Targeting works (which is why ASBOs and PSPOs are ineffective, lazy, divisive policing)

"Broken window" theory (or, to use its pompous operational name, "order maintenance policing") is the idea that lies behind a lot of modern policing including, in the UK anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) and public space protection orders (PSPOs):

In essence, Kelling and Wilson argued that latent danger loomed everywhere, and everywhere people’s disorderly impulses needed to be repressed, or else. Their “broken windows theory” didn’t stay theoretical: Also known as order maintenance policing, this tactic propelled an entire generation of policing practice that sought to crack down on minor “quality-of-life” infractions as a way to stem violence.

The problem is that, as research now shows, all this sounds good but doesn't work - a great deal of time and money is invested in the idea that anti-social behaviour (essentially annoying but non-criminal acts) and petty crime are gateway drugs to more serious crime and that we should target deprived areas using aggressive approaches like stop-and-search, arrests for petty misdemeanours and large scale area campaigns. This, in most developed countries, inevitably means targeting areas with concentrations of minority residents (black or Hispanic in the USA, black or South Asian in the UK) leading to understandable allegations of racism and high degrees of mistrust in police and criminal justice.

What Stephen Lurie, Alexis Acevedo, & Kyle Ott have shown is that serious crime (they focus on violent crime) is much more concentrated socially than 'broken window theory" allows:

...in over 20 cities, we found that less than 1 percent of a city’s population—the share involved in what we call “street groups” (gangs, sets, and crews)—is generally connected to over 50 percent of the city’s shootings and homicides. We use “group” as a term inclusive of any social network involved in violence, whether they are hierarchical, formal gangs, or loose neighborhood crews. In city after city, the very small number of people involved in these groups consistently perpetrated and were victimized by the most serious violence.

We are talking about really small numbers of people - Lurie describes how:

This held true even in areas considered chronically “dangerous,” like parts of East Baltimore. There, the group member population totaled only three quarters of a percentage point, even as they were connected to 58.43 percent of homicides. Shootings tend to be even more concentrated than homicides. In Minneapolis, we found that 0.15 percent of the population was determined to be involved in groups, but this population was connected to 53.96 percent of shootings—a proportion over 350 times higher than their population representation.

The conclusion here is that we need to do two things: target resources (policing and other interventions) towards the very small numbers responsible for most of the mayhem, and spend some time explaining to the wider public that 99% of young people living in deprived areas with high crime levels are not criminals or even likely to become criminals. Right now with ASBOs, PSPOs and extensions of stop-and-search we are doing the opposite. These strategies act to give the impression to people in these areas that the police and public authorities do not trust them and consider them likely criminals. It is no surprise, then, that these communities - often minority communities - don't co-operate with the police or other public authorities.

We should scrap ASBOs, PSPOs and the whole structure of anti-social behaviour measures and direct resources towards targeting the small number of (mostly) young men who are responsible for most of the violence, burglary, robbery and assaults in our cities.

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Racism - why the progressive left's definiton is damaging

It was some time in the early 1990s when a friend, steeped in the occult law of progressive politics, explained to me that most on the "left" didn't mean what I thought they meant when they talked about racism.

You see, along with most of the populace, I'd laboured under the misunderstanding that racism was prejudice based on a persons race. So a decision, for example, to exclude someone, not employ someone or stereotype someone based on their race is pretty much all there is to racism. It seems I was wrong - or rather that there's a different meaning of racism that derives from society's structure, history and other stuff that Marxist sociologists speak about.

Under this different meaning of the word 'racism', I (as a white person) do not have to say or do anything at all that regular folk consider racist for the progressive left to consider that I am a racist. My very existence is a monument to racism - white people are racists because they are white people. And, of course, the victims of that racism - people of colour - cannot be racist even if they use language or act in a way that most folk would consider racist. Understand that you don't have to agree with this definition of racism (and I don't) for it to be significant in the way a discourse about racism is conducted.

There is, for some white people, an escape clause. You become an 'ally' of people of colour. This doesn't actually stop you being a racist because you are white but it does provide some protection as your heart is in the right place - especially if you've acknowledges the deep structural causes of racism within society (having learnt about this from listening to those Marxist sociologists).

Which brings me to Emma Dent-Coad MP and Nasreen Khan (or Naz Kahn as she was until recently).

Taking Naz Kahn first. It is clear that Naz is a person of colour (being, in this case, a Muslim of South Asian heritage) which means that, in progressive mythology, she cannot be a racist even if she says something that is racist. Moreover, Naz's crime was to be anti-Jew and there's a problem with the Jews in that progressive myth . Everyone recognises that Jews are a minority and that they were (and are) persecuted but they are mostly outside that people of colour definition because that would put them in the same category as the Palestinians who are, of course, oppressed (by Zionists who are mostly Jewish).

Ms Kahn may have overstepped the boundaries of what the progressive left will accept in terms of antisemitism - mostly by suggesting Hitler wasn't all that bad, which means the Labour Party will eventually get round to sacking her - but her opinions are simply slightly more extreme versions of those held by a significant proportion of Labour members. Anti-Zionism is acceptable (because the Palestinians are oppressed) even though opposing Zionism means opposing the existence of Israel, something central to the identity of most Jews.

Meanwhile, Emma Dent-Coad, the MP for Kensington is reported to have called a black Tory activist, Shaun Bailey, a "token ghetto boy". Normal progressive left reaction to this (and indeed that of most regular folk) would be to say "racism" because referencing the ghetto and calling a black man 'boy' definitely fits everyone's idea of racism and Ms Dent-Coad is white so, in that progressive mythology, presumed guilty of racism. Yet a black progressive left MP, Clive Lewis, chose to defend her:

I see some brothers getting upset at @emmadentcoad recent comments. Where were your howls of outrage at the Tory ‘nigger in a woodpile’ comments? Pathetic.She’s done more for black people in her constituency with #grenfell in 6months than most tories will do in their entire lives.

