Verbal

Calm down. It's a Fulham thing, and they've done it for donkey's years. The neutral area is actually a great place to watch the game at Craven Cottage.

Spoken like a true Mirpuri. Weird, that. You have that fingers-in-your ear, la-la-la-la thing down pat. The Hijras are always the clincher. Anyway, it’s been fun torturing you with stuff that is so clearly beyond your comprehension. But behind it all is this. I loathe the fanaticism of small things, like humiliating a customer by feigning a religious stand against wine-bottle-carrying. I loathe it in the same I way I loathe the fanaticism of supposedly big things, like killing a young man by feigning a religious stand against a war of which the perpetrator has absolutely no conception. I loathe the fanaticism of conspiracy theorists who then seek to render these murderers innocent and the families of the murdered guilty. They are all on the same continuum, regardless of the scale of the offence. They are all fanatics, unable to deal with the world in a normal, human, pluralistic way, and instead reject it by getting on their narcissistic high horse. So just imagine for a moment this alternate universe. Instead of the overwhelming number of Muslims in Britain being represented by largely conservative Mirpuris, wouldn’t it be wonderful if instead these were balanced by a number of Sufis from South Asia who decamped to British cities, bringing their Saintly relics, their refined and detailed understanding of different grades of Hash, their skills at making hooch, their addiction to a kind of ritualized ecstasy, men and women alike, that is truly a wonder to witness. And their music. Have you heard their music? Do you even know what it sounds like? This is religion like you’ve never experienced it – and it is an experience. What, then, would be our picture of Islam? Not the sneering provocations of Anjem Chaudhary or the self-righteously odious 7/7 ‘leader’ Siddique Khan. Nor the niqab’d medical female student loudly refusing to touch the body of a male cavadar and demanding exemption (it happens depressingly frequently). Nor the dismissal of a customer merely for the ‘offence’ of presenting a bottle of wine for payment. My guess is we’d all be just a little bit happier. Wouldn’t you want that, rather than trying to get a pathetic rise out of people you consider reactionary, with threads like this yelling, in faux chav, “have at it”? Happy Christmas.

I know it's a lot for you take in, and complexity isn't your strong suit. So let me confuse you still further. By far the largest section of Muslims in the UK are of Pakistani origin. At least 75% of them are from, or have families from, a tiny rural area in Kashmir, around the Mangla Dam, near Mirpur. This small area is highly conservative, highly traditional. Sadly, it seems that most of our most problematic fundamentalists are drawn from this small group of extended families - including people like Anjem Choudhary and Mohamad Siddique Khan. Very, very few Muslims with connections with Mirpur are known for a 'liberal' interpretation of Islam. Practically none of them will have anything to do with Sufi traditions that are so widespread elsewhere in Pakistan. In fact I've heard many supposedly 'Westernised' Mirpuris - including some well known TV 'personalities' - decry the 'loose morals' of Pakistanis they encounter when they travel to Karachi or Lahore. The culture they are so appalled by includes drinkers, consumers of vast amounts of hash - and even some cross-dressers and sex-changers. If you knew anything about the events surrounding festivals like Basant in Lahore, you'd also know about some pretty 'out there' activities involving 'parties' which involved something quite a lot more eye-opening than kite-flying. So the picture of Asian Muslims we have in this country is gleaned from this strangely unrepresentative set of conservative clans from Mirpur. Most Muslims I've met in Pakistan are well versed, so to speak, in the Koranic prohibition on intoxication. Most Muslims I know in Pakistan drink. There may be just one official brewery in Pakistan, but there are thousands of unofficial ones. Even - and especially - in the Taliban strongholds of the Tribal Areas, you'll find local hooch easily. My advice: avoid a drink colloquially known as Khyber Water. It's powerful stuff. And your suggestion that the Muree Brewery is the only one in the Muslim world is a joke, right? You're surely not serious. To link this back to the Muslim in M&S, he or she may or may not be from Mirpur, but statistically there's a good chance they are. They may or may not be 'liberal' in their interpretation of Islam, but I bet they're not. In forming our impression of what Muslims are like and how they think, we are, unfortunately, led down the garden path by a distinctly unrepresentative sample of Islamic adherents in this country. Most Muslims I know laugh at the idea of not 'handling' alcohol; they enjoy it too much. It's absurd to claim there's Koranic justification for not touching bottles of wine, and the only justification for such a stance can be found in the same dodgy Hadiths that are dragged out to condone all manner of oppressive behaviour.

