Who Hoo! League of Gentlemen Returns!

The BBC dark comedy series set in the town of Royston Vesey, where just about every character is a dysfunctional weirdo, sadist, or serial killer with some kind of bizarre fetish or obsession returns for three more episodes. It was last on our screens in 2002. It’s been fifteen years, but it shows that the show’s got a very dedicated audience, who share the League’s taste for black humour.

They considered making Royston Vesey even more grubby and shabby for the new series as a comment on Brexit, according to an article one of the League, Reece Shearsmith, gave to the I a few days ago. He stated that the show was never political, but that Brexit had meant that the rest of Britain had caught up with the xenophobic insularism of Royston Vesey.

This is a local blog. For local people. We do not want you here, metropolitan Tory snob.

The ‘I’: Dimbleby States Media Treating Corbyn Unfairly

Also in yesterday’s I newspaper was a piece by Adam Burnett, ‘Corbyn Is Not Treated Fairly, Says Dimbleby’, in which the host of the Beeb’s Question Time attacked the media’s bias against the Labour leader and said it would be wrong to rule him out of winning the next election. The article reads

Veteran BBC host David Dimbleby has blasted the “lazy pessimism” of the media’s election coverage, saying Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has not been given a “fair deal” by the press.

The Question Time chairman, who will host the BBC’s election night coverage, said Mr Corbyn has “a lot of support in the country”, and given the “political somersaults of recent years, it would be a mistake to count Labour out.

“It’s a very odd election”, said Mr Dimbleby, speaking to the Radio Times. “The interesting thing is that a lot of Labour supporters really like and believe in the messages that Jeremy Corbyn is bringing across.

“It’s not his MPs in the House of Commons necessarily, but there is a lot of support in the country.

“And I don’t think anyone could say that Corbyn has had a fair deal at the hands of the press, in a way that the Labour party did when it was more to the centre – but then, we generally have a right-wing press.”

He added: “My own prediction is that, contrary to the scepticism and lazy pessimism of the newspapers and British media, it’s going to be a really fascinating night, and it will drive home some messages about our political system and the political appeal of different parties that no amount of polling or reading the papers will tell us.”

Of course, Question Time has also shown it’s own bias at times against Corbyn and the Labour party. And under Blair, New Labour was not a centrist party. It was, in its determination to privatise the NHS, the education system, and throw millions off welfare benefits, a right-wing party, just as the Tories are now. And the Tories in their determination to destroy the welfare state, which began in earnest under Thatcher, are far right when compared to the post-War consensus in all parties to support the NHS and welfare state, and maintain full employment.

Dimbleby’s right to attack the media’s bias against Corbyn, even if some of it seems like he’s trying to whip up interest in his own election night programme by saying that the outcome isn’t a foregone conclusion. But he’s wrong about it being ‘lazy pessimism’. It’s deliberate lies and fabrications, by a media and political class that are desperately afraid that Corbyn will succeed in undoing forty years of Thatcherism, and create a genuinely fairer and stronger Britain.

The right-wing media, including Beeb, and its paymasters come from the upper middle class, which have done very well thank you under Thatcherism. They have profited from the tax cuts and massive expansion in power and wealth achieved by grinding the other 75 per cent of the population down with increased taxation, the destruction of the welfare states, the privatisation of state industries, including the NHS, stagnant wages and zero-hours contracts. They, and the businesses they head and manage, have profited immensely from a cowed workforce, who are forced to work for poverty pay.

It is because Labour under Corbyn threatens this, that they have responded with lies and smears.

Don’t believe the media.
Vote Labour on June 8th.

Labour to End Tory Persecution of Sick, Disabled and Poor

This is excellent news for anyone on a low income, or who suffers from a long term sickness or is or cares for a disabled person. And it’s going to send the Tories, the Blairites and the parasites in the private insurance industry, who recommended the current high persecutory disability policies, absolutely incandescent with fury.

Mike over on his blog has reported that Labour have made the following promises in their manifesto:

* to scrap the work capability assessments and Personal Independence Payment assessments.

* to stop the endless reassessments of people with severe long term conditions.

* Scrapping sanctions.

* Scrapping the bedroom tax.