What you see here is that Ms Dent-Coad is being defined as an 'ally' to people of colour thereby provided cover for a deeply racist (in regular folks' understanding of what that word means) remark. You see, Ms Dent-Coad is on our (people of colour) side so therefore we can excuse her offensiveness to a black person. And this get out clause is reinforced by the victim is this case being a Conservative activist and politician. Here's Mr Lewis again:

If you think you can fight racism and be in the Tory party then I guess this conversation isn’t going to go very far I’m afraid. If anyone has any understanding of the structural reality of modern racism, you’d not come within a country mile of a Tory membership card.

In Mr Lewis's mind, Tory equates to white. What he's saying is that any black person (and the comment was in response to someone who is a person of colour) who joins the Conservative Party has given up on racism, is a sort of traitor to the cause - an Uncle Tom or a 'coconut'. And, within Mr Lewis's mindset, adhering as it does to those progressive myths about racism, this must be the case - the Tories are the party of the establishment and the establishment is white and racist.

If one thing comes of this sorry situation - with a senior Labour MP insinuating that thousands of black and minority Tory activists, including hundreds of councillors and MPs are somehow unconcerned about racism - I hope it is to confine the stupid progressive definition of racism to the dustbin of silly ideas where it belongs. We've made huge progress over the past few decades in dealing with the endemic racism within our society and, as the words of Naz Kahn and Emma Dent-Coad show, we've still a long way to go. But to say that "structural reality of modern racism" (whatever that actually means) says that Conservatives don't care about racism is to wear a set of ideological blinkers. Racism is, in the end, always about people prejudging others, often harmfully, on the basis of their race. Yes it's ingrained and embedded in society but can we not try and turn it into some sort of 'groupthink' where only those subscribing to a narrowly-defined ideological position can be called anti-racist?

....

2017: Another year of human progress beckons. Let's celebrate!

Another year crawls coughing and spluttering from the ashes of its predecessor. Blinking in the watery light of a January morning, 2017, like many of its inhabitants, groans with the hangover from supervising the final death throes of the "Year of Horrors" that was 2016. Everywhere the perkier of those denizens, perhaps those most inured to hard drinking, started the annual task of churning out comments and predictions about the year ahead.

I've never been one for making predictions - I'm usually wrong - so instead I'll celebrate things we already have that are wonderful. We are, ignore all the doom and gloom, truly a blessed generation and we don't remind ourselves of this fact often enough. It's not just that there are fewer poor people in the world that ever in human history but that the things those no longer poor folk can have include stuff that were the stuff of science fiction just a decade or two ago.

I lost my phone in Lisbon during 2016 (on 23 June as it happens) and for various reasons had to get a cheap smart phone as a stop gap before my new and shiny Samsung was available. For less than £20 I had the sort of computing power that, as a student, had occupied a whole floor of a building in Hull. And with that bargain computing I could make phone calls, send letters, research the information I need for work plus things undreamed of back in the 1980s like social media and text messaging.

We've also found that the electricity these things need to run - much less as it happens that in times past - is now increasingly coming from renewal sources. And the fossil fuel sources we still use - fracked natural gas especially - are also far less contributory to climate change. If the EU would stop being dumb about importing cheaper solar panels from the Far East (more protectionist nonsense I'm afraid) maybe we'd move even faster towards a sustainable energy market without having to do so by making poorer people's fuel more expensive.

There was a time when brand ownership was what matters to food businesses because brands allowed a premium price to the consumer. Today - if the coffee business is anything to go by - the brand is no longer the thing, it's capacity and production efficiency that matters more. Food businesses are now delivering their margins more by reducing production costs rather than through the costly malarkey of brand marketing. This renews the wonderful thing that is cheap food, something brought to you by great farmers, fantastic manufacturers and brilliant supermarketers. It is a cause for celebration that we spend just 11% of our household incomes on food and drink (13% if you include booze and fags) and the trends - especially if Brexit opens up international food markets - will carry on downwards to the benefit of everyone.

Because we no longer spend all that cash on food, we've been able to buy stuff we otherwise wouldn't have had the money for - such as over 20% of our income on leisure, pleasure, recreation, culture, hotels and restaurants. Not only do we have more leisure time but we've also got the cash to enjoy that time better. And to top it all we're living longer and healthier lives than ever before - a trend that's set to continue. Whereas a previous generation retired at 60 or 65 and died ten or twelve years later, today's retirees can expect - even with a raised retirement age - to live passed 80 in an active independent life (and some can look to living a great deal longer).

For sure this longevity presents a challenge - not least to our creaking and badly run health service - but it shows why the cult of the young that dominated media and politics for so long is no longer such a deal. Those 55 year old baby boomers (like me) can look forward to an average of 30 years more life so don't tell us that we've nothing invested in that Brexit decision. And with reducing rates of dementia and heart disease joining rapidly rising cancer survival rates whose to say thirty years doesn't become 35 or even forty!

Meanwhile, society is getting better. Crime rates have shown a recent rise but the really bad ones like murder are as low as they've been since the '70s. Other supposed crises seem less so - child obesity rates at five and eleven are at the lowest they've been since 2000 and this might represent a switch in what was a seemingly intractable problem. Vaping has resulted in an acceleration in smoking's decline - would be even faster in public health folk would get with the programme and accept that the markets and a consumer product has achieved what they couldn't.

Elsewhere the frantic panic about 'hate crime' seems misplaced too. If our primary schools are any guide, the UK is a really tolerant and non-racist place - out of 4.5 million children aged five to eleven there were just 420 racist 'incidents' in 2014-15 which is about one incident for each 10,000 children. And this came after a long campaign to make schools report incidents rather than just using their own discipline and correction. In Bradford - as multi-ethnic a place as you get - the Council and police had to put on extra resources to encourage the reporting of 'hate crime' And in a couple of months they managed just eight reports of such crimes from a population of half-a-million. We really aren't a racist nation - nor indeed are we especially sexist, homophobic or disablist either - at least if reports of hate crime are anything to go by.

The world's not perfect and mankind isn't perfect but let's get ourselves some perspective in 2017. Not everything's going to go well - some people will suffer personal loss or tragedy, celebrities who played a big part in our lives will die and the wrong side might win an election. But on the fundamentals and the direction of travel for technology, leisure, health and security the world's getting better year by year. There's no reason not to think this will continue on 2017. So look up, smile and enjoy the bounty that human genius has brought you.

