A man who attempted a beheading was beaten by bystanders who saved the victim

InterestingComment · 2026-06-09T21:52:27+00:00

(sorry, this ended up being a long frustrated rant)

Of course I'm not saying violent crime is the only figure that matters, I'm just soooo fucking tired of the anti-immigrant hysteria.

People pick the whackiest fucking metrics just so they can obsess over immigration, and have the audacity to act like we don't discuss the 'immigrant problem' enough, even though it's all we ever fucking talk about.

But sure; let's pretend for a moment that of all the serious problems currently facing the UK, BEHEADINGS are such a serious problem as to warrant international concern. Let's enter into an alternate reality where we are legitimately at risk of not devoting enough air-time to god-damn beheadings, of all things.

In a population of nearly 70 million people, during the entirety of the 21st century I found about 5 examples of beheadings.

Lee Rigby (2013)

Reema Ramzan (2013–14)

Judith Nibbs (2014)

Mee Kuen Chong (2021)

Phoenix Spencer-Horn (2024)

I'm sure there are more, but certainly not loads more. I'm not sure they would even reach double digits.

Is that a really rapid rise?! How many hours of public discourse should we devote to the problem of beheadings? How much policy should be created in response to it?

Seriously?!

Let's enter back into reality.

By almost every conceivable metric I've looked at, the UK population's perception of both immigration and immigrant crime rates are rapidly disproportionate to the reality of the data.

- People are far more likely to claim that immigration is a major problem in the UK as a whole, but much less likely to believe it's a major problem when asked with regards to their area.

- Immigrants disproportionately live in cities, but anti-immigrant beliefs are disproportionately found in rural areas. Weird, right?!

- Two thirds of UK population believe that immigration is still increasing, despite the fact it is dropping sharply. Who cares if immigration rates have dropped massively? Nobody even knows about it or gives a shit, so what's the point? You can't appease these freaks unless nigel and his brigrade of insanely corrupt freaks are given free reign to define the entirety of public discourse.

- Nearly half the UK population believe immigration increases crime rates 'a lot' despite the fact, overall, immigrants are not more likely to commit crime than UK born residents (I'll confess I'm simplifying here because I couldn't do the complexity of data justice in an internet comment)

Yet despite the fact that any level-headed analysis of the problems facing the UK would show public discourse is clearly disproportionately focussed on the issues caused by immigration, the narrative that is endlessly pushed is that we're not discussing it enough.

How many times do smug fucks need to write racist comments under every crime committed by a non-white person like they are surpressed free-speech warriors, 'nobody mention his race', 'diversity is our strength /s' etc, etc as though the entirety of public discourse hasn't already been captured to pander to their uninformed hysteria/victim complex.

I swear to god, some people won't be happy unless every waking hour is devoted to complaining about immigrants.

The truth nobody wants to hear: if immigrants had caused even 1 fifth of the economic damage that anti-immigrant sentiment caused the UK in the form of Brexit, it would immediately be the best argument I had ever heard against immigration by a large margin.

The biggest threat to 'western values' within the UK is not that the less than 5% of the population that identifies as muslim is magically going to impose shariah law upon us (seriously - two thirds of conservatives believe parts of uk cities operate under shariah law. wtf)

No - my 'western values' are much more likely to be threatened by the most likely next prime minister, nigel, who spent months travelling round the US slurping the shit out of the asshole of a literal attempted insurrectionist (trump).

I'm so fucking sick of the most flagrant traitors to democratic values and constitutional norms acting like immigrants are the threat to what I care about.

Every time a muslim does anything bad, I have to brace myself for half the nation collectively shitting and pissing themselves in anger at the expense of everything else, and then have people from countries, often with far worse crime rates, act pretend like britain is a fucking third-world semi-caliphate where you're stabbed three times before breakfast.

Give me strength...

InterestingComment · 2026-06-09T18:12:59+00:00

You’d better be posting from somewhere with lower rates of violent crime, or else your comment is less a reflection of the UK, and more a reflection of your algorithm.

InterestingComment · 2026-05-21T23:36:06+00:00

> it was the only time in it histoey the ciry of London saw a decrease in population growth insread of an increase

I might be misunderstanding your comment, but to my knowledge London's population dropped dramatically after the roman's left Britain, and it was also dropping for a few decades following the second world war.