* Increasing ESA for people in the work-related activity group, and reversing the cuts in UC LCW.

* Uprating carers allowance.

* reinstating housing benefit for young people under 21.

* Reversing the cuts to the bereavement support payments.

* Reviewing the cuts to work allowances in Universal Credit.

* Reviewing the decision to limit tax credits and Universal Credit to the first two children in a family. Which is, as Mike points out, the Rape Clause. This odious piece of legislation was defended in Scotland by an equally odious piece of work, Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Tories up there.

Mike states

The Labour Party manifesto, released today (May 16) has confirmed what we all saw in the leaked version last week – a bonfire of the cruel legislation that has led to the deaths of thousands upon thousands of vulnerable people.

But remember – this is only what Labour would do, if elected back into office on June 8.

With the mass media lining up to attack Labour over any slightest quibble, that will be hard to achieve.

So please make sure all 12 million sick and disabled people, and all of the unemployed and under-employed get to see this.

He also applauds Labour’s promises to end the way the Jobcentre staff and the benefit system itself demonises those with disabilities and the unemployed, so that it becomes more supportive and enabling.

He gives due credit to Debbie Abrahams, Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, saying that this confirms what he has known about her, that she is a woman of strong professional integrity, who will act on her promises.

Mike concludes

If YOU have a long-term illness or disability, this is all the reason you need to vote Labour on June 8. If you don’t, but know somebody who does, please share this information with them.

See: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/05/16/confirmed-labour-will-end-tory-persecution-of-the-sick-disabled-and-poor/#comments

I agree with Mike on just about every line of this. And I won’t be remotely surprised when the Tories and their lapdogs in the press and media go absolutely insane at this.

It is a direct reversal of the welfare policies introduced by Blair and the Tories, at the behest of American private healthcare firms and insurers. The wretched work capability tests were recommended by John Lo Cascio, the head honcho of the American insurance fraudster, Unum. This was based on bogus science, that has now been comprehensively refuted. I’ve reblogged material from Johnny Void and Kitty S. Jones and many, many others over the years, which provide a very detailed critique which absolutely demolishes its pretension to scientific fact. But still the Tories tout it.

And Labour’s pledge to stop the demonization of the sick and poor is a direct attack on one of the fundamental principles of Thatcherism: that those dependant on welfare payments, the sick, disabled and unemployed, must be humiliated as much as possible, in order to deter them from becoming a burden to the taxpayer. Meaning the rich, who must be given tax breaks and corporate subsidies at every opportunity.

It’s called the principle of Less Eligibility, and it was the reason why the workhouses were such places of degradation and misery. But Thatcher celebrated it as one of her ‘Victorian values’, which she really wanted to call ‘Victorian virtues’, but her spin doctors wouldn’t let her.

Like the Tories, the Blairites are Thatcherites, who adopted her vicious, spiteful and punitive attitude to poverty.

This is also a comprehensive rebuttal to the refrain you also hear from Tory voters when the work disability assessments are criticised: no, they’re not going to vote Labour, ’cause Labour introduced them.

Well, they can’t use that excuse now, because Labour’s committed to scrapping them.

This will be bitterly resented by the Tory press, not just because it is a strong attack on decades of Tory policies, but because newspapers like the Torygraph make their money from advertising, and are afraid to do anything that will offend their advertisers. The Torygraph is particularly sensitive to this, as they’ve been spiking stories that would offend their advertisers. It was the reason one of the columnists, Peter Oborne, walked out and very publicly denounced them in the rest of the media, including Channel 4, a few years ago. As the Torygraph seems determined to lock itself into a death spiral of continuing cuts and sackings in order to maintain its share price, while its readership plummets, I’m not remotely worried if these policies help put another boot into the Tory paper.

And, of course, it’s going to inflame the already fevered tempers over at the Daily Mail massively. The Heil has been one of the papers that has been at the very forefront of demonising people on disability benefit as scroungers. Mike has shown that the true statistics for benefit fraud is 0.7 per cent – a vanishingly small amount. But thanks to the Tories and the lies of the press, the British public believe that it’s 27 per cent.