....

Racism, recruitment and the myth of 'white privilege'

Yesterday evening finished with a couple of glasses (large ones of course) and a little engagement with one of the stranger on-line communities - American racists. Today, as with everything, these racists have adopted a new and shiny ideological designation - alt-right. As if, somehow, this will distract us from their racism and apply a sort of pseudo-intellectual polish to white supremicism.

I won't bore you with the details of last night's exchange of views except to say that I tried to get them to define what exactly they meant by 'white'. Given that whiteness - 'white rights', 'White America', 'white genocide' and so forth - is central to their philosophy you'd have though our alt-right on-line agitator would have a clearly set out exposition as to what 'white' means. Now, in part, I was trying to trip them up on the matter of whether or not Jews are white (dealing with their desire to place anti-semitism as a minor crime because "it's a religion not a race") but the truth here is that the inability to define what we mean by 'white' destroys the entire basis of this extremist ideology.

Zip forward twelve hours or so from my exchange of pleasantries with the American racists and this pops into my Twitter:

We have an amazing opportunity for an aspiring current affairs journalist to receive training from Newsnight’s presenters, producers and reporters and learn more about how to embed social media in the reporting process.

First broadcast in 1980, Newsnight is the BBC’s weekday current affairs programme, which specialises in analysis and often-robust cross-examination of senior politicians.

The team at Newsnight are looking for a Trainee Researcher to join their team for this comprehensive, 12-month placement.

The successful intern will receive training from an experienced team of producers and journalist on broadcast and online content ranging from written features and video journalism to social media and live broadcasts.

Fantastic opportunity for, let's say, a working class kid from Barnsley just setting out in journalism. Or a young Polish immigrant who has just finished her journalism MA? Except, um, nope.

All roles advertised through Creative Access are only open to UK nationals from a black, Asian or non-white ethnic minority.
Only applications via Creative Access will be considered – please DO NOT contact companies directly.

The problem here is that the public school educated child of a successful black businessman is getting priority over other less privileged young people simply because that child is black. Now I'm prepared to believe that there might be issues with the 'diversity' of the BBC - they keep telling us there is:

The BBC is struggling to meet its own targets on increasing the diversity of its workforce, with a tiny increase in minority employees over the past year and an actual decline in the number of disabled employees.

The number of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) staff employed by the BBC rose by just 42 to 2,405, an increase from 11.9% to 12.2%, according to figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Broadcast magazine.

The 2011 census tells us that 12.9% of the UK population is from 'non-white' backgrounds (although this includes 'Gypsy/Traveller/Irish Traveller' most of whom look pretty white to me) suggesting that the BBC is close enough to par for it not really to be an issue.

The BBC is justifying an overtly racist recruitment policy on the basis that it is 0.7% (really 0.6%) short of its target. And please don't insult my intelligence by trying to suggest that saying "sorry mate, you're white, you can't apply for the job" isn't racist.

If you want to understand the pig-ignorant racism of the alt-right, you need to look at the establishment racism of the BBC. How do you suppose that working class white kid feels when he sees a job go to someone else - not because that person is brighter, better-qualified or more experienced but because the working class white kid was excluded from applying in the first place.

This goes straight to the heart of the reasons for that racism - the idea that the rules are different for minorities. And so long as this isn't understood, so long as we treat the white working class as a bunch of thick racist losers (and we do) they will stay angry and excluded. And the sort of approach used by the BBC - and other organisations - in recruitment really doesn't help resolve the problems.

It's not just those American racists who struggle to define 'white' it's our public authorities - indeed 'white' is defined by who defines as 'not white' meaning that the skin colour of the UK majority, in all its glorious varieties becomes a simple binary definition. This covers over a host of variations - some of those US white rights folk weren't prepared to see southern Europeans as white because they - in American terms - are Latinos. And we know that the current president of the National Union of Students describes herself as black - which will come as a surprise to all her Arab brothers and sisters.

I could carry on categorising - putting everyone into a little racial box like the government seems to want. But what purpose does this serve except to valorise racism? To feed an overweening industry built on playing endless games of equalities top trumps? All those human rights lawyers, diversity officers, race relations consultants and ethnic monitoring form designers.

We're a better place for saying that it should be illegal to make decisions - in jobs, schools, housing, whatever - on the basis of someone's 'race' (whatever that might mean). And it's great that we've carried on welcoming people here regardless of where they're from, what they look like and what their beliefs are. It's this stuff that makes us a great nation.

And we've still more to do. Black people are still stopped by the police too often, still make up too much of our prison population and still do worse at school. But we've got to open our eyes, to look at those people we stereotype as chavs or pikeys, dismiss as thick racists, and ask whether we should give them the same sort of attention we give to equally excluded non-white communities? And perhaps speak less about white privilege and more about economic advantage - there are too many white people who simply don't feel in the slightest bit privileged or advantaged.

....

Some interesting stuff to read including snowflake bullies, non-racist football, child mental health and why public health lie all the time

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Bullies with a cause - exploring the 'snowflake fascists':

To make matters worse, among “the most consistent findings in educational studies of creativity,” according to psychologists Erik L. Westby and V.L. Dawson, is that “teachers dislike personality traits associated with creativity.” Although teachers report they value creativity, these nonconformist children who act and think differently and don’t quite fit in—the children most in need of teachers’ support and protection—are, research reveals, teachers’ least favorite students.

Rod Liddle on form as he discusses why football isn't racist whereas middle-class professions are (and has a go at Beyonce):

It’s not just Millwall, mind — football has done extraordinarily well in accustoming the white folks to divest themselves of racial prejudice. It is still the focus of anti-racist odium from the middle-class liberal left, of course, which despises what it sees as a lowbrow white working-class leisure pursuit. And yet there were more black players on Millwall’s books in 1975 than there were black journalists on the Guardian’s staff. A greater proportion of black footballers then and now than black academics, black lawyers, black MPs, black educationalists, black social workers — name your middle-class profession and the answer will be the same. And black Britons thrived in the same trades as those working-class supporters on the terraces — as electricians, plumbers, labourers.

