Ban the Burka? Q to Kier Starmer today-is this a good idea or not?

[happydappy2]

I know dictating to women what they can or can't wear is not popular amongst feminists. But is stating that they cannot cover their face a bad thing? There are many situations where faces have to be visible for security, ie in a bank you cannot wear a motorcycle helmet. I know some people will say if certain women cannot wear a burka they will not be able to leave their home....but isn't it better that women can just live their lives in the same way as men do, ie faces uncovered? Interested to hear others views. Personally having lived in Saudi Arabia I respected their customs when in their country but feel the UK should also be able to say, in our country, women can show their faces.

And what made them leave those countries and come to this one. In your experience?

sorry, just add - they don’t have to have been in any other country apart from their home country, they may have come from a country where multiple languages are the languages of that country. So, Lebanon for example - all the Lebanese I know speak fluent Arabic, French and English with some also speaking Italian. And my Romanian daughters in law for eg - they speak Romanian, English, Italian and Spanish, then there’s the Portuguese one of them also speaks fluently.

Just because the majority of those in Britain only speak one language and have absolutely no desire to learn another and not just because the think the whole world should speak English, it doesn’t mean everyone is the same.

I'm not talking about that. I know full well that in some other countries it is the norm to speak several languages.

I was asking in the context of refugees who have sought refuge in several other countries (not their homeland) before arriving in the UK

depending on what countries they'd been to before ending up in the UK "

They'd been to, not lived in as in their home country of origin

As in..if someone flees from Sudan to the UK, they'd presumably have to stay in several other countries for a considerable amount of time in order to learn several languages along the way. And if they were settled in those countries, why did they have to leave?

I'd someone spoke several languages due to their home country routinely using several, their ability to speak several wouldn't be a result of 'what countries they had been to before ending up in the UK ' wrt the quote above

@Weepixie also

I live in a country where it’s common for people to speak 3 languages fluently and ‘only’ speaking 2 languages fluently is the basic norm. In fact at a recent grandchild’s graduation about 12 of the 65 students graduating stood up when asked if anyone spoke 4 languages and I suspect in countries like the UK the majority of people have absolutely no idea of just how many languages people outside of the UK can and actually do speak.

I have no idea which country you live in but sure there are countries where it is the norm to speak 2 or more languages. But there many others that don't.
To suggest it's only the UK where the majority have no desire to learn another language and expect the rest of the world to speak theirs is ridiculous.

And if language wasn't such an issue as some pp have suggested then why does the UK spend millions on translation services.

Living in this country is a privilege not a right.

That isn't a universal law though, is it ?

@Lavender14
Any homeless person in the UK with complex circumstances is offered a warm hotel with free bed and board.

I'm not writing this to defend the wider point being made, but this detail is not true. Or perhaps depends on your definition of "complex circumstances". I had the misfortune to be homeless in an area where there was/is a lot of pressure on council housing. The basic rule was that you had to be considered to be "in priority need" to be offered a place in a homeless hostel or other emergency accommodation. "Priority need" included elderly, disabled, with dependent children, and one or two other things. You also had to prove you weren't "intentionally homeless" which was a very strict definition, and meet a few other things. The "priority need" rule was the one that ruled out most people though.

I was considered "not in priority need" and so they were happy for me to be street homeless. (They were actually wrong in this decision, I should have counted as disabled, but such is the pressure on housing, they want to deny as many people as possible because there's nowhere to put them.)

I now live in an area where there is more housing, and the rules are less strict. So more/most(?) people would be offered a hostel place. I find it upsetting and shocking how many people don't realise this isn't a general standard, who think local councils will help everyone who becomes homeless. They don't realise the fear of those of us who know that's not the case (and with increasing pressure on housing will presumably become worse in more areas).

As for "free bed and board" - not quite true, working people have to pay out of their wages. UC housing element doesn't apply, they have to get Housing Benefit which has tighter income rules. This can make homeless hostels prohibitively expensive (as they are far more costly per room, due to having staff etc, than renting a room in an HMO).

@GreenFriedTomato And if language wasn't such an issue as some pp have suggested then why does the UK spend millions on translation services.?

That's what I wondered as the NHS bill for translation services is £114 million a year.

If people can pick up languages due to 'passing through' various countries on the way to UK then we should have a useful group of polyglots arriving by dingy on a regular basis. If these multi-lingual people have a head start on others when it comes to work prospects (and actually want to work) I wonder why they throw their documentation away?🤔

@SerendipityJane That isn't a universal law though, is it ?

