When the Nazi-woman-on-a-tram video came out, I was one of the twitter-chattering classes who bemoaned what she was saying.
In case you haven’t seen it, here’s the foul-mouthed and utterly inarticulate rant by a woman with her toddler on her lap bemoaning that “my Britain is fuck all” because of immigration, asking other passengers where they come from, telling them to go back (one person is told to go back to “Nicaraguaberra”)
It’s horrible, but it represents the views of many, many people who don’t yell it in public and who aren’t daft enough to do it in front of a camera.
But then I read that “Emma West (34) of New Addington was charged with Racially Aggravated Section 4a on Monday. She was remanded in custody overnight.”
It makes me uncomfortable that she was arrested and spent the night in a police cell. Before you call me a racist, let’s be clear: I disagree with everything she said, and the manner in which she said it. And, had she and a few of her friends surrounded a black person and started shouting at him, they would be obviously threatening and should be arrested.
But Ms West wasn’t threatening anyone. She remained seated, with her child on her lap. While her words are abhorrent, they’re only words. No-one was physically threatened. She wasn’t inciting anyone else to violence. So what’s her crime? Being a horrible idiot isn’t a crime. She’s offensive, but being offensive isn’t a crime. And no-one has the right to be protected by law from being offended.
It seems to me that those of us who believe in free speech must support the right for people to spout offensive nonsense.
Some products are made that are rarely seen in the nation that produces them. One of these seems to be American democracy. Successive American governments have been exporting democracy, even to places that appear not to want it, but are reluctant to allow their own people to partake of this delicacy.
“We very much want to see the human rights of the people protected, including right to assemble, right to express themselves” – Hillary Clinton on the Arab Spring.
Meanwhile, Oakland, USA:
“You can’t have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail…mass arrests and brute force are at odds with the universal rights of Bahrain’s citizens ” – Barack Obama about Bahrain.
With riots kicking off left right and centre, an article by Penny Red called Panic on the streets of London keeps reappearing in my timeline.
Apart from some hyberole and cliche (“watching my city burn”, “society is ripping itself apart”), it’s a good article. I find her statement “Riots are about power, and they are about catharsis” to be incisive.
But one thing really grates. Primarily, I find this to be disturbing: “The so-called leaders who have taken three solid days to return from their foreign holidays”
Firstly, and least importantly, why the word “foreign” there? Is it to imply that going abroad is the hallmark of a cigar-chomping, caviar-snorting top-hatted capitalist? It looks as if “going to Foreignland” is code for “disgustingly rich” which, at the turn of the last century it might have been. But it ain’t now.
Most importantly is the implicit assertion that if only our leaders had returned earlier (or not gone to Foreignland at all) everything would be alright. If only our wise paternalist leaders had their hand reassuringly on the rudder of state, there wouldn’t be unrest.
This is, of course, preposterous. This lazy belief in Leaders is prevalent in the right and the left (I’ve seen lots of comments on Twitter from left-leaning friends deriding the fact that our leaders have been on holiday. In holiday season, the bastards).
If only David Cameron hadn’t cut this budget, it implies, Dwayne Scumbag wouldn’t be nicking from an injured boy (video). If only Nick Clegg/ Boris Johnson / Ed Milliband were sitting in their office in a suit and tie, it’ll be OK because it’s not the rioters’ responsibility and it’s not our responsibility – we can all turn on The X Factor and go back to sleep.
But David Cameron, tosser though he is, did not seize power in a military coup. We – as a society – elected him, and no-one seriously expected him to do anything else other than gleefully rekindle Thatcherism.
We – as a society – enjoyed the practically free credit that allowed us to stock up on the shiny consumer durables that are being looted now. And we as a society tell each other that ownership of Brand X or machine Y is so important to your value as a human being that you should break a window to acquire one.
And if we as a society are so infantilised that we believe that we’re helpless until a Leader comes back from Foreignland, smiling benignly to roll up his sleeves and clean up our poo, then we’re in even bigger trouble than it appears.
What worries me is that once Our Leaders come back to take charge, to the relief of both the right and the left, they’ll feel the need to show they’re in charge by Utterly Condemning the Mindless Violence and then getting out the rubber bullets and water cannons. Because whatever it is that’s going on, rubber bullets and water cannons won’t cure it.
Naturally, because he’s caring-and-sharing, he only has those people’s best interests at heart:
My concern about it is it prevents those people from being given the opportunity to get the first rung on the employment ladder.
