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George Floyd/Black Lives Matter Protests


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One thing about statues is that often seem to be of folk you have never heard of. Who put them all up? Nepotism at work in the local authorities? Wealthy landowners back in the day commemorating their own?

Dont really see it as part of kids history education to have to who a random statue is and then explain it's some rich slave trader.

Open season on statues IMO. No one cares, and those who pretend to are just projecting other thoughts

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6 hours ago, GordonS said:

The people who own the statues. They should listen to all the voices, decide which are good arguments and which are bollocks and then, the bit they've all failed with over the past three decades, actually do something about the really obviously terrible ones.

My own opinions:

Churchill's achievements outweigh his sins, but really everyone needs to get onboard with the obvious fact that he as racist AF.

Victoria didn't own or trade slaves and she didn't have meaningful political power to do anything about the issue. By all accounts she was particularly kind to black and Asian people.

Francis Drake - yes, get him down. He raided ships for loot, took slaves he found and sold them at the next island. He and his cousin Hawkins went to Africa and enslaved between 1,200 and 1,400 people, and according to contemporary accounts that probably meant they killed three times as many. One of the best things to come out of all this is that we're learning these facts - I didn't know this before yesterday.

Which Wellesley? Wellington?

Yeah, sorry Duke of Wellington. Don't want to upset our neighbours across the Channel.

In all seriousness I think it is a fascinating and unansweraable question - who decides?  The people? The same people who voted in Boris?   It's a pity it will not get discussed because people will just shout.

So we keep a racist alcoholic and the Empress of India but not the man who enriched the country and helped stop an invasion? Everyone has more than one trait, regardless you will 'offend' someone.

And there was also the point that if you remove these statues and street names, people will forget about slavery within a generation.  Made by Sir Geoff Palmer before Outraged from Milngavie comes on. 

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17 hours ago, NotThePars said:

Willing to put everything that I've got that the majority of people involved in ripping that statue down have devoted more time and energy on these issues that you're weaponising than you ever have

 

I'll double down on that bet. In my experience, people who give a fúck about systemic racism, or homelessness, or inequality, tend to give a fúck in general. It's what I see as being a decent human being. Not cool or virtue signalling, just decent.

As wattoo said previously, we are all subject to a capitalist system. The difference is that some of us don't accept that this system is unchangeable.

Edited by WhiteRoseKillie
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15 hours ago, WATTOO said:

Oh temper temper now !!

Being honest I don't really care too much about what happens in the states as we've got more than enough problems closer to home, the fact that this has spread over here has made it something I DO feel strongly enough to comment on, hence why I'm here.

Black lives do indeed matter but so do everyone's lives in my book, I don't differentiate by someone's skin colour, their religion or anything else. It just makes them a person to me and equal to one another which is more than can be said for some I could mention, so i wonder who the REAL racists are.................

What has spread over here? You are aware that "we" had a thriving trade in human beings a century before the United Staes even existed?

You are aware that within living memory it was legal to discriminate against human beings on the grounds of their skin colour in this country?

You really would be better off stepping away from this forum, and doing a bit of reading. Your last paragraph is just pathetic.

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14 hours ago, WATTOO said:

That's certainly NOT what I was saying, on the contrary I was making the point that we're all to blame of being part of a system which sees multi Billionaires on one side and people who are starving to death on the other, that's just not right and rather than happening 300 years ago it's happening right now.

 

Some of us have dedicated a fair amount of time and indeed money over the years trying to break that system and move on. Unfortunately, that's apparently made us, among other things, "the real racists" in your eyes. If you're too lazy to try and change things, blame yourself for them not changing. Don't you dare sit behind your keyboard and criticise those who take action for a cause they believe in, often risking their futures and their personal safety to do so. I have never been prouder of any of my kids than when I found that my eldest had taken part in the Student Protests in 2010. She didn't make a big thing of it, but said to me a couple of days later, "Dad, it just seemed to be the right thing to do. And with so many there, I knew it was the right thing to do."