Frank Furedi in challenging mode as he discusses mental health and children:

Confused and insecure children are likely to be diagnosed as depressed or traumatised. Virtually any energetic or disruptive youngster can acquire the label of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Youngsters who give their teachers a hard time or argue with adults are likely to get stuck with the label of oppositional defiant disorder.

The proliferation of new medicalised categories with which to label school pupils says far more about the inventive powers of the therapeutic imagination than the conditions of childhood. Pupils who suffer from shyness are offered the diagnosis of social phobia. The diagnosis of school phobia can now be applied to label those children who really dislike going to school.

And Chris Snowden explaining slowly and carefully why public health lies all the time about drinking:

The graph represents the relationship between alcohol consumption and mortality. It is, I think, well known that the relationship is J-shaped. This particular J-curve is based on 34 prospective epidemiological studies which collect data on how much people drink and then follow them over a period of years with a view to seeing if they die and what they die of. As this graph shows, the risk of death declines substantially at low levels of alcohol consumption and then rises, but it does not reach the level of a teetotaller until the person is consuming somewhere between 40 and 60 grams of alcohol a day, which is to say between 35 and 50 units a week.

Here's a canter through the weird and wonderful world of consumer apps (this Uber for everything!):

Valet Anywhere will find you and park your car for you. Dufl will pack and ship your bags for you. Zingy, Barkpost, Wag! and FetchPetCare all offer on-demand dog-walking. Over the holidays, I received a breathless pitch for Thirstie, an app billed as a “discovery-to-delivery platform that allows you to stock up on last-minute wine, beer and spirits under an hour.” (Lest you think Thirstie has cornered its market, it’s locked in a Coke-Pepsi-style battle with its arch rival, Saucey.)

Meanwhile the Adam Smith Institute are running against the tide on migration - a welcome challenge to the media-led shouting:

The best international development policy would be to let in more workers from the third world in to work in Britain, according to a new paper from the Adam Smith Institute. Politicians should stop trying to save entire countries with foreign aid programmes and instead help their inhabitants by letting them move to developed countries, it says.

Finally, this is a really great idea:

Using this LoT (Locator of Things) technology, Pixie has basically created a network of items that can correspond and even talk which each other. This does not only create a ‘smart household’, but it also adds potential smart technology to the city. Add a pixie to your bicycle and find it back easily. Let your car give you a sign when you forgot to bring your driver license. Or add a Pixie to your shopping cart and let it find a your pre-set shopping list.

....

Who is 'us'?

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Nigel Farage, in that inimitable manner of his, has been on about Muslims. And in doing so dear old Nigel has framed it in these terms:

..there are some Muslims in Britain who comprise ‘a fifth column living in our country who hate us and want to kill us’.

My question in all of this is to ask who Nigel means by 'us'? We sort of know, or think we know - it's clearly not intended to mean Muslims so might mean everyone who isn't a Muslim. The problem is that we struggle to determine who 'us' might be - at least when we get to the point of actually sorting out the sheep from the goats, us from them.

Firstly there's no doubt that there are a bunch of people who hate me for what I am (or choose to be) - some hate my Englishness, others hate my catholicism, and another bunch hate me for being a Tory. Amidst all this hatred there's a few who hate me for rejecting the idea that there is one god whose prophet is Mohammed. A minority of these hate-filled people entertain the idea of violence as a means of projecting their hatred

But that doesn't get any nearer to the vexed question of who Nigel means by 'us'. It's all mixed up in judgements about language, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual preference and political opinion. Which perhaps means that, while Nigel thinks I'm part of 'us', I don't think I am because it would mean accepting his world view by suggesting that my Black, Pakistani and Jewish friends are somehow 'them' - tolerated rather than welcomed in my place.

What we see here is the irony of the left's groupthink - ironic both because the left focuses closely on defining characteristics (and society's attitude to those characteristics) and also since I'm talking about Nigel Farage who isn't 'of the left', at least in conventional terms. If we define people as members of a particular group (or groups) then we allow for the sort of comment that Nigel Farage makes by allowing for the existence of 'us' and 'them'. If, on the other hand, we define people as individuals who have a particular set of characteristics - some innate, some acquired, some a matter of choice or belief - then the idea of 'us' ceases to have relevence other than as a practical pronoun.

The political use of the word 'us' is exploitative of people's desire to belong. Nigel Farage uses it to suggest that Muslims living in Britain are not 'us' because a few of those Muslims hate some non-Muslims and may want to be violent towards those people. And we therefore have to reject all Muslims because we can't on first assessment tell whether this is a Muslim who will chat to us about cricket, laugh at our jokes and discuss business, or a Muslim who is only a switch away from blowing us all up.

But, on this logic, I should reject other groups that might hate me too. How do I know that the person with the Twitter account proclaiming their hatred of Tories isn't planning violence against me - perhaps a terrorist attack on the Conservative Club? I've watched the antics of anti-austerity campaigners and reckon they're pretty violent at times - how is this different from what Nigel Farage is saying about Muslims? Clearly such people aren't 'us'.

We could go on here - citing how some people hate (and therefore might be violent towards) a host of different groups from gays and lesbians through an assortment of races or religions, to the supporters of the wrong football club. There is no 'us' if it is defined by membership of a group not, in one way or another, hated. But the word is convenient and deniable - membership of 'us' is fluid and flexible subject to interpretation and amendment. Confronted by a challenge, I've no doubt that Nigel Farage would absolutely deny that 'us' didn't include Muslims even though the logic of his criticism tells us this must be the case.

I am quite comfortable with 'us' existing - my support for West Ham places me in a group where 'us' is fellow supporters and 'them' is everyone else. And the same goes for a load of other things - from my politics through to my group of close friends or family. But where we make the mistake is in framing political debate in terms of 'us' and 'them' - I'm guessing this isn't a new thing but it is, despite the opinions of right wing nationalists like Nigel Farage, very much associated with the left of politics, with the idea of collectivity and with the primacy of the group in their idea of society.

In the end there should be no 'us' in politics where that word is used to define others as an enemy, as unwanted or as dangerously different. Nor should there be an 'us' that means one group of people being unfairly privileged by government simply because of their membership of that group. And there should not be an 'us' where the politician campaigns on the basis of group interest - 'vote for me, I'm the Muslim/Black/Working Class candidate'.

