Women's safety in Europe after Cologne

[DavidTCDaviesMP]

I have been invited onto Mumsnet to discuss the situation for women in Europe following the attacks in Cologne, and the challenge we face in Europe in trying to help millions of mainly young men, who are arriving in Europe from cultures which treat women very differently. I believe this is an issue which needs open discussion by political leaders yet is swept under the carpet. David Davies MP

emily I am delighted to hear you were adopted by kind and loving parents and that you were able to work through any residual issues you may have had from previous abuse - but it is unrealistic (I hope!) to compare your traumas to that of a sexually-confused war-child who may be a danger to both themselves and others around them. It is a social experiment when you bring a bomb into your house. Would I take in a little girl to my home who needed love and cuddles? Would I take in a boy soldier who'd been forced to shoot his father and rape his mother and then brain-washed into being canon fodder? You must learn to differentiate between two different scenarios.

I do not agree with tossing around allegations about poor mental health - happy to put my head above the parapet here and say I have serious mental health problems - doesn't mean I can't be lucid from time to time - but I try not to let my anxiety get out of hand or it'll all go Pete Tong.

The working classes were fed to the lions long ago - and with globalisation the lines have become blurred. You all remember "white van man" who was vilified on twitter the other year? There's confusion in this very thread - when I spoke of most of us being well-travelled and having met interesting people - emily brought up the issue of class and said that Nick Griffin is middle-class - and then went on to say racism it's not confined to one class - tbh I was a bit confused by her statement - is it the working-class who are racist or the middle-class?

But to give my thoughts - the North London elite see their Nigerian doctor and that simply lovely Hungarian girl who helps with the children and the Polish builders who put in the new bathroom so much quicker than "white van man". From their 5-bedroom houses they see wheelie bins put out on a Monday. My relatives (by marriage) see slums with people who don't work, sewage backing up in the pipes because the infrastructure built in victorian times wasn't designed to house that many people (and their waste), they see wheelie bins overflowing and rubbish in the streets. They're not seeing cultural enrichment.

Mave Im so glad you responded to emily in that way. I have just read through the posts last night and am staggered by the way many of you spoke to emily.
The poster who wrote that she had genuine concern for Emily's mental health and in the same post wrote that she hoped she had someone in real life who could tie her arms to her sides, should be ashamed.

Emily, I felt really sad to read about your experiences, and it made me think how particularly hard it may be to read horrible comments, like the ones you have picked out. Yet you keep going, trying to stand up to and highlight prejudice when you see it, against other vulnerable and hurt people. I admire you.

There are children in the care system who are violent due to feeling continually on hyper alert to danger, and perceiving it when it isn't there, because tragically that instinct has helped them to survive when real danger has been present. Children who have been soldiers are not
beyond the understanding of people who are used to helping very abused and neglected children. There are already services set up for them that have been around for years. There should be much more money put into child mental health and social care. The woeful shortage has nothing to do with refugees. The under funding and cuts need to be protested against and addressed, not used as a reason not to help refugee children.

I agre Bungo and then you have this
metro.co.uk/2016/02/18/care-worker-sexually-assaulted-patient-while-giving-her-a-bath-5703878/

how can a male 'carer' be allowed to was a female patient? That is outrageous.

and this

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2064957/Elderly-people-abused-carers-Neglect-bad-pensioners-wanted-die.html

where are all the right on luvies (this auto corrected to lunies) publicly campaigning and collecting signatures to raise the standards of elderly care?
The elderly who have built up this country and given so much end up as worthless beings looked after by people who get paid a pittance, have bad working conditions are often not very educated. This is not a dig at all the wonderful carers that give their time and compassion under appalling working conditions but at policy ignoring elderly care.

"There are children in the care system who are violent due to feeling continually on hyper alert to danger, and perceiving it when it isn't there, because tragically that instinct has helped them to survive when real danger has been present. Children who have been soldiers are not
beyond the understanding of people who are used to helping very abused and neglected children."

I understand what you are trying to say. However, on the other side it is girls in care who are among the most vulnerable citizens in the UK. It is girls in care who will have to share accommodation with newly arrived teenage men (not all children as we found out in the Sweden murder case), who do have sexist attitudes towards girls and who will be the most likely to suffer from such an influx.

All children in care need to be looked after properly.

This is an example of a wonderful service for traumatised displaced children
www.baobabsurvivors.org

And it was around before this current 'crisis'.

Twisted, not all of us said emily had mental health problems, in fact I stated a while back that I did not believe she had. She did however lash out quite nastily at me, but I let that go, it doesn't really bother me as she doesn't know me in real life and isn't really in possession of the full facts so is not really going to be able to make a fully formed judgement about myself or indeed others on this thread.

