Yet it takes a long time for everyone to get with the new programme. Educationists are still planning to teach the evils of Empire. I'm sure there are lots of bright young teachers and deputy heads just itching to implement their new diversity strategies as soon as they get the chance. And so forth.
But you do have to wonder what kind of idiot thought this, reported by the Pub Philosopher, was a good idea.
A row is brewing in Corby after the Prison Service announced that it was closing its office in the town and moving to nearby Leicester. The Tory parliamentary candidate wrote to the Prison Service to ask why and received a letter from the Director of Finance stating that one of key influencing factors was:
Our ability to attract a more diverse workforce - 93.7 per cent of the population of Corby are white British, compared to 59.6 per cent in Leicester.
Talk about 'it was worse than a crime, it was a blunder'. That's a few thousand BNP votes IMHO. I guess that against stupidity the gods themselves battle in vain.
In the heart of the Black Country, depending on your viewpoint, there's either been an outbreak of people power or racist Islamophobia. Maybe even both.
An £18 million mosque and community centre for Dudley has been thrown out against the advice of planning experts – but the battle will almost certainly continue with an appeal.
One man was arrested during scuffles outside the meeting to consider the plan which prompted the biggest protest campaign in memory.
Anti-mosque campaigners cheered after proposals for a £6 million mosque with 65ft minaret and £12 million community centre were rejected by all nine members of the planning committee.
But chairman of Dudley Muslim Association Khurshid Ahmed today said the bid to build the mosque would almost certainly continue.
“We have been extremely tolerant and patient”
There's a video here. Evening Mail coverage also. And the BBC, with a slightly different focus.
Something seems to have happened. A few weeks ago, with only 1,000 signatures against it, the mosque was set to go ahead. But the numbers, like Topsy, just grew and grew. Eventually there were 20,000 signatures - a campaign seemingly organised by a UKIP councillor, Malcolm Davis. Whether you agree with his campaign or not, this is the first known instance of an elected UKIP representative actually doing anything outside the EU parliament.
29 comments:
I believe the Olympic mosque is out of the picture, too.
"....chairman of Dudley Muslim Association Khurshid Ahmed today said the bid to build the mosque would almost certainly continue.
“We have been extremely tolerant and patient”"
Sounds a bit like a threat to me....
Oliver - There is definitely a group of MPs who have said they are going to get it stopped.
I don't think we want in-yer-face alien religious symbolism in Britain. These people are trying to force their religion to the forefront and I am proud of the protesters. I hope they carry on protesting and carry on winning.
Anyone who wants big,showy ads for islam has many islamic countries to move to.
Melanie Phillips just gave a talk in Oz on the cultural cringe to islam in Britain and Europe and she's put it on her blog. It's at melaniephillips.com
The Corby story is highly significant. It may be the start of something very big. Bearing in mind the proportion of people who rely on government employment and state largesse generally this kind of investment decision based on the the degree of diversity (or whatever word they invent) could and I predict will be used to politically control areas of the country perceived as insufficiently ethnically diverse or politically inconvenient. The forces at play here are global and we can't see the wood for the trees. Listen to Digby Jones of the CBI talk about these things, e.g. mass global immigration, he has no problems at all. Capitalism as an abstract system is no protection (notwithstanding it being the only economic system with works at the micro level). Did captitalism serve the other peoples' around the globe when it favoured the UK population's integrity and autonomy? I think you'll find it'll try to roll over you like it rolled over all those other peoples. The synergy is over.
Ask: WHO are they and WHY do they want to create a different UK/EU population?
Anonymous 11.50PM - OK, WHO are they and WHY do they want to create a different UK/EU population? Please enlighten me. I'm here to learn.
"They" are a certain disaffected portion of the UK native and not quite native population, who find that they just can't get the sort of power they'd otherwise have in an Anglo-Saxon polity. Hence, they wish to replace the Anglo population with one composed from the peoples of Oriental despotisms and desert Sultanates.
The more interesting question is why now. I put forward that it is down to the West 'fighting' the Cold War by surrendering to all the tenets of the Marxist expropriation faith, albeit without its hard, economic edge. The idea was we'd stave off redistribution of property and liquidation of the bourgeouis, if we instead agreed to the liquidation of those social elements most capable of managing property and forming a middle class.
