I guess it depends on which countries and which cultural norms. Lets take Turkey for an example. Turkey is 99% Sunni Muslum and yet it is a well thought of a much visited tourist destination where we can go to beaches and wander around the cities without much fear of recrimination for what we are wearing or a requirement to head to the nearest Mosque 5 times a day. However we are asked to respect their cultural norms when we actually visit areas like Mosques and or peoples homes. The same goes for Italy when you visit Rome and the Vatican City - we wear long shorts and cover our shoulders.
Those countries would beg non religious people to go and visit if he tourist trade dried up. They get a clear financial return for alowing johnny foreigner into their country. Plus the tourists go home again 14 days later, have no right to stay, don't use the local education system, pay for the health system if they need it etc, etc, etc.
If you take the deepest Middle East countries as an example then you're always going to run into some serious cultural conflicts because they haven't massively moved on in thousands of years. But you will also find that they have no tolerance of other cultures and/or belief structures and it's this that I think causes a great deal of the difficulty when shifting to the UK because it's a radically different environment. We end up with something of a culture clash however I don't believe we should be taking the stance that if they can't change then why should we?
I don't beleive we should ask more of the natives than of the immigrants.....
I don't think that allowing immigrants to exercise their religious beliefs nor hold on to their cultural identity is costing me anything at all.
That all depends upon where things stop. When demands are made to allow practices that are illegal in our country, to change laws etc to suit their culture then things have gone too far. Two small but recent requests are open air cremations and animal slaughter without stunning the animal. Tip of the iceberg in all probability.
As far as food goes I've typically found that getting Chinese cuisine from proper Chinese chefs tends to taste better than getting it from M&S or Sainsburies but then that could just be me
It probably is not just you, then again I could sacrifice the odd Lamb Jalfrezi for lower levels of unemployed people, cheaper housing, schools that had low levels of non english speakers etc, etc, etc.
Art is an easy one - pay a visit to the Tate Modern, or the old Tate or perhaps the Portrait galleries. Artists like Van Gogh, Monet, Rembrandt, Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, Johannes Vermeer are all foreign and are reconised for enriching the art world no end. Now I admit that art is very much subjective and that you'd have to be interested in it to get the full advantages from it.
Lots of good european artists there. Artists who did not even need to step foot in the UK for me to see their work too
Where are the great African or Indian artists that have enriched you?
Because the news is always 100% factual and never has any spin on it? The news doesn't supply cultural awareness at all, it supplies news that is almost exclusively relevant to you and no-one else. Where are you getting cultural awareness from the news?
It is simply an example. There are plenty of TV programs, websites, books, magazine articles etc that focus on other cultures. If I ever find one of them interesting enough I'll go there to se the culture for myself rather than seek out the Egyptian quarter of Soho to see if they've erected any Pyramids recently or built a shrine to Anubis.
Don't you think that it's a little sad to get all your cultural awareness from the TV? Home and Away is hardly representitive of the average Australian culture and Flight of the Concords is definately not how the rest of New Zealand is (Nor for that matter is Lord of the Rings
)
The antipodeans have culture? Out of interest, what is New Zealand culture?
The downsides to immigration in the present system is that anyone in the EU can turn up here and jump on the Benefit system.
Yet the majority of immigrants on the dole appear to be non EU.
They don't have the same controls that we Antipodeans have, we can't turn up in this country and bludge like many from the EU do.
Are there statistics for EU scroungers available?
This is the downside of the present system and I think there needs to be some sort of accountability for those that are choosing to settle here. If I have no job and no money then because I can't get the benefit then I can't stay here, simple as - I think the same should apply to other immigrants.
I'd agree.
But surely by voting the BNP in you are directly advocating that policy?
I have never voted for the BNP in any election, poll or anything else. I actually voted Tory locally and UKIP in the European elections. However the garbage that is spewed out about the BNP in this thread and across the news/media coupled with the off the cuff "immigration is good" posts that completely fail to explain why they have that viewpoint prompted me to post and questions some of the rather baseless assumptions being posted.
Only a few posts ago the difference between 6.3% and 10% was HUGE to you......... but the difference between 4.5% and 15% isn't anything interesting now.......