Cllr. Gavin Ayling

The trouble with race relations is not the actions of ethnic minorities, it’s not even the actions of the BNP and other racists, it’s the actions of white do-gooders.

“You know,” said one Brighton & Hove Council Officer to another “what would be a great idea? If we only allowed coloured people to apply for a job in our museum.”

She must have continued “There are far too many white people working in Brighton’s Museum and everyone knows that our interviewers are pro-white racists so, rather than tackling that, let’s just interview only non-white people!”

This is how Kieron Keenan was told he may not apply for a job at Brighton Museum according to the article by Rob Hustwayte in today’s Argus (no permalinks, hence no link).

And on their first day at work the new researcher at Brighton Museum will feel good inside that they got a job, not on merit, but because of the self-righteous bigots who decided that the Race Relations Act should be misused in this way.

The Brighton & Hove Black History Project thinks it is acceptable to try and ensure a “more representative” workforce. What utter, undisguised, racist nonsense!

Ohhhh, I’m going all Daily Mail!

With this one action we have:
- Made Chinese/African/Asian/Afro-Caribbean applicants feel that they need help to get a job
- Illustrated that Brighton & Hove City Council do not believe in merit
- Illustrated that even if they did believe in merit, they don’t trust their interviewers to employ based on it
- Made white moderates angry
- Made ethnic minorities (who are, afterall, a homogenous group) angry
- Given white extremists even more ammunition
- Effected the life of Kieron Keenan
- Damaged race relations
- Brought disrepute on the Race Relations Act (though that was self-inflicted).

David Cameron had better not ever come out in favour of positive discrimination.

I may need to edit this post later, but that’s how I feel now.

England should not be multi-cultural for several reasons:

- The cultural ideals of many parts of the third world are completely at odds with our own, not least the attitude of parts of north Africa and the Middle East to women.
- Cultural attitudes that do not lie in parallel will inevitably lead to violent conflict

The Commission for Racial Equality is quite right (for once) that allowing parents to choose a school and, even, run a school, will lead to segregation. Miss Anon (a co-author on this site) said to me the other day, that despite inspections and the National Curriculum, the influence of cultural attitudes within a school run in a non-English cultural majority area will inevitably lead to further segregation.

It is, in fact, inevitable that if we do not try to assimilate foreign cultures (let’s not beat around the bush, that’s what non-English culture in England is), then we will soon not have a single England — rather mini nations within England. And if those areas become significant enough, might we not have separatist movements spring up in the not-to-distant future? It’s almost a reverse-zionism for non-Jews!

Anyone who knows me will tell you that one of my virtues is a complete belief in a policy of colour-blindness when it comes to ethnicity. I’ve said before that I have many friends of a non-white colouring. I don’t say these things because I think it qualifies me in some way to speak on this subject, rather to illustrate that the colour of someone’s skin makes vehemently, absolutely no difference to their behaviour, attitudes or politics.

The BBC, left-wing do-gooders and the proponents of quotas, positive discrimination etc. are failing to notice what needs to happen. Talking of police treading carefully because of ‘community relations’ is missing the argument entirely. The police, of course, should not be entering people’s homes and beating them up (if that’s what happened), but neither should the ‘community’ be treated as a single group, either by the police or the media.

There will be people of all ethnicities in the area with a complete range of attitudes. Thankfully, not all Muslims or coloured people think the same way as George Galloway.

What I’m trying to say is that the debate must move on from colour, it must move on from place of birth — neither of these are relevant. Instead we should focus on the English culture and see what can be done about ghettoisation, stigma, Muslim academic underperformance, fundamentalism and, most importantly, cultural diversity.

When I talk about English culture, too, I am not talking about some historic picture-postcard scene of gentele folk sitting around a sunny village green eating scones and cream tea while watching cricket. No, I am talking about attitudes towards working, freedom from oppression and looking out for one-another. English culture has evolved and will continue to evolve. It will, hopefully, absorb the finer points of foreign cultures (let’s hope we all start having large families and Latin-style low-key family parties soon), but it should remain a culture unique to England, not one of several cultures within this country.

I intended this to be a short post, but I have noticed something about my non-stop use of the phrase “English culture”. It is my belief that in the long-term, if the EU works out the way it should, there will eventually be a European culture. This isn’t abhorent to me, but it must be reached naturally and by following a process of evolution. There will be much opposition to it not least from the right of my party and from the left of Labour, but that’s what the UK has signed us up to and, while we remain the EU, we must accept that this is the direction it should take. The choice is (a) a path to a European culture or (b) England leaving the EU (and preferably the UK).

