David Cameron’s hilarious fight against his better self on gay rights issues was wonderful entertainment. But the cause of his embarassment was not really gay rights, but Europe.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/24/david-cameron-stumbles-gay-rights
Cameron’s decision that in the European Parliament the Tories whould ally with the far right homophobe and racist grouping centred on Poland and the Baltic Republics, was always going to be a timebomb. Persecuting homosexuals in Eastern Europe was entirely predictable as the issue which would trigger it. Thoroughly deserved.
What kind of party can’t ally any more with the parties of Angela Merkel, Jacques Chirac and Silvio Berlusconi because they are too left wing? If that question doesn’t give pause to any sensible person considering voting Tory, then I don’t know what will.
You could always call one of the said homosexuals “flower” – I’m sure they wouldn’t object!
Funnily enough, the silver ring “virginity pledge” initiative so favoured by Bush and evil-gelical types in the US backfired most spectacularly. Not only did they have higher rates of STDs and unwanted pregnancies, but the subjects were given to favouring oral and anal sex to the more usual practices. Since they weren’t actually having what was considered sexual intercourse, surely that was ok? Ah, for the want of some basic sex education… but no, keep the little darlings ignorant and they’ll stay innocent… right?
I have to admit to being puzzled about why sex acts between men get some people so, erm, worked up. I don’t sit around pondering about the sexual mechanics between every couple I meet, whether mixed gender or otherwise. Why would it be of any interest, let alone business of mine? Various rationalisations seem to get put forward, it being “unnatural”, “sinful” and so on are the obvious ones. But then we get people – with a straight face – expressing deep concern about population levels, as if the human race were in danger of fizzling out.
Perhaps it’s only white gays we should be concerned about, and non-whites can go at it with full approval? Homophobia – at the end of the day – is usually a combination of repressed homosexuality and racism. The rest is just rationalising.
@glenn. The other canard is that “it says so in the Bible” (and presumably the same justification holds true for other holy books also). But I have become increasingly of the mind in recent years that originally, religionists took a poor view of sex due to their distaste for the vulnerability that they found came with physical and emotional intimacy. The male elite in patriarchal societies were also presumably internally psychologically conflicted between their physical strength and an unsettling dependence on the weaker gender!
Western civilisation could have taken another route, and figured out how to deal with things like sexual jealousy, non-monogamous relationship arrangements, polyamory, same-sex relationships and phsyical instincts in general. But they chose differently: they decided to make it a moral issue, and constructed their religious laws around it, and invented the concept of naked shame. Look at Genesis, and it reports that God gave mankind that shame; I contend than mankind gave it to themselves, by writing it down, and promoted it via organised religion. Sadly we’ve not thus far been able to stop transmitting this meme to each successive generation.
In more cases that today’s religionists are prepared to admit, I wonder if some of their anti-sex agendas can be explained this way, even if only on a subconscious level, regardless of whether the target is unmarried relationships, or gay ones.
On homosexuality, I wonder if your point about repressed sexuality is sometimes quite close to the mark. A straight friend of mine will sometimes remark: “We’re all a bit ‘bi’ really”!
I think you miss my point, or several of them.
The social stigma attaching to teenage pregnancy is why a girl with any self-control will normally avoid pregnancy, except if she is overcome by an irresistible impulse. In that case, any child conceived will likely be, in hereditary terms, about as well endowed as any child she is capable of producing: i.e., the birth of such a child will often be a good outcome for society.
But for this outcome, there must be (a) the “shitty” consequences of getting pregnant, which provide the incentive for restraint that will fail only under exceptional circumstances, and (b) no readily available form of contraception.
Today, thanks to wonderful liberal reformers without the slightest idea of what they are doing, society has been so changed that it is now mainly less intelligent unmarried girls who get pregnant — and who do so deliberately for the economic pay off, while intelligent girls may avoid pregnancy indefinitely (by means of contraception as taught in school) and are encouraged to pursue professional careers, which means that many will be long past their prime child-bearing years before they even consider settling into a permanent relationship with a view to having a child.
