Magdalene Laundries payout.

Started by T Fearon, June 26, 2013, 09:32:39 PM

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T Fearon

Er I dont recall denying that people were severely mistreated in the Magdalene Laundries, or denying the victims compensation (though God only knows where they would have ended up had there been no Magdalene Laundries, in an era of few if any social services and little or no state aid).

I am merely saying there are countless groups out there who were also mistreated and abused, during the same era, and where will this all end? 

Jim_Murphy_74

Quote from: T Fearon on June 27, 2013, 05:23:54 AM
All any group needs to get an inquiry and compensation is a few voices to start with,a film (with inevitable poetic licence), a media gratuitously hostile to the perpetrators and hey presto,you're in business.A wad of dosh and a perverse apology from the government of the day,who had nothing whatsoever to do with the abuse.

At least you used the term "perpetrators" so (assuming some level of intelligence on your part, a jump I know) you acknowledge this unfortunate women were wronged.

Yes, you need a campaign but unfortunately it seems the state and their agents (quite often the Catholic Church) will not acknowledge or compensate for any wrong without the glare of the public spotlight.

Also the government apologised on behalf of the state, not themselves, a state that absolutely everything to do with the abuse.

In the end a couple of hundred k is small beans for being wrongfully incarcerated (which by any definition most here were), let along the forced labour and abuse that many suffered. 

/Jim.

T Fearon

Jim, at primary school I and my classmates were all regularly caned, and I mean whacked across the hands with a stick violently, aged under 11. Should we be entitled to redress from the state, school, and Catholic Church who ran the school?

That's the point I'm getting at, where does it all end?

Should Britain apologise to Northern Nationalists for decades of misrule and failure to guarantee their rights?

seafoid

Quote from: theskull1 on June 27, 2013, 08:41:04 AM
Tony and Stuart Hall would have similar views I'd say
It's all whataboutery



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-22932222

Mr Aylett said his client had been arrested "as a consequence" of the investigations into Jimmy Savile, "who used young girls on a scale that is simply staggering".
He referred to the 1,300 complainants in the Savile case and said: "Instead, in the dock today is a frightened and bewildered 83-year-old man answering for the touching - no more, no less - of all of 13, not 1,300, victims over a quarter of a century ago."
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

brokencrossbar1

Quote from: T Fearon on June 27, 2013, 10:16:28 AM
Jim, at primary school I and my classmates were all regularly caned, and I mean whacked across the hands with a stick violently, aged under 11. Should we be entitled to redress from the state, school, and Catholic Church who ran the school?

That's the point I'm getting at, where does it all end?

Should Britain apologise to Northern Nationalists for decades of misrule and failure to guarantee their rights?

In fairness there is a huge difference between being caned and the ingrained institutionalized abuse that was facilitated by the 2 most influential organisations in Ireland. 

T Fearon

Not really. Abuse is abuse, regardless of the scale. My late mother often said, and I quote, "we were slaughtered by the nuns at school". Where does all this end?

Also, as  I said in a previous post (and I am in no way condoning the treatment meted out in Magdalene Laundries) but if a lot of the young women hadn't gone to the laundries, they might have suffered a fate a hell of a lot worse on the streets, as there was no social service structure at the time.Factor in also that a lot of the nuns running the laundries had probably been abused themselves at school etc, then you've another load of cans containing worms. What about the abuse of servant girls in bog houses in Ireland in the first part of the 20th century?

T Fearon

Last sentence should read "big houses" not Bog Houses!

muppet

Quote from: T Fearon on June 27, 2013, 12:42:52 PM
Not really. Abuse is abuse, regardless of the scale. My late mother often said, and I quote, "we were slaughtered by the nuns at school". Where does all this end?

Also, as  I said in a previous post (and I am in no way condoning the treatment meted out in Magdalene Laundries) but if a lot of the young women hadn't gone to the laundries, they might have suffered a fate a hell of a lot worse on the streets, as there was no social service structure at the time.Factor in also that a lot of the nuns running the laundries had probably been abused themselves at school etc, then you've another load of cans containing worms. What about the abuse of servant girls in bog houses in Ireland in the first part of the 20th century?

Reading this thread Tony I think you really are jealous of any victim who ends up getting compensation. You show faux sympathy and then belittle their suffering.

Quotethey might have suffered a fate a hell of a lot worse on the streets
Quotewere all regularly caned
QuoteAll any group needs to get an inquiry and compensation is a few voices to start with,a film (with inevitable poetic licence), a media gratuitously hostile to the perpetrators and hey presto,you're in business
Quotean inordinate number of them seem to have smiles on their faces

I have never come across such a person before.
MWWSI 2017


deiseach

#24
Quote from: muppet on June 27, 2013, 02:26:10 PM
Reading this thread Tony I think you really are jealous of any victim who ends up getting compensation.

I recently stumbled upon a blogger who has written a number of essays on the Hillsborough disaster. One of his pieces was on the type of people online with whom he crossed swords over the years who would deny black was white when it came to Hillsborough. Tony probably fitted into all ten of his categories when it came to his eagerness to defend the poor darlings in South Yorkshire Police against the thieving Scousers. But Category 8 works for Tony in the case of the Magdalene victims as well:

QuoteCategory 8: The 'What-About-The-Money?!?' type, AKA The Hillsborough Time-And-Motion Student.

This type of annoyance is to be found on most current affairs forums and the comments sections of most news websites, not just Hillsborough discussions, and it has to be said that wherever they comment, they seldom appear to be terribly interested in the subject that is under examination, or know a great deal about it beyond the 'bare bones'. The Category can be sub-divided into two types, but both are afflicted with the same cynical shortfall in moral curiosity.

