617 Sqn Grave Vandalised!
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https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...tral-term.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...man-power.html
Islandlad, I don't know your history nor care. So you call me a racist! Well I will not shut up. You wish to deny me free speech, to 'unplatform me'. I suggest that you read the minutes of the recent Oxford Union debate on the subject. The motion to deny free speech was chucked out by a vast majority of young intelligent people. I wonder if you come into that bracket? You mention that it was a racist term in the 1940s; of course, like many WOKE's you appear to be rather uneducated. Read up where the term Nigger came from. As for trying to change history, there are very many things you might start doing; how about changing 'Atila the Hun's' name to 'Atila the Whatever', as you may think that 'Hun' is a racist word. History is the past, we cannot change it. Many BLM supporters demand reparations for what has happened in the past.... OK, so the French should be sued for killing King Harold in 1066. All this is of course compete nonsense. The past is indeed the past and we learn from it. But we cannot change it. Grow up.
It's been said so many times on various posts " We should learn from history not erase it "
What does puzzle me however regarding the word nigger is that it's ok for a black person to call another black person nigger but not a white person. Now, how black do you need to be to use the word. Could someone with mixed race parents use it.
The original Nigger's memorial stone should be reinstated and the replacement put in a museum to show future generations what a sad place the 2020 World is becoming..
What does puzzle me however regarding the word nigger is that it's ok for a black person to call another black person nigger but not a white person. Now, how black do you need to be to use the word. Could someone with mixed race parents use it.
The original Nigger's memorial stone should be reinstated and the replacement put in a museum to show future generations what a sad place the 2020 World is becoming..
Straw Poll
So can I just check something?
Everyone over the age of 60 thinks the decision is a bad one and all the young upstarts are wrong because they disagree?
I just need to be sure.
BV
Everyone over the age of 60 thinks the decision is a bad one and all the young upstarts are wrong because they disagree?
I just need to be sure.
BV
Incidently, it has been suggested that we live is a strange world... we do. WOKEs wish to deny history and aeroplanes with black crosses or swastikas are banned in Germany. However, those who wish to change history should remember that denying the Holocaust is in itself an offence. You cannot have its both aways.
We live in a “post-truth” society in which emotional responses dominate balanced consideration of evidence. Our use of technology has reinforced black or white thinking, all-or-nothing, splitting our world neatly into one category or another; we create, define our individual context.
But thinking, living in an ambiguous world is grey; we abhor uncertainty thus place objects and ideas into neat boxes, which in time become reinforced silos of belief owned by tribes of like thinkers.
A solution, if there is one, requires changing behaviour, perspective, reframing our thinking.
We need to challenge ourselves and society, questioning whether views have meaningful value. Avoid ‘absolute’ words and rethink them as ‘sometimes’ or ‘every now and again’.
Acknowledge and accept that life is filled with uncertainty. We don’t have all the answers all of the time. It’s completely fine to say, ‘I don’t know, I need to think about that more.’
But do we, will we; I fear not.
At best we might only manage our society as it is, each to their own, tribes guarding silos of thought seeking to become the new history.
Except being unable to rewrite factual history, attempting change history represents the failure to learn; which could be history's prime purpose.
"I also have no interest in reconstructing the past as I would like it to have been. I learned from it precisely because it wasn’t what I expected, which also explains why I don’t remember it. Furthermore, you cannot learn from my mistakes, only from your own. I want to encourage, not discourage, your making your own."
Ackoff; https://thesystemsthinker.com/a-life...tems-thinking/
But thinking, living in an ambiguous world is grey; we abhor uncertainty thus place objects and ideas into neat boxes, which in time become reinforced silos of belief owned by tribes of like thinkers.
A solution, if there is one, requires changing behaviour, perspective, reframing our thinking.
We need to challenge ourselves and society, questioning whether views have meaningful value. Avoid ‘absolute’ words and rethink them as ‘sometimes’ or ‘every now and again’.
Acknowledge and accept that life is filled with uncertainty. We don’t have all the answers all of the time. It’s completely fine to say, ‘I don’t know, I need to think about that more.’
