關於 public housing in uk ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

[翻轉視界] Changing Perspective 15

We all want the same things in life: freedom, peace, and stability.

我們追求的目標其實都是一樣的: 自由、和平和安穩的生活。

★★★★★★★★★★★★

I'm a banking lawyer. I’ve got a very Australian accent. Sometimes people say things to me like that refugees are not really refugees, that they are just business opportunists. I then say, ‘Well, I’m a refugee from Laos, does that change your opinion?’ With that, they are taken aback.

•opportunist 機會主義者、投機取巧者
•refugee 難民
•be taken aback 被嚇了一跳
•Laos 寮國

我是一名銀行律師，說著一口道地澳洲腔。有時會有人對我說，難民並非真的難民，他們只是商業投機者。我就會說：「這個嘛，我就是從寮國來的難民，這會改變你的看法嗎？」聽完後，人們通常會大吃一驚。

★★★★★★★★★★★★

When we arrived in Australia, we lived first in a hostel in Melbourne, and then with my aunt and uncle and their kids in Sydney. There were 14 people in the house, and our family of 5 were in one room. My parents worked in factories, and my father worked a second shift in a restaurant at night so they could save up for a house.

•hostel （免費或廉價的）旅社 ; (UK) （無家可歸者的）收容所
•shift (n.)輪班職工；班；輪班
•save up for 為...存錢

抵達澳洲時，我們先在墨爾本的一間旅社落腳，之後才與我的叔叔、阿姨還有他們的孩子住在一起；我們14個人住在一間房子裡，而我們一家五口擠在一間房間。我的父母在工廠裡工作，父親晚上還要去餐廳打第二份工，這樣才能存錢買房子。

★★★★★★★★★★★★

I went to a public high school in a rough area of Sydney, in Bonnyrigg, right in the middle of a housing commission area. Only 4 kids from my year went on to Sydney University, and I was one of them. I still remember the first day of my law course, sitting in the lecture hall next to people from private and selective schools, and feeling nervous, out of place and undeserving.

•rough area 危險區
•housing commission area 住房委員會區
•selective school 菁英學校
•out of place 感到如魚出水，很不自在，局促不安
•undeserving 不配受到的，不該得到的

我在雪梨的貧民區上公立高中，學校在邦尼裡格，也就是在危險區的中央；我們年級只有4位學生考上雪梨大學，我是其中一位。我仍然記得，我在法學課上的第一天坐在那些從私立學校與菁英學校出來的同學旁邊，感到緊張、不適應且不配出現在那裡。

★★★★★★★★★★★★

My parents didn’t want to leave their country. They did it because they had to, because they were discriminated against by the Communists because of their Chinese background and political beliefs. Then they had to live with us in a refugee camp in Thailand for 10 months. And when they came to Australia, they worked hard, they always did the right thing, they tried to fit in, and they created a good family life for us. All my siblings went to uni, and we have all become professionals.

•be discriminated against by 被...歧視
•Communist 共產主義者； 共產黨員
•political belief 政治信念
•refugee camp 難民營

我的父母並不想離開祖國；但他們不得不離開，由於他們的華人背景跟政治信念而被共產黨歧視、敵對。我們一家不得不在泰國的難民營裡待了10個月。當他們抵達澳洲後刻苦工作，總是做正確的事試圖去容入這個環境，為我們創造了美好的家庭生活。我所有的兄弟姐妹們都接受大學教育，並都成為專業人士。

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Back when we arrived, there was a bit more compassion for refugees. I think that's what's missing in Australia these days. Even in some of the ethnic communities, I feel that there's sometimes a lack of compassion, because they forget where they've come from. So when people say something negative about refugees, I always speak up with my story, to try to bring kindness back into the conversation.

•compassion 同情、憐憫
•ethnic community 少數族群社區
•say something negative 說壞話
•speak out/up （尤指對有強烈共鳴的話題）公開發表意見，坦率說出

回顧我們剛抵達之際，當時對於難民們有較多的憐憫與同情，而我認為這是現在的澳洲所缺乏的；甚至在一些少數族群的社區裡，我也覺得那兒缺乏同情心，因為他們忘記自己從何而來；所以當人們對難民說一些負面的話，我總是會對他們提起我的故事，試圖將善意帶回人們的對話之中。

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Bring kindness back into our lives.

