Abortion is a tragic choice no woman should have to make
Abortion is something so horrible it has to be described with euphemisms: ‘a woman’s right to control her own body’; ‘a woman’s right to control her reproductive choices’. But the most common is ‘a woman’s right to choose’. The sentence is left incomplete: it is short for ‘a woman’s right to choose between a pregnancy she fears may destroy her financially or professionally, possibly even physically, and the killing of the baby in her womb.’
In other words, many if not most women who have abortions feel they have no choice. Overworked women with low incomes, unsupportive families, unsympathetic employers, no partners and/or existing children to care for may simply be unable to cope with a baby; nursery care in the UK is prohibitively expensive – on average around £50 per child under two per day in London. Women may find their careers or education derailed by pregnancy. Not to mention the stigma attached to unplanned pregnancy, particularly for teenagers; this may literally be fatal for those whose relatives are of the ‘honour killing’ variety.
Continue reading at Left Foot Forward
Student protester hit by policeman suffers brain damage – Daily Mail readers respond
The Daily Mail reports:
‘A student was rushed to hospital for emergency brain surgery after he was allegedly hit with a police truncheon during last night’s tuition fees protest.
Alfie Meadows, 20, developed bleeding on his brain when he was hit as he tried leave the ‘kettling’ area outside Westminster Abbey, his mother said.
The Middlesex University student fell unconscious on the way to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, where he underwent a three-hour operation to save his life.
He was one of 44 people, including six police officers, treated in hospital after London’s most violent night of student rioting over fees.’
The following are a selection of its readers’ responses:
‘”Allegedly hit by a police truncheon”.
So, there’s no proof it was a police officer who hit him. It is just as likely it was one of his fellow thugs wielding a sign or piece of metal fencing who hit him.
Did he not see what had happened at the previous riots, sorry “protests” in London? Did he expect the police to just back off and let him and his fellow yobs take control of the streets?
Well done to the Met – you took a battering and responded with considerable restraint and professionalism. I strongly believe you will have the support of the vast majority of this country if you respond with vastly more force next time, and I sincerely hope you do.
– martin, Brighton, 11/12/2010 13:10’
‘If he hadn’t been there it would not have happened. And what was his mother doing at the protest? I thought this was a protest by students not students parents.
– John, Keighley,UK, 11/12/2010 13:06’
‘Hopefully this foolish waste of space child or his parents will have to foot the bill for the cost of treating him. As a tax payer, I begrudge paying towards the cost of treating idiots.
– Robbie G, Westminster, 11/12/2010 12:47’
‘And here lies the problem. Idealistic young pups who think they know it all. For the most part I blame thier parents and thier university, marxist lecturers for filing these kids heads with propaganda. These students need to look at the motives of those who are pushing thier buttons and controling thier minds.
– Max, London, 11/12/2010 12:28’
‘These protestors get exactly what they deserve and once again the police get all the blame.
The police should be allowed to use tear gas, truncheons and rubber bullets against these so-called university hooligans. They shouldn’t get a penny towards their education from the tax-payer.
– Mags, Ipswich, England, 11/12/2010 11:33’
‘I do not care what happened to this student. The police should be using water-cannons & tear gas on these idiots as they’ve clearly been infiltrated by left-wing trouble makers & anarchist groups. As for the ones who insulted the dead by desecrating Churchills statue & the cenotaph, they should be shot on sight.
– Draco got it right., Ryde, IOW., 11/12/2010 10:52’
‘These students are a joke. When they don’t get their own way it’s the fault of the police, the govt…but not themselves! In WWi & WW2 young English men rallied to the call of the nation and many made the ultimate sacrifice. Unfortunately, this current ‘mob’ would only rally to the call of free beer and drugs, as for sacrifice they do not even know the meaning of the word. They are a disgrace and it is the students who should be cleaning up London, not the taxpayers…again. The money spent containing these protests, cleaning up after them, prosecuting the thugs, is all money that could have gone to lowering tuition fees – the irony is apparently lost on these dullards!
