Meet The New Boss....

...simultaneously very different from the old boss, and also not much better.

On Your Marks, Get Set, Go!

I didn’t think it’d be long before the whining started. Jackie Ashley on the upcoming Paralympics:

There is a crude, unthinking sports fan who confuses the human lottery with virtue; who worships a Bolt or a Phelps because they are big and physically impressive; or who thinks that Australian or British sportspeople are inherently "better". Why waste time talking about it? Because it's exactly the same kind of stupidity that denigrates other people because they happen to have been born with physical palsy or a learning disability, or to have had a car accident that resulted in both legs being amputated.

See, we shouldn’t have cheered for Mo Farah, because it makes us more likely to go out and tip a disabled man out of his wheelchair.

I think that’s what she’s saying, anyway.

… the Paralympics may be morally more important than the Olympics. For the stupid adoration of people because of their physical luck has as its flip side the stupid ridiculing or hostility to people because of their disabilities. In essence, it's the same thing. The comedian's vile insult, the punch at a bus-stop, the schoolboy mockery of wheelchair-users are all failures of empathy – failures to see the people who are actually there.

Ah. Yes, idiotic as it might sound, that is indeed what she’s saying.

And in Britain, at least, this is the time to worry. Official government figures show that the number of disability hate crimes reported to the police in England and Wales has reached a record high – there were some 1,942 last year.

Have they indeed?

So what's going on?

Well, it’s simple. For one thing, we’re recording them as such now, whereas before they would have simply gone down as crimes against the person (which, since you seem to dislike the use of labels, I’d have thought you’d be in favour of?).

For another, victims have realised that there’s an advantage to be had in claiming to have a ‘high profile’ crime, so it wouldn’t surprise me one little bit if a disability is claimed as the reason for a crime, when it may not have been the case at all.

Charities believe it must be linked to the rise in "scrounger" rhetoric by ministers, and the suggestion that huge numbers of people are dishonestly claiming benefits.

Of course they believe that. Given the alternative…

And because there are always a few bad apples, it is an addictively easy blame game. Yes, there are idle people with disabilities. Yes, there are crooks who happen to be partially sighted. It's the same with those who aren't disabled … except that they are a little harder to pick out, and pick on.

If you think people are more sympathetic to able-bodied criminals and benefit cheats, you really haven’t read many local newspapers…

As the Paralympics will remind us, there's a vast range of disability, and it's people with learning disabilities who are most at risk. According to the Papworth Trust, 90% of them report being bullied, with a third saying it happens every week or every day. These are the people at the sharpest end of the fear and insecurity that comes with hard times. What's happening to them is the latest episode in the sad saga of discrimination of old: "they're the same" – all black, gay or Jewish people. It's seeing the label, not the person.

Oooh, a Godwin!

Mostly, in modern Britain, we've moved beyond this. Mostly, but not quite. That's why the Paralympics matters so much.

Yes, to avoid labelling which leads to thinking of people as different we should have a great big separate event, exclusively for the disabled.

And not mention Oscar Pistorius. Not once.

Another ‘Well-loved Family Man’ Bites The Dust?

Youth leaders have blamed a police dog handler for sparking off violent disorder in inner-city Chapeltown, Leeds.

Didn’t he poop-scoop?

Come to think of it, in Chapeltown, who’d notice a bit more crap on the street.

Must have been something else, then?

Youths were said to be angered after a police dog bit a 14-year-old boy who was among a crowd which gathered at the scene of a shooting of a man near to a park off Chapeltown Road.

The 34-year-old shooting victim was last night critically ill in hospital after he was hit in the face by a shotgun blast.

There you are, watching the local entertainment with your chums, maybe discussing Wittgenstein or the latest news from the stock market, and suddenly there’s a police dog running loose, savaging you for no good reason at all. Apparently.

Yes, it can happen. But remember where this is.

Claude Hendrickson, director of the Chapeltown Young People’s Club, said: “One of the police dogs got loose and bit a number of people, including a boy who was an innocent bystander.

“Young people witnessed the police dog attacking the boy and were disgusted by it.

The kids were not happy with what happened and decided to face-off the police.”

You’ll note in the other example no-one’s initial response was to ‘face off’ the police. Civilised people settle this sort of grievance with lawyers and appearances in APILN.

You'll also note Claude's rather interesting phrasing:

"...and bit a number of people, including a boy who was an innocent bystander."

That sounds to me as though the other bitees weren't quite so innocent...

He claimed a fellow youth worker had thrown a bicycle at the police dog in order to get it off the teenager.

Mr Hendrickson added: “Seeing a fellow young person being attacked by a police dog has incited and incensed young people.

“We have ongoing problems with the police; we feel sometimes we are unfairly policed.

This was very much between the police and young people. It has been building up for a time because of the way the police handle young people.”

And there’s the reason why this country (or rather, parts of it) is so utterly broken I believe it’s beyond fixing.

These are youth workers. What’s their first reaction? To excuse their charges of any need to behave like civilised human beings and to join them in condemning the police for having the temerity to challenge their ‘right’ to rob, steal, intimidate and rubberneck at crime scenes.

Oh, yes. That crime scene:

Locals said the victim was a well-known boxer and family man and they were puzzled why he would be shot.

Mr Hendrickson said: “He’s a real family man. Everybody is mystified.

Yes. That’s what they said about Duggan too.