And the rich, who have been pushing for these policies so they can enjoy ever greater profits and tax breaks are afraid.

How else can you explain today’s headline in the I, which screams that Labour intends a ‘tax grab on the rich’. The term ‘tax grab’ seems to show a little panic on the part of the editor, no doubt on behalf of the Russian oligarch who owns the paper.

So don’t be deceived by the lies and hysterical denunciations of these policies. Unlike the rubbish spouted by May, these are sincerely meant, and if implemented will lead to a better, fairer, and healthier Britain.

Because the destruction of the sanctions regime and the work capability tests will stop people dying. Look at Stilloak’s website and the site Atos Miracles to see how many have died in poverty, misery and starvation due to these vile and evil policies.

So please vote Labour on May 8.

Public Dissatisfaction with NHS Rising, Report the ‘I’

Today’s I newspaper has an article stating that the British public’s satisfaction with the NHS is falling. The article begins

Public dissatisfaction with the NHS is rising according to new data.

IN 2015, overall NHS satisfaction fell to 60 per cent, down from 65 per cent in 2014, the British Social Attitudes survey found. At the same time, dissatisfaction with the NHS rose by 8 per cent to 23 per cent the largest single year increase since 1986.

Dissatisfaction is now back at the same levels reported between 2011 and 2013, the survey, published by The King’s Fund charity found.

The decade of NHS funding growth during the 2000s was accompanied by increasing levels of public satisfaction, it said. This reached a peak of 2010 at 70 per cent and, although satisfaction is still high by historic standards, it is 9 per cent lower than in 2010. The report is entitled, Public Discontent with NHS is Rising, and it’s on p. 4.

This is no accident. It’s a deliberate part of the Tories’ over all long term strategy to sell off the NHS. Remember the meme from Noam Chomsky Mike’s put up at Vox Political on how the right operates to privatise industries by defunding them. And the Tories have vested personal interests in selling it off. 95 of the Tory and Lib Dem MPs in the last parliament had connections to health firms looking to profit from the sale of NHS services. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said that he wants the NHS privatised. And the Tory conference last year was sponsored by private health firms, and included debates on topics like opening up the NHS to private industry.

If you want further proof, consider some of the stuff that gets posted on the right-wing Canadian blog, Five Feet of Fury. This is an ugly little blog that makes absolutely no secret of its hatred for organised labour, immigrants, indigenous Canadians, feminism and socialised medicine. It also has a venomous hatred of Italians. It was urging its readers to send in stories about how awful the British NHS was, and went absolutely berserk at the 2012 London Olympics because it dared to include the NHS in the opening display. Socialist propaganda, it roared. It would be tempting to write this off as just a North American blog, whose readers are safely confined to the other side of the Atlantic. This would be a mistake. It’s part of a network of right-wing blogs which link Conservatives over here with their counterparts in Canada and the Republicans in the US. It says openly what the Tories over here only say amongst themselves, and then start lying when it gets out.

Be warned. Don’t be taken in. Protect the NHS from these profiteers.

Vox Political: Portsmouth Tory Wanted to Smear Feminists and Other Opponents

This is another interesting piece from Vox Political. A Conservative member of Portsmouth town council, Scott Harris, wanted his friends and colleagues to collect information on various political opponents, including the local feminist group and a charity devoted to combating domestic violence, in order to smear them. See http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/02/05/tory-smear-councillor-sent-emails-to-his-intended-victims/ He was also looking at gathering information on a local government employee, who was getting information about the council under the Freedom of Information Act. The man was pursuing this as a private citizen, concerned at the way the town was being developed. Nevertheless, Harris wanted to find a way to get his bosses to sanction him.

This is a proper ‘Rotten Boroughs’ story, of the type that appears all too often in that column in Private Eye devoted to shady dealing by members of the local authorities. Many of them are about the efforts of councillors to shut down political opponents, even private citizens using their own time and means. This one was discovered through his own stupidity and his smear campaign unmasked in the Guardian before it could get going. But it shows how nasty and low the Tories are now going.

