Asian rape gangs? Don't be racist

Yes, that is, in essence, one of the damning findings of the report published today that comprises the findings of an inquiry carried out by Professor Alexis Jay looked at how Rotherham Council's children's services department dealt with cases involving child exploitation between 1997 and 2013.

You can read the report here.  It is not just a damning indictment of Council staff, but also Councillors (in a Council that has been run by a large Labour majority since its inception in 1974) and the Police. 

Key findings are:

- 1400 cases of child abuse over a 16 year period, of whom over one-third were already known to child protection authorities some down to the age of 11;

- Examples of "children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone";

- "They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten and intimidated"

-  Police regarded many victims with "contempt";

-  Of three previous reports into the problems, one was suppressed and two others ignored.

Beyond the utter incompetence is a more sinister element, you see "By far the majority of perpetrators were described as Asian by victims", but Councillors preferred to treat such cases as "one-offs" refusing to see a pattern.

The bigger concern was "several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist. Others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so."

In other words, Council staff, with support from Councillors, were more concerned about being accused of racism, than they were about young girls being raped.  

"One senior officer suggested that some influential Pakistani-heritage councillors in Rotherham had acted as barriers. Several councillors interviewed believed that by opening up these issues they could be 'giving oxygen' to racist perspectives that might in turn attract extremist political groups and threaten community cohesion"

Yes there was genuine fear of racist nationalist groups using reports of Pakistani gangs committed sex crimes to stoke hatred, but what was the most important thing here?  Avoiding political fallout and backlash, or protecting the vulnerable?

The cultural relativism also nearly risked Pakistani women who were abused and given shelter.  

"several of those involved in the operational management of services reported some attempts to pressurise them into changing their approach to some issues. This mainly affected the support given to Pakistani-heritage women fleeing domestic violence, where a small number of councillors had demanded that social workers reveal the whereabouts of these women or effect reconciliation rather than supporting the women to make up their own minds".

The Council leader has resigned, but I am less interested in who is found accountable, charged and sued for this right now, than the philosophical failings that it has exposed.

Check your privilege

Identity Politics is an arm of new-leftist political philosophy that takes class analysis (whereby your perspectives are driven by your class, defined mostly by wealth) and extends it to race and sex.  It identifies racial groups as being either privileged or disadvantaged, and by extension every member of such group is deemed to have such privilege or disadvantage, from birth.  

This is applied primarily in the Anglo-Saxon world, with the United States leading with the "check your privilege" expression deemed appropriate on the basis that all white European Americans are deemed privileged, whilst African-American, Hispanic and Native Americans are not (Asian Americans are inconvenient to this theory so typically ignored).

In the UK, it is more complex, but in essence white British people are deemed to have privilege over any migrants from non-European backgrounds.  This is deemed to be so because of historic state and societal racism.  Yes, that does mean that men of Pakistani background are deemed disadvantaged over people from white British backgrounds. 

The implication is that privilege brings power, unavailable to the "disadvantaged".  Don't confuse things by pointing out if the privileged person is poor or uneducated (although being a woman and disabled loses you "privilege points") or the "disadvantaged" person is a tycoon.  Reality is relative, and Identity Politics acolytes trade in moral and cultural relativism, and in groups, never individuals.  Individuals don't readily fit theories and disrupt careful classification.

So what may be said in Rotherham is that when confronted with evidence of gangs of Asian, predominantly Pakistani men, gangraping young girls, the "check your privilege" monitor went off in the heads of the Identity Politics trained officials and politicians.  How racist to assume this is true or a pattern rather than an aberration? For the narrative of a gang of oppressed men raping young girls is difficult to reconstruct into the politically correct one. (i.e. poor people sometimes abuse their kids because life is too hard, as this Kiwi Marxist proclaims) 

Instead of ignoring the politics and doing their jobs, they rubbed their hands in anxiety, not about the crimes, or the safety of the girls, but about how "offended" some would be at the fact that groups of Asian men felt freely able to embark on brutal, sadistic and egregious sex crimes on vulnerable young girls.

You see the men who abused the girls thought of them as "sluts", "deserving it" with a level of misogyny that all leftwing oriented feminists would jump on in an instant if it were not men of an ethnic minority background.  However, the Identity Politics element makes them pause, for they fear that identifying the cultural factor (as distinct from racial) will be seen as racist and scapegoating.

Yet the cultural factor is clear - rampant misogyny and belief that young girls exist as the sexual playthings of men, and that their religion and race will protect them from law enforcement, for they can cry "racism" for being "targeted".

Those who thought they could protect Rotherham's Asian community from a neo-fascist nationalist backlash now risk causing much more harm to the law abiding members of the Asian communities in Rotherham than what would have happened had they done their jobs properly.  Not least because it was Asian girls and women who were also victims, and because it fueled an attitude amongst perpetrators that they could act with impunity.

You can bet that racist groups, ramshackle as they are, will find this abject failure to protect young girls because of the race of those who raped them, will happily feed the racism they were trying to avoid, because of the racism they chose to apply themselves.

