Welfare handouts, idle people and Michael Portillo
On August 30, former Tory MP Michael Portillo penned a Sunday Times article carrying the headline ‘Idle young should be entitled to nothing‘, a celebration of the ideology and beliefs of controversial American libertarian Charles Murray, a bloke who gained fame in the 1980s and 1990s for his statements about “the underclass” and the alleged link between ethnicity and intelligence (see here for an overview).
Particularly surprising is the fact that the champion of such ideas is Michael Portillo, the man who, a few years ahead of David Cameron, called for a Tory makeover that would disentangle the party from the deepest right-wing morass it was stuck in. Compare in fact Portillo’s mid-90s ‘SAS speech’ with the cuddly toy TV personality currently hopping from one settee to another on Andrew Neil’s This Week.
In any case, Portillo is guilty of superficially rehashing ideas that don’t have a leg to stand on now any more than they did back in the Eighties. Notions that go back and forth like a tennis ball between Daily Mail columnists and neo-Conservative politicians to the point that they’ve grown into their default ideological background.
One phrase in particular struck me for its staggering degree of superficiality.
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What is the left-wing position on immigration?
Recently blogger Left Outside noted, in his entry on Dan Hannan’s praise for Enoch Powell, that:
Discussing immigration is difficult in this country, often it descends into one side calling the other racists. Or more commonly, a writer beginning a piece by stating that it is no longer possible to discuss immigration in this country, without being accused of being a racist. I don’t think that this is a particularly healthy way to conduct debate.
Not healthy indeed. But who is lagging behind? Dialogue on asylum, immigration, migration is very important, but little is said by the left on the subject other than to denigrate the position taken by the BNP.
But to leave a void instead of valid ideas, leaves the issue in the court of the far right and does nothing to counter the argument that the leftist attitude towards migration is anything other than mere contrarianism.
In today’s current political climate especially, there can only be one thing as bad as a policy where all immigration and asylum is curbed (more or less in line with how the BNP stand), and that is an open door policy. For this is the sort of argument sympathised by libertarians and hardcore free marketers of the Milton Friedman ilk who embrace a pick of the workforce for as little payment as possible, and a constant wave of unemployment just in case that cheap worker gets silly.
Another reason why the left needs its voice heard on immigration is because who a country accepts or denies as being legitimately in need of political asylum may be wrong.
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Leave me and my potential babies alone
Shock, horror, disaster: the population is exploding! Yes, the recently-over-reported demographic expansion of 1%, incidentally mitigating the encroaching pensions crisis, has kicked off a chain of explosions – explosions of racial paranoia, class hatred and misogyny.
According to Amanda Platell of the Mail and Melanie McDonagh of The Telegraph, what this means is that middle class, “Anglo-Saxon” women now have a duty to have more babies in their twenties. I have a spare set of sewing scissors around if anyone cares to unpick the various strands of racism, misogyny and class prejudice going on in those assumptions – let’s just say that it’s all intersectionally fucked.
I’m going to work on the assumption that by “Anglo-Saxon…women”, McDonagh means to say is that ‘white women should be having more babies.’ And despite my Mediterranean-Slavic heritage, I’m fairly sure I’m one of the nice young lilywhite gels McDonagh wants to see breeding like paranoid supremacist bunnies.
To which my response is: fuck. Right. Off. I’m not going to be told when and how and with whom I may breed, by anyone, thanks.
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Only immigrants, sterilisation & euthanasia can save Britain
Now I haven’t actually looked at the statistics, but one thing is clear from the latest Government migration report – Britain is close to bursting point, and it’s only a matter of time before our little island sinks into the North Sea, groaning under the weight of its own populace.
Even the Marxists at the BBC are reporting ‘the biggest population increase for almost 50 years‘, along with the terrifying news that the population has finally balooned past the 61m milestone. The evidence of an impending catastrophe can no longer be ignored: only yesterday I had to queue up in Waitrose behind 3 other people, adding another 5 minutes to my already nauseating weekly shop.