– Bob Dalton, Willington, England, 11/12/2010 10:41′
‘”Alfie’s mother, Susan Meadows, 55, an English literature lecturer”
“Alfie’s father, Matthew Meadows, 62, a writer and artist”
“Mr Meadows, who is studying philosophy”
This tells me everything I need to know.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for “Poor Alfie” – no any other paracites vandalising my country.
– George Brown, Romford, Essex, 11/12/2010 10:07’
‘would you please show myself and others the evidence that you have that he was struck by a police baton? until then it could have been an object thrown by the hooligan element that was there .
– john, dyfed, 11/12/2010 10:04’
And so on and so on.
But the winner is:
‘Wonder if those despicable and evil thugs would have attacked Police Officers, in such a disgusting way as they did to ours, in countries such as Iran and Saudia Arabia? NO, they know better than that. They would have had their hands chopped off, or treated in some other barbaric way. They were nothing but cowards to hide their faces, and I believe a majority of those were not even students – more like the illegal immigrants which Labour let slip away in this country!
– Therese, Cardiff, Wales, 11/12/2010 13:00’
Welcome to Britain.
We must defend our Britain and our immigrants from the fascist menace
Today is a day of national shame for Britain: the fascist ‘British National Party’ (BNP) has won two seats in the European parliament, and 6.6% of the national vote. Led by the Holocaust-denying Nazi sympathiser Nick Griffin, who won one of the two seats, the BNP is an all-white party that calls for an immediate halt to all immigration to the UK and the repatriation of existing legal immigrants through ‘a system of voluntary resettlement’. It claims to be defending the British nation and the culture and interests of the ‘indigenous population’.
Of couse, the BNP vision of Britain is inrecognisable to any civilised British person. It is a vision of troglodytes and swamp-dwellers who still live fifty years or more in the past and are incapable of coming to terms with the reality of the twenty-first century multiethnic Britain that most of us are at home in and comfortable with. I grew up in London, and went to school in an inner-city comprehensive, where the children spoke 51 different first languages. In my first year at school, as far as I can remember, roughly three-quarters of the children were from partially or wholly non-white or immigrant families. And the proportion only increased. For the most part, the difference between a native and an immigrant in London is blurred or non-existent, and for most of us Londoners, almost everyone we know and love is at least party immigrant in their origins. A foreigner arrives here and, within a year or less, becomes a Londoner. It is the great, constantly changing ethnic mix of London, with new ethnic groups and individuals arriving continuously from all over the world, that makes this such an exciting, dynamic city to live in. An all-white Britain would be an alien world for Londoners, or for the inhabitants of any town or city in the country.
So when the fascists or their fellow-travellers say that immigration is ‘destroying traditional British culture’, they are lying. As a Londoner born and bred, I think I would know if my traditional culture were being destroyed by immigrants. And guess what ? It isn’t. The British culture that I grew up with is a culture that is inseparable from multiethicity, constantly rejuvenated by new waves of immigrants. What a joy it is, to discover the Nigerian community in Peckham, or the South Asian community in Alperton; to hear regularly Russian and Polish in the streets; to eat Somali and Eritrean food ! The Notting Hill Carnival takes place every summer in Notting Hill, the traditional centre of West Indian life in London, where I grew up, and has been running for fifty years. Inspired by the annual carnival in Trinidad and launched in response to the Notting Hill race riots of 1958 – themselves incited by an earlier generation of fascists – it is an integral part of London’s cultural life. Without immigration, we would not have it. Ending immigration – were it possible – would prevent the emergence of other such cultural phenomena in the future.
