To think my normally sane DH is in danger of looking like a racist prick?

[FlamingoCrimbo]

DH just forwarded me an email that has been forwarded to him and to other people at his work by one of his colleagues.

I'm hoping he's not forwarded it to anyone except me - it doesn't look like he has.

It's one of those ones called 'border law'. Just found a US version here - swap the US references to UK ones.

DH is just misguided, IMO, sending this on - he ought to know I'd find it offensive. But it's made me wonder if IABU to find it offensive and to think it's probably been written by someone in the US equivalent of the BNP or at least widely distributed by BNP supporters.

So - AIBU and, if IANBU, how would you tackle it with him? He's very lovely, kind, and, sometimes, misguided so I don't want to upset him. I had to stop myself replying with 'you know this email makes you look like a racist prick, don't you' but that's not really very nice, or helpful!

skihorse - "if you give me a choice between MY child and a child on the other side of the world you can bet your arse which one I'll save" - thats natural and understandable - but you wouldn't claim it was ethical though would you? What if the maths changed? What if it was 10 children on the other side of the world or your child? What if it was 100 and some kid down the road?

As usual, daftpunk discovers something incredibly important she has to do somewhere else whenever someone challenges her views and asks her to justify them with a fact or two, rather than rant and rhetoric!

seeker..

..but....but.. she promised me she'd be back....

...when's she coming back?

skihorse - "we in Europe will (probably) be just hunky-dory thank you. "

Don't bet on it. How much of the energy resources are in Europe? How productive can European agriculture be without cheap energy? We are likely to remain dependant on the rest of the world for the forseeable future.

Since when is it a choice between "saving" your own kid or one around the world? Our children, even the poorer in the UK, live in luxury, while every 3 seconds a child in the 3rd world dies from preventable causes.

skihorse are you actually complaining that more Ethiopians didn-t die of famine? I am hoping that you did not mean that.....

And the only people being called BNP voters are in fact....BNP voters, you lemon. Stop twisting to make your point....

I think dp has some fantastic views, I would love to say half the stuff she does lol.

As for this thread,,,, blown out of proportion I think. It was a stupid email that goes through offices, hey I receive loads!!

"I think dp has some fantastic views, I would love to say half the stuff she does lol. "

Me too, I just couldn't keep a straight face

"I think dp has some fantastic views"

Do you mean the pseudo fascism or the aspect from her conservatory?

Keeping things in proportion is no fun though.

"Thanks to Bob Geldof and his ilk, Ethiopia went from a population of 25 million (in Live Aid days) people living on an unhospitable piece of land to the 80 million we have today. "We" now have an extra 55 million mouths to feed who are living on an unhospitable piece of land."

That's the most breathtakingly uninformed ignorant, uneducated and offensive bollocks I've read on here for a long time. And I am including the posts of the resident BNP members.

I went to Ethiopia in 1990, which can't have been long after the Live Aid thing. At the time, the population of Ethiopia was around 50 million (Not 25 million) but there had only been a couple of censuses and those hadn't included the wartorn areas - Tigray and Eritrea.

Yes, the population has increased. But in a country where there is no health insurance and no benefits system, children are how people provide for old age.

But don't worry skihorse. Bob Geldof hasn't done you a great disservice. The average life expectancy is in the forties, and the country is aids-ridden. So you won't have to support all those extra mouths for too much longer.

Although I doubt, somehow, that you're big on charitable giving ...

Skihorse what a very strange and cruel idea to entertain. You should rethink. When you read/heard/were told this, did it not occur to you to check? That's really awful.

ooji "you seem to believe that hypocrisy is a moral failing rather than an essential part of the human condition. I agree with your analysis of peoples motivations and priorities. I wouldn't criticise individuals for behaving in that way. I would behave in that way. That doesn't mean that it is ethically right though. "How ridiculous to say: I know what's right, and you all have to do it, even if I'm incapable or don't want to, just because I think it's right. " Well obvoiusly I didn't say that. I said that I know whats right, I don't expect it to happen but we should achnowledge that it is selfish. Pretending that there is an ethical reason for it is another hypocrisy."