In one sentence, ethnic diversity is neither a bad thing nor a good thing (it’s irrelevant) — cultural diversity is a bad and dangerous thing.

Some excellent comedy Tory election ads to be found here: B3TA, not least this:

For more visit their site. You’ll note that Iain Dale has only picked the favourable ones in his post. I’m not sure whether the Boris one above was intended as positive or negative, but I think it’s positive!

Where, In what world would an English Chief Constable be allowed to say this?

In fact, any slightly anti-Welsh sentiment leads to cries about the ‘usual’ English nationalism. Of course, as I calm down slightly, we must remember that the Chief Constable of North Wales Police has always had some, frankly, ridiculous positions on crime prevention — and he is one of the major reasons I believe in democratically elected sheriffs, but it is still proposterous.

Again, imagine replacing “English” with any other nationality or group. There would be cries for the unfortunate idiot’s resignation. Let that happen now.

I’ve been getting off track lately. I worry that I am talking so much ideology that I am losing, not only my ability to communicate what I believe, but also to connect with people. I would, therefore, like to make a brief post about my core beliefs and avoid getting ideological about them:

- I believe in an English Parliament. The UK is currently made up of four countries, three of whom have devolution. This means that MPs elected by Scottish or Welsh constituents are in positions of power in areas that affect England only and it also means that Scottish MPs can vote on matters that affect England only. English Votes on English Matters, the Conservative Party policy, just won’t work and there’ll shortly be a Critique available to buy from the CEP’s website explaining in great detail, why.

- I believe in privatisation. Competition means lower prices for customers and more efficient operation of the services they provide.

- I believe that immigration has eroded the cultural uniformity of the UK — this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, this is just an observation. I believe that a moratorium on immigration for a short period to allow the immigration that has been recently to “bed-in”. I know just one conscientious, hard-working patriot who wishes to remain in this country — most of us can see that a better life can be had in Japan, the US, Canada, Australia or Jamaica. Allowing emmigration in reasonably large numbers is reducing the quality of Britain’s brain-pool and is, sadly, the ultimate expression of democratic failure.

- Following on from the last point, the cost of living in England is too high. I believe this can be resolved with some radical amendments to the provision of public services. Council houses, for example, should be there, not to provide cheap rent to those who are underpaid by their private-sector employers — they should be there as a safety net for those who, through no fault of their own, lose their homes. Why, for example, are asylum seekers and those who get themselves pregnant (when unable to support a family) given a home while those who lose their home to a fire are made to live in a dirty, noisy Bed and Breakfast? Some friends of friends of mine have recently had to start bringing up a child in a B&B following a house fire — where’s the sense in that? The market in private rentals is currently skewed by the cheap (read: taxpayer subsidised) rentals paid for by Council Tax payers.

- Following on from the last point, the cost of food is too high due to the Common Agricultural Policy. We live next to a region of Earth capable of feeding us with ease. The US creates more than its fair share of food prduce, but aside from them, we should be at the fore-front. New Zealand has shown us how it should be done.

- I believe that there is such a thing as global warming, but I don’t believe that humans are as much to blame as state-control socialists would like us to believe. Tell a lie often enough and it is likely to stick. At the risk of sounding like an ‘Intelligent Design’ advocate in a different argument, there is too little understood about the planet’s climate to extrapolate meaningful information from the heating of the climate. The reason, for example, for ice ages is poorly understood. That we are currently in an uncharacterically cool period in Earth’s history and that we are due for a radical heating should make us pause to think.

- Further, on the environment, there are some really important things we should be worrying about more. Recycling of metal and plastic should be our number one concern — there’s only so much of either and if we start to run out, particularly of oil, we’re in for some major upheaval. Global warming is, if avoidable, very expensive to avoid — surely we’re better off trying to provide sanitation, security and food and water to the Third World than trying to ensure that a desert doesn’t expand a few hundred miles? If the cost of keeping the desert small is so exceedingly high that we could have fed the Third World, is it irresponsible to waste the money?

