New Young Blogger in Town ...

One Marvin Olasky. Good stuff.

I Told You So ....

MI5 must be writing the BNPs editorial. How else can you account for this ?

All together now - 'No surrender .. er .. and we're all off to Dublin in the Celtic Twilight ....'.

Great Liberal Myths Part 19 - Migration and Crime

Everyone knows that claims of links between immigration and crime are fabrications of the right-wing media, pandering to the lowest prejudices of the brutish Native Brits.

A year ago, Chris Fox, the first full-time president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said "Mass migration has brought with it a whole new range of and a whole new type of crime, from the Nigerian fraudsters to the Eastern European dealer in drugs and prostitutes to the Jamaican concentration on drug-dealing."

"Anger At Police Claim", said the Guardian, quoting refugee organisations who criticised his remarks as "unfortunate and irresponsible". The great Aaronovitch has said that "there is no greater propensity among immigrants towards crime, prostitution and anti-social behaviour than among the population at large".

Our Criminal Justice system must be even more institutionally racist than we thought then - because according to the BBC 10% of all UK prisoners are now foreign nationals. A rough calculation - that's over 7,000 people.

Ah, of course - they're all 'drugs mules' - poor, ignorant women conned and coerced by evil criminal masterminds into swallowing coke-stuffed condoms. Well with "550 Jamaican women, overwhelmingly drugs mules" here - double up for a similar number of equally poor Nigerians - you're still looking at some 6,000 other offenders.

Remarkable. With no greater propensity to crime, they MUST be the innocent victims of our racist society.


Many migrants of course come from societies where crime is much rarer and far less tolerated than in the UK. India has high poverty but remarkably safe streets. In African countries like Kenya and Tanzania it's not uncommon for shoplifters to be chased and beaten to death by bystanders - a custom which would make Saturday morning in Swindon quite a bloodbath - for the first week.

Only last month Joseph Nwabuko was shot trying to stop a robbery. And a son of immigrants, the late and great Tasawar Hussain, was shot dead by armed robbers Barry and Derek Elener in Bradford last year while bravely trying to prevent their escape. Beyond the tragedy of a brave man's death two aspects of this case sadden me.

This morning one of the police officers involved was interviewed by Nikki 'I'm Not A Bleeding Heart Liberal' Campbell on Radio 5. The officer said Hussain was a brave man who had 'just instinctively done the right thing'.

Campbell - 'So you're saying that's the right thing to do - you should have a go'.

You could hear the alarms going off in the officer's mind. 'Er, well - members of the public should not attempt to stop armed robberies - they should call the police'.

What kind of country do I live in, I thought ? The Liberal Democrats have let me know. Mr Hussain's widow and young daughters will be pleased to know that along with various other useful idiots, the Lib Dems will be campaigning for her husband's killers to be given the vote.

Cuthbertson and Mel P. hand out the ritual shoeing.

Innumeracy At Radio 4

Caroline Quinn on the Today programme, fronting an item about whether advertising of food (well, the wrong sort of food anyway) should be banned :

"Studies show that children who watch more adverts for these foods are more likely to be overweight - so that's pretty conclusive".

Maybe it shows that children who are sat in front of a TV for long periods tend to be overweight. Cos they're sat in front of a TV.

The Glorious Iraqi Resistance

Strike another blow against U.S. imperialism. John Pilger and Tariq Ali must be so pleased.

For an Iraqi resistance they seem to have a lot of mates in Pakistan, where 50-odd Shias were killed in Quetta.

(Oh, and the BBC chose to put in their report an email from Christian of Liverpool - "Many of those who protested against the war saw this coming". I well remember all the banners saying 'If you invade, terrorists will kill all the Shias. And Shias in Pakistan'.)

Dream Ticket ?

Now this is an interesting item. Bush/Giuliani in 2004 ?

Repeat after me ....

Aaronovitch weighs in on the Goodhart brouhaha. OK, not really. He stares at the wall and repeats his mantra.

There's nothing you could disagree with - except his conclusion of 'why worry ?'.

I've got immigrants in my family ... nice ethnic mix on the train ... yes, thank you David. He'll be telling us next some of his best friends are black.

"Most relationships are social constructs and vary enormously from place to place and time to time" - your point being ? A national culture is indeed a social construct, constructed in some cases over hundreds of years. One can also be constructed in a few years - usually a rather nasty one.

"Those who worry about the effects of immigration are missing the point: adaptability is part of humanity". Quite right - humans ARE adaptable. Where David goes wrong is assuming we're infinitely adaptable, and that our adaptation will always take desirable forms. Britain has in the past absorbed many different waves of immigrants successfully. A strong, self-confident nation can absorb and intergrate even higher numbers.