That's what's known as denial. One of the most frequently used words in Urdu translates into English as "shame". So for his embarrassment, here's the 'imaginary brewery in Islam': http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/9153934/Ale-under-the-veil-the-only-brewery-in-Pakistan.html Here's where to buy hash in Karachi (particularly recommend Zamzama): http://webehigh.org/karachi-pakistan/ And some edification on the subject here: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-conservative-pakistan-everybody-must-get-stoned/2/ Hallucinogenics are widespread in the large population centres in Pakistan (basically the Indus river valley) because Sufism is so deeply ingrained. You can't really take part in Sufi rituals without being off your head. And just to get your friend into a proper state, here's some info on a common sight on the streets of Karachi and Lahore - Hijras, or transexuals and transvestites. Hijras are also found quite frequently at weddings, and are considered by some to be good luck: http://worldpress.org/Asia/845.cfm Perhaps your friend can quote the relevant verses on the 'prohibition' of alcohol in the Koran - not some dodgy Hadith.

No it's not. You do realise that M&S has its origins as a Jewish-owned company, and Judaism has the same prohibitions on pork as Islam. I doubt any more than a tiny handful of Muslim employees would have any sort of problem selling pork. And for those few who do - it's presumably dawned on the management at M&S that they do actually sell other things than pork. Alcohol is another matter. It isn't prohibited in Islam - the only thing frowned upon is to be 'intoxicated'. Speaking as someone who's toured a brewery in Islamabad, and walked through an entire street in Karachi filled with shops selling an unbelievable variety of weed, I can tell you that squeamishness about alcohol and drugs has little to do with Muslim cultures in South Asia, where alcohol and an industrial consumption of marijuana are commonplace. Now if only M&S sold the latter, everyone would be happy.

Certainly not. In their small but highly visible way, Soho's VFX houses are a good illustration of how the energy of London created something from nothing in less than twenty years. Before 1995, the film and TV industry in Soho was little more than a disparate collection of postproduction houses. Then in 1995, those houses got together to finance and build the Soho Net London Fibre Ring, which gave them high-speed connectivity among each other, so that a small cottage industry suddenly had some critical mass. Together with some major technological innovations, particularly from the highly left-field Computer Film Company, Soho slowly gained the reputation for cutting-edge visual effects, at a price the LA houses could not compete with. So the losers here are not the provinces in the UK, but (mostly) the film industry in LA. LA has suffered in other ways - ILM, the largest (and highest-priced) VFX house, draws talent away to its facility in Marin County, just across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. And Pixar, which in any case has had a strong affinity with Silicon Valley, is also based just outside SF. But London now produces the VFX for many of the biggest-budget Hollywood movies, using largely UK-educated talent - and ALL of that talent is developed in-house. NONE of the finance to do any of this was provided by the government - no soft loans, no tax breaks, nothing. There have been attempts to create VFX houses in Manchester and elsewhere. A good friend of mine set up a brilliant Manchester-based company called Red Vision, which among many things developed software that enabled large-scale battle scenes in films and TV to be "populated" by individuated infantrymen who (according to programmed rules) did their own fighting, free of the animator. He ended up in London, though - for no other reason than that the creative edge was there, and he much preferred to be part of it. If the Soho companies didn't exist, you can't deduce that regional VFX companies would have prospered. There just isn't the economic creativity or critical mass in the regions to do it.