The first sub-group appears to be made up of just general Neo-liberal conservatives. Their sole motivation for interceding in any discussion at all appears to be one born purely of concerns about the greatest crime they can ever picture a Government being guilty of. But what is this crime? you ask. Bombing villages of innocent people off the face of the Middle East? No. Selling arms to corrupt Third World dictators to assist in the suppression of their own populations? Good grief, no. Declaring falsely-based wars in order to steal resources and so quench the Western World's tortuous thirst for oil? No! Worse even than that! The Government activity that they object to most vehemently is this; the spending of... *GASP* ...taxpayers' money.

It doesn't matter the degree of seriousness or the enormity of the issue that is under consideration, a Category 8 will always be able to justify their desire to see the matter put to bed by simply grumbling, "Dear oh dear, I dread to wonder how much all of this is costing..." In the case of Hillsborough, they imagine it's a waste of money looking into it because it was so long ago and because 'everybody already knows what happened'. (It is noticeable that when you ask them to clarify what happened, they either can't answer, or they give a list of the familiar discredited ideas about crowd misbehaviour.)

Corruption, it seems, is only worth combatting when it can be fought against cheaply. Police abuse of authority, and all the oppression that that entails, are a trivial matter when set against the big picture. (The big picture is dominated by the image of heroic Middle Englanders with sword in hand and shield on arm, bravely leaping from Ivory Tower to Ivory Tower of a vast bureaucratic Governmental machine, fighting off the evil soldiers of the state, all in a bid to secure the greatest boon of freedom that the democratic world can ever bestow upon its people i.e. a cut in taxes.) These people are almost exclusively from the Middle Class themselves, as is intimated by their tendency, on the rare occasions that they have any information to offer at all, to link to articles on the Daily Mail or Daily Express websites. They have no interest in football, which is a matter of personal taste and thus not a problem, but also no recognition of the reality that the Hillsborough Disaster is a long, long way from being an exclusively footballing matter. That most certainly is a problem.

The other sub-group in this Category is more aggressive, and if anything, even more cynical. It is less that they are irritated by the expense of running inquiries into Hillsborough, more that they are unshakeably convinced of hidden motives that lie behind such inquiries. Quite simply, they are smugly certain that the Hillsborough Family Support Group, The Hillsborough Justice Campaign and Hope For Hillsborough are all run by grasping, opportunistic charlatans who are taking shameful advantage of the deaths of loved ones in order to extort money from hard-working Middle Class British taxpayers. Essentially, this sub-group of Category 8 is obsessed with money, but feels a desperate need for the good of their own self-esteem to believe that everybody else has the same obsession, and so have to project such motives onto any person they witness with a grievance.

In the case of the Hillsborough families of course, this accusation is not just shockingly cruel and insulting. It is also foolish, and shows a stunning ignorance of the decades of pain and frustration the Disaster's bereaved and injured have gone through while battling the stony-hearted British legal machine. Many of the families have in fact been compelled to spend many thousands of pounds of their own personal funds, small fortunes that they will almost certainly never recoup, in pursuit of justice. In spite of being constantly let down by the judicial system, and meeting repeated unnecessary legal brick walls, still they have persevered.

So let's apply a little logic, shall we? When someone whose only interest is money finds that the route he is following over many years repeatedly costs him a small fortune, and never shows the slightest sign of yielding a positive return, would he persist with it for half a lifetime? Don't be ridiculous. He would give up the chase long, long before twenty-four years have elapsed. If the Hillsborough families have not given up after that long a time, money cannot possibly be their motivation, and the fact that Category 8′s think otherwise only serves to prove that cynicism and realism are not the same thing at all.

Category 8′s are a sad symptom of the idiotic right wing cynicism that has gripped a large core of the British chattering classes for the better part of forty years. Their intervention in Hillsborough discussions is another that offers nothing of value, as it will rarely contain any information about the Disaster itself.

T Fearon

My views on Hillsborough remain unchanged, and they are undeniably that bad behaviour from Liverpool "fans" ( ie the same Liverpool "fans" that caused the Hysel carnage 4 years previously) caused the police undue pressure and fatal errors were made. Yes the Police made mistakes, yes they attempted to cover their mistakes (as all humans do) and that is not excusable either, but ultimately the blame, in my opinion, lies with the misbehaving fans. The scenario here is the attempts to blame the RUC and Garda for Omagh, letting the real perpetrators  ( i e those who planted the bombs)off the hook.

muppet

Quote from: T Fearon on June 27, 2013, 04:35:18 PM
My views on Hillsborough remain unchanged, and they are undeniably that bad behaviour from Liverpool "fans" ( ie the same Liverpool "fans" that caused the Hysel carnage 4 years previously) caused the police undue pressure and fatal errors were made. Yes the Police made mistakes, yes they attempted to cover their mistakes (as all humans do) and that is not excusable either, but ultimately the blame, in my opinion, lies with the misbehaving fans. The scenario here is the attempts to blame the RUC and Garda for Omagh, letting the real perpetrators  ( i e those who planted the bombs)off the hook.

Take down that post you attention seeking fool.
MWWSI 2017

T Fearon

So are you saying the Police weren't under extreme pressure at Hillsborough having to deal with unruly fans, and consequently made fatal errors?

muppet

Quote from: T Fearon on June 27, 2013, 04:52:01 PM
So are you saying the Police weren't under extreme pressure at Hillsborough having to deal with unruly fans, and consequently made fatal errors?

No I am saying take down that post you attention seeking fool.
MWWSI 2017

Captain Obvious

Quote from: muppet on June 27, 2013, 04:52:42 PM
Quote from: T Fearon on June 27, 2013, 04:52:01 PM
So are you saying the Police weren't under extreme pressure at Hillsborough having to deal with unruly fans, and consequently made fatal errors?

No I am saying take down that post you attention seeking fool.

+1