Blah Blah Flowers

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to urgently review the way LGBT asylum seekers are treated.

Labels: asylum seekers, bisexual, gay, Government, homophobia, immigration, lesbians, LGBT, petitions, transgenderism, transphobia

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Replace the current national anthem with "The National Anthem" by Radiohead.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to stop deporting gays and lesbians to countries where they may be imprisoned, tortured or executed because of their sexuality.

Labels: gay, homophobia, immigration, lesbians, music, petitions, Radiohead, United Kingdom

The British Government has proved consistently reluctant to do anything to help the Iraqis that have put their lives on the line to help the British troops invading their country. According to The Times, the Government is using every excuse it can think of to turn their asylum applications down.

Labels: Government, immigration, Iraq, The War Against Terror

Gah, stuff to do, stuff to do, thank Crickey I'm on leave this week as I'm just so tired right now.

Anyway, just time to dump a few links in your laps for your edufictation...

Iraqi interpreters and other key support staff who have risked their lives to work for Britain are to be allowed to settle in the United Kingdom.

And done just in time to avoid the meeting that was being organised in one of the rooms in the Palace of Westminster about this. Bollocks to it being 'a Times campaign', everyone played their part.

Meanwhile, the Home Secretary is urged to respond to allegations that failed asylum seekers have the shit kicked out of them as they are deported. The Indy had a big report on this yesterday, shocking if true but not surprising.

This ban will not stop us. There's going to be a Stop the War demo on Monday, but the police have decided it's illegal and dusted down legislation centuries old to justify their reasoning (which is interesting because although Gordon Brown promised to repeal SOCPA when he finally took to the thrown I believe it's still in force right now). More info here.

And finally, for some 'light relief', Celebrity racist Danielle Lloyd says she "felt like a man" after being forced to venture out in public with hairy armpits as part of a TV documentary. More TV fakery as it was prosthetic underarm hair, she wasn't even asked to just not shave for a while.

Labels: beauty, Daily Mail, demonstrations, Gordon Brown, immigration, Iraq, Parliament, The War Against Terror, United Kingdom, women

Conservative peer claims the BNP have 'some very legitimate views' on immigration. This is Sayeeda Warsi, who has cropped up here before, so is obviously keen that the new Conservative party should be comprised of homophobes AND racists, just like the old one.

Labels: BNP, British National Party, Conservatives, immigration

Talking Points Memo have discovered a new bit of Fox-lunacy.

Because some of the people involved in the crap terrorist activity of the last few weeks in the U.K. were Doctors in the N.H.S, universal healthcare in the U.S. would become a gateway for terrorism in the United States!

Here, here, here...

Labels: Fox, immigration, news, stupidity, terrorism, The War Against Terror, United States, YouTube

Oh fuck off, fuck off, fuck off! What fucked-up focus group was it that has encouraged New Labour to so blatantly play to the racists in the audience? And this latest idiotic idea from Ruth Kelly? Where is the proof that sharing a common language affects integration? Where would be the safeguards to make sure that this doesn't just ghettoise vulnerable people in our country even more? Where is the proof that immigrants were going around saying "Hurrah! This country's ridiculously helpful translation services mean I never have to bother learning the language!"*? Never mind that English speakers have historically tended not to make as much of an effort learning foreign languages as they have learning ours.

*And if you are a lazy immigrant intended to use translation services rather than learn English I'd suggest that you don't come to Barnet, as the council closed the service entirely a few years back to save money.

Labels: immigration, Labour, racism

The BNP say Margaret Hodge is saying things they want to hear. Even at the worst point of Michael Howard's reign I don't remember the Tories getting the unqualified two thumbs up from the fascists.

Labels: BNP, British National Party, Government, immigration, Labour, multiculturalism

The Daily Telegraph claims John Reid is burying bad news while reporting John Reid declaring Al Qaeda is winning the battle of ideas with the British Government*. Meanwhile the Observer reports John Reid is planning to prevent Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants from coming to this country in January and The Sun goes with the news that John Reid is looking for ships to use as floating prisons.

John Reid, lest we forget, is NOT running for Deputy Prime Minister when John Prescott rides off next year. He must be mightily confident that Gordon Brown is going to lose the next General Election though.

* I'm struggling to remember a time when the British Government won the battle of ideas with anyone over anything. It failed to convince people that the Millenium Dome wasn't going to be a load of crap, that the War in Iraq was a good idea for the region or that David Blunkett wasn't an evil-minded shower of shit. Way back in the late nineties Tony Blair said that the Government were going to persuade the British people of the wisdom of joining the single European currency, then never spoke of it again. The only arguments the Labour party wins are those that Tony Blair has with the rest of the party, by frightening them with the bogeyman of losing power.

The American mid-term elections don't seem to have come up much in the UK News, except for the whole thing with Foley talking dirty to teens thing. But when I look at American media the common refrain from Republicans is that whether some guy fiddled with kids or whether that Republican was a crook that embezzled tons of money or whatever, the only crime is that the Democrats are trying to take advantage of it. Puh-lease! I think, when it comes down to it, the guy that committed the crime is probably worse than the guy who talked about the guy who committed the crime. I don't think anyone suggested that Moses was worse than Pharoah for writing how he persecuted the Jews. And I suppose that whole thing of Shrubya standing on the boat in front of the 'Mission Accomplished!' was a genuine excited declaration and not about PR at all? Look at Patrick, who will probably end up voting for a party he doesn't like, because the only thing going for them is that they aren't called 'The Democratic Party', despite okaying massive increases in spending, on the military, and increasing the power of the Government to spy on and harass it's citizens. Rolling Stone has a pretty damning report on the corrupt crooks of both parties who run the United States.