What can we do about it? Either: a.vote for the 'silly joke of a party' who are proposing to end this and try to move the major parties in that direction, or b.prepare for a civil war to take back our country, or c.moan on weblogs about how powerful the alien forces are and how you dare not do anything about it, until Khurshid and company decide to stop being 'extremely tolerant and patient'. Which is it gonna be?
I think it is the 'silent majority', that is us, who are to blame. If we don't like this as much as we say we do, then why don't we do something about it?
The following might be a good start:do not vote in the next General Election. If the turnout fell to around 30% even Nu Labour/NU Tories would lose credibilty.
Vote in all Local elections. This is the Left's real power base and they only win because a lot of people abstain.
Oust Red Ken, or Mr 15% as Mick Hume called him.
Make legal challenges to muliticultural excesses eg Mass Mosque building, racially exclusive policies.
Anon, I think not voting is a really stupid idea. People like Blair do not care about their moral authority, as long as they are in power thats all that counts.
The biggest problem already is too many non-voters. At the last election the size of the labour vote was almost the same size as the public sector.
I think the biggest problem to patriots is extremists who blame the jews for everything, not that I believe they are beyond criticism ofcourse but most people don't wanna be associated with nazi-esque language.
There must come a time - I suggest under a Conservative government led by David Davis - when the public sector much lose its franchise.
Working in the public sector is a matter of choice. People would weigh up the pros and cons. Better job security than in the private sector. A lush guaranteed pension. Those are the upsides.
The downside would be, they could not vote in national elections. I think few would hesitate. "Job security and pensions against my vote. Hmmmm. Tough choice."
This vast sector is currently in a position to vote itself rises and additional benefits and perks. This is not democratic.
(I would exempt our military and our emergency services from the removal of the franchise.)
For the same reasons, the unemployed should also lose their vote. They could regain it by getting a job, if they really gave a stuff about their vote. (Pensioners would obviously be exempt.)
This would put the wealth creators back in the driver's seat.
This can only be done by the Tories, but it absolutely must be done if we are to save our country.
A sound plan from Verity, there. A similar proposal, but one worked out in conspicuously far more detail, has been aired on MR by GW. He suggests that the "creators" of society in the broadest sense - business owners who create employment and production, the married who create the next generation and social stability, share owners whop create wealth, the educated - should be allowed extra votes in reward for and acknowledgement of theit greater contributions. Creating something brings one to responsibility, and naturally places one in the position of governor, as realised by Ludovici ( http://www.anthonymludovici.com/creation.htm ).
Working to bring about such changes is indeed an option, but it first requires an appreciation on the part of the right that it isn't some helpless bit of flotsam, thrown and stirred about by unchangeable ideological tides, but that it has motive power of its own. In a set up worthy of a morality tale, the Right must first accept responsibility itself to restore it to the nation.
I take it then, Dave, that you oppose Holocaust denial laws, which place Holocaustian historians and chroniclers beyond criticism, despite the mendacity which Norman Finkelstein so well documents. (The story of how we arrived at the 6m casualty figure, via 20m and 10m, is just a classic of intellectual fraud).
Verity,
Withdrawing the franchise from citizens on account of where they work is not sound, but is instead fascistic nonsense of the worst possible hue.
"This vast sector is currently in a position to vote itself rises and additional benefits and perks. This is not democratic."
This is a meme. Where is your evidence that this has ever happened?
"For the same reasons, the unemployed should also lose their vote. They could regain it by getting a job, if they really gave a stuff about their vote."
OK, you plan to exempt the military but what about ex-servicemen and women disabled through PTSD?
One rather thinks you've read too much Robert Heinlein . 'Starship Troopers' wasn't really meant to be a template for how a democratic society should work.
A recent survey of young people showed that, when asked which theuy'd choose if they had to choose between the right to drive and the right to vote, 75% said they'd choose the right to drive. So maybe democray's down the tubes anyway
Disallowing votes by people who disagree with you is an absurd plan, and quite disgraceful that anyone might sell it as "democratic". Public-sector employees cannot vote themselves pay-rises; they can vote for parties who are likely to give them pay-rises. But then homeowners can vote for parties who reduce stamp duty or give tax relief on mortgages; drivers can vote for parties who slash petrol duty; heads of industry can vote for parties who reduce the amount of red tape companies need to wade through. This is democracy, precisely.
