Tories at war over Boris’ equality agenda
A war of words has broken out between Boris Johnson’s adminstration at the GLA and some supporters within the Conservative party.
The London Mayor published his long-awaited report on equalities policy this week titled – Equal Life Chances for All.
But before the report came out councillor Harry Phibbs, from Hammersmith and Fulham, wrote a long, rambling article for ConservativeHome arguing that Boris has been, “shamefully allowing Ken Livingstone’s ideology of quotas, interest groups, thought crime and racial separatism to remain largely intact.”
Among other things, Phibbs had problems with:
The draft has promised a commitment to “eliminating institutional discrimination”, which includes “unwitting prejudice.” It states that Mayoral appointees will “reflect the diversity of London.” It promises “responsible procurement”.
That tirade was taken up by Ed West on the Telegraph website, who said:
What’s so odd about the Tory strategy is that Boris won probably the most racially divided election in British history, winning huge support from white Britons in the outer boroughs “doughnut” and failing to win a majority of a single minority (with the exception of the Jews). This was partly because of Livingstone’s history of promoting black and now Muslim grievance politics, and partly because of demographics.London is turning into an American-style racially divided city, thanks to runaway immigration and white flight, and in those sorts of societies people vote for their tribal party. For the Conservatives to cooperate with black racial identity politics is suicide, because the sort of black voters who believe their problems are down to racism and lack of taxpayer’s money, and not fatherlessness and a culture of violence and ignorance, are not going to vote Conservative.
Note how minorities are implicitly blamed for “white flight”. Also note how “black identity politics” is equated with “a culture of violence and ignorance”.
But the Boris administration, to their credit, were having none of Harry Phibbs’ tantrums. In an interview, deputy mayor Richard Barnes said:
Well I think Harry Phibbs has a lot to learn about life really hasn’t he? It was drawn to my attention what he said and he also criticises the language we used that it’s overly PC. Well when Harry aspires to be a little more than a councillor in Hammersmith and Fulham then I’m sure we can address and sit down and recognise the real issues.
…
The days of walking into an organisation with a machete in one hand and a sub-machine gun in the other are long gone.
Ouch!
Dave Hill provides some context, saying that:
The new element – as stressed by Boris’s deputy Richard Barnes in an interview here – is the recognition that those marooned in London’s margins aren’t necessarily defined by membership of an ethnic or sexual minority. They also include those such as jobless young white people and the elderly. Barnes describes this wider embrace as of a piece with enhancing social cohesion: “These are issues for all of us.”
Councillor Harry Phibbs, not happy with the rebuke, hit back with the paranoid theory that Boris was “oddly preoccupied with seeking to ingratiate themselves” with anti-Boris bloggers like Adam Bienkov and Political Animals.
Phibbs’ tirade against the ‘equality agenda’ was also rejected by Boris earlier when the Mayor’s deputy explained his willingness to enter the Stonewall Employers list again.
He also had some support from ConHome editor Tim Montgomerie who called deputy Mayor Richard Barnes “childish“.
For now, the Mayor’s administration are ignoring the nut-job wing of their party. But for how long?
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.
We should focus our anger on Standard & Poor’s
The slightly heady days of the initial financial crisis, when there was a naïve hope around that radical change might somehow come of its own accord, seem a long time ago now. We should still be angry at what’s happened, but what can we actually do? Where can we focus our anger in a way that actually changes things?
Well, here’s one suggestion for where we should focus our anger.
I and others recently picked upon the still startling notion that Standard & Poor’s (S&)P, the biggest international credit rating agency, should have been both instrumental in bringing about the financial crisis, but is now proceeding to throw its weight about, telling us all how we’re going to have slash spending in order to keep the country ‘creditworthy’.