You sit there and criticise those who don't accept the status quo. I may not lead a People's Revolution, might not change a damned thing of note, but if I can say that I did what I could to leave the world a bit better for my kids and grandkids, I'll count my life well-lived.

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One thing about statues is that often seem to be of folk you have never heard of. Who put them all up? Nepotism at work in the local authorities? Wealthy landowners back in the day commemorating their own?

Dont really see it as part of kids history education to have to who a random statue is and then explain it's some rich slave trader.

Open season on statues IMO. No one cares, and those who pretend to are just projecting other thoughts


The statue of Colston was erected by a local merchants guild in the late 19th century in recognition of his philanthropy. The Dundas statue in St Andrews Square was funded by a public subscription from men in the Royal Navy after he died. The statue of the Duke of Sutherland that’s been mentioned in relation to this reappraisal of statues was also paid for by a public subscription, again after he died.

I’m not sure about the statues in George Square, I think some of them may have been out up by the municipality and some paid for from public subscription.

If no-one cares about statues then why are people pulling them down? That would suggest that some people care.
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58 minutes ago, Mr Waldo said:

Yeah, sorry Duke of Wellington. Don't want to upset our neighbours across the Channel.

In all seriousness I think it is a fascinating and unansweraable question - who decides?  The people? The same people who voted in Boris?   It's a pity it will not get discussed because people will just shout.

So we keep a racist alcoholic and the Empress of India but not the man who enriched the country and helped stop an invasion? Everyone has more than one trait, regardless you will 'offend' someone.

And there was also the point that if you remove these statues and street names, people will forget about slavery within a generation.  Made by Sir Geoff Palmer before Outraged from Milngavie comes on. 

"Who decides" and "who do you think ought to decide" are two different things. You're right that the second question is unanswerable and I really don't want us to waste any more time on semantics, as they had done in Bristol for decades about Colston's statue. It's time for decisions rather than more discussion.

IMO the views of BAME people should carry most weight. It's unfair to expect them to walk under the gaze of likenesses of monstrous racists just because we've got used to them and they did a bit of work for white people's charidee.

There are two massive differences between Churchill and Drake. Churchill did not participate in slavery whereas Drake was as bad as literally any slave trader and is directly responsible for the murders of thousands; and Churchill played a major role in saving freedom and democracy in Western Europe while Drake was just fighting to defend one oligarchy from another. For ordinary people the outcome of all those wars of the 17th, 18th and 19th century meant sod all to their daily lives.

While completely accepting Sir Geoff Palmer's opinion is worth about a billion times more than my own, I do wonder how much someone with both a knighthood and an OBE is the tear-things-down type. And I'm sure that, regardless of the specific issue, the notion that we need statutes depicting the people who did terrible things to remember their terrible things, otherwise we're more likely to forget, is blatant nonsense. The logical conclusion of that argument is that they should have a statue of Osama bin Laden in New York and the Irish will forget the famine if they don't stick up a few of Trevelyan.

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Apparently, some wee vegetarian guy with a funny moustache started a massive war which killed lots of innocent people. I don't know his name though as the snowflake left won't let us have a statue of him.

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1 hour ago, GordonS said:

"Who decides" and "who do you think ought to decide" are two different things. You're right that the second question is unanswerable and I really don't want us to waste any more time on semantics, as they had done in Bristol for decades about Colston's statue. It's time for decisions rather than more discussion.

IMO the views of BAME people should carry most weight. It's unfair to expect them to walk under the gaze of likenesses of monstrous racists just because we've got used to them and they did a bit of work for white people's charidee.

There are two massive differences between Churchill and Drake. Churchill did not participate in slavery whereas Drake was as bad as literally any slave trader and is directly responsible for the murders of thousands; and Churchill played a major role in saving freedom and democracy in Western Europe while Drake was just fighting to defend one oligarchy from another. For ordinary people the outcome of all those wars of the 17th, 18th and 19th century meant sod all to their daily lives.