This is meaningless blither. I don't get it at all.

There is so much reducto in this thread! But then it started off that way I guess. This is a perfect example of how crying racist makes proper argument impossible.

And yes, basically, from what I can see on one side there is a great deal of hypocrisy, apparently excused by a generosity with other people's money. On the other: a couple of revolting comments and an enormous amount of defensiveness and misunderstanding.

Nobody's going to bother to read Tether's links, I am quite sure.

OP, your DH's was not (I think) a funny email, but not the most blindingly racist I have seen either.

Here are a couple of random answers to points made earlier on this thread (I paraphrase the bits I'm putting in quote marks):

1. 'Why do people in fear of their lives want to come to Britain rather than stopping in the first "safe" [European?] country they land in?'

But many refugees/asylum seekers want to go to France, or Italy, or Germany, or somewhere else instead. (A few years ago I lived in Malta, where many asylum seekers were picked up when their boats were washed ashore - they wanted to reach Italy, not Britain.)

We don't read all their stories in the press here, because those stories don't make news here.

Maybe those who do want to come here feel an affinity with Britain in terms of a shared language, or culture?

1. 'It's human nature to feel more empathy with the child next door than with the child in Ethiopia.'

Yes, it is. But you can also feel empathy with both.

And, from a purely selfish point of view - if we don't give aid to countries such as Ethiopia, people from there are just going to travel from there to here ('the West') in search of a better life for themselves and their children.

Wouldn't you too undertake a heartbreaking journey to give your family a better chance in life?

But maybe you would prefer to stay in the village/town/country where you have family and friends? And perhaps you would do just that if someone (someone from 'the West'?) built a well in your village, or built a school or hospital nearby, or gave you a grant to buy a few chickens, or whatever it might take to make you want to stay put?

If you think this might be so, isn't 'giving overseas aid' a good thing?

Quatro I do give, but I have to be realistic. I don't have much money, I give to homeless people I see living in the streets around my home - and, this probably sounds lame, I'd love to have live in my own house an old person who doesn't have anybody else, is struggling with the bills and has been abandoned right here in our own countries. If Ethiopia is indeed as fertile and giving as you claim, why is it racing towards hell in a handcart? Again. We have been giving for 30 years, nothing has changed.

As I said, my earlier comments might sound harsh, but the world does not have endless resources and I think I have a pragmatic view. Have you ever heard of "blue oil"? Did you know for example that Israel has formed an allegiance with Turkey for water? Or that the mighty seemingly unstoppable train of China is wobbling on its tracks due to water supplies? Or that in future times it may be Canada who is able to bring the US to hand? Etc., etc.

oojamaflip You raise an extremely good point about cheap energy - and you're damned right - agriculture will be extremely difficult without said cheap energy. Which kind of brings us back to the immigration issue and over-crowding. But at least (I hope) up here in Northern Europe we have the luxury of fertile soil and regular rainfall, we're never far from the fertile coast and we have an abundance of lifestock who thrive in our climate.

And to the poster who actually suggested I let an Ethiopian child live over mine? Did you know that you'd actually fail most psychometric tests? Well... fail is objective but it wouldn't look good.

Someone else accused me of BNP? Un-fucking-believable haha.

Skihorse I still don't get your earlier comment but you seem more giving that Ooj who thinks we should allow the entire world to live off our resources (so long as she is not personally the giver).

Actually since Ooj suggested that it wasn't unreasonable to use some of our tax money to support those in need, she would be just as much the giver as anyone else. I think that she was just saying that she was no saint herself, and I totally agree with her about the at the least amoral attitude of those who essentially say that they really couldn't care less about the rest of the world so long as they themselves are OK. Which is unpleasant and short sighted.

