British items on Italian RAI TV and newspapers are few and far between. Certainly the brexit fiasco is causing the UK to feature more on Italian TV media. Brexit is, of course, a heaven for all Euro area inhabitants as they can get a good twenty per cent more for their money as the pound sinks lower into the abyss created by misinformation and British pig- headedness.
Is it no coincidence that the epic ‘Dunkirk’ film will be on general release by the end of August? Brits seem to glorify in good losers rather than extol winners – Scott over Amundsen, for example – and it’s not just their own losers they praise: witness the Queen’s special medal given to Italian Olympic marathon runner Dorando Pietri in 1908 for losing on a technicality. This is perhaps because Italians are not good losers. It’s in their nature to be first in everything possible – rather difficult during the country’s continuing economic doldrums. That’s why Federica Pellegrini’s win in the 200 metres free-style in the recent world swimming championships was an occasion for triumph, even triumphalism. (It was a pretty sensational win, I have to admit).
Other Italian news items from a group of northern islands they consider highly eccentric (and now highly masochistic) involve the British royal family. Just wait in your doctor’s surgery here and you can easily pick up a magazine with enough stories from her Maj, William, Kate and Will and the rest of the post Saxe-Coburg bunch to fill a year’s regal gossip. That’s also thanks to the Italians’ narrowly missing keeping their royal family in the referendum in 1946. (54% percent for a republic against 46% for a monarchy – almost Brexian in closeness.)
Last night yet another news item cropped up on RAI and it was a subject very close to Italians – that of the wearing of crucifixes on one’s persons and the display of Christ on the Cross in schools and public institutions. This was the case of a white baptised Christian five-year old girl placed in foster care with a Muslim family who immediately stripped her of her crucifix neck chain.
She was then told her that her religious feasts, Easter and Christmas, were rubbish and they even denied the poor girl her favourite dish of spaghetti ‘alla carbonara’ because it contained bacon.
Things became worst when the poor girl couldn’t understand a word her Muslim foster family was saying to her and was told to learn Arabic. Being taken out for shopping with a fully burkhaed foster-mum didn’t help either.
When finally rescued from being ‘converted’ within a strict orthodox Muslim family the girl was said to be in a state of extreme distress
The authority in charge of the fostering, Tower Hamlets, hasn’t a very good record in its social services but surely it must have realised that the little girl should have been adopted by a family closer to hers in culture and ethnicity. Tower Hamlets refused to comment on the situation. That’s not surprising from a body that is incapable of realising that multi-culturalism is dead and that integration involves more a situation of ‘when in Rome do as the Romans do’ (or, as St Augustine stated in 390 AD ‘… Romanum venio, ieiuno Sabbato; hic sum, non ieiuno: sic etiam tu, ad quam forte ecclesiam veneris, eius morem serva, si cuiquam non vis esse scandalum nec quemquam tibi.’)
The questions to be asked in this abysmal case – which in some respects must be regarded as child-abuse by the health services of a local council – are these:
- How can Tower Hamlets have enrolled a strict orthodox Mohamedan family as fosterers? Fostering families should have firm standards but certainly not strict dogmas. And surely is there a not- negligible connection between the extremer forms of that religion and enrolment as a jihadist.
- What were the circumstances that led the five-year old girl to be fostered? And did the girls’ parents have no say in the choice of the family to foster her?
- There are many more white family fosterers than black family fosterers in London. In fact, there is a majority of black children being fostered in white families. So why, in this case, did Tower Hamlets choose to foster a white child with a black fosterer who is supposed to be in the minority?
- There are further cases involving giving daily help and care to the elderly in the UK. A friend told me that her mother actually refused to open her front door when confronted on the other side by someone she described as a bundle of black cloaks and hoods. Why don’t health workers wear a defined uniform and display a badge which clearly defines their work status so that older people, not used, like younger people, to exotic clothing, are not alarmed? I was further informed that the carer wore her clothes for religious reasons. Carers should wear clothes for professional purposes, not for religious display. Is the UK really a secular society?
The little girl’s case was reported extensively both in Italian RAI TV and on the talk-shows which predominate on the Italian medium. All the case did was to encourage fear of mohamedanism as a religion, add fear to those brought up in western cultural and religious values, especially Roman Catholicism which, while not as extensively practised as in previous times is part-and-parcel of Italian cultural values, and, ultimately, to ridicule not only the inefficiency of Tower Hamlets but also the weirdness and misdirection of British society.
Hi, Francis. We have been in the UK all summer, read the paper every day, and have radio four on all day and every day. I have to say that I have never seen or heard this story! At the risk of aligning myself with a president who shall remain anonymous, I have to say that this has the ring of ‘false news’. Whilst, also, I am familiar with the vagaries of Tower Hamlets council, I am not at all sure that it could be true, at least not in the extremes you present!
Whoa!! I retract that. It’s all over the Telegraph and Independent today!
Having said that, I still find the story, and the reaction to it, disturbing. I am guessing, I suppose, but I presume that the story originates from the mother who, I am guessing again, would have been in pretty dire circumstances and considerable distress to have had her child removed. I am displaying some prejudice, I know, but I am also guessing that the Mother may not have taken full benefit from the education system and, perhaps, may not be totally unprejudiced in her own views. We have, also, a five year old child, also, presumably, in some distress, demanding Spaghetti Carbonara! Really! Social workers have an extremely difficult job dealing, sometimes very urgently, with difficult people in distressing circumstances. Whether the foster parents are Muslim, Christian or anything else may well be the last consideration if you need a bed for the night for a child in danger.
I would answer some of your questions.
No doubt muslim fosterers are recruited because there are occasions when muslim children need fostering.
You have no business knowing the precise circumstances. They are the busines only of those involved.
Can you not imagine an urgent circumstance when any bed is better than no bed.
Would you want to live in a country where the government told you what to wear?
Where is the father in all this?
Are you really taking the word of a distracted and distressed mother and/or a five year old child to stereotype a nation?
I needed a rant! No offence intended.
T
No problem. I appreciate your views on this story which was headline news in Italy.
I would add that further details have emerged from this story. The girl was apparently of muslim background but came from a non practising family. She has since been reunited with her grandmother. Tower Hamlets mayor is also under investigation for having used ‘spiritual’ influence to secure votes. Furthermore the D of E is concerned that some schools are being used to radicalise students in jihadist thinking. Tower Hamlets shady recent past has thus not helped in getting a clearer picture of this story which is still rumbling on in the Italian media.
Yes, some of the case papers have been released. The foster family were, in fact, the mother’s parents, ie the child’s grandparents who had been caring for the child for some time before being recently approved as foster parents. It is they, the grandparents, who are described as ‘non-practising muslims’. The mother had ‘raised concerns’ about the fostering but had never requested a change of carer. The case arises because the grandparents wish to move back to their country of origin and take the child with them.
A somewhat different story to that initially reported with such relish for motives that we can only guess.