While completely accepting Sir Geoff Palmer's opinion is worth about a billion times more than my own, I do wonder how much someone with both a knighthood and an OBE is the tear-things-down type. And I'm sure that, regardless of the specific issue, the notion that we need statutes depicting the people who did terrible things to remember their terrible things, otherwise we're more likely to forget, is blatant nonsense. The logical conclusion of that argument is that they should have a statue of Osama bin Laden in New York and the Irish will forget the famine if they don't stick up a few of Trevelyan.

Why should the views of BAME people be given most weight? 

What sort of ratio do you think they should be weighted at compared to white people? 3:1, or just an incremental 10%.

What about different ethnicities? Obviously the chinese were less affected by the Atlantic slave trade than black people on average, so should they get the same weighting just for being a minority? 

Surely everyone's views should be given equal weight, even if they are "wrong". 

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9 hours ago, GordonS said:

The people who own the statues. They should listen to all the voices, decide which are good arguments and which are bollocks and then, the bit they've all failed with over the past three decades, actually do something about the really obviously terrible ones.

My own opinions:

Churchill's achievements outweigh his sins, but really everyone needs to get onboard with the obvious fact that he as racist AF.(1)

Victoria didn't own or trade slaves and she didn't have meaningful political power to do anything about the issue. By all accounts she was particularly kind to black and Asian people.(2)

Francis Drake - yes, get him down. He raided ships for loot, took slaves he found and sold them at the next island. He and his cousin Hawkins went to Africa and enslaved between 1,200 and 1,400 people, and according to contemporary accounts that probably meant they killed three times as many. One of the best things to come out of all this is that we're learning these facts - I didn't know this before yesterday.(3)

Which Wellesley? Wellington?(4)

That would be The People, then.

..and my opinions on your choices:

1. Nope. The idea that Churchill was the only man who could have led the UK at the time is rvisionist bollox. His name is in the frame for the fúck-up at Gallipoli, the Bengal Famine, sending troops in against striking miners in Wales, sending fucking tanks into Glasgow to maintain control...

2. Nope. She didn't do a lot of stuff, she did do a lot of stuff. Nice to know that she had black friends (and that that phrase goes quite that far back), but throwing up statues to folk because they fell out of the right fanny is something I've never been a fan of.

3. Nope. At last we're getting somewhere. Fully agree, and glad that you're asking a few questions of perceived History. No sarcasm intended, btw. Good on you.

4. Nope. Not as ineffectual as Albert's Missus, and not as well-practised in out and out cuntery as the other two (as far as I know), he was a massive anti-semite and opposed the Reform Act, so no friend of the people.

My rule of thumb here - and I'm aware that it is open to argument - is that someone should leave the world a better place overall than when they entered it, or at least made more lives better than they affected negatively. Then we can talk memorials. So, Mandela (Nelson, before anyone gets smart) - yes. Thatcher - hell, no. Eric Morecambe (as seen earlier in the thread) - yes. Cecil Rhodes - no.

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After decades being accused of demonising black people for the entertainment of a primarily white audience, the TV show Cops has finally been cancelled.

Amazed they were still making it. They must have enough shows in the can to repeat until the Rapture.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52988967

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2 hours ago, Mr Waldo said:

Yeah, sorry Duke of Wellington. Don't want to upset our neighbours across the Channel.

In all seriousness I think it is a fascinating and unansweraable question - who decides?  The people? The same people who voted in Boris?   It's a pity it will not get discussed because people will just shout.

So we keep a racist alcoholic and the Empress of India but not the man who enriched the country and helped stop an invasion? Everyone has more than one trait, regardless you will 'offend' someone.

And there was also the point that if you remove these statues and street names, people will forget about slavery within a generation.  Made by Sir Geoff Palmer before Outraged from Milngavie comes on. 

Never lived in Milngavie, but seriously? That is an argument at best rather than a point, and one which is impressively stupid.

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