The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.

[Cudzoziemiec]

If Amazon made washing machines, they would be equipped with motion sensor cameras to survey your kitchen (or bathroom, or wherever) and probably also send you pictures of your laundry in mid-wash.

[ian]

So, finally got an email from someone called Do Not Reply To at Easyjet telling me my compensation claim for a flight in June has been denied because of excuses (ATC issues). This only took nearly six months. So, as I'm taking the day off and committing myself to nothing useful, I've spent an hour trying to figure out what they have paid me for cancelling two flights. I'm still no wiser, none of the individual payments accord with anything I claimed. I assume one payment is compensation for the first flight (£220) and the remainder almost, but doesn't quite, cover the replacement flight and hotel (£20ish off). Maybe they were against my steak dinner and wine bill. The least I deserved since I spent an hour at the airport after my flight was cancelled advising their other passengers of their rights that were obfuscated in the photocopied So Your Flight has been Cancelled piece of paper (you have to click through a webpage to find out that, yes, you are entitled to get a flight with another airline and book yourself a hotel).

I suppose I am in profit to the tune of £200, but the entire process has been shoddy. You'd think, given the number of flights they've cancelled, they'd be good at it by now. I can't be arsed to grink them again as I'm in profit, albeit somewhat randomly.

In other news, still no closer to getting a five-digit passcode to Barclaycard, their latest advice is to set it using the app that I can't get into because it requires the near-mythical five-digit passcode. This is round #82, the one that doesn't involve me saying no 5 digit, not 4 a lot to a support person who will then splain that a PIN is four digits. I do so know this.

[rogerzilla]

If Amazon made washing machines, they would be equipped with motion sensor cameras to survey your kitchen (or bathroom, or wherever) and probably also send you pictures of your laundry in mid-wash.

I can imagine leaked footage of beskidded grundies making it onto rotten.com.

[Pickled Onion]

I've just spent a month visiting various family members in Colombia and doing a bit of travelling round. Without fail everyone I met asked "where are you from?" (usually followed by "yeah, that figures, your Spanish is terrible"). I also asked the same of others, eg American accent "I'm Norwegian", different Spanish accent "I'm from Bolivia", etc.

Anyway, I was at breakfast at one place and asked the woman opposite (indeterminate accent) the same question, she gave me a look and said "I grew up in London", I replied "Oh really, so did I" and carried on the conversation. Having got back I've read a few recent articles in the Grauniad and apparently I'm a Racist Bigot of the highest order and should contact my employer's HR with a letter of resignation.

[Beardy]

You only need to resign if you asked where they were really from. Repeatedly.

[Pickled Onion]

You only need to resign if you asked where they were really from. Repeatedly.

According to this article and this other article just the first question is racist, without the follow-up.

I speak to people as people, regardless of appearances. I'm willing to be educated/corrected but to my mind, if I'm told I have to speak differently to someone because of the colour of their skin, then *that* is discrimination.

[mrcharly-YHT]

You only need to resign if you asked where they were really from. Repeatedly.

According to this article and this other article just the first question is racist, without the follow-up.

I speak to people as people, regardless of appearances. I'm willing to be educated/corrected but to my mind, if I'm told I have to speak differently to someone because of the colour of their skin, then *that* is discrimination.

I embarrassed myself with work colleagues one day.

We were walking as a group, for a team lunch. Conversation moved to 'where had people grown up'. In the group there was me (Australia), another Australian, 3 from India, 1 from Taiwan. I turned to the only person who hadn't said anything and asked where they grew up. In outraged tones, they replied "North London!"

Now, in my defense, this colleague talked a lot about his preferred food, cooking, and, crucially, said "Where I come from, we don't eat rice and we don't use forks, we use bread like chapattis to eat with."

I was ignoring accents, because those were primarily driven by where people learned to speak English (although I lost my Aussie accent, one of my Indian-born colleagues had an Irish accent because that's where he went to school, etc).

[ian]

Having travelled around the world a lot, you get used to be asked where you are from – and vice versa. Sometimes it's surprising, which is part of the fun of meeting new people. Obviously if you meet someone in a village in the backend of Malawi wearing traditional dress and he says he's actually Canadian, the response isn't 'are you sure?' (even more interesting, his brother turned out to be in London's very own Metropolitan Police). The world is often a lot more international and diverse than people assume so be open to surprises and make no assumptions. I was unaccountably South African for years and I've told the story of when a well-meaning lady from the US called the African contingent people of colour which went all sorts of wrong ways and I think she's still recovering. Generally, in much of the developing world, once people learn I don't have children, they're astounded. One time, after a meeting in Nigeria, someone shoved a package of some kind of herbs into my hand – 'to help you with the lady, lots of babies' he confided. He was a vet though, so I didn't take it.

