Cllr. Gavin Ayling

Okay, so two things tonight would cause me to be described as a bigot. One will remain a wink between me and one new reader who I believe may be reading this tonight.

The second is in our next Housing and Central Services Committee (HCSC) Agenda (Item 8). By the way, here’s the HCSC minutes and agenda index.

Okay, so before we read it (like you were going to!), let’s discuss some background.

There are two types of racist in my humble opinion:

There is the stereotype (who is hard to find, actually) who believes that black people are inferior, that they shouldn’t be employed if they come to an interview, that they should not be allowed to use the same buses etc, etc. Let us call them ‘old Tories’.

Then there is the more common type: the do-gooder. They say “Ah, you have [insert colour here] skin so you are less able to obtain training than a white person” or “Ah, you have [insert colour here] skin so you need more careful treatment” or “Ah, you have [insert colour here] skin so you must need help speaking English” (Hands up those who thought I should have copied and pasted some of that.). Let us call this, more common and thoroughly more underhand and manipulative racist ’socialists’.

So socialists (read Ken Livingstone or the person who introduced the legislation allowing this) are the ones responsible for some of the measures that our Council must make.

In Item 8, then, there is a survey of Council Tenants in Adur District Council. Apparently ‘ethnic minorities’ (you know, the ones the socialists believe are less intelligent) answered the survey differently to white people. Just to be clear an ethnic minority can only be non-white — the proper definition of the type of respondent the government required us to identify is “black and ethnic minorities (BEM) (excluding white minorities)”.

Scroll to the last page and you will find the bit that has got my goat. This is the ‘Action Plan’ as a result of the survey’s findings:

Black Minority and Ethnic groups are less satisfied with opportunities for involvement in management and decision making. Action – further investigation is required and efforts made to include members of BME groups in tenant participation.

So, basically, a statistical anomaly that should never have been measured throws up something vaguely interesting and the answer is to ’solve it’? Erm no.

I am quite sure no-one is sending letters to white tenants only. I am quite sure no-one is turning black people away when they offer to participate. And even if they were, I’m positive a survey is not the best way to find that out!

To put it to a test I telephoned a tame ‘ethnic minority’ and asked them what they thought.

Warning, the next paragraph contains swearing that is necessary because it is a verbatim quote. If you don’t like it, skip it, okay?

When asked whether we should do this the tame (tame because socialists tell me they are less intelligent etc.) EM said “Why are we collecting that information? Like anyone gives a shit.”

And why did I quote an EM? Because in this ultra PC (but we took their great, great, great grandfather’s land to grow sugar plantations on, sob) modern era, I couldn’t say that myself without being described as an ‘old Tory’. And let’s be honest, if I was one of those, how could I have tamed that stupid (the socialist’s intimation, not mine) EM in the first place?

Hopefully I can use that headline all over again after the poll.

The question is, why wouldn’t Boris win? The English have an interesting humour and I would guess the vast majority of English people would vote for him purely because he appeals to them.

Correcting myself, then, the question should be: Is there enough cultural Englishness left in London for the natural winner of this contest to win? The answer will likely be the poll result — I hope and expect the answer to be “Yes”.

Vote for the blue buffoon that we all think is nuts!

I don’t doubt Tim’s seat is safe: he’s been a brilliant MP to almost everyone who has contacted them and, when he disagrees, he tells you so and why.

But it is interesting that Emily Benn will stand against him at the next election (BBC).

Emily’s blog and Tim’s website

Maybe I’m age prejudiced, but I now know what I didn’t know at seventeen and, frankly, I wouldn’t want seventeen-year-old me to represent anyone. Won’t Emily feel the same in eleven years?

And won’t she be too young if we have a snap-election? Is Emily to dictate Mr Brown’s decision!?

“Never have so few decided so much for so many.” The Sun

This is how The Sun launched its campaign today against Gordon Brown’s momentous decision to abandon democracy and his party’s manifesto on which he was elected by said democracy.

Sign the Sun’s petition too.

I thought I’d remind you there’s a Health Public Meeting by Worthing and Southlands NHS Trust at the Shoreham Centre, Pond Road, Shoreham-by-Sea on Friday 21st at 7pm.

You never know, it may not be a done deal!

Tonight there was a consultation held at the Shoreham Centre. I have loads to write, and there are people to mock, but it’ll have to wait. I left the house at 7.25am this morning, returned just now and I haven’t yet had dinner. Oh, and I’ll be leaving tomorrow at around 7.45am with a Council meeting in Worthing straight after work, so that will be nice.

Still sign the KWASH petition if you haven’t already.

I am delighted to announce that my motion on the EU treaty and the referendum Mr Blair et al promised us was passed, not unanimously, but with no opposition votes. The text reads as follows:

Notice of Motion - Council Procedure Rule 17
The following Notice of Motion is proposed by Councillor Gavin Ayling:
The “Reform Treaty”, signed by Tony Blair on 23 June, is acknowledged publicly by the leaders of nearly all our EU partners to be virtually the same as the Constitution Treaty. France and The Netherlands decisively rejected that Treaty.
The “Reform Treaty” transfers yet more substantive powers from Britain to the EU and further erodes British laws and the British Constitution.
It will reduce the rights and freedoms of the residents of Adur and the whole nation.
Therefore this Council calls on Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, to abide by the Government’s promise to the electorate in the 2005 Labour Party Manifesto page 84, “We will put [the Constitution Treaty] to the British people in a referendum…”

Read the original on the Adur District Council website.

And I’m also delighted to see that Ming the pitiful has now suggested a referendum would be a good idea, naively believing that the people would vote for massive bureaucratic waste, cultural erasure, pathetic and unnecessary directives and higher taxes (for no gain).

Oh, and Sign the Petition

As if to prove my last post true, Kwik Fit have provided some excellent service to me today.

A couple of days ago my car started making some horrendous metallic noises. I thought, actually, that a part of my car was dragging along the ground. When I got to the gym (for that was where I was going) I checked the underside and could see nothing too loose. I did, though, discover that the exhaust pipe gets quite warm (mind your fingers says the voice of experience).

At lunch time today I took my car down to the Kwik Fit on Old Shoreham Road in Hove and they took a look at it while I returned to work. When they phoned me back they told me that there was a bracket loose and that they’d welded it back on. I asked what the damage was (you know, to my wallet) and they said “Oh, no charge for that“.

So this is a big thumbs up to Kwik Fit and it’s multinational parent company, Ford Motors.