Entries tagged with links

A good day for blogposts; here are two that I can't resist linking to on the off chance that'll get them even one more reader.

matociquala on writers writing the Other and how not to be stupid, insensitive, trapped by your hegemonic privilege, &c. when doing so. I'm not a writer, and I'm not likely ever to be one, but I found this post and its comments worth reading as a reader, and as a generic human being. Especially in conjunction with the thread started by

nojojojo's comment here.

naamah_darling on being Politically Correct. This one had me near bursting with laughter, which is I think generally the best state of being to be in when learning how not to be, in her felicitous phrase, a plug of congealed, bituminous iguana semen. There's also the added bonus of my quote of the year so far in the comments, from

angry_geologist: “'Politically correct' is what bullies call it when their former victims start to stand up for themselves.”

ETA and more; defensive is as defensive does, but cultures are not on a level playing field, and agonising over [perm from] white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied, cis-gendered, straight, anglophonic guilt is unhelpful.

Couple of things that deserve wider circulation.

Zombizi posts a rare entry on his blog about one of the many victims of the rule change in the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme.

Last November the UK government changed the rules for the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme. The shitty thing they have done is to apply these rules retrospectively, suddenly putting many people who had made their homes here at risk of deportation.

One such a person is my close personal friend and favourite Uncle, Bill Tonghoek. He pretty much scored maximum points in the test, except for the fact that he doesn’t have a university degree, leaving him 5 short of the requisite 75. If you were to spend more than 5 minutes with the man you’d realise that there’s a very good reason for this. He’s clearly the most educated person on the planet and able run intellectual circles around most cardigan-wearing professors.... no university would have him. To say our country will be a poorer place without this high-earning, tax-paying, big-spending individual is a massive understatement, and not for the reasons stated above.

You can read what’s happening to his friend, and consider another way in which our government is being actively evil.

Elsewhere (via Cat Vincent), we find that in our brave NewLabour world, being overconfident in public is now an indication of criminal, nay, terrist intent. So be careful out there, youall, remember to shuffle in a fearful fashion, with your eyes cast down, lest you get dragged away as the subversive you surely are.

Linkspam

Random political linkerage