Cllr. Gavin Ayling

I’ve written before about Mrs Alibhai Brown (search above), but she’s at it again and deserves to be taken down a few more pegs.

A colleague disagreed with me about the tone of Yasmin’s piece. What follows are some extracts from my responses:

The colour of someone’s skin has absolutely nothing to do with their attitude to anything, any more than people with size nine feet all think the same or act the same, or make the same decisions.

There are stereotypes, of course, which is why one of my friends calls himself a ‘coconut’ and their half-Philipino friend once called himself a ‘banana’, but the same may be true of people with big noses. They’re likely to have a chip on their shoulder, no?

Yasmin has every right to say what she thinks, but that doesn’t change whether she’s wrong or not. And she is wrong: morally and when it comes down to whether something is true or not.

Race becomes an issue because people place so much emphasis on it — aside from some facial features its even more meaningless than skin colour. Compare, for example, Colin Powell’s skin hue with that of George Bush and Condoleeza Rice. Colin Powell is actually as pale as George Bush. Now lets suppose skin colour was somehow relevant to someone’s attitude or political outlook, how should Colin Powell behave? White or black?

And while she’s making these sweeping generalisations, are black people more left-wing or more right-wing? Is strong family a policy of the right or the left? I would say right, but how much stronger is the family unit in Italian, Hindu and Muslim families, those supposed Boris-haters? Is positive discrimination a sop to their guilt-ridden white population or is it a genuine attempt to help those people who are not given as many chances because of racism in the white-dominated management structures? I’ve yet to meet someone who has thought carefully about the situation who would benefit from positive discrimination (a non-white in other words) who supports it. But positive discrimination is a policy of the left (and Ken) and not of Mr Johnson. And what about homophobia? Mr Livingstone (and other left-wing extremists) welcome Islamic preachers who spout homophobic diatribe, while the right (and Boris) condemn them. Yasmin would claim this is a race issue, but I would argue that it is just bad manners: if you invite and welcome someone with openly hateful views without publicly criticising those views, you are implying support for them. It is not racist to condemn preachers of hate (and no-one outside the BNP to my knowledge has condemned Islamic preachers without referring to those among them who preach hate) but it is homophobic to embrace them.

So back to my point, is it left-wing or right-wing to be non-white? Is it reasonable to suggest that a particular colour would vote for Boris? And is it acceptable to label people that you are criticising by their skin colour?

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?

Sources have been telling me to expect an election either in October this year or March next year. But the very public indication has come in the form of an appointment by Mr Brown.

And who could blame him? Cameron, who achieved so little by appearing to be a better Blair, has not changed tack at all since Brown’s coronation. While Her Majesty’s Government is being openly racist to the majority of the population, while it is breaking a manifesto promise on a treaty that will continue our country down a path towards federal subservience and while democracy has been being dealt a hammer blow by foreign governance (don’t accuse me of being anti-Scot, please — Gordon Brown was not elected in either of the last two elections by his constituents on the basis of domestic policies)…

… while all that has happened David Cameron has been far from opaque. In fact you could be forgiven for forgetting he existed except to appear briefly in the news in Rwanda.

Cameron, shout angrily about the wrong that is being done. Shout angrily about the hospital closures in England, shout angrily about the promised EU treaty referendum, shout loudly against racism against the English, shout angrily about the amount of tax that is still being wasted.

Shout.

Now.

Or tomorrow you will lose a General Election and, believe me, it will be a greater loss than in May 2005.

Why is this message considered too sensitive?

I have sent this to our MP:

I have known for a couple of years that the government doesn’t give free training to white people (only to ‘ethnic minorities’). I wrote to the lady in charge of the free training a while ago and published the answers here.

But it seems it now goes further than the cost of training, now it extends to the provision of training at all according to This is London.

David Cameron’s walking a dangerous tightrope between public opinion, the leftwing media and his party — I understand that. But when will he say that things like that article are wrong?

If you are Scottish then when you say that you may well not be paying. In fact if you’re at school in Scotland you will shortly be receiving free dental check-ups paid for by the English and Welsh tax payers.

If England had a Parliament at all and if Wales had a full Parliament (rather than an impotent Assembly) then the imbalanced treatment of the English and Welsh would be more acceptable as we would have a democratic say in whether we wanted to spend our tax on the same facilities for ourselves. But as we don’t, this is yet more ademocratic tax-theft by Mr Broon.

A man attacks someone because of something he’s heard.

Do you (a) blame the man; or (b) blame the person who said what the man heard?

Of course you blame the man, not Jack Straw.

Jack Straw has been “courageous” to say what he thinks about his Muslim constituents who wear the veil. And I think he’s right.

The trouble with his comments is that, as a member of this government, it is expected that what he wants will be introduced as legislation. This is why Letwin has offered the warning that the state should not prescribe what people may wear.

The veil is a significant barrier to reasonable communication and it is an obvious marker of difference. The Muslim Public Affairs Committee suggests that the veil is not the cause of any Muslim-non-Muslim conflicts. I believe the veil is a metaphor for the ghettoisation of Islam within the UK.

If you listen to Straw’s entire interview with Today, though, you hear the normal calls for equal rights etc. Let’s be clear, right now and forever: No-one in the UK needs legislation to have equal rights. The only way rights can ever be taken away is with legislation and the fact that the only legislation that there is that deals with ethnicity attempts to mark skin colour as some significant distinguishing feature; that there are employers paid by the taxpayer who admit to turning away white job applicants because of their skin colour should be enough for us all to say: “Enough”.

I want to be clear:
- There should be no legislation that refers to skin colour/religion.
- There should be no legislation that tells people whether to wear a veil, hijab or burka.
- There should be no difference in requirements for a passport photo due to religion or skin colour.
- There should be no legislation that refers to skin colour/religion.

The inclusion of the last one twice was quite deliberate.