Then, as I was driving home at 6 o’clock, I had to spend nearly half an hour sitting in traffic – caused, no doubt, by hundreds of people all traveling to see their hundreds of children. Make no mistake – there are simply too many people in Britain now.
Normally, it’s perfectly easy for poorly informed commentators like myself to come up with a solution: throw out the immigrants and get rid of the benefit culture that brings them here in the first place. Hundreds of tabloid columnist have suggested this simple scheme ad nauseum over the years, but it’s always fallen on deaf ears.
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The right to criticise union leaders
If your boss sacks you for wearing a crucifix to work, you may have a case the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003. Clock on clad in a hammer and sickle lapel badge, and she can freely tell you to pick up your P45, you dirty commie bastard. Or so I had assumed, anyway.
But shortly we will find out whether or not Trotskyism is deemed legally equivalent to religion, after the decision of Socialist Party members Brian Debus, Onay Kasab, Glenn Kelly and Suzanne Muna to take one of Britain’s largest trade unions to an employment tribunal under these very regs.
All four have been banned from holding office in Unison for between three and five years. Mabledon Place says that is because they are racists; the four activists say they are being singled out because they are Trots.
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Is Dan Hannan really a libertarian?
contribution by Soho Politico
As we have all now read, yet another recorded interview with culture warrior Daniel Hannan has surfaced and caused much controversy.
What I’m interested in is the defence of Daniel Hannan over this emanating from the right.
Their claim is that Hannan’s lionising of Powell is benign, because he never associated himself with Powell’s views about immigration specifically, and is in any case personally a ‘libertarian’ on borders.
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Tory MEP Dan Hannan praises Enoch Powell
Daniel Hannan MEP has given another interview to a right-wing US group. When asked who was among his greatest political influences, Hannan says it was Enoch Powell:
Yeah, all of those guys…In the British context, Enoch Powell. He was..as somebody who understood the importance of national democracy, who understood why you need to live in an independent country and what that meant, as well as being a free marketeer and a small government Conservative.”
The importance of national democracy and living in an independent country? More like Enoch Powell was someone who wanted a racial war in the UK merely because a few immigrants had come over to settle here.
According to Paul Waugh, this is the response from the Conservatives:
CCHQ is not going to comment formally, but sources say that Dan’s remarks clearly refer (as I pointed out above) to Powell’s views on non-immigration issues. If he had explicitly praised Powell on race or immigration, David Cameron would have had a different response, I’m told.
I suppose praising the BNP, as long as it’s not immigration related, is ok too? After all Nick Griffin must be a lovely chap as long as you ignore his mad, racist conspiracy theories. Why not invite him around for tea Mr Hannan?
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The BNP vs Human Rights Commission
Notwithstanding stupidity, or that their full-timers are embroiled in power struggles when not suffering ‘depressive illness’, the BNP are still a threat.
This will not be helped by the announcement that the BNP are to face court over their non-compliance with the 1976 Race Relations Act.
I have no doubt that the EHRC doesn’t see it like this: they have a duty under the law etc etc, it’s not a choice, it’s built into their mandate etc etc. But I suspect that go-to excuse of the BNP is at least partially correct – that the Labour government have a hand in this somewhere. At the very least, it is endorsed by the upper echelons of Labour, as Harriet Harman made clear today.
A great number of people in this country feel alienated from the institutions of power and the ‘respectable’ faces of democracy and civil society. Pitting these ‘respectable’ faces against the BNP will not warn people off the BNP, it will solidify their reputation as anti-establishment.
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Real face of the BNP ‘family festival’ exposed
Yeah I know its the News of The World, but they have done an undercover expose of the real nature of the ‘family’ Red White and Blue festival.
Demos against the BNP event are good, but the numbers won’t match those that voted for them . What is needed is to take apart their arguments, policies and expose what they really stand for and seems like the NOTW has done a good job of that last element.
It’s not enough to shout racist, we need to argue why they are wrong to blame immigrants for a lack of decent social housing and jobs if we are to counter their hate filled message.