It is good that emily found a loving home after a bad start in life and has come through that. There are children within my family grouping from a similar situation and they are now thriving. But to compare them with a former child soldier there is no comparison really. Child soldiers need a very specialised kind of care that I don't think most foster carers in the UK can give it requires significant specialist counselling etc and as I understand it doesn't always work as sadly some of them go on to take their own lives etc. No one is saying that care shouldn't happen but it should be tailored and right and not compromise the care and well being of another child. As the slogan says "Every child matters". Where the money should come from? Unfortunately you and I are not in charge of the budgets for this.

Yes, working class neighbourhoods much like mine are at the sharp end of things. We've experienced budget cuts from almost every area and it's really truly difficult for all migrant and native alike. Answers, are in the governments hands as they hold the purse strings...

"All children in care need to be looked after properly." i agree 100%, but they are not. Funding is an issue as well as cultural and structural problems around care. I don't mean cultural in terms of other cultures but the culture of regarding girls in care as worthless and troublesome. How is the current dire situation of those in care going to be helped if traumatised young men from cultures where gang rape and gang sex assault is common?

if traumatised young men from cultures where gang rape and gang sex assault is common join their homes.

emily has been extremely rude and personal about other posters long before anybody did it to her twisted. Although I have to say I'm not keen on doubts about mental health being bandied around in arguments anyway.

twisted, so what's your view on Rotherham then, where a lot of the victims were in care and the care system let them down? Surely you must be of the opinion that the Jay and Casey reports are racist and shouldn't have been allowed? Since we're not supposed to talk about cultural factors surrounding sex attacks? What about the finding that a refusal to allow the discussion of race (which you advocate) was one of the factors which allowed the abuse to continue for so long? Or do those children in care not matter quite so much to you?

(As a side note, just because some of you may be interested, the jury went out to consider the verdicts on the current Rotherham case on Wednesday. There may be some interesting fall out from that.)

Why is this thread turning into the 'Emily' thread? Mave I agree about all the smug out of touch leftie lovies . They make me sick to my stomach. Signing letters and berating us. Let them open their million pound homes to refugees. Because they are not going to, any time soon, open their doors to the homeless or elderly of this country.

Bungo I agree with you. That was a rhetorical question I asked.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3453809/Let-migrants-demand-luvvies-String-millionaire-celebrities-sign-letter-urging-Cameron-intervene-refugee-crisis-Calais.html

Let's bare in mind that right on luvies are not necessarily particularly educated or have broad views. They just like to hear their own chatter like most other people.

What is absolutely sickening and ironic, however, is that they are campaigning as part of an elite club to change policy. How arrogant and deluded. This seriously pissed me off. They are not academics, they are not experts, they are not even stakeholders in this as they won't be affected by an increase in migrants. As i said before these stars don't need to make use of public services, they have the means to live wonderfully and safely whilst the poor of this country have to share scraps with ever more people.

So who on earth do these deluded stars think they are? Anything special? Fuck them, I say.

Yes Mavelus. They are not fighting for scarce public resources. So very easy to be generous when you want for nothing yourself.

Hi all,

Thanks for the numerous reports about this thread.
Can we please remind you all of the talk guidelines
We really don't like to remove discussions but if we end up removing so many posts that the discussion doesn't make sense then we will consider removing the thread.

peace and love to all

grace it isn't just the Polish put in the bathroom so much quicker -they probably did it so much cheaper too... my brother is a self-employed brickie.
Since the polish influx the wages have plummeted.
He is trying to build and maintain a life here - run a house for himself and his partner, hopefully one day have DCs (having IVF ), sort out a pension for his old age (he probably won't be up to heaving bricks around past 70). He is a hard worker and likes and is proud of his work (my dad takes pictures of interesting brickwork he comes across to show him ).
He is competing against Eastern European brickies who are just here to make money for the short term - so they live cheaply and either send money back or plan to move back, where the cost of living is much lower ...so they can afford to undercut my brother...and he wasn't 'raking it in' before.
There is nowhere really he could go that has a higher cost of living so that he can earn 'lots' of money to support him here in his old age.
(not sure if he did or not but he was talking about voting UKIP in the last election...he is that angry)
twisted said this
There should be much more money put into child mental health and social care. The woeful shortage has nothing to do with refugees. The under funding and cuts need to be protested against and addressed, not used as a reason not to help refugee children.
Emily said similar earlier ...it appears you both believe in the magic money tree.
This country is running at a deficit (£69 billion - £69,000,000,000 this year) - it spends more than it gets in revenue. That is that is around 10% of the total income....every year, the debt is going up.
So it borrows more money and pays interest on that money (billions a year) - which is further adding to that overspend.
As I understand it the deficit is so big that even closing all tax escape loops and taxing the rich more wouldn't be enough (there are iirc approx 30 million income tax payers in the UK and 64 million people in the UK that should put that 69 billion into some kind of perspective.) You can argue about where to spend the money we do have etc etc...but that is the reason the government is cutting welfare etc.
To stop over spending, to stop increasing the debt, this isn't even to pay the debt off - I doubt we could ever manage that.

