DREICH!

Before anyone calls the RSPCA, the above is NOT MY FAULT!!!!! Yes, it is a photo of a very wet kitty,but he insisted on going out when it was drizzly, and as soon as it started to rain he was up on the window ledge and I got him straight back in again! Awwwww!!


My lovely Elvincraft 2 ply merino lace est arrivee! Fabulous!! The colour is just divine. Although it's too dull to photograph outside so I had to take the pic in the kitchen and so it isn't really possible to see the true colour and the little variations in shade.I'm thinking actually instead of ruining it by knitting an ambitious lace shawl which has about 4 charts, I might knit another Kernel because I love that pattern; also, I am more likely to wear a scarf than a cumbersome (if fine) shawl, because that's what I like. I just love gorgeous scarves.

However....I have just found - on the fabulous Knitty - a lovely wrap called Cold Mountain, which I can easily adapt (fewer pattern repeats) to make a lovely lace scarf about 150 x 45cm. The colour of my lace yarn and the name really match, and Arthur's Hill can sometimes feel a bit like a cold mountain at times!

Funny, if you go down south, they just do not use the word dreich at all, it isn't in their vocabulary except as something they might read in a book. The word itself means everything at once about a day like today: wet, miserable, drizzly, grey...... I have been interested for a while in the fact that a lot of the language and dialect up the Northern coast, particularly here and further north to Scotland, resembles Scandinavian and also Dutch langauge. Dutch can sometimes sound a bi like someone speaking a mishmash of Germand and Norwegian with a Scottish accent. We talk about 'bairns', 'gannin hyem', 'hooses'....my Grandad used to call me 'lang'en' which is actually Norwegian for 'long [or tall] one'.

I would love to shove the Geordie accent in Nick Griffin's face and ask him if he is going to send us all back to....where? Norway, Denmark, Rome, Holland? Or, as someone on QT pointed out, send us all back to Africa, which is where we began our evolution. After all, white skin and pale eyes are simply an evolved response to the reduced need for melanin, the brown pigment that protects us from the UV rays of the sun in really hot places. A pigment that many white people encourage by going for sun bed sessions to make them look brown.....how ironic is that?

But yeh...you would think people would have realised by now how dangerous and insiduous fascism can be. Propoganda, fear, ignorance....this is a 'good' climate for Griffin's racism to be able to spread, because the uneduacted or simply ignorant just see immigration, migration and asylum-seeking as one and the same, without thinking about the reasons behind why people come here. Can you imagine what would have to happen to you and your family, what would have to be going on around you, for you to even consider leaving everything - literally everything - behind and risking your life to travel halfway across the world (and not in a comfortable plane or ship either); and can you even begin to understand what circumstances would lead to someone choosing to take their children on such a dangerous and uncertain journey, destined for a foreign country, and with no money? We complain about how crap Britain is and how lousy the Government is etc etc but we are actually very well off, in terns of money and other factors. We can go outside without worrying about being shot; our children can go to school - or not - and we do not have to pay for healthcare. we can say whatever we want about the (unelected)Prime Minister, about the way the country is run, we can protest if we are not satisfied and we can teach our children whatever we want to, all without fear of being jailed or tortured or even disappearing. If we are ill and cannot work, we do not starve, and women whose children's fathers are not with them are provided for. Children without parents are given shelter and - in most cases - are protected from harm. We have enough - more than enough - to eat. We have a roof over our heads, regardless of income. Imagine having none of the above. That is why people seek asylum. They are not given hundreds of £ of taxpayers' money per week and they are not given homes which would otherwise be available for British people. The accommodation available for asylum seekers is usually with private landlords who win contracts from the government. These asylum seekers are not allowed to work, so they are not 'taking our jobs'. There are plenty of jobs for British people. If someone is granted asylum and given the right to stay in Britain they have to seek permission to work. The sort of work they do is generally poorly paid and 'casual' - not the sort of work British people would perhaps wish to do, such as cleaning toilets in a hotel or picking vegetables for £3 an hour. They are limited in seeking work by the fact they cannot move around the country as we can if we wish. The people targeted by racists as 'taking our jobs' etc. tend to be people from the E.C who have the right to come where to work, as we do to work in their countries and often do. Does Griffin have an opinion about, say, rich middle class people who drive up the price of housing in idyllic parts of France or Italy or Czech and who have gained skills and qualifications here, paid for by the taxpayer, and who now use those skills to make a living and benefit their new country of residence? And why does he himself look slightly tanned?

I dont want to make this a political blog so I have tried to keep it simple, but there are so many more different things to consider and the majority of Griffin's supporters are, sadly, poorly educated, knee-jerk reactors, who would blame immigrants for a rainy day! They are entitled to their opinions are of course, but I am sure the BNP is well aware that most of the people who agree with them are poorly informed and do not really understand much about the complex issues around immigration and economics and so forth. Racism, however it is dressed up, is destructive for everyone, and it is absolutely stupid to talk about 'keeping Britain British' after 3 or 4 generations of welcoming people from all over the world - people whose descendants have now made their homes here,put down roots, had children and grandchildren - many of whom are mixed race. In my view the UK as a mixed race society is fine.the problems which arise from a multicultural society do not arise specifically from that fact, but from people's attitudes and their unwillingness to co-exist with their fellow human beings. People are people. It is a no-brainer.