Ultimately, what's wrong with Identity Politics, is that it is juvenile. A simplistic attempt to try to extend the banality of Marxist group analysis onto wider groups, that has little more than superficial value in explaining outcomes and providing answers as to the causes and solutions or wider social problems.

For in the UK, power in any relationship, is a function of multiple factors.  Family, age, size, wealth, legal authority, employment and yes, sex and in some cases race.  It depends on the individuals.

It is the Identity Politics adherents that ignore the individuals, and focus on race, and as a result, in their jobs, they truly did ignore the individuals, who were victims.

I would vote UKIP, but it is not libertarian

I want to vote UKIP in the European Parliamentary elections today.  There have been and are a lot of reasons to commend UKIP, but despite a plaintiff claim by Nigel Farage on Conservative Home, I am strongly inclined to not put a cross beside UKIP - because UKIP is no longer the libertarian-inclined party I warmed to, and was a member of for a year.  I say this with great hesitation, because I passionately believe the UK needs a party that is led and populated by people who want much less government, I believe exit from the European Union is, unfortunately, essential to achieve this, and I also think, fundamentally, Nigel Farage errs on the side of less intervention. 

What's the problem?  Well it's all about Romanians.  Yes there have been plenty of instances of Romanian gangs engaging in criminal activity in the UK, but you can talk about disproportionate numbers of crimes committed by race in several other dimensions as well.  Had Nigel Farage said "you know the difference between a group of black men moving next door and a German family", then he wouldn't and couldn't have got out of it by saying "well the crime statistics show a disproportionate number of prisoners are black".  It isn't just taboo because it is politically incorrect, it is because the implication that everyone else should look upon people of a certain ethnicity with suspicion that they could be criminal because of their ethnicity leads you down a path that is utterly reprehensible.

For in that are the seeds of collective guilt, the seeds of racial discrimination and hatred.

So whilst Farage initially wrote off his radio comment as just being because he was "tired", this press release killed my vote for UKIP. 

Blame whoever wrote the headline to it, because I don't need to quote from the press release to "get it".  In my office I work with a Romanian woman, who is hard working, diligent and conscientious and who arrived in the UK legally before the "doors were opened".  I don't believe she was after "my job" and I also don't believe I'd have reason to be concerned if her and her friends or family moved in next door by merely the fact that they are Romanian.

Had Farage come out and said his concern was about open borders allowing criminals to live in the UK unchecked from other countries, not just Romanians and that it was highly inappropriate and wrong to appear to single them out, he might have saved it.  However he didn't, he and the party, engaged in the sort of slimy two-faced contradictions it accuses the others of undertaking.

The press release said "Police figures are quite clear that there is a high level of criminality within the Romanian community in Britain. This is not to say for a moment that all or even most Romanian people living in the UK are criminals."

"Lots of black people commit crime, but most of them don't."  Imagine that statement, for it could be said to be true, but how is it treating people as individuals?  On their deeds not their background?
 

I'm not one to throw about the "racist" insult as is the tactic of all too many on the left, and by no means do I think UKIP is anything approaching the BNP.  Indeed, by wanting a common approach to immigration from all countries, it resists this, but it is absolutely true that UKIP's campaign this year hasn't been about liberating the UK from the EU primarily, it has been about scaremongering about immigration.  As one wit quipped, "if you are scared that a poorly educated, non-English speaking eastern European is going to take your job, then maybe you might just be quite shit at it".

There was a lot that could have been focused on more, like the contribution the EU has to the cost of living, but instead it focused on this:

UKIP used to say on its website:

WHAT WE BELIEVE IN

We believe in the right of the people of the UK to govern ourselves, rather than be governed by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels (and, increasingly, in London and even your local town hall). 

We believe in the minimum necessary government which defends individual freedom, supports those in real need, takes as little of our money as possible and doesn’t interfere in our lives.

What libertarian would find that to not be in the right direction, with the only slip to freedom being a reference to what would be a basic welfare state, but which would be a revolutionary change from the socialism of Red Ed's Labour, the do-gooding enviro-statism of the Liberal Democrats, to the diluted, Green-tinged, petty statist Conservatives?

Sure there were some signs that the instincts of some in the party were wrong.  Some defended the NHS, some argued against liberalising planning laws.  In fact the party's local government policy says that it would stop housing development on green space, even though the primary cause of the housing crisis is the neo-Stalinist planning system that locks up half of the land in London in less than pristine greenbelt land (and a quarter of that land would supply London's housing needs for a generation).

Then the EU was blamed for HS2, the privatisation of Royal Mail, the privatisation of the NHS and more latterly the crisis in Ukraine.  There are enough reasons to criticise the EU for its wasteful subsidies and fetish for regulation without making up conspiracy theories about how the EU changes policies that are outside its remit, or making excuses for corrupt kleptocratic revanchist thugs. I've argued vehemently with several UKIPpers on these points, using facts and quoting European legislation (see I know this stuff!), and they either fold quickly and say it doesn't matter or claim I've been duped because somehow I can read legislation and understand it with a law degree.

A party that proudly can't be bothered to use reason in its arguments, and more recently blames Russian irredentism on the EU, is not just getting it wrong, but is damaging the cause.

Now Romanians have been scapegoated, and there isn't really any shame about it.

