Icons of England

ICONS was an on-line project launched by the office of the Secretary of State for Culture, Media, and Sport with its aim to find out about a shared English culture and whether it exists at all. Objects, places, people, ideas, fictional characters, etc. are nominated by readers and put to a vote and debated before the advisory board decides whether the nominated item should become an Icon of England.

The site has some nice features ('Free lesson plans!') and tons of information on the icons, all with the aim to 'create the portrait of England'.

enjoy!

http://www.icons.org.uk/

Muslims in Britain

I found this video when I was searching for some videos on the UK General Election 2010. I think it's worth watching. A little explanation: There is 'Sharia law' mentioned in the video. 'Sharia' refers to the "way" Muslims should live or the "path" they must follow.

Ooooo-eeee-oooooooo

For those of you who don't understand the title, the following video will explain everything:

Doctor Who is a science-fiction television programme that originally ran on the BBC from 1963 to 1989. A television movie was co-produced with Universal Pictures in 1996, after which the series itself was revived starting in March 2005 in the United Kingdom and Australia, and in March 2006 in the United States on the Sci Fi Channel (and, as of 2009, BBC America). It is still in production as of 2010.
Doctor Who is about the adventures of a mysterious time-traveller known only as the Doctor. The Doctor travels through space and time in a craft known as the TARDIS, an acronym for "Time and Relative Dimension in Space". The Doctor is usually accompanied by one or more companions, who are often attractive females. The tone of the programme varies from serious to comic, from gothic horror to pantomime camp. The original Doctor Who series is fondly remembered among the general public both for frightening monsters (such as the Daleks and the Cybermen) and pioneering use of both electronic music and low-budget special effects.

[...]

Feel free to browse the wiki, it has many interesting articles not just about the Doctor Who series, but about its spin-offs Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures, and K-9.

Hugh Laurie: British vs American slang

Stop Boring Hugh Laurie!

A two-minute montage of various talk show hosts asking the same questions over and over again.

United Kingdom Independence Party

About two weeks ago me and my "team" had to convince you about the UKIP's policy. :) Then I wasn't a hundred percent sure about it's exact aims, just had some vague guesses. Now I checked it up and thought it would interest you as well, as their aims and the topic is closely related to our compulsory reading for today. Hope you'll find it useful!

On Not Knowing Foreign Languages

This is a little excerpt from 'How to Be Inimitable' a book by George Mikes(Mikes, George. How to Be Inimitable. London: André Deutsch, 1960., ch.II. Old English; © George Mikes & Nicholas Bentley, 1960), who was a Hungarian-born journalist sent to London as a correspondent to cover the Munich crisis. He went for two weeks, stayed for the rest of his life. He made England his home, and later published a series of satirical/ironic writings on the English way of life.

EU regulations in Britain (see our compulsory reading for more...)

Britishness and/vs/as multiculturalism

I have chosen two articles for you to look into for next week, one is on multiculturalism in Britain and how the notion of being "British" has (or has not) changed in the last few years, with more and more migrants settling in the country and now second and third generation British people being born of Caribbean, Middle Eastern and African origin. The city most acutely concerned with migration is of course London, that in the past decades has truly become a "showcase" of cultures, with people from all around the world living together.

The second article is about the end of a massive wave of migration from Central Europe to Britain, which started with the "Big Bang enlargement" of the European Union in 2004. As this latter topic bears great relevance to us in Hungary - probably you also have relatives or friends who went abroad to work for some time, or maybe you yourself have done it - I think it is worth discussing the reasons and the consequences of these movements.

Please read them through, they are not easy at the first glance, studded with culture-related and political vocabulary, but that is exactly what we are going to go through in class. Concentrate especially on the following points:

No. 1

• Why has multiculturalism become a derogatory term in the last few years?
• In what ways does the co-habitation of different ethnic groups lead to confrontations?
• Do you agree that multiculturalism can contribute to a “deliberate weakening of [the] collective identity” of a society?
• What do different political parties and political bodies say on the matter?
• What do you think of the three reasons the article summons in protection of multiculturalism in Britain?
• And about the chances of “promoting a new, inclusive Britishness”?

Bagehot

In praise of multiculturalism

Almost everyone now agrees that it has failed. Has it really?