The famines in Southern Africa have little to do with the amount of aid given, but like most humanitarian disasters are a combination of incompetency, natural circumstances (drought and flood being the most frequent culprits, with severe drought hitting at the moment), and war. If the area was more stable sustainable planning (at all levels, individual right through to governmental) might well resolve many issues. But it's not. However there have been studies about how aid can indeed cause many problems, with direct food aid being a particular issue. To me that means that more emphasis should be on the root causes of the food shortages, but obviously it's hard to do that at the same time as trying to stop people starving to death.

Northern Europe has been relatively blessed, but global warming will threaten us too (as well as having dire effects on poorer parts of the world). The trouble is that we can't seal our borders (even if we should wish to do so) so if the rest of the world goes to pot, then more and more people will try to move to safer places, and it will be very difficult to stop them.

Exactly -- other people's money. And people aren't saying they couldn't care less about the rest of the world. And to claim hyprocrisy is not a moral issue is bizarre.

There is a significant issue surrounding the politics of aid, and how much it helps or hinders btw.

"You know what I meant. I meant I don't want NG running the country but want the BNP to have MMP's (which they have) and MP's (hopefully will win Barking at next election)."

Do you live in Barking Daftpunk?

If you so do you rely on any form of social service/benefits/housing that a BNP influenced Barking & Dagenham Council might remove from you if you turn out not to meet their definition of "Britishness"?

Or are you happy for other people in Barking to pay that price safe in the knowledge that you won't just so that you can get a BNP "voice" in Government.

how any woman could support the BNP is a total anathema to me! they are not only racist/homophobic and xenophobic but misogynist too.

some of their more high up activists are rapists, wife beaters and the like..

just what we need to sort out broken britain.

god help anyone who is not a white , straight, employed man if the BNP get anywhere near gaining power.

ooojimaflip - "you are trying to lead me into the dangerous grounds of practicality rather than principle. It's POSSIBLE that restricting immigration leads to more well being in the long run - hard to analyse.

I don't think we are to far apart in principle though - we are arguing about methods rather that aims."

But practicality is where the exercise of morality becomes tricky. It's easy to claim what is, or isn't moral, when you deal with abstract theory alone. It's even easier when that abstract theory removes much of the elements which makes it's application complicated.

We are pretty far apart in principle.

If I understand you correctly you claim that not allowing unrestricted immigration is valuing your life above others and is therefore racist and has no moral justification.

I'm claiming that's nonsense.

"how any woman could support the BNP is a total anathema to me! they are not only racist/homophobic and xenophobic but misogynist too."

I strongly suspect, though am willing to be proved wrong, that Daftpunk doesn't live in Barking and Dagenham where she hopes for a BNP MP to be elected.

She's certainly insinuated that she doesn't want them running the whole country.

So it appears she wants them as some sort of protest voice but doesn't want to be somewhere where they might have any control over her life.

So perhaps she does know that life anywhere under their influence would suck, but is happy to sacrifice the people of Barking and Dagenham to achieve something.

skihorse try reading the posts before you get all shocked. Nobody called you a BNP voter, the only person who was called a BNP voter is DP, because she votes BNP. I'm not sure how much clearer that can be put.

Also, you can't "fail" a psychometric test. And nobody said you should save an ethiopian child instead of your own, it was pointed out to you that your child is not in imminent danger of starving to death or dying from a lack of clean water. You seemed to saying that it was a bad thing that more didn't die in the 80's famine...but you were given the benefit of the doubt on that one.

Harpy DP is not honest in her views, she posts outrageous comments that she refuses to explain or debate, when asked sensible questions she ignores them and disappears, every time she gets in a row.
There are many diverse opinions and the possibility of good debate, but not with the small minority who already have such entranched bigotry that means they are wannabe members, not just voters, of an established racist group. As you can plainly see, others with differing views on immigration have been engaging and talking.

peacocks - Hmmm, I may have got a little rambly there. It WAS late after all. I think Nooka has responded better than I did.

"Actually since Ooj suggested that it wasn't unreasonable to use some of our tax money to support those in need, she would be just as much the giver as anyone else. I think that she was just saying that she was no saint herself,"

My personal behaviour has no bearing on the issue.