BBC2 White Series

[miss giggles]

I enjoyed white girl, although probably because I watched the original documentry and wanted to know what happend to her.

I remember thinking at the time her story was not so much about religion as about a need to belong, to feel secure, to be part of a family and a community. I really would like to know if she stayed with Islam, or left, and managed to find that need fufilled elsewhere.

 

[Harold Hill]

Problem I have with White Girl is just that, even when it's 'White' season, the BBC just can't drop exaggerated white meets Islam dramas - normally exposing white prejudices far more readily. How many do they think we need?

 

[Spion]

Problem I have with White Girl is just that, even when it's 'White' season, the BBC just can't drop exaggerated white meets Islam dramas - normally exposing white prejudices far more readily. How many do they think we need?

How many have there been?

 

[Harold Hill]

How many have there been?

Off the top of my head, we've had last night featuring alcoholic/insular white family and peaceful Muslims.

The one about the Bradford riot showing Muslims getting 'unfair' sentences.

A completely unrealistic one by the Full Monty writer showing a Muslims girl getting cut off from her white friends after 9/11 and her brother going off to join some suicide bomber cult.

And the worst of all, the one in the East End featuring a sociopath father and alcoholic mother including gems such as a mob of whites incited to call Asians trash and a Muslim girl being hit by a crossbow for no reason.

Hold on I'm beginning to see a pattern here.

 

[Paulie Tandoori]

Indeed. And this morning i was reading about a white w/c woman in Manchester who's turned her life around and started up a community learning scheme in Wythemshawe. Last year I met a woman in Merthy Tydfil who has successfully secured various pieces of funding to pay for community childcare, education, employment schemes and so on, all community run. And i also read about some Welsh ex-miners who had clubbed their redundancies together and are now in the process of sorting out all kinds of local schemes to improve their environment, housing and job opportunities. But why bother with any positive examples in this season eh? Violent low-life xenophobic alkies clearly make far better viewing.

 

[Spion]

Hold on I'm beginning to see a pattern here.

What pattern is that then? Care to explain?

 

[Spion]

Indeed. And this morning i was reading about a white w/c woman in Manchester who's turned her life around and started up a community learning scheme in Wythemshawe. Last year I met a woman in Merthy Tydfil who has successfully secured various pieces of funding to pay for community childcare, education, employment schemes and so on, all community run. And i also read about some Welsh ex-miners who had clubbed their redundancies together and are now in the process of sorting out all kinds of local schemes to improve their environment, housing and job opportunities. But why bother with any positive examples in this season eh? Violent low-life xenophobic alkies clearly make far better viewing.

That would be less representative than the alchie xenophobes tho wouldn't it? If they wanted the best representation of the white w/c today they'd be better off looping re-runs of The Office

 

[electric.avenue]

I think he raised an interesting point. His argument was that he was not living hand-to-mouth, which was how working class people had lived in the past. The point was made (I can't recall by whom) that the true working class are the people coming to our country to do all the shit jobs below minimum wage. Personally I think it's worthwhile discussion to have.

You could even argue that much of the working class of the UK lives in China.

 

[electric.avenue]

That only makes sense if you reduce w/c to meaning people living in absolute poverty - that's not what the term means. And i'd ask how long this aeroplane feller could last without working.

The whole problem with the concept of class is that there is no clear definition of who is in what class. I know people who are practically millionaires - own property (more than one), have private health care, etc, yet they decry as "middle class" any bugger who doesn't happen to speak in their regional dialect, doesn't smoke, cares about cleanliness, or whatever. Even though the people they are on about live in social housing, earn low wages, etc.

It's almost like class can just mean what you want it to mean.

 

[Stoat Boy]

Just seen the trailer for the programe tonight. The BBC person interviews young white males in Peterborough who explain how they cannot get a job because of all the foreigners. Then he offers them work, at £7 an hour, in a field picking vegetables which they decline. Then, horror of horrors, one of them opens a can of lager.