What worries me is

a) the numbers are historically unprecedented - witter about the Huguenots and Flemish weavers all you like, but this is on a totally different scale.
b) we haven't got a strong and self-confident national culture - or 'narrative' as the sociologists would say. Quite the opposite.

Keep those eyes tight shut and keep blaming the Daily Mail, or in this case the Express.

New Survey Washes Whiter

Some mistake surely. Yesterday's Guardian quotes a 'new survey' which shows that 'total migration into the existing EU member states will run at 220,000 a year'. Sadly reporters Ian Black and Claire Dwyer don't tell us who carried out the survey, or indeed anything else about it, save that it implies "that the government's original "open-door" estimate of 5,000 to 13,000 a year coming to the UK is realistic and does not require limits on benefits, quotas or other restrictive measures. " We probably don't need to know any more, do we ?

After all, when the government released the last such comforting survey, some nasty statisticians had the nerve to demolish it.

I'm not a statistician, but one point occurs to me. All the existing EU countries (save the UK and Ireland) would have imposed restrictions on people coming either to work or claim benefits when the survey was done. Blair's second thoughts only came a week or two back. Surely even were the overall figures correct (and the Guardian won't tell us who did the survey so it can't be checked) the likelihood is that Britain and Ireland would get the lion's share due to being the only countries without restrictions.

Perhaps we should reject the scare-mongering of the tabloids and Migrationwatch. As Habib Rahman, chief executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, says "We don't think anything like this will happen. Anyway, the Roma (Slovak and Czech gypsies) are a persecuted minority."

Blair and Blunkett have decided that immigrants from the enlarged EU will not be eligible for benefits. If the reaction of the Slovak Roma to a 50% benefit cut is any guide, Geoff Hoon must be hoping things stay calm in Basra, or he'll be running out of troops.

"Thousands of police backed by 2,000 soldiers in the ghetto towns of eastern Slovakia appeared to have temporarily ended attacks by mobs forcing their way into food shops."

Sounds more as if the shopkeepers are the persecuted minority. But don't worry. The BBC reports that "A Roma leader in eastern Slovakia, Frantisek Gulas from the Slovak Romany Council, told the AP news agency that his group was working with police to try to persuade Roma not to loot. "

Bloody, controversial - why don't they like it ?

The packed cinemas across the US for Mel Gibson's "The Passion Of The Christ" don't seem to be going down well in Guardianista country - 'two hours of almost uninterrupted gratuitous brutality' says one commentator.

I'm the kind of person who faints when surgery is shown on TV, so we won't be queuing for tickets. But surely the whole point of the violence is that it's an attempt to accurately depict what Jesus suffered for our sins (always excepting Patti Smith's). The whole point of Christianity is that 'God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life'. Hardly gratuitous then.

A low budget production, unknown actors, subtitles, dialogue in an obscure language (Aramaic is still spoken in some parts of Syria, Iraq and Iran) and buckets of blood - just the kind of thing a liberal luvvie should get off on.

But when it comes to bloody and controversial they appear to prefer stuff like this.

"Ian, a middle-aged journalist, takes twentysomething Cate, a family friend, to a Leeds hotel room and abuses her. Halfway through the 90-minute play, the Soldier arrives and subjects Ian to verbal threats and rape. Cate escapes. A mortar bomb crashes into room, the Soldier sucks out Ian's eyes and then commits suicide. Cate returns with a baby that's been given to her by a victim of the war raging outside. It dies, and Ian tries to eat it. Now blind and hungry, Ian finally dies. Rain pours in on his head ..."

Nothing gratuitous about that. As Jonathan Miller pointed out "You pays your money and they eats their eyes".

I'm surprised the Guardianistas haven't yet discovered the writings of the Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich, from whose visions of The Dolorous Passion Of Our Lord Jesus Christ Mel Gibson apparently drew his inspiration. A quick tour round the links on this site to subjects such as sexual immorality, a reference to George Bush's proposals to prevent homosexual marriage - I could write the article myself.

UPDATE - came across a review (well sort of) of the Passion at this rather touching blog.

Bush Bashing Corporation Part 724

Nearly forgot this one. On Monday the R4 Today programme interviewed John McCarthy, who around the same time as Terry Waite was kidnapped and held by Hezbollah (painful) in Beirut for several years.
Captured ? Locked up ? Blindfolds ? Chains ? The BBC couldn't resist it, could they ? They just had to draw a parallel with Guantanamo Bay (Real Audio).

