Boris Johnson’s new ethnic team
Heh, I couldn’t resist a chuckle at the press release I’ve just received:
Boris Johnson has today announced the appointment of Kulveer Ranger as his new Director for Transport Policy. Kulveer was the lead delivery manager of the Oystercard for London in 2003 and led commercial negotiations on behalf of the Secretary of State supporting the King’s Cross redevelopment.
Kulveer will lead on policy direction for Transport on behalf of the Mayor. He will also oversee the relationship between the Greater London Authority and Transport for London to ensure the delivery of the Mayor’s priorities.
Congratulations to Kulveer and this is one appointment I can’t dispute because I think he is very capable. Kulveer is also currently Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party.
Boris has also appointed Munira Mirza as his cultural advisor, which gives some cause to worry. Munira was a regular writer for Spiked Online until recently, so her views on many issues aren’t that dissimilar to Brendan O’Neill *shudder* She was also spearheading the Manifesto Club, which takes very hardline libertarian positions on issues, including the view that, “the child protection industry is poisoning adult-child relations..” Bizzarely, they seem to have taken that report offline now. Hmm…
Munira might have sensible ideas on multi-culturalism, but I think she does go too far with the right-on libertarian ‘all multiculturalism is bad’ view. I expect some big clashes here, mostly because she wrote this for Policy Exchange (scroll down) and it was very badly received by most ethnic minorities in the arts.
Update The Evening Boris reports it as: “In line with his campaign pledge to ensure his top team reflects the ethnic diversity of London, the Mayor has made Kulveer Ranger, 32, director for transport policy…”
This is why I wrote that tongue-in-cheek headline!
Kudos to you, Ranger!
It’s great to see a capable, young Sikh guy representing those of us who vote Tory within the party ranks.
But the child ‘protection’ industry is destroying adult-child relations. Try and volunteer anywhere nowadays, or offer to help out for a bit somewhere, and you will be buried under a mountain of forms, which don’t do any good anyway. This is because of a combination of a misguided sense of ‘the state knows best’, and a desire to keep their mates in a job by generationing work for them.
Rumbold:
I concur. I’m interning on my Gap Year before I go to University this October and had a fortnight to do whatever I pleased.
I visited a local elderly people’s home and though they were happy to see me come and offer my services, they had to refuse my offer as there’s something like a 3 month delay between application and actually doing anything of worth for them.
Rummy
Blame paedo-noria; Rebecca Wade, Murdoch. My point is the state was forced to act because the lynch mobs had been let loose.
Don’t let your ideology get in the way of the facts, the public demanded it and they got what they deserved.
ZinZin:
The mass hysteria was only stoked by yellow journalism so the public cannot be blamed for being fed this frantic propaganda and reacting to it.
Nav:
It took me several months to process my CRB despite the fact that I was only going to work at a school for one day a week for a term.
ZinZin:
I agree that the tabloid press whipped up the hysteria which caused the government to bring in some of these laws. Doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t have done it anyway (given their mentality).
Rumbold:
These days you’d need to be more worried about the kids stabbing you for looking at them the wrong way than the school should be about you potentially being a danger to children.
Or so The Telegraph would have me believe…
i wouldn’t worry too much, if this is an “ethnic” team rather than 2 ppl appointed because they’re good at something, perhaps it sounds like he will milk the multiculturalism cow when it suits him, so i guess the trick is to just make him think it might suit him somehow..
the problem is the way bureaucracy sets out about ‘protection’ that’s what many libertarians have a problem with.
I think Munira Mirza’s views (on multiculturalism) are spot on and excellent. Well done Boris.
Rumbold
They let you work with children! I can’t believe it, it should n’t be allowed! Polluting young minds with your anarcho-capitalist ideals.
Worst than the Jesuits
The article you link to Sunny says it’s by Meera Dattani
Anyway, from the examples you’ve given I think she seems like a very good choice indeed.
Only having gone over to Harry’s Place do I get a bit of a shock, apparently she’s a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party
Wasn’t it the Chinese that said may you live in interesting times..?
Nav:
Heh.
Sonia:
Exactly. By the end of it you are made to feel grateful that you were allowed to volunteer. Is this the sort of society we want to live in?
ZinZin:
Heh.