What I am saying is that a viable society is not likely to be a liberal utopia, and that conversely, a liberal utopia will almost certainly fail.
But before some unmarried mother with a PhD in fluid dynamics berates me for saying only dumb teenagers get pregnant, I know, I know, thank God, that lovely, clever, responsible unmarried girls still sometimes have babies.
My last remarks, as I should have indicated, were in response to comments by CheebaCow.
To which I will add that you are quite mistaken in accusing me of reducing homosexuality to mechanics. I said essentially noting about homosexuality, except to advocate a little old-fashioned discretion, a view with which you seem to agree.
Re: the Genghis effect, I applied this term to the disproportionately high mating success of certain males due to female preference, but on reflection, this seems a misnomer.
Genghis Kahn’s extraordinary reproductive success (16 million living descendants, according to Y-chromosome haplotype analysis) was due, not to female selection, but conquest and rape.
In terms of Y-chromosome haplotype frequency, the exceptional reproductive success of particular males may have similar results whether due to rape or female selection. However, they will have other genetic consequences that are likely to be quite different.
The Genghis effect will increase the representation of the genes of the dominating male(s) in the population gene pool, i.e., all genes not just Y-chromosome genes, but with no selective effect.
Female preference, however, is highly selective: hence the ridiculous tail of the peacock, and the bizarre behaviour of the male Bower bird. In the human population, one might expect, therefore, that universal female mate selection would result in some definite modification of male physique or behaviour: think of Heathcliff, eight feet tall, maybe.
Thus a name other than Genghis effect seems needed: maybe the “Clinton effect.” What do other people think?
Jon,
You say, “Bush’s religious cohorts in government stopped recording the figures in embarrassment when their abstinence and anti-contraception projects turned out to make things worse… ”
It sounds like Bush had the right idea: restoration of the anglo-saxon method of reproduction, likely the only means to prevent European populations from simply disappearing: not that your average liberal gives a damn. We need more aid for Africa, they say, where population has grown from 600 million in 1980 to 1000 million today!
You say, “I think the best we can do here is training children and young adults to use contraception, despite your horror of it … ”
I have no horror of contraception. I say merely that its use can have destructive consequences for society.
You say, “puritanism is social engineering via religiously inspired shame.”
That maybe, but its an old system that has been consistent with the survival and success of British society.
Anyway, I’m not a puritan. I’m a biologist. I’m with Craig: fucking is the prime pursuit of the male (though I hate to say that in mixed company since most women like the dreamy, Byronic idealist, not the sex maniac). For most of us, life is a matter of hanging about, so to speak, for seventy odd years in the hope of getting lucky once in a while and thus leaving our Y chromosome in the gene pool of the future. Other than that, society would probably get on without us ?” a worrying thought.
Alfred: You’ll find both your own and liberals’ ideals are reached with more aid to Africa, and reducing poverty in India for that matter. Countries where children are less likely to die, and where a welfare structure is in place, are likely to have far smaller families. This is simply because when children are more likely to survive childhood than not, you can get by with fewer of them. A welfare structure means you don’t need a large family to provide your pension.
Perhaps the biggest contribution to delaying child-bearing (if not eliminating it) is greater autonomy for women. The more educated and emancipated the female population, the less likely they are hussled into pregnancy.
Your view would seem to look at reproduction the way conservatives look at the economy – people are there to service it, rather than benefit from it. Again and again you assert that it’s a Good Thing for women to have children at an early an age as possible, with some bloke who just bowls her over then disappears. Not for the woman concerned, it isn’t, and certainly not for the child! Maybe we would have a brave new population of swaggering young men with (single) mothers not much older than them, ready to wreck the same on their female counterparts, if nature not nurture completely held sway. But is this really any good for society? Wouldn’t a child be better raised by parents who actually knew a thing or two, were in a stable partnership, and genuinely wanted the child?