It also shows the very low priority the Conservatives give domestic violence. According to a piece in the I last week or so, the amount of violence against women is rising. The piece stated that campaigners linked this to the stresses created by Tory policies. Which might be another reason Mr Harris wanted the two groups smeared. It was another pair of voices criticising not just the violence itself and the council’s response to it, but it pointed to the underlying party political causes.

Yasmin Alibhai-Browne on the Saudi’s Empire of Terror

Okay, I’m sorry I haven’t been blogging much in the past few months. As I’ve explained before, the re-election of the Tories left me profoundly depressed and dispirited with the state of politics in this country, and the mindset of the British people. I’ve also been trying to write a book on the British Empire and slavery. That’s also taken up a lot of my time.

However, I’ve come across a few items, which I think really deserve to be blogged about. One of them is about Cameron supposedly performing a lewd act with the head of a dead pig. There’s so much going on with that story that I intend to devote a whole post about it. But first there’s this piece, by Yasmin Alibhai-Browne, on the evils of the Saudi Regime.

Alibhai-Brown’s one of the journos on the Independent. She’s of Ugandan Asian heritage, and is married to a White British man. She writes mostly, though not exclusively, about racial issues, as well as women, and, of course, Islam and the position of Muslims in modern British society. I’ve got a lot of respect for her, as she will tackle difficult issues that many others won’t touch. She has, for example, covered anti-White racism as well as the more familiar variety inflicted on ethnic minorities. This was in the first few years of this century, when the statistics showed that more Whites were the victims of race hate crime than Blacks or Asians. I admired her for that, as she showed that you can tackle that issue without having any sympathy with the Fascist Right or the racial reactionaries of the Tory party.

Last Sunday, the 27th September, she put up this article about the pernicious influence of the Saudis. She wrote:

Iran is seriously mistrusted by Israel and America. North Korea protects its nuclear secrets and is ruled by an erratic, vicious man. Vladimir Putin’s territorial ambitions alarm democratic nations. The newest peril, Isis, the wild child of Islamists, has shocked the whole world. But top of this list should be Saudi Arabia – degenerate, malignant, pitiless, powerful and as dangerous as any of those listed above.

The state systematically transmits its sick form of Islam across the globe, instigates and funds hatreds, while crushing human freedoms and aspiration. But the West genuflects to its rulers. Last week Saudi Arabia was appointed chair of the UN Human Rights Council, a choice welcomed by Washington. Mark Toner, a spokesperson for the State Department, said: “We talk about human rights concerns with them. As to this leadership role, we hope that it is an occasion for them to look into human rights around the world and also within their own borders.”

US ‘welcomes’ UN putting Saudi Arabia in charge of human rights panel

The jaw simply drops. Saudi Arabia executes one person every two days. Ali Mohammed al-Nimr is soon to be beheaded then crucified for taking part in pro-democracy protests during the Arab Spring. He was a teenager then. Raif Badawi, a blogger who dared to call for democracy, was sentenced to 10 years and 1,000 lashes. Last week, 769 faithful Muslim believers were killed in Mecca where they had gone on the Hajj. Initially, the rulers said it was “God’s will” and then they blamed the dead. Mecca was once a place of simplicity and spirituality. Today the avaricious Saudis have bulldozed historical sites and turned it into the Las Vegas of Islam – with hotels, skyscrapers and malls to spend, spend, spend. The poor can no longer afford to go there. Numbers should be controlled to ensure safety – but that would be ruinous for profits. Ziauddin Sardar’s poignant book Mecca: The Sacred City, describes the desecration of Islam’s holiest site.

Even more seriously, the pernicious Saudi influence is spreading fast and freely. King Salman has offered to build 200 mosques in Germany for recently arrived refugees, many of whom are Muslims. He offered no money for resettlement or basic needs, but Wahhabi mosques, the Trojan horses of the secret Saudi crusade. Several Islamic schools are also sites of Wahhabism, now a global brand. It makes hearts and minds small and suspicious, turns Muslim against Muslim, and undermines modernists.