Not content with playing a major part in bringing unemployment and financial pain S&P published, in March 2009, ‘Toward a Global Regulatory Framework for Credit Ratings‘. In what must be the understatement of the year, the report says:
continue reading… »
Tories: you can’t have localism without postcode lotteries
If David Cameron’ were serious about localism and an enormous decentralisation of power being his big idea, then he would surely tell his frontbenchers never to throw around the phrase ‘postcode lottery’.
On the other hand, if Conservatives are serious about ending postcode lotteries and ensuring equity of provision across different places, they should admit that this would place significant limits on how far local choices can be allowed to result in any differences on anything that matters.
That latter anti-local variation and pro-equity view appears to be the view of Tory frontbencher Grant Shapps, who is energetically touring the broadcast studios to promote his report on the postcode lottery in IVF treatment.
IVF is just too important an issue for different provision.
continue reading… »
Watch: Restaurant shamed on Blue-fin tuna
The excellent guerilla activists from Don’t Panic magazine have pulled off another audacious stunt. Journalists from the magazine covertly filmed and then asked workers at London’s high-end restaurant Nobu about having Blue-fin Tuna on it’s menu.
The video shows several claims made by Nobu staff shown to be false.
When an undercover investigation from Greenpeace revealed that Nobu was using blue fin in their sushi dishes, the restaurant claimed that they ‘did not know’ the fish was endangered. At that point it had been on the IUCN red list of endangered species for over 12 years. A similar ignorance was prevalent among the staff when we visited the restaurant.
Nobu have assured Greenpeace that they take the issue very seriously, but all they have done in the year since the investigation is add a disclaimer to the menus in their UK Nobu restaurants (although not in any of their other 23 restaurants around the world).
It’s not good enough – the situation of the blue fin is critical. All this takes is a little thought and application on behalf of Nobu to find an alternative to the endangered blue fin. If Nobu gave a shit about the fish on which their business depends, they would act now to change things. Perhaps they’ll care more when people abandon their restaurants in droves.
Don’t Panic were also behind earlier stunts such as ‘A drink with Alan Duncan‘ and ‘Naked picnic at Anthony Steen MP’s house‘ (below)
Do open primaries really work?
Very impressive that over 16,000 people in Totnes voted to choose the Tory candidate for the next election in an ‘open primary’. Normally, about 100-300 people are involved in these kinds of selections.
Couple of thoughts:
- Open primaries give a huge advantage to people who have “proper jobs”. For example, in this case the candidate who was a doctor beat two people who were involved in local government. I think this is broadly a good thing, but it is worth having another look at how much campaigning candidates are allowed to do.
If local people are basically making their minds up on the basis of one leaflet per candidate, then parties might end up getting stuck with people who would, in fact, be pretty hopeless candidates and/or MPs.
- Apparently the cost of the whole thing was £40,000. That’s ok for a one-off, but not a good use of resources for parties to adopt as the main way of selecting their candidates (for that amount of money, you could get a full time campaign organiser, office, phone line, risograph etc.) It becomes more feasible if the cost per constituency can be got down to about £3-5,000.
One way to do this could be for local parties to agree to hold their primaries on the same day and send out the information together and let people choose which primaries to vote in. It would require a culture shift for local parties to work together in this way – but isn’t changing the culture and doing things differently what this is all meant to be about?
Poll of polls: Tories on 68-seat majority
The latest ‘poll of polls’ by the Independent newspaper, published today, shows the Conservative Party has a lead of 14 points.
That would give the Tories a majority of 68 seats if the swing was uniform across the nation.
The weighted average of five polls last month puts the Tories on 40 per cent (up three points), Labour on 26 per cent (up two), the Liberal Democrats unchanged on 19 per cent and other parties on 15 per cent (down five).
The Independent report goes on to say:
The figures were based on the last polls before MPs left Westminster for their summer recess, including a ComRes survey for The Independent which put the Conservatives on 42 per cent and Labour on 24 per cent. The Conservatives have now enjoyed a consistent double-digit lead over Labour since the beginning of the year. John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, compiled the figures and said there appeared to have been a “decisive long-term shift in the public mood” since the spring last year. Last autumn’s recovery in Government support now seems to have been “little more than a temporary blip”, he said. “Labour evidently has a tough job on its hands to shift this now long-standing public mood once more.”
