Welcome To Zelo Street!

This is a blog of liberal stance and independent mind

Sunday 19 June 2016

Gove’s Howard Flight Moment

Today saw the resumption of campaigning ahead of next Thursday’s referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, and so on to The Andy Marr Show (tm) came Vote Leave luminary Michael “Oiky” Gove to be gently grilled by the host on a variety of questions, including the tone of some campaign behaviour, and literature. In the course of the conversation, Gove let slip one rather interesting admission.
After Gove had paid tribute to murdered Labour MP Jo Cox, he was asked about the poster put out last Thursday by Nigel “Thirsty” Farage and his fellow saloon bar propper-uppers at UKIP, which depicted a long and bedraggled queue of refugees from the Middle East who were crossing from Croatia to Slovenia. The poster, titled “Breaking Point”, suggested they were all coming here. And they were brown. And foreign.

Marr broached the subject gently: “can I ask you [about that] poster which went out just a couple of days ago from the UKIP side of the EU debate, which had a big crowd of migrants, in fact not coming into Britain but on the Slovenian border?” Gove’s reply was unequivocal: “Well, when I saw that poster I shuddered. I thought it was the wrong thing to do”. But then the discussion moved to his own side of the out campaign.

Marr again: “let me put to you what the Vote Leave statement said on Turkey - ‘Since the birth rate in Turkey is so high we can expect to see an additional million people added to the UK population from Turkey alone within eight years. Crime is far higher, gun ownership,’ and so forth. That sounds a bit like that’s the other. Those are threats, those people out there. Are you totally happy with the tone of that kind of statement?

Vote Leave had been caught dog-whistling - telling voters that those brown people were breeding, and doing it faster than our people, then coming over here. So was Gove happy with the tone? Well, yes he was: “Yes, because I think it’s important to stress that when we’re thinking about the enlargement of the European Union it’s the official European Union policy to accelerate Turkey’s accession to the EU”.

Quite apart from conceding that Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan is going backwards on meeting the criteria for accession to the EU - and so not joining in Gove’s lifetime - he said it was OK to use the “breeding” dog-whistle. That’s where it gets singularly unfortunate, because of the precedent set by another Tory luminary.

In late 2010, Howard Flight, who had just been granted a peerage, said of the Coalition’s plans for child benefit changes that “We're going to have a system where the middle classes are discouraged from breeding because it's jolly expensive. But for those on benefits, there is every incentive. Well, that's not very sensible”. For that he had to issue an apology and withdraw his remark.

So will Michael Gove do the same, or is it OK to scare voters about people “breeding” if they’re brown, Muslim, and talk foreign? Don’t hold your breath, folks.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Since Britain's population is now about sixty millions I reckon us honkies are doing some serious fucking of our own.

Any day now wannabe Nazis like Gove'll be trying to revive "miscegenation" lunacy and all the other Dixie racist mind-rot.

So why be surprised when Howard Flight, a walking arse head if ever there was one, joins in the Fatherland bullshit.......In the USA of course it's "Homeland."

Frankly, I'd welcome almost anybody of dusky hue, just as long as they don't share Gove-Flight paranoia and hate-propaganda. An honest fellahin from Egypt has more substance than any of the Leave morons.

Drifter said...

The indigenous birthrate is at best stable. There is a slight rise in population due to advances in the average age of mortality. The vast majority in the rise in our population is almost exclusively due to immigration and the first generation immigrant birthrate.

Anonymous said...

Ah, yes......."The indigenous birthrate".......It was only a matter of time before that bucket of old fish heads got tipped on to the floor.

If we're going to start on that nonsense we might as well get the roots right too: Blame the Vikings, the Jocks, the Irish......even the Welsh......then the Romans......then the Normans......Then the Huguenots......Then the Jews (England was, after all, the first country to tell them to wear identity tags)......But the worst of the lot was the Normans and the properly named William the Bastard, the cockney twat.

Just imagine how great Britain would be if we'd kept them all out. By now everyone of us would be two metres tall, blond, blue eyed and a member of the Master Race. And we'd probably be the only "indispensable" and "exceptional" nation - you know, like the USA.

Yes it's all those immigrants, refugees and their birthrate. They cause all our problems. They're probably responsible for Farage being a pisshead too.

Or something.

Ed said...

Annual birth rate per thousand people
(World Bank 2015)

Turkey: 16
UK: 13

https://t.co/bXRv5qJh07

Anonymous said...

Yes, Ed.

Meaning what?

James said...

Since the birth rate in Turkey is so high we can expect to see an additional million people added to the UK population from Turkey alone within eight years.

This is NOT a bad thing. For an alleged intellectual, Gove hasn't the first clue about demographics - which are that the indigenous population is stable AND AGING. There are more pensioners than ever before, and fewer Britons of working age to pay their pensions. The only short-term fix to the problem, other than lower standards of living or culling grannies, is increasing the number of people of working age by allowing immigration. There is no other way it can be done.

Anonymous said...

I blame the parents.

I blame the Sixties.

I blame that well known Eastern priapic tendency.

I blame permissiveness.

I blame the politically correct culture.

I blame the lack of christianity.

I blame the liberal media (no, honestly).

I blame the lack of Victorian Values.

I blame the BBC.

I blame the Welfare State.

I blame the NHS.

I blame the unions.

I blame the Russians.

I blame the Chinese.

I blame the Cold Wa -........oh, hang on.

Have I left anyone out?

Nathan deGargoyle said...

Bloody Celts coming here taking our roundhouses...

Anonymous said...

I'd love to blame the Celts, but we can't because they want out of the British Union.

Ironic, no?