There is no magic money tree - we have a kitty and not enough money in that kitty to pay even for what we currently have...

I do still think morally we have to help financially in the surrounding camps and take the most vulnerable.
(And tbh the most vulnerable will be more of a drain on resources than able bodied young men - assuming they can find legal employment and so pay taxes - although even then unlikely they will earn enough for their tax to cover their health costs etc)

But to say we can help everyone - immigration doesn't affect anyone's standard of living, housing etc comes out of a different government pot etc, we just need to invest more in services (especially services that bring in no revenue) ... is not the reality of the situation ...helping these people costs every single one of us one way or another.
So if you are well off and can afford to lose a couple of grand a year - fine (North London elite ?) Others could lose a bit and not really feel it (on some thread someone said something about how much we spend on coffee - not me though!)
But if you are one of the poorest in our society?
They are the one's that suffer the most..the people whose generosity is being tested the most.

Supporting people in the most expensive countries to live in is the least cost effective use of funds.

Well said Unlucky. I wish these luvvies would either put up or shut up. If they care so much about these people why don't they spend some of their fantastic wealth on supporting the refugee camps instead of trying to force more poverty on the people of this country. So much more good could be done by making life more tolerable for refugees in, or close to their own countries so that they can return when things improve. The answer is not always to let more and more people into this country when it means a lower standard of living for everyone except the fortunate rich.

"There is no magic money tree - we have a kitty and not enough money in that kitty to pay even for what we currently have..." Thanks, unlucky

I will say again for those very few on here who continue to ignore one salient fact: No government has its own money.

It's income is derived from various taxation: corporation, inheritance, personal income, VAT, capital gains, stamp duty, etc. If I ran my household the way all British govts have run the Treasury, without making serious adjustments, my family would be on its knees by now.

Sonya ..... "Supporting people in the most expensive countries to live in is the least cost effective use of funds."

I have had to re-read your post above several times, because it is such a truism. That means, could mean, that everyone's notion of assistance is wrong. Have to go away and think about this ........

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/nine-year-old-yazidi-sex-slave-raped-by-10-isis-militants-is-now-pregnant-and-could-die-delivering-10170743.html

I want to weep.

She is now receiving medical care in Germany, thank God.

THESE are the kind of people who need to be prioritized, and brought over safely.

Not strapping young Algerians who have decided they want to become a European, because...well, because.

I have just seen this - Denmark criminalises free speech. I hope this is a reporting error.

www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7452/denmark-free-speech-islam

NewStatesman ...... At the end of the vid, did you hear what the leader said. Apparently he welcomes Yazidi fighters to join his group but only under the Kurdish flag.

I can't seem to find anything else specifically about that, Britt ... however there's this from www.legal-project.org:

Article 266(b) of the Danish Criminal Code criminalizes "expressing and spreading racial hatred", making it an offense to use threatening, vilifying, or insulting language intended for the general public or a wide circle of persons. In 2001, several Danish politicians were convicted under this provision for allegedly making "anti-Islamic" statements. More recently, in June 2010, the Danish crown prosecutor sought to lift MP Jesper Langballe's parliamentary immunity so that he could face charges under Article 266(b) for publishing an article about the creeping "Islamisation of Europe" and the subjugated status of Muslim women

I imagine most would agree that deliberately spreading hatred is to be condemned. However the question seems to be how different countries actually apply the laws about this, and especially who they apply them to - complicated of course by the issue that any remark short of slavish admiration is instantly labelled by some as racism, bigotry and all the rest ...

TheNewStatesman That poor girl. :( Yes, that is who we ALL extend our hearts and hands to.

unlucky "Globalisation and its discontents". Aaaah, the magic money tree. My very young son needs psychological support - I will need to wait approx. 4 months to get an initial assessment. I'm terrified, he's talking suicide. Resources are already stretched - praise the magic money tree for it will grow magical resources for all! (I'm planning to pay for private, however unlike Emma Thompson I'll go without heating + food to do so).

New Statesman because they are bored, reports the BBC. www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33986899