At the expese of rate payers

[Hellyon]

Ken Livingstone is planning on spending �100 million of rate payers money on a mega mosque in London that will be bigger than St Paul's cathedral.
I have no objections to mosques at all but I do think spending �100 million of ratepayers money ( when churches have to fund their own building and repair) extraordinary. Setting aside the fact that based on previous big builds like Wembley, Millenium Dome and Olympic village all seem to end up cost double the estimate the final bill could be �200 million.
It's only going to cause a lot of bad feeling at a partcicularly sensitive time.
Surely the money would be better spent on hospitals, community centres etc?

Read more here
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml? xml=/opinion/2006/09/25/do2502.xml

Any one who wants to sign the petition iagainst it t's here
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ScrapMegaMosque/

[Pippa68]

There's one then...

I'm not just talking about AB, whiff..there are many more people in the country besides here.

[anotheoldgit]

I cannot believe the thinking of those on this site, who could not care less how far this country is being taken over by all these immigrants that we welcome with open arms.

Back in 1940 we stood alone, yet kept the might of Hitler's hordes from invading these shores, but now we are just holding our hands up in surrender (if some of whimps on this sight are anything to go by).

Haven't any of you hand wringing leffties any pride in what Britain stands for? Would you stand by and see the very image of our country and it's capital completely altered and replaced by buildings that are completely foreign to our heritage?

With us all being Non-Christian (as sp1814 would have us believe) is it not time that Westminster Abbey and St Paul's, were knocked down and replaced by Mosques?
Why stop there? down with the tower of London and all those ancient castles, that maybe the crusaders gathered in before going off to kick the Muslims out of the Christian's sacred land, perhaps these great ancient structures might offend the muslims and that won't do at all.

When all of these are destroyed then perhaps you can start on the Cathedrals and our quaint village Churches? But better still for all those that want to turn Britain into Islam, save your effort and cash, bug*er off to the Middle East where all the Mosques and the life style you seek is out there waiting for you.

[NJOK]

Ooooooooooh!

"Haven't any of you hand wringing leffties any pride in what Britain stands for?"

Have you read any of the previous 40 posts? There are a lot of people who believe that Britain "stands" (and has fought) for things like tolerance and freedom?

Or does the London skyline count for more than basic principles like that?

[Octavius]

Why do people always hark back to the war time era when talking of British values? Were there really no other times when Britishness could be demonstrated so valiantly? I am not mocking my forefather�s heroics � far from it � but surely there must be something else in the last 60 years to add some mettle to Britishness?

And regarding our heritage another � do you know anything about British architecture? It is because of the influence and influx of �foreign� ideas that provide the outline of many of our buildings throughout the UK. Consider Greek, Roman, Baroque, Renaissance and Georgian et al. Most styles lend themselves to travellers who bought back ideas from the countries they travelled. The Tower of London was originally Norman French (Gundulf), with a Dutch style moat. Canary Wharf Tower was designed by an Argentinean (didn�t we fight them once?). The up and coming Shard of Glass is designed by an Italian � how many more examples do you need.

Whilst I agree that a mega-mosque with 40k capacity is uncongenial. One more mosque is hardly the downfall of Britishness - I think it was the size that mattered. And to bemoan the decay of local churches you may as well point a finger at the British high street banks and breweries that have a penchant for converting them into bars, restaurants or bank branches.

Is it purely Islamic mosques to whit thou protesteth, or will you also be challenging the Mormon, Sikh, Hindi, Jewish, Spiritualist, Latter Day Saints, Scientologist establishments of worship that exist on our shores also?

[sp1814]

So is the answer to ban all further building of mosques?

How would the anti-mosque posters sell that to the Muslim community?

Seriously...if you were a local councillor, how would you phrase it?

[Lonnie]

I'm not going to argue for or against the Mosque, i've done that in earlier threads, but I think you'll find that the Muslims already own the land, whether it gets built or not, depends on the outcome of their planning application, and yes, as earlier posts have said, the money is not coming from us, the taxpayer.