Good article. Of course, we could actually recognise a minor problem with the underlying logic of ‘white British’ etc, which is skin colour and perceived ethnicity/identity/nationality are two different things and should not be measured together.

My skin remains pale pink-very light brown (depending on the weather and the bit of skin – although due to some thorns, bits are rather deep red today) whilst my ethnicity is subject to change – I might be English or British depending on the phase of my life, and I cannot guarantee not to be something else by the time I am 91. So in effect something that is a physical given is being combined with something that is a changeable variable. And you have to ask why – who benefits from this?

In fact, who benefits from gathering information on skin colour at all (I can kind of understand ethnicity, as if you discover two-thirds of the population consider themselves Ruritanian, you may need to reconsider the teaching of language at school…)? I couldn’t care less what skin colour people have by the time I am 91 (I fully expect a better range of cosmetic options will allow blue and green for example), but I would mind if I was no longer able to live in a liberal, democratic culture because all the people who looked just like me happened to worship a particularly repugnant variant of Baal (appologies if he is still worshipped somewhere…).

I think this article is too long. I can precis it:
“Oh, come and admire me everybody. I don’t care what colour people are. My nobility knows no bounds. Oh, aren’t I marvellous”.
If he cares to work in the public sector, he will shoot up the career ladder without any need to lick arse.

Personally, although my skin is pinkish in winter and pale brownish in the summer, I like to put either Native American or Australian Aboriginal when I fill these forms in.

By the way, is there an SI unit for measuring self-regard?

2

1 unit of self regard = 1 narcissi

Unless its for a job where my potential new HR department might not like my smart assery, I put ‘Other’ and in the box ‘human’.

If I’m feeling really childish I’ll put it in the box ‘mind your own business, get a real job’.

But then by doing this I get an ephemeral feeling of rebellion. Pathetic and chidish as it is.

Still it is better than the sneering, superiority complex the author of this post has.

Good article, I rolled my eyes when I saw this story in the paper (again: it seems to turn up every few months) and I’m glad someone responded to it here.

@ 2 and 3

All this article really says is that a Britain where whites are not an absolute majority would not be a bad thing. Care to explain why you find that so objectionable?

Sorry, 6 should have direct to 2 and 4.

Galen 10,

Isn’t narcissi the plural – one unit of self-regard should be one narcissus.

And Chaise – as far as I can see neither Trofim or Galen10 are likely to object to a non-white Britain, but were instead picking up on the tone of smug rightousness they (or at least Trofim) read in the article…

Well that’s simply not true. I’m not under threat. I’m intensely relaxed about it all.

Congratulations, your Oscar for Best White Liberal is in the post. Don’t cry too much when receiving it.

By the way, those forms asking for people’s ethnicity are racist. Nobody should fill them in.

Care to explain why you find that so objectionable?

Er because nobody has been asked whether they want this and when they object people scream raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacist at them?

I would have no objection to being in a “racial” minority.

However as a gay man I would have a great big objection if such a change also brought about greater social intolerance.

Looking at this story for example:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_un_gays

In favor of the amendment to remove sexual orientation from the resolution on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions (79):
Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belize, Benin, Botswana, Brunei Dar-Sala, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, China, Comoros, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Republic of Tanzania, Uzbekistan, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

bruno,

Wouldn’t objecting to people of another skin colour becoming the majority be, by definition, raaaaaacist?

wow i thought it was just me who had problems with those “equal ops” forms. As a “black male” (can i say that?), born in England I find it amusing when i see the different varients these so called “politicaly correct” brigade put on these forms. Should I put:
Black
Black British
Black Carribean
Black African
Black Irish
Black European
Black other?
These people only create these rules to cause more divisions in society.
Judge me for what I do not for what I am please.

7

So there was no need for all the flim flam describing how the OP is above the base instincts of the masses. ‘Lets all rise above our skin colour, after all I’m white and I can do it.’

And it is wrong anyway. The basis for the claim of ‘White-British’ being a minority was the product of dodgy research and dodgy methodology. Why not query why research is being conducted that appears to be deliberately fanning the flames of misinformation, division and stereotyping?

Such a post would be useful and there would be no need for tortuous retellings of one man’s heroism.

@ 10

“Er because nobody has been asked whether they want this and when they object people scream raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacist at them?”

LOL. Truth hurts, apparently.

“because nobody has been asked whether they want this ”

Nobody has been asked whether they want flexible exchange rates, funding for the royal opera house, or frank lampard in the england team.

We have a representative democracy, and whilst the electoral system does discriminate against small parties, polls overwhlemingly show absolute disgust to the one political party proposing measures to keep the UK majority white. Put a series of concrete proposals (i.e. actual policies designed to achieve this rather than vague whinging ‘something must be done’ style) to do this on a referendum and they would be overwhelmingly rejected.

“So there was no need for all the flim flam describing how the OP is above the base instincts of the masses. ‘Lets all rise above our skin colour, after all I’m white and I can do it.’”

Where does it say that? All I can see is that he says he’s “intensely relaxed”, which is acceptably minor auto-trumpeting.

“And it is wrong anyway. The basis for the claim of ‘White-British’ being a minority was the product of dodgy research and dodgy methodology. Why not query why research is being conducted that appears to be deliberately fanning the flames of misinformation, division and stereotyping?.”

Cool: go ahead and write the article! I agree that would be useful, but so is pointing out that the very thing that makes this (true of otherwise) newsworthy is racism?

@ 16

Also, I see problems with a “what percentage of the population shall we make white?” vote, not to mentioning enforcing the decision.

8

Thanks.