But do we, will we; I fear not.
At best we might only manage our society as it is, each to their own, tribes guarding silos of thought seeking to become the new history.
Except being unable to rewrite factual history, attempting change history represents the failure to learn; which could be history's prime purpose.
"I also have no interest in reconstructing the past as I would like it to have been. I learned from it precisely because it wasn’t what I expected, which also explains why I don’t remember it. Furthermore, you cannot learn from my mistakes, only from your own. I want to encourage, not discourage, your making your own."
Ackoff; https://thesystemsthinker.com/a-life...tems-thinking/
I have not read each and every comment on this topic, but has anyone criticised the Station Commander at Scampton for being bullied into ordering this? I'm sure that in the past, there were many with backbones, such as Douglas Bader, who would have said 'F*ch Off'. Interesting the type of person that is now being appointed at Staich! One chum told me that the present incumbent used to work for him when he was a Fg Off... I'll not repeat what I was told for it is 'hearsay' and anyway people do change. But interestingly, in my day, even the Station Adjutant (later called OCGD Flt) was always a pilot. Same with the Base Commander.
Sharpend
An alternative viewpoint might be that the Stn Cdr (or whomever is responsible for the new memorial) showed an extraordinary amount of backbone by doing something they believed to be morally correct despite knowing the backlash it would receive from some demographics.
BV
BV
All. I’ve sat on the sidelines through this debate and consequently, as I have a lot of ground to cover this tome may come across as slightly rambling…but as in an Eddie Izzard monologue please stick with me and we’ll reach the denouement eventually.
I’m afraid in this present woke, ‘Cancel Culture’ we’re not really ending up in an Orwellian nightmare which, no matter how apposite it is, was contained in a novel. No, we’re getting very close to what happened outside the Staatsoper in Berlin on 10 May 1933…and that didn’t end well!!
My philosophy has always been ‘What is, Is’! Which may or not have come from ‘The Borrowers’ by Mary Norton?!?
We cannot turn back the clock, but we must always learn from the past and ensure that those wrongs are not repeated…but (isn’t there always a but?)…we cannot and must not try to expunge what happened then! As I’ve quoted before in a strangely similar debate about ‘Butch’ Harris…’ The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’.
As far as I’m aware Gibson did not name his dog deliberately as a racial slur. No, as said hound was a Chocolate Labrador, he named it after a well-known brand of paint manufactured by one of the UK’s leading paint producers. So, who was in the wrong?? Gibson? Or should we now boycott all Old English Sheepdogs because of their link to a racist paint manufacturer?!? These things are not quite as easy as they first appear!
Back in the day, I was 2ic and senior nav in the RAF’s ‘most operational’ support helicopter squadron. For the disbandment of the Squadron and the retiring of the SH version of the ‘Mighty’ Wessex I planned a round NI and GB flypast of all of the bases, stations and locations that were linked with 72 (Basutoland) Squadron and the venerable ‘Wessii’. As you can see our ‘bracketed’ name is Basutoland, as in WWII the people of Basutoland raised funds to support the war effort, part of which went to pay for 25 Spitfires which flew with No 72 Squadron. They had Sesotho names like Makesi, Moshoeshoe, and Thaba Boisu - the latter a name which had also been given to three Sopwith Camels in World War 1.The original goal was to collect £50,000, but in the end The Basutoland War Fund collected more than £120,000. Because of this 72 Squadron took the honorific title ‘Basutoland’
To honour our heritage I sought, and received, approval to use the callsign ‘Basuto’ for the pan-UK flypast. Holy Moly…I now understand that Basutoland was a was a British Crown colony established in 1884 due to the Cape Colony's inability to control the territory’s Commissioners!!
Shock, horror!! Does this make me some form of unrepentant racist as members of ‘Black Lives Matter’ and their alickadoos would have it!! Of course not, I was just honouring our forebearers from 1917 to 2002.