Exactly so. I'd be genuinely curious to see any evidence of this - rather than the actual and quite different claim being made here, that London gets, in some sense, a disproportionate amount of investment and infrastructure. I think the peeved provincials are responding atavistically, implying a lament for some long-lost industrial power. However, the simple fact is that that industrial power hasn't moved to London - it's moved to China, India and the rest of the NICs. London has reinvented itself on banking, insurance, intellectual property and the creative industries. The provinces have drifted along on London's coattails. As an example of the latter, I went to a screening of Gravity a couple of nights ago, and the stunning effects in the film, which required the development of new technology, were all done in Soho (Framestore). No other city in the world, including LA, is able to compete with Soho fx houses like Framestore, Double Negative and CFC on ingenuity, creativity and price - which is why so many US vfx-heavy films come to London. Gavity was also shot at Shepperton Studios, and leaving aside the tax breaks and other incentives, there is no way that this movie or any other would be shot outslde the Shepperton, Leavesdon, Pinewood, Elstree arc around London, because the creative talent doesn't exist in the UK provinces in anywhere hear enough of a critical mass. ALL of these studios, incidentally, are commercial enterprises and are not built on government hand-outs. If cities in the provinces wanted to compete, they would have to invest several hundred millions of public money on a "built it and they will come" hope and a prayer. It isn't going to happen, and shouldn't. But the really odd thing about the peeved provincials and their response to Cable's remarks is that they seem to have missed the rather central point that he was talking about airports. If you ask any Londoner, especially in the West of the city, they will say they don't WANT any expansion to Heathrow. Even - and especially- Boris Johnson - is saying this. The problem the provinces have is that to build the kind of airport capacity required outside of London - AND get people to actually use it - would take vast amounts of non-returnable public money being pumped in. So the peeved provincials are ignoring the fact that they are already heavily subsidised by London and Londoners; and yet their implied answer to the problem is the expenditure of even more huge amounts of public money on top of that.

That's strictly a solipsistic oxymoron. You can't declare yourself self-aware - by definition only others can do that. So delete self-aware. Rest is fine.

You and pap are showing your usual provincial sludginess with this kind of lazy response. With pap's lack of mental alertness in failing to read beyond a headline, you two should get on like a house on fire. London's economic dominance over the rest of the UK is not down to population size. That would just make it bigger than other cities not immensely richer. I tell you what: get on a train, if your provincial salary can take the strain, and come to London. Have a good look around. See what's happening, rather than peddle your provincial hard-done-by stereotypes. You'll be amazed. Just within a mile of where I live, we have two premier league clubs, arguably the best restaurant in London, an architects' practice that is world famous, a leading theatre, cinema and gallery venue, one of the most popular concert venues in London, the wonders of the River Thames, a famous international tennis venue, some of the finest riverside Georgian architecture in Britain...as well as multinationals like Coca Cola and Disney, creative-industry stalwarts like the BBC and HarperCollins, and much, much more. All within a mile. And I live in a quiet part of town. So it's not just about population. But whether you come down here or not, please do feel free to stay in your comfort zone. It's a perfect place for some...

I'm not implying it, I'm saying it. I live in both worlds and the contrast is startling. You can point to busy individuals in northern provincial cities, but as populations, the contrast is between sludgy entropy and creative energy.

Nothing in the article or Stephanie Flanders' report suggests anything of the sort. This sounds like typical special pleading from serial scrounging provincials, trying to explain away London's massive subsidisation of provincial Britain as some kind of fake colonialism. As Flanders says, the problem isn't London, its central government. London has not disempowered provincial cities like Liverpool or Manchester - it's just got on with being what it has become since the end of WW2, a world city. It's not just x times bigger than other British cities; it is an economic engine of vast proportions, and people who live and work in it have an energy that puts provincials to shame. As someone who lives both in London and the north of England, the contrast in attitudes is stunning. Even the act of getting off the train in London require spinning up to 'London speed', rather than the provincial dawdle. Economic creativity in the capital is vastly superior to anywhere else in Britain. Provincial decline, on the other hand, has followed manufacturing decline - and no one came up with a better idea. London, spectacularly (although not without problems), did.

As Bearsy's link makes clear, the OP has merely cut and pasted from a post on a snopes.com thread from 2006. He has added precisely nothing to it, other than to suggest, quite by accident I suspect, but quite rightly, that his post is about hate. So what exactly do you find "original" about something that's blatantly copied? And what is "stimulating"?