You and I are not defined by our membership of a given group or groups - for sure such membership might inform what we think important but imposing this 'us-ness' on people is essentially divisive however well meant it might be. We know it's divisive because we see Nigel Farage do it with Muslims and are outraged. But Farage's use of 'us' is absolutely the same as the 'us' that determines the multiple manifestos at the recent election (for young people, for the disabled, for England, for Scotland, for ethnic minorities, for LGBT people). Are people really defined by age, gender, sexual preference and ability or by the specifics of their own lives, loves, interests and opinions? Surely it's the latter - I do hope so.

....

Why everyone is right about immigration...

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City-AM published a piece of mapping showing - or purporting to show - the lack of relationship between high levels of immigration and UKIP voting habits.

The results are similar across England and Wales, with Ukip's key messages on Europe and immigration hitting hardest in the areas with the fewest immigrants. 

Now I could quibble with the conclusions made about the map since the Boston area clearly shows some of the highest proportions of residents with a non-British nationality and UKIP is pretty strong there - it's one of the places where they've a better than evens chance of winning in next year's general election.

But this isn't the point I want to make. Rather I want to argue that only relatively small numbers of immigrants are needed to alter people's perceptions of immigration. So we'll start with this statement from the article accompanying the maps:

Ukip's first elected MP, Douglas Carswell, represents the coastal seat of Clacton, where residents with a non-British nationality make up between one and three per cent of the population.

Clacton's electorate is 67,447 - is 1-3% of these people are not UK citizens that's 1349 adults, Add in children and we've between two and three thousand immigrants in Clacton. I'm going to guess that these immigrants are concentrated in the parts of the constituency with low cost housing, often (and this is especially true of seaside towns) close to the centre of town. There'll be a shop saying 'Polski Sklep' or similar that caters for the community. One of the pubs in town will become a gathering place and there'll be a collection of lurid and overblown stories about crime or violence. Someone, somewhere will say the town is being 'swamped' by 'these people'.

So while folk like me who say that immigration is far less of a problem than people make out are right, it's also true that these perceptions - the impact of immigrants on how people see a place - are true. People do see that their town has changed, and don't always see that change as being for the best. And we shouldn't dismiss such botheration as 'xenophobia' or 'racism' or those who express concerns as narrow-minded little Englanders (or whatever chosen pejorative us who know better have selected).

If there is a solution then it lies in getting to know the immigrant, in breaking out from the 'Parallel Lives' situation that described Bradford after the riots of 2001. Now I think a good deal of the onus here is on the immigrant to respect local culture, mores and rules - it is completely unreasonable for us to be expected to change the way we talk, act or otherwise behave so as to accommodate immigrants. But this also means that one of those old customs - being a good and welcoming host - applies. And this is down to us who already live here.

Three years ago I wrote about the village where I live:

Friday night, Cullingworth Conservative Club and it's quite busy. There are a few blokes who've chosen to watch the rugby here rather than at home as well as the usual Friday night collection. Some people are playing dominoes in the corner, others are playing snooker and the rest are sitting or standing to talk and drink.

All very typical of that English culture which presents such a barrier to those from different cultures we might say. But let me invite you to take a little closer look - and to discover why the separate development theory of multiculturalism was wrong.

Stood, pint in hand, with the rugby watchers is Manu - newsagent, Parish Councillor, avid Bradford City fan. Across the lounge sits another middle-aged Asian lady with her friend - her white, bottle-blonde friend. Occasional side conversations are held between her and others passing by - some older, some younger. Friendly exchanges about shared experiences in village, mutual acquaintances and other such matters of moment.

Among the domino players is Pete - Chinese takeaway owner and former ping-pong player. Pete's also on the club committee and, while his accent's a bit impenetrable after a few lager & blackcurrants, he's as much part of the Club and the village as anyone else.

I'm pretty sure that, if I put my head round the corner past the one-armed bandit, there'll be a selection of the Brown clan - mostly third or fourth generation in the village and varying in colour from dark brown to a good sun tan. And sitting with them will be friends and neighbours, girlfriends and boyfriends - also native to the village but with a paler hue.

And there will be others less noticeable among the crowd. People whose parents arrived after the war from Eastern Europe, for example. Beyond the Club, there's a Muslim lady who's our GP, there's 'Smiler' who owns the general store and many others who - like me - aren't from the village. Yet we seem to get along alright. There aren't all that many fights - and these won't usually result from racism.

This is the sort of world we should aspire to and it isn't served by wanting to stop all immigration now nor is it helped by telling anyone who expresses worries about immigration that they're thick xenophobic racists.

....

You and your racist garden!

OK so the lefty sociologist didn't merely jump the shark, he did a back flip and double somersault over said fish:

“Gardeners’ Question Time is not the most controversial show on Radio 4, and yet it is layered with, saturated with, racial meanings.

“The context here is the rise of nationalism. The rise of racist and fascist parties across Europe. Nationalism is about shoring up a fantasy of national integrity. My question is, what feeds nationalism? What makes nationalism powerful?”

Dr Pitcher said the “crisis in white identity in multicultural Britain” meant people felt unable to express their views for fear of being called racist, so expressed their racial identity in other ways, such as talking about gardening."

Apparently all that talk of 'native species' and 'pure soil' is giving Dr Pitcher palpitations - a sort of belief that liking gardening is really a manifestation of 'blood and soil' nationalism. Now what we're seeing here is one man's projection of a perceived crisis onto anything and everything he sees - so gardening becomes fascism because everything he doesn't understand or appreciate is fascism.

But like many things, gardening is an import - something from soft and sunny southern Europe. And those Southern Europeans weren't taken - here's Tacitus:

"The climate is unpleasant, with frequent rain and mist, but it does not suffer from extreme cold."

And the truth is that 'native' doesn't really apply to many plants - at least in the British context. As Maggie Campbell-Culver described in her delightful book, "The Origin of Plants":

A small number of plants did somehow survive the onslaught of the millions of years of ice to emerge triumphant into the post-glacial period...There were in all probability no more than two hundred or so species in total, certainly little growing that could have been turned into a sustaining meal or a posy of flowers.

