The Glasgow Airport attack has thrust two men into the media spotlight: Bilal Abdulla, a doctor at Paisley’s RA hospital and (apparently) one of the two would-be bombers, and John Smeaton, the man who interrupted his cigarette break to punch said bombers.
Which means that in Scotland, smokers are protecting the public from doctors.
Heh heh heh.
*coughs up a lung*
Comments
0 responses to “Glasgow Airport irony”
So think how many more terrorist plots will now be foiled by folks standing outside workplaces on a fag break…one up to the anti-smoking lobby.
Norman Tebbit was RIGHT when he talked about his Cricket Test.
What Cricket has to do with this terrorist plot.
As early as 16 years ago, Lord Norman Tebbit, a British politician expressed his concerns about the increasing numbers of British Citizens that identified with a foreign nationality more than their British citizenship.
An example he gave was what he saw at a cricket match in Great Britain between their national team and that of Pakistan. He saw a great number of British citizens of Pakistani descent rooting not for England but for Pakistan. And they weren’t all naturalized first generation British citizens, but third and fourth generations as well.
How, he wondered, can these people be considered British citizens and take part of the responsibilities of British citizenship, when they themselves don’t even really think of themselves as British as indicated by them rooting for a foreign team instead their own national team?
And what are the consequences for British society of having a significant segment of its population that will not integrate itself into British Culture but instead identifies itself more with a foreign country than their own?
This “test” of British citizenship came to be known in England as the “Cricket Test” and as you can imagine was greeted with hostility and calls of racism from the Left.
But his concerns were unfortunately vindicated on July 7th, 2005 when “home grown” terrorists hit the London Underground subway system with suicide attacks
And now we have another terrorist plot which might have just included “home grown” terrorists in Great Britain.
Too bad people didn’t listen to Lord Tebbit’s concerns in 1990 instead of ridiculing his “Cricket Test”.
Tebbit: ‘Cricket test’ could have stopped bombings
Tebbit attacks ‘unreformed’ Islam
How, he wondered, can these people be considered British citizens and take part of the responsibilities of British citizenship, when they themselves don’t even really think of themselves as British as indicated by them rooting for a foreign team instead their own national team?
That’s deeply flawed. You could say exactly the same thing about the Scots’ “anyone but England” attitude to sports.
And now we have another terrorist plot which might have just included “home grown†terrorists in Great Britain.
We only know two nationalities so far, and they’re Jordanian and Iranian.
Sorry, not iranian. Iraqi.
JD, JD, JD…
So think how many more terrorist plots will now be foiled by folks standing outside workplaces on a fag break
Ah, but that only applies to terrorists who can’t get inside buildings. Had the jeep got through the doors, the smokers’ addled lungs would prevent them from getting inside quickly enough to twat any terrorists. So really we need smoking areas everywhere.
And a ban on doctors, in public at least…
> the smokers’ addled lungs would prevent them from getting inside quickly enough to twat any terrorists.
More to the point, someone would probably try to stop them until their cigarette was properly extinguished.
> That’s deeply flawed. You could say exactly the same thing about the Scots’ “anyone but England†attitude to sports.
What, you mean the attitude that is part of a national mindset that is probably now going to lead Scotland to be ejected from the Union?
I agree with Tebbit about the Cricket Test, but I don’t think that’s any reason for Steve to condescendingly harangue us like ten-year-olds.
Heh.
Rumour has it there are quite a few ManU supporters living in London. I think these should either be sent back to Manchester or asked to support Arsenal/Tottenham/Fulham/Chelsea/another London club.
We can’t have these divided loyalties! This needs to be stamped out! Now!
I think you’re missing the point, Armin. If there were a realistic prospect of significant conflict, even war, between Manchester and London, then, yes, a bunch of Londoners seeing themselves first and foremost as Mancunians would be a serious issue. But there isn’t. Pakistan, on the other hand, is sometimes an ally to the UK, sometimes not; it’s a nuclear power; it is regularly at war with India, a British ally; it has border skirmishes with Afghanistan, a British ally. And, of course, some British subjects of Pakistani descent have gone out to Pakistan, got trained in camps there, and gone on to fight against British troops in Afghanistan and elsewhere. I’d love to hear an example of that sort of thing going on between London and Manchester.
