Can someone explain...

FoxEye

FoxEye

FoxEye

Caporegime
Joined
17 Feb 2006
Posts
29,263
Location
Cornwall
...what's so wrong about this?

A "miner's strike"-themed fancy dress event has been cancelled by a university.

The attempted event has been called "disgraceful" and "disgusting" and the university is considering taken action against rugby club students who dreamed it up.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-42128595

Which seems incredibly heavy handed. Another case of being terrified of causing offence and distress to people with nothing more important to care about?

Or is this something really awful that I'm just not understanding the significance of?

Does anyone remember Spitting Image on TV? I really don't think we'd get away with something like that in today's "take offence at everything" culture. It's mind-boggling to me.

Let some students dress like miners and pretend to be Maggie Thatcher. What the heck does it matter? Let some people be offended if they want to be. It won't kill them.
 
I'm offended that you're not offended.
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Maybe because right now, they don't want people reminding that joining the single market, actually destroyed coal mining and and another number of huge British industries.
 
FoxEye said:
Let some students dress like nazis and pretend to be Hitler. What the heck does it matter? Let some people be offended if they want to be. It won't kill them.
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FoxEye said:
Let some students dress like KKK and pretend to be some famous black person. What the heck does it matter? Let some people be offended if they want to be. It won't kill them.
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FoxEye said:
Let some students dress like terroists and pretend to be Bin Laden. What the heck does it matter? Let some people be offended if they want to be. It won't kill them.
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i guess that's the thought the university are going with.

i don't see the issue, but i am not effected by it so can't comprehend any offense this could cause
 
Moses said:
It'd be a bit much soon after people had lost their jobs etc, but we're talking about something which happened three decades ago... so what's the problem? It's not as though people died. If there was a Hillsborough themed event, then yes that'd be awful... but we're not talking about mocking death, or race, or disability, etc (other equality act stuff).
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Actually, some did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_David_Wilkie

As I said in another thread, Scargil was a thug who cared little about either the coal industry or his unions members...
 
That argument only works if the university believes its students cannot differentiate between Maggie Thatcher, Bin Laden, and Hitler :p Hmm, thinking about it...
 
I am genuinely concerned at the way our universities are going. My daughter will be going there in about four years and I'm really worried what she will be taught there. Granted these stories aren't about every university but they seem to be increasingly common.
 
I think it’s a bit odd to say that the miner’s strike was “relatively minor”. The death of coal mining in this country, whether it was time for it to die or not, had a huge effect on large swathes of the country and still has repercussions today.

I also think it’s very short sighted to say that there weren’t deaths as a result of it. I’ll wager there were plenty of suicides, never mind more remotely linked deaths.
 
Vonhelmet said:
The Moors murderers only killed five children. Let’s have a Moors murderer themed party.

You can’t measure these things purely on death toll.
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It's fairly obvious that the strike-themed event wasn't celebrating the fact that three people died. Nor should it be a taboo to parody because of a small number of deaths. Heck, people die in Disney Land occasionally. Whilst tragic, it is of little consequence to the way people view Disney Land. It doesn't warrant being compared to a WWII concentration camp over a couple unintended/accidental deaths.
 
Moses said:
The Nazis killed millions through the Holocaust/war/etc.

The KKK murdered black people in recent history, on a large scale.

Terrorists murder people regularly. There are significant attacks every week.

Those are all significantly different from having a crass fancy dress theme about something relatively minor which happened three decades ago.
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And the Romans murdered far more people per capita than the Nazis and the KKK ever did, yet going dressed as Roman legionary isn't frowned upon at all.
 
Vonhelmet said:
I think it’s a bit odd to say that the miner’s strike was “relatively minor”. The death of coal mining in this country, whether it was time for it to die or not, had a huge effect on large swathes of the country and still has repercussions today.

I also think it’s very short sighted to say that there weren’t deaths as a result of it. I’ll wager there were plenty of suicides, never mind more remotely linked deaths.
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Even at the time, I loathed Scargil and the NUM with a vengeance, but I was also really sad for the miners.... :(
 
I'm convinced the reason people take offence to almost anything these days is because we have it so cushy that we're just utterly bored. It appears that people have no drama in their life and they have to create some from innocuous nothingness.

However, in saying that.. a Miner's Strike themed fancy dress party? Just... why? How could that even be a thing? :p
 
FoxEye said:
It's fairly obvious that the strike-themed event wasn't celebrating the fact that three people died.
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Who said anything about celebrating deaths? I want to celebrate Ian Brady and Myra Hindley’s love of outdoor pursuits. What’s wrong with that?

Anyway. The point is the miner’s strike was far from minor, and you’re trivialising a huge piece of British history to say it was, deaths or not.
 
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