She’s absolutely right about the destruction of historic Mecca, including the buildings, monuments and homes of Muhammad and his companions – the holiest figures in Islam. The Independent has published a number of pictures showing how the city has been effectively gutted in a frenzy of building and modernisation. This has been ostensibly to provide more accommodation and greater access for the millions, who go to the city every year on the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. But it also shows the Saudis’ deep lack of concern, even contempt, for their country’s ancient monuments. Much of the radical Islamism now threatening the world is Saudi in inspiration. considering the destruction the Saudis have inflicted on Islam’s holiest city, I’m not remotely surprised that ISIS have been so keen to destroy ancient monuments they consider to be ‘against Islam’. And that’s a highly elastic phrase, which also means genuinely Muslim monuments, but from a sect or interpretation of Islam they hate or mistrust.

As well as banning non-Muslim religions, other Islamic sects are also banned in Saudi Arabia. The Shi’a live in marginalised villages without gas, electricity or running water. They are not allowed to build or worship in their own mosques, and their religious literature, including their version of the Qu’ran, is illegal. When copies are found, they are confiscated and destroyed. A few years ago the Grand Mufti declared them heretics, who were worthy of death. Some of the destruction they have caused seems to be directed against the Shi’a. A few Saturdays ago the Independent’s sister paper, the ‘I’, carried a story about the Saudis’ bulldozing the homes occupied by Muhammad and his followers. While these are naturally of considerable veneration to Muslims generally, the Shi’a in particular venerate them and travel to them when making the pilgrimage.

As for the Saudi’s fixation with secular money-making, it’s pretty much been the case in that part of the Islamic world since the Middle Ages. Mecca became extremely rich on the money spent by the pilgrims flocking there, and much of the poetry written during the Middle Ages was extremely secular. It wasn’t about the delights of paradise, or the beatific vision of God’s face awaiting the faithful in paradise, or about religious devotion to Muhammad, his companions and the Qu’ran. No, it was about the delights of getting drunk on wine, and having a great time with the slave girls.

I’ve read accounts of interviews from moderate Muslims around the world, who have lamented how the religion in their countries has become increasingly intolerant and violent due to the influence of preachers, who have gone to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to study. And moderate Muslims over here have voiced the same concerns. There was also a piece published nearly a decade ago in the Saturday edition of the Financial Times by the imam, who received Salman Rushdie back into the faith after he emerged from hiding. I’m afraid I really can’t remember the imam’s name, except that his first name is Zakariya, if I remember correctly. This scholar has written extensively about Islam in Britain, as well as inscriptions in Arabic dating from the 17th century and found in churchyards in Yorkshire. This particular imam wanted the British government to invest in a British Islamic seminary. There was at the time a shortage of imams to serve in British mosques. This allowed some of the fire-breathing bigots from outside Britain to jump the queue at immigration, and spread their message of hate to Brits over here.

And I’m afraid the situation is only going to get worse. According to an article I read back in the ’90s in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, foreign governments sponsor and support mosques in the West to promote their own national influence. That means that the 200 mosques the Saudis intend to build in Germany will reflect the hard-line attitudes of Saudi Arabia, rather than a more liberal, Western form of Islam that the moderates look forward to. As it stands, there has already been friction and accusations of separatism in Germany directed against some of the Turkish Muslim organisations. In the ’80s or ’90s there was a controversy within the German labour unions against some of the Turkish labour organisations. The Germans alleged that despite their talk of integration, the Turkish groups were pursuing a separatist agenda. A German-Turkish writer has also described how, when he was a child, he had ethnic German, non-Muslim friends until one of the Turkish Muslim scholars told their community that they shouldn’t have anything to do with them. Politicians and activists across Europe are worried about the growth of parallel communities, which attempt to cut themselves off as far as possible from outsiders, whether, White, Black, Asian, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, secular or whatever. One Islamic community leader on a programme about racial problems in contemporary Britain, spoke about his fears for the development of Muslim communities, whose citizens would only know other Muslims. His views were echoed by the representatives from the other faiths – Judaism and Christianity, who also appeared on the programme. They were similarly worried that their peoples would also grow up in sealed communities interacting only with members of their own faith.