So nearly all of the plants and trees we love - the daffodils the bluebells, the horse chestnuts and the lilies - arrived after the ice age had finished. And a goodly number - even such forgotten plants as Alexander - arrived because humans like to grow them in fields or gardens.

My garden - a glimpse is in the picture above - has the regular mix of 'native' and 'non-native'. There's a willow tree, yellow flags, currants and primrose - all pretty native. And then we've rhododendron, geranium, azalea and Japanese acer - definitely immigrants. But what of the the more recent mish-mash - the fancy hybrid primula, the tea roses, the day lilies? These plants - immigrants all - are the real glory of the English garden because gardeners have tweaked, crossed, selected and encouraged them to become the splendid things they are today.

It is this magic - the human intervention that makes for the wonders of our gardens - that our lefty sociologist fails to understand. Perhaps a bit of this is the snobbery of the urban trendy, the dismissing of gardening as something that boring old people do in dull old suburbs, but there's also a profound ignorance about the garden, the way in which we try to balance the natural order with the new and exotic.

So the idea that talking about gardening is suppressed racism may be gibbering, dribbling nonsense but underlying such a statement is something else - an ignorance of the garden, the dismissing of the pastime as some sort of 'white, middle-class' obsession and the desire to make something as quintessentially English as gardening somehow an ethnic marker rather than a cultural wonder.

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UKIP. Prejudiced? Yes. Illiberal? Certainly. Racist? No. Should you vote for them? Absolutely not.

****

UKIP launched some posters. As cynical political campaigning goes they are premier league. Indeed, they have achieved exactly what UKIP wanted - best captured by Dan Hodges, top grumpy, lefty cynic:

It would be wrong to call Ukip’s brand of racism subliminal. There’s nothing subliminal about giant billboards claiming 26 million “Europeans” are about to arrive on our shores in the hope of stealing the jobs of every honest, hard-working Brit.

Now I'm pretty sure there's a fair smattering of racists supporting UKIP. But then I met a couple of ex-BNP Labour supporters recently. They were pretty racist.

The reality here is that, just as has always been the case with effective political communications, there is no room for nuance or subtlety. We 'say it like it is' meaning that we strip out any qualification, remove any caveats and say that there are 26 million unemployed Europeans and they could come and get your job.

This is rubbish, has no evidence to support it, is prejudiced and reveals again that (like all our political parties these days) UKIP see illiberalism as the way to get votes. The posters are only 'racist' if you believe that wanting to reduce levels of immigration is 'racist'. I simply don't accept that argument and Hodges' secondary argument that we'd think it was racist is the posters said Asian or African is equally daft - the posters are for an election to the European Parliament so focusing on things that are, in part, a consequence of EU membership seems reasonable (even when what is said is utter twaddle).

UKIP is a prejudiced party - making sweeping judgement and generalisation about EU residents coming to work in the UK. I think they're wrong but I don't think their policy is racist.

UKIP is an illiberal party - for all the tabloid libertarianism of Farage's rhetoric, UKIP's immigration policy, response to same sex marriage and economic policies are deeply illiberal. But they are not racist.

I detest the EU. It is anti-democratic, controlling, interfering, unaccountable, lying and unjust. I will vote to leave with enthusiasm when I get the chance to do so. And I will argue the case against from an absolute belief in free trade, free speech and free enterprise. So I won't tack along with UKIP's prejudiced illiberalism. Indeed, if we want that referendum, that chance to leave, then the very last thing we should do is vote UKIP.

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Populism (or is it prejudice) du jour...

****

Ah yes, let's roll out an anecdote to justify our prejudice:

“I’m influenced by my time as MP for Stoke-on-Trent. I remember talking to a young, second-generation Pakistani British lad who was concerned about the speed of change in the community as a result of the failure to introduce controlled migration from the EU accession states last time,” 

So the child of immigrants doesn't like others doing what his parents did? And we should construct public poilicy on this basis?

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Immigrants, work and the deer cull

****

The most depressing thing I’ve heard in a long while came in a tweet or email read out by a Radio 5 Live presenter – in response to an item on managing deer population someone had commented that we need a “human cull”. And the presenter read this out with want sounded like (but might not have been) approval.

Which humans this respondent wanted to cull wasn’t clear – maybe every tenth person, perhaps just the disabled, the sick or the lame? Rather than think for a brief second about what they were saying, someone had pinged out a comment about killing a load of people because he’d decided there were too many. I guess it was a joke!

But then I listened to a debate – well more an exchange of sound bites – between John Mann, Labour MP for Bassetlaw and Graham Evans, Conservative MP for Weaver Vale. The subject was immigration and the two Northern MPs were in agreement on much of the discussion – there were too many immigrants, they were taking the jobs of British people and something should have been done earlier. Both MPs were adamant that there wasn’t the slightest hint of racism in what they were saying but equally keen to stress the idea that immigrants were taking British jobs, filling up British schools and costing a fortune in British hospitals.

Whatever the case about immigration – too much, too little, the wrong sort, the right sort – to blame our levels of unemployment and problems in our public services on folk who’ve arrived here from the other side of the world so as to work is what we expect from the BNP not the Labour and Conservative parties. Not only is it untrue but it’s wrong and dangerous as well.

The immigration debate has descended into a "who can be most damning of immigrants without actually being racist" contest. Currently the Labour Party is winning.

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Quote of the week...David Ward MP

****

Comes from  David Ward MP:

"...as someone who has run race awareness classes, I find the idea that I have been sent on some sort of correctionary course to be patronising and quite offensive.” 

David still doesn't get what he did wrong - quite amazing for someone who lays claim to anti-racist purity!


...

On being English...

I stopped being British - except in the formal sense of Britain being my country - the day someone decided that a twee little song written by Roy Williamson in the 1960s was the Scottish 'anthem'. It's not that I have anything against 'Flower of Scotland' as a song but that the sentiment it displays to me as an Englishman is "not welcome here".