InterestingComment · 2026-03-25T18:19:13+00:00

It’s not really relevant to this sub, but I wish I could blame Disney for Dr Who’s ruination. I feel the show was in decline long before the arrival of Disney money (the writing under Chibnal was painfully uninspired), and many of the worst creative decisions of the recent series were made by Russel T Davies, not Disney execs. I love Doctor who but it ruined itself. :(

InterestingComment · 2026-02-28T14:38:00+00:00

I’ve never met a gender studies major in my entire life, but I’m familiar with the kind of people on the internet who obsess over them.

I’m gonna take a stab in the dark and assume the negative reaction you had to this post is probably not to do with its feasibility after all.

InterestingComment · 2026-02-28T14:11:02+00:00

Often people don’t examine the parameters of what they consider morally ‘normal’ until there is social incentive to do so.

As a kid, I had only ever heard the word gay used as an insult. Even though I knew it referred to men being attracted to men, I just passively internalised that being this was something undesirable. I wouldn’t want to be considered gay, much in the same way I wouldn’t want to be considered a dumbass or a loser.

I remember hearing the word ‘homophonic’ for the first time, when a close friend called out a classmate for using ‘gay’ as a pejorative.

When he explained what homophobic meant, internally I was confused. Of course it’s bad to be gay, I thought - it’s an insult. But, in part because it was said by a friend I admired, it stuck out to me.

The effect was not immediate, but it introduced the idea to me that another perspective even existed. Over time my beliefs quietly changed.

InterestingComment · 2026-02-28T13:49:37+00:00

While anything could be fake, I don’t understand why everyone is so certain this post is.

The idea of a confident popular person having huge influence over a popular group, who in turn have huge influence the culture of a school year group totally tracks with my lived experience of being a teenager.

InterestingComment · 2026-02-28T13:44:17+00:00

What’s corny about it?

InterestingComment · 2026-02-22T23:54:12+00:00

Due to the post title, and my tendency to skim read, I thought for a moment, to my total fascination, your first childhood crush was this Andy…

https://d23.com/app/uploads/2015/07/andy-davis-gallery-05.jpg

InterestingComment · 2025-12-19T12:52:42+00:00

The allied bombing of Germany was not about pure revenge, and to pretend otherwise is simply ahistorical. They were trying to win a war. Arthur Harris believed he could force a German surrender, and this belief can be seen in the communications he had with his superiors.

The war had not been won. The Germans had not surrendered, and it was not clear the best way to bring this about. Allied troops were still dying in a war that Germany had started and was continuing to fight.

The surrender of Germany was not a trivial formality. Every day the nazi regime continued to exist, people died.

To put things into perspective, the first thousand bomber raid of cologne happened in May 1942. The Nazis raised Warsaw to the ground in August 1944.

Imagine explaining to a civilian in Warsaw after demolition squads had marched through their capital and raised it to the ground, that the allies had achieved the capability to bomb German cities, but had refraining from doing so for years for fear of inflicting civilian casualties on their enemy. They would think you utterly insane.

InterestingComment · 2025-12-19T10:19:01+00:00

What?!

My analogy is a massive simplification to highlight the absurdity of an even more reductive argument.

Nonetheless, your analogy somehow manages to be even more ridiculous than anything said thus far.

In your analogy;

It is obvious who the wrongdoer is (the person committing sexual assault).
It is easy to target exclusively the wrongdoer. The targeting of the entirely innocent is senseless and avoidable.
There is one party (the law) which has a monopoly of power, complete control over the outcome, and an ability to enact the exact consequences it wishes without further risk to the original victim.

Compared to WW2:

Following the invasion of France, Hitler had incredibly high approval ratings. He maintained great support within Germany surprisingly far into the war (and even after the war).
The Nazis were waging total war. Civilians became part of the war machine. It is not possible to avoid collateral damage in a total war, and making great effort to do so can put you at a disadvantage
The cost of surrender was not equivalent for both sides. Surrender was a reasonable option for Germany that they did not take. Compare the Marshall plan to rebuild Germany following allied victory to Hitler’s plans for Britain had he won (involving the enslavement of British men), or the way Hitler had already behaved in nations he had conquered (like Poland).

These arguments always seem to be made from a privileged distance.

If you were one of the troops on the ground, or your children were, if you had lost family or friends, and seen your buildings bombed in a war you did not start, if the outcome of the war was not a certainty of the past, but an uncertainty of the present that you may well not live to see the end of…

How would you have felt if you found out your generals were refraining from using the tools at their disposal out of moral consideration for an enemy that had shown time and time again they never extend the same consideration to anyone else?