- Among us pramatists, the future of the UK is one of an Islamic country (ONS). If we had a constitution, the country may still be unrecognisable within a short period. If the constituents of George Galloway re-elect him at the next election, we must question (a) their wisdom and, (b) their belief in the rule of law. I am strongly in favour of free speech but that relies on the majority of people sharing my belief in freedom. If the comments Galloway made about murdering Tony Blair go electorally unpunished, what hope of that? The solution is a limit on further immigration until the local populace has managed to distance itself from the actions of those Islamists in the Middle East and east to Pakistan who believe that a woman is there to make more men (hat-tip to CJ Cregg) and any attempts to rise above their station should result in a beating.

- I believe in the right to free protest and freedom from protestor harrasment. The animal rights protestors have a valid point, but their methods are ruining people’s lives and livelihoods. We must protect people from violent protest…

- At the same time, peaceful protest must be allowed. Walter Wolfgang, Brian Haw and Charlotte Denis are the thin edge of a very dangerous wedge.

- I can see the benefits of a database that lists all the country’s people, but that should not be a new database, it should be a concatenating checking mechanism attached to the government’s existing databases. The government, currently, has no meaningful way of linking that chap who paid for road tax, with the same man who is claiming he cannot provide CSA payments to his ex-wife and children; the government is incapable, currently, of linking that person who requested a disabled parking permit with that person who should be receiving disability-related tax-relief but who isn’t currently claiming it. Yes, there is a need. But an ID card database is not the answer — this is a further expression of a government who, through their own incompetence, shifts the burden of effort away from the state and toward the individual in an ironic and exact mirror of its simultaneous power-grab as it takes more and more free choices away from people (pension compulsion as a key example).

- I believe that the NHS has a place to play in a humane country — nobody should be made to pay for a bandage if they honestly cannot afford it. This, of course, should be provided by charity, but in the 1950s the whole mechanism for providing this was dismantled. Now that we have the NHS we must work to improve it. A key to this is to encourage people to invest in private health provision. There needs to some sort of incentive to going private.

- Anyone who declines a job they are physically capable of performing while claiming unemployment benefit should not lose a proportion, as is currently the case, they should, after a reasonable time, lose all their benefits. Unemployment benefit should be there to provide for those who cannot find a job, not as an alternative lifestyle choice. Some people, I have spoken to, say “I’ve paid tax for XX years, they owe me some time off.” I do not owe you that.

- Children born outside of a permanent relationship (one where both parents are living together at the time of conception) should be supported by the payment of vouchers — having a child must not be an alternative way of getting independence from your parents.

- Tax should be cut. And cut hard. Paying, as we do currently, approximately 50% of our wages in tax is not the way to make a successful country.

- Infrastructure must be expanded urgently. If I were a US business looking to start a European branch, I would seriously consider locating in Germany or the Netherlands just because the infrastructure there is up to scrutiny. If you want to have a meeting with people around the country, you don’t want to have to budget for excruciating fuel costs (which are, sadly, in place across the EU), as well as congestion, Congestion charging, water restrictions and crowded trains. A business that wishes to start in Brighton (as I live nearby) has to contend with a crowded A23 (road) to London, a railway network which is unable to provide seats to even two stations-worth of passengers and which costs a small fortune; it has to contend with sky-high land and property costs, sky-high costs, basically. It also has to contend with an increasingly uneducated populace…

- Education is not being provided to our young people. Universities, apparently, are now so expensive that graduates must pay for them all the while Chemistry, Engineering and Physics departments close and tax does not reduce. Children are being stabbed in schools. There are very few cases, so far, but that ubiquity of knives is bizarre and must be stopped. Educate children.

- Finally, for now, state-funding of political parties must never be allowed. What is wrong, for example, with saying to the parties that there is an absolute maximum that any single person/organisation can donate to a party — a level playing field without my taxes going to fund the SNP and Labour Party (let alone Respect and BNP, which are in their own class of vile)?

I should be exercised about this. I should be foaming at the mouth that our government is going to think about brainwashing our children… But then the EU’s been providing “The EU, My Country” colouring-in exercises and brochures telling our children that the EU is a good thing for a while now (see Daniel Hannan’s Euro-briefings) so there’s little danger of things getting worse!

I am duty bound, too, to remind you that this will only affect England and yet is being labelled “British”. The Scottish and Welsh devolved governments will, undoubtedly, introduce Scottish- and Welsh-ness classes. See the Campaign for an English Parliament for more information.

If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon.
George Aiken