In addition, those of you who know me, are well aware that I am quite fussy about the spelling of my surname. It is an Anglicised version of an original Gaelic-spelled name. One of my ex-Father-in-Law’s old mates used to call me the ‘soup supper’ as during the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s the Anglican Church of Ireland would provide soup kitchens…but only for those who took the Anglican Communion. Therefore, one of my, thankfully pragmatic, ancestors probably thought. ‘Well it’s the same God so what the heck!’ and, to save his and his family’s lives he converted from Catholicism. And the fact that I am here, boring you witless, is testimony to the fact that I am incredibly grateful. Again, should I feel appalled, change the spelling back and ‘turn’ as the say in NI? No. ‘What is, Is’. It made me and my family what we have been I the last 180 years or so. I can acknowledge what we had before, but I can’t change what happened in the late 1840s.
What these inane ramblings are getting at is that we are all a product of our pasts – good, bad or indifferent. Could we, should we have done things differently? Of course. But we cannot turn the clock back!! If only we could!! But we can learn from what happened in that ‘foreign country’ and make sure that it doesn’t happen again!!!
What is, Is!!
I’m afraid in this present woke, ‘Cancel Culture’ we’re not really ending up in an Orwellian nightmare which, no matter how apposite it is, was contained in a novel. No, we’re getting very close to what happened outside the Staatsoper in Berlin on 10 May 1933…and that didn’t end well!!
My philosophy has always been ‘What is, Is’! Which may or not have come from ‘The Borrowers’ by Mary Norton?!?
We cannot turn back the clock, but we must always learn from the past and ensure that those wrongs are not repeated…but (isn’t there always a but?)…we cannot and must not try to expunge what happened then! As I’ve quoted before in a strangely similar debate about ‘Butch’ Harris…’ The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’.
As far as I’m aware Gibson did not name his dog deliberately as a racial slur. No, as said hound was a Chocolate Labrador, he named it after a well-known brand of paint manufactured by one of the UK’s leading paint producers. So, who was in the wrong?? Gibson? Or should we now boycott all Old English Sheepdogs because of their link to a racist paint manufacturer?!? These things are not quite as easy as they first appear!
Back in the day, I was 2ic and senior nav in the RAF’s ‘most operational’ support helicopter squadron. For the disbandment of the Squadron and the retiring of the SH version of the ‘Mighty’ Wessex I planned a round NI and GB flypast of all of the bases, stations and locations that were linked with 72 (Basutoland) Squadron and the venerable ‘Wessii’. As you can see our ‘bracketed’ name is Basutoland, as in WWII the people of Basutoland raised funds to support the war effort, part of which went to pay for 25 Spitfires which flew with No 72 Squadron. They had Sesotho names like Makesi, Moshoeshoe, and Thaba Boisu - the latter a name which had also been given to three Sopwith Camels in World War 1.The original goal was to collect £50,000, but in the end The Basutoland War Fund collected more than £120,000. Because of this 72 Squadron took the honorific title ‘Basutoland’
To honour our heritage I sought, and received, approval to use the callsign ‘Basuto’ for the pan-UK flypast. Holy Moly…I now understand that Basutoland was a was a British Crown colony established in 1884 due to the Cape Colony's inability to control the territory’s Commissioners!!
Shock, horror!! Does this make me some form of unrepentant racist as members of ‘Black Lives Matter’ and their alickadoos would have it!! Of course not, I was just honouring our forebearers from 1917 to 2002.
In addition, those of you who know me, are well aware that I am quite fussy about the spelling of my surname. It is an Anglicised version of an original Gaelic-spelled name. One of my ex-Father-in-Law’s old mates used to call me the ‘soup supper’ as during the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s the Anglican Church of Ireland would provide soup kitchens…but only for those who took the Anglican Communion. Therefore, one of my, thankfully pragmatic, ancestors probably thought. ‘Well it’s the same God so what the heck!’ and, to save his and his family’s lives he converted from Catholicism. And the fact that I am here, boring you witless, is testimony to the fact that I am incredibly grateful. Again, should I feel appalled, change the spelling back and ‘turn’ as the say in NI? No. ‘What is, Is’. It made me and my family what we have been I the last 180 years or so. I can acknowledge what we had before, but I can’t change what happened in the late 1840s.