I do actually find it a tad self-congratulatory and “right on”, but have no huge issue with it.

..and of course correction is justified…altho for some reason 1 narcissi of self regards seems to sound better than 1 narcissus.

@18.

Can you imagine the kind of state you’d have to have for it to be possible to maintain a fixed percentage of the population as one ethnicity?

The biggest growing category is ‘mixed race’ which somewhat implies that, far from being an issue of concern, people are more than just relaxed about having different ethnic groups living in the same country.

“because nobody has been asked whether they want this ”

Asked if they want what exactly? For people with a different skin colour to live in the same country? Or people who have the same skin colour but come from a different country originally? I don’t understand what you want to be asked about.

Surely if you want to live in a country where the skin colour / birth country ratio is kept artificially in favour of people who happen to be pinkish rather than brownish and happen to have been born on a bit of soil we happen to call Britain then you are racist, (I think there is a website that kind of agrees with you here. Google BNP)?

@ 20

“Can you imagine the kind of state you’d have to have for it to be possible to maintain a fixed percentage of the population as one ethnicity?”

Not without Godwinning.

“The biggest growing category is ‘mixed race’ which somewhat implies that, far from being an issue of concern, people are more than just relaxed about having different ethnic groups living in the same country.”

Yep! And what’s the betting that the survey treats all mixed-race people, even those with 7/8 white great-grandparents, as non-white?

For those race predictions to come true, there will have to be a lot of inter-racial relationships.

Has anyone told the blacks and Asians that they need to start making friends yet?

Has anyone told the blacks and Asians that they need to start making friends yet?

Are you saying blacks and Asians have no friends? That’s not very nice…

Dontcha just love it when the red top comics get all in a lather about stuff like this?

As though Britain…or more exactly England…was ever the home of some ethnically pure Anglo-Saxon volkish culture. They need to read some history.

Are you saying you can’t read Sunny?

Friends with each other, in the romantic relationship sense.

Friends with each other, in the romantic relationship sense.

oh wait, you were actually saying that blacks and Asians hate each other and don’t “make friends”… right. So, where’s your data to back this up?

Are you trying to pretend there isn’t a vicious streak of anti-black racism among some Asians, and vice versa?

cjcjc @11, quite.

I couldn’t care less what skin colour people are.

I do care what their ‘culture’ is.

Galen10,

..and of course correction is justified…altho for some reason 1 narcissi of self regards seems to sound better than 1 narcissus.

I doubt anyone worth measuring would only have 1 narcissus of self-regards…

I myself undoubtedly have a small garden of them (hence my ability to use “I myself”). Hence I am happy to show off my ‘liberal’ (I am not sure why not being racist should be considered liberal as opposed to just plain normal…) credentials about race. Perhaps we all are, by commenting on this thread…

29

Just out of interest… why do you care?

We obviously don’t want to go down the Dubai road of demographic change.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G–pYzttkY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZdKZd5Em7A

There are pockets of that in Britain already. Exploited illegal workers. The Chinese cockle pickers who died in Morecambe Bay. The Indian students who were handing out the free evening newspapers outside tube stations and living in overcrowded slum conditions in east London. The factory workers from India I have seen in sandwich and food processing plants in north west London.

What is it that stops Britain from being like Dubai? Having a managable trickle of immigration as opposed to what Dubai has done, where foreign workers from poor countries are the majority?

Skin colour doesn’t matter, but culture and rates of change does I think.
In the Central African Republic, the majority of the population believe in witches.
Surely you could only have a small number of people from the CAR moving to Britain in any given period, otherwise it would be more difficult to integrate them into British life.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=unreported+world+witches&aq=f

Galen10,

Just out of interest… why do you care?

Sufficient numbers of people who practice intolerance or are satisfied to interfere with liberties we tend to take for granted could make life unpleasant for people on our island. We saw this with the last Labour government!

But by the time you get to 91 many of the non-pink uns will be third generation indigenous, more British than the Brits etc

33

I don’t think the the practice of intolerance and interference with liberties attributable to New Labour was a product of a “culture” per se.

Or do you mean you fear that an influx of people with a different “cuture” could cause or exacerbate existing tendencies in that direction?

Galen10,

Let us take cjcjc’s example of homosexuality. Can you deny a large influx of people from cultures where this is regarded as sinful would be a good thing in any way?

Likewise women’s rights – can you deny that there are certain cultural groups within Britain that effectively deny these, and that a large influx of others with these views would put effective women’s rights in jepordy.

Now I am happy to take anyone who wants to be British (without much definition) regardless of origins or skin colour. I would not really want to live in a country filled with those who neither wanted to be British nor wanted to respect the rights of others to be themselves and equal. And that is the risk with mass immigration.

In all honesty I think said risk is unlikely – many who come here come because they want to be in Britain, not to transfer their own culture – and so long as we can stop propping up the old men with beards and the hidden gossips who maintain ‘communities’, I am happy that most immigrants will integrate so my concerns above are not needed. Hence I am pretty relaxed on immigration – but the risk should always be remembered, especially as it suits some political figures of all bents to divide communities up into groups based on ethnicity or colour or religion, and thus to hinder integration.

@ 34

Exactly.

Galen10,

I don’t think the the practice of intolerance and interference with liberties attributable to New Labour was a product of a “culture” per se.

I’m using “culture” very broadly (because I can’t think of a more appropriate word).

Or do you mean you fear that an influx of people with a different “cuture” could cause or exacerbate existing tendencies in that direction?

