Migrants staying at the Glasgow River Hotel in Erskine are to be given Judo lessons to help them integrate into society.
Clyde Judo Club will host a 12-week programme at the Hotel in Erskine. The project aims to integrate refugees into the judo community and assist them in finding local clubs that offer stability through the sport when they are resettled.
The head coach at Clyde Judo Club, Susan Wright, said those participating in the programme would be taught basic judo moves.
She was quoted as saying: “we don’t know yet how many refugees are taking part, but it’s probably going to be a maximum of around 25. It’s very important to do this because these people have come from far away and arrived with absolutely nothing.”
“As it will be mostly men taking part, we’ve got really good male coaches who are going to come along to deliver the project.
“They need to be helped to integrate to wherever they are going to be and judo is a fantastic way of doing that.”
The project is one of several initiatives across the Scottish judo community that aim to empower and positively impact the lives of refugees.
However, the Judo coach’s comments are rather telling. The locals have been told that the hotel will house families, yet this project seems to be directed at young men.
And the use of male coaches? Where are the female coaches, and what happened to equality? Pretty sure there’s always some experienced female waiting to lay some moves on an unsuspecting male novice. But not here, it would seem.
Indeed, if there is to be an initiative to integrate migrants into the local area, there are more suitable and frankly less eyebrow-raising ways than teaching them how to fight.
No doubt a rebuttal to this would be to say that it’s teaching them self-defence. Who it is they think precisely is going to attack them is anyone’s guess. Suppose the powers that be have spun the narrative that the #ErskineSaysNo demonstrators will attack on sight if countermeasures aren’t put in place. Laughable, really, as the average demonstrator is a middle-aged Scottish woman.
We could ask the Judo club why they didn’t step forward six months ago and offer their brand of self-defence to the locals, but we know the reason, money; there will be some incentive in place for these clubs to get involved.
At the demonstration on Sunday, we shall try and ask the counter-demonstrators who hold a sign up saying “Erskine needs investment” if this is what they mean. Surely even they must see this move as an own goal.
Talking of the counter-demonstrators, a left-wing paper published an article about the demo last week, and instead of talking themselves up, they did what these people do and acted the victim; why you ask? Because the police gave them a ticking off for shouting threats and obscenities at the locals protesting. The self-declared social justice warriors don’t like it when the open doors they push against swing back and hit them in the face. It’s funny how these “rebels and dissidents” naturally assumed the state would be on their side.
The Homeland Party believes that local communities like Erskine grow organically, we want to see a world where people do come and go, but this is a natural process; if people have to take classes on how to integrate, then it’s probably not going to work. Another problem is how quickly 2000 new homes can be built in a town like Erskine with little in the way of increased infrastructure. This causes a justified “us against them” mentality, which, if things were left to grow at their own pace, we wouldn’t have.
It is a fact that Erskine residents have been enduring poorly planned, unsuccessful progressive policies for quite some time now. These policies not only cost the Scottish people a significant amount of money, but they also divert funds from essential services that residents urgently require.