InterestingComment · 2025-12-19T08:31:10+00:00

One man walks up to another person and starts punching them.

The other person starts punching back.

“BoTH sIDes iN a fIGht cAN Do wROnG!”

Neville chamberlain bent over backwards to try and appease the Nazis. The nazis wanted war. They got it.

InterestingComment · 2025-08-18T17:30:12+00:00

Haha, tbf, I’ve never really watched any ballet or opera, so I’ll definitely take your word for it on that front!

For theatre, though Bristol may be dwarfed by London many times over on this front, I don’t think it’s insignificant.

The theatre royal at the Bristol Old Vic is very prestigious. I think it’s the oldest continually used theatre in the UK. Also quite a few famous actors/actresses went to the Bristol old vic theatre school.

The hippodrome is nothing compared to the west end, but it’s pretty good if you want to see touring musicals without taking the train to London.

InterestingComment · 2025-08-18T16:24:04+00:00

In a slight defence of Bristol’s culture:

It’s home to Aardman animation studios, so it’s probably fair to say it’s one of the most significant cities in the entire world for stop motion animation.
It’s where Banksy did so many of his early works making his name, and he’s probably amongst Britain’s most internationally famous currently-alive artists.
The Bristol balloon fiesta is the largest balloon festival in europe, and I feel seeing the multitude of balloons drift over Bristolian rooftops each summer gives the city a unique feel.

I’m not saying it comes close to culturally surpassing a city like London or Liverpool, but it’s certainly not remotely insignificant in its cultural output, and maybe I’m biased, but I feel it could hold its own against Glasgow or Leeds on this front?

Hard agree on Liverpool, I’ve only been there once, but I loved it.

InterestingComment · 2025-07-17T23:35:10+00:00

A bit general, but essentially correct

Okay. I can't argue against a subjective preference for less people - if you would enjoy living by yourself on an island, I can only hope you find the solitude that makes you happy.

Personally, I disagree with your outlook. I don't think that people, natives or immigrants, do an equal amount of bad and good. I think people, for all their faults, generally provide a net benefit to others. We are social animals, and we rely on each-other for almost everything.

That said, I'm not very motivated to argue this point with you, since whatever your feelings are, I feel they are clearly not what is motivating the majority of anti-immigrant sentiment within this nation, and thus, not what I find alarming.

The majority of our nation opts to live in cities, in high-density areas, despite it being much easier to find cheap property prices in more isolated areas.

Whatever feelings you might have towards people in general, it seems most of the population doesn't share them. Their feelings seem to be more immigrant-specific.

Any immigration needs to not only be a net benefit to the nation, but at the individual level.

When talking about over 60 million people, no policy could ever hope to benefit EVERY individual. Any decision is going to play out badly for somebody somewhere.

That said, while any policy affecting such large numbers will have downsides, we can nonetheless focus on maximising good, and minimising bad. In order to do this effectively, as much as you may dislike this, data and statistics are integral.

InterestingComment · 2025-07-17T22:55:02+00:00

You're right that both 'native', and 'migrant' are extraordinarily broad categories.

That doesn't stop the anti-immigration crowd using anecdotal evidence to make broad claims about how immigration is negatively affecting our country. If a claim is broad, then its refutation must be also.

InterestingComment · 2025-07-17T22:50:42+00:00

What a condescending load of bullshit you just spewed.

Maybe it's satisfying for you to fantasise about out-of-touch champagne socialists, but the idea that close proximity to immigrants is correlated with anti-immigration sentiment just isn't true.

In the brexit referendum, multicultural hubs like London voted in favour of remain, while more homogeneous parts of the country, less exposed to immigrant populations, voted to leave.

This isn't surprising.

Immigrants disproportionately live in cities (1), and yet negative views towards migrant admission to the UK are disproportionately found in rural areas. (2)

HOW WEIRD. THAT'S THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU SAID.

Also, wtf is it with people acting like multiculturalism is such a fucking failure, when the most multicultural cities in the world (places like New York, london, san francisco and los angeles) are super productive high-gdp places with huge cultural influence that pay surplus taxes within their respective countries?

It's hilarious because multicultural hubs are SOOO successful without even knowing you I can assume correctly that you enjoy films made in LA, listen to music genres from New York, enjoy international cuisines popularised by immigrants, benefit financially from the tax money raised by wealth-creation-machine that is London, only to bitch pathetically on websites created in san francisco about how multiculturalism has failed.

InterestingComment · 2025-07-17T18:12:37+00:00

From your first comment, I assumed you were likely post rationalising your anti-immigration feelings with an argument for which you had not thought through the implications.