What these inane ramblings are getting at is that we are all a product of our pasts – good, bad or indifferent. Could we, should we have done things differently? Of course. But we cannot turn the clock back!! If only we could!! But we can learn from what happened in that ‘foreign country’ and make sure that it doesn’t happen again!!!
What is, Is!!
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And your point is ?
60 year olds remember the Cold War.
60 year olds had parents who lived through WW2.
And Grandparents whe fought in WW1.
In other words a connection with harsh reality.
Knock yourself out with “woke” drivel.
But you will have to reinvent your connection with Western Civilisation.
Or fail.
China and Russia play a long game.
Putin and Xi Jinping can hardly believe their luck.
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Islandlad, I don't know your history nor care. So you call me a racist! Well I will not shut up. You wish to deny me free speech, to 'unplatform me'. I suggest that you read the minutes of the recent Oxford Union debate on the subject. The motion to deny free speech was chucked out by a vast majority of young intelligent people. I wonder if you come into that bracket? You mention that it was a racist term in the 1940s; of course, like many WOKE's you appear to be rather uneducated. Read up where the term Nigger came from. As for trying to change history, there are very many things you might start doing; how about changing 'Atila the Hun's' name to 'Atila the Whatever', as you may think that 'Hun' is a racist word. History is the past, we cannot change it. Many BLM supporters demand reparations for what has happened in the past.... OK, so the French should be sued for killing King Harold in 1066. All this is of course compete nonsense. The past is indeed the past and we learn from it. But we cannot change it. Grow up.
I won't 'unplatform' you. I am not attempting to change history. Tomorrow's history is today's present. It is BLM and WOKE. It's not my present. That's a sideline to me. Much as this is. But if 'they' come after the RAF and 617 the outcome may be one ' you' really don't like. Very Senior Officers - the high paid help as someone described them, my just cut 617 loose; as all too difficult and career limiting.
Keep digging that hole. If 'they' come after you, following this lot I will just look over the edge and say "told you so". Should that happen? Absolutely bloody not! But I fear it may do if people don't Grow Up Catch Up and for heavens sake .... Shut up!
Stop conflating arguments to make your point. This is a stand alone argument.
You can shout "fire" in a crowded cinema; it is your right. It's freedom of speech. Is it clever? Based on your argument you would say "yes"? I would say no. It's there to be used wisely.
I did re-read the etymology: nothing new for the uneducated there. The disengenuous type the word for effect. It slides them towards the racist camp. It does not need to be typed.
sharpend you are not MLK. This is not worth marching for. You are not Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This is not the thin end of the wedge.
Last edited by Islandlad; 19th Jul 2020 at 11:44.
George Glass
As I feel sure you haven’t read my previous posts on the subject (does anybody ever) I’ll reiterate them for you.
I am not a fan of cancel culture or ‘wokeness’ and ordinarily I would agree with you about the dangers of erasing history in all its forms.
The issue of the dog’s name is not the thin end of the wedge’ or a slippery slope towards the Fourth Reich.
It is the name of a dog. The name is not a pleasant word and whether it was in 1943 is open to debate. I just do not believe a memorial stone, on an RAF (an employee that wants to be open to all with no fear of discrimination) base with that word on it is appropriate.
Remember, I had absolutely nothing to do with the new memorial. I am merely voicing an opinion that I support the move.
Many of you seem to think that makes me one of the woke generation who thinks we should burn books and destroy statues. I am not, I can assure you.
I could likewise argue that any of you who want to restore the old memorial are racist. I do not believe that to be true.
I fully appreciate Sqn traditions and despite being a mere whippersnapper (aged 43 with 21 years of service and counting) I just think that, on balance, the new memorial is a good thing.
Please vent your anger at the people who want to change all of history before trying to label me. I am able to take things on a case by case basis rather than stoically sticking to a single angle and refusing to listen to anyone who has a different opinion.