Det Chief Insp Lisa Griffin, who is leading the investigation, described it as a “senseless crime”.

She said: “I want people in the community to come forward and help me solve this crime and I am particularly keen to speak to anyone who saw vehicles leaving the scene at or around 6.40pm.”

That ‘community’? You’ll be lucky, love…

Just Shut Up And Vote The Way We Tell You!

Gary Younge (is it me, or does his picture on that by-line look a lot like deceased actor Gary Coleman?) on those bloody gays and their refusal to recognise the real enemy:

In a brilliant exposé the Guardian reported how a lone man held up a pink triangle at a demonstration of the English Defence League – one of the most openly anti-immigrant and Islamophobic organisations in the country. When the reporter asked him what it was for he replied nervously: "This is the symbol gay people were made to wear under Hitler. Islam poses the same threat and we are here to express our opposition to that."

Given fascism's history of violent and outspoken homophobia, the news that the EDL would have a 115-strong lesbian, gay and transgender wing would appear, at the very least, incongruous.

Yes, indeed, it’s a puzzle. Why would a group opposed to the creep of Islamification attract people worried about the potential drawbacks of that?

But surely Gary must be able to find a way in which this is actually the fault of the west?

Ah. He can:

But in fact it just the most glaring example of the misguided and ill-informed shift in our nationalist discourse that has moved the emphasis from creed to culture and race to religion in a bid to erect a moral rampart between the a mythological modern, enlightened, progressive west and the demonised medieval, backward, bigoted south.

There’s nothing good about our society, folks. We’re just fooling ourselves. We’re just the same as any remote, primitive tribe, really...

Far from being a contradiction confined to the far right, these issues have taken on totemic significance in the mainstream in the broadside against both multiculturalism in general and non-European immigration in particular as though they were inimicable (Ed: sic) with the principles of social equality.

By which Gary means ‘Damn! They aren’t supposed to be the ones on the side of justice!’.

At the end of an otherwise reasonable editorial on immigration in early April the Financial Times argued: "A strong emphasis on cultural assimilation is also justified" including a "robust defence of western values, such as women's and gay rights".

Well, who could possibly argue against that?

But Gary gives it the old college try:

The problem with this particular line in the sand is that it is quickly washed away by reality. For something to qualify as a "western value" it must possess at least two qualities. First, it must be a "value" that is exclusive to the west. Second, it must be a belief that has been long-held, broadly consented to and deeply entrenched.

Since when did we let Guardian columnists and race hustlers define our terms for us?

Gay rights can boast neither of these attributes. Many basic rights were only granted to gays in the west relatively recently.

Indeed, but we stopped imprisoning and killing them a hell of a lot longer than that…

Moreover, far from cementing a consensus, these legal advances remain controversial and highly contested. In the 31 American states where gay marriage has been put to a popular vote it has been defeated.

We’re really no better than the people who push walls over onto gay couples, are we?

The west has also proved quite adept at exporting homophobia. More than half of the countries that criminalise homosexuality do so with laws left over from British colonialism.

Which ended last Thursday, right?

Not many, many years ago, leaving such laws in the hands of the native peoples, to repeal as they saw fit?

The greatest threat to gay rights comes not from Islam and the left, but the Christian right.

Really? So a strongly worded letter to the ‘Church Times’ equates to the death penalty? But this paragraph tells you why Gary has a bee in his bonnet about this:

This is why we cannot allow an issue as important as gay rights to be snatched by the right as a stick with which to beat Islam, immigration and the left.

Islam, immigration, the left = good.

Everything else = bad.

No matter what reality says….

The More Things Change...

So, exciting times ahead? Well, no. Same old, same old, it seems...

There'll still be race hustlers:

A senior black Metropolitan Police officer and anti-racism campaigner is suing the force over allegations of discrimination, it was revealed today.

Superintendent Paul Wilson, 51, said his career has been held back because of the racist views of colleagues.

There'll still be idiot judges and poorly used laws:

David Stothers, 36, of Rochdale, Greater Manchester, was given a three year community order for a sex assault in which he ordered the woman's six-year-old daughter to indecently touch him while he tried to take a photo on his mobile phone.

Police will still just arrest everyone in sight and consider it 'job done':

Describing the incident, a spokeswoman for Derbyshire police said: "A man who is 49 was at his house when another man, aged 43, knocked on the door.

"The two of them got into an argument over a littering incident, during which the 49-year-old was punched in the face.

"We arrived and arrested both of them because it was unclear who the aggressor was.

"Both have been released on bail pending further inquires (sic)."

We'll still be held hostage by unions when we just want to get out of this country for a break:

The Unite trade union is considering a 20-day walkout but is not expected to announce strike dates until Monday at the earliest. Unite must give BA seven days' notice of strike action, making 17 May the soonest possible date for industrial action.

Councils will still take long-suffering ratepayers for a ride:

A council has inspected one of its day centres following claims it is haunted.

A maintenance team was sent to the Wintern Day Centre in Fishguard to look for structural faults or anything that may explain strange events there.

A newspaper reports staff are afraid to work after hours as items have flown off walls, furniture has moved and unplugged printers have burst to life.

And 'CiF' will still consider that looney devil-spotter (and now utter failure as Green Party candidate for councillor) Beatrix Campbell is a suitable person to pontificate on child protection issues, as even other contributors point out:


So what's new?