Jun 14th 2007 | From The Economist print edition

Steve O'Brian

SWEAR WORDS, like everything else, are subject to fashion. Since the London bombings of 2005, a new obscenity has entered the lexicon, alongside the anatomical and the blasphemous: multiculturalism. Once it connoted curry and the Notting Hill carnival; these days, when applied to British politicians or their policies, “multiculturalist” is almost as derogatory a term as “socialist” or “neocon”. Even more than they agree about most other things, the main political parties are united in their conviction that multiculturalism is a perniciously naive idea whose time has gone, or ought never to have come at all.

Last week, for example, David Cameron, the Tory leader, warned an unenraptured audience of Islamic leaders about the dangers of “cultural separatism” in Muslim communities. “The creed of multiculturalism,” he alleged—meaning, roughly, a combination of indulgence and subsidy for minorities and their institutions—had contributed to a “deliberate weakening of our collective identity”. Two Labour ministers, meanwhile, suggested the creation of an annual holiday to help cultivate a renewed sense of Britishness. A commission set up by the government last year, to advise on segregation and extremism, recommended this week that less money be spent on providing civic information in Urdu, Arabic and so on, and more on unmulticultural English lessons. The need to rethink Britishness for a post-multicultural age is a regular theme for Gordon Brown, the (Scottish) prime-minister-not-much-longer-in-waiting.

The shock of hearing a suicide-bomber's video testament delivered in a Yorkshire accent—hitherto more associated with cricket commentary than terrorism—spelled the end for multiculturalism. But even before the bombings the word was becoming a slur. Rioting by Asian youths across northern England in the summer of 2001 forced curry-house multiculturalists to confront the reality that government nonchalance had helped to engender. As well as the burned cars, they saw fossilised social mores and the angry alienation of second- and third-generation Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants, some of whom profess more allegiance to the global umma than to Britain.

All that is real, tragic and terrifying, and becomes more so with every blood-curdling terrorist plot that British police uncover. All the same, poor, deplored multiculturalism has been much less bad than its many detractors now claim.

There are three reasons why the legions of anti-multiculturalists are wrong. First, left to their own devices many immigrants to Britain have prospered. Indians and some other minorities do better than whites in schools. There are many types of British Muslims, and some of them are moving up and out. The 2005 bombers, it now seems, were shaped and motivated as much by strife within Muslim communities—fanatical Islamism serving as a perverse form of intergenerational rebellion—as by schisms between Muslims and wider British society. Nor have immigration and multiculturalism led to so very much restlessness among the natives. The nasty, if clownish, British National Party has occasionally picked up the odd council seat, but it is a piffling force compared with far-right outfits elsewhere in Europe.

Second, multiculturalism's detractors tend to concentrate on the easy targets. It is plainly true, for example, that Britain should anathemise egregious practices such as forced marriage or “honour killing”. That government commission and others are right to emphasise English lessons, especially for women, since an inability to speak it harms their children's prospects as well as their own. The commission is right again to imply that too much funding has historically and divisively been offered to community groups that cater to only one ethnicity or religion. (The commission also advocated better cultural preparation for new arrivals, for example to help them understand the British philosophy of queuing and thus avoid ruckuses at bus-stops and post offices.) But less tends to be said about what, in the end, are the most important determinants of segregation, namely housing and education. “Multicultural” policies—letting people, by and large, live and educate their children where they like—may have inadvertently created neighbourhoods and schools in which almost every face is the same colour. But as well as being illiberal, most of the alternatives would probably create more trouble and anger than they prevent.

Americans in glass houses

Finally—and for all the disparaging talk about Londonistan, capital of Eurabia—other countries, including those where the disparagement of multiculturalism is sharpest, have less to teach Britain about integration than is often assumed. That is partly because they have failures too, and partly because their circumstances are too different to be meaningfully compared. Mr Cameron talked admiringly about the American solidarity embodied in the pledge of allegiance and Mount Rushmore. Yet in Chicago and elsewhere, black Americans are more ghettoised than any minority is anywhere in Britain (they also intermarry less than blacks in Britain). Slavery, of course, makes black Americans a special case—but so are any number of British Muslims. Many are refugees; others are from families who migrated to the old imperial motherland from backward parts of Pakistan and Bangladesh, to work in British factories that subsequently closed. Many of their American counterparts may indeed stick the Stars and Stripes on their front lawn as devoutly as do other hyphenated Americans; but, apart from their faith, they may not have much in common with the Muslims of Burnley or Oldham.