As Toby Young says in the Telegraph today about Farage :

When he sticks to that subject, he's an excellent proponent of the argument. But when he brings Romanians into it, when he smears an entire nation to make the case against immigration, he's clearly doing the cause more harm than good. You can sense more moderate voters recoiling every time he strays into this territory. It's as if the Ukip leader is confirming the caricature of Euroscepticism that the BBC, the FT, the Independent and the Guardian have been trying to paint for the past 30 years – the Eurosceptic as swivel-eyed loon, as Little Englander, as closet racist. People like me have always claimed that's a straw man. But Nigel Farage is that straw man. 

In the local election my choice is clear.  My borough is Labour dominated, in my ward there are three Conservative councillors, and one UKIP candidate, who hasn't bothered to distribute a leaflet outlining his views on council spending, housing, roads and schools (council issues), so he doesn't deserve my vote (especially given UKIP's opposition to new housing on the greenbelt).  I'll vote for the Conservative councillors on their individual merits.

I have a mild tribal instinct to treat UKIP as Thatcherite Conservatives, but it isn't - despite Labour's protestations, it isn't by a mile.  I detest the simpering, ecologist felching, gutless cowardice of some of the Conservative leadership, albeit this has changed somewhat in government, but give the choice I have decided to vote Conservative.  Not because it will make a difference, but because I cannot give moral agency to UKIP campaigning as it has done, and because polling indicates that UKIP may win, with Labour second and the Conservatives a close third.  I'd much rather give the Conservatives a chance of beating Labour, than give my moral endorsement to UKIP's campaign.

UKIP is proudly seeking working class Labour voters.  Good on it, I'd be thrilled to see Labour terrified in the heartlands it has so cynically taken for granted.  However, that isn't me, and I would much rather that a reasoned debate be had about the European Union and what the UK could be like without it, than scaremongering about an entire nation and evoking "understanding" for Vladimir Putin.

Quite simply, despite much that is good about UKIP, it is now poisoned, and I can't bring myself to endorse a party that tolerates that poison.  I'll vote Conservative because the European Parliament itself is not that important, and because the candidates themselves are fighting for less control from Brussels, and include some rather fine individuals (e.g. Daniel Hannan) who consistently argue against environmentalism, socialism and the travesties of the Common Agricultural Policy and EU waste.   It's not the UKIP I wished I could have voted for, but it's in the right direction, its professional and it doesn't besmirch individual nationalities.

Farage's gaffe on Ukraine

More often than not I agree with Nigel Farage.   He generally has disdain for statist authority, tends to prefer to leave people alone to live their lives the way they want and his stance against the EU is primarily (although not exclusively) about wanting less rules from Brussels, not more rules from Westminster (the Tony Benn stance).

 I agree with withdrawal from the EU for many reasons, most of all its strong protectionist instincts, the overwhelming push to introduce pan European legislation on matters that shouldn't be regulated and the unaccountable nature of the European Council and European Commission, not least because the European Parliament has no powers to repeal or introduce legislation.  I'm no worshipper of democracy, but law making should not be done by appointed officials, rather than elected representatives, not least because the latter can be removed.

I don't believe the EU should have a foreign policy that extends beyond trade, not least because the interests and positions of Member States are wildy diverse.  How can you reasonably represent a common view from leading NATO Members that are Nuclear Weapons States (the UK and France) against neutral states (Austria, Ireland and Sweden)?  You need only look at the sclerosis the EU has with disputes between its Member States of this nature (Gibraltar-UK) to see this, as well as how ineffectual it is in dealing with issue facing its Member States from threatening behaviour.  

However, when Nigel Farage debated Nick Clegg saying the EU had "blood on its hands" and spoke rather approvingly of Vladimir Putin he opened a can of worms that he didn't really intend.  Hence the backtracking via press release.

You see Nigel's most appealing trait is that he speaks off the cuff, he says what he feels like saying, it isn't particularly well rehearsed and that shows, and people respect it.  What it means is that sometimes what he says points to much much more than he really means.  That is what has happened over Ukraine.

Budget 2014

I agree with the IEA - Budgets should be scrapped.  They are awful political exercises in running a lolly scramble, whereby the Chancellor of the Exchequer gets to exercise wholly inappropriate powers to dish out other people's money.

He seeks glory and gratitude from the various preferred parties who either get some of their money back (a tax cut, or even tax freezes are meant to gain applause) or get to spend other people's money.

There are two things I want from the Budget in principle, as for the detail, I have suggestions on those too, but here goes.

Is it fear or is it editorial judgment?

In the past week, a battle within the Liberal Democrat Party has become news, if only because it highlights the clash between those who believe in absolute free speech, and those who think free speech should be tempered by it not "causing offence" to others - which of course is not free speech.  The latter is the sort of "free speech" seen in China, when you can talk about anything, as long as it doesn't offend the Communist Party, or in Islamist countries where you can't offend the local clerics.

It is anything but liberal.

Nick Cohen in the Guardian has a good summary of the battle.  In essence it went like this...

- A Sunday morning BBC discussion programme included two people who wore t-shirts from "Jesus and Mo".  Here it is