Yes, that’s more along the lines of my ‘thinking’ – you’ve put it more eloquently. However, I think it’s unlikely; it seems to me that there are insufficient immigrants of a kind to cause a problem significantly larger than currently posed by the people already here*. I just think we should keep an eye on it – it’s something to be aware of, not be concerned about. I think people forget that not everyone is tolerant and mindful of the liberty of other people.

* An acquaintance said gays and adulterous women should be stoned to death; then again, I’ve known rather more racists and homophobes.

I assumed right from the start that this statistic would be one of those “if this trend continues…..” types.

The labour share of the vote has increased since May. If this trend continues, there will be no Conservative or LD MPs at the next election.

Translated into tabloid-speak “There will be a one-party state after the next election!

My wife’s father was from Guyana and his skin colour was pretty dark.

My wife’s mother was from Wales and her skin colour was much lighter.

My children have lighter skin colours than my wife.

I tell you this to explain why I have never ticked any box on any form asking for details of the “ethnicity” of my children and I have assumed that anyone interested in such information must be a racist.

Because my children (and everyone elses) are people, not ethnic statistics.

I think there`s a lot of sense in challenging what we mean by the white indigenous people of Britain.My ancestors appear to be a mixture of IberoCeltic and Norse but since the end of the last Ice Age people have have been drifting into Britain from Asia and the Middle East through continental Europe so we can`t talk sensibly about a race of white Britons who were here from time immemorial.
I like the idea that Britain is now an avowedly multi-racial society but I am resistant to multiculturalism and mass immigration without a proper democratic debate….and democracy and debate are both forbidden in our global capitalist controlled dictatorship.
As for the idea that we are tolerant and hospitable…..don`t make me laugh….just try resisting the bully-boys who enforce our dictatorship`s rules through their beloved BBC! To be tolerant one must be free to be intolerant….and we aren`t!
If any of you is cabable of reading anything that contradicts your received witchfinder prejudices perhaps an article by David Coleman in the current edition of Prospect magazine would expand your thinking…..but I won`t hold my breath!

jim evans,

If any of you is cabable of reading anything that contradicts your received witchfinder prejudices …

If you are happy to assume the conclusion why bother entering the discussion? Do you seriously expect anyone to engage with your hostility?

Have a lovely weekend.

36

No I wouldn’t see it as a good thing at all; altho it’s more about what the individual believes rather than generalising that as they are from a particular culture they will necessarily adhere to all the cultural taboo’s of the culture.

I think in general terms we’re in violent agreement.

jim,

Are there two of you? The first two paragraphs were reasoned and sensible, but then you slip into conspiracy theory mode…

There are very few of the witch-finder types around here, and they are normally easy to dismiss. However, people do hold different views and will challenge you on them – if you are serious about debating, accept this.

41

You se..there you go again. The first paragraph is unexceptional; reasonable even. Then it all goes a bit Pete Tong doesn’t it?

You may “believe” that democracy and debate are verboten…but it certainly isn’t that obvious to me.

Who are these bully boy’s enforcing the rules of this putative dictatorhip you feel exists through the BBC? Even if you think the BBC has faults, it’s widely regarded as pretty estimable around the world, not just here. That just makes you sound like Tebbit and the worst of the Tory right insisting that the BBC is a nest of commies.

The freedom to be intolerant…hmmnnn..yes, up to a point. There is a real debate to be had around the concept of “no platform for racists”, or whether certain extreme groups should be banned, or tolerated so we can keep an eye on them and ridicule them more easily….. but lets not be so tolerant that we tolerate intolerance is also a defensible position.

You have a way of appealing to reason, but then spoiling it by going off on one in terms which would make Nick Griffin’s good eye twitch.

44

… snap

“nd democracy and debate are both forbidden in our global capitalist controlled dictatorship.”

Exactly. Thats why both you and I – for the crime of debating on the internet – are currently languishing in a gulag in mid wales, looking forward to 15 years of hard labour.

Planeshift,

When did they put the internet connection in the gulags. Undoes all my good work tracking down debaters and getting them locked up without trial. I was sure that once I tracked down Sally we would hear the last of her!

What do you mean that I’ve blown my cover? Oh bugger…

44

“jim,

Are there two of you? The first two paragraphs were reasoned and sensible, but then you slip into conspiracy theory mode…”

Actually, now that I think about it more…. it could be that jim is a “cut and shunt” (yes..SHunt)… one personality is Mr Reasonable social worker, the other Mr Tinfoilhat conspiracy theorist?

It would explain a lot!

Anton Vowl, you link directly to a page that calls this professor a eugenicist.
Is he? He belongs to something called The Galen Institute I believe. I’m not really informed enough about it to really have a clear opinion on it. Do you?
There was a campaign by some Oxford students to have him sacked from his job at Oxford University.

As Britain is considered by many people to be a racist country, with the Metropolitan Black Police Association calling the Met police ”institutionally racist” for example, then changing demographics have to be managed well.
http://operationblackvote.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/blair-racism-is-alive-and-kicking/

http://www.obv.org.uk/news-blogs/sewell-blame-black-boys-underachievement

Segregation can creep in if people are not paying attention to what is happening on the ground.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8881030.stm
And it’s good that Oldham council is doing something about it by building new schools which will be deliberately integrated.

This Dispatches programme about the textile sweatshops of Leicester, was also a warning at what can go on unseen in the Dubai like parallel world of exploited workers and the black economy.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-75/episode-1

All the people in the Dispatches film, (the exploiters and the exploited) were of South Asian origin. Many of them illegal immigrants from the Subcontinent.