Although I’m saying its good the NOTW has exposed this, I’m in not in anyway saying the Murdoch press are on our side, but lets use what they have discovered in our arguments and campaigns.
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Racism creeping up in Italy
Anyone still of the opinion Italy’s not going through a fascist comeback?
This is unbelievable. After a wave of ugly rhetoric and dubious policies, a number of northern Italian councils run by the far-right Northern League (Silvio Berlusconi’s biggest coalition partner in government) have gone on the rampage against anything foreign.
Top of the list, the town of Capriate, 20 miles from Milan, where the council announced a ban on kebab and ‘ethnic’ shops from the town centre. The news hasn’t reached the foreign press yet, so you’ll have to be able to understand Italian if you want to find out more here and here.
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But where will they send me?
As if it wasn’t bad enough that despite being a British citizen I’m apparently incapable of ever passing the British Citizenship test (numerous goes at the various online versions have ended in complete and humiliating failure), now it looks like the knuckledraggers who post on the white-nationalist-fascist-scum Stormfront forums want to have me deported.
During a recent discussion over there about the Norwich North by-election one of its more evolved members, that is, a Nazi who can not only use a keyboard to spout bile on the Internet but who can even add links and shit too, decided to post my piece about the lies the BNP had been printing in their election leaflets: The BNP’s lies in Norwich North. On top of that, said Nazi also decided to post a piccie of my good self to illustrate the article, one that he nabbed off my Facebook profile.
Now after a minor panic about how the hell he’d got hold of a photo I’ve only ever used on Facebook, and after taking some advice from friends about Internet security (cheers Sunny), I decided to remove my FB profile from public view.
I hadn’t actually realised that doing that would have a knock-on effect anywhere else, but I’m delighted and amused to report that this action has led to my photo on the Stormfront forum being replaced by a generic faceless avatar.
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We need to tolerate the extremists
David Cameron packed what he himself described as ‘a really trashy novel’ for his 10-day holiday in France. By contrast, my choice to read on Brighton beach last week was rather more serious.
Ed Husain’s ‘The Islamist’ is controversial autobiographical account of the author’s involvement with the Islamist far right in Britain, and ends with a call for some of the organisations at that end of that spectrum to be subject to suppression by the state. Tony Blair is berated for offering such a pledge in 2005 and then not making good on it.
That line of thinking probably appeals to quite a wide range of opinion. It is unlikely that the English Defence League and Casuals United – the self-professed football hooligans who staged a demonstration against Muslim extremism in Birmingham on Saturday – have drafted anything resembling a detailed statement of coherent political philosophy. But no doubt they would favour a ban on Hizb ut-Tahrir and Al Muhajiroon.
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The witchhunt
Lousy news from the trade union front, people:
The New Labour-loving horrors who run the public sector union Unison have stepped up their campaign to purge their Labour affiliated union of all grassroots socialists and leftwing activists.
We on the left are not pleased.
The union has just banned four of its best grassroots activists – Glenn Kelly (Bromley Unison branch secretary), Suzanne Muna (Unison’s Tenant Services Authority branch secretary), Onay Kasab (Greenwich Unison branch secretary) and Brian Debus (Hackney Unison chair) – from union office for three (Kelly and Kasab), four (Muna) and five (Debus) years.
Their crime? – well, that depends on who you ask, and how highly that person thinks of Labour.
I’m one of the many who believe that Kelly, Kasab, Muna and Debus are being strongarmed out of Unison because they are Socialist party members. They are passionate critics of New Labour, passionately opposed to this government’s privatising of public services, and – and this is doubtless the kicker, as far as Unison’s New Labour lubbers are concerned – galvanising grassroots enthusiasm for Unison to break its formal funding ties with Labour. continue reading… »
Let’s play the Citizenship Test game
I have invented a new game. It is called ‘ask politicians questions from the citizenship test’.
Anyone can play, you take part by turning up at events where a politician is answering questions, and ask them questions from the citizenship test.
Does Phil Woolas, the immigration minister, know when women got the right to divorce their husbands?