Sunny:
If you judge Munira Mirza on her two ‘Comment is Free’ articles, she doesn’t sound much different from you (and I mean that in a good way). She has rejected the Lee Jasper-esque policy of divide and rule and ‘representatives’ for each ‘group’.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/munira_mirza/index.html
“Ethnic team”?
There’s me thinking he was the new transport head honcho, and there’s you and others inadvertently pigeonholing him according to race.
Ok, so it’s only natural for people to highlight/big up their own (and PP is largely an asian thingy).
But.. food for thought eh?
Rumbold - I’ll have to explain this in more detail. Munira is the cultural advisor, and that has implications for what cultural events the Mayor promotes and funds.
I’m not criticising her - our views are similar on a range of issues… but I do take truck some her points though.
For example on free speech. the Manifesto Club is explicitly free speech in the post-enlightenment sense etc. The problem is their approach isn’t grounded in reality - that free speech is rarely always free, and its determined by the powers who choose to publish certain stuff and self-censor others.
Similarly, her views on arts funding is fine in theory, but ignores the fact that arts funding has ended up with some political correctness precisely because there are structural reasons why certain groups (middle class whites) get an over-proportional attention and funding.
Marvin - scroll down.
Pigeonhole him? He’s a Tory and a Spurs supporter, which are two minorities I’m quite happy to discriminate against.
Other than that he seems quite capable, and I’d rather have a capable Tory than an incapable Labour guy (Oystercard or ID card, anyone?). However, it doesn’t mean for a moment that Boris has discovered any decent transport policies, he’s merely appointed a competent man.
Incidentally, I’m on our local PTA and supervise various events and no one’s ever forced me to jump through any paedo-busting bureaucracy (whether they *should* have is a moot point). It’s definitely tabloid paedomania behind it though, but that in turn stemmed from a lot of cases of people in positions of trust abusing the lack of control that existed. Swinging too far the other way is perhaps inevitable, in the same way as you can’t, as a politician, be too tough on crime for the public to accept.
Rumbold/Sonia -
It’s not the society that too many of us want to live in, but the stark reality is that many, many people think about covering thier arse first, before getting on with the jobs at hand. However worthy volunteering is, it is no different.
We live in a blame culture, someone must be at fault for everything that goes wrong. How we got here is difficult to say. For my money it was a combination of well-meaning pressure groups looking for a role, journalists and politicians looking to score cheap points and on-the-make and on-the-take lawyers aided and abetted by no win no fee.
Covering one’s self is an end in itself every bit as much as any volunteering. I personally think that there is scope for taking more risk and am willing to take the chance of a few scandals, but candidly I will never sell that to the media, the politicians or the pressure group class. For as long as they cry of ’something must be done’ goes up arses need to be covered.
I used to volunteer at a local sports centre before moving. We had terrible problems getting people in and litigation threats were one reason for that. Frankly, looking at the press I sympathise fully.
The thing about the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) is that the name is going for the same kind of ironic branding as the Ministry of Sound: you go to that nightclub, you don’t expect to find endless beige corridors full of civil servants typing memos.
Probably gives them no end of trouble when they fly over to the US to hob-nob with all the other corporate consultants…
I don’t know anything about Brendan O’Neill but what he wrote about Izzadeen was the only article on the subject that made the remotest sense to me.
in the post-enlightenment sense
Hundal attempts to act the intellectual rather than the ethno-populist to great affect. Not.
What on earth are you talking about?
You’ve lost the plot old chap.
Sunny - you are not being fair. The new Mayor makes two appointments - for transport and the arts - who happen to be from ethnic minorities and you headline it “Boris Johnson’s new ethnic team.” Personally, I’m delighted that well-qualified non-white people are being appointed to serious mainstream roles, rather than being confined to the ‘community relations’ ghetto.
As for Munira Mirza’s report, it read to me like pure common sense. If it “was very badly received by most ethnic minorities in the arts”, as you claim, then perhaps you should question their motivations. Some of them may have been worried that their taxpayer-funded ‘ethnic art’ endeavours might not stand up to objective scrutiny.
For Boris: so far, so good.
Heh Sunny you’ve touched a nerve not just here but even Iain The Mighty isn’t impressed:
I’ll explain about Munira Mirza later. I get on well with her - that’s not the issue.
As for ‘ethnic advisors’, it was meant to be tongue in cheek! Obviously someone appointed to do transport isn’t going to be there on the basis of their race!