Besides, if you take into account nationalised industries -- which I think you should -- the public sector is now smaller than when Thatcher won in 79. You don't win elections be whinging that too many people who disagree with you are allowed to vote; you win them by persuading those people to change their minds and vote with you. To the eternal chagrin of middle-class left-wingers, the unemployed and working classes voted for Thatcher in droves. This idea that such people are somehow incapable of voting for right-wing policies is as ridiculous as that other popular and wrong idea that aristocrats can't vote Labour.
Martin, what a provincial chap you are, although I would still allow you a vote as long as you're a wealth-creator and not on the dependency tit. I have no interest in SF.
"One rather thinks you've read too much Robert Heinlein . 'Starship Troopers' wasn't really meant to be a template for how a democratic society should work."
Oh. Is that what "one rather thinks"? Don't know who Robert Heinlein is. Sorry.
Squander 2 - I am aware that the working classes voted for Maggie in droves. Because millions of people in the working classes are not subservient, but are aspirational, as it is human nature to be. She served them well. Britain, except for people living in "social housing" with no furniture but a plasma TV hanging off the wall, is now largely middle class, thanks to Maggie.
Alex Zeka - I don't know who MR and GW are, but years ago, Ozzie novelist Nevil Shute devised a similar plan. There would be universal franchise - no one denied a vote - but you would get extra votes for things like a degree, an advanced degree, an advanced position in society, experience at whatever ...
This presupposes that people, like Tony Blair, who have degrees are by being the holder of a degree, are not mad, malicious and dangerous to know.
I cannot imagine why people who don't contribute to wealth creation (except the military, emergency services and OAPs who have contributed through a working life)should benefit from a vote. In the main, government is about the collection of taxes and the deployment of money. If you didn't help to create the money, it's not your business how it is deployed.
Finally, to Khurshid Ahmed: No, babes, it's us who have been extremely patient. We're the owners of the country and we are running out of patience and tolerance.
Do they, the slamascist,understand what democracy is about. They have been tolerant and patient. F off.
Khurshid Ahmed - Here's a little lesson in civics for you: You cannot be "patient and tolerant" on someone else's property. Patience and tolerance is the property owners' privilege, not yours.
The owners of the United Kingdom are becoming less tolerant and less patient with every passing day, and I suggest that if you cannot fit in, you ship out. I would like to see us provide free one-way tickets to malcontents like yourself, after you have provided a swab of DNA and a retinal photograph, ça va sans dire!
Verity, GW is Guessedworker who tends to this site:
www.majorityrights.com
Often referred to as MR.
Robert Heinlein:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Heinlein
I suspect he appeals a lot more to boys than girls. Though surely you remember the Starship Troopers film? It was made some time in the 90s. Stripped away most of what was interesting about the book and opted for taking the piss.
Anonymous 3:02 - No. I've never noticed a movie called Starship Troopers - and it sounds like a real yawn-o-rama. It could equally be called Troopers in Starships. Or Star Troopers in Stareships. Or Startroopers Falling asleep.
Oh, wait a minute! That's the audience.
Verity darling,
I might be a provincial, but at least I'm a UK resident.
"Oh. Is that what "one rather thinks"?"
Yes.
Squander Two put the same case as I was trying to make rather more eloquently.
"Because millions of people in the working classes are not subservient, but are aspirational, as it is human nature to be. She served them well."
Did she? By 'allowing' them to buy council houses at a massive discount (thereby screwing the rest of the taxpayers who had financed their construction) which might not be capable of being sold thereafter? Is the universal law of 'Location, Location, Location' suspended for former council houses?
Having bought and then sold one, I can tell you the answer is, er, no. Bought 1996, sold 2002, profit (drum roll)....£250.00.
And with a new boiler, goddammit!
Did she really serve them well by allowing employers to take 'contribution holidays' from their pension funds, and hoping that the differences would be made up by an ever-rising stock market?
Um...didn't happen.