We've been here a long time us English - the basis of the laws, language and culture came here with the Saxons. In my county of Kent we still remember this, marking the place of the Saxon - English - cathedral beneath the grander Norman cathedral in Rochester. And despite the best efforts of subsequent know-alls, the essence of English common-sense remains. The idea that law is enforced, adjudicated and administered by our peers not those who claim superiority still clings on - the magistrate, the jury and the common law remain at the heart of our legal system. The place is ours not theirs - although sometimes they forget.

There still seems a reluctance among our betters - judges, civil servants, broadcasters, writers - to accept the idea of England. To allow us to claim it as our heritage and birthright. And their weapon of anti-English choice is racism. We must not lay claim to Englishness since it excludes the children of immigrants - as if Englishness was ever a thing of blood. Such people suggest that, since half of London's population is now non-white (whatever that may actually mean), it is no longer an English city.

But when I meet a fellow Englishman, I do not ask for a genealogy - for proof of his Englishness. All I ask is that he is from here - and that being "from here" matters to him. I don't care whether he was born in a Punjabi village or a Turkish slum, I care only that he cares about England. And that he will make his contribution to our history.

That history isn't one of kings and prime ministers, nobles and castles, bishops and judges but one of people - farmers, millers, brewers, travellers, singers, writers. Of craftsmen and creators. It is a story of the men who built the cathedral not the bishop who commanded it built. It isn't that we know the names of these Englishmen. It's true their names are in the graveyards, we can read the generations there, but it matters more that their work carved England - the stories, the songs, the myths. And that these Englishmen still carve that story - not in words or paintings but in all our lives, in the culture that envelops us and cares for us.

And those who think being English is about race do all us English people an injustice - whether it's some ghastly snob of a Guardian writer or some badly tattooed thug from the EDL. And not just today's generation but a hundred generations whose love of this place made it so wonderful. Those people who laid out the fields, built the roads, dredged the rivers, constructed the harbours - who shaped our place and who still shape that place today. And who remember - for whatever reason, the people who helped, not in an off-hand way but prominently and significantly:

Maybe, most of the time, we walk past this remembering - not giving it heed or attention. But sometimes, either because we're asked or because we've taken that moment to stand and stare, we notice. A little chink of our ordinary past shows itself. And we smile, perhaps get a tear or breathe deeply in our remembering. But we are shown again what it is to be English - why the place matters.

And - as Cloke says to George in "An Habitation Enforced" - it all takes time and care:

"All I say is that you can put up larch and make a temp'ry job of it; and by the time the young master's married it'll have to be done again. Now, I've brought down a couple of as sweet six-by-eight oak timbers as we've ever drawed. You put 'em in an' it's off your mind or good an' all. T'other way--I don't say it ain't right, I'm only just sayin' what I think--but t'other way, he'll no sooner be married than we'll lave it all to do again. You've no call to regard my words, but you can't get out of that."

I suppose that being English is a state of mind, a feeling that the place fits like an old coat. One where you know its history - how the green stain got there, where you caught the sleeve on the thorn bush, how you lost your purse in the lining. And when you put it on, it just feels right. You don't need twenty generations in the village to feel like this -oh, it helps - just English mud on your boots and a moment to look around you.

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Respect - playing with sectarian fire...

****

There are a couple of by-elections going on at the moment in, what might be described as urban seats - Rotherham and Croydon North (where I was educated - not that this has anything to do with what follows). And my dear friends in the Respect Party are standing in both seats.

I can't comment on the Croydon election - although you can never know with Lee Jasper - but in Rotherham, Respect have parachuted in Yvonne Ridley, former journalist and famous Muslim convert. All good politics I guess. But then we get a glimpse at the literature - in a reprise of the recent Bradford West by-election we see a blatant and disturbing appeal to sectarianism:

"The RESPECT Party Britain's only party that openly embraces Islam..."

 "...they (the Labour Party) are also going into pubs and clubs behind our backs and attacking Muslims, Asians and Muslim immigrants in particular."

"...we would remind you the last time the Muslim/Asian community voted to elect a Labour MP from Rotherham (he) set up an Israeli support group the so-called 'Labour Friends of Israel'."

"We have set up a database of Muslim/Asian families to make sure your voice is heard..."

This is what Respect have brought to Bradford and what they propose for Rotherham - divisive, insensitive, racist and sectarian politics. Less of a problem in Rotherham when the Muslim population is less that 15% of the electorate but the fact that this unpleasant sectarianism exists at all should be a cause for concern.

In the end there is little difference between the message pumped out here to young Muslims and the message that the BNP, EDL and National Front target at white working class communities. It's 'them' that cause your problems - vote for us because we're on your side against 'them'.

In Bradford we got a glimpse of this divisive approach at the last Council Meeting - motions on "islamaphobia" and questions attacking Israel. We sit quietly while JUST West Yorkshire - supposedly a 'racial justice' charity - churns out a stream of sectarian 'research' (using funding from those naive idiots at Joseph Rowntree) aimed at supporting this sectarian Respect agenda - indeed the leader of the Respect group on Council is a trustee of this "charity".

These people are not interested in integration, in tolerance or in peace. Respect and its allies are set on stirring up discontent in these communities, in finding demons where there are no demons and in dividing one group of Yorkshire people from another.

After a dozen years of building cohesion in Bradford it is distressing to see Respect attempt to tear that work down. And to see them spread this damaging message in Rotherham

....

...of course anti-semitism isn't a problem in the UK

****

Or maybe it is:

A spokesman for the Brighton Dome said the reason for the cancellation was to concentrate all security resources on one evening, in order that at least one show would go ahead smoothly with a "higher level of security". He said that the decision had been made following discussions about security with Sussex Police, and with awareness about the disruptions and protests at the Edinburgh shows.

It is appalling that people feel able to target a show simply because it is Jewish. And that the police are so supine and unready to defend free speech.

....

I dunno but is The Register just a little bit racist here?

****

I'm not a techie and can't really comment on the causes and background to the RBS meltdown but I do think that The Register might just be a little racist with its bold capital laying of the blame thus:

Staff who oversee batch scheduling for RBS are based in India

Maybe they are (although RBS haven't said one way or another) but the implications of this statement are that outsourcing IT work to India - where wages are lower - is a dangerous and risky matter. And that none of the blame falls on British-based IT management.