Quite so. The OP is also a proven liar. I'd like to hear his explanation for this guff - although I suspect it'll be wrapped up in some self-righteous indignation intended to convince himself he's not a lying, raging xenophobe.

You haven't quite got the hang of human interaction yet. Yes, it's an autobiography, but given the question you ask, an historical actor's own account of his reasoning is a pretty good place to start. Others, including professional historians, will have their views too. And actually on this particular question, there's lots of published and peer-reviewed material out there. It's easy to find. Interesting that you should be instantly sceptical of word from the horse's mouth, and yet so ready to endorse the far-right's "personally signed off" garbage. I wonder why you accord such unquestioning authority to a pro-apartheid source and yet won't even read Long Walk to Freedom? So to repeat for the god-know-how-many times: do you concede the "personally signed off" quote is untrue? Do you concede that far-right, pro-Apartheid websites hardly count as the most authoritative sources of considered views of Mandela's legacy? And do you admit it might be a teensy bit difficult to conduct a bombing campaign from the confines of a high security prison and as the country's most important political prisoner?

If you're going to continue to avoid answering the question about the non-existent quote from Mandela that he "personally authorised" the Church Street attack or the 1980s bombing campaign in general, then presumably you would wish to withdraw your link to that pro-apartheid site. Perhaps you would also wish to distance yourself from the false claim that Mandela "personally signed off" the attacks by acknowledging that it is a fantasy perpetuated by far-right and racist sources. In fact, if you google the phrase, what comes up is a sorry list of extreme-right and white-power sites, as well as a few football related sites like this one (not surprising, I suppose, given that the far-right have always targeted football sites for recruitment). Beyond this, there is an important distinction to make that I'm unconvinced you are capable of grasping. It is one thing to acknowledge, as any reasonable person would, that greatness is measured on scales that balance moral force or good judgement on the one hand, and mendacity or poor judgement on the other. It is quite another thing to invent the negatives, in order to falsely cast someone in the worst light. Racists, especially the apartheid relics and their apologists here, have constantly sought to pin the "terrorist" label on Mandela - and they've had to resort to outright lies to do it. You happen to find yourself in the sorry position of falling for their crap, hook, line and sinker. On the question you ask, about Mandela's refusal to "renounce violence" if you read Mandela's own account of this in his autobiography, he basically took the stance that he was not in a position to do so, not just because of the asymmetry of violence from the illegal apartheid regime, but also because he saw it as a ploy to discredit him, split the anti-apartheid movement, and prolong violent white rule. He was, essentially, being asked to "renounce violence" while having no power to stop the regime continuing its violent oppression of the opposition - and the prize for this was a promise of personal freedom and political betrayal. He also believed the offer from the regime betrayed political weakness. And on this he was proved right. The regime were able to hold him for only another five years before he emerged, free and unencumbered by sleazy deals with the regime. So yes, any assessment of Mandela must balance the good and the bad - but hysterical pro-apartheid rhetoric, unthinkingly retailed with slack-jawed gullibility, must play no part in that assessment.

He was for long stretches. Now for the third time, answer my questions if you'd be so kind: where is the "personally signed off" quote from Long Walk to Freedom? This is important because it's supposed to indicate that he was personally directing the bombing campaigns, and it is important because your pro-apartheid friends repeatedly hold it up as evidence of Mandela's culpability. And please explain how Mandela, the most invisible man in South Africa, for long stretches in solitary confinement and for others monitored in minutest detail by prison guards, directed the campaign. Give evidence (not sourced from Stormfront) of how he did this. What's the problem here? Why no answers? Is it that you're a closet racist or that you don't read books? If you can't answer, perhaps one of your mini-mes can jump in, like the chef du submarine or the puerile ursine acolyte? The far right has been desperate to tie Mandela to the bombing campaigns of the 80s and yet has produced not a shed of evidence that any such claim is true. The effect of falsely claiming that he did lead those campaigns, though, is depressingly effective when it's reproduced ad nauseum by the educationally challenged on here.