The vogue for promoting a new, inclusive Britishness is well-intentioned, but probably doomed. National identities cannot be confected—and besides, the British already have one. Privacy and freedom are two of its nicer components, and multiculturalism, for all its failings, has been a fine expression of it.

No. 2

• What has triggered the Polish immigration to Britain? What made it possible?
• What jobs and positions have immigrants been taking at the first place?
• How do you think the massive immigration affected the British society and what was the general opinion on it?

From The Times
Tide turns as Poles end great migration
Alexi Mostrous and Christine Seib
February 16, 2008

Polish builder Aric Jenac, 33, building at a home in London (Susannah Ireland / The Times)

A wave of immigration that helped to fuel Britain’s early 21st century boom is over, as the Polish plumber and thousands like him go home. The Times has established that, for the first time since they began arriving en masse four years ago, more UK-based Poles are returning to their homeland than are entering Britain. Statistics show that only 38,680 Poles signed up to the Government’s register of migrant workers in the third quarter of 2007, a slump of 18 per cent from the previous year. Polish officials say that Poles leaving the country outnumber thoses coming in.

Hard statistics on the number of Poles leaving Britain do not exist. There are no embarkation controls on EU members so they are are not counted out. But Polish officials, British employment agencies and the Polish media all believe that the tide of immigration has turned. Since Poland joined the EU in 2004, 274,065 Poles have signed up for work permits. They make up 66 per cent of all applications from Eastern European countries. But a combination of tightening economic conditions in this country, a comparatively weak pound and an unprecendented surge in the Polish economy has made it unattractive for Poles to remain. “At the end of last year we saw the tipping point,” Krzysztof Trepczynski, Minister for Economic Development at the Polish Embassy in London, said. “It’s a real change. There are now definitely more Poles going back to Poland.

Jan Mokrzycki, president of the Federation of Poles in Great Britain, said: “The first thing that’s been hit is the builders. There’s no doubt about it. Many aren’t prepared to wait for the construction boom that’s going to happen for the Olympics in 2012. “Also, the Polish economy is experiencing an upturn. The zloty is at a high and although we’re experiencing inflation here and in Poland, it’s not as noticable in Poland because the currency is strong.” Half of the estimated one million British-based Poles are expected to return home, said the Centre for International Relations, a Warsaw-based think-tank.

Chris Zietkowski, 34, a Polish painter and decorator, told The Times that he wanted to return home this year. “Two years ago I could make five times the amount of money here than I could in Poland,” he said. “Now the wages are about the same and the living costs in the UK are much higher. There is a lot of work in Poland, probably more than in the UK. It’s a good time to go back.” Mr Zietkowski added that many of his friends were also thinking about returning. “The feeling is: why be away from your family and your home-land for no reason?”

The tide of immigration prompted supermarkets to introduce ranges of Polish products as they sought to tap into the substantial spending power of the new arrivals. Polish newspapers and radio stations sprang up. Libraries started stocking Polish books. The young immigrants, most of whom were aged between 18 and 25, quickly infiltrated the building and plumbing industries, drawing praise for their work ethic and low prices. Last year’s downturn in the British building industry has prompted many to return home.

Kasia Popyla, 23, is a student physio-therapist who has just returned to Poland. “I used to make £800 per month,” she said. “Since the summer I’ve watched the zloty value of my savings, which are in pounds, fall lower and lower. “At the end of the day we are Polish, we left in our early 20s and are coming back to get married and watch our kids grow up in Poland.”

Cost of living

743,000 Eastern Europeans applied to register for British jobs between 2004 and 2007

468,000 Poles successfully applied, 66 per cent of the applications

1 million Poles estimated to have migrated to Britain

£1 equals 7.23 Polish zloty (2004)

£1 equals 4.83 Polish zloty (2008)

8% of Poles left the country in the past three years, fleeing 16 per cent unemployment

£800 Polish monthly average wage (2003)

£1,967 English monthly average wage (2003)

Source: Home Office and Poland’s statistic office