The Register would have a point if there had never been a major IT disaster overseen by more expensive British workers!


...

Is JUST West Yorkshire being intentionally disingenuous?

****

In its latest bulletin (something it produces with staggering frequency), JUST West Yorkshire provides the following headline. Indeed it is the main headline on the whole bulletin:

The North is 40 years behind the rest of the country in terms of racism 

Now you and I understand that the term "The North" usually refers to Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumbria and the North-East. So I was rather surprised given the years of innovation and effort put in by people in Bradford (where JUST has parachuted itself thanks to the generosity of those nice folk at Joseph Rowntree) to address issues of racism and community cohesion.

So I check out the article and (you have to smile) it's a link to a report in the Dail Mail that it headed with the above offending headline. But when you read the acticle it refers to "a study" led by David Craig who is:

...professor of community development and social justice at Durham University

And his study is about the North-East not the North:

The report says racism remains a ‘major issue’ in the North-East, with black and minority ethnic (BME) people still experiencing racism at individual and institutional levels across public and private sectors, and in particularly in the criminal justice system.

I'll give JUST the benefit of the doubt on this occasion (although they should know better than to faithfully re-cycle Daily Mail articles) but hope that, in future, they don't try and damage race relations in places like Bradford with wild allegations of racism.

....

Has the BBC given up on reporting news??

****

Yesterday evening, the main BBC News chose to spend the first ten minutes of a half-hour programme talking about racism at the European Football Championships. Now I happen to think that racism is a serious issue but still question whether a few idiot Poles making monkey noises at non-white Dutch footballers really constitutes the main news item.

Once the BBC had finished with interviewing itself and expressing shock and horror at the racist chants, the next important news item was that we had some pretty bad weather. This featured some pretty spectacular waves (not the surfing kind) at a place in Cornwall.

Only then did the BBC mention the appalling events in Syria where a government is beating, raping and murdering its citizens while giving the finger to the civilized world. The imminent collapse of the Euro (perhaps) barely merits a mention. Before we return again to sport, to racism and the preening of presenters.

Where is the real news?

It seems to me - and the Leveson enquiry defines this perfectly - that the media classes determine the news agenda by what they talk about at the dinner table or over fancy coffee in some trendy cafe. What matters to real folk out there is the real world is as nothing besides the endless obsession with political gossip, perceptions of racism and having a good laugh at the stupid people who don't live in North London.

All this is compounded by filling in hours of supposed news programming with stagey interviews of BBC journalists - turning these people from news reporters into the news itself. The result is that we are given the tiniest glimpse of the wider world followed by tendentious opinionating from the BBC-appointed (and employed) expert.

It seems to me that the BBC has given up on reporting news.

....

So Diane's a little bit bigoted and a lot hypocritical - why the fuss?

****

I missed much of the twitter entertainment following Diane Abbott's tweet:

@bimadew White people love playing "divide & rule" We should not play their game #tacticasoldascolonialism

Let's be clear then - this is racist (I would prefer to say 'mildly racist' but I guess these days racism is an absolute - one either is or isn't racist). And it's ignorant (but then Diane is a Labour MP so ignorance is to be expected).

The comment shows Diane to be a hypocrite - first onto every anti-racist bandwagon, paraded as a paragon of political correctness yet ready to apply different standards to herself from others.

And, you know, all this is fine by me. The tweet displays both her deep prejudice and historical ignorance but we all come with a little bigotry and a lack of historical knowledge is perhaps excusable. Plus of course - from the moment she chose a private school for her child - we already knew Diane was a hypocrite, one of the "one rule for the leaders, another for the proles" school of socialist.

There are calls for her sacking - but if Ed Miliband were to remove every hypocrite and every bigot from his front bench team, he probably wouldn't have one left. And I can't see why Diane should be punished for something that, in her ignorant bigotry, she really believes.

And, quite bluntly, as a white person who thinks our colonialism did more good than evil, I'm not in the slightest bit offended by Diane's outburst. I just think she's bigoted and wrong - like most of her colleagues on the Labour left.

....

Double standards?

****

The racist tram lady was in court today:

A woman accused of launching a vile racist rant on a tram is to spend Christmas behind bars after she was remanded in custody for her own safety.

And the race relations industry was having its say:

What, I wonder does the response, to the YouTube clip show? Is it just prurient interest? Is it shock or is there a degree of acceptance of the validity of her comments if not actions? Twitter comments in the days after suggest all of the above and more!

Racism is still a blight on the face of Britain. Sweeping it under the carpet, failing to resource counter measures will not create cohesion but will only serve to sow discord in all our communities. As soon as we realise that racism lies everywhere then we start to tackle discrimination where someone is judged by ethnicity or nationality, by colour or by creed. That day cannot be achieved by putting our heads in the sand.

At the same time that race relations industry made no mention of a far worse case of racism – this time accompanied by violent assault:

A gang of Muslim girls who repeatedly kicked a young woman in the head walked free from court after a judge heard they were 'not used to being drunk' because of their religion.

The group screamed 'kill the white slag' while kicks raining in on 22-year-old Rhea Page as she lay motionless on the ground, the court heard.

The attackers - three sisters and their cousin - were told by a judge that normally they would have been sent to jail.

However, he handed the girls - all Somalian Muslims - suspended sentences after hearing that they were not used to alcohol because their religion does not allow it.

There is no doubt at all that this was racially aggravated – possibly racially motivated – assault unless “kill the white slag” has taken on a different meaning recently. Yet not a word from the “Equalities & Human Rights Commission”, no endless condemnation from the regular horde of left wing commentators on diversity matters.

But then, officially it wasn’t racially aggravated:

The women, who are all Somalian Muslims, were not charged with racial aggravation.

One wonders, had this been say four white skinheads wrapped in union jacks beating up a black youth while crying “kill the black bastard”, would the CPS have charged them with mere assault? I doubt it, those white skinheads would have got the full set of racial crimes laid on them (and quite rightly).

So why not these Somali women?

And why are the Runnymede Trust, the Equalities & Human Rights Commission and the usual collection of righteous MPs, columnists and "charities" more interested in that stupid woman on the tram (who hurt nothing other than feelings) than this violent racial assault?

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