racist because I don't agree with the things your saying then ok! As for the BNP I am sure they did really well in local elections recently mostly in the towns hmmm funny that init maybe I am not the only person that disagrees with certain aspects of our country! It was not one person in Finsbury park there was quite a lot of them and the police was protecting them as you can imagine thousands of Arsenals fans walking back to the station getting abused by loads of people are likely to kick off. It happens all the time in Finsbury park! And other areas of London. As I have stated I don't have a problem with Foreigners I don't dislike someone because of where they come from. As for the South Africans I do get on well with some of the polish as well and go out drinking with them and yes they do know my opinions on the state of our country etc

and I live in London and would not feel any more uncomfortable in an area with a high proportion of 'foreigners'
agree very much with cestlavie in being more indimidated by groups of stella lager lads

in general I think migrant workers come here to work hard and improve their lives a bit

nothing wrong with that...

Me and DH say the very same thing!

Our parents - Irish and West Indian, respectively - had to put up with the whole 'No blacks, no Irish' thing for years in Lodnon. Fast forward a generation and my Irish builder is complaining about the 'bloody Poles taking our jobs', my Guyanese MIL is saying things like 'watch those eastern Europeans - they are all thieves' ...oh, and the BNP in our area have suddenly decided the Irish are alright (just a few years ago we were all IRA-supporting, murdering Micks) and that actually, it's the Muslims who are taking all our jobs.

It's pathetic!

large groups are often intimidating for whatever reason

i think racism has really crept back into football the last few years which is sad

i saw a very brief bit of st trinians the great train robbery on sunday and was at the stereoptype represented in that

amazing how things have changed as far as racism is concerned in the last 40 years

changed for the better

swc. elegant post.
FWIW I always think prejudice and fear are close bed fellows.

What on earth is 'On a real'? Is that the same as 'Really'?

I actually like it that i hear a lot of foreign voices around. In my local tesco we have a kosher section, polish section and african sectin and japanese section as well as world foods generally. these sections are very well used by those particular communities/minorities as well as english people having a look to see what might be there.

As someone else pointed out, very feew are indiginous english and most would hvae immigrated here at some point - case in point early 20th C and late 19th C waves of immigration from eastern europe and ireland - quite like our current wave from eastern europe. People kick up a fuss and then next generation integrate into british life and are almost if not totally indistinguishable and all the fuss dies down again.

I am sad to hear that UCM's been banned though - wasn't she of "Is that you UCM fame"?

oh i have just thougt of an even narrower reference of a place to use

does anyome knopw syon lane

my late great aunt bought a semi there when they were first built in the 1930s and it was all young white couples

by 1990 it had changed completely and she was a minority white face and indeed just about the only original resident but she didnt feel intimidated by her neighbours because she knew them and accepted them and vice versa but she was intimidated by the huge amount of traffic roaring past so that she had difficulty crossing the road

so being elderly doesnt per se mean you cant cope with population mobility but it does make all sorts of changes in life difficult to cope with

ramble ramble in irrelevant way

Shorty, I'm sorry but your arguments just sound weak and fuelled by Daily Mail-esque scare stories about 'the state of our country (exclamation mark!!)'. It's silly. The country is no worse 'state' and is probably in a much better 'state' than it has ever been at any point in history, so you can calm down about that.

In answer to your question, I left Stoke Newington last year, so was in Finsbury Park on a daily basis until then as it was my nearest tube station. It's a highly mixed area - a lot of Poles, North Africans, West Africans, West Indians, and still a fair few Irish. I'm sure there is some racial tension there - the world is not a perfect place and it is sometimes difficult for lots of different types of people to all get along - but on the whole, most people in that area are able to live together and get on with it, as they are in Stokie or Dalston or Camberwell or Kilburn or any of the other multiculutural areas with pockets of social deprivation that I have personally lived in in London.

The BNP prey on people who are unable to look at the bigger picture. It's so easy to blame 'immigrants' for all society's ills (immigranst, by the way, often seems to include all sorts of different people - from asylum seekers and refugees, to British born Asians in the East End, to Poles, who are EU members and legally perfectly entitled to live and work here...).

Those who voted for the BNP -well, I pity them. They will end up vile, bitter racists ranting about 'foreigners\ while the rest of us get on with our lives and thank God we live in such an amazing city.

there are far fewer poles coming asnd staying in the uk now than there were i think or the rate has slowed because poland is actually doing considerably better economically than it was and wages and prospects there are much better than they were

it is surely a good thing that countries in europe exchange economicaslly for the general improvement of the whole of the ec

I've just read the first two pages and skipped to here so sorry if i have missed much!
First i want to say my grandmother is italian.
But i do feel somewhat uncomfertable in situations where i am the only white brit.
I am not racest in the slightest. but sometimes i feel intimidated.

I was on the tube in london. The Line that runs from Wembly into the center. (from scotland so i couldnt tell you what it was called)
Three black males got on. I was pregnant, about 7 months, i was showing anyway and was wearing a dress and nice wedged sandles, my feet were killing me so i took my flat shoes out of my bag, while in the middle of changimg my shoes these three black guys barged into me.
They didn't say sorry and kept on walking, right up to a man who was sitting along on the next carrageway. One boy smacked him with a rolled up newspaper, then they snapped his gold chain from his neck. Two of the lads PICKED HIM UP while the other one went through his pockets.
There were two fit and able men sitting in the samw carrageway and they didnt do anything to stop them. I stood up to ask the guy if he was okay, when i did one of the black guys bulled out a blade and told me to 'sit back down, white slag '
These boys were around my age, i was 21 at the time, maybe younger, but they had accents, not london spoken anyway.

Still the two men said nothing! So obviously they were intimidated also. The man who was on his own, was shaking, and the three muggers got off at the next stop.

I agree that the boys could very well have been white brits, as i know that they are no angels, but it is this situation that has made me weary of my surroundings.

Please NOTE I did not vote for the BNP! Also My fathers family are all Irish! I never said it was there fault to the state of the country I just pointed out some of the faults of the government with benefits and how rather annoying it is when all you hear all day is any language other than English!

regardless to what u believe in areas of London you are not welcome if you do not live within there society or come from their country not just for English people but people in general and them areas are can be dangerous to walk thru.

ah yes. i too am often weary of my surrounding....