Does Frank Field of the Balanced Migration group know how many days schools are required by law to remain open for?
Does Nadine Dorries, author of ‘Is Britain already full?‘, know how many under 18s there are in the UK?
I suspect the results would be vastly entertaining. And just maybe, if enough of the people responsible for introducing this test get publicly humiliated by failing the citizenship test game, they will get rid of this pernicious and vindictive waste of money.
Unthinking criticism of South Yorkshire Police
Depending on your point of view, it’s either an innovative approach to building community relations or proof of the Islamisation of our police force. You might’ve heard about the revelation that two sergeants and a community support officer spent a day accompanying a group of Muslim women around Sheffield city centre. All the women, including the white police officers, were dressed in Islamic costumes, including the burkha, jilbab, hijab and niqab.
Naturally, a lot of folks have flapped their jowls in fury: the bile-soaked secularists who squat in blog comments sections; the various ‘jihad watch’ websores who warn of ‘dhimmisation’; and the more ‘wholesome’ Christian People’s Alliance, whose response makes you suspect they wouldn’t have had a problem if only they’d all dressed as 12th century monks .
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Why the right doesn’t understand racism
Time magazine Catherine Mayer wrote a front-page piece this week about the rise of the far-right across Europe. Tim Montgomerie over at ConservativeHome takes issue with the section of the article that asks whether political parties should, “Steal their nationalist thunder by taking tough lines on issues such as immigration? This smacks of capitulation to the very ideas critics seek to defeat.”
He says:
I do think part of any anti-BNP strategy means addressing popular concerns about immigration, access to housing and championing people’s patriotic instincts… while ALWAYS attacking their racism.
There are two ways in which the right, and Tim Montgomerie, misunderstands racism. Firstly, a lot of BNP propaganda and attempts to whip up local concerns on issues such as housing and transport is based on lies.
The right-wing strategy seems to be to use the media to whip up paranoia about immigration (”Gypsies are taking all your GP appointments!!”, “The Poles are taking over”) and other issues, and then follow through with those policies in the name of addressing popular concern.
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Irony still exists, despite Jeremy Clarkson
Trying to understand what we find funny by dissecting comedy routines is roughly as effective as trying to do so by dissecting the brains of Jim Davidson fans. And slightly less funny. Charlie Brooker wrote a good, but not very funny, column to this effect on Monday.
In the same Guardian comedy special, Brian Logan wrote a bad, and not very funny, column about the ‘new offenders’ of comedy. It’s made worse by the fact that his initial thesis that sexism and racism are back, wearing an Irony Cloak that makes their attackers manifest themselves as Humourless Sandal Wearers, isn’t a bad one at all.
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The BNP’s lies in Norwich North
Much to my joy I received my first Norwich North by-election leaflets from the BNP yesterday. The first one was pretty much as I expected:
I think its the same layout as the one they used for the Euro elections a couple of months ago: it’s got the Battle of Britain spitfire picture which caused some hilarity last time round when it was revealed to be a Polish (in BNP speak: dirty-foreigner-Eastern-Europeans-coming-over-here-and-taking-all-our-jobs) squadron plane, and it’s got four numpties, I mean ordinary British working people, trying to make excuses for their decision to embrace fascism.
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Smearing opponents as anti-semitic
A favourite tactic of die-hard defenders of Israel is to smear critics of the country’s policies through guilt by association, lies, and decontextualised quotations.
I have come to know this latter strategy quite well. Based on short extracts, or even a single sentence, from two out of the 100 plus articles I’ve published, I have been accused of ‘understanding anti-semitism’ and ‘defending’ Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial.
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The neo-nazi “threat”
What are we to make then of Neil Lewington, the latest in a string of neo-Nazis to be convicted of terrorism offences?
There is one constant between Robert Cottage, Martyn Gilleard and Lewington, which is either reassuring or worrying, depending on your view: despite their world view, whether it be imminent race war, or the intention to try to start one, all were only interested in “small” explosive devices.
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