Well I suppose if Waite and McCarthy had been captured in a gun battle, fighting for the Maronite Phalange militia, rather than being respectively a Church Of England worker and a journalist. Details, details.

But McCarthy played up to the BBC like a good 'un. Stockholm syndrome ?

BNP Launch "Operation Alienate Voters"

The website is more popular than ever, Michael Howard is giving them free publicity, they've gained another councillor, immigration and asylum are still making headlines - for the BNP the prospect of electoral breakthrough in June, with its accompanying hefty Euro-MP salaries and liberal expenses, has never been closer. They can almost smell those freshly-printed Euros.

I have assumed for quite a while that the BNP will at any time contain at least a couple of Guardian or BBC researchers looking for the videotape or story which will horrify all right-thinking people, a permanent sleeper from Searchlight or a similar grouping, and at a more senior level an MI5 operative or two. If they are as bad as Michael Howard says, I would expect no less from our security services.

I have also assumed that as the election approached attempts would be made by one of these three forces to produce what in the popular press would be called a 'spoiler'. My money was on some spectacular a week or so before the election, linking the BNP and its leader to some abhorrent practice like paedophilia or heroin importation. The objective truth of such a claim would not necessarily be all-important - after all, that could be established after the election. The story would be the thing.

I may be underestimating the subtlety and elegance of our security forces. For the BNP appear from their website to be engaged in a campaign to alienate as many people as possible, particularly those from the Conservative, traditionalist Right. This strategy cuts across and is diametrically opposed to their stated aim to be seen as a party of respectable Middle England.

Consider the evidence. At the New Year religious leaders in Manchester, including representatives of the Church of England, Catholics, Methodists and other Christian denominations, issued an unexceptional anti-BNP statement to the media of the sort many Church leaders have issued before.

The BNPs response was a hysterical denunciation of all religions and their followers, one which would have gladdened the heart of Johann Hari or the National Secular Society.

"More people have been murdered by religious bigots than any other kind in history.The moral high ground that these Holy men pontificate from is built upon a graveyard hiding the historical crimes of their blood soaked religions. "

"In the name of the Bible, the Koran, the Ghita and the Torah untold millions of people have been slaughtered across the centuries. They have used their holy books to condone the slaughter of anyone that dared defy their edicts and to bless the swords, bullets and bombs of the killers."

"We are dedicated to the democratic political process and public accountability - whilst each of these religions are merely fascistic structures based on enslaving their adherents and ensuring their own increased power. They are nothing more than fascists in their religious robes and frocks!"

Now I find it unlikely that the BNPs theorists are unaware of the enormous gulf in ideology which separates the average Joe in the pew from the Bishops and other leaders who speak for them. Think of the gulf between John Public and our elected leaders - then remember that a Church is not a democracy. Church leaders in the UK are likely to be members of the liberal elite and to share the views of that elite. A dissenting cleric, like the late and great Cardinal Winning, is the exception. Churchgoers in the UK, if we leave aside the Pentecostal and Evangelical wings, are likely to be older, whiter, wealthier than the average. They are also less likely to have criminal records, more likely to have stable families and to be involved in their local communities. They are also disproportionately female and by definition are socially conservative.

Just the people, in fact, the BNP are looking for to give a respectable front to their party. Christians may be renowned for turning the other cheek but I'm not sure that calling them 'enslaved adherents' to a 'blood-soaked' religion, led by 'fascists in frocks' is a credible marketing tactic.

Then came Michael Howard's proposed Burnley visit, and a chance to diss the Thatcherite right. In another classic editorial which this time would warm the heart of Dennis Skinner or Arthur Scargill, the BNP implied that the Thatcher ministers responsible for privatisation would be put on trial under retrospective legislation. Just the kind of policy to attract dissident Tories, or indeed people like the 'businessman and Territorial officer' who represented the BNP in Suffolk recently.

Howard certainly seems to have written off the Tory vote in Burnley - but the references in the BNPs report to 'Hecht' will only resonate with a core racist vote, when their need is to appeal to what Trevor Phillips called 'genteel xenophobia'. The core racist vote, such as it is, is theirs already.

Whether this stuff is being written by MI5 moles or the wild men are truly at the helm, the effect is the same. From a vote-grabbing perspective, it's worse than a crime - it's a blunder. I look forward with interest to future headlines like 'All Sun Readers Are Morons", "England Supporters Are Scum", and "Only Child Molesters Read The Daily Mail". The BNP may snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet.

Respect Coalition Latest

The new Respect Coalition website is up to #2 in the Google rankings. Link to it now and propel it to its rightful place. It's been updated and has an entertaining application form.

