Does Anyone Think That By Visiting Stately Homes, It Will Make Our Immigrants Feel More British?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/566935/Immigrants-visit-stately-homes-feel-more-British-claims-National-Trust-chairman

/// Mr Parker told The Telegraph: "We all of us need to have a sense of how did we arrive at where we are today. ///

I think most of us know.

/// "[This is] ever more important because you have people in this country from so many backgrounds and they need to be tied together by something. It is a sense of being an inhabitant of these islands.” ///

[murraymints]

still do not see why the colour of a poster on AB is relevant to anything !

[anotheoldgit]

sp1814

/// There are also government-sponsored schemes to get the elderly onto the Internet through NIACE's and Digital Unite. ///

Your analogy between a valuable teaching scheme and making a certain group aware that the countryside exists, just does not work.

/// but you could also argue that seeing as the Internet is freely available to anyone who cares to go to a library, why should the elderly (another minority) have specific funding? ///

Yes the internet via computers is freely available in the library, but first one must acquire the knowledge of how to use a computer.

Also those schemes for the elderly are not just primarily available to just elderly white people.

[Peter Pedant]

// I think most of us know. //

not sure about that - some youngster I was trying to get to an exhibition on Clive of India ( who ?) explained he had done history but it was the History of the English in Oireland....

so I said so you;ve no idea that we were in India for 200 y ?

and he said no .....

[whiskeryron]

Integration.

May I as a true born Englishman respectfully point out that when we had an Empire wherever the Brits settled they NEVER integrated with the indigenous population. Should we really expect immigrants to integrate ?

[retrocop]

I wouldn't agree there whiskeryron.
When Mr Fletcher and his fellow mutineers went to the Pitcairns I think it was rather an intimate association with the locals.I think most of the inhabitants have British ancestry. :-)

[sp1814]

murraymints

It's a detail thing.

For years I thought that jackthehat was a man, and then last year I found out that she's a woman. That doesn't change my opinion on any of JTH's posts, but it adds 'shade and colour' to her posts.

Same way that it adds depth if you know whether someone is a teenager, or a business owner, or a world traveller, or a LibDem counsellor...

[sp1814]

AOG

I think that analogy works. Why aren't these schemes available to the non-elderly. Information on how to use the Internet is freely available to everyone and so in my example, the elderly (a minority) is being funded to take advantage of something that is readily accessible to everyone.

[mushroom25]

//a lib-dem counsellor....//

OMG SP, i hope that was a typo and you meant an elected representative of said party.

that there might be in existence people who want to counsel me about political affiliations is a path i dread to explore........

[sp1814]

Incidentally, along the same lines, I think it would be a great idea to get working class kids interested in classical music, opera and ballet.

Just because these have always been regarded as middle class pursuits, doesn't mean they have to be. There's a world of classics which is open to everyone, but many from working class backgrounds feel it's 'not for them', which is a great shame.

[sp1814]

mushroom25

Gah!

Counsellor / Councillor.

I bloody hate homophones...never picked up by my spellchecker because I've not set it up to identify when I'm just being thick.

[sp1814]

mushroom25

;-)

[mushroom25]

the world will beat a path to the door of the person that creates an effective syntax checker.

:-)

[anotheoldgit]

sp1814

/// Incidentally, along the same lines, I think it would be a great idea to get working class kids interested in classical music, opera and ballet. ///

/// Just because these have always been regarded as middle class pursuits, doesn't mean they have to be. There's a world of classics which is open to everyone, but many from working class backgrounds feel it's 'not for them', which is a great shame. ///

Not only a matter of working class adults or kids (as you chose to describe them), one doesn't see many ethnic minorities in the audiences at the Proms or other classical music, opera, and ballet venues.

[sp1814]

Yes AOG, which is a shame.

You also see very few white people at reggae gigs, but conversely you do at soul/disco/rap concerts and I believe the same is true - the 'language' of classical music/opera/reggae/ballet is difficult for those who are not used to it, to appreciate it, whereas soul/disco/rap/pop is more universal.

[naomi24]

SP, //When you write: "It seems to me that in your constant defence of everything ‘foreign’ to the indigenous Brit"

That's because I'm am the only black person on the AB News section, and it's useful to be able to provide an alternative and personal point of view, especially when some people post questions specifically to criticise immigrants in general and black people in particular.//

How do you know you’re the only black person in the AB News section? Perhaps others don’t have such a ‘thing’ about it. That aside, you are not an immigrant so why consistently align yourself with immigrants? British born black people who refuse to abandon what appears to be a relentless compulsion to focus upon their perceived differences exacerbate division. Our ambition should be to eradicate recognition of colour altogether, but whilst black people born here continue to view themselves as somehow ‘different’ it’s never going to happen.