The suspect bomb in London.... but this comment really annoyed me. It feels vaguely racist and yet I am not sure it is..

[BreeVanDerCamp]

All options, including the Irish, are open at this stage," said the source.

so jonathan ross ok, bbc, utter b* then?

No, Edam. We're all protected ....

Thank God for the PC police. I can rest easy now.

Yeah, wish they'd been around when the IRA was trying to bomb the shit out of me and every other bloody person living in or merely travelling through a major city. Would have been such a comfort.

Edam

I was.

But as you say, that was the IRA. Not the Irish as a race. I would have thought that following 300 + posts the differentiation had been made.

My point was that it it bizarre that everyone was getting so wound up about DC's post when the thread is about an immediate threat to life and limb.

it is bizarre

We shall have to agree to disagree, I have to much respect for you as lifer MNer.

Goodnight, God Bless.

No edam, the thread was about the racism of the original mark in the BBC report.

during the 70s and especially at the time of the birmingham pub bombings so many people didnt speak to my parents because they were irish - no more no less. They ignorantly assumed every irish person was a terrorist and therefore responsible for the loss of life that occured in brum. Yet in reality my parents were 2 of the gentlest and kindest people you could ever know. They were very very hurt by these ignorant actions .

OK, the news story that all the fuss was about concerned an immediate threat to life and limb.

I am in no way condoning any branding of particular nationalities, btw.

A family member runs his own firm and has/ had a lot of Irish people working for him.
When the bombs were being placed in vans in London this person had a feet of white transit vans, and one of the Irish chaps who worked for him would go off on jobs and come back day in day out, then people started phoning the family member and saying so and so did not turn up today so family member called the chap in to the office and ask him why he was not going to the jobs, and what he was doing. It turns out the poor bloke was terrified of driving the van in to London through the police cordons as he was sure he was going to get stopped and beaten for being an Irish man in a white van.

Jampot

In the 70's my aunt went on holidays to Greece. They went out for dinner and got talking to a lovely girl.

Lovely girl, got very very drunk. She started puking every few minutes in the restaurant. (nice)

This pompous arsehole, strode over to my aunt and said very loudly "You F*ing Irish , if you are not blowing us up you are puking all over us.

To which my very sober aunt replied, actually........she is English and from the home counties, would you like to mind her ?

Pre-conceived notions.....so dangerous.

was in londn today - on the underground and changed trans tice - had to gogle the news as i knew nothing

Respect to your aunt, Bree, what a perfect turn of phrase.

Thank you Edam.

We have all been blessed with the right words at the right time. It is my DD's deepest regret that I was not a barrister. He reckons I have words at will.

You should meet my dad, then. Very irritating, we are a fairly wordy family but none of us can never win an argument with him, even if he's only being devil's advocate.

I am glad the offensive comment has been deleted . Thanks for taking the time to clarify things.

But still really surprised that so many intelligent people seem to believe that claims of suffering make racism and bigotry acceptable.

Where do you draw the line?

Is "I saw something horrible when I was five and it marked me for life.." a better excuse for racism than

"These XXXXXXs, they came here, took my job, and pushed up the cost of housing so my dcs cant ever expect have a home of their own, in the area where they grew up"

Because the latter also reflects real suffering and if we have an economic downturn I expect the BNP will benefit to an extent.

For me, the key difference is that DC is Irish. Unless he's been making up his whole MN persona. His words were harsh but they are the words of someone who comes from that culture and was the victim of attempted murder at a very young age in a place which you'd think even terrorist bastards would leave alone.

Having lived in London through IRA bombing campaigns and lost a colleague and had other colleagues injured, I have NO sympathy with terrorists or terrorist sympathisers. Or the Americans who funded them, btw, since we are talking about nationalities.

I never resorted to blaming all Irish people for the actions of a few thousand nutters and I don't think anyone should. No more than I'd blame my fellow Britons for invading Iraq - lots of them marched against it. But I can see why someone in DC's shoes might hold very strong views, even if those views are abhorrent to many.

Well no doubt DC will come back to this thread and apologise to all those he offended and explain that he didn't mean any harm

You are giving him the benefit of the doubt when he has done very little to deserve it. DC likes to think of himself as an intellectual giant yet he is unable to separate a very bad childhood experience perpetuated by terrorists with the people of the country, the country he allegedly comes from .

He doesn't give a shit about anyone on here, he just swoops in offends and pontificates and fecks off again. I for one will be ignoring him from now on.

Oh, agree with you, generally have no time for DC and his fourth form debating tactics. But I felt for him when people who objected to his posts on paedophile priests started trying to attack him by outing him as a victim of child abuse. Wrong on so many levels. And IIRC his post was not merely about the evil men who planted the bombs, but about the people who supported them and celebrated when bombs went off. I can imagine being exposed to that might make you hate more than the individual directly responsible for the act.

blimey. Looks like I missed something here.

Do you remember anything about a toy shop bomb

Because I don't, and it would be a weird enough political statement to stick in peoples minds.

Even his anecdote is true, and I doubt it is, to me nothing excuses his sentiment towards a people. If you accept that, you accept an unending cycle of violence where people who have been mistreated go on to hurt others

The message has been deleted. Any chance we can leave it at that?

I recall the toy shop bomb, was there.
Is anyone here really claiming the Irish were that picky about which shop they bombed ?

My post was offensive, but I will personally apologise in the most grovelling terms to anyone who can point out one single factual error.

Various riots in Northern Ireland were described by the BBC as "ethnic cleansing". The IRA and Loyalist thugs enjoy widespread support.

Note the use of the present tense here.
The political parties which honourably and bravely struggled against violence have been relegated to the fringes when the Northern Irish got the opportunity to vote for violent thugs.

In elections that everyone accepts are scrupulously free and fair, the Northern Irish have put in power people who if they were (say) Serbs or Iraqi would find themselves on trial for war crimes.

The nature of the crimes of NI's leaders are not exactly unknown to the people of NI.

But they still voted for them.
Thus I feel justified in the use of the term "majority" when talking of their support for terrorism.

My post was offensive.

I will take that as an apology, thank you Domini.

Shake ??