To be ashamed that we have caused people of this country to live in fear?

[FinalInstructionstotheAudience]

Watching news. People, ordinary people apart from the colour of their skin, are being threatened, their business ruined, and are petrified to step outside.
Because a few ignorant, selfish, thuggish women and men, who don't have the wit to understand that social media spouts false information.
They don't want to understand what is happening, their herd mentality kicks in and off they go. They even take their kids. A new summer holiday past-time
What a disgusting country this has become

Ok, apologies @ChardonnaysBeastlyCat

You want to imprison democratically elected politicians? Wow. That is a scary viewpoint. Who gets to decide these democratically elected politicians are punished - you?

If you think you can do better, why not go get yourself elected (if you even can).

I agree. "We" don't.

They weren't all brown either.

'Ordinary people apart from the colour of their skin' is quite an unfortunate sentence. My brown skin is perfectly ordinary, I think....!

Agreed

But they may not be living in council accommodation either. My partner and I are immigrants. We have never had any state support in 25 years we’ve lived here.

so it was OK that they were welding weapons , slashed the sky vans tyres and terrified the female reporter ? Why exactly ? we have to tackle violence and intimidation by all groups not pick.and choose !

No, I'd imagine they were deterring the various mobs who have been attacking up and down the country. Have you seen the carnage and damage they're causing?

One of my best friends (she's white, not that it should matter), lives a street away from the riot that happened in Sunderland, and she was petrified for herself but even more for the people of colour who live around her.

This Wednesday apparently the EDL are pitching up in Brentford (London) to do god knows what, and I've told all my family to stay in, don't go out.

In fairness it's not incorrect that migrants get access to social housing but what people fail to realise is that asylum seekers being giving social housing still have to follow the same due process as everyone else. Properties are not just given away. Migrants still have to use the same bidding system as everyone else and will be bidding against hundreds of other people. The previous tenant in my current council flat was an asylum seeker and another asylum seeker has just moved in to the council flat beside me. Neither were simply given their flats. They had to go on a waiting list.

I think another thing people incorrectly talk about is migration impacting on jobs but people don't realise that many will take relatively unskilled jobs because they still pay per week what you can live on for a month in some countries. What is low paid to us may seem quite well paid to others.

of course we have seen the carnage ! But if every group of men take to the streets in balaclavas and welding weapons how is that going to help ?

I know you're not doing this specifically here, but I see a trend of calling anyone who disagrees about the housing situation or many other political and social situations, including immigration, a "far right" or "low IQ" thug. This is not helpful either. The thugs are the people on the street inciting violence and damage.

People are consistently attacked on here and in real life if they have a view point that's critical to popularised left politics. It takes away proper discussions.

For example, the response "educate yourself" is a put down, often used by left-leaning people. It's snobby, dismissive and dangerous.

It's the easiest and most low-intelligent way to shut down discussion, engender hatred and division and, potentially, incite violence further down the line when people don't feel listened to.

Our education system has a lot to answer for this - we should be teaching kids to consume well-balanced journalism & off social media & not pander to disseminating small chunks of information on platforms e.g. BBC reels style news.

Oh sorry, I didn't see or hear anything about anyone in Birmingham slashing tyres or harassing a woman. That's obviously disgusting behaviour, and as other people have said, it's an all man thing.

But, from my context as a daughter of a woman from the 70s whose community felt the same violence from skinheads, the reason that the majority of them are congregating are in response to what we're seeing from the white mob.

As an aside, doesn't it feel awful to distinguish groups of people by skin colour? What a weird, dystopian reality we've come to this week.

To be ashamed that we have caused people of this country to live in fear?

You might have done. I certainly have not. Do not include me in your shame.

Agree 100%. It's breaking my heart.

This isn't anything new. It's just more obvious now than before because of the amount of people now affected. I'm Jewish and my children's school have had to further increase security since October. They do multiple bomb sweeps a day. We always have guards outside our schools because there's a constant threat but since October the amount of guards has doubled. As parents, we partly fund this security by ourselves, £1600 per child. This is for a primary school, by the way, so the kids don't even know what's going on and don't understand why people want to hurt them.

I was really hoping the world would learn from the threat Jewish people have lived under that they need to do better, but no. Instead, they largely ignored it and have now instead doubled down and hate even more people than before. So that's fun.

No one should be afraid to be themselves, to embrace and be proud of their own culture, religion or even skin colour for fuck sake. It's beyond absurd.

(And before anyone starts at me - I know it's not just Jewish people who have been living in fear up until now. I am just speaking about my own experience, I can't really do so about others!)

I’m horrified about all the Jewish people scared to walk about on the streets since last October.

I’m disturbed by the double-standards of the police, the government and the ‘morality police’ on here - who get away with quashing any attempts at even handedness.

a tenth of these are refugees, many of whom are living in tents, yes, or under bushes, or in shop doorways, or sofa surfing with friends and families or relying on charities, such as the one in my spare room currently, who has been destitute since getting refugee status, and placed here by "refugees at home" to get him off the streets. They don't get housing.

The other 90% have come here to take up work, many highly qualified, many working as teachers, doctors, nurses, etc, and well able to provide their own housing. Some in lower paid work, and often living in HMO in shared rooms.

What would you like to happen? Low paid work not done? Supermarket prices sky rocket because of crops not brought in? Teacher and doctor vacancies unfilled? If you have a child in secondary school there is a good chance at least one of their teachers is a refugee - in fact, without the number of refugees we have teaching maths, then every school in the country will be suffering even more from deficit of maths teachers.

Or is it the refugees you want to be thrown back into the sea? They don't get housing.

maybe you should consider what position you will be in next week if our local supervolcano blows, and takes out the British isles. Which it one day will do

You and your family will be refugees.

Were they carrying giant knives to protect themselves from the unarmed protesters that weren't even there?

So we just allow about a million a year so by 2030 the population is reaching 80 million and on and on. 700,000 is one year's immigrants.
No housing, no roads, no schools for these huge numbers - oh, maybe that will result in complaints from locals or even riots in the streets - haha, as if.

As I said, I was watching for a portion of the evening on tiktok live, and it looked like a group of Asian men standing around an area in Birmingham. I didn't see any sign of rioting, no smashing windows or burning cars or looting. It looked like they were near a mcdonalds but that survived the crowd, you didnt have people smashing windows and running off with the big macs to make this country great again. I didn't personally see a single machete, although it wouldn't surprise me if they were armed with whatever they have in their homes. They're not exactly up against a mob of fairies are they?

I wish we had enough of a police force so that the violence was stopped right at the root. Instead you've got a few dozen coppers trying to hold a line while the mob do their utmost to start a fire in a hotel. No wonder communities feel the need to protect places themselves.

Also, in fairness, being an asylum seeker does make you eligible for social housing when many, many others are not.

in my city, you're not even eligible for the social housing list unless you come from certain demographics - over 50s, asylum seeker, in receipt of certain state benefits, care leavers etc.

And yes, they're all competing for very, very limited social housing but there are many families and single people living in poverty in insecure costly rentals who don't meet the criteria to even apply.

When people are competing for limited resources and some people struggling in poverty can't even apply, people get pissed off and it creates division and anger and frustration.

You know that isn't additional population, don't you? People reach the end of their lives and die. People also leave the country. This doesn't represent a million increase. (no where near a million anyway)

That sounds so obvious but I am not sure if you have grasped that.

I am sorry, I obviously phrased that clumsily! I meant no offence. Just trying to say ordinary as in you, me, anyone just trying to live a life, but whose skin colour makes them a target for thugs!