@barry-sanchez , I think you’re material is well past its sell-by date. The reports coming out of Telford are horrific, and being widely reported. Ten, fifteen years ago, you’d have had a point. The subject was swerved, not covered, and not understood.
The situation today is wholly different. We’re not completely in the dark about the subject. We’ve even seen, through convictions, patterns which suggest that many of the offenders are from very specific places in the world, Pakistan perhaps chief among them, with people from Mirpur being disproportionately prominent.
That knowledge should be reason enough not to tar a billion people that do not live there with the same brush, or even to say that all citizens of Mirpur were like that.
That knowledge should spark a discussion about how people born in the 20th and 21st centuries should ever have acquired those views, beliefs and prejudices. True seekers might discover that Pakistan has had dismal state provided education, and that a good deal of education boys receive, especially in disputed reasons like Kashmir, is provided by Saudi-sponsored Madrassas, spreading one of the most extremist strains of Islam. Females are permanent second class citizens.
The worldly-wise might realise that all religions have extremist sects. We have Christian “pro-lifers” that murder doctors for their work at abortion clinics. We have so-called adherents of Buddhism practicing genocide in Myanmar.
Those with more recent memories might remember that we hosted the Saudi Crown Prince here last week, and agreed to sell him 48 new warplanes to enable him to take Yemen back to the Stone Age.
You confuse culture with religion, lets deal with the bbc appeared reluctance to publish shall we?
I know about the dire education system in Pakistan and from that want it produces, the tarring of the brush wears thin when by all accounts this is the thin end of the wedge, the silence so we don’t offend whilst the most vulnerable are hurt is galling.
What have we become, too scared so we walk on by, culture and religion have to be tackled.
Agree pretty much with all of that @pap apart from the bit about education in Pakistan
I know wikipedia isn’t always correct (I needed a reference) and I readily acknowledge the country has some of the lowest literacy rates - but is it really true that any education (boys)received is via Saudi sponsored madrassas? I acknowledge they do sponsor quite a few.
Hands up. My previous comments cannot be considered wholly accurate. Their national education system has been in the shitter, and I’ve done a disservice to those trying to improve it.
Even so, only 18% of females have more than 10 years of schooling.
Another piece of Sotonians time-based, lore, @cobham-saint .
For years, many have speculated that Barry’s cultural experiences have a cutoff point way in the past, on account of him having no cultural awareness of bands, movies, TV shows or political happenings past a certain, unspecified point in time.
The historians among us will be delighted with the narrowing of the dates.
@barry-sanchez clearly has knowledge of Driving Miss Daisy, but ironically, given the nature of his thread-starts, no knowledge of Groundhog Day.
While this may frustrate some, we’ve narrowed the cultural cutoff point to a mere four years, 1989 to 1993.
He’s either just about to discover Nirvana and Rage Against The Machine or still thinks they’re the best things ever. Either way, he’s a lucky bastard.
As Blatherer-in-Chief on this forum I thought you would have got that.
Anyway, the BBC covered Telford last night, so how does that square with them not wanting to offend anyone? Also why didn’t you have a go at SKY for not covering it at the same time as the BBC?
Being reported now that the figure 1000 girls being abused figure is sensationalist nonsense.
I’m sure the truth will out, and any girl or boy being abused is dreadful but you have to wonder where the 1000 figure came from and what agenda that is serving. The police say they are looking at 46 cases of children at risk.
You simply won’t allow the possibility of that amount to be permissable as it goes against your agenda, why do you say there can’t be when you don’t know? As many as 1400 were abused in the Rotherham case.
It’s easy to sensationalise numbers, but where are these numbers coming from? BBC supposition, Sotonians rounding up the numbers x10, interested parties, or somewhere more official?
What I’m trying to say is that can anyone give some reliable facts and back them up with cast iron sources, or are we just shouting at clouds to match our own world view?
Not asking for a friend this time, just an exasperated me…
