I exceeded the smilie count with this post, and have had to excise a few from both my own posts and Vaul's. Consequently the post might read a bit more po-faced than I intended it to.
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Originally Posted by Vaul
Not the best boasts really. Basically saying you're stubborn, annoy people, will never admit you are wrong and will argue until you are blue in the face. Hardly floods you with credibility, as now, people are going to get the impression that debate with you is pointless.
Crucially though mate, I never preclude the possibility that I might have to change my mind:).
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The rules, mate, the rules. Those things that keep the country running, that you, in my opinion, in a rather childish, studenty, naive way, (I hope I can say without offending)
LOL! I'm sure I can interpret that in a complimentary way somehow....
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seem think are meaningless and we should scrap the entire Court system because its garbage, and bend over backwards for anyone who demands their own special treatment.
Well, you seem to be misinterpreting a lot of my arguments, whether deliberately or not I don't know. Where did I say scrap the entire court system? In fact what I said (in an admittedly roundabout and probably unnecessarily vehement way) was that the system of appointing judges and qualifying barristers was outdated and ridiculous. The legal system itself is fine, the people running it are not.
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Ah, the standard Lefty tactic of calling everyone who disagrees with them a racist, and hoping that it frightens them into silence. I'm glad you rolled that one out. The Judge was obviously the secret head of the BNP. It’s as clear as day in this case...
I'm not actually a lefty, but never mind. Still, in the sober light of day I can't really back that statement up, and I consequently retract it.
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A Human Rights Warrior you may be, but you are being a warrior for the sake of it; looking for a case to champion, without spending a bit more time working out if you should be championing it at all.
Wrong. I am in fact a drastic lazy git, nothing would please me more than to live in a country where everything was perfect and I didn't have to complain:-).
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If you think that rules are not rules, then you are free to break the law, and on the basis that you disagree with it, and see what happens.
Pretty much, yes. If I disagree with a law there's generally a good reason for that. I certainly wouldn't break laws just because it suits me to (with the exception of speeding if I'm honest- but then I wouldn't complain if I was caught).
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Just out of interest, do you only drink tea made with ethically produced tea-bags?
Tricky one that. For the last few months I've been using tea bags that I requisitioned from Tescos bin- so although they weren't produced ethically, I'm not actually supporting the companies that exploit the workers that made it. It's my variant of 'freeganism'.
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Did you protest against the war in Iraq?
I went on the march.
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Do you think that anyone who has any sort of concern about Asylum is obviously a racist?
No, but I suspect them of ignorance unless they prove otherwise.
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Do you think that anyone with a St. George’s cross out for the football must be a BNP voter?
No.
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Just trying to get a better view of the sort of person I'm arguing with here.
Sure:). Economically speaking my views are not really left wing or right wing- I'm basically a centrist. I realise that capitalism is the best system for creating wealth for everyone but I also think that governmnt intervention is often necesary. Social policy wise I'm a fairly hardcore libertarian.
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Up there.
You asked for reasons why people need to wear a uniform, I gave you several, you seem to have difficulty seeing them,
Well, I read back over and all I could see was your assertion that it presents the 'correct' image and identifies the pupils as going to a particular school. I am asking you to explain why either of those things is good or necessary, because it isn't at all obvious to me.
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You are free to petition the Courts and attempt to change the law, banning Sikhs from being exempt from crash helmets if you like; not sure what that would do for their human right though, Mr warrior. ;)
Well, that clearly isn't what I want though, is it? I introduced the Sikhs as a specific example of where examptions are given in law to appease religious sensibilities. I totally fail to see how allowing Muslims to wear Jilbabs is in any way different.
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Anyway, as I said, the problem as the turban, the solution was the exemption from crash helmets. In the girls case, the problem was she was a Muslim, the solution was a perfectly acceptable uniform, as deemed so by the school, other pupils, High Court, etc. No problems there.
You can say it's 'perfectly acceptable' until you're blue in the face mate but it still doesn't make it perfectly acceptable to the girl in question.
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If a Muslim moved here from Nigeria, and demanded that, as is correct under their interpretation of their religion, they must be allowed to operate Sharia law, and that the butchers they live above must stop selling pork as it is offensive to them, would you support their right to do so, or would you (evil, racist scum!) be forced to deny them this right?
No, because the obvious difference there is that that (theorectical) Muslim would be trying to impose their values on everybody else whereas this girl clearly want to impose her values only on herself. It's also a pretty tenuous and spurious argument, has any Muslim ever come here and demanded that we stop eating pork? Outside of nutters like Al-Mujiharoun, I doubt it.
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So were they right?
To shoot deserters? I'd say so, in general. To shoot small, shell-shocked orphans, with a little wikkle kitten under their arm, and a gammy leg? Well, we can all custom build a situation that makes a rule seem wrong, can't we?
Yes, and that's why having inflexible, 'one size fits all' rules is a bad thing.
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As for locking up our homosexual friends, again, the standards of the day have to be taken into context. Homosexuality has been seen to be a disease, a mental disorder, and many other things.
Well, the standards of those days were clearly wrong, and if the standards of today say that all Muslims must fit in the pigeonhole allocated to them, then they are wrong too.
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The standards of the day need to be taken into account. Looking back, was it right to lock up gay people? No. Still, you can’t anymore, so that proves that this archaic legal system that you so despise moves with the times, doesn't it?
I don't despise the system mate, only the people running it:-).
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I'm not sure if you've noticed Mr Warrior, but apart from an appeal,
Yeah, an appeal sounds good to me.
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So you abuse the right to non violent protest as well? As fine a note as any for me to end this post on, I think.
How have I abused my right to non-violent protest?:confused:
LOL! :iloveyou: too mate. I may strongly disagree with you on almost everything, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't be happy to sit down with you for a beer (and no doubt a lively discussion;)).
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Originally Posted by Devilbod
When I saw the report on channel 4, one of the statments that was given by the Headmaster was that when they ask the pupils of the school if they want the particular form of dress added to the Uniform list, several students said they would prefer it if it wasnt because they would be made (by parents I guess) to wear that form of dress if it was accepted.
Now to me that puts a whole different slant on things, the right to wear religous clothing is fair enough, but it could be one of the reasons this school is so popular is because of this apparent racist dress code allows a certain amount of the pupils to leave religion at home?
Now that is a good point, unlike those made by Vaul whose argument essentially seems to be that 'rules are rules, and these uppity minorities should know their place';). If by preventing one girl from wearing what she wants, they also prevent several others from being forced to wear clothes that they do not want to, then that is worthwhile. It all comes back to the point I (rather clumsily) made in my first post in this thread: along with the right to religious freedom of expression, must come a responsibility not to impose your religious beliefs upon others. The Muslim community (and indeed every other religious and cultural minority) must accept that in return for the freedom to practice their religion, there must be limits on what they can do in its name. A good start in my opinion would be to ban circumcision and try to get together a workable law to prevent people being forced into arranged marriages. I guess that's what annoys me most about this case- we're banning Muslims from doing stuff that doesn't really matter at all at the end of the day, and doing very little about issues that actually are important:rolleyes:.
Rich :¬)
Edit: LOL @ how similar nichomach's post is to mine- he puts it a lot more eloquently though....