Chez Moi

Immigration in Briain: What needs to be done for smoother integration?

As you can see, I am not letting go of this topic! Thing is, I need to sound quite knowledgeable about it and I have just about a week’s time. Which is where you, my lovely blog readers come in. Please log onto my show on BlogTalkRadio and click on the appropriate button to speak to the host - me! All you need to do is tell your own immigration story. Location, your stance - nothing matters. You might be living in North Wales and might be from Eastern Europe and your neighbours couldn’t be nicer - ring and tell me. Or, if you are a Chinese living in Midwestern America and your white brethren are colder than Arctic ice, ring and tell me.

Whatever your immigration story is, I am willing to listen. So please pick up that phone and dial (001) (347) 996-3899
The date: December 10
The time: 2:00 PM GMT Be there!ps: It is free! All you need is log on to the website, just click the link and you will know more!

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Tags: radiochat, immigration, britain

Britain is all caught up with the news of teacher Gillian Gibbons being thrown into jail in Sudan, facing a 15-day jail term followed by deportation. At one point, it was reported that she might be looking at the business end of a whip - 40 times. Her crime? Letting her class of 7 year olds name their class teddy bear ‘Mohammad’. All over the country loud, disbelieving gasps can be heard, accompanied by the typical ‘they must be joking, surely!’ Foreign Office is scrabbling about trying to stop the Sudanese government from lashing out on the poor bewildered woman.

One of the guys in my course even made fun of it the other day. That made me think - they don’t get it, do they?

While it is tragic that the poor lady has been thrown in jail, laughing about it or passing disparaging comments about the attitude of ‘those people’ doesn’t help matters. Much as the British might see it as nothing short of ridiculous to get het up by something so trivial, the matter couldn’t be more serious to the other party. If one looks at it from the Sudanese government’s point of view, the teacher has committed a blasphemy, by naming a teddy bear after the Prophet. So, in their minds, she deserves to be punished. In fact, had it been a Sudanese citizen who had committed this act, retribution would have been swift.

This is not the first time the West has been caught with its foot caught in a religious quagmire. A few year’s back, an enterprising outfit in America called Sitting Pretty released a range of toilet seats named, ‘Sacred Seats’. The collection carried images of Lord Ganesha and Goddess Kali in glorious technicolour. Retailing for a whopping sum of $130, the line was augmented by such compelling prose such as this:

“Ganesha the Hindu elephant god, removes all obstacles, destroys evil and provides you with protection on your journey.”

Say goodbye to constipated bowels! Taking the dump and prayers at one go - what more could a harried Hindu want?

Of course, the Hindu community got into a major uproar and the line was withdrawn. A while later, a San Francisco company released ‘designer footwear’ carrying images of, you guessed it, Ganesha and assorted members of his illustrious family. Outraged squawks from all quarters made sure the shoes weren’t released into the general market. Despite this, flip-flops and Hindu gods were once again merged in 2003 by American Eagle Outfitters and the result was pretty much the same . Then there was this French shoe manufacturer who put pictures of Rama onto shoe fronts.

 

Why would someone do it? While one can arrive at a whole lot of answers, what it all boils down to is that the people behind these never realised (or cared enough to realise) what these images represent and what kind of sentiment they carry for the millions of Hindus around the world. Unfortunately enough, no one seemed to understand the reason behind the furore caused by these incidents so that the circumstances need never be repeated again.

What do all this have to do with this divorced teacher and her impending, frightening future in Sudan? Personally, nothing. She merely went with her students’ wishes, the papers say - after all, why wouldn’t she let them name their toy? That she did not understand the weight the name Mohammad carries and therein lay her misfortune.

The teacher’s inadvertent error just reiterates the fact that it is high time the Western countries start taking into account other cultures, customs and religions. It is that classic rule “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” To this, one more statement could be added: “do not judge everyone or everything by your standards”.

Does the teacher deserve what she gets? No, no, emphatically no. Do the general Western populace need an education on what goes and what doesn’t, with respect to the world’s religions? A definite yes.

Lavs of Myownpenseive tagged me with a Middle Name Tag. I am not sure how I am to go about it as I do not have one - a middle name, that is. So I shall take a leaf out of MM’s and go with expanding my blogging handle, DesiGirl.

D - Desi. 100%

E - Enthu; in some cases, OE or Over Enthu

S - Sarky; one of my closest friends once said ‘you are one of the sarkiest bitches I have ever known and if I can get past you, then the official mauling wud be a piece of cake’. One heck of a compliment, that!

I - Inventive; I wish I could spin stories at the drop of the hat like my son. More importantly, I wish he doesn’t lose that ability.