文章出處: https://bit.ly/3gjlUgs

New Humans of Australia

Photographer: Simone Cheung Photography

★★★★★★★★★★★★

翻轉視界: http://bit.ly/3fPvKUs

真的好喜歡他
這是她的演說全文
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Ever since I first stepped through the door behind me as Prime Minister, I have striven to make the United Kingdom a country that works not just for a privileged few, but for everyone. And to honour the result of the EU referendum.

Back in 2016, we gave the British people a choice. Against all predictions, the British people voted to leave the European Union.

I feel as certain today as I did three years ago that in a democracy, if you give people a choice you have a duty to implement what they decide. I have done my best to do that.

I negotiated the terms of our exit and a new relationship with our closest neighbours that protects jobs, our security and our Union.

I have done everything I can to convince MPs to back that deal. Sadly, I have not been able to do so. I tried three times. I believe it was right to persevere, even when the odds against success seemed high.

But it is now clear to me that it is in the best interests of the country for a new Prime Minister to lead that effort. So I am today announcing that I will resign as leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party on Friday 7 June so that a successor can be chosen.

I have agreed with the Party Chairman and with the Chairman of the 1922 Committee that the process for electing a new leader should begin in the following week.

I have kept Her Majesty the Queen fully informed of my intentions, and I will continue to serve as her Prime Minister until the process has concluded.

It is, and will always remain, a matter of deep regret to me that I have not been able to deliver Brexit.

It will be for my successor to seek a way forward that honours the result of the referendum. To succeed, he or she will have to find consensus in Parliament where I have not. Such a consensus can only be reached if those on all sides of the debate are willing to compromise.

For many years the great humanitarian Sir Nicholas Winton – who saved the lives of hundreds of children by arranging their evacuation from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia through the Kindertransport – was my constituent in Maidenhead.

At another time of political controversy, a few years before his death, he took me to one side at a local event and gave me a piece of advice. He said, ‘Never forget that compromise is not a dirty word. Life depends on compromise.’

He was right.

As we strive to find the compromises we need in our politics – whether to deliver Brexit, or to restore devolved government in Northern Ireland – we must remember what brought us here.

Because the referendum was not just a call to leave the EU but for profound change in our country. A call to make the United Kingdom a country that truly works for everyone.

I am proud of the progress we have made over the last three years. We have completed the work that David Cameron and George Osborne started: the deficit is almost eliminated, our national debt is falling and we are bringing an end to austerity.

My focus has been on ensuring that the good jobs of the future will be created in communities across the whole country, not just in London and the South East, through our Modern Industrial Strategy.

We have helped more people than ever enjoy the security of a job.

We are building more homes and helping first-time buyers onto the housing ladder - so young people can enjoy the opportunities their parents did.

And we are protecting the environment, eliminating plastic waste, tackling climate change and improving air quality.

This is what a decent, moderate and patriotic Conservative Government, on the common ground of British politics, can achieve - even as we tackle the biggest peacetime challenge any government has faced.

I know that the Conservative Party can renew itself in the years ahead. That we can deliver Brexit and serve the British people with policies inspired by our values.

Security; freedom; opportunity.

Those values have guided me throughout my career.

But the unique privilege of this office is to use this platform to give a voice to the voiceless, to fight the burning injustices that still scar our society.

That is why I put proper funding for mental health at the heart of our NHS long-term plan.

It is why I am ending the postcode lottery for survivors of domestic abuse.

It is why the Race Disparity Audit and gender pay reporting are shining a light on inequality, so it has nowhere to hide.

And that is why I set up the independent public inquiry into the tragedy at Grenfell Tower – to search for the truth, so nothing like it can ever happen again, and so the people who lost their lives that night are never forgotten.

Because this country is a Union. Not just a family of four nations. But a union of people – all of us.

Whatever our background, the colour of our skin, or who we love. We stand together. And together we have a great future.

Our politics may be under strain, but there is so much that is good about this country. So much to be proud of. So much to be optimistic about.

I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honour of my life to hold – the second female Prime Minister but certainly not the last.

I do so with no ill-will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.

I don't think it's purely coincidental that the latest round of blackface minstrelsy involved actors from Channel 8 (Shane Pow, Chew Chor Meng). So I want to talk about our monolingual vernacular broadcast stations in Singapore, and Channel 8 in particular.

