Democracy or Republic

[PDLM]

British police just don't have enough experience with lethal force.

This is a good thing not a bad thing on the whole don't you think?

My school was incredibly mixed, with 30 people in each class there were probably 10-15 nationalities. All the British Indian kids, British Chinese kids, British African kids, etc etc, were completely integrated culturally.

I'd be surprised if there were that many nationalities. Most of them would be of British nationality (unless you were at an "expat" school) - maybe the original nationalities of their parents were more widespread. The kids are indistinguishable by culture, nationality, ability to speak English or more or less anything except their inherited racial genes.

[MrLister]

This is a good thing not a bad thing on the whole don't you think?

Of course, but if they had better training then the incident would be less likely to have happened. But I'm glad they don't carry firearms routinely.

I'd be surprised if there were that many nationalities. Most of them would be of British nationality (unless you were at an "expat" school) - maybe the original nationalities of their parents were more widespread.

I went to a normal boys' grammar school in South West London (this is in the mid to late 90s). It was selective, but not a public fee paying school or any expat school (do "expat schools" even exist in the UK?!).

Let me do a quick stroll down memory lane and just take my own class of 30 students as an example...

Two guys from India
One guy from Sri Lanka
One guy from South Korea (actually Korean)
One guy from Japan (stayed one year, actually Japanese)
One guy from Finland
Two guys from Ireland (including myself)
Two guys from China (one HK, one 'BBC')
One guy from Trinidad & Tobago
One guy from Mauritius
One guy from somewhere in Africa that I never found out
One guy from Israel
One guy from Greece
One guy from Turkey
One guy from Iran
One guy from Wales
One guy from the Philippines
Two twins from Spain

Pretty much every one else was 'British English' provided you don't follow their family trees back to somewhere else in Europe.

Note: Yes, most of them are British Nationals and born in Britain. But I'm kind of talking about where their parents came from, and in many cases they hold foreign passports also.

[gilleshk]

I'd argue that London is the most racially diverse city on the planet - in fact, it's claimed that more languages are spoken in London than any other city on Earth, which is a pretty good claim to London being the most racially diverse place.

Why does it need the be THE most? London and the UK certainly are very racially diverse but you can say the same about many other cities and it's an impossible claim to confirm. Virtually 50% of Toronto is made of visible minorities whereas London is less than 40%.

The city of Vancouver(not GVRD) now has less than 35% of WASPs.

UK census shows that about 70% of the population consider themselves white and christian where as in the US about 75% consider themselves caucasians.

And census being what they are and with the rapid migration of people, these numbers are constantly changing.

And while we may like to think that we're just one big happy family, there's still plenty of stereotyping, racial profiling and tension between ethnic groups in every country.

[MrLister]

Why does it need the be THE most? London and the UK certainly are very racially diverse but you can say the same about many other cities and it's an impossible claim to confirm.

It doesn't have to be THE most. Just that PDLM was saying the USA was "THE MOST" and I thought I'd be pedantic back to him as he usually is himself And rightfully he pedantically replied with "citizens" rather than just foreign residents, which may or may not be true.

The UK's heavily white as a whole - so is the USA. If we're talking cities, which if you're bringing up Toronto and Vancouver we must be, then London... well, London isn't heavily white. I haven't seen the census data for solely London (and it would be incorrect anyway as so many Londoners are fresh immigrants or transient) but I'd estimate at least half of the population aren't the 'WASP' type.

Is Vancouver THAT diverse though? Sure, there's a large non-WASP population, but there's also a very large Chinese population... I wouldn't say it's diverse in the sense of having literally hundreds of spoken languages and different races/cultures living alongside each other. It's something like 300 languages spoken in London, basically the highest anywhere, I don't think it's quite the same anywhere else in the world, apart from probably New York. And even NY is getting much harder to immigrate to now, reducing that...