You also talk gloomily about the ability of (white) Europeans, British particularly, to reproduce to the extent that our population increases. May I ask why a population increase is in the least bit welcome? And that most certainly applies worldwide, not just in this country. A serious depopulation move all round is our only hope of sustainability.
I might point out that while the “highly philoprogenetive immigrants” [sic] that you speak of compete with locals for housing, jobs, etc., a vastly bigger pool is also freely competing – over a billion Chinese with our manufacturing industry. They are the invisible immigrants, who compete by offering labour in the worst conditions for as little as £0.10/hour. Not to mention their counterparts in the sweatshops of Vietnam, Indonesia, Haiti etc., competing against the Chinese to take away British jobs.
If Britain in its old form is more or less finished (which arguably is no bad thing anyway), that is far more to do with our trading, industrial and monetary policies than some supposed wishy-washy new age liberal policies on race purity and early pregnancy. Recall that it was those standard-bearers of such soft liberalism as Thatcher, Howard, Widdecombe etc. etc. who denounced single-parent mothers as being the scourge of the Earth, and reflected such sentiments in their policies, while the rates went through the roof. Britain has just about the highest rate in old Europe. Strange, is it not, that we don’t see the supposed benefits of having more than twice the teen pregnancy rates of Germany, France, Holland, and four times that of the Scandinavian countries?
I’ve been reading Thurber & White’s ‘Is Sex Necessary?’. There are some grand bits about the ousting of the red-blooded male, and said male’s defensive acquisition of hobbies eg begonias to make up for it.
Jon, in this darker world, your analysis is surely closer (good piece by Yasmin Alibhai Brown in the indy today on religious repression too). Shame must be useful, of course. It would be a very different society if one could walk around naked. Warmer, for a start.
But people would be terrified; wouldn’t they? Certainly they can’t even handle the Naked Rambler (and I had to stop myself adding nudge nudge wink wink there, sigh)
Alfred
a) all my female friends who had children late in their careers: all concerned thriving
b) sweetest sight this week: 16 year old schoolboy’s face lighting up at the mention of his new son. You somehow don’t expect it, do you?
I also think the Bower bird’s behaviour is quite charming, but that peacocks always look embarassed by their tails. Perhaps men who aren’t obviously flash just need to create homes to pull?
Glenn,
You say, “May I ask why a population increase is in the least bit welcome?”
I would be quite complacent in the face of declining western populations if western governments were not in the process of offsetting and more than offsetting declines in European populations with people of much greater fertility from elsewhere.
A decline in Britain’s population could greatly ease the stress of life: less competition for jobs and housing, meaning better wages and lower housing costs, and less need for new infrastructure and thus lower taxes. Under such favorable conditions, some recovery in the fertility of the native population might occur without significant social intervention.
You say, “you assert that it’s a Good Thing for women to have children at an early an age as possible, with some bloke who just bowls her over then disappears.”
That is a travesty of what I said. Among other things, I stated up the page, somewhere, that in the 50s, although one third of all children were conceived out of wedlock, there was usually a hasty marriage within three months of conception. When this did not happen there was the unmarried mothers’ home followed by adoption.
Re: China — Without a rigged currency, British workers should be competitive with those in China. There is a problem with the dynamics of adjustment if there is massive capital export, which is what we have seen, and that should have been controlled, but was not because politicians are controlled by the financiers (Tony Blair gets millions from JP Morgan, etc.) — such control, incidentally, has existed since the immediate aftermath of WW1 and probably long before.
You say, “Strange, is it not, that we don’t see the supposed benefits of having more than twice the teen pregnancy rates of Germany, France, Holland, and four times that of the Scandinavian countries?”
But I just explained, we encourage the wrong kind of teen pregnancy!
Hello Alfred,
ok, so it’s immigration from outside Europe that is the problem, given it’s not more than matched by home-grown people. May I ask why the relative numbers of the “native population” are so important? Could you define what you mean by native, and would you have such concerns if the incomers were, say, Swedish or German natives?
