- in regard to Africians to Essex – I believe the story may be based on this scheme of Tower Hamlets Council – Cash incentive scheme – http://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/data/housing/data/lettings/data/homebuy.cfm.

Grants are paid to tenants to help them buy a home and so free up a much needed council or housing ass. flat.

Its perfectly possible that up to 26k went to an African tenant of Tower Hamlets who moved to Barking or Dagenham or Romford etc.

But importantly, and obviously what the BNP fail to mention is that, its possible for white tenants to do the same. And knowing the areas involved no doubt a number have.

What it does highlight again is that housing stock pressure is often involved in all this. Something the Government really needs to sort out for all involved.

How dare thy!

Anyway its more like anglo-saxon-viking-nordic-vandal-celtic

Was it removed by the Pickled Politics lawyers because it mentioned the nutter by name? I will not rest until this mystery is solved! er, or maybe I’ll give up now…

I still can’t make up my mind on the question of whether immigration is a moral, as opposed to practica/ economic, issue. I’ll keep cogitating.

Refresh – What idealism! How, er, refreshing. I agree the sneering/ hectoring of the working classes is atrocious, although I blame “the meeja” at least as much as if not more than the Government. I suspect I won’t agree with you entirely on the economic front. I don’t see any real alternative to the neo-classical consensus in terms of macro-economic policy. But there’s more we can do at the micro level to create a better enabling environment for all citizens – education particularly. New Labour, for all its teeth grindingly irritating inconsistency, spinning and the rest, has done more than any party probably since Attlee to affect this, as even Polly Toynbee repeatedly points out. It seems to me that even the south American progressives – eg Lula – are working very much within the framework of that neo classical consensus.

(Chavez has done good stuff on basic education and healthcare – altho not sure of the views of the terrified Cuban doctors working in those favelas that the Venezuelan quacks are too scared to enter. But, as even that BBC Newsnight Stalinist hagiography of Chavez couldn’t fail to show, I’m really not confident about his direct attempts to create employment through soviet style subsidies of factories. The best they seemed able to show was a run down factory producing t-shirts with chavezista slogans that went straight into a govt warehouse – really reminiscent of those apocryphal 1970s Russian shoe factories producing only left-footed shoes and tractors 20 years out of date that broke down as soon as you drove em off the premises. When the real price of oil drops – which it will one day – will Chavez have left a sustainable legacy?)

I wasn’t taking the piss. I was just interested in a third party view of the exchange, and not only had you been reading the thread, you also come across as quite bright. So, I thought I’d ask. Thanks for your comments.

The underlying integrity and the decency is dismissed out of hand – perhaps they don’t send their children to the right school, don’t drive the right car.

You know, you’ve made me think. And I am beginning to see it as a hectoring and bullying of ordinary people which has driven us to this.

I’ll ramble a little if I may, the new guy taking over Barnardos made it very clear that we as a society are criminalising children through ASBOs and in my view purely because they don’t fit in with the gentrification program that we have been seeing in the last few years.

Whereas I could spend time stressing why ASBOs could be more deserved by students returning to their digs (or apartments as they are now) in the early hours of Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings. (Come on Charles Clarke why don’t we have the ‘Student-ASBO’ on the statute books?).

The British Working class can do without the moralising of the sneering Blairites.

I do hope the Labour Party membership find the means to cut out the alien growth within, and we can all build Jerusalem.

[I think I must rest now...]

April 18th,

So, I’ve been talking to PikeBishops doppleganger on ‘Comment is Free’, a Mr BobLord. Is there anything I’ve said you would view as wrong? Unlike most folk that seem to come to web sites, I’m open minded, and willing to learn. Seems to me that immigration has no moral justification whatsoever, except obviously in asylum cases. Maybe I’m wrong.

Err. Before you ask, Britain is much better off with diversity, although obviously not with suicide bombers. And generally, I vote Liberal.

Get it right.

It is the English Working Class, unless England has recently been renamed Whiteland (?!)

I’m sure Friedrich Engels The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 dose not talk about the ‘white working class’.

So remember, get it right: English Working Class.

With regards overplaying our problems, I agree.

Moderation and balance is the correct approach. My feeling is that we as a community (hope Jay doesn’t mind me using the term in this context), fail to see the problems.

I have had some involvement in local and national politics. I recall canvassing one election and when invited in to an Asian household I was shocked that the whole house had no floor covering, and the ‘bread-winner’ had been laid up with stress for at least two years – unemployable. And yet the outward appearance was comfortable.

I also knew someone else who had been waiting to be re-united with his wife for 15 years; and had taken to drink. Desolate.

There are many many more, and yet perhaps due to being of recent immigrant stock we (rightly or wrongly) focus on the successes. And forget the poor of which there are many more.

The only differentiator between poor white and poor black being the colour.

I know that you put the two together they get along and share the problems and experiences – but to leave them helpless and hopeless after having a government that is supposed to represent their interests. Sorry its worse, knowing that should they kick out New Labour they will get the Tories back.

You can probably guess where my political life has been spent – and perhaps (cheap cross-link), the manifesto we need is one to challenge New Labour.

How is this for a radical statement? I live in a pretty integrated area of Glasgow. I’m not denying that there is the occasional race crime, but, by and large, we get on OK. Why not send the anthropologists in to see what is wrong with us?

And I am a white person, particularily because I’ve been playing Oblivion in a darkened room.

Please ignore Refresh’s patronising advice about your need to amend your views vis a vis your postings on other subjects – carry on as you are and keep contributing its great to have you here with as many diverse views as possible!

And then this excellent contribution. Clearly from someone who has been through it all. You’re probably in your mid-40s. And seen it all before.

I am not sure Raj Persaud would be a role model for anyone – but totally agree we are not visible enough.

The talk here in triumphant terms of how many Asian billionaires make the Times Rich List weakens the real contribution of Asians and immigrants.

The excellent campaigns against stereotyping asians and blacks by the media of old has clearly worked and allowed us all the room to grow.

The BNP and similar have had to look for other methods to entice the suited and booted – and it was for years the asylum seekers. And I notice they did not succeed regardless of the fact the mainstream parties tried to ride that wave too.

In the end it will always fall to the economy and the share of the spoils across society that will trump racism.

I am more than comfortable that we are not born racist and the environment that dictates how we view each other.

No community should be isolated or isolationist.

That said it will always be a long and lengthy negotiation within society that will lead to coherent approach to the problems we all face.

By talking up success and failing to highlight our problems (which are huge) is isolating us from the communities we all, in general, grew up in – which were mixed, white and black, working class.

Ravi – well done for your timely contribution, but drop the understanding tone on the neocons.