[Sleuth]

I was referring to people such as John Gilmore (suing to be able to travel within the US without having to show ID - which used to happen in the former S.U.); Don Zirkel, a wheelchair-bound 80-y-o former church deacon who was arrested when he refused to take off his anti-war T-shirt in the food court of the Smith Haven Mall in Lake Grove; Stephen Downs who was wearing a T-shirt bearing the words "Give Peace A Chance"; and folks with anti-war/Bush signs who were arrested for failing to move to "free-speech designated zones" when folks with pro-Bush signs were permitted to line the president's path, e.g. Bill Neel, the two grandmothers are Legend's Field, Brett Bursey who was arrested for holding a "No War for Oil" sign at a Bush visit to Columbia, S.C. and when he asked the arrested officer whether "it was the content of my sign, and he said, 'Yes, sir, it's the content of your sign that's the problem.' " Et al.

Gilmore--you overstate. This has to do with air travel only; you make it sound like you can't drive/bike/walk anywhere. I am not so sure you should be able to get on a plane without showing an ID; not now, anyway.
Downs--okay, I will give you the (idiot) rogue cops, but I don't think Downs was prosecuted so the justice system fixed that. And there might be another side to the arrest, although the security guards caused the mess.
Ditto for Zirkel.
And the Bushies are over-zealous with their free speech zones. The law they are using has been around for almost 40 years and these guys are the first to use it this way. It was originaly set up to prevent assassinations and, I would argue, limiting free speech is not the intent.
So, I think you also overstate this. Yes, Bush is overly-aggressive with the application, but the law has been around for 40 years and he's the first doing this.
I guess my point is, and I am sure we will have to agree to disagree, that you take isolated events spread across years and make it seem like it is everday life in America. Plenty of Americans voiced disapproval to all those things you mentioned; it isn't like the country just agrees with it all.

Sorry, need to point out that those guys that were arrested were charged with tresspassing, not with wearing a t-shirt (although the ti-shirt and idiot rent-a-cops is what caused the conflict).
But I concede the "free speech" zone point. Bush should not be doing that and it is an affront to the Founders. Political free speech was (probably) upper-most in the minds of the Founders and Bush has no right to limit it the way he does. The Secret Service should have to show some sort of cause beyond "disagreement" to remove people.

[PDLM]

Gilmore--you overstate. This has to do with air travel only; you make it sound like you can't drive/bike/walk anywhere. I am not so sure you should be able to get on a plane without showing an ID; not now, anyway.

Can you give any scenario at all where not presenting ID increases the risk of anything at all? This is just part of the Government's Management By Fear response to terrorism - nearly all of it is window-dressing because they feel they must be seen to be "doing something" even if the things that they do make no difference at all to the risk of further attacks and cause massive inconvenience to the travelling public.

[gilleshk]

Maybe we should have the right to bear arms in an airplane to defend against all those terrorists

[Sleuth]

Can you give any scenario at all where not presenting ID increases the risk of anything at all? This is just part of the Government's Management By Fear response to terrorism - nearly all of it is window-dressing because they feel they must be seen to be "doing something" even if the things that they do make no difference at all to the risk of further attacks and cause massive inconvenience to the travelling public.

Nope. No example, sorry. At least not in the terms of this discussion. Seems to me that if you were going to do something stupid on an airplane, getting a fake ID would be the least of your worries. However, they only catch the stupid criminals and this might be a way to catch somebody stupid. Perhaps because they are on some sort of watch list or something.
But I think that showing an ID predates 9/11. And I am not sure how showing an ID is a massive inconvenience.

[ouwen]

Fair enough, but all of the developed democracies seem to me to have sufficient process. The problems arise from the laws which are enacted by some of the political leaders (for example the complete freedom to intercept any and all private communications without any judicial oversight whatsoever, as just enacted in the US).

"Just enacted" must mean domestic communications. They've been doing that on US to international comm for well over a decade. They have installations in California and in England.

[gilleshk]

Hey tin foil... go get your meds. You're resurrecting threads that are almost your age