City law firms have been urged to stop hosting work socials at the pub over fears they exclude Muslim staff.
A report by Rare, a UK graduate recruitment company specialising in diversity, said the legal profession’s “big drinking culture” is unfair to those who abstain from alcohol.
It suggested that law firms introduce more cooking, painting or pottery classes to boost team bonding, rather than hosting events centred on booze.
We’re in a society where a pint and a natter is a usual and normal method of social bonding. Apparently we’ve got to change this in order to incorporate the immigrants. Rather than they picking up our habits. Even if that does mean an OJ and a natter.
Sigh.
Oh, FFS!
Funny, I remember going to Turkey and I had to change out of my shorts and Mrs Grist had to put on a shawl and a sari type thing to cover up before we went into the grounds of a a mosque. I can’t think why they didn’t give me a pint, but I’m not the complaining type, I suppose…
Diversity and inclusion require the majority not only to tolerate the alien and perverse but also to change to accommodate them and even celebrate their difference and perversity. And thus the leftist termites gnaw at the cultural foundations of the West.
Did a little job in Kuwait once. It was Ramadan. The expat workers were advised not to eat or drink in front of |Muslms in daytime. Fair enough. But they are imposing that rule here in some workplaces, which is not on as far as I am concerned.
OTOH, my pub here is run by a couple of Muslim lads and it’s more than fine with me.
I remember a Muslim friend of mine saying that he couldn’t drink alcohol because of his religious beliefs. Had we not been down the pub enjoying a couple of pints at the time I might even have believed him. I’ve had a similar discussion with a Jewish friend while we were both tucking into bacon sandwiches.
As @AndyF says, actual Muslims don’t seem to be as uptight about the whole thing. I’ve been with them (and other teetoller types like Mormons) in pubs and if they are strict enough to nor partake, they often just mock us souses for our headaches the next day
@FrancisT
You’re preselecting from the people you know. You’re not going to know the other sort.
“A report by Rare, a UK graduate recruitment company specialising in diversity,”
Now all the Muslims and other diverse types are googling their site to look for opportunities. Let the faux-enraged media do your advertising for you. Oldest trick in the book.
How do Muslims in Russia cope, where heavy drinking is the primary form of networking? (Muslims make up 10% of the Russian population, though mostly concentrated along the southern border with Georgia and Azerbaijan.)
When I was working in a “City” office (actually a hundred yards or so to the West), one of my colleagues used to classify pubs on the quality of their lemonade. Being teetotal never stopped him joining us for a drink (unless the pub had not-worth-drinking soft drinks)
I get around this problem by not hiring Muslims.
Sorry you didn’t get the job, it’s Allah’s will innit.
“the legal profession’s ‘big drinking culture’”
Is this a London thing? My dad was fairly prominent in Scotch legal circles, and although he and his colleagues certainly weren’t teetotallers, I wouldn’t have characterized the profession as having any “drinking culture”, let alone a “big” one.
Ha, a downy faced boy serving me in a garage, had the temerity to say, why do you drink this, it’s not healthy. as he scanned the 6 pack i got for a bbq. I said, jocularly, do you not drink alcohol for health reasons or religious. i said plenty of christians used to feel the same way 100 years ago. They even banned it in america. But the drinkers won eventually.
According to the Bible, Jesus “turned water into wine” so I assume that He had no problems with alcohol consumption – and if it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me!
My brother and I rarely drink. After my father’s funeral the family had a meal at the local pub. We got a big pot of tea. No problem.
Hold the interviews in the Red Lion. Problem solves itself.
One interviewee named Hamza said: “It feels dishonourable in terms of religious beliefs going into a pub because that’s a place that we don’t really like to associate ourselves with.
Likewise.
BiW – the useless cat ladies in HR keep sending me hijabis and random Africans, because they think Diversity is more important than being able to do the job.
I disagree.
Some of those interviews have been quite amusing, tbf.
I don’t know… a pottery class with unlimited free booze might be a blast!