UKLiberty….are you for multiculturalism or not?
I see it as a form of multi-apartheid in which I am expected to pay taxes and tolerate people who are free to arrive here and disrespect my culture while I am expressly forbidden to challenge theirs.
Look folks…..here`s a little ray of reality to conjour with….the truth is we are part of an American empire which goes way beynd them ripping us off financially and running our media and politics…it also extends to what sort of immigration policy we have and it`s particulary strong on imposing a “lawyer culture” which the Blairs exemplify perfectly.
Blair conspired with clinton to deregulate our financial systems and allow American style mass immigration from his expanded EU and beyond.Mrs Blair cleaned up financially by acting as an immigration lawyer……and see how rich they are now.
This is not a democracy…..and if you could open your minds you would see that!

cjcjc:

‘However as a gay man I would have a great big objection if such a change also brought about greater social intolerance.’

Tolerance of intolerance is just intolerance by proxy. Glad to see Searchlight is now tackling fascism in all its guises.

Galen…I have come to the conclusion that you are a sincere person who is genuinely confused by the apparent inconsistency of my comments….and at times I share your confusion.
Psychologically it seems we are all a composite of different personalities so you maybe right about me.
All I can say is that long ago in the early part of my career I realised that most left wingers are endlessly tolerant of fascism and right-wing ideas if the people expressing them just happen to be religious or of another racial/ethnic/national origin….however long they have been here.
BUT …and here we do have a split personality approach….the same lefties openly express a hatred of any white British person who dares to want to live in his “community” or express the sort of cultural intolerance we hear towards Jews from the Muslims or the attitudes towards women in Muslim communities…for example.
Multiculturalism will eventually cause deep social divivisions because it`s based on the subjugation of indigenous culture and the supremacy of minority cultures.

BBE: Are you trying to pretend there isn’t a vicious streak of anti-black racism among some Asians, and vice versa?

Who said there wasn’t? But that doesn’t tally with your assertion that blacks and Asians don’t mingle. There’s also a vicious anti-black racism amongst whites. There’s also a lot of mixed-race relationships.

Why should other cultures take over the secular and social democratic Britain I was born into in ?If this was an African nation having its civilisation and indigenous people cleansed and bullied you folks would be complaining about the racism and denial of human rights.You only have to look at Zimbabwe and South Africa and Nigeria to see that there`s a distinct advantage to having one clearly dominant western culture in a nation.

You know as well as I do Sunny that for many Asian parents it’s ‘no BMWs’ – Blacks, Muslims or Whites.

Everyone ‘mingles’. My point is that by the time whites are ever a minority, there’ll be tears shed by the black and Asian race purists too.

Boo hoo.

53

Perhaps you really aren’t a psychotic crazy.. I honestly hope not.

I’d dispute your assertion (‘cos honestly, that’s all it amounts to) that left wing = tolerant of fascism if it’s politcally correct to do so, and the ones doing it are coffee coloured/muslim/wear unusual clothes.

It’s just a total travesty of anything that would actually happen in the real world. The fact that you so earnestly believe it doesn’t make it so.. any more than intelligent design is rendered more respectable by the fervour of its adherents.

It isn’t only lefties who would express hatred of the type of attitude you posit (which looks alot like apartheid incidentally), plenty of people on the right and centre would be appalled too.

The fact that certain muslims or anyone else are capable of terrible statement or actions doesn’t validat your prejudice (for that IS what we are talking about here), anymore than saying ALL WASP’s in England are resposible for the slave trade, imperialism and the genocide of indigenous peoples around the world.

History and life are complicated. Your views are not, and are all the more dangerous as a result.

Multiculturalism is here to stay whether you like it ir not. Sure it has problems, but for the sake of your sanity (and respectability) lay off the rivers of blood crap: it wasn’t true when Enoch first spat it out, and it isn’t more convincing for the repetition.

Your indigenous culture isn’t at risk: Sharia law isn’t imminent, the green flags of jihad will not be flying over Wstminster. It’s a fervid delusion which you must have picked up somewhere..and wherever it was, you should turn around and walk towards the light instead.

The Dr.Strangelove act does you no favours, and swamps any nuggets of sense lie buried in the layers of bile.

OK Galen….I give up….there`s a nice living to be made peddling your sophistries and nothing but persecution and abuse for folk like me.
Do the maths yourself though….how long before you and the Toynbees and Chakrabartis have so many disparate “communities” here that all your charmless fascist buddies start hacking the rest of us to death in the street?
If you have children at least consider them and their future while you minceabout on the moral high-ground with Che and the rest of our New Enlightenment.
Fingers crossed you are right and I am wrong…..but I doubt it.
I have to go now…because of other committments…so you can all sneer at my receding back to your heart`s content! Best Wishes…despite our differences.

Jim Evans – I urge you to disseminate your remarkably lucid and well-reasoned ideas as widely as possible. Surely, with such stalwart opposition, the dictatorial left-wing fascist triumvirate of the BBC, ethnic minorities, and Polly Toynbee cannot endure for long!

Have you considered printing out some literature and handing it out on street corners? I’m sure that the combination of your admirable command of logic and reason along with your winning personality must be even more convincing in person.

These forms often ask “please tick the box which you feel you belong to. Although I am white, I often tick “Afro Caribbean” because on some days I feel really funky.

Damon: He belongs to something called The Galen Institute I believe. I’m not really informed enough about it to really have a clear opinion on it. Do you?