G - Girly; that is one thing I have always wished I was. I don’t mean I took a left turn half way thru college and got a sex-change. I just wish I was soft and girlish like most girls around.

I - Imaginative - in desperate short supply. Help!

R - Rowdy; I was one, growing up. Have been called less flattering versions of the same.

L - Laughter; cos that is the most precious thing, IMO. Have belly, will laugh.

Anyone who hasn’t been tagged for this one, please feel free to take it up.

Gordon Brown’s government has been blundering about since his first day at the office. The Northern Rock crisis hit them long and hard and they have barely got past that. But with the latest ‘offering’, they have taken incompetence to levels barely scaled before.

They have only gone and lost our child benefit records. All of it. All 25 million of it. Gone. Child benefit records, that contain everything from the names, national insurance numbers, addresses, date of births, bank accounts. Know what the funniest bit about this whole thing is? The Chancellor Alistair Darling stressing “there was no evidence of misuse of the data.”

Really? That’s okay then - I can heave a big sigh of relief and go back to surfing the Web.

What really happened?

Apparently, on October 18, HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs service) sent the child benefits data to the National Audit Office, in two CDs, by unrecorded and unregistered post! The CDs, containing the details of 25 million individuals, failed to turn up at the NAO and when NAO complained, a second set was sent to them.

What a bunch of imbeciles! Who are these idiots who run the government? They send vital information, in CDs, by unregistered post and when that fails to turn up, instead of kicking shit, calmly send another copy over! And now, they expect everyone to be relaxed because they assure us that “there is no evidence the data has gone to criminals”. Well, we won’t know that, will we, until huge sums of cash go missing from our accounts?

The blame game has started already - the Chancelleor blamed junior officials at HMRC for the fiasco; HMRC Chairman Paul Gray has resigned already. The Tories are baying for the Chancellor’s blood, asking him to resign too.

How serious is this?

Very. The general public is really worried as to what is going to happen. The data in the lost discs contain real juicy details and any crook would give an arm and a leg to get his grubby mitts on them. Even though the discs are supposed to be ‘password protected’ and the data is in an ‘encrypted form’, how much time would it take for a determined fraudster to break it?

Banks are trying their best to assure the public that the information contained on the discs are not enough for anyone to access their bank accounts. But there are other ways of perpetrating fraud. Identity theft is a big deal now and for those in the game, this is manna from heaven, Using someone’s name, address and date of birth, a crook can take out credit cards, loans, mobile phones etc, for starters. David Hill, senior security consultant at red24 says to the Times, “having a national insurance number is as good as having a passport.”

Worryingly, our children’s data is in there too - including their dates of birth. What is there to prevent sickos from targetting the children?

While Darling has glibly said people ought to check their bank accounts for “irregular activity”, what protection does Joe Public have against the identity theft? From identity theft, organized crime is just a step away. Immigration, driving licences, id cards, NI numbers - anything and everything could come under attack.

So what can one do?

There are organizations like CIFAS that can help one fight identity fraud. CIFAS is the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service and will be able to advise on protection of identity and what to do in case of identity theft. Email them at protective.registrationuk@equifax.com. You can also register with a credit reference agency like MyCallCredit, who will, for a fee, monitor your credit and would alert you periodically. Any changes or irregular activity, you would be contacted immediately by the agency and you can react proactively.

The UK Payments Association has released a leaflet for those concerned about the HMRC data theft. The leaflet, according to the APACS website, contains “questions and answers, as well as top tips on spotting and stopping ID theft”.

A special hotline has also been set up and the number for that is 0845 302 1444.

or Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam or Kannada has become super-easy now, thanks to the Google Indic Transliteration tool. This is a no-mess, no-fuss device and all you need to start typing in any of these Indian languages are the Ctrl and g keys - and knowledge of the language, of course!

I dearly love to write in my mother tongue but installing the font everytime I changed my machine proved to be a headache. I work from my laptop (Windows) and desktop (Mac) and the font is not Mac friendly. Plus, every time I want to write something from uni, I run into problems if I have to download fonts.

This nifty tool solves all those problems very easily. After all, all you need to do is type the URL and voila, you can get cracking straightaway. It has got some neat add ons, word suggestions that comes up when you are half-way through your typing, to lend a helpful hand by coming up with alternatives. 

If you click on the ‘Edit..’ link, you’d get a window like this:

need I say more? If you are a nitpicker, you could choose to have the whole keyboard displayed as it were, and you could tap tap away.

This tool is supported by both IE and Firefox, thereby making it easy for you to use from a Windows, Mac or Linux based machine.

So what are you waiting for?