“It suggested that law firms introduce more cooking, painting or pottery classes to boost team bonding, rather than hosting events centred on booze.”
So, they want to exclude straight men instead?
Hallowed Be said:
“a downy faced boy serving me in a garage, had the temerity to say, why do you drink this, it’s not healthy. as he scanned the 6 pack i got for a bbq”
Answer – it’s the only way I can cope with po-faced puritans without punching them.
Western Bloke said:
“pottery classes to boost team bonding – So, they want to exclude straight men instead?”
I don’t know, wasn’t there a movie with a phallic pottery sex scene? But I think that was the ‘80s.
“It suggested that law firms introduce more cooking, painting or pottery classes…”
Painting immediately rules out the Muslims – graven images innit. Calligraphy would be OK
Baron Jackfield-
yeah its weird Christianity basically founded on drinkipoos, but nevertheless temperance was a big thing esp amongst the non-conformists. The place i drink most at nowadays was founded as a temperance hall. Another win.
Btw. One way to immediately change the drinking culture for big firms is move out of london. Locate yourself on a junction on the M25.. You’ll find a) people driving home puts a kaibosh on daily lunchtime and after work sessions. b)and even for special events the half of the office/team that have to turn right at the end of the road to get home are reluctant to join any after work drinks held in places that require them to turn left, and vice versa.
Baron J
if it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me!
And 1 Timothy 5:23 [KJV]: Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.
Once, I was in a meeting to which many of us had travelled for up to two hours. The meeting was overwhelmingly female and chaired by a woman. The company’s head accountant, Mohammed, arrived to make a presentation to us, and he said: ‘May I politely request that you all respect Ramadan by abstaining from coffee when it arrives?’ There was an embarrassed silence, then the women began to agree that we should all abstain from coffee “in respect of Ramadan”. So I objected saying, “while I acknowledge your religious observance, Mohammed, Islam is not my religion, and we need a cup of coffee – I have driven 85 miles and nearly two hours to get here”. The women rapidly agreed. And Mohammed refused to speak to me ever again.
Fortunately, he referred me to his conservative deputy who was of Nigerian descent. Chibuzu maintained that the white man’s greatest gift to Africa was Christianity because it taught Africans to transcend tribalism…and his views on ethnic crime in the UK were a delight!
“1 Timothy”: it’s easy to remember which of Paul’s letters were, in the view of the great majority of scholars, forged: Tim, Tim, and Titus.
There’s three more where opinion is uncertain or divided. That leaves seven that the great man – or hallucination-prone epileptic – wrote himself.
There are also four which are suspected of having genuinely existed but are “lost”.
For seven out of eleven to have survived seems to me good going given how few, poor, and obscure the early Christians presumably were.
But then it’s remarkable that memories survived of the existence and death of a mysterious back-country preacher.
Rather verbose there, Theo.
I used to like to walk the dog along Whitechapel Rd past the London Mosque & would get remonstrated at the denzins. I found a short sweet “Fuck off Paki” was usually sufficient. I certainly didn’t intend going into my reasons for walking there. Nor did the dog. None of their business.
by the denzins, obviously.
My opinions of the London Mosque run to more than 3 words.
Incidentally, a little further along the road is a small park. It was the site of what I believe was St Mary’s Church copped a biggun in the Blitz. I’m sure I can remember the gravestones either still marking the graves or stood along the wall when I was a kid. The adjoining road is White Church Lane.* It is now the Altab Ali (Memorial) Park. The only part of the church left is a section of medieval masonry in the outside wall. I suppose we should be thankful we’ve still got that..
*One notes that the word Church in the street name has been vandalised. Presumably they’ll get around to White. The one that was at the other end of the street is now missing altogether.
BiS: three rambling posts and you think I am verbose? Your lack of self-awareness begins to resemble Spud’s.ll
PiP
Whether the letter is genuine or not is now irrelevant. The point is
that St Paul advocated moderate alcohol consumption, and that this is widely accepted by modern Christians and theologians.