But he’s not just caring-and-sharing. He’s also a True Blue Tory who lives in The Real World of laisez-faire economics:
The point is that if an employer is considering two candidates, one who has disabilities and one who does not, and if they have to pay them both the same rate, which is the employer more likely to take on? Whether that is right or wrong and whether my hon. Friend would or would not do that, that is to me the real world in which we operate.
Rather stupidly, I had assumed that the role of Members of Parliament was to enact legislation that protected the vulnerable by promoting equality, redistributing wealth from the very rich to the disadvantaged and ensure that people aren’t exploited in the workplace.
I realise now that, because inequality and exploitation exists in the real world, we should accept it and encourage it by exempting groups of people from laws designed to protect them.
So let’s have an army of ultra-low paid people doing menial tasks without legal protection of any sort. In the capitalist real world, there is no need to price those people out of the market with statutory maximum working hours, or the requirement for safety equipment as they go down mines or up chimneys.
The disabed are analagous to former prisoners, says Mr Davis:
The only way the former prisoner would be given a chance by the employer is if the employer was able to say, “I’ll give you a smaller amount for a certain period of time and we’ll see how it goes. If you prove yourself, I’ll move you up.”
From his voting record, I see that Mr Davis voted against equal gay rights, presumably so we can have minimum wage-exempt homosexuals staffing up hairdressing salons or kd lang tribute acts. I’m surprised that he voted for a stricter asylum system, given the opportunity it gives us to import squadrons of highly-trained professionals from war-torn areas of the world who could work as doctors for £3 an hour in the cash-strapped NHS.
I’m not hysterical at all. In fact, if Mr Davis would care to attend my kickboxing class next Saturday, I will kick his arse for 60 minutes and not invoice him £5.93 for that hour at all. As someone with a disability (multiple sclerosis), I’ll happily do it for free. To prove myself.
Since meeting loads of quakers on CND marches in the mid-80s, I’ve always shared the aims of Amnesty and, since becoming financially solvent, I’ve always made sure they get a hearty share of my pay packet.
But I do wish that Amnesty would drop its campaigns on abortion and the death penalty.
Personally, I’m in favour of a woman’s right to choose, and completely opposed to the death penalty. (Saying “killing people is so wrong that if you do it we will kill you” seems morally and logically indefensible.)
But I know dozens of people who left Amnesty, or tell me they can’t support it because of these campaigns. I hope that the organisation will get back to its core message of freedom of conscience and return to a position of neutrality on abortion and the death penalty so that it ceases to alienate potential supporters.
I’m increasingly uncomfortable with the whole sordid story.
If the Pakistani military didn’t know he was hiding in a garrison town for years, it’s terrifying that they have nukes as they’re way too incompetent to look after them.
If the Pakistani military did know he was hiding in a garrison town for years, it’s terrifying that they have nukes as they’re obviously no friend to us. They’re also a danger to neighbouring India, a democracy with 20% of the world’s population. (I had originally written “we should take their nukes off them”, but with the current fad for invading countries, it’s a dangerous thing to call for!)
If Bin Laden was unarmed (as the Americans say) what type of resisting arrest did he need to do to make it impossible for 20 highly-trained special forces members to incapacitate him and take him alive?
Where’s the evidence it was him as there are no photos and he was buried at sea? Surely the aim is to demoralise his supporters, but without proof that he’s dead it’s less effective.
I object to the phrase “justice is done”. The desire for revenge is an understandable emotion, but it’s a destructive one. Summary execution is not the same thing as justice; it’s murder. The triumphalism is ugly and misplaced.
I fear that the world is more dangerous after the murder of Bin Laden by the USA rather than safer. And I have to fly to the USA next month.
I’m watching the UK news about President Obama producing his birth certificate, with increasing incredulity. The problem appears to be that he hasn’t satifactorily demonstrated that he was born in the USA. But to whom has he failed to demonstrate it? I find it hard to believe that he’s never shown a birth certificate before when standing as a governor or senator (or whatever it is).
A further question occurs to me. Why can’t someone born outside the USA become President? Given that the USA is basically a nation of recent immigrants, why couldn’t a naturalised citizen become the leader? Why the discrimination?
And, while we’re on the subject, how come a country that separates religion and state has Christmas as a national holiday, but not Hannukah or Eid or Diwali? And “In God We Trust” as a motto?
I should add that I love visiting the USA and am not snarking. I’m genuinely interested.
Yesterday morning, I tweeted “Whoever forms the next government will need support of LIb Dems, and price should be nothing short of full electoral reform.”
