Archive for October, 2006
The Times They Are A’ Chaining
Posted by David Conway in Race and Equality on 20/10/2006
Incensed no arrests followed a demonstration that took place last year in London against the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, despite one demonstrator having worn a suicide-belt and others having displayed banners calling for the killing of those who insult their prophet, a 35 year old man from Aberporth draped over his garden-fence a sheet on which he had painted the words: ‘ Kill all Muslims who threaten us and our way of life. Enoch Powell was right’.
Fearful that reprisals might be taken in his in his locality, the man’s neighbour reported him to the police who arrested him and brought him to trial this week on a charge of religiously aggravated disorderly conduct.
Alan Johnson’s Muddled Meddling: How Not to Increase Social Cohesion
Posted by David Conway in Race and Equality on 19/10/2006
‘Young minds are free from prejudice and discrimination, so schools are in a unique position to prevent social division. Schools should cross ethnic and religious boundaries, and certainly not increase them, or exacerbate difficulties in sensitive areas.’
Thus argues Education Secretary Alan Johnson, reportedly, in favour of what is widely expected about to become a new government policy for new faith schools that they must set aside up to a quarter of their places for pupils not of that faith, if there is local demand by them for admission.
There are many suppressed premises in his argument .To appraise its soundness, we need first to identify them, and then consider the truth value of all the independent ones.
Wake up call
Posted by Robert Whelan in Religion on 18/10/2006
Yesterday’s Telegraph carried a frank and unequivocal comment article by the Labour MP and sometime Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane. MacShane says that while Britain’s politicians have been sedated by the opium of multiculturalism and political correctness, radical Islam has been spreading in our midst. He is damning of a leftwing that has aligned itself with anti-Semitism in favour of Islamism, damning of the failure to prosecute or extradite known terrorists, and damning of both the Home Office’s and the Foreign Office’s censorship of the debate. In actual fact, MacShane has been speaking out intermittently on this matter for some time, but he has also been accused of saying different things to different people. It is notable, then, that his denunciation of government policy to date includes a swipe at Tariq Ramadan, the high priest of double-speak or taquiya, and that he has been willing to see it printed in the national press. As MacShane presents it, there can be no ambiguity: we have a choice between terrorism – and free, democratic societies maintained by the rule of law. He is all for the latter. Perhaps he has finally decided to nail his colours to the mast. Not just this, but now, what with the recent pronouncements of Ruth Kelly, Jack Straw and John Reed, there is a growing sense that the government has finally realised that if it has a problem then it has to confront this problem robustly. Hence, perhaps, the timing of Tony Blair’s pronouncement yesterday, that his government’s position on multiculturalism had changed, and that the priority is now integration. No doubt the usual suspects will howl with horror. We should be cautious in our optimism and manage our expectations. There is a long way to go yet. But, as a Telegraph leader says today, if this government is serious about reversing the separatist legacy of multiculti politics and challenging the lethal ideologies infiltrating the Muslim mainstream in Britain, then this new political posture can only be a good thing.
Nick Seddon
The EU should deal in trade not aid
Posted by James Gubb in European Union on 17/10/2006
An enlightening publication released today by the Centre for European Reform (CER) heavily criticises the EU’s flailing attempts through the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) to advance democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. The ENP, through MEDA (for Mediterranean neighbours), offers greater integration into the EU’s single market and financial assistance in return for, amongst other things, political economic and legal reforms. Yet despite a budget of c.$1bn p.a. the report finds EU efforts to have been almost totally ineffective, and virtually silent on set-backs to the very things it is supposed to be offered in return for. There have been no EU communiqués on the slowing momentum of political reform in Jordan and Morocco, the EU only reluctantly offered fund to Lebanon after Syria left and the EU refuses to bat an eye-lid when moderate Islamist groups are cracked down upon.
There are two points to be made here. Firstly, the EU is distributing aid wrongly. Aid has been front-loaded and – much worse – in collusion with corrupt governments. The EU really should have learnt from fifty years of post-colonial aid that this strategy doesn’t work and will only serve to prop up the very undemocratic regimes it is attempting to reform. Aid should be offered to a State only in response to improvements and, where this isn’t forthcoming (and preferably anyway), to independent groups in civil society.
Secondly, if the EU really wants to make an impact it should deal in something the MEDA recipients really care about: trade and full access to the EU single market (a point touched upon, but probably not emphasised enough, by the CER paper). This is worth a whole lot more than one-off aid payments. Moreover, with access to a vast new market for its goods, enterprise should be encouraged, production diversified to more than just the State and with it increased demands for representation and reform. But this is the EU and free trade we are talking about, never mind.
School failure
Posted by Robert Whelan in Uncategorized on 16/10/2006
Following on from the National Audit Office’s conclusions that 13 per cent of the population are being failed by poor schools and preceding a report from the Public Accounts Committee warning the government about the impact of poorly-performing schools, the front of Friday’s Times Education Supplement reported the headline ‘No need to read books: Pupils can now gain top-grade GCSEs simply on a diet of extracts’.
Kids don’t need this education or this form of thought-control
Posted by David Conway in Political Correctness on 13/10/2006
For requesting to be transferred to another discussion group because unable to understand the Urdu being spoken in the one in which she had been placed, all its others members being Asian and, with one exception, unable to speak English, a fourteen year old pupil at a school in Worsely, Greater Manchester, was, according to a report in the Daily Mail, placed under arrest and held in a police cell for several hours, after being photographed and finger-printed by the police, who then released her without charge.
Given the incident took place during a GCSE science class, the only consolation to be gained from this sorry incident lies in the knowledge that the girl had not missed much by being unable to participate in the class discussion. The new syllabus for science introduced last month has been comprehensively rubbished by experts as lacking in substance.