Support for other parties such as the UK Independence Party and the Greens reached a peak in June amid anger over the MPs’ expenses scandal.
A 68 seat margin was the same achieved by Tony Blair in 2005.
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 .
continue reading… »
Obama’s new concerns about Cameron
A new report in this week’s New Statesman magazine, which hits the news-stands tomorrow, highlights fresh concerns by the Obama administration over Cameron.
The article, by political editor James Macintyre, will say:
Most recently, Obama’s aides have been alarmed by Cameron’s new European alliance with Michal Kaminski, the former member of the neo-Nazi National Revival of Poland party (NOP). I have learned that a column last week by Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian – echoing my own report of Jewish concerns over Kaminski – has been circulated inside the Obama camp.One Democratic party source close to the administration confirmed to me: “Your assumptions about the beliefs of Obama’s foreign policy team are correct – there are concerns about Cameron among top members of the team.
It follows his widely covered report last year revealing that Obama regards Cameron as a “lightweight”.
Tomorrow’s article goes on to say:
And since my original report on Obama’s view of Cameron last year, I have been contacted by a senior figure at one highly respected newspaper with a separate account from an Obama aide. The source says the account was withheld from publication after a last-minute appeal from the aide.
According to this account, after taking breakfast with Blair, visiting Brown in Downing Street and meeting Cameron in Parliament, Obama is said to have given the following verdict: Blair, he said, was ‘sizzle and substance’ . Brown was ‘substance’ . Cameron was merely ‘sizzle’.
Harriet Harman’s ‘feminist blitzkrieg’
Abusive husbands were left furious today after a “controversial” new drive to reduce domestic violence against troublesome women was unveiled by chief feminazi Harriet Harman.
Under the contentious scheme, children as young as five will be taught that time-honoured traditions of men beating their wives when they take too long doing the dishes or refuse sex because they ‘have a headache’, are no longer acceptable in today’s politically correct, ultra-feminised society.
Shockingly, boys will be indoctrinated that their female friends are ‘people’ with “human rights” too, and just because girls are weak and over-sensitive doesn’t mean it’s acceptable to punish them for disobedience.
But imaginary critics warned that ministers are cramming the already over-stuffed National Curriculum with silly lessons that should be taught in the home, and schools should teach proper subjects like maths and fox-hunting instead of focusing on the supposed rights of nagging women.
continue reading… »
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or RSS feed. You can also get them by email and through our Facebook group.
» The real agenda behind Telegraph’s abortion investigation
» How Scotland Yard monitors prying bloggers and journalists
» When disabled people want to work – employers can hold the back
» Revealed: the reality behind Workfare and why it doesn’t work
» Job snob? No, I’ve got the T-shirt
» Why country-by-country reporting matters to our wellbeing
» If Unions want to become stronger, they need to modernise
» Why work “reforms” in Spain are a warning for workers across Europe
» Five things you need to know about the NHS bill
» Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier. More Racist.
» Laziness levels in Britain getting lazier, wails government
|
62 Comments 15 Comments 23 Comments 8 Comments 24 Comments 19 Comments 16 Comments 83 Comments 203 Comments 85 Comments |
|
LATEST COMMENTS » the a&e charge nurse posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Chaise Guevara posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Chaise Guevara posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Oliver posted on Job snob? No, I've got the T-shirt » the a&e charge nurse posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Hannah posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » mr_hopkinson posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Amy Finlayson posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » the a&e charge nurse posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » pagar posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Oliver Conner posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » pjt posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » Lee Griffin posted on The real agenda behind Telegraph's abortion investigation » JIm posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? » BendyGirl posted on Workfare - what does the evidence show? |