You spend a lot of time digging out links for others damon, but you don’t seem to read into the ones offered to you. More on the Galon Institute here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/mar/16/watchingdavidcoleman1

Anthony Barnett @34

But by the time you get to 91 many of the non-pink uns will be third generation indigenous, more British than the Brits etc

My bet would be that will probably be the case.
But what is the bulwark that stops the more backward aspects of ”third world” cultures spreading here? I just watched another Unreported World on Channel 4.
From India, and the plight of young couples who dare to fall in love agaist the wishes of their community.
Why should the culture of the Khap panchayats not prosper here too in the future?
http://www.google.co.uk/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=1G1SMSN_ENUK407&q=Khap+Panchayat

This was the programme.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/unreported-world/episode-guide/series-2010/episode-18

Unreported World shows how things are, and how complacent we can be to think that a seven hour aeroplane journey somehow makes all that backwardness fall away from a person from cultures like that, arriving at Heathrow.

I understand that LC is a political blog, and that this post might be going against the line it likes to push, but I only raise it as part of the debate.

But what is the bulwark that stops the more backward aspects of ”third world” cultures spreading here?

Personally, I’m very confident that secular British culture is sufficiently appealing on its own merits that, faced with the choice between that and the beliefs of their parents (where those beliefs are of the reactionary and unpleasant sort you’re referring to – in many cases they are very much not, and indeed many people emigrate to Britain specifically in order to enjoy our secular culture and escape the repressions endemic in their home countries), far more children of immigrants will embrace the former than the latter. The only way I think anybody could prevent this would be to convince them that secular British culture is the preserve of people who hate them.

Do you not share that confidence? Do you not believe that secular British culture can survive and thrive on its own merits?

Sunny @ 61

I disagree with the article you link to. Using the Galton Institute (aka Eugenics Society)’s use of the word eugenics to imply they are a racist organisation is a bit like saying the United Negro College Fund is racist. They’re both historical uses of words that are jarring now because they have since changed their meaning.

Eugenics was not always a dirty word, and a lot of things that you and I both support, such as family planning, birth control and liberal abortion policies, were part of the eugenic movement’s aims. The people who supported that were no more responsible for the forced sterilisations or the holocaust than democratic socialists were for Stalin’s purges.

Coleman sounds like a piece of work, but the Galton Institute doesn’t have anything to do with that. MigrationWatch, on the other hand…

@ 63 Dunc – what you said.

Richard Dawkins makes the nice point that it is meaningless to talk of a “Muslim baby” or a “Christian baby”. If kids from whatever parental or cultural background grow up in a secular, rational society they will, I hope, increasingly make up their own minds about their cultural and ethical preferences. That may mean a difficult break with one’s parents and their culture.

But it is a mistake to think that individuals or groups are forever fixed in their positions, and isn’t it the exciting thing of being a “liberal” to encourage that stuff about making up your mind rationally? And as it’s about promoting secular rationality, then like Citizen Vowl who started us off, I don’t care about pigmentation.

(However, as an aside, cannot “ethnic monitoring” have a valuable role in identifying discrimination in corporate or state functions – ie in identifying an irrational mindset or practice?)

Sorry if this is a bit stream of consciousness …

Yes and no Dunc. The way you put it was the positive spin and the way I put it was the negitive. I only bring up the negitive for the sake of argument.
This was an alarming story on Sunny’s other site back in January, about drug addiction in Punjab.
http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/7274
Some of those people obviously end up in Britain as we have seen in reports like this on BBC London.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7505574.stm

Coming to Britain without transferable qualifacations or a skill, dumps you right at the bottom and living in the squalor of bedsitland and only the minimum wage to look foreward to.
And that’s for people who are legal.

Sunny, I had seen that CiF piece, but even reading the links of of it, it really doesn’t show us the real dirt on this Professor Coleman. (One link wouldn’t work).
What the Galton Institute promotes that is so terrible, I cant quite figure out.

Or is it just the word eugenics that has him guilty as charged?
It’s difficult to get to the bottom of his offence which so upset some students at Oxford that they camppaigned to have him sacked.

But I do notice in that CiF piece that it says that :

First, we know that: a) Coleman is a eugenicist; and b) he is against immigration. He is, of course, in the company of many supporters of immigration controls who would not consider themselves racists (although many of us believe that immigration controls are inherently racist, and explicable only by racism). But the likelihood is that Coleman’s opposition to immigration is driven by a more extreme and conscious desire than is the case with most people to preserve some kind of notional purity of British stock.

It clearly states he is against immigration.

And yet in his own words in the Prospect article, he says this:

Public disquiet at the scale of immigration into Britain featured strongly in the last general election campaign, and almost certainly helped to decide its outcome. Despite that, most of us realise that migration for work, family, retirement, study and other purposes is normal and desirable in any civilised country.

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/11/when-britain-becomes-majority-minority/

“When did they put the internet connection in the gulags.”

That John Hirst is a fucking good lawyer

There are many different kinds of needles on the market, from plain plastic needles to metal, glass, bamboo, woods and many other materials. There are straight needles and circular needles (not to mention double-pointed needles). All of this can be pretty confusing to a beginner. How do you know what needle is right for you?

First, go needle shopping with a project in mind. When you’re a more experienced knitter just looking to build up your supplies, you can buy needles with no particular project in mind, but when you’re first starting out, it’s best to buy only the needles you need.

The pattern you choose will say what sized needle was used to complete the project. That’s the size needle you should go looking for. At your local yarn shop or craft store, there will be a limited number of materials for each type of needle, probably plastic, metal and bamboo or wood.

Different knitters like different needles for different reasons. Many knitters love bamboo or wooden needles because of their warmth, the natural feel in the hands, and the comforting but quiet clicking sound they make. They’re also good for knitting slick yarns because the needles have a bit of friction, which can help keep the stitches from sliding off the needles. Wooden needles are a great choice for beginners for the same reason.