I did not wish to misrepresent you, I have to admit to not reading every word of every post, and apologise if I surmised incorrectly.
To me, the unmarried mothers’ home sounds pretty terrible. Where was the unmarried fathers’ home? The stigma of being an unmarried parent seems to fall pretty heavily on one side. And that’s invariably when the girl in question is poorly educated, from a poor background and without supportive parents who might arrange a termination long before the fertilisation goes much beyond a blastocyst. “Perfectly heathy human beings” as you call them do not get aborted, much as religious fanatics might insist otherwise.
Why pack them off to such a home before pregnancy, so they can pretend nothing happened and retain “respectability” in the street? Yuck.
I’d like to know how you think British workers can compete with their Chinese/ other sweatshop counterparts. There are no environmental laws, no health and safety to concern the employer. No maximum hours, no minimum wage, no minimum age. No pension, holiday, sick-leave or indeed leave to appeal should an overseer decide to beat, sexually molest or otherwise harass you, no unions, and no compensation for injury or arbitrary dismissal. A far-right paradise, in other words!
Import tariffs and trade controls have been done away with since Thatcher/Reagan and particularly Clinton kicked the doors open with NAFTA and GATT. The only competition now is a race to the bottom.
How – tell me – can British workers compete, as you airily assert?
If we have the “wrong kind” of teen pregnancy, and I think no teen pregnancy is “right”, then surely it’s because of backwards, religious-pandering squeamishness against letting our youngsters have awareness through sex education of the kind that is available throughout the rest of Europe. Not to mention the gasps of horror that The Mail would evoke when it thrills its readership with juicy tales of young teens (see pictures!) being told explicit things that no Decent Young Lady should hear.
Most teenage girls do not get pregnant through being bowled over by a Mr. He-Man anyway – it’s usually through drunken fumblings which are definitely not encouraged by government policy. It is encouraged by the vast drinks industry, which has a megaphone to blast the message that drink is cool and grown-up, with “Drink safely now!” added with a snicker, while public information campaigns call barely muster a whisper.
I’d like to know why having a child later – if at all – horrifies you so much, while having a child at a much younger age leaves you feeling so soft. Increasing the generation gap lowers the population, so I wonder if that’s more to do with it that anything.
We’re looking down the barrel of seven billion worldwide – I fail to see why adding more white faces really improves things a heck of a lot. After all, old whitey has hardly made the world a better place by almost every objective measure.
*
Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems your argument comes down to this – you think woman primarily pass on the healthy, intelligence-producing genes. And as long as plenty of these pretty, intelligent and healthy teen girls get knocked up some some jack-the-lad, then everything will be just great! Do you know of many instances this has proven to be the case?
“Do you know of many instances this has proven to be the case?”
–glenn
Wondering if Albert knows much about the Magdalene Laundries.
Glenn,
You say, “ok, so it’s immigration from outside Europe that is the problem… ”
I did not say that, I said people from elsewhere, i.e., anywhere.
You ask, “May I ask why the relative numbers of the “native population” are so important?”
I don’t think I said anything about this. There are many reasons why people may object to mass immigration. I gave you three economic reasons. In addition there can be cultural reasons. How do you like this one:
According to Britain’s former Justice Minister, Mr. Malik, booted from office for expenses fraud:
“… in 1997 we got our first Muslim MP,
In 2001 we had two Muslim MPs.
In 2005 we had four Muslim MPs.
In 2009/2010 we’ll have eight Muslim MPs.
In 2014 we’ll have 16 Muslim MPs.
At this rate the whole Parliament will be Muslim …
I’m confident, as Britain’s first Muslim minister, that in 30 years or so we’ll see a Prime Minister in this country who shares my faith. …”
Here’s the video link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2fiDWzp6C4
There are also racial grounds that I am not inclined to advance. However, if you call those who would preserve their own race, racist, then I say racism is not a bad thing and that anyone who opposes racism, thus defined, is either a nut or a traitor ?” not a description that would apply to Nelson Mandela or Desmond Tutu.
