More discouragement of cycling in Australia

[Milzy]

speaking of prejudice

(when I moved to the UK, I felt I'd gone back 15/20 years in terms of smoking and sexism. And I still can't believe how acceptable it is to hate gypsies/travellers here. And using terms like oriental. Edit: and anti-semitism. It took me a long time to notice that one)

The travellers around these parts are constantly leaving their rubbish behind, pooing in people's gardens stealing things. Brawling. Why do people hate them so much? Maybe they're just jealous of their awesome way of life?

 

[ianrauk]

This goes a bit beyond "discouragement" of cycling :
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/...a/news-story/cb567a71b7bdbd71cb94912c8aadcd3d

That's insane. Chainsaw ffs

 

[Milzy]

Please stop posting this ignorant rubbish.

Please.

Australia is bad. UK is worse. Scotland is much worse. 3 cheers for Wales and NI!

https://www.noo.org.uk/NOO_about_obesity/adult_obesity/international

View attachment 310428

Look, the USA can't get enough corn syrup down their necks.

 

[Drago]

I don't like Australia. A potentially amazing continent, wasted entirely on the Australians.

 

[jefmcg]

The travellers around these parts are constantly leaving their rubbish behind, pooing in people's gardens stealing things. Brawling. Why do people hate them so much? Maybe they're just jealous of their awesome way of life?

Every racist thinks they are not racist because what the believe about the race they hate is 'true". Only in the UK amongst enlightened countries is this sort of discourse considered acceptable. Then they think they have the right to call others racist.

 

[simonsch]

I don't like Australia. A potentially amazing continent, wasted entirely on the Australians.

I don't like the way Brexit seems to have brought the bigots in the UK out in force, and convinced them that it is OK to say such things.

 

[Saluki]

I don't like Australia. A potentially amazing continent, wasted entirely on the Australians.

Last time I was there - 2009 and Darwin, Wilson Crescent, Moil to be exact - our hosts told us that it is now wrong to call the indigenous people 'bloody aboes' and now refer to them as 'them black fellas' so felt that there was an improvement. There thoughts on Muslims was pretty horrific. They had not 'improved' in that department

They were horrified when we went off cycling most days. We had packed our helmets, knowing the Aussie law about them. We encountered no problems with other road users in Darwin, there were quite a lot of people on bikes. We were riding near the University are though, so maybe that is why.

 

[jefmcg]

This goes a bit beyond "discouragement" of cycling :
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/...a/news-story/cb567a71b7bdbd71cb94912c8aadcd3d

This is really bad.

I don't think you should take a single incidence of Mad-Max style violence as indicative of anything.

It occurred to me to compare this with barbed wire across bicycle paths. Google seems to indicate that is much more common here than in Australia, and here that offence only warrants a couple of hundred pounds fine and a "thinking skills" course.

 

[simonsch]

Last time I was there - 2009 and Darwin, Wilson Crescent, Moil to be exact - our hosts told us that it is now wrong to call the indigenous people 'bloody aboes' and now refer to them as 'them black fellas' so felt that there was an improvement. There thoughts on Muslims was pretty horrific. They had not 'improved' in that department

They were horrified when we went off cycling most days. We had packed our helmets, knowing the Aussie law about them. We encountered no problems with other road users in Darwin, there were quite a lot of people on bikes. We were riding near the University are though, so maybe that is why.

Amazing as it may be to some, there are a diversity of people and views in Australia.

 

[jefmcg]

[QUOTE 4777362, member: 43827"]Wow! Australia sounds amazing. No racism.[/QUOTE]
I never said there was no racism in Australia, I was just objecting to British people saying it was much worse than in the UK.

What is definitely true is that open racism is much more acceptable amongst the educated middle class people in the UK than in Australia. I have no idea who amongst my Australian friends is antisemitic, because they would never reveal that part of themselves. I do know many antisemitic Londoners.

 

[jefmcg]

I suspect the remark was made tongue in cheek. I

One of those things that gets funnier the more you say it?

 

[simonsch]

Anyway, FTW:

 

[jefmcg]

English person: "Australia is a terrible country, because of all the racism. But on the bright side, there aren't many gypsies there'

 

[Glow worm]

One of those things that gets funnier the more you say it?

Blimey- fair enough!

 

[simonsch]

English person: "Australia is a terrible country, because of all the racism. But on the bright side, there aren't many gypsies there'

Exactly.

On a related note, a colleague recently discovered that his son was wearing gloves to school on a hot day. It turned out that the other kids insisted on it "so that they wouldn't get French DNA on them". There is plenty of it (racism, not French DNA - well, probably that too) here in the UK - and it seems to be becoming more acceptable to voice such views, which worries me. (Certainly I am not claiming it is better in Australia - but it is definitely a lot better in Australia now than it was when I was growing up in country Australia in the 1980s).