Metal needles are heavy, sturdy and hard to break. Their slickness makes for quick knitting, but can also make it easy to slide your work right off the needles. Metal needles are also cold, so they’re not great for knitting in the winter. The metallic clicking of these needles is also annoying to some.

Plastic needles are similar to wooden or bamboo needles in terms of lightness and smoothness, but they lack warmth. They’re also very smooth like metal needles so they allow you to knit quickly. They are more flexible than other needles.

Try out different needles to see which kind you like. Odds are you’ll have a favorite in no time!

Well, buck damp leather. That’s a marvellous post. One can’t help feeling that there is some deep metaphorical meaning to it all, but – perhaps I’m just obtuse – I can’t quite work it out. Could you extrapolate, please, if possible, without using the word “needle”?

Y’see, Jim at 58 pretty much sums up the paranoid-majority mindset. Aside from his bizarre stuff about our “fascist buddies”, you get crap like this:

“OK Galen….I give up….there`s a nice living to be made peddling your sophistries and nothing but persecution and abuse for folk like me.”

He thinks anyone who disagrees with him must be paid to do so, yes, but that’s a minor point. What really annoys me is that this guy has probably never been persecuted in his life, unless being called a bigot for being a bigot is persecution. He’s probably one of those who thinks that “freedom of speech” means that nobody’s allowed to contradict him.

58

“Do the maths yourself though….how long before you and the Toynbees and Chakrabartis have so many disparate “communities” here that all your charmless fascist buddies start hacking the rest of us to death in the street?”

Errmm..which buddies is it that are the charmless fascists again (I’d have thought all fascists were charmless)?

Your “weltanschauung” seems so peculiar it is kind of hard to tell. Your cassandra like predictions of us being hacked to death in the streets are simply a less erudite re-hash of Enoch’s “rivers of blood” speech. As has been pointed out before, it wasn’t true then, it isn’t true now, and it isn’t going to happen in the future.

“f you have children at least consider them and their future while you minceabout on the moral high-ground with Che and the rest of our New Enlightenment.”

I do have children, and I’m pretty sanguine about the future for her in a multicultural, tolerant, largely secular society. I don’t recognise your fervid imaginings of the current situation, still less the delusional nightmare you seem so sure lies ahead.

Why you think I, or anyone else you lump together in your imagined “New Enlightenment”, mince about is beyond on me but the implied homophobia appears symptomatic of your bigotry and intolerance. This is bad enough in itself, but particularly worrying in someone claiming to be a social worker. I pity the poor unfortunates unlucky enough to have you as a case worker.

“I have to go now…because of other committments…so you can all sneer at my receding back to your heart`s content! Best Wishes…despite our differences.”

We’re not sneering at you, we’re sneering at your views, your ignorance and your inability to see your warped view has no basis. Surely you could expect little else on a left of centre site? In truth, you are more to be pitied than disliked; your view of life seems so bleak and so divorced from reality that I actually feel sorry for you, but I’m not really that interested in “troll feeding”.

No doubt there are plenty of other web sites where your views would be welcome; here they just aren’t!

Professor David Coleman certainly has a negative agenda in my opinion.
Writing the way he does and the way Migration Watch do, they know that what they say will be picked up by the most reactionary media.
Even the words he uses about how white British people will be ”a minority in their own country” are inflamatory, shrill …. and even racist I’d say.
”In their own country”? What an utterly stupid thing to say.

However, I wasn’t that convinced by the hatchet job done against this professor of demographics. I don’t know that much about the Galton Institute, and I have to ask you (who might read this) do you?
Sunny linked particularly to this CiF piece:
”Watching David Coleman
The co-founder of Migration Watch wishes to persuade us he is the victim of a smear campaign. But what about his views on eugenics?”

But having read it, I’m not really any the wiser. I did find the readers comments under the piece more informative though and many of them say that it was a terrible article.
This was one of them.

downsman
16 March 2007 1:07PM

A quick look at the Galton Institute website suggests its officers are, like Steve Jones, engaged in biological and genetic issues rather than in creepy extreme-right politics. Its ‘links’ section is lengthy but singularly lacking in links to political organisations or pressure-groups, with no mention of MigrationWatch.

The allegation that it changed its name from the Eugenics Institute could be deployed as Ms Hayter does, to suggest it wants to conceal its true interests. But could it possibly be that it genuinely wants to distance itself from simplistic assumptions that it is little more than a scientific cover for Nazi ideas?

I disagree with MigrationWatch, but its views and findings should be challenged by open debate, not by smear and innuendo. Anyhow, the policies by which we admit immigrants currently could be said to be racist and eugenic, could they not? After all we have chosen to join the white EU, thus guaranteeing a steady flow of white immigrants from other parts of it. And we also insist on either evidence of superior qualifications for work or substantial capital resources in non-EU immigrants. These would both satisfy any test of ‘indirect discrimination’.

Ms Hayter’s heart may be in the right place but her views, in 2007, just feel a little old-fashioned. I am quite happy to have MigrationWatch as one pole of an evidence-based debate on this issue. At least their arguments are based on research findings and published statistics, not personal smears.

When talking about the future, or how things might actually as far as immigration and multi-culturalism and or melting pot scenarios work out, I really don’t like spin either way.
Talking things up or talking things down.
Even in Barack Obama’s America, there are tens of thousands of Mexicans and Central Americans being deported on special deportation flights. That is the sign of a desperate situation that has been ongoing in the US for decades, and everything doesn’t necessarily end up in some rosy happy future.

