I'm 3rd generation (grandson of an) immigrant. Indo-pak (ie. SouthEast Asian) background and my grandad, who was a legend and may Allah give him Jannah (The Heaven) was invited in about 1950. My dad came in about 1963 when he was 11 and dad his high school studies here.
My dad has perfectly excellent command of english but prefers to speak in his own mother tongue. Maybe due to that I speak 3 languages (English, Punjabi and Urdu) and can read 3 (English, Urdu and Arabic). I wasn't the best student and school in terms of english and grammar but I had an excellent teacher (Ms Johnson, late becoming Mrs Howe) and thus excelled at the language.
I have mates who are 2nd generation immigrants (like coming to the UK during highschool in about 1990) and none have a poor comman of english whatsoever. Even the ones that didn't bother too much with school/schooling despite being encouraged by their parents. I suffered racism all the way up until I qualified as a registered nurse (and yes, I did pay for my own studies after having been a bus driver and B&Q worker before that).
The racism was such that it started when I was in the 1st year of junior school - though I'm not mentioning the town I was brought up, nor the schools I attended including nursing school/uni and hospital as that would just cause stereotype - and this earliest memory was with my 1st year teacher. She was horrible and only now in my 40s and upon reflection (and getting my first job as a critical care nurse in the city) I realised it was the islamophobia gene at play. You see, my dad was/is an open muslim. The (insitutional) racism ended after I finished my studies at which time it went to the very top of the food chain!
During Covid I was one of the first out of my unti (at the time) to experience and look after a Covid patient. For approximately 6 years, on this unit as well as many others I gave out about £1000 worth of pens and other such items to help boost staff morale. The return I got when I finally left this unit (4 years as an agency nurse and then 2 years for Covid) was bugger-all.
Though I'm not bitter and our Mohammed (PBUH/Sallallahu-alayhi-wasallaam) taught us to not get bit from the same hole twice. So, though I do go back and yearn one day to start giving out pens once again, for now this method of boosting morale is on hold. As I said, I was one of the first to exp Covid from our unit and it was the time when PPE was a big issue.
I first shaved my beard (a part of me for the previous 18 years and more with a brief tiny stint without) to allow the ability to wear the sub-standard PPE that was being provided. Though I needed a solution to enable the beard and air powered respirators were at that time a thing of luxury. I enquired to 3M and was told there was a backlog of about 1 million units worldwide (not all faces fit the standard FFP3 masks, even without a beard, including small faces and/or the girls).
So I sold my £3k carbon road bike which I used for commuting to work for the past 2 years or so and was bought brandnew (as a frame) for about £1.2k. The £1k I earned from that - I sold it super cheap cos I needed to save life which is a big part of my religion and this was my chance - helped fund one of the last Air Powered 3M Respirators left in the country (one of the best with the best face mask too).
This respirator cost me about £950, which was about (I'm trying hard with my grammar, can you tell) £400 over priced. On a sidenote, I recently sold it with a fresh filter for about £250, but that's a different story. So, after Covid was finally done and many of the staff had left or just about hung on to their profession on ICU, I finally tried to claim back expenses for this respirator.
The threatening letter from HMRC wasn't having none of it and refused to acknowledge that there was a reason/need for me to have bought my own during the start of the pandemic. Including servicing and spares this respirator had cost me about £1.3K over the course of the 2 years, but I wasn't gonna argue with HMRC as a standard PAYE employee.
So, the point... I'm not sure. Maybe that 'the cousin' school needs to try harder if the 2nd or 3rd gen haven't got a grasp of the glorious 'english' and need interpreters... Or maybe, I'm just saying.
Interesting viewpoints and thread and though I may sound offended, I'm really not. I have been a part of SingleTrackWorld forum for many years and should such a topic come up for discussion there, you'd see (and I have done) open racism and hate speech. We're actually doing very
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