The national maritime museum is apparently going to review Nelsonās heroic status in response to BLM
Rights or wrongs aside, I am looking forward to watching the protestors topple his statue
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This is a genuine question - where do we stop historically?
Iām verging on being an old but I donāt live in the past, I donāt care about a persons race, sexuality, disability or anything.
Yes, acknowledge the past but surely itās easier to just reset the clock and move on?
Everyone can do this and call out anyone who doesnāt - this is not difficult, but why is it?
Not sure itās a question of where or when. I think itās really a case of what we choose to venerate.
I donāt believe in the sins of the father. We all start with a blankish slate. Whatever we might be responsible for, weāre not responsible for anything before weāre born.
So am I personally ashamed to be British because our ancestors were involved in the slave trade? No. Nothing to do with me, guv. Am I proud that the UK was one of the leading abolitionists? No, for the same reason.
Iām here because the parents got busy in the mid 70s. Itās not a particular achievement of mine.
I think an important question to ask when considering the statues is āwould we put a monument up for this person now?ā. If the answer is no, you can see why people might have an issue with the stuff thatās stood there for centuries.
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This is the bit I have difficulty with I guess. I certainly wouldnāt put up a statue but we canāt change the past. Acknowledge how shit it (we) were (ignoring the sensibilities of the time) but why can people not just treat each other equally? This is what I personally donāt get.
And I donāt think tearing down statues and trying to rewrite history to make it more palatable to the oppressed parties is particularly helpful. Keep it raw so nobody ever does it again is surely better?
Iām pissed now fuck you all, is that fair enough for Saturday night?
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We canāt change the past but by the same token, the Germans arenāt building new streets named after Hitler and Goebbels.
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I suggest Pap you look to the East in Germany, see if thereās harmony, progression and wealth there there since the wall fell, anyway I must get pissed now.
True.
Thatās progress
Maybe we should re-evaluate and teach black history and have a damnned close look at colonialism and how that has affected our national psyche.
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Oh, stop being so logical and sensible ffs 
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How big can that feeling be now? Anyone with a living memory of the British Empire will be an elderly senior citizen, and itās unlikely theyāll remember much. At the same time, youāve got people genuinely terrified that weāre not going to be able to make it outside of a political union we happen to be leaving.
I donāt think thereās a national psyche. England is a varied enough place so that quite a few places have got their own strongly held views at complete variance with those of the present government, and many of the views you might find in other parts of the country.
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Yes, there are some enclaves and people in general who still hold very nasty racist views and show them in their day to day lives.
Given that some politicians (or would-be politicians such as Farage - where is he & Rees-Mogg btw?) are happy to accommodate their views, I still despair that the Brexit message as āsoldā to the whole of the UK is nothing but a pig-in-a-poke
I guess Pap will automatically say the opposite
Perhaps history is there not to be erased or rewritten, but for us to learn from, to make sure we learn from any mistakes so they do not happen again
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Very true , but there is also the argument that history is written by the winners. Also a lot of what went on is also swept swept under the carpet. Either because it was unpalatable or because it was the norm at the time.
Teach history but also teach the alternate historyā¦
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Thatās not what I said. I said thereās no national psyche, not that there are raging racists everywhere.
What youāve said doesnāt bear any relationship to anything I wrote.
Very much my take on it. I never feel bad joking on sicki about the Holocaust, or pretty much any subject, because to my mind some things need to remain in the public consciousness by any means possible. If people are joking about it, itās not forgotten. We donāt have to confine our awareness of these horrific events to muted speeches with bowed heads and a sober backdrop. I can read @Polski_Filip 's musings on his visits to Auschwitz and feel genuinely moved, then chuckle at a gag about it 2 minutes later. Both instances remind me equally powerfully of what was done.
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BLM is the here and now.
Statues and reminders of the past are a sign of how far or how little we have progressed. Leave the signs of the past as that.
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I think what gets me is the automatic assumption that without these statues, we lose our heritage, and I do think that is nonsense.
Statues of Hitler, Lenin and Stalin were torn down all across the continent. Absent some cataclysmic event, history aināt forgetting who they are.
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If you read what I said youāll see that I didnāt say that you said that, just that you might.
Jeez
Silvio was my fave in The Sopranos. Think I love him a bit more now.
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