I read this guy talking about ”Mexifornia” years ago. I even have his book by the same title. You don’t have to agree or like the way he writes, but there will always be a substantial proportion of the population who look for the negatives.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_2_do_we_want.html

I think that not everything he says can be dismissed. But maybe the real blame lies in the form of capitalism they practice in the US. Where urban sprawl and endless suburbs killed off aspects of community that this guy remembers from the 50′s and 60′s.

I don’t need to mention though that Mexico is now a seriously disturbed society, with violence endemic. Just over the river from El Paso in Texas, hundreds of women are being murdered for some horrible reason – plain murderous misogyny probably.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_homicides_in_Ciudad_Ju%C3%A1rez

@36

Let us take cjcjc’s example of homosexuality. Can you deny a large influx of people from cultures where this is regarded as sinful would be a good thing in any way?

One would hope that continued exposure to the irreffutable fact that having so much supposed “permissiveness” in our society has thus far brought down upon the UK precisely *zero* events of supernatural damnation and destruction would eventually help a majority of such people to see things in less stark terms. Personally I’m pretty certain that would be the case.

Two things irritate me immensely about coming to anti-immigration conclusions via that road. Firstly we have the assumption that most if not all immigrants belonging to a particular culture are strictly adherent to that culture, and secondly we have the assumption that cultures themselves are immutable. Both of these assumptions are easily disproven anecdotally and statistically – by way of example, in our own culture cjcjc’s sexual orientation would have seen him branded a criminal if he had expressed it openly less than fifty years ago.

In more general terms, I think what we’re seeing both in terms of anti-immigrant rhetoric from our own shores and in terms of intolerance from a minority of immigrants is the dark side of nostalgia – or a desire to put things back the way they were in the past when some felt they were happier, more secure, or both. Instinctively, humans fear change – possibly because of an evolutionary trait that should long have been consigned to history, or possibly due to a psychological truism that change tends to lead to entropy and – eventually – death. Either way it’s something that only reason can conquer and I hope one day it will.

bluepillnation

One would hope that continued exposure to the irreffutable fact that having so much supposed “permissiveness” in our society has thus far brought down upon the UK precisely *zero* events of supernatural damnation and destruction would eventually help a majority of such people to see things in less stark terms. Personally I’m pretty certain that would be the case.

I’m not pretty certain, but I would be hopeful that might be the case.

These people might say that was patronising though.
The guy in the first video clip is now banned from Britain because of his extreme views, but he seems very popular with the London audience.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=global+peace+and+unity&aq=o

Talking things up – talking things down. While I agree about always trying to look on the bright side, one shouldn’t be complacent either. Oldham council is having to make a new integrated academy school, because of racial segregation in some of its other state schools.

We see from American cities the huge problems of integration and racism that have gone on for decades. And still go on. Baltimore didn’t look too harmonious in The Wire tv series. And the recent election for the mayor of Tower Hamlets council in London, where the Bangladeshi community (who make up a third of the borough’s population) were able to get an independent candidate elected over the Labour man, also raised some isues about integration and diversity. It was a block vote by a minority of the population.
I’ve lived in a divided society in Belfast most of this year, and although people aren’t at each other’s throats, there are walls up between many neighbourhoods, and occasional communal violence.
Time doesn’t seem to be such a great healer, because there are fundamental differences outstanding. One part of the community is determined to abolish the state which the other part of the community cherish. So you have a kind of stalemate.
Even though when you go into the shiny city centre, everything looks normal and calm.

I hope I’m not being too negative, but I just look at the problems of divided societies – like South Africa still, or Brazil with its terrible inequality and social issues of crime, poverty and violence. You can’t know how the future will be. It doesn’t always get better. Sometimes things stagnate.

@74

I understand what yo’ure trying to say – but the examples you bring up are very disparate in terms of the conditions that led to where they are now. Starting with the US, and in particular the southern states (Baltimore in particular is known as “the nortmernmost Southern city”), the integration followed a century or so of slavery basd on racial grounds, followed by a brutal civil war and then a long, slow process of attempting to provide equal civil rights to all citizens regardless of racial origin. The writers of The Wire make no bones about the fact that they were in part aiming to make a political statement – one in favour of increasing understanding and promoting equality, mind – with the show. The books on which the show is based (Homicide : A Year On The Killing Streets and The Corner) show a much more nuanced picture – especially in the case of the latter and I highly recommend reading both. It’s also worth pointing out that Homicide was written in 1988, when things were a lot more tense in racial terms than they are now, and some of the stories in The Wire are therefore telling a story from 1988 in a the context of the early 2000s. Things are getting better in terms of racial relations there, and while the crime situation is still not a good one, it is factors such as poverty that are primarily driving that.

South Africa, again, is suffering from the fallout of a long period of legally sanctioned racism – a period that ended much more recently than the civil rights unrest in the US – combined with a severe disparity in wealth which will continue for a long time. Brazil, like many Central and South American countries, is dealing with its own problems related to a political system that was skewed heavily in favour of the wealthy, backed by money from the US.

None of these even remotely compare to the situation we have in the UK, where the first major wave of immigration from the Commonwealth was by invitation with the intent of offering citizenship to those who would willingly come here to work. And as for those who try to fan the flames of intolerance within their community, it’s worth remembering that our entire country’s population is still primarily of white European origin and despite that, and despite a significant (though I hope dwindling) number of people who secretly harbour sympathies for the BNP and their ilk, they’ve never had so much as a sniff of real political influence in the decades since the Windrush made port.

In short, it’s a slow process – and there will be peaks and troughs, but inch by inch things are improving – despite the best efforts of the right-wing press – and that’s a thought that keeps me warm in bed during the cold winter months.