Another Unworkable Initiative

Tony Blair's plans to give heads the power to carry out random drug tests on pupils surely has to be one of his most fatuous ideas. He literally wants teachers to take the p***. Given the UK teaching unions, the chances of this being implemented in more than a handful of schools looks near-zero.

This morning it was a hopeful soundbite on BBC news - and by the afternoon the teachers unions were already expressing doubts both in England and Scotland.

The last thing heads will fancy is administering these. Without going into the practicalities of obtaining urine samples too closely, the potential for claims of harassment and abuse looks pretty impressive. And I can just imagine the reaction of a head with for example large numbers of female Muslim pupils.

However there is a grain of sense in this initiative. Not the pupils but the teachers should be tested for dope. Admittedly this would lead to a mass exodus of English, Drama and Social Science teachers, but you can't have everything. The principle should then be applied to all State employees, including those working for the BBC. There must be some social workers and probation officers who don't take drugs - I've just never met them. I remember a probation officer friend complaining that he kept bumping into all his clients at parties, and I know from personal experience that many social workers are more adept at putting together a three-skinner than disentangling their clients troubled lives.

Such an initiative, enforced with draconian penalties such as loss of pension rights, would make Oliver Letwin's plans to reduce State employment seem petty in their scope. They would be tumbling out of the doors faster than you could print the P45s. Admittedly many of them are probably unemployable in the private sector, but they could over time retrain as plumbers, cockle-pickers or gardeners, all of which are in demand in twenty-first century Britain.

UPDATE - This isn't to say that I think all Blair's initiatives are wrong, even this one. It's just that the more likely ANY Blair or Blunkett initiative is to have an actual effect, the less likely it is to be implemented. This follows in that noble tradition. It's just another 'Blair gets tough' soundbite

Stephen Pollard supports the idea and has the traditional smack at the Lib Dems.

Damn, Damn, Damn ...

I would have loved to have heard Sean Gabb vs Yasmin Alibhai Brown on the BBC World Service. Report here. Once again the BBC shows its commitment to free debate.

(Sean has argued for the abolition of the CRE and all race relations legislation) ..

"When Yasmin Alibhai-Brown objected that this would remove all controls on racial attacks and on discrimination, Dr Gabb replied:

"Yasmin, are you saying that the white majority in this country is so seething with hatred and discontent that it is only restrained by law from rising up and tearing all the ethnic minorities to pieces?"

Her answer was yes, though she seemed to think better of this answer immediately after. But she did not take the invitation to deny that the white population was only kept in line by criminal laws to restrain them from attacking ethnic minorities. When Dr Gabb asked if she seriously believed he wanted to murder her, his microphone was turned off and he was "released" from his engagement with 20 minutes of discussion still to run."

Howard Speaks In Burnley ....

And Harry's not blogged on it. Is he late getting home from work ?

The suspense is awful ....

R.I.P. John Daly

John Daly, whose Still Waiting For Greenhouse is the best resource around on climate change, has died suddenly. He'll be greatly missed. Each time a new warming story appeared in the UK media, his site would a few days later provide a careful analysis with links to the research. He leaves behind a site with so much data and so many links that it'll still be a valuable resource for years to come.

A Modern Martyr

Feargal Keane's R4 programme Taking A Stand this morning interviewed Helen McKendry, daughter of Jean McConville, the mother of 10 who was abducted and killed by the IRA in 1972 for the crime of cradling in her arms a dying British soldier, shot in the Divis flats where she lived.

Even at the time PIRA realised that orphaning ten children wasn't good PR. They denied that she had been abducted or killed. The current republican story is that she was killed because she was an informer.

The head of Belfast IRA at the time was one Gerry Adams.

Helen McKendry has been campaigning since she grew up for justice for her mother, despite intimidation of her and her children. Grim but compelling listening. When there's a sound link (the BBC page isn't updated yet) I'll add it. It's here.

UPDATE - Mick Fealty at Slugger O'Toole has a sombre link to last year's funeral.

Iranian Election Latest

When people talk about the 'democratic deficit' or 'stifling dissent' here or in the US, I wish they'd think a bit more about Zimbabwe or Iran before opening their mouths. I can just imagine what the Guardian would say if the Archbishop of Canterbury disqualified 2,400 Parliamentary candidates for not following his brand of Christianity.

Now 100 Iranian MPs have criticised Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for doing just that. Voting is on Friday. If any candidates are left.

Tonight's News

A quick roundup ... George Monbiot leaves the Respect Coalition, already reeling from the 'food-for-oil' revelations.