All this is likely to get worse if the Saudis are allowed to proceed unchecked. And, quite simply, I don’t think there is the political will to prevent it. Alibhai-Brown points out later in the article how close the royal family is personally to the Saudis. There’s also the awkward fact that they dominate the oil economy. They can throw their weight around now, because of the way they learnt they can wreck the global economy by raising or dropping the price of oil, as they did during the energy crisis of the 1970s. All they have to do is drop their prices, and the Texas oil industry – or Venezuelan, for that matter, is decimated. And the profits to be made from their oil company, Aramco, are just too massive to be resisted by Western industrialists and politicians. And so it seems that the Saudis can spread global terror and religious hatred with impunity.

The whole article can be read at: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-evil-empire-of-saudi-arabia-is-the-west-s-real-enemy-a6669531.html. Go and read it.

I don’t think what she said about there having been no coverage of the iniquities of the Saudi regime is completely accurate, however. A little while ago there was a documentary on Channel 4 about radical and extremist Islam, which included some of the viciously anti-Semitic and anti-Western teaching coming out of Saudi mosques and madrassas. That provoked a critical article about the Saudis in parts of the press. I think the Daily Mail ran a piece. But it shows how seriously that kind of journalism is taken in that it appeared on Channel 4, which was already set up as the alternative cultural channel to BBC 2, the Beeb’s alternative channel for more serious culture.

Despite the horror and violence of the situation in the Middle East at the moment, I believe that there are still opportunities awaiting us to bring about peace and tolerance. But these will be blocked if we allow the Saudis to continue preaching intolerance. The world’s peoples – Muslim and non-Muslim – deserve better.

Farage Demands Abolition of Anti-Racism Legislation

The Generalissimo of Golf-Club reactionary bores has been in the news today. As I’ve already mentioned in previous posts, the Fuhrage has gone on record as telling Trevor Philips, the former chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, that the current legislation preventing employers from discriminating on the grounds of race, should be repealed. Philips was interviewing him for a Channel 4 documentary to be shown next week, Things We Won’t Say About Race That Are True. The Kipperfuhrer claimed that such legislation was no longer necessary, as Britain had moved past race.

The I also covered Farage’s remarks. It’s article reported him as saying

If we’d sat her 40 years ago, having this conversation, your point [on the need for laws preventing racial discrimination in the jobs market] would probably have been valid. I don’t think it is today.

If I did talk to my children about the question of race, they wouldn’t know what I was talking about.

The employer should be much freer to make decisions on who she or he employs. The situation that we now have, where an employer is not allowed to choose between a British-born person and somebody from Poland, is a ludicrous state of affairs. We have taken our relationship with Europe to a level that, frankly, has gone against common sense and certainly against self-interest.

He was also quoted as saying

I would argue that the law does need changing, and that if an employer wishes to choose, or you can use the word ‘discriminate’ if you want to, but wishes to choose to employ a British-born person, they should be allowed to do so. I think you should be able to choose on the basis of nationality, yes, I do.

When asked whether UKIP would retain the laws banning racial discrimination, he stated they wouldn’t, on the grounds that ‘We as a party are colour-blind’.

Say whaaaat? The Kippers have some of the most frothingly racist membership of any political party outside the openly Fascist parties like the BNP, NF, Britain First and the EDL. It seems that every week there’s yet another scandal in which one of their candidates or officials has been caught making racist, or otherwise offensive or bigoted comments. Like the female Kipper in Margate, who announced she couldn’t stand ‘negroes’, or ‘people with negroid features’. Or the laughing boys in the Kippers’ Bristol branch, who claimed they weren’t Fascists after they were caught were ‘liking’ comments by Britain First and the EDL on Facebook. Or the fact that Britain First have taken to protecting Kipper demonstrations in their armoured car. The list goes on.

Needless to say, anti-racism campaigners have been mightily unimpressed with Herr oberst’s claims. Labour’s shadow Justice Secretary, Sadiq Khan, who was also Britain’s first Muslim cabinet minister, stated

This is one of the most shocking things I have ever heard from a mainstream politician and demonstrates breath-taking ignorance. We have made huge progress in tackling racial inequality and discrimination in this country, partly because of Labour’s strong anti-discrimination laws, but things are still far from perfect.

The direct of the think tank, Britain Future, attacked the Fuhrage’s remarks as ‘quite a throwback’, saying ‘We can debate the content of anti-discrimination legislation, but there is a strong consensus that if you believe in equal opportunities then that means anti-discrimination legislation that gives everyone a fair chance.’

