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Tuesday 16 June 2020

Boris Puts Spiked In Charge On Race

To those unaware of their backstory, putting someone from a BAME background in charge of setting up a commission on racial inequalities, and bringing on board a former chair of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, who is also from a BAME background, looks like a sensible move. But in the world of alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and chief polecat Dominic Cummings, it’s never that straightforward.
Munira Mirza

As the Guardian has reported, “Munira Mirza, the head of the No 10 policy unit, is leading much of the work to form the commission on race and ethnic disparities announced by Boris Johnson on Sunday after the global wave of Black Lives Matter protests … It is understood that Mirza has said she hopes to recruit Trevor Phillips as part of the commission”. So let’s look at those backstories.
Phillips, as the Guardian points out, “previously referred to UK Muslims as being ‘a nation within a nation’”. His attack on the “Muslim fostering” row, written for the Murdoch Sun, was dead on arrival: many of the claims he made about Tower Hamlets Council and the emergency placement of a child in foster care were known to be untrue, as details of the Case Management Hearing the previous day had already been made public.
Ms Mirza is also an experienced practitioner in Muslim bashing: as a regular contributor to Spiked, so called because it should have been long ago, her litany of incendiary headlines makes grim reading. From “The press should be free to ridicule Islam” (it already is, thanks), through “Diversity is divisive” and “Stop pandering to Muslims” (stop something that never started - good move, eh?) to “Lammy review: the myth of institutional racism”, the impression of a provocateur peddling misinformation is inescapable.
So why is Ms Mirza being given this role? Simples. Bozo The Clown is inept, the public are starting to rumble him, a distraction is needed, and no-one muddies the waters with alternate reality like Spiked. Sebastian Payne of the FT let the cat out of the bag when he told “officials in Boris Johnson’s inner circle are urging a ‘war on woke’ and have influenced the PM‘s thinking on the culture war”. What culture war?
Ah well. That would be the culture war about to be ramped up as a crude and predictable diversion from Bozo’s failings. Payne also slipped up badly when he then claimed “Johnson himself has taken a generally balanced approach to cultural issues. He made a big defence of Winston Churchill’s statue on Monday, but has also made it clear he is listening to the concerns of the Black Lives Matter movement”. And to that I call bullshit.
There is no defence needed for the Churchill statue: the claims that there is a move to have it taken down are bogus, another excuse for that culture war. Bozo isn’t listening to BLM, and as to “generally balanced”, Peter Jukes of Byline Media had something to say.
So Johnson’s first bid to become PM - his Telegraph column about Muslim women looking like ‘bank robbers’, aided by ‘proud to be racist’ Steve Bannon is ‘generally balanced’, Sebastian? If your middle ground is there I suggest you’re part of an obvious culture capture”. But good of Payne to reveal what is already being briefed by Downing Street.

Putting Spiked in charge of the Ministry of Truth? We are truly through the looking glass.
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8 comments:

Andy McDonald said...

It seems that the phrase "former member of the Revolutionary Communist Party" is, pun intended, a massive red flag. Caution, here be gobshites.

As for Johnson's Telegraph article, here's a quick summary:

Boot boys bad, fair enough, but then he immediately says that it was a terrible shame they felt the statue was in need of defending. Shame about the skinheads, pity you had to provoke them, you know what they're like.

Then he says that we need to address the present and not the past - in other words, leave everything as it is, people are complex. But he's already fudging. What Churchill 'may have said'. Throwing in an African slaver, nice bit of "they were all as bad as each other".

And his solutions? Proper democratic channels - well, that's code for suck it up. A few statues of BAME people who helped make the commonwealth? Yeah, who deck themselves out in finery to suck up to Mrs Queen. A cross-party commission on racism? That's the ball sailing out of the park and into the very long grass a long way down the road. A body stuffed with nonentities which will spend months as an afterthought before it convenes, argues about the seating arrangement, then dissolves with everyone blaming the intransigence of the people from the other parties.

But it's "cheerful". Oh goody. They're just big kids really. Some of them are almost as smart as the white kids!

TL/DR: shut up and be grateful we're not lynching you.

"It is no use just saying that we have made huge progress in tackling racism."

Which is all he's fucking done.

Arnold said...

As Bozo hasn't implemented the findings of previous enquiries, why rig this one?

grim northerner said...

They can project the 'findings' of the 'whitewash' on to Brendon o neal's forehead.

Anonymous said...

The bigoted left's worst nightmare, two unbiased independent thinkers who won't play the blame game and are actually interested in social progress and addressing racism in all it's forms. What's not to like. No need to mention their ethnicity, not relevant. But, as always, the leftist bigots are pre-judging the issue, everything must be as they say it is, no dissent, lies are truth and we don't want to hear anything but our own views echoed. Not interested in social progress, just want to impose our world view on everyone because we are right.

Anonymous said...

Anon @18:44, you can keeping calling kissing the ass of your upper-class Norman overlords social progress if it makes you happy.

grim northerner said...

Fuck me, your posts are so boring, you write like a million other twitter ranters who also have nothing of interest or value to add.

grim northerner said...

He's just a toxic coward, one of many who've oozed out of the toxic sludge of Brexit. Beautiful mixed race brits are the future and the likes of him can't bear it.

N said...

You didn't get to the point in time for me not to lose interest. Your rambling is pointless since no one will bother reading it all.

But you think you're an 'independent thinker' despite all evidence to the contrary. Johnson worshipping freaks aren't independent thinkers, by the way.

Independent thinkers. That's a good one!