As an aside, the series widely considered The Wire’s predecessor is called Homicide : Life On The Street. The series as a whole is excellent, but one of the standout later episodes is called “Finnegan’s Wake”. It deals primarily with new evidence coming to light on a cold case from the ’30s – but the heart of the story is the retired homicide detective who last worked the case, who they go to for advice. His whole character is a study on how police and society’s attitude towards race and crime have changed in the latter half of the 20th century – for example, the drinks to celebrate the successful closing of the case come to an awkward end when he drunkenly lets a racial epithet slip.

Of course, we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that we are talking about fiction here, even if it is based on real-life experience.

Some random observations about immigration:

1. Both sides of the immigration debate say they are being persecuted, that their point of view is “taboo” or “forbidden”. They are of course both wrong; the proof of this is that you can find all shades of opinion regarding immigration on the internet, and the debate isn’t restricted at all (or hardly at all) by the British state. The truth is that immigration is a controversial issue (like many political issues) and because of that, whatever view you express you’ll find some people strongly disagreeing with you.

2. The debate is often rather childishly polarised into two simplistic camps: “immigration is good” and “immigration is bad”. The truth is that some immigration is good for Britain, and some isn’t; that some immigration (a higher proportion, obviously) is good for the immigrants and some isn’t; and that the British state should do what is in the interests of Britain, i.e. let in those would-be immigrants who it’s in our interests to let in, but not the others.

3. Forms that ask people their ethnicity often give confusing options which suggest that the person originating the form doesn’t have a clear idea in their head of what ethnicity is. For example, I recently filled in one where one of the options was “white”; although I am white, I didn’t tick this because white isn’t an ethnicity (it’s a race), therefore it can’t be my ethnicity.

4. The article says “Britain is more of a cultural than a racial identity” and
cicic (@11) says “as a gay man I would have a great big objection if such a change also brought about greater social intolerance”. I think culture rather than race is the nub of the issue. My preferred solution would be that all persons wishing to migrate here would be asked a series of questions to find out whether they are a bigot. People giving the wrong answers wouldn’t be let in, people giving the right answers would be required to sign an oath saying that they aren’t bigoted against XYZ groups and promising that if they ever change their mind they’ll leave the country or report to the nearest police station for deportation.

Of course, people could lie, but if they did they’d have to keep up that pretense for the rest of their time in the UK, which would have mostly the same affect as them genuinely not being bigoted.

Of course, people could lie, but if they did they’d have to keep up that pretense for the rest of their time in the UK, which would have mostly the same affect as them genuinely not being bigoted.

Why stop at immigrants?

Why not question the indigenous population and deport any that refused to aver they were not bigoted?

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

after all.

@77

Couple of points I’d like to take up with your post above.

1) While we should of course keep the national interest in mind, what about humanitarian interest? If we let in people who, for whatever reason, are expected to be a net drain on the economy (old folks perhaps) or represent a slight threat due to their demographic grouping, but if returned to their country are likely to face torture, murder or subjugation, I’m cool with that.

2) I’m very uncomfortable with deciding whether or not someone can live here based on what we think of their politics. I can see the benefit, but I think your system would firstly make it easy to use immigration as a long-term tool for boosting the party in power’s share of the vote (more so than some believe it already is) and secondly create a two-tier system where some people have freedom of speech and others don’t. I don’t like the idea of having second-class citizenship.

@78

Why not question the indigenous population and deport any that refused to aver they were not bigoted?

Because it would be a terrible waste of taxpayers’ money to run DNA tests on every white person in the UK in order to ask those of pure Anglo blood that question – and I suspect that the number of people eligible to be asked that question (and therefore “indigenous”) would be somewhere around bugger all.

What always makes me laugh about the way white racists throw the term “indigenous” around is that every single one of them has a mish-mash of Anglo-Saxon, French, Celtic, Nordic, Jewish, Slavic and heaven knows what else in their bloodline. By their own standards they’d probably fail their own purity test if they meant “indigenous” as opposed to “white”.

bluepillnation @75. Completely correct reposts to those examples I gave about America, South Africa and Brazil.
My main point is though that you can talk this issue up or down. And both can be legitimate. You don’t have to talk about Baltimore, you can maybe just talk about today’s Independent on Sunday front page about Damilola Taylor and what has happened in the ten years since then.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/remembering-damilola-the-killing-goes-on-but-the-fightback-is-under-way-2139882.html

And you can spin it both ways. Things aren’t so bad. Not as bad as they can sound in the media and panics about knife crime. But 27 teenagers being killed in London in 2007 was too many, and the fact that a majority were black, and 9 even of Congolese origin alone, was something to take notice of.
I still remember seeing this young lad and his friends from Hackney taliking about it on those three minute films that come on before the Channel 4 evening news,
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/i4i+aj+nakasila+biography/1394447.html

Then there is the politics, and the feelings of people who are sure they are being discriminated against, and that it is not appreciated by the rest of society.
Even resentment about how their immigrant parents were treated in the 60s, 70s and 80s. You can see it in the politics of Operation Black Vote.
http://www.obv.org.uk/news-blogs/new-police-stop-and-search-plans

Which Sunny’s other website had something to say about.
http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/1752

http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/9400

It all can get very complicated. Listening to a couple of women from a group called ”Black Mental Health” being interviewed on the radio for an hour like I have done one time, and the complexity becomes almost too much.
http://www.blackmentalhealth.org.uk/

That’s a lot of links, but I use them just to show the depth of feeling and difficulty of steering your way through such a landscape and knowing what is the right position to take at any given point.