I could be offended by that, of course, my fecundity is my business (or more accurately my wife's), but different cultures.

[Cudzoziemiec]

You only need to resign if you asked where they were really from. Repeatedly.

According to this article and this other article just the first question is racist, without the follow-up.

I speak to people as people, regardless of appearances. I'm willing to be educated/corrected but to my mind, if I'm told I have to speak differently to someone because of the colour of their skin, then *that* is discrimination.

I embarrassed myself with work colleagues one day.

We were walking as a group, for a team lunch. Conversation moved to 'where had people grown up'. In the group there was me (Australia), another Australian, 3 from India, 1 from Taiwan. I turned to the only person who hadn't said anything and asked where they grew up. In outraged tones, they replied "North London!"

Now, in my defense, this colleague talked a lot about his preferred food, cooking, and, crucially, said "Where I come from, we don't eat rice and we don't use forks, we use bread like chapattis to eat with."

I was ignoring accents, because those were primarily driven by where people learned to speak English (although I lost my Aussie accent, one of my Indian-born colleagues had an Irish accent because that's where he went to school, etc).

Why was he outraged?

[Mr Larrington]

As a Penniless Student Oaf I once asked a fellow Oaf of Oriental appearance “Where you from, then, Bill?”

“Lime'aaase!” he replied, in purest Cockney.  This seemed a perfectly satisfactory answer and I did not press the matter further.

[mrcharly-YHT]

You only need to resign if you asked where they were really from. Repeatedly.

According to this article and this other article just the first question is racist, without the follow-up.

I speak to people as people, regardless of appearances. I'm willing to be educated/corrected but to my mind, if I'm told I have to speak differently to someone because of the colour of their skin, then *that* is discrimination.

I embarrassed myself with work colleagues one day.

We were walking as a group, for a team lunch. Conversation moved to 'where had people grown up'. In the group there was me (Australia), another Australian, 3 from India, 1 from Taiwan. I turned to the only person who hadn't said anything and asked where they grew up. In outraged tones, they replied "North London!"

Now, in my defense, this colleague talked a lot about his preferred food, cooking, and, crucially, said "Where I come from, we don't eat rice and we don't use forks, we use bread like chapattis to eat with."

I was ignoring accents, because those were primarily driven by where people learned to speak English (although I lost my Aussie accent, one of my Indian-born colleagues had an Irish accent because that's where he went to school, etc).

Why was he outraged?

The implication in my question was that he grew up somewhere in India/Bangladesh/Pakistan.

My question was naff.

In the group of about 6, I think we found out that he was the only person who was born and grew up in England.

[Pickled Onion]

The implication in my question was that he grew up somewhere in India/Bangladesh/Pakistan.

My question was naff.

In the group of about 6, I think we found out that he was the only person who was born and grew up in England.

This is the bit that I'm struggling with. We are many generations along from the time when someone in England with not-white skin is likely to not be from England. So what in your question implies they are from India/etc.?

If someone in Australia asks where you're from (you said you've lost your Australian accent), do you get offended at the implication you're European? Do you feel the need to explain that your ancestors were European? Or do you just say you're Australian?

[Cudzoziemiec]

We don't have the subtleties of the context or Mr Charly's exact words. Nor do we know anything about this person, other than eating chapattis in the way they're intended, which might suggest a geographical origin. Except we do have the quote, "Where I come from, we don't eat rice and we don't use forks, we use bread like chapattis to eat with." I'd say that while plenty of people in North London eat like that, that doesn't make North London "a place where people don't eat rice etc". If asked to list places where people eat [etc], you probably wouldn't put North London on your list. And starting with "Where I come from," does invite the question as to where that is.

[mrcharly-YHT]

The implication in my question was that he grew up somewhere in India/Bangladesh/Pakistan.

My question was naff.

In the group of about 6, I think we found out that he was the only person who was born and grew up in England.