Chill out people…
“her views on many issues aren’t that dissimilar to Brendan O’Neill *shudder*”
There is little more amusing than s-called “lefties” moaning about libertarian Trots that have realised that authoritarianism was not really the end game of dialectic materialist philosophy.
The child protection industry is over zealous. I had to get a CRB check so I could take my daughter on a Duke of Edinburgh Award Camp. 364 days of the year she can sleep in the same house as me. But for 1 night when she is in one tent and I am 20 feet away in another tent we need a CRB check. Mad, Mad Mad. At it cost DoE £35 to get it.
Dizzy, when you start making some sense and have something interesting to say then please feel free to come back and let us know.
leon - well, no surprise Iain Dale has the wrong end of the stick. I have no problem against Tory Asians (though Munira isn’t right wing). This was a tongue-in-cheek post.
Iain gets back up from Daniel Finkelstein…like I said Sunny joke or no joke you’ve hit a nerve. These Tories are a little sensitive about their man Boris and his rep amongst the brown folk.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2008/05/iain-dale-under.html
I must admit I popped in to tell you what a fraud you are and actually what you say is not all that irritating .Personally I find anyone who makes a profession out of their so called ethnicity a pain in the arse. Max Boyce , Jim Davidson are typical and anyone in that position is a court jester really .
There is one way ,same rules for everyone .The rest is all whiney rubbish. If some are worse at fitting in with the dominant culture so what are we going to have short basket ball player quotas . I think not .
I’ve met Boris a few times and in the company of she indoors . He is one of those people whose life has included little contact with immigrants and their progeny and practically abases himself before anyone who has some claim to minority status . He is a great fellow but I found it hilarious , he is likely to err far too much on the side of appeasing the self appointed community spokespeople and ignore those to whom the subject is a distraction and would rather talk about something else .
Sunny:
Fair enough.
MaidMarian:
That pretty much sums it up. The question is, how can we reverse it? The state needs to get rid of some of the laws surrounding it, change the law on compensation to ensure that it is almost impossible to sue, abolish the health and safety junta, and finally, explain to the people and the press why they are doing this.
Newmania:
You mean ‘her indoors’.
Rumbold -
More or less, yes. One of Labour’s better pieces of legislation is the provision in the Compensation Act 2006 that allows consideration of whether something is a ‘desirable activity’ in compensation cases. That needs to be expanded in collaboration with a general reduction in laws. And no, Europe is not to blame by and large.
Pressure groups need to realise that making a good point is not the same thing as control. Journalists need to realise that not every slip/trip is a political point.
There needs to be a realisation that health and safety (and equal opps for that matter) are not lawyer cash-machines and H & S needs to go back to its original purpose. If some pressure groups don’t like it, tough - they can sort themselves out without the state doing it for them.
Oh, and there needs to be a separation of ‘human rights’ (a very good piece of legislation) from this sort of issue.
you see, this is the sort of thing i find rather confusing. i actually quite like spiked, i read it fairly often and find that i agree with a lot of the people involved. the trouble is that they’re all supposed to be a bunch of “revolutionary communists” - but i’m buggered if i can see any evidence of it. i’ve read pieces by munira mirza and brendan o’neill that i liked very much. and surely, the fact that boris has appointed mirza shows that he wants a broad-based administration or something. i can’t believe nobody has pointed this out to him. either way i can’t see the problem at present. and if MM rejects the tammany hall “community leaders” approach this can only be a good thing - the sooner community members vote on party lines and not on ethnic lines the further forward we will be imho. as for this chap who’s in charge of transport, so what if he’s a tory? would you expect boris *not* to appoint tories?
hah - this is right on the nail; the sooner the parties realise that they can’t get the entire community delivered as a block, the better; that way the tory ethnics will vote tory and the labour ethnics will vote labour and so on. you know, the same way that some white people vote for the bnp and some brown people vote for “respect” - but most vote for other parties for other reasons than ethnicity.
and so they bloody should be! it does them no good at all to be seen as a bunch of out-of-touch posh whiteys. perhaps ken should have taken a leaf out of this book and been a little bit more sensitive about his rep amongst people who cared about being londoners, not about the political version of ethnic profiling.
then perhaps the self-appointed boris-watchers might do him the favour of pointing this out to him loudly and continuously rather than telling him what a big fat racist he is and getting kneejerk reactions in the other direction.
b’shalom
bananabrain
I think ‘er indoors is the correct mockney Rumbold.