Labels: Democrats, Government, immigration, John Reid, Republicans, The War Against Terror, United States

At the risk of turning this into a blog where I just whine about stupid columnists, Goddamn Lowri Turner. You remember Lowri Turner right? Remember? Well, this week Mrs 'I don't have anything against gays but' turns her keen insight on immigration.

To the middle classes, immigration from countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union is a win-win situation. After years of being held to ransom by surly builders and overpaid nannies, they are back in the driving seat. Hand Vladimir a meagre bundle of cash and those gutters are fixed in a jiffy with no mention of a cup of tea or going home at 3. Vonya will be just as willing to come and live in your house and look after your kids for a pittance.

It's not often that you get someone who isn't living in the nineteenth century being so open about taking such advantage of other people.

For company bosses too, this new pool of highly motivated, skilled workers is a godsend. Well, if you were a boss would you rather employ some spotty British youth or Vicky Pollard type, or a young man from Estonia with a mother and four sisters to support back home? The latter obviously.

Everyone under 23 is a chav, obviously.

Plus, we're told, these people bring a taste of a different culture with them. This translates, if you are one of the chattering classes, into a fabulous little ethnic bistro round the corner. I have a Polish deli not far from me and a Russian restaurant and Bulgarian and Hungarian eateries can't be far behind.

"And dahling, they all talk in that funny noise that almost sounds like talking and if you throw them a quid they'll do one of their funny little dances for you! They really are a hoot! Not like the girl we had to let go last week, we gave her her monthly wages and she didn't have the common decency to prostrate herself at our feet in thankfulness! Honestly, the ingratitude!"

The result is a middle-class consensus that immigration is good for the country. I am part of this consensus. I think immigration is a good thing. Still, I hosted a radio phone-in this week and I heard a rather different story from a section of the population who are being hushed-up because their views and experiences do not fit the official response. They are what we used to call the working classes, but now we're too embarrassed to call them anything really.

Now, see that bit up there where Lowri says: immigration is good for the country and I am part of this consensus? I believe that this is a lie. I am led to this conclusion because Lowri spends the rest of the article repeating the usual claptrap racists spout through a variety of third persons without any attempt to counter it.

I talked to builders who told me of some Eastern European counterparts driving untaxed vans, living 10 to a house and doing work for cash at prices that they, as men with families to support and mortgages to pay, couldn't hope to match. Some of this is sour grapes, of course. Our builders have long preferred cash and are not known for being eager beavers.

Oh, you didn't accidentally refer to them as 'the so-called working classes' in their hearing did you?

However, it is not just building jobs that those from the former Soviet Union are mopping up. Factory and agricultural work, as well as care jobs are all popular. The obvious argument is that these are all jobs that we don't want to do. They are poorly paid and low status. But, rather than accept these facts and just hire in a more desperate lot of foreign workers, shouldn't we be thinking perhaps about improving the pay and conditions so they are fit for our own people? As one caller said to me this week, 'The British working classes are being sold down the river.'

Another caller had an astute prediction. He said, 'Just you wait until it's middle-class jobs that are being taken, see how you like it.'

And it's already starting. I spoke to a dentist who was incandescent that the Government has just hired in Eastern European dentists to solve the NHS dental shortage. We already have lots of foreign doctors and nurses, but it will be interesting to see how the middle classes react when they are followed by accountants, lawyers and management consultants. They'll be choking on their borscht and blinis then.

Accusations of racism are easy to sling at those who have concerns about the influx of foreign workers. However, I also heard worrying stories this week of a brand of old-fashioned racism that is being imported with some of those who are arriving here.

If you were shut behind the Iron Curtain for a lifetime, it is unlikely that your views on race are enlightened. Some of those travelling here from tiny villages have never seen a black person. I was told of one university lecturer from Khazakhstan who came home to her UK landlady every night and wept because she was so horrified by the brown skins she encountered.

That's not actually racism Lowri. I would hazard a guess it's 'culture shock'. My Concise Oxford defines racism as 'a belief in the superiority of a particular race; prejudice based on this'. Now maybe your Kazakhstani was weeping because the inhabitants of those brown skins weren't all strung up at the nearest lamp-post but so far it's only you and your phone-in friends who are the closest to expressing a belief that they're in the master-race.

As one black caller told me,

"Ooh, ooh, look! 'Black person', 'black person'! I must be right, I've got a black person backing me up!"

As one black caller told me, 'I grew up with racism and things had got better. Now it's like going back 20 years.' One cabbie recounted how he hears the N-word used in the back of his cab now and another woman reported a squat opposite her house populated by Russians, some of whom paraded about wearing Nazi insignia. It sounds unbelievable, but she was adamant.

So she must be right.

Now, none of this is an argument against immigration. We are a nation whose wealth is founded on foreign labour. Our continued prosperity depends upon it. Besides, with so many of us opting these days to retire to Spain, we can hardly moan when others want to come here. However, not listening to certain opinions and experiences because they are uncomfortable and unfashionable is simply wrong.

However, listening to people when they're full of shit isn't exactly a prescription for mental health either.

Labels: immigration, journalists, Lowri Turner, racism