This is the bit that I'm struggling with. We are many generations along from the time when someone in England with not-white skin is likely to not be from England. So what in your question implies they are from India/etc.?

If someone in Australia asks where you're from (you said you've lost your Australian accent), do you get offended at the implication you're European? Do you feel the need to explain that your ancestors were European? Or do you just say you're Australian?

I tell people I'm the most despised of immigrants; an economic migrant (my parents emigrated to Oz  in search of better incomes and possibilities).

I think he was being over-sensitive, tbh. I don't have an australian accent. He has a fairly neutral english accent. My much missed colleague who was walking next to him has a hint of Brummie accent (she did her second degree there, but was born and grew up in India).

[Kim]

Surely - and I'm a clueless white person, so what do I know - it's about context?

If you're in a group of people who've travelled somewhere taking about where you've come from, then it seems reasonable to ask the next person in the group where they come from.

If you're in a group of people talking about the weather, cold fusion or sourdough recipes and you ask the only brown-faced person in the group where they come from, not so much.

If, on receiving a reply to the effect of 'Penge', 'Canadia' or 'God's own planet of Yorkshire' you follow up with "No, where are you *really* from?" that's pretty unambiguous racism.

[Hot Flatus]

I think the whole point about the Palace comments was that they were exclusionary.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Surely - and I'm a clueless white person, so what do I know -

You might be white and clueless, but you're also a person who doesn't live where they grew up and didn't (afaik) grow up where they were born, as well as having lived in various other places in between. Just like the person in the first of Pickled Onion's links below, and a huge number of other people. Yet you still have an answer, even if it's not definitive and might vary by place, time, questioner, etc.

According to this article and this other article just the first question is racist, without the follow-up.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I think the whole point about the Palace comments was that they were exclusionary.

And the moving of her hair in order to read her name badge was at least as offensive.

[rafletcher]

Whilst in hospital in Great Missenden my wife asked her non-white, non-European, nurse where he was from. "Aylesbury" was the reply - which was accurate in as much as that was where he was currently living. His birth country was, it turned out, Nepal - which is what my wife intended to elicit by her question. It can somethimes just be a matter of interpretation and comprehension.

[Kim]

Surely - and I'm a clueless white person, so what do I know -

You might be white and clueless, but you're also a person who doesn't live where they grew up and didn't (afaik) grow up where they were born, as well as having lived in various other places in between. Just like the person in the first of Pickled Onion's links below, and a huge number of other people. Yet you still have an answer, even if it's not definitive and might vary by place, time, questioner, etc.

Indeed.

The difference is that people don't routinely ask me where I'm from within the first 5 minutes of meeting me.  I might get asked it - in reasonable contexts - a handful of times a year at most.  Rather than several times a week.

[Auntie Helen]

Whereas I get asked it every week. Usually people ask if I’m from the Netherlands or Norway.

[ian]

Anyone with peripatetic career will be used to answering the question once every five minutes (unless you have the sort of British accent that comes direct from a Richard Curtis movie, which I don't). Of course, then I've usually been the only British (and white person) in the room, so exoticism is to be expected.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Surely - and I'm a clueless white person, so what do I know -

You might be white and clueless, but you're also a person who doesn't live where they grew up and didn't (afaik) grow up where they were born, as well as having lived in various other places in between. Just like the person in the first of Pickled Onion's links below, and a huge number of other people. Yet you still have an answer, even if it's not definitive and might vary by place, time, questioner, etc.

Indeed.

The difference is that people don't routinely ask me where I'm from within the first 5 minutes of meeting me.  I might get asked it - in reasonable contexts - a handful of times a year at most.  Rather than several times a week.

I think this is the nub of the issue. If most 'where are you from' questions are really asking 'You aren't british, so tell me where you are really from, you immigrant to my country.'


Refreshingly, in my new locality, people ask "Where are you staying?" followed by "Are you liking it here?", since accent alone identifies you as a non-local.

[perpetual dan]

My mum does this, and it grates. Especially with hospital staff. And then reports what she learnt to me. It would grate less if name and country of origin weren’t apparently almost the only things to define a person. It’s not like the nurse caught the 87 bus from Nigeria to Stoke Mandeville that morning.

[ian]

To be fair, both the left and the right of the belief spectrum do seem obsessed with catalogue people and their origins and how many of them there are in a manner that would have probably impressed Galton. Though they reach diametrically opposite conclusions from each other.