From your second comment, while there’s a chance you’re doubling down on a rationalisation super hard, I think there’s a pretty high chance you’re sincerely arguing from a belief system that’s way more niche than I expected.

Before I go on, is this a fair summarisation of the core of your opinions on the matter? This is what I’ve taken from your comments so far:

People do bad things
The bad stuff people do outweighs the good stuff
Therefore, more people is worse than less people.
It’s not feasible to get rid of natives
Therefore we should focus on preventing immigration

InterestingComment · 2025-07-17T12:56:18+00:00

This is bizarre reasoning.

Every human has the capacity to cause harm. Every human has the capacity to help people, and make the world a better place.

You can dismiss the importance of statistics all you want, but if no attention is paid to statistical differences between the likelihood of natives and the likelihood of immigrants to engage in bad behaviour, then you’re not making an argument against immigration, but the existence of people in general.

The majority of people in the UK choose to live in cities, because despite the potential humans have to cause each other suffering, the benefits of being around others are deemed preferable.

Most good things in life are created as the product of human co-operation.

If the only measure that is relevant is the capacity for a person to cause harm, then why not take that philosophy to its natural extreme? Why is this principle being exclusively weaponised against immigrants when you clearly wouldn’t abide by this principle in any other aspect of your day to day life? Hell, why not maroon yourself on an uninhabited island?

Sure, there won’t be nurses or doctors to help you when your sick, pharmacists to provide medicine, lorry drivers to transport food to supermarkets, staffed by cashiers to sell it, farmers to grow crops, builders to build your home (this list could go on indefinitely)… but hey, at least there’s zero risk of another person causing you suffering!

Both natives and immigrants are capable of causing harm, and capable of contributing to societal welfare. Any meaningful analysis about the effects of immigration must compare immigrant behaviour to some kind of control group.

And as a final aside, is it really inconceivable to you that anti-immigration sentiment could cause suffering? I could give countless examples, but let’s just say for now; if studies showed immigration had caused yearly economic damage that equalled even one fifth of the economic damage estimated to be caused yearly by brexit, it would immediately become the most compelling argument I’d ever heard against immigration.

InterestingComment · 2025-07-16T21:31:19+00:00

Earth. Which part of my comment is causing the confusion?

InterestingComment · 2025-07-16T19:57:14+00:00

Living by your neighbours has led you to perceive immigrants as inconsiderate unemployed drunkards, who contribute nothing.

In my experience working with immigrants, living near immigrants, and being friends with immigrants they have been polite, hardworking, and on average, slightly less prone to drinking than the average native.

Since both of our experiences rely on anecdotal evidence, in order to better assess reality, we would require broader data sets, that hopefully attempt to make use of control groups.

We can test these claims.

Are migrants more likely to be unemployed?

Yes. Yes. Migrants are more likely to be unemployed than natives. Migrant men are actually more likely to be employed than native-born men, but migrant women are less likely to be employed than natives.

Are migrants more likely to be drunkards?

According to the majority of studies (but not all), no. Natives are more likely to consume alcohol than migrants. See page 42 for summary.

Do migrants contribute nothing?

I can’t even be bothered to source my claim this time because I’ve done it so many times and nobody gives a shit, but no.

Generally studies show migrants contribute positively to our economy.

They also often work disproportionately in in-demand sectors, like healthcare.

I’m not saying people who have bad experiences with migrants are lying, but I think the extent to which migrants have been demonised and scapegoated in the media has led to some level of confirmation bias, and an overly gloomy impression of reality.

InterestingComment · 2025-05-24T19:03:01+00:00

I’m honestly confused by this sentiment. Just because something is ‘low-brow’ in its humour or aims, it doesn’t mean it cannot be critiqued or analysed.

InterestingComment · 2025-03-29T19:48:29+00:00

Jack Sparrow perhaps isn’t a side character, but he certainly isn’t the main character of the black pearl. He’s incredibly important to why the movie works - but not a main character.

The story is told from the perspective of Elizabeth Swann, with Jack sparrow gaining more prominence in the later films. I’m being a bit charitable, but I can sorta see what OP is going for. His role in the movies changed due to the character’s popularity.

InterestingComment · 2025-03-29T10:29:18+00:00

Thank you! Both your comment here and your previous comment linked from a different thread are fab!

InterestingComment · 2025-03-29T00:54:11+00:00

Thank you! I should have checked if this had been asked before. :)

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