Now I aint got any time for lazy white trash myself but how does this sort of thing contribute to a 'white' season ? Perhaps the BBC should focus on the education system which throws out such morons with alarming regularity. Or just rename the whole thing 'White shite'.

 

[ViolentPanda]

You could even argue that much of the working class of the UK lives in China.

You could, but people would suspect that you'd forgotten to take your daily Ativan and Largactyl cocktail.

 

[_angel_]

That would be less representative than the alchie xenophobes tho wouldn't it? If they wanted the best representation of the white w/c today they'd be better off looping re-runs of The Office

How do you know this?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Just seen the trailer for the programe tonight. The BBC person interviews young white males in Peterborough who explain how they cannot get a job because of all the foreigners. Then he offers them work, at £7 an hour, in a field picking vegetables which they decline.

I wonder how deeply it addresses the difficulty of signing off for a few days work (which is what quite a bit of agricultural labour tends to be, duration-wise) and then getting your claims (JSA, HB, CTB etc) reinstated?

Then, horror of horrors, one of them opens a can of lager.

It's probably seen as the latest "opium of the masses", is lager.

Now I aint got any time for lazy white trash myself but how does this sort of thing contribute to a 'white' season ? Perhaps the BBC should focus on the education system which throws out such morons with alarming regularity. Or just rename the whole thing 'White shite'.

Bear in mind that this stuff is produced by the middle class for the middle class. The Beeb have to produce this stuff, because they don't care to know any better.
As for the educational system, yer actual middle classes will blow a lot of hot air about how there's "equality of opportunity", and how that means that "Mr. Chav" had the same opportunities as Tarquin and Tabitha, when it means anything but that.

 

[dtb]

missed the first few, will try and catch the rest. i hope it's not to biased like most bbc programming these days, about time white british people had their say

 

[audiotech]

there was an implication that bradford had fairly recently been some sunny utopia but the fact is most of those guys were kids/young men when the mills started closing - and its not as if theyve been drawn into racism by the BNP and failure of the left recently

i know wibsey and its one of those places i could guarantee that if you went there 20 years ago the local pakistani shop would have been boarded up and covered in swastikas, much like most of the rest of bradford when i was growing up

and one of the guys may have been black, but like that tosser at the end said, most of 'em say im not racist i just hate muslims (by which they mean anyone with an asian skintone) - which is why ive always argued that a lot of the anti-islam shit kicking about on both the left and right can not only sometimes be covert racism but can also be perceived as covert racism, as in nudge nudge we know what you mean son

I was organising in Bradford against racism some years ago and the place was the pits compared to now. I also remember all members of the community coming out to see the NF turn tail as it tried to gain a foothold amongst disgruntled white voters.

Somebody mentioned Dewsbury waiting for a spark to set things off? Well, that actually did happen a number of years back, when the BNP turned up and organised some local hooligans to have a ruck with the local Asian youth. The subsequent riot was costly for community relations, as well as damage to property.

Apart from the cheap beer, my experiences of working mens clubs are on the whole not good. For instance, I was banned for three months from one for telling a committee member to shut up and sit down.

Working mens clubs are run mainly by cliques along Stalinist lines. Women used to have no say at all in the running of these clubs and were disallowed from holding full membership. Not sure what the situation is now on this?

Most working mens clubs have been stagnating for years, with many closing down due to lack of trade.

 

[d.a.s.h]

tbh when the BBC makes something about the English wor . . . I mean white working class it's like David Attenborough going to observe the gorillas. Maybe one day the gorillas will come and have a look at David Attenborough for a change.

'White Girl' didn't grab me, I turned over after about ten minutes. 'All White in Dagenham' is on this Friday and looks like it might be a bit more interesting.

 

[dtb]

i didn't think that one about polish immigiration told us anything we didn't already know, it just highlighted the fact that the system is not working and english people are suffering as a result. it's good to finally hear people on TV being allowed to voice their concerns without being labelled as racists. seems as though the tide is finally turning

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

I just watched White Girl but my b/f didn't video it all

What happened after the wedding?