In 2009, in the Channel 8 series 'Daddy At Home', the colleagues of a character played by Li Nanxing made fun of the fact that he was working as a cleaner--already classist and offensive to begin with. Then they joked that they should call him 'Aminah'--presumably because Malays are associated with menial occupations.

In March 2015, the Channel 8 actor Desmond Tan posted a photo of himself in blackface and a turban on Instagram. It was captioned: "I love my Indian look. What you think?"

In June 2015, former Channel 8 actress Sharon Au, while hosting the SEA Games opening ceremony, approached an Indian girl in the stands to say some line, which the girl didn't do very well. Au playfully admonished her by mimicking an Indian accent and shaking her head from side to side: "Vat happened?"

Vernacular broadcast stations exist to promote and propagate the use of our official languages. News broadcasts, for example, play the role of setting formal standards for the respective languages. On the surface, these provisions seem necessary to protect linguistic rights in a multicultural society--that one should be able to study and access media in the language of one's choice.

But I think we've failed to properly deal with some of the consequences of these policies. One of which is that monolingual environments (with the exception of English) create monoethnic and monocultural worlds. It would not surprise me that those who grew up on a diet of Channel 8 (and Channel U) would have found nothing wrong with the fact that the Mediacorp New Year Countdown in 2013 heavily featured Chinese songs and actors making wishes in Mandarin. It would have been the Singapore that they recognised and knew; a Singapore they took for granted as the norm.

In public housing, ethnic quotas are imposed supposedly to prevent the formation of racial enclaves. I wonder why this has not been applied to our media landscape. Because each of our vernacular stations--Channel 8, Channel U, Suria, Vasantham--is a virtual racial enclave. It is possible to come home from a workplace where people speak only one language, switch on the TV, and nestle with similar company. The silo-isation is seamless. Television, which could have been a civic instrument reminding us of that deep, horizontal comradeship we have with fellow citizens of all stripes, is instead an accessory to this social insulation.

I'm not here to crap on Channel 8. A predictable response to some of the concerns raised above is that I am exploiting the ideal of multicutural accommodation (multicultural casting) to squeeze the use of English into the vernacular channels. These spaces have to be maintained as linguistically pure because of the idea that they are under siege by English, that global language, signifier of upward mobility, and so cool it has no need to announce its coolness.

There have been too many times when I've been told that any plea for English to be emphasised as a main lingua franca is tantamount to asking the Chinese to 'sacrifice' their identity 'for the sake of minorities'. In this formulation, minorities are seen as accomplices of a right-wing, anti-China, pro-US/UK Anglophone political elite intent on suppressing the Chinese grassroots.

Because the mantle of victimhood is so reflexively claimed, the problem is re-articulated as the 'tyranny of the minority' rather than that of neglect by the majority. And national unity is cast as something suspect--unity of the Chinese community achieved only through the loss of dialects, unity with the other races at the cost of Mandarin attrition. With this kind of historical baggage, I can't even begin to critique Channel 8 without being seen as an agent of hostile encroachment.

But what I can do is to keep supporting the works of our filmmakers who try to give us images of ourselves which are truer to the Singapore that we live in. Anthony Chen's 'Ilo Ilo' faced some limitations in diverse representations as he was telling the story of a Chinese family. But he had Jo Kukathas in a scenery-chewing role as a school principal. Royston Tan, in his tender and wistful short film 'Bunga Sayang', explored the relationship between an elderly Malay lady and a Chinese boy. And Boo Junfeng, while casting Malay leads in his harrowing 'Apprentice', must have grappled with the risk of producing a domestic film whose main audience might have to depend on subtitles. And yet he took that risk, and the film performed creditably at the local box office.

(I have to also mention our minority filmmakers, such as K Rajagopal, Sanif Olek and Raihan Halim, all of whom are producing important films which expand our visions of Singapore.)

If we were truly a multicultural society, there would be nothing remarkable about what the above filmmakers have done. But with a background of persistent blackfacing, slurs, invisibilities and humiliations, any recognition that minorities exist, that they are as essentially Singaporean as Chinese bodies, that they may appear in international film festivals as one of the myriad faces of Singapore, is an occasion for healing. One cannot help but give thanks for the balm. There is much healing to do.