The DFES rearranges the deckchairs on 'SS Educational Titanic' yet again. I'm convinced there's a strategy here. When league tables revealed the giant gulf betwen State and private education, they brought forward the 'value-added' measure. Surprise - the private schools were best at that, too. Now we have potentially the six-term school year and the recasting of exams to look forward to. Anything but admit that the abolition of the grammar schools was a mistake. And if we shake it about enough no-one will be able to compare the present and the past ...

And Blair gets tough on immigration Episode 94. Does anyone believe anything will come of it ? The Government's immigration and crime policies have been marked by unending 'get-tough' policy announcements. Most are unworkable and those that aren't are overturned by the courts. At taxpayer expense of course. I'll be very surprised if anyone's deported from Holland, either.

And don't you just love that Guardian popup (currently a nice environmentally sound, globaliseresistance-y Toyota advert) that takes forever to load ?

Slash And Burn

The Fabians held their annual conference a week or two back, on the State and human happiness. Paul Richards blogged thereon. Now Paul is a decent democrat, whose political outlook is singularly free of the anger and bitterness which suffuses so many blogs (mine for example), so I feel a trifle ungentlemanly in using his belief that a reduction in the State's share of national income from 42% to 40% would constitute 'slash and burn' as the springboard for this post. I doubt he'll lose sleep.

We await a report on the Fabian website, so I can't be sure if Polly Toynbee's thesis that "only the state can buy the things that make people happiest" was carried unanimously, but Paul's musings don't make me optimistic.

"I was on a housing estate outside Norwich on Friday, visiting the New Deal for Communities and chatting to residents. They have £35 million to spend, a new community centre, neighbourhood wardens, new healthy eating initiatives, and extra money for local schools. The Tories would remove all of it at a stroke."

Now I know nothing about Thorpe Hamlet or Mile Cross, and what follows is painted with my broadest caricature brush, but let's assume the New Deal and Surestart are being implemented as they are in my neck of the woods, i.e. it's the 'bad' estates that are getting the money. Where's it going to end up ?

This £35 million isn't being bunged in cash to the residents - it'll end up in the pockets of middle class social worker types. The new community centre will replace the old one which has been vandalised beyond repair. The only working class people who will benefit will be the builders who tear down the thirty-year old maisonettes (themselves a replacement for Victorian terraces), and replace them with shiny new modern terraces, into which the people who rendered the maisonettes only semi-habitable will be moved along with their victims. If they're very lucky, the elderly will be moved into sheltered housing, completely contrary to a strategy of social diversity but ensuring they can step outside more often. There seems no reason why this cycle of rebuild and rehouse shouldn't go on indefinitely.

New healthy eating initiatives ? For God's sake, these people know where Lidl is ! Fruit and veg are dirt cheap there. It's not poverty of purse which keeps the trolleys full of lager and empty of oranges.

Sure Start ? In one Sure Start area near me, mums have just had a nice day off. Someone else took care of the kids while they had an Indian head massage, facial, aromatherapy and were given tips from a beautician. I'm not sure how this helps people in the long term to make more of their lives, but it keeps a few more quasi-hippies employed. This week, the drumming workshop for seven to eleven year olds with 'behavioural problems' - or 'little sods' as they were known in more judgemental days.

Extra money for local schools ? New interactive whiteboards and more laptops ! Pity about the kids' reading skills, but you can't have everything. Oh, and an extra classroom assistant to give one to one attention and stop young Colum, who's already been excluded from two infant schools, disrupting the education of his classmates for yet another term. That will, at least in the short term, bring a benefit. I'm not so sure about the message it sends out to potential Colums and to their parents.

The neighbourhood wardens are the one idea that seems a good one. But will it work in practice ? Will the bad boys take any notice of Mr NW unless he's as bad as they are ? Perhaps, just as certain northern councils hired criminals to provide security on major building projects, they could find the hardest thug on the estate and make him a warden. "Since all Mile Cross cannot govern Dave Yob, let Dave Yob govern all Mile Cross", as was once said of Kildare.

All this helps soak up that £35 million of our taxes. Some good will come of it, of course. Some young men may have their lives transformed by modern dance classes, as Chris Smith rhapsodised (don't even think about it ... ), some young heroin user may pull herself together and get a state-funded job counselling other heroin users. You can read these success stories in the Guardian. But is this a good return on what Labour insist on calling 'investment' ? I call an investment something on which you hope to get a return. Or does the return in fact consist of more welfare-dependent people, needing the services of more social workers ?

The righteous Richard certainly thinks so.