You say, “To me, the unmarried mothers’ home sounds pretty terrible.”
It may have been, but the girls survived it. That’s the problem with liberalism, you think the world can be rid of everything that is a bit icky or makes one feel uncomfortable. Unfortunately that is not so. And if one assumes that it is so, it can end very nastily indeed. For example, if the Lib-left and their Tory imitators ignore the wishes of the great majority of the indigenous population on mass immigration, they will likely see the sharp rise of a fascist right, mouthing on about the Tiber foaming with much blood…
You ask “where was the unmarried fathers’ home? The stigma of being an unmarried parent seems to fall pretty heavily on one side.”
But if you read what I said earlier you would understand that this is irrelevant. It was tough on fellows when they had to stand in the shit and mud of Flanders in the Great War. Life ain’t always fair, men and women are not always and cannot always be treated the same way. The liberal desire to make everything perfectly wonderful without regard to reality is an extremely dangerous tendency.
Then you talk about a girl without “supportive parents who might arrange a termination long before the fertilisation goes much beyond a blastocyst. “Perfectly heathy human beings” as you call them do not get aborted, much as religious fanatics might insist otherwise.”
First, although you apologize for not reading what I already said, I am afraid that I will not not repeat myself. The whole point of the argument was the effect of out-of-wedlock conception on the fitness of the population. I wasn’t talking about better birth control or abortion procedures. Some women may use the morning after pill, nevertheless in America, partial birth abortions are still legal I believe, if they are not in Britain.
You ask “Why pack them off to such a home before pregnancy, so they can pretend nothing happened and retain “respectability” in the street? ”
I was not advocating unmarried mothers’ homes, I said that’s how it worked in the fifties. Obviously we are not going to put the clock back 60 years. What I was suggesting is that we think what we’re doing and what the consequences of our actions are.
You ask “I’d like to know how you think British workers can compete with their Chinese/ other sweatshop counterparts. There are no environmental … ”
Well, if it’s so bloody hopeless trying to compete with the Chinese, why are Jack Straw and company so keen to drive the British population over 70 million through mass immigration?
But the answer to your question is the exchange rate. When ten pounds equals one Renmimbi, or whatever, then British workers will be fully competitive. Then they won’t be driving an SUV to a big box store to buy cheap Chinese crap, eating at KFC, or at home on processed food, they’ll be riding an electric bike to a local store to buy mainly basic commodities and essential items many of which will be made locally. The trouble is, that the adjustment will be very costly and very difficult, because by the time it occurs, Britain will have lost most of the technology that it will need and used to possess.
You talk about “backwards, religious-pandering squeamishness against letting our youngsters have awareness through sex education of the kind that is available throughout the rest of Europe.”
“Backwards religious pandering” sounds a little bizarre, perhaps because I’m an atheist. But if its all about sex education, obviously we don’t want to copy the Germans or the Italians who have an even more drastically failing reproductive performance than the British (fertility rates of 1.4 and 1.1 versus a replacement rate of 2.1).
You say “We’re looking down the barrel of seven billion worldwide”
So you think it would be a good idea to wipe out the British race to make way for the others?
You say “old whitey has hardly made the world a better place by almost every objective measure.”
You sound like a racist. Are you a self-hating white or an colonizing non-white?
You say “Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems your argument comes down to this – you think woman primarily pass on the healthy, intelligence-producing genes. And as long as plenty of these pretty, intelligent and healthy teen girls get knocked up some some jack-the-lad, then everything will be just great! Do you know of many instances this has proven to be the case?”
I was talking of the change in the British way of reproduction that has occurred in the last 60 years. The old method produced Shakespeare (who had at least one an illegitimate son), Newton, Sam Johnson, Charles Darwin, the homosexual Alan Turing who tragically committed suicide almost certainly because of harassment by the police and a few others. So, whatever the exact mechanics the process, what Britain had seems to have worked well. I doubt if what is happening now will work as well.