This is not to agree with those ‘politically correct’ types who, in their cultural relativism, embrace a form of self-hating anti-white racism that is not much better than the racism of the BNP. There is not a ‘white culture’, ‘black culture’, ‘Asian culture’. etc.; there is our single, great British culture, in all its glorious, constantly evolving diversity. The cultural synthesis between ‘indigenous’ Britons and immigrants works both ways. It is not just a question of indigenous Britons benefiting culturally from immigration, but also of immigrants benefiting from contact with our great British culture. Every time a woman from Pakistan or Turkey, for example, takes advantage of British freedom to escape from an unwanted arranged marriage or oppressive and sexist parents and pursue her life as a free individual; every time Tamil, Tibetan or Chechen dissidents demonstrate here against regimes that persecutes their people back home, that is a triumph for Britain and something of which we should be proud. Immigrants are fuel for Britain’s economic and cultural growth; and Britain is a place of personal and political liberation for immigrants from less free societies.
The fascists would like to destroy our London and our Britain, and to substitute for them a London and a Britain based on uniformity; a uniformity based on the most retrograde and primitive elements of our ‘indigenous’ society. Such a Britain would be impossible to create, of couse, and the very attempt would necessarily involve pogroms and bloodshed on a scale never witnessed here before. To destroy London’s Arab Bayswater, Portuguese Golborne Road, Bengali Brick Lane, Soho Chinatown and so on, would be to destroy the whole city; an experiment in totalitarian violence of the kind practised by the Nazis and Communists. Nor would it stop there. Keeping ‘British culture’ uncontaminated by foreign influences would presumably mean keeping the British people hermetically sealed from the rest of the world: no pizzas or curries for us; no American music or films; no French or Italian clothes; no Japanese electronic goods. British culture cannot be separated from global culture, and only the most medieval of barbarians would try to do so.
There are appeasers who say that the mainstream parties should steal the fascists’ thunder by adopting the fascists’ own policies on immigration. If Labour or the Conservatives became more like the BNP, there would be no need for racists to vote BNP ! This is in fact a very good reason why the mainstream parties should never allow the fascists to dictate our immigration polices: it would involved the fascisisation of British mainstream politics. If racists want to vote for a fascist party, they should be allowed to do so. However disgusting it is to think of it, they too are part of our nation. The worst part of our nation should be able to vote for the party that represents their loathsome, primitive worldview. This party may grow or shrink, but it will always remain a minority party. Meanwhile, Labour and the Conservatives will remain uncontaminated by the fascist disease.
But that does not mean that anti-fascists should remain idle, and allow the BNP to grow to the point where it does serious damage to our multiethnic society. The Labour government deserves praise for having pursued a liberal immigration regime, and allowing unprecedented numbers of immigrants to arrive here and contribute to Britain’s economy and society; it deserves praise for putting our economic and cultural interests above any temptation to appeal to the racist vote. But it also deserves criticism for not being more forthright in countering the scaremongering propaganda propounded by the Daily Mail and other tabloid newspapers, which boost their sales by playing upon the fears of ordinary British people. Just as the popular press in recent years manufactured a hysteria about paedophiles, to the point where entirely innocent people were assaulted by thugs or even falsely imprisoned in the belief that they were child-abusers, so it has helped to generate hysteria about mass immigration.
British mainstream politicians and all anti-fascists need to counter the xenophobic lies. They need to stress the contribution that hard-working immigrants make to the British economy, and the economic damage that attempts to restrict immigration would cause. They need to stress the dangers that forcing immigrants underground involves; the slavery and sexual exploitation of vulnerable young people from abroad; the loss in tax revenues from the creation of an illegal economy; the attendant rise in organised crime. For a modern capitalist economy needs to be able to import labour that cannot be provided by domestic sources; there may be native unemployed, but these very often are unwilling to do the jobs that immigrants do. We must challenge the lie that ‘immigration causes racism’: the London region, which receives a massively disproportionate share of the nation’s immigration, gave only 4.94% of its votes to the BNP; considerably fewer than the national total of 6.6%, and fewer than most other regions of the country.
So stand up for the new, exciting, diverse, forward-looking Britain against the Britain of decay, decline, uniformity, bigotry and fear. The fascists’ version of ‘British culture’ is dying. Good. Ours just keeps getting better.
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