Voting TaKtiX

This had never occured to me:

The convicted terrorist Peter Hain is annoyed that the Tories are opposing Labour’s amnesty to some terrorists. We’re entitled to opposition support,” pouted Mr Hain, before stamping his little feet and threatening to take his ball home. Mr Hain wants to push through complete forgiveness for on-the-run bombers who did their dirty deeds before April 1998. They won’t have to appear in court, they won’t have to acknowledge their crimes. The Conservatives might wish to point to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which offered an amnesty from prosecution to people who told the complete truth about their part in that country’s civil war. But Mr Hain doesn’t like to be reminded about South Africa, because he led the small group of renegades who stopped the South African cricket tour in 1970, and was convicted of various public order offences. Under the laws that his party has passed, this would be a terrorist act.

Wonder if anyone has pointed that out to him directly?

Was planning to do a post on mis uses of the term ‘multiculturalism’ (by both sides), but Robert Sharp has done a pretty good one already:

Communities living side-by-side, not integrating, becoming ghettos, that in turn become no-go areas for the police and ordinary citizens. Cultures and ethnicities living side-by-side without integration or communication is not what I would call multiculturalism… just antagonism. Multiculturalism has to imply a certain degree of integration, assimilation, and above all, a process of change for it to be something to value.

To me, multiculturalism is the ability to have a friend who’s muslim, another who’s jewish and to chase after a girl whose grandmother came from Africa. We learn from those who move here, just as they learn from us, we take on board the bits we like, condemn the bits we dislike (forced marriages anyone?) and the new communities do the same with us. Eventually, they merge together, so differences in religion mean as little to us as the differences in denomination now do mostly everywhere (except Northen Ireland of course).

This vegetarian isn’t likely to be buying a kebad any time soon, but my local Thai place does a damn fine tofu based thing I can’t pronounce. I like that. Still can’t figure out how to cook the stuff though…

Well, I’ve been thinking of something to write all day, and fiddling with the template a bit. Opening up a random post to see what it looked like, I found this from Gary: (more…)