Tommy Robinson asked to leave a restaurant because staff felt uncomfortable serving him…

[harriethoyle]

… AIBU to enjoy this?!

If you spout objectionable views, don’t be surprised if people object to you!

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/tommy-robinson-kicked-out-hawksmoor-london-b1231594.html

I would not want to serve a man who I know views me with contempt and wishes I was not in the country. I also would not want to serve a man who galvanised his followers to block desperate women from accessing services aimed at women escaping violent situations.

If bakers can be protected from making cakes for gay couples because they disagree with the messaging on their cake then refusing to serve somebody because of the views they hold should be equally fine.

I feel the same about serving religious people who are so judgemental they think I am going to hell - but unfortunately for us both we cannot discriminate based on belief (so long as it is a protect belief)

That case was about whether someone with one belief should be forced to aid someone else pushing an opposite belief. If the cake had been a cake with no message, and the baker denied service due to the beliefs or sexual orientation of the customers then I am sure he would have last.

Aaah, so it’s a diploma and or a socio-economic class that define who you are and the worth of your intellectual contribution rather than the merit of the contribution itself?

Very progressive.

Why would those things that you refer to not be reasonable indicators of ability because that person has reached a particular educational standard (which is in theory available to anyone to obtain)? That would in practice be an indicator of worth too.

You go to work to do your job. The job you’re getting paid to do so you should do it.

Consultants, surgeons, doctors etc have to treat some rather unsavoury people. Would everyone be saying the same if they turned around and said nah, not treating him!

As an educated left wing progressive, who has literally taken to the streets to oppose racism, with an interest in the arts, my opinion is this. I may well find myself more in agreement with a bunch of "left school at 16" TR fanboys than a bunch of labour voting professors in a uni arts department. The world (especially the self-proclaimed progressive / academic left) has gone nuts

It's a worthless argument because academia is a left wing echo chamber; rather proving the original point.

He was a member of the BNP, a white nationalist party.

Have you seen the nonsense that educated elites have come out with in the last 10 years. When Lammy thinks men can have cervixes and Starmer thinks women can have penises, why on earth would you assume a no-nonsense "I tell it like it is", uneducated brickie not be infinitely more capable of making a decent point than a queer theory infected woke-ist?

That's not correct. You have a right under civil law to refuse service as long as it's not discriminatory. I would refuse to serve Andrew Tate because he's a violent misogynist who preaches hate against women.

It’s a private place so they can kick out who they want. Good for them.

Completely agree.

I remember hearing that the staff at the Royal Alexandra Hospital had worked hard to save the life of Khalid Ahmed - the man who tried to blow up Glasgow Airport.

So I’m pretty sure the serving staff could manage to put a steak down on Tommy Robinson’s table and you know, just get on with their lives.

They can now. They couldn't up until 5 minutes ago, and trans identified men are still trying to overturn that ruling in court. It's also not permitted to refuse a trans midwife in the NHS for example.

Ok so take gender identity out of the equation if you must, I am sure many trans identified people would disagree with you that it's not a protected characteristic and we are certainly expected to behave as if it is. I couldn't sling someone out of my business establishment or refuse to deal with them purely because they were trans.

But the fact still remains, you said all protected characteristics were equal in law, it's just that some people face more discrimination than others. My example shows that while you may possibly be right in theory, in real life you are very wrong. No straight white male is getting any protection in law when anyone discriminates against his whiteness, his sexuality or his maleness. It happens daily in the name of DEI and it's totally legitimised.

The sort of invective regularly directed at straight white males with 'white male privilege' frequently verges on hate speech and would be considered hate speech if it were directed towards anyone with a protected characteristic that marks them out as a minority of some sort in this country. But it's tolerated, ignored and indeed encouraged to discriminate against white men and speak disparagingly of white men, and to hammer home negative stererotypes towards white men these days.

With the possible exception of trans identified males who might be turned down for a job or refused service for being trans, there is no protected characteristic in being male and white and straight, is there? But that brings me back to point A. Gender Identity as a PC.

Age isn't really a protected characteristic either. Again, it may be in theory but in practice there are far too many exceptions and caveats where it isn't, to the point that it's pretty useless claiming it as a protected characteristic for most people.

Don't get me wrong, I am not making a case for the poor, hard done by white man. I am just making the point that while in theory we may all have the PCs of age, sex and race, in reality that means absolutely nothing for a huge swathe of people.

Many people are allowed quite legitimately to be barred from certain positions, activities and events by people whose PCs apparently trump theirs, or by organisations that have a DEI policy that discriminates against certain demographics in the name of being a 'safe space' for other demographics, or for reasons of positive discrimination. The problem with positively discriminating for certain cohorts of people, is that you in order to do it you have to negatively discrimate against others, don't you?

So you are saying that TR is a white nationalist because he was a member of the BNP for one year, over 20 years ago? Have you evidence that he agreed with everything the BNP stood for, and have you evidence his viewpoints are the same now as they were then?

You might be right, I am not certain of all his views. The one thing that I do know for certain is that people espousing views like you are, are normalizing the idea that being "hard right" or "white nationalist" or "racist" are nothing to be ashamed of, because half the country are all of those things.

Post of the thread 👏

Well I hope they are getting their policy in order, because they are going to have to apply it consistently.

Why is that that it matters so much to you to start with? The source, the provenance, the purity. It shouldn’t.

I don’t know what happened to unis, but what I learned there in my time is that you had to analyse everything scientifically, solely based on facts and rigorous logical thinking, neutrally, without biases or blinds, independently, and once you had reached your conclusion, you should not be afraid to speak out, even if you were alone to do so.

Academia and the Left have changed a lot. For the worse.

I don’t think his life depended on eating a steak in the Hawksmoor.

😆 🤣

Come on. Are you saying that all your colleagues are prone to such delusion?

The English education system at university level is genuinely world leading. It did not get there by being manned by idiots and it will continue to be very able and expert. To suggest the transgender issue is indicative of wholesale intellectual rot is not reasonable. The world respects the UK for its highly educated and capable academics.

What views have I espoused (I wasn't aware that I had espoused any on this thread, just stated a fact) that lead you to this pretzeled conclusion?

Which country are you talking about?

Have you worked in academia because I can assure you, until you have, as noble as your thoughts are, they are naive.

🤣🤣🤣

When are people going to learn thatthat these days you need to do your own research. These people who think Robinson is "far right" or hates non white people should remember that the same telly box insisted that men were women and it was a conspiracy that covid came from a lab in China. As someone upthread said, start by watching his Oxford Union debate (still on YouTube I think) or documentary. It has taken me a time to get in the habit as I remember when the BBC was a trusted journalistic source (ha ha) but its well worth doing.