Mumbai

[ailbhe]

I also heard an interview with a woman who was waiting for her brother outside the hotel.

"He is in there, I don't know where he is, I am just waiting."

The BBC interviewer said "And is he - does he work at the hotel?"

"No," she said, somewhat flatly. "He is a [management or higher position, I forget]."

The interviewer had the gall to sound surprised.

Comments

This makes me so angry

[auntysarah.livejournal.com]

You mean ... foreign people can perform rudimentary tasks?!

[random-c.livejournal.com]

I'm confused. Hotel management or generally a professional type elsewhere?

[ailbhe]

A professional type who was in the hotel for all the same reasons the Britons were - business meetings, etc.

[random-c.livejournal.com]

Ah. Yes, being surprised at that is bonkers.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

The Guardian reported that there is a possibility that some of the attackers are "British-born Pakistanis".

And here I was thinking that if you were born somewhere then that's where you're from. But no, apparently being Muslim now works to a different set of rules.

I could spit.

[ailbhe]

Yes, I've also heard "Britons of Pakistani origin."

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

At least that allows tham to be Britons, which the Graunad in its liberal wisdom has judged incorrect.

[ailbhe]

I think technically one could be born here to non-citizen parents and not be a Briton. Not that that's what the Grauniad meant, but I think it's true that one could. That's why so many pregnant women went to Ireland and why Ireland changed the constitution.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

You could totally be born here and not hold a UK passport, but the question of who is and is not "A Briton(tm)" is a complicated and frankly, especially for you and I, a moot one. Se below.

You're right that that's not what the Grauniad meant, but then they are slowly goin round the bend and are within view of bumping into the Daily Mail coming the other way, if you ask me.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

UK citizenship law was changed so that if you were after 1983, you weren't automatically entitled to UK citizenship. So technically, you could be British-born but not hold British citizenship.

I don't know whether or not that's what they were, but I find that a lot of people assume that British citizenship is an automatic right if you're born in Britain, and actually that isn't true anywhere in the EU (Ireland was the last, but the referendum in 2004 changed that.)

[webhill.livejournal.com]

I would define a "British-born Pakistani" as a citizen of Pakistan who was born in Britain. Being born somewhere does not define current citizenship! Here in the USA I read a lot of stories about "Mexican-born Americans" who are children, born in Mexico, who come here with their parents as infants or very young children, and grow up here,and become citizens of this country. They are Mexican-born Americans, not Mexicans.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

The tricky point is not really about what passport these alleged attackers with British connections (of hichever stamp) hold, as Ailbhe recognised. i'm not trying to start any kind of "what defines your identity" debate here (anyway, as an ex-Soviet Israeli Jew born in Azerbaijan and residing in Britain, I'm the first to admit it's cumpleecatid).

The real point is that the rumours - and they are rumours only, denied so far by both UK and India's PMs - that some of the attackers may or may not have *any* kind of connection to the UK were still very tenuous at the time the Guardian piece was written, and they should have known better than to make an unconditional headline out of them.

Instead, the most liberal and left leaning newspaper in the country carefully chose language that disowned these alleged people of whatever nationality, just in case.

Nice.

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

He was (is, I hope) a solicitor. He was there for a party. I found that whole exchange very noteworthy.

I stayed at the Taj when I was like 6. It doesn't make it any more terrible but it does make it more real to me.

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know what you mean (I had tea at the Taj five weeks ago).