There are many societies that have embarked on great reforms that resulted in self-destruction. Consider Soviet Communism, German Nazism, now Western European Liberalism, I fear.
Just to revert to the topic, I viewed the David Cameron video interview that Craig mentioned. It is quite strange. For one thing, toward the end of the discussion, the camera was focused on the back of David Cameron’s head. Why did they do that, I wonder.
From the conversation, it was really hard to know what they were talking about, and quite clearly Cameron didn’t know what he was talking about. Not that that really matters, surely. If he gains office he will have people to tell him what to say, plus a teleprompter. The only important thing then will be whether he picks good advisors and has the sense to do what they say.
During much of the conversation Cameron seemed to be experiencing some kind of mental dysfunction, which caused him at one point to plead for an end to the interview. But I should think it was nothing serious: a three martini lunch, perhaps.
Anyway, Cameron did manage to blurt out that the Quaker proposal for civic unions was a good idea, which indeed it surely is. So what’s the problem. I think Craig is a little too severe in his comments about this very likeable young man, who is almost nice enough to be a Liberal.
Hello Alfred,
The three reasons you’d vaguely alluded to for objecting to immigration, all of which are disputable, are vastly outweighed by the exporting of our manufacturing industry to China. Don’t you understand? It’s not that we have got A Chinese against A British person to worry about – the entire manufacturing base has been dismantled and sent over there.
We don’t have a Chinese vacuum cleaner manufacturer competing with a British counterpart – the British counterpart IS in China. And it’s the same with just about everything else – if you have any electronic component under 10 years old which wasn’t made in China, it would be a surprise.
Doubling the number of British Muslim MPs each cycle, and extrapolating the way you have done, is – I fear – a classic invocation of the slippery slope fallacy. Whether Malik is doing it to encourage the faithful, or you are doing it as dog-whistle tactics. In 36 years, by the time we have a Muslim PM, there should be 8192 Muslim MPs 🙂
Racism is discriminating against others, and seeing them as lessor, on account of their race. Are you a racist, Alfred?
*
Unmarried Mother’s homes: Girls survive rape and beatings too. Doesn’t make it right. Just because men went off to war, it still doesn’t make it right. Didn’t you ever hear that two (or more) wrongs don’t make a right? Talking about a fascist right, mouthing about the Tiber foaming with much blood… well, I see you’re doing your bit.
I did read what you said earlier, but that doesn’t mean I “would understand” the point. That would imply your point was unimpeachable, which is quite incorrect besides being rather arrogant. Liberals don’t desire to make everything great without regard to reality – that’s just your opinion.
Your buying into the “partial birth abortion” myth in the US shows how badly informed you are, and using that dubious assumption to claim “perfectly healthy human beings” are being aborted all the time here – which was your context, remember – is rather weak. Again, perfectly healthy human beings are not aborted.
*
You have not decided to even begin tackling the economic points of trade imbalance, and the export of our manufacturing base wholesale. It’s all down to the exchange rate, indeed. Jesus!
I suggest that you become acquainted with economics, and find out what’s been happening since Thatcher and Reagan. Look at output compared with wages, and how differently they track each other since their time compared with the start of the Industrial Revolution. Look at the average hours worked since WW-II, as a household total. Then look at debt. That’s what’s paid for our over-padded lifestyles, not just cheap imports.
*
No, I don’t think “it would be a good idea to wipe out the British race to make way for the others”, where did I suggest that for a moment? Straw man arguments do not become you. Reducing worldwide population is what I actually did suggest. And reducing poverty, and empowering women, is how that can be achieved, as I illustrated to you earlier.