Brown certainly somes bears some blame for the 'pensions crisis' (as a humble provicincial, Verity, I reconciled myself to working until I die long ago), but there's plenty of it to go around. Thatcher and the actuarial profession, the guys who're supposed to work out our lifespans and forgot that we're all, ahem, living longer, have more than their own fair shares to carry around.
Did she serve them well by persisting in the lunacy of comprehensive education?
I don't think so. I don't know if you have 'Question Time' where you live, but a very powerful thought occurred to me when watching last Thursday's bag of blowhards decrying parents who move house in order to get Wayne and Kylie/Titus and Jocasta into the better comprehensives' catchment areas; selection has returned to publicly financed secondary school education.
Used to be the case it was on the basis of the child's scholastic ability; now it's on the basis of the parents' ability to, cough, buy a house.
How Thatcherite. And how wrong.
Wrong because the old system was geared towards the benefit of all children; not the satisfaction of their parents' aspirations.
Ah, the old plasma TV canard!
Verity, you really, really need to read more economics blogs. Didn't you know that such contraptions' very existence prove to the anarchocapitalist libertarians' satisfaction that the market is right in everything it does all the time and the market can never be wrong and even if the market is rigged then that's just the operation of personal incentives and we're all made better off by lower taxes and low regulation?
Didn't you know this?
Easy sell on the South Coast - not so easy in the provinces.
"In the main, government is about the collection of taxes and the deployment of money."
No. The collection of taxes and the deployment of money are, quite literally, the means; but not the end. The end is supposed to be keeping the borders secure and the highways clean and passable.
Re Heinlein & 'Starship Troopers' - citizenship is only available to those who have performed military service.
And no movie with Denise Richards in it can possibly be boring.
Well said Martin!
Martin - Given your certain assumption "one rather thinks" that I had been reading too much Robert Heinlin, a writer I have never read in my life, I think your other extrapolations will probably be equally faulty.
You seem to be rather provincial. Why on earth would any country other than Britain have "Question Time"? No one outside Britain, excepting Brit expats, gives a stuff about what goes on in British politics. They don't even know who the players are, any more than you know who the players are in Malaysia or Canada.
The business of the government, to repeat, is to collect taxes and deploy them. Yes, for important things like guarding the borders, which this government has abandoned, and other things essential to the national weal.
Not to be engaging in social engineering. People's lives - other than their safety in public places and engagement in possible criminal activity - are not the business of any government.
It is also not the business of the government to take the responsibilitiy for their own health away from people. The grotesque NHS should be destroyed. For the nightmareish "contributions" people pay out of their salaries, they could be buying the Rolls Royce of health insurance for their own families.
BTW, I have seen many newspaper pictures of the insides of welfare recipients' social housing, and in many instances there is no furniture. But there is a giant screen TV hanging on the wall.
Verity,
Don't really (or rather, couldn't really care less) about Malaysia...but if memory serves the leaders of the Canadian Conservative and Liberal parties are Stephen Harper and Stephane Dion respectively.
I have a series of links to Canadian blogs, you see...sometimes, I even read them...
"Given your certain assumption "one rather thinks" that I had been reading too much Robert Heinlin, a writer I have never read in my life, I think your other extrapolations will probably be equally faulty"
OK, you've patronised me. I get the message.
"You seem to be rather provincial" -
Provincialism, like love, is not a crime!
"The business of the government, to repeat, is to collect taxes and deploy them."
And to repeat, this statement is wrong. These are the means, not the ends.
"For the nightmareish (sic) "contributions" people pay out of their salaries, they could be buying the Rolls Royce of health insurance for their own families."
Well aye and no', if you don't mind me sounding provincial. I agree with you on the need for absolute reform of the NHS - its abolition, although ideologically desirable, is politically impossible, so even suggesting it as a possible outcome is daft - a more acceptable kind of long term reform would be to restrict its services to those under 10 and over 65.
"BTW, I have seen many newspaper pictures of the insides of welfare recipients' social housing, and in many instances there is no furniture. But there is a giant screen TV hanging on the wall."
BTW, please provide sources - if you can.