And that’s the point: Farage doesn’t want everyone to be given a fair chance. His party has attacked legislation going back to the Victorians protecting women, the working class and employees, giving them maternity leave, paid holidays and defending them from unfair dismissal.

The I in its report also comments that Farage’s claim conflicts with recent findings that 49 per cent of ethnic minorities have been unemployed for over two years due to the recession, a far higher proportion than White British.

Just this evening I reblogged a piece from The Young Turks show from American television, reporting the finding of the left-wing American magazine, Mother Jones, that Black Americans have been disproportionately affected by the recession, and that in economic downturns, White racism becomes more overt and acute. This is directly relevant to what’s happening over here. I even have Black friends, who’ve experienced the same kind of discrimination as that reported by the magazine of Black Americans.

And it isn’t just Blacks. Generally, British Muslims also suffer disproportionately from poor academic results and problems finding work. This isn’t just a problem for those, who did poorly at school. Even well-educated Muslims with degrees may find it harder than White graduates to find jobs. Economic problems are one of the factors behind Muslim disaffection in this country. It is not, by any means, the only factor. Nevertheless, its importance should not be discounted.

Farage is clearly lying about his party and its supposedly anti-racist stance. It appears to be another policy he’s copied from American Conservatives. The Repugs over the other side of the Atlantic have been trying to rewrite history in order to make the repeal of anti-racism legislation more acceptable. One notorious Canadian site, for example, pointed out that George Wallace, the notorious opponent of ending segregation, actually wasn’t personally racist. He was a member of NAACP, and de-segregated his department store before anyone else did. It’s just that as a supporter of property rights, he stood for the owner’s absolute right to dispose of his property and business exactly how he wished.

Similarly, Guy Debord’s Cat has blogged on the raft of Libertarian organisations and think tanks trying to rewrite the history of the American Civil War, so that it wasn’t about ending slavery, but about tariff reform.

The Fuhrage was a guest at CPAC last week, the big, hard-line Conservative conference in America, which features such devastating intellectuals like Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. He’s also a friend and associate of Rand Paul and other notorious right-wingers, who stand for privatising everything that ain’t nailed down and squeezing the poor for every penny they don’t have.

It’s all part of the Repugs’ ‘Southern Strategy’. This was a deliberate attempt to appeal to White voters in the South, who feared competition from Blacks through affirmative action. And they weren’t subtle about. One party political broadcast by the Repugs under Reagan featured a White man opening a letter telling him that he hadn’t got the job, while the voiceover announced that ‘you’ didn’t get it, ‘even though you worked for it’, and that it had gone instead to a Black person through racial politics.

Now British anti-racist legislation makes that kind of explicit approach illegal. Nevertheless, the Tories have also been trying to appeal to ‘angry White men’. The Spectator back in 2004 declared that there was only one part of the population that wasn’t welcome on the streets of inner London, and that was White men. And just like the Tories of the Speccie, the Kippers are trying to appeal to the same electoral base.

It’s a pernicious, dangerous policy. Much of the anti-racism legislation Fuhrage complains about was put in place to prevent racial unrest, like the riots that broke out all over the country in 1981/2. These were fuelled by the acute poverty and racism experienced by the Black population. It’s designed to prevent the kind of racial fears and violence that Mosley stoked up and tried to capitalise on against the Jews in the East End in his campaign to become Britain’s Duce. This legislation hasn’t been entirely successful. It’s still very controversial, and it has worked to make many working class Whites feel left behind and unfairly discriminated against. But despite these problems, Britain’s a better place because of them.

And what the Fuhrage hasn’t mentioned, is that the same laws which protect Blacks, Asians and other ethnic minorities, also protect Whites. There have been cases where White British have successfully sued an employer because they were discriminated against because of their colour. The same legislation that protects ethnic minorities protects all of us.

But Farage isn’t interested in that. He just wants to appeal to the racist and prejudiced, in order to create a far more hierarchical, more racist, and more unjust society. And his smooth claims to be non-racist are simply falsehoods to disguise that.