I'm not sure what you mean by that ?

@bridesheadremoved

That's what I wondered as the NHS bill for translation services is £114 million a year.

Gosh. That is horrendous.
I was led to believe it came out of a different budget. It really should - healthcare funding should not be for translation. It needs to come out of an immigration budget or something!

And those are figures from a couple of years ago , it;s probably increased by now.

If you want to give yourself sleepless nights you can read the full paper ;

https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/nhsspendingoninterpretersandtranslationservices

I agree with you, it should come out of another budget, say Foreign Aid

I'm surprised they list "Chinese" without saying if it is Mandarin Chinese (spoken in mainland China, or Cantonese (spoken in Hong Kong)

That £114 million might be preventing £500 million in claims against the NHS due to informed consent issue.

Of course.

Apparently not.

£2.8 billion was paid out in 2023/24 for compensation and associated costs on all of NHS Resolution’s indemnity schemes for clinical negligence claims, compared to £2.64 billion in 2022/23 for clinical negligence claims.
41%, or £1.15 billion, are maternity-related payments, the same percentage as 2022/23.

The two areas that generated most claims were A&E and maternity services.

You said : Living in this country is a privilege not a right.

But that doesn't apply to everyone does it ? You (generally) can't take away UK citizenship from people born here can you. (Unless they aren't white, of course).

So it's only a privilege for people coming here.

Hence it doesn't apply to everyone.

Hence it's not universal.

@SerendipityJane You (generally) can't take away UK citizenship from people born here can you. (Unless they aren't white, of course).

And they need to have dual nationality.

Shemima Begum was an exception because of the severity of her case.

This was the problem with some of the convicted Grooming Gang members. Some had dual nationality Pakistani/English and were facing deportation back to Pakistan. So some relinquished their Pakistani Passports to evade deportation.

Full story here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-63404698

can't take away UK citizenship from people born here

You don’t get British citizenship simply by being born here.

Aye, it's much more nuanced these days. Nuanced not being a synonym for better.

You certainly shouldn’t get citizenship simply by being born here.

Indeed. You should only get citizenship by not being born here.

Don’t be stupid. You should get citizenship based on your parents status not where your mother happened to be when she went into labour.

Where were all these people who are rightly claiming that covering one's face is anti-social, dehumanising and deeply impractical when we were all forced to cover our faces for the best part of two years under the Covid regime? The evidence for the effectiveness of masks in preventing the transmission of respiratory diseases was and remains extremely insubstantial and controversial. In any case, any potential benefit relies on masks being worn properly, and virtually no one did so during Covid - not even in medical settings.

It strikes we as pretty hypocritical. We can must all cover our faces for what our rulers deem "good" reasons, however debatable and tenuous those are. But it's a big problem when the authority figures of other cultures impose similar rules for different, non-West-approved reasons.

At least most Muslim cultures don't encourage or insist on the masking/covering up of children of either sex, unlike the Covid regime, where we had the horrifying sight of toddlers in masks.

Being me, regardless of the effectiveness of face coverings or otherwise (and I suspect that the care needed to make sure they worked in any meaningful sense meant they weren't. Effective, that is) didn't matter.

Wearing a face mask was a great proxy for how serious you were taking the pandemic and by extension the medical advice around cleanliness.

So for myself I was glad they were mandated, as that was a great way to keep myself and my family safe. Which it did. (Until September 2022 😡)

Er... ok? I'm not sure what your post has to do with the societial and social problems caused by universal masking, which was the topic of my post.

But your post does demonstrate the point that the true and primary purpose of mandated masking during the Covid regime was the same as it is in some Muslim cultures: state control - a forced display of compliance with a state-sanctioned ideology the individual may not subscribe to, whose basis in empirical evidence is highly questionable.

If you say so.

Personally I was quite happy to wear a mask when required. In fact I found myself wearing one when it wasn't required.

The pandemic was quite a useful experience in demonstrating how the average intelligence really does approach 100 as you increase the sample size. With the implications for distribution that brings.

I also had a vaccine, so you can be sure in your calling me a sheeple if you like.

As a colleague noted, it must have been hard having studied science to get a degree and beyond only to have [email protected] tell me how wrong I was.

The only "societal" problems I saw in the pandemic was how many people were willing to bet their lives on their own (or even worse other peoples) stupidity. And then I remembered I'd been reading the Darwin Awards for over 2 decades. And it was Boris Johnson on charge.