Martin - Yes, you "don't care very much about Malaysia" and you happen to know the name of the prime minister of Canada. Hardly a perfervid interest in those countries' daily politics. Would you watch a programme similar to "Question Time" from those countries with the local version of a Dimblebore and an anonymous audience of shouty people? Of course not! By the same token, no one else in the world is interested in our Question Time. So no, we don't "get Question Time" where I am.
The NHS - I agree with you. Politically, abolishing it just wouldn't fly. Restructuring it and restricting it might fly, though, as in your suggestion of under 10s - I'd make it under 18s - and over 60s. And it should be restricted to British citizens only. Foreigners (bar EU citizens)would only be accorded emergency treatment and they would have to pay for it. This would include all "refugees" and "asylum seekers".
It really is a revolting institution.
I'm not an anorak and I don't save clippings or bookmark things in which I don't have a special interest. One large area of non-interest on my part is British welfare recipients. So no, I haven't saved any photos of interiors of council flats with no, or little, furniture, but a big TV on the wall. I seem to remember a story about three underage sisters who were all pregnant at the same time and the (single) mother of the three complained that with three extra babies, she would need a larger free flat. And it showed the interior of her flat. I can't remember, but I think I noticed there wasn't any furniture at all, but they had a big TV on the wall.
verity, since you take such a keen interest in British politics it is not absurd that you might have seen "Question Time", you can watch it over the net even.
Martin, agreed there is selection in Schools, always has been, the rich tend to live amongst other rich and poor in the sink estates this is selection when it comes to all local services and 'culture'.
These evil leftists returned us to the elitist system, the only question is was it stupidity or intentional? I guess some of each.
Its also true of hospitals, people always complaining about the NHS but where I live its great, and house prices are rising fast...
I know prices are rising all around but we have had a bit of a hot spot.
I am not sure about your stance on "Council Housing" though, I thought the idea was the government saved the tax payers money by not having to rent out at discounted prices while facing some rather large maintance bills.
Dave - If I could watch Question Time without having to pay for cable, I would probably tune in every now and then. I'll take a look at the Beeb's site and see if it's offered. Sometimes, they detect that you're not in the UK and put up cunning notices that say, "This content only available in the United Kingdom."
I don't even watch the BBC news because I can't understand so many of their sarf London accents. I miss half of what they're saying.
Re education, I think the downgrading of education has been intentional. It is too uniform to be otherwise. The absurdly inflated passes, the classroom chaos in so many places, the teaching of irrelevant subjects, the refusal to accept that some children would be less bored and would do much better in an apprenticeship type of education... the crushing uniformity of it all. This government wants drones.
Any genuinely socialist government - and most certainly, any conservative-liberal government - would see it as a duty to make certain that no intelligent youngster should be dished out a mediocre education just because of where he lives. It's cruel and sickening to blight a child like that. And now they're doing school places by lottery!
I think the Conservatives should promise to bring back grammar schools as a high priority. I think regarding it as a class thing is so destructive. It is to everyone's benefit that intelligent children are trained up to their maximum potential.
Dave,
Re Council Housing - that might indeed have been the idea; however when Gordon Brown erased (that is, every British taxpayer swallowed) Glasgow City Council's £900 million housing debt to facilitate the transfer of its housing stock to Glasgow Housing Assciation, whether or not that's been its effect is another matter altogether.
One (sorry, Verity) has to bite the bullet and agree with Madame V. about the motives for the quite deliberate degradation of secondary school education. This was an ideological act, perpetrated by children of privilege like Williams, Crosland and Crossman for no reasons stronger than vengefulness and spite; the ultimate act of self-loathing, in that those prigs projected their self-loathing onto others, demanding that others NOT have the chances they had in order that their guilt for being born might be assuaged.
The advance (degradation?) of the curriculum into subjects which are unsuitable for secondary schools, such as psychology, economics and media studies, is merely an expression of how the wider economy has changed over the same period. We are told that we have no need of metal-bashers but can never have enough psychologists; an economic falsehood which if confronted earlier by true conservatives might not have produced the underclass whose humanity Verity so blithely dismisses.
What a bizarre post! I have never dismissed the underclass. I have no respect for the welfare feckless - but I have enormous sympathy with children who are being robbed of their future lives by being given an "education" which will do nothing to advance them.
Post a Comment