Perhaps, but then we have behavioural data to support the attitudes surveys that consistently show mixed ethnicity relationships and marriages are ever increasing.

Therefore, the litmus test of attitudes towards immigrants are probably those who have chosen to form a long-term relationship with someone of a different ethnicity.

in the interests of anti-racism i have been shoving it up a bengali lady for over three years, some would say my cock end is the tip of the spear of social justice.

fellow posters, what have you done for the cause?

her mother is the most racist person i have ever encountered by the way, she's hilarious

I think that shows that things are improving in the long term but doesn't give a snapshot of where we stand right now. For every person who marries someone of different ethnicity there could be neighbours quietly seething in resentment. We just don't know.

Steinbeck was right. The people most content in themselves I've ever seen have been those in the least rich counties who have enough but not too much, and they've also been the most giving. Rich people are uniformly unhappy (because by their own metric of success they can never have enough).

yes, we do know or at least we have a very strong indication when we compare data between countries.

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institu...-neighbour.pdf

I don't think that 1 in 6 of people here not trusting their neighbours is a particularly good thing, though at least it appears to be improving.

I also think that comparing countries in an attempt to show that UK Rulez is a hark back to much worse times, and that we should abandon such petty jingoism if we want to advance as a society. Given the current state of this country and its appalling history we should be far more modest about who we are and who we want to be.

The governments approach to refugees is disgusting and seems to me to be getting significnatly worse fast. Climate is going to ramp up the pressure massively. Europe seems a lot worse and the continuing rise of the far right is extremely concerning. We need to be very careful because attitudes can get far worse really fast.

Another area imo where brexit was a disaster for us and the EU. Worst practice can become lauded as 'progess by them lot' too easily.

Thank you for your servicing

So demonstrating any area where the UK is excelling is now an act of petty jingoism in the Jalfrezi rulebook. Lol gonna have to revisit that list of his standard plays and add this one.

I tend to agree with him. Trying to demonstrate that we're excelling at something is to say we're better than others. Aside from it's lack of veracity, it's an attempt at reassurance of this anxiety we as a nation feel since we got knocked off our perch. And it certainly does promote jingoism.

Grow up.

I think there's generally a misguided reluctance from the left/progressive side to be positive because of risking it seeming like there isn't still so much to do.

But we do need to talk up anything good. On immigration/refugees for example we should have long been much more positive about how well we handle it and how good it is. Sure we have to recognise and address our faults/weanesses (of which there are no shortage) but the overall attitude needed to be much more positive. Our relationship with the EU is a huge example of the disaster of not being positive. For all the people moaning about masstricht, for example, there should have pro-europeans talking our part in the EU up and it's importance to both the EU and to us.

If we can do this without comparison with other places then all the better but it's tough when so many opportunities to proclaim we do worse than other countries are siezed upon. Generally it's bollocks so I'd happily get rid of nearly all of it.

In a block of 19 flats on average every resident mistrusts 3 of their neighbours.

According to people here that's something to celebrate. Talk about setting a low bar.

Dude I want to say 'you're better than this' but you've repeatedly shown yourself not to be, and your pronouncements from on high do not do do the leftist cause any favours. Though this place resembles a battleground, when you try to browbeat your way into feeling like a moral victory, you do precisely ZERO good. You do not teach your opponents anything, you do not learn anything yourself, you do not prove your case, you do not explain your way of thinking, you just make people think 'if he debates with his friends the way he debates here, I'm glad I'm not his friend'. You have this habit of totalizing everything and making it seem like any deviation from YOUR opinion is just a calamity. There is no give with you, only take. Please tone down the rhetoric. Please treat people with respect even when you think they're not treating you with respect. No-one gains when you talk to people who are at very least good-hearted if not also quite well-educated too in the way that you do.

Did you actually read the relevant posts or are you grunching? I was trying to have a conversation with someone until diebitter butted in just to post abuse. Telling him to grow up is fair and pretty mild too.

You should take it up with him.

What does it tell you that I'm taking it up with you, and not him? Yes, I read all the relevant posts. You're not going to find someone in here that agrees with you as much as me on the subject matter. So what does it tell you that I'm trying to tell you to tone it down and not him? If you think telling someone to grow up is mild, then maybe you need to spend a bit of time as Pasanda or Korma.

Might be better in PM but if you’re going to throw abuse around you have to expect something back. Im sorry if telling diebitter to stop being so childish spoiled the thread for a few posts but it’s mild compared to what I get, and you should consider the sequence of events before jumping in.

As I said, I have already done that, and I'm sure there's blame to go around. Please hear me when I say that you can and should do better. Educating ourselves for the sakes of organizing and learning theory and history and so on extends to how to achieve what we want to achieve by talking to people in a way that's most likely to change their minds. The way you're doing it is maximising the chances of entrenching people further. You may think you're doing good, but you're alienating people that we want and need onside. The feeling of purity we get when we prove ourselves better than centrists is not something you can take to the bank and cash. Think of Aesop's Fable about the sun and the wind: the wind tries to blow the man's coat off, the sun makes it hotter and so the man takes his coat off of his own accord. That's how we win. Anger is justified, and sometimes we should be publicly angry, but take it to protests and marches and sitins and strikes and media interviews. It is misdirected here.

In real life, yes of course you’re right but believe me you’re making the same mistake as chez if you think you can change anyone’s mind online with your approach.

This the internet, wazz, where some people play lots of disingenuous games simply because they feel they can get away with it, and if you don’t highlight hypocrisy and contradictions when they occur you might as well piss into the wind.

I don’t even know if you’ve noticed but we’ve already seen a marked shift in stance from one person here because opposing statements that they were making couldn’t be reconciled, and I silently applaud them for changing their mind because most people don’t.

To avoid pissing in the wind myself you don't notice any hypothetical statements here with the way you act in this forum?

We have to have some kind of yardstick for measuring how well the country is doing. In that respect, it's no different to GDP, the gini coefficient or any other quantitative measure we might use to evaluate what we are doing and not only ask "can we do better?", but "who are the more successful countries, and what are they doing?".

As for the 1 in 6 neighbours thing, meh. At my old house, 2 doors down there was a guy who was a total ****hole, and I certainly wouldn't have trusted him with anything important. I don't think the 1 in 6 figure is bad or unreasonable, and in the example you gave 16 out of 19 people in that block of flats all trust each other. I don't think that's bad

You can't "change anyone's mind" with any approach - people have to change their own mind. The reason I engage with this particular thread is that it's one of the few places where you have a relatively diverse set of political opinions and the regs are well-informed on political issues they care to comment on.

I've definitely moved my opinion on issues based on facts, reason and logical arguments presented itt. Don't assume that just because someone doesn't shout "I yield!" that they have not at least acknowledged a point as fair, valid or reasonable.

Minds change. It can't be prevented.

The 'dont trust' stat is an odd discussion anyway. Seems like people are a lot more like that naive simpleton chezlaw than the perceptive fascist spotter jalfrezi. Is the complaint with the figure about how **** so much of humanity is is rather than how trusting we are as a society?

It is an odd stat and people trust people in different ways. and have different definitions of trust.

The national happiness index surveys seem reasonable to me but won't give much succour to the flag shaggers' alliance.

I guess that's the same chzelaw who, when he was a mod, let people who he'd been warned many times were fascists run around mocking the death of an anti-fascist protestor, and the same jalfrezi who had warned him?

Your sarcasm is horribly inappropriate.