This morning, on Pete Aylward’s suggestion I emailed my Lib Dem MP (for whom I voted, if that matters):
“I’d like you to represent my views to Nick Clegg. Please do NOT go into a deal with the Tories and start savaging public services.
“Please support Brown, but make the price of your support a referendum on introducing real voting reform (so number of seats is related to %age of national vote, not tinkering with first past the post as Cameron seems to want to do), and the scrapping of ID cards.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get a really fair voting system in place that will radically change Britain in a way that will last much longer than any of us will last. Britain voted for change – this is the chance to give it to us.”
Staggeringly, he’s responded by email to say he’s on a train to London to talk to the rest of the party, set out his initial position (remain independent) and suggest I come to a consultation meeting tomorrow or Monday (which I shall, if it fits around my grandmother’s funeral).
(I haven’t reproduced his replies; it seems ill-mannered to do so.)
I’m a bit shocked. The last bloke was Labour, so an MP who talks with (rather than at) constituents is a bit of a novelty round here.
Happy St George’s Day. Today I received this leaflet from the BNP through my door. It offended me because my next door neighbour is a good friend; she’s a Birmingham-born muslim lady of Pakistani origin. She brings us round nice curries every time Ramadan ends and sends us Xmas cards and we do the same.
I myself am guilty of the grievous sin of miscegenation (marrying someone of a different “race”) as my wife is Asian. We have two appallingly off-white children, one of whom has just got into one of the best schools in England and will no doubt show how she’ll sponge of the state by doing well in her exams, getting a good job and paying lots of tax – abusing British hospitality thereby.
So I wondered what to do with this letter from the BNP. I thought about wiping my bottom with it but frankly it’s a little bit too glossy so all it would do is spread all the shit around, much like the BNP’s leaflet distributors. So follow me into my toilet where we’ll burn it.
Here we have the BNP’s leaflet on fire, and now I’m going to flush it down the pan where it belongs.
This has been a non-party political broadcast, on behalf of all the civilised and decent people in England, regardless of what country their parents came from, whatever religion they have or whatever their colour is.
The lucky Mrs Lawson is currently in Thailand visiting her parents, while I stay at home and try to prevent the kids seeing news reports of twenty dead in Bangkok.
The current crop of trouble-makers are the Red Shirts – supporters of ousted and exiled Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Shinawatra is a deeply unpleasant scumbag businessman turned politico. After his election, a programme of extra-judicial killings of suspected drug-dealers was ordered, with many photos appearing in the press of bodies shot at close range through the back of the head while miraculously resisting arrest while they had their hands and feet tied.
A raid on a mosque in muslim Southern Thailand left 50 prisoners dead after they had been stacked like logs on the back of lorries in the heat for hours. Thaksin said that it was the mens’ fault for weakening themselves through the Ramadan fast.
So there’s nothing to love about Mr Thaksin, except… except… he was elected by a landslide, was the first Thai Prime Minister to serve a full term. He introduced a range of policies that reduced rural poverty by half in four years, the country’s first universal healthcare program, and his re-election in 2005 had the highest voter turnout in Thai history. He was ousted by a military coup while overseas allegedly because of corruption (which he almost certainly was; corruption is epidemic in Thai politics). That’s the trouble with democracy, you see; sometimes, the people vote for idiots or villains.
The group opposing the Red Shirts, the PAD (Yellow Shirts), are the group that shut down Bangkok airport in 2008, causing incalculable damage to the Thai economy during the peak season. They are widely believed to be supported by the Queen and represent the elite of the country—the traditional old guard of aristocracy. Wikipedia sums it up perfectly:
“The Asian Human Rights Commission has noted of the PAD and their agenda that, ‘although they may not describe themselves as fascist, have fascist qualities.’ Citing the claimed failure of popular democracy in Thailand, the PAD has suggested constitutional amendments that would make Parliament a largely royally-appointed body. It has openly called for the military and Thailand’s traditional elite to take a greater role in politics”.
What the whole sorry situation shows is that while Bangkok is a primate city full of millionaires, Porsche cars, skyscrapers and aircon shopping malls, the rural poor in Thailand (most of the people) are as marginalised as ever. The traditional elite pretended a romantic idolisation of the farmers while either ignoring or despising them (much like Russian communists’ relationship with their peasantry), so the poor had to look to a nasty, authoritarian telecoms billionaire to hurl them some cash to buy their votes.
Meanwhile, we hope that my wife makes it safely back home before some idiots shut down the airport again.