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Your emails and texts

Fiona Crack | 19:43 UK time, Tuesday, 11 April 2006

Today we heard from Karachi, Italy the US and India. You had plenty to say in reaction to the debates we aired on World Have Your Say.

First we heard from Italians about how the tight election have affected their lives.

Samson from Zambia texted us. It read,

The Italian Prime Minister has failed. How does he run a stagnant economy. He is not worthy to run such a big population.

Erasmus Datok, Jos in Nigeria says in his text,

I am encouraged by what is going on in Italy. It goes to show that the rejection of poll results is not only peculiar to Africa.

This anonymous text came in during the programme,

I think is time for him to vacate the office. Let him leave the Italians alone if they have choose a different leader.

Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo who represents Colorado came on to tell us his opinion about the raging immigration debate in the US. He took your calls.

Anthony, Nigeria texted to say,

The US should make legal migration less rigorous because that is the only practical way of stopping illegal migrants who they need after all.

Lorena Horton, San Diego, California also emailed us,

I am a native Californian. I grew up ten minutes from the border. I am very familiar with the immigration problem. I see more of a threat from the Corporations than the immigrants. The US allows it’s corporations to move factories down to Mexico and to pay the Mexican worker far less than any US worker. Our (US) immigration problem is the result of our profit driven corporations. Profit has become much more important than humanity. The average Joe is upset over immigration, when then should be upset over greedy corporation exploiting cheap foreign workers.

Finally this from a "Proud Polynesian American",

I'm a Polynesian American, born and raised in Southern California to parents who are both immigrants to the United States. The key word here is LEGAL...my parents came from the South Pacific LEGALLY, through the US Immigration process and for the past 20 years, have been living in the United States as US citizens. I agree with the congressman in that with these laws, we are NOT keeping people from coming in to the United States, we're merely asking them to go through the CORRECT and LEGAL immigration process. Living the "American Dream" is abiding by the LAWS here in AMERICA. By the way, love your show, keep up the good work!

When Tiger Woods was asked about his form at the Masters he replied 'Once I got on the greens I was a spaz." And that one word "spaz", which is a slang abbreviation of the word spastic, offended some people. We kicked off a debate with Francesca Martinez, a comedian, who also suffers from cerebral palsy.

David, USA sent this email,

Context and personal linguistic history must be considered when dealing with slang and it's many usages world wide. To be honest, most of us here in the US use the word spaz to mean crazy or acting in a wild or strange manner (a state of mind). The last thing we think of is a disabled person. If you conducted a pre Tiger Woods survey asking us what it meant, that's the answer you would get.

This anonymous criticism by email,

I cannot believe your programme has given such a lot of air time to this "spaz" debate. I did not see the episode on the television, but know that in New Zealand the word was used quite frequently and offhand without thinking. I never hear it now as the word is probably no longer "trendy" or current.

Joe Budious in Miami emailed us to tell us how it is seen in the US,

In America. Its like saying you are are nervous or not smooth. It has no negative meaning! In England a fag is a cigarette but in America its an offensive to say fag as it means homosexual. Next issue please. You have it all wrong. Really.

Jennifer, UK emailed us to say,

"Spaz" is really just a slang and people using it are either too lazy or uneducated to think of another word

Walking to the studio with Francesca, we discussed the reaction in the US to Tiger's comments. There, the consensus was that the word "spaz" just meant things like "hyped up", "wired" or "over the edge". Other definitions sent to us were "dork", "dweeb" and "moron".

One kind gentleman even sent a link to the Webster's dictionary definition of "spaz", which had a link to the definition for "klutz".

But it also defined "spaz" as being short for "spastic", which is the point.

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