Should we close schools for Ramadan etc?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-117202 7/Schools-close-Ramadan-non-Christian-festival s-avoid-pupils-missing-classes.html

Instead of closing schools, and everyone losing out on lessons, perhaps these pupils should then be forced to attend school during the Christian festival holidays?

This way the authorities cannot be accuse of short-changing the non-Christians of valuable teaching time.

They could be taught during the Easter and Christmas holidays by non Christian staff.

[sophie_1003]

The way it suggests in the article, and how I've seen it done in practice, is that the school times teacher training days to land on religious festivals that a large number of the pupils would be observing. Therefore the school isn't closed for any 'extra' days and no-one misses out on any taught time.

[paraffin]

aog:

I agree with sophie - it appears as though schools will be asked to reshuffle their schedules to accommodate the multi-cultural diversity in Britain's schools today.

I don't think any kids will "losing out on lessons" as a result

[Ethel]

Why should teachers, caretakers, cleaners, cooks, secretaries and classroom assistants work over the Christian festivities, though, AOG?

As Sophie says, there will still be 190 school days for every pupil as there is now.

[rov1200]

To simplify matters why don;t the government get every child to convert to Muslim?

[chinadog]

Why dont the government send the muslims back to where they came from? Im sick of people having to kow tow,they demand the govt gives. Its about time all this stopped!!

[Lonnie]

Does it make any difference, because thanks to this goverment, this country, in about twenty years or less will be wholly Muslim anyway.

[TCL-MUMPING]

chinadog as you seem to think Muslims can't be British, do you want Roman Catholics sent back to the Vatican State too?

[LucyThomas5]

Britain is a Christian country and only Christian holidays should be observed. And before you say it, it matters not that few people attend church in modern times. Christianity is enshrined in our culture and laws and we should not make way for other religions.

Go to Iran or Iraq and see if they will observe Christian holidays.

[sp1814]

Chinadog...could you please explain to all of us what mechanisms would need to be put in place to do this.

Try answering these questions:

1. What do you do with the housing stock owned by British Muslims...would they be compensated at current values?

2. If compensation for repatriation at current values were put in place...how will this be funded?

3. How will the jobs vacated by British Muslims be filled? I assume there wouldn't be a handover period so how could Brits fill these jobs?

4. What would happen to all the Muslim-owned businesses? Would these be compensated?

5. What would happen to local economies once these businesses closed down?

If you're going to post "send them back", it's best to have some kind of plan.

What's your plan?

[*Princess*]

That's absolutely ridiculous. I could understand if we were Pakistan or Bangladesh, then we would abide by the rules and holidays of Islam.

Seeing as we're not, and we're GREAT Britain, why should we? Lets keep us being Great Britain.

If Muslims aren't happy with that, they should move somewhere else.

And before anyone says, that's not racist.

As a Christian, if I were to live in Bangladesh, I would respect their rules and holidays. I may not follow their main religion but I would respect it. I would also not demand the schools and work places be closed over Christian holidays. If I felt like that, I would move back to England.

It's all about respect for the country you're living in.

[LucyThomas5]

Princess, you're absolutely correct.

To answer the racist sp1814's questions.

1. What do you do with the housing stock owned by British Muslims...would they be compensated at current values?

No. They would be repatriated to their homelands and the houses passed to local councils who would allocate them to British nationals in need of housing.

2. If compensation for repatriation at current values were put in place...how will this be funded?

The only compensation for repatriation would be the air fare home.

3. How will the jobs vacated by British Muslims be filled? I assume there wouldn't be a handover period so how could Brits fill these jobs?

Firstly, you can stop calling Britons 'Brits'. This is a term of abuse used by Irish Nationalists and is extremely offensive. You wouldn't like it if I called you a **** or ni66er so don't call me a Brit.

As to your question, the jobs will be filled by the 1,000,000 people in this country who choose not to work. They choose not to work because the benefits they receive are greater than the wages they would earn in employment. No person who chooses not to work should earn more than 40 times the minimum hourly wage. That would mean that nobody who chose not to work would earn more than anyone in work.

4. What would happen to all the Muslim-owned businesses? Would these be compensated?

They would not be compensated. They would simply be closed down and the free market would be allowed to fill the gap

5. What would happen to local economies once these businesses closed down?

Local economies would be unaffected because as has been explained above, other businesses would fill the void.

[gelda]

Well said Lucy!

[Julnar]

We are a predominantly Christian society and school holidays reflect this. There is no need to officially mark other religions holidays. If parents wish to remove their children for Ramadan or Diwali, they should be allowed to do so, but not expect the timetable to be uprooted to satisfy their personal choice of religion.

[Totterdown]

If a considerable number of British people decided to live in another country, were allowed to wear Western style clothes, in private were allowed to follow Western customs, even worship as they wish, do you honestly think these other countries' governments would go as far as to let children have separate religious holidays if in a multi cultural school? I think not. The parents of these children should think these things through before deciding Britain is the place for their families and not expect rules to be changed just for them.

[sp1814]

Lucy

So to clarify - are you saying that we should repatriate all Muslims and confiscate their houses???

Seriously?

Can you forsee any problems with that?

Secondly, if Brit is a term of abuse, how offended were you at the term 'Britpop' (early 90s term for a collection of bands such as Oasis, Blur and Pulp)?

Your answer to the question of job vacancies is confusing to me. How could you be sure that the jobs vacated fit the skill set of the unemployed? Say if we lost 75,000 Muslim doctors, how many British doctor are there to fill those places?

Would you suggest rapid training of plumbers, electricians and tree surgeons to take over those jobs?

I could understand your point if we were talking about unskilled labour, but we're not - how quickly could untrained unemployed people be trained to, say, run a local shop?

I don't think your suggestion is practical.

Regarding the wholesale closure of businesses - the knock on effect to suppliers and distribution companies would be catastrophic. We've had evidence of how the failure of one link in the chain can cause mass unemployment (when the distribution company for Woolies and Zavvi went under, it took those two companies with it).

[sp1814]

LucyThomas5

Also, what do you suggest happen to the housing stock vacated by repatriated Muslims?

If they went back into social housing, you would seen the housing market collapse.

A sudden expansion in available housing would drive down the cost of the existing stock. House prices have been over-inflated for some time, but what the country needs is a 'soft landing', rather than an almighty crash.

Taken in it's entirety, I doubt whether the suggestions you put forward are really practically workable.

[sophie_1003]

To everyone saying "They shouldn't expect us to close OUR schools, we would respect their holidays etc etc" They (presuming everyone means all Muslims, regardless of whether they have children or not) are not asking schools to close for other religious festivals, schools themselves are suggesting it so that the children who would usually be taken out of school for these festivals will not miss out. It also has a lot to do with attendance rates, if schools are open on days when the majority of pupils are not there it looks very bad on their records. As for 'sending them all home' what will become of people who have ancestors dating back to when Britain was invaded, how long does a family have to have been living here to class as British, or is it only white people with a British sounding name that can legitimately call this country home?

[Lonnie]

You know, people refer to this country as 'Great Britain', and so it is, but does anyone actually know what the 'Great' stands for?.

[sophie_1003]

Lonnie- thankyou for flagging that up had never thought about what the 'Great' means, having looked it up on wikipedia am somewhat enlightened!