The western civilisation – North American etc. too, not just European – is on the road to hell. Not because of your notions of sweeping liberalisation, far from it. We’ve taken a massive swing to the right in recent years, for your information. America is beset by hardline Christianist nutters, half of whom think slavery should never have been abolished. You see liberals and foreigners behind anything wrong anywhere. But we’re all going down through rampant, corporate driven greed, sell-out governments, corrupt and incompetent heads of organisations, with the multinational institutions driving the bus.
Alfred
well don’t take any notice of what Mr Malik MP has to say, he is shall we say economical with the truth and rather likes the sound of his own voice. Does he really think that the number of muslim MP’s will double at each election? He obviously hasn’t factored in BNP into his exponential equation and Dewsbury where he currently stands is a strong possibility. He may in time be booted from parliament as well as the government. Doubt he would be missed apart from home entertainment retailers and the like.
I’m sure Dave will be happy to hear that latin pop star ricky martin has finally come out. I bet dave has all his records..
Glenn,
You say the three economic reasons I gave for opposing mass immigration are disputable. No doubt they are disputable. But are they refutable? You provide no evidence to indicate that they are.
I do understand that capital is a factor of production and that if the capital accumulated through the sweat and toil of generations of British workers is exported it will lower Britain’s standard of living. But it will raise the standard of living of citizens of the third world, which is what you want isn’t it? And as a way of raising the standard of living in the third world, it is surely more effective to export capital from the first world than the have people migrating en masse in the opposite direction.
But whether that is the case or not, the export of capital which has been ongoing for hundreds of years and is hardly likely to stop now, although in delusional moments I have inveighed against it, as have better economists than myself, e.g.,
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/100324_truth.htm
Given that capital export is occurring, the best one can hope for is to control the dynamics of change to limit dislocation and mass unemployment. To this end, I see the pound is coming down nicely, off a quarter in the last few months.
As for the rest, you seem a little heated. Lets call it quits.
Anon,
You say “well don’t take any notice of what Mr Malik MP has to say, he is shall we say economical with the truth and rather likes the sound of his own voice.”
I think you are mistaken to dismiss Mr. Malik’s wild boasting. His remarks constitute an extreme form of religious and racial arrogance, and that from a member of the government. They are a slap in the face to people of Britain.
One should also not ignore the question of why such an oaf was ever included in the Labor Government. And the reason, I suggest that he was, is that New Labor calculate that they can win the next election with the aid of a block ethnic vote, but they need the likes of Mr. Malik to rally that vote.
In adopting this strategy, they must assume that the deluded fools who think that New Labor is still the party of the workers are sufficiently well conditioned by the propaganda of political correctness to be too racially self-deprecating to object to the insolence of such as Mr. Malik.
Mr. Malik is, obviously, a gift to the BNP, who draw support from the less easily duped members of the proletariat, many of whom may not really care if electing the BNP mean “rivers of blood,” to use the BNP misquotation of Virgil’s quotation of the Sibylline Oracle — as translated by the BNP’s St. Enoch Powell (who, before turning against the idea of mass commonwealth immigration, staffed 34% of the National Health Service positions with immigrants from the Caribbean).
Alfred,
in reply to your post in reply to mine.
I think the inclusion of muslim mps like malik in the new labour project were as you suggest a way of getting the ethnic vote. i would guess he really is a useful idiot who will be dispensed with when no longer needed.
it is in places like blackburn where jack straw should be worried given labours adventures in the middle east and i would venture to suggest straw would not have been totally in agreement with the invasions into islamic countries given the knock on effect it would have in his constituency. i would guess though that the muslims will continue to vote labour in spite of the wider picture because they are probably the only party who will continue to buy these people who tend to rely quite heavily on state handouts be it child benefits or JSA. Labour has devloped its own client state whilst in office, it hasn’t been so rash as many would have us believe.
Anon
You say, “Labour has devloped its own client state whilst in office, it hasn’t been so rash as many would have us believe.”
I agree, and they work well in parallel with the BNP, who take working class votes off the Tories as the immigrant tide rises.