I'm sure you're trying EVER so hard to think of an answer - so hard you've forgotten the questions. So I'll try again. 1. How did Mandela, from solitary confinement, the prisoner of a regime that banned even his picture being publicly seen, orchestrate a string of bombings in the 1980s? 2. Please give the actual quote from The Long Walk to Freedom where Mandela says he "personally signed off" on those attacks. Just to give you a helping hand, try to avoid looking for answers in those sites you evidently slavishly read, like Stormfront.

I'm not sure you're helping your argument by quoting a pro-Apartheid (that is to say, racist) website. And what are the "facts" here, that you seem so impressed by? The list of bombings are dated from 1981 to the "late 80s". Mandela was in prison, often in solitary confinement, from 1962 to 1990. Your Apartheid-loving mates quote Mandela as saying that he "personally signed off" on one of those attacks (Church Street) or all of them - it's not clear which. This quote is supposedly in The Long Walk to Freedom, his autobiography. Far-right sites, including your friends at Stormfront, are quoting it, without ever giving a proper attribution. All they quote is that phrase - nothing else. So can you please post the actual quote, as a paragraph? I could find no reference at all to a claim by Mandela that he "personally signed off" bombings from solitary confinement. He does comment on Church Street in the book, saying: Hardly the same as "personally signed off", is it? Incidentally, since you are so enamoured of facts, your Apartheid friends claim that the famous "I am prepared to die" sentence was uttered at the beginning of Mandela's speech at his trial. It wasn't. They were the last words of his speech. Still, facts are facts...

Seven pages of heat and very little light. Historically, pretty much the only people to call Mandela a terrorist were Thatcher and the racist apartheid regime - and even the SA regime, with all its brutal power, could never pin an actual criminal charge of terrorism on Mandela. He was cleared in his original trial (the offences included leaving the country without permission) and then, after much rearrangement of the paperwork, was convicted of sabotage. (It says something for the poverty of education in this country that something a snarling politician said 30 years ago is taken as gospel). In his famous speech at his second trial he spelled out his political ideals in these words: Of course, we don't have to take this at face value - except that his life, in prison and out, clearly followed that moral and political path.

Unauthorised by whom? On your definition of terrorism the French resistance against the Nazis were terrorists, as was Stauffenberg in his attempt to murder Hitler, as were the Italian citizens wo strung up Mussolioni and his wife, as were the mass protesters who sparked the rebellion against Ceausecu, as were the killers of Gaddafi. In fact, Gaddafi himself used exactly the definition you've just given to attack the rebellion against him. As did Hitler after the Stauffenberg plot - and as he did repeatedly in the murderous reprisals he ordered against French, Dutch and Czech resistance to Nazism. So to repeat: unauthorised by whom?

In what way was Mandela a terrorist? Please explain rather than sticking a label on and hoping that's sufficient.

If you're starving you're also likely to be dying of thirst - and have no money to buy food or water. The essence of capitalism is that you're therefore dead. The amelioration of this is what social democratic ideals and institutions (not socialistic ones - the terms of this debate are off) are about.

I'm not really. The phrase "equality of opportunity" has lost its meaning - and its radical power. If you were to say that the principle needed in all cases to apply to the selection of, say, members of the Cabinet, what would have to change? For a start, the power of Eton, Westminster, Harrow, Winchester, Oxford and Cambridge to "pre-select" political leaders. It also means the inhibition of closed political "clubs", such as the Bullingdon, where qualifications for membership are restricted to the odious criterion of "breeding". It means altering the powerful, pervasive middle-class sense of entitlement (this one still amazes me whenever I hear it, which, in my present place of work, is often). And most of all, it means empowering those without power, without presumptively aspirational parents, without inherited wealth, without private education, in such a way that they have good reason, based on equitable social and educational systems, to believe that they too can rise to the top. To make the institutional and social changes needed to achieve this requires something close to, or maybe more than, a revolution. As an aspiration, at least, it's happened before, in 1776 and 1789. It was what the Enlightenment was in part about. And what, around the 1830s and 40s, was the last Great Idea of the Enlightenment? Socialism. Are you ready to come out as a socialist, Smirking?

Lesson one: how to contradict oneself within one and a half sentences.

Great article, depressing thread.