BV
I am not a fan of cancel culture or ‘wokeness’ and ordinarily I would agree with you about the dangers of erasing history in all its forms.
The issue of the dog’s name is not the thin end of the wedge’ or a slippery slope towards the Fourth Reich.
It is the name of a dog. The name is not a pleasant word and whether it was in 1943 is open to debate. I just do not believe a memorial stone, on an RAF (an employee that wants to be open to all with no fear of discrimination) base with that word on it is appropriate.
Remember, I had absolutely nothing to do with the new memorial. I am merely voicing an opinion that I support the move.
Many of you seem to think that makes me one of the woke generation who thinks we should burn books and destroy statues. I am not, I can assure you.
I could likewise argue that any of you who want to restore the old memorial are racist. I do not believe that to be true.
I fully appreciate Sqn traditions and despite being a mere whippersnapper (aged 43 with 21 years of service and counting) I just think that, on balance, the new memorial is a good thing.
Please vent your anger at the people who want to change all of history before trying to label me. I am able to take things on a case by case basis rather than stoically sticking to a single angle and refusing to listen to anyone who has a different opinion.
BV
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The Basutoland War Fund. Because of this 72 Squadron took the honorific title ‘Basutoland’ - callsign ‘Basuto’
In the English language, the word is an ethnic slur typically directed at black people, especially African Americans.
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As I feel sure you haven’t read my previous posts on the subject (does anybody ever) I’ll reiterate them for you.
I am not a fan of cancel culture or ‘wokeness’ and ordinarily I would agree with you about the dangers of erasing history in all its forms.
The issue of the dog’s name is not the thin end of the wedge’ or a slippery slope towards the Fourth Reich.
It is the name of a dog. The name is not a pleasant word and whether it was in 1943 is open to debate. I just do not believe a memorial stone, on an RAF (an employee that wants to be open to all with no fear of discrimination) base with that word on it is appropriate.
Remember, I had absolutely nothing to do with the new memorial. I am merely voicing an opinion that I support the move.
Many of you seem to think that makes me one of the woke generation who thinks we should burn books and destroy statues. I am not, I can assure you.
I could likewise argue that any of you who want to restore the old memorial are racist. I do not believe that to be true.
I fully appreciate Sqn traditions and despite being a mere whippersnapper (aged 43 with 21 years of service and counting) I just think that, on balance, the new memorial is a good thing.
Please vent your anger at the people who want to change all of history before trying to label me. I am able to take things on a case by case basis rather than stoically sticking to a single angle and refusing to listen to anyone who has a different opinion.
BV
I am not a fan of cancel culture or ‘wokeness’ and ordinarily I would agree with you about the dangers of erasing history in all its forms.
The issue of the dog’s name is not the thin end of the wedge’ or a slippery slope towards the Fourth Reich.
It is the name of a dog. The name is not a pleasant word and whether it was in 1943 is open to debate. I just do not believe a memorial stone, on an RAF (an employee that wants to be open to all with no fear of discrimination) base with that word on it is appropriate.
Remember, I had absolutely nothing to do with the new memorial. I am merely voicing an opinion that I support the move.
Many of you seem to think that makes me one of the woke generation who thinks we should burn books and destroy statues. I am not, I can assure you.
I could likewise argue that any of you who want to restore the old memorial are racist. I do not believe that to be true.
I fully appreciate Sqn traditions and despite being a mere whippersnapper (aged 43 with 21 years of service and counting) I just think that, on balance, the new memorial is a good thing.
Please vent your anger at the people who want to change all of history before trying to label me. I am able to take things on a case by case basis rather than stoically sticking to a single angle and refusing to listen to anyone who has a different opinion.
BV
Just disappointment.
Your reply is disingenuous.
Why be provocative in singling out over 60’s in your previous post ?
Fact is that history has not been taught in schools over the past 30 years.
Fact is most 30 year olds have not the faintest idea of the context of the issues they are panting about.
Fact is that Western Civilisation is under huge pressure.
From powers who have clear ideas where they are going and how to get there.
And us ?
Self flagellating over a memorial that should be a source of pride.
Brilliant.