The Tebbit test isn’t about giving a fuck who wins a cricket match; it’s about the suspicion that the cricket support may be a symptom of something wider. And that suspicion has been proven not to be entirely without grounds.
Mind you, if you are going to give a fuck who wins a cricket match, I’ve often thought that it must be awful for players like Monty Panasar to go out on the pitch and see all these people who claim to be from the same “community” as him cheering on his opponents.
I disagree. Because assuming the attempted attacks had a “religious” background this isn’t really about loyalty to a country. It’s about belief systems which are not tied to a specific country, but a religion or a system of beliefs. Meaning the cricket test might very well have failed, as they might very well would have supported the English/Scottish/British/take your pick team, yet still wanted to change the world, including the country where they lived and which they in their specific way loved.
Personally, the flaw in the cricket test is it’s based on a flag-waving bulldog-spirit sense of nationalism that means nothing to me. Never mind what it must mean to an immigrant regarded as not existing because you won’t tell something you don’t know. By Tebbit’s standard, the George cross wearing football thug sticking the boot into the Galatasaray fan is the biggest patriot there is.
> the cricket test might very well have failed
The idea behind the Cricket Test isn’t that it’s some sort of exam that immigrants have to pass and that we can be 100% sure of the loyalty to Britain of anyone who passes it. It’s more of an observation: here are some ostensibly British people who, in this context, clearly do not associate themselves with Britain. What about other, less harmless, contexts?
> assuming the attempted attacks had a “religious†background this isn’t really about loyalty to a country.
Of course it is: it’s about loyalty to Britain. People who are loyal to Britain don’t conduct campaigns of mass murder against the British, by definition. Whether someone is disloyal to Britain because they prefer Islam or because they prefer Peru is a side-issue. It’s not about whatever conflict we happen to be in right now: it’s a long-term issue. For instance, in 1970, I doubt anyone gave much of a damn about how well Argentinian immigrants to the UK were integrating. One day, it turned out that that mattered. What if there had been hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Argentina? What if a lot of them had joined the army? Obviously, it would have had major implications for the country. The point is that you don’t know what’s going to happen in international politics even a short time in the future, so you need the people of the nation to have some shared loyalty to each other, just in case. A big swathe of the population who openly celebrate their support of the country’s opponents is cause for concern.
As an aside, I’ve often noticed that the people who claim that it’s racist to suggest that, say, Bangladeshis should become more British than Bangladeshi when they move to the UK don’t tend to sing the praises of Brits who move to the South of Spain only to spend all their time in steak-and-chips-and-Sky-Sports Union-Jack theme pubs complaining about the fucking wops.
> an immigrant regarded as not existing because you won’t tell something you don’t know
Sorry, Tony; I’m not being facetious (for once), but i honestly don’t know what you mean here.
> the flaw in the cricket test is it’s based on a flag-waving bulldog-spirit sense of nationalism that means nothing to me
What, you’ve never supported Britain or Scotland against some other nation in any event ever? You surprise me.
Anyway, you’ve missed the point: the Cricket Test isn’t about failing to support Britain; it’s about actively supporting Britain’s opponents. Tebbit never said anything about Brits with Pakistani parents who weren’t into cricket. The absence of a flag-waving bulldog-spirit sense of nationalism is not really a problem; the presence of a flag-waving bulldog-spirit sense of nationalism, but for another nation, is.
> By Tebbit’s standard, the George cross wearing football thug sticking the boot into the Galatasaray fan is the biggest patriot there is.
Yes, that must be why the Thatcher Government took no action whatsoever against football hooligans, ever.
> i honestly don’t know what you mean here.
Oh, OK, I’ve read your other comment now. I see. You are (presumably deliberately) misconstruing
“Immigrants who know about the terrorists and inform on them don’t exist”
to mean
“Immigrants who know nothing about terrorists don’t exist.”
How clever.
>>presumably deliberately
No, there was an ambiguity there. Hence my asking for clarification.
…complaining about the fucking wops.
They would never do that!
Complaining about the dagos, on the other hand…
Via Digg:I kicked burning terrorist so hard in balls that I tore a tendon.
So, you’ve failed in your holy mission and you’re on fire. What you could really do with is a gang of marauding Glaswegians kicking you in the knackers.