Multiculturalism is a Must

Let’s kick this off by saying that I don’t agree with the decision by Rotherham Council to remove a group of children from their foster parents, on the grounds that the foster parents in question belonged to UKIP. A person’s political opinions should have little to no bearing on their ability to care for children in need, and if as the reports suggest the couple believed that they were meeting the cultural needs of the children, then all the better.

 

That said, I always feel a shiver run up my spine whenever UKIP is mentioned, because this lingering remnant of Thatcherism is one of the things that scares me the most. Nobody save the hardcore skinheads really takes the BNP and the EDL seriously, but UKIP, made up of dissatisfied eurosceptics and libertarians, gives the British far right a respectable middle class face, one which guarantees them support.

 

UKIP claim not to be racist and that may very well be the case, but their very name – the UK Independence Party – and their insistence on tighter immigration regulations, an immediate withdrawal from the EU and a ending of the UK’s policy of multiculturalism means they do a very good job of a appearing as such. And it’s the last of that policy triad that really worries me.

 

UKIP and their supporters on the Conservative right seem to me to be the type of insular Little Englanders who believe that everything will be okay if we just rely on ourselves and stop associating with Johnny Foreigner. They are stuck with an empire mentality and don’t realize that times have changed.

 

Multiculturalism is a must nowadays. Asia is rapidly becoming the world’s production hub, China is over taking the US as the premier economic super power and India has the world’s most rapidly growing population, set to surpass China by 2025, only 13 years from now. The axis of power in the world is rapidly shifting from the West to the East and we need to get with the times.

 

This is not to say that the West does not have a lot to offer or has become irrelevant, because that is not true. The US President is still acknowledged as the world’s most powerful man and the US still has the world’s biggest military. But military strength is not what matters anymore. We have to move with the times, and recognize the world is changing, lest we get left behind.

 

In UKIP’s dream world, England would be politically and economically self-sufficient, and immigration, while still ongoing would be tightly controlled, keeping the white majority in tact. But in reality, this will not end in UK’s independence, but in the UK’s utter isolation, leaving us alone, in a world that has changed beyond our understanding. A world in which we no longer have a voice or any authority. If the UK wishes to keep its place as a respected elder statesman, than rather than rejecting multiculturalism, we must embrace it.

Away for the Weekend

Hey all.

I'm away for the weekend, so expect an update next week

See you later

The Benefits of the BBC

“Ladies and gentlemen, if we cannot debate that which troubles our society and more importantly troubles our government, then we cannot in all honesty, call ourselves a democracy.”

                       Freddie Lyon – The Hour, Season 1.

So the BBC has hit some bumps in the road of late, what with the Saville investigation and now the Newsnight debacle leading to the resignation of its Director General George Entwhistle after just fifty four days in the job. Not that it was ever going to be an easy job. Now the new DG, whoever he or she is, as well as the BBC Trust, are going to have the job of rebuilding the public’s trust in the BBC. Of restoring it to the national symbol that it is.

Whenever something like this happens, a few naysayers always pop up out of the woodwork to attack the BBC and its supposedly biased nature. And maybe it is biased slightly, but only in the way that all forms of media are in some way biased. If there’s anything I’ve learnt over the last year and a bit as a journalism student, it’s that everyone has an angle and everyone is trying to sell it. There’s no such thing as unbiased reporting.

But the most important thing about the BBC is not only that it produces brilliant and at times thought provoking, entertaining and enlightening programmes, but that it allows for the point encapsulated in the quote at the beginning of this blog. It allows us to debate that which troubles our society and gives fair and equal weight to all sides. Whatever it’s supposed bias, it allows everyone, on all sides of an argument, the chance to say their piece. That’s the point of Question Time, or the Andrew Marr Show, or Daily Politics. The BBC may disagree with someone’s view, but it doesn’t stop them from airing it.

In order to see what life would be like without the BBC we need only to look across the Atlantic to the US. They have numerous news networks, but all of them are privately funded and obviously biased. You have MSNBC and CNN on the liberal side of the aisle and Murdoch’s pet Fox News on the conservative side,(though some would argue that Fox is not so much a news program as the propaganda arm of the Republican party, with its blatant disregard for truth and facts).  They report what their viewers want to see, and what their investors tell them to report. It has reached a point where if you want proper unbiased analysis of the news, it would be better for you to turn over to Comedy Central and Jon Stewart’s Daily Show than watch any of the main news stations.

The BBC on the other hand, is publically funded. The only people it is responsible and accountable to are the licence payers. This frees it up to report freely and honestly, taking the time to weigh up and display both sides of a story. It is a vital tool of our democracy and we would be lost without it.

Yes it has hit some bumps in the road of late. But it will get over them. Because without it, Britain just wouldn’t be Britain any more.

Danger Still Lurks in the Corridors of Power

"You wrote a concession?”

“Of course I wrote a concession. What you want to tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing?”

“No.”

“Then go outside turn around three times and spit.”

West Wing: Season 4 – Election Day

So, Election Day 2012 has come and gone and President Obama has been re-elected, cruising to victory with 332 to 206 electoral votes. The pollsters had seen this result coming for a while – this election has been called a triumph for science – but for me I think it was confirmed when I heard that Romney had not bothered to write a concession speech. The above quote from the West Wing immediately sprung to mind.

Always have a concession speech, for the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing is mighty and terrible.

But despite the fact that Romney has lost and will now hopefully fade into obscurity, I am still worried, about the future of America. For it was not Romney’s economic policies or even his foreign policies that worried me, but his social policy. Or, rather, the social policies that would have been forced on him by a Tea Party Congress.

I was recently informed of a book called The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Attwood. In it the US has been replaced with the Republic of Gilead, a patriarchal society where women are considered second class citizens, good for nothing more than reproduction. While I am not saying that is what would have happened, I could see the US under President Romney and a Tea Party Congress going in a similar direction.

I was seeing borders tightened as fear and racism took hold, the defence budget going up while the war hawks’ eyes turned towards Iran, Obamacare overturned, social security and Medicaid gutted to pay for another round of unnecessary tax cuts for the one percent. I saw the Supreme Court packed with enough conservative justices to overturn Roe v Wade and all the other steps that have been made to make America a more open and accepting nation. I was seeing social policy and civil rights in the US set back twenty years or more.

The poster boy for this may have been defeated, the rape denying Akin and Mourdock may have lost their election bids. But while the likes of Michelle Bachmann; Paul Ryan and Doug Lambourn are the still in the House, while Rush Limbaugh still holds sway over millions of Americans, while there is anyone left in a position of authority who supports the opinion than an Obama victory marks the death of liberty and freedom in America, then the job is not done. Not by a long chalk. The Tea Party and its backwards, nineteenth century ways need to be exercised from Congress quickly. The Moderates within the GOP need to take this as an opportunity to take their party back from the fringe right.

The Jabberwock of Fear that Mitt Romney represented may have been defeated, but the people that put him there in the first place still exist. And until they have been removed, America will never properly heal.

Oh Those Fickle Weather Lords

I don’t think I’m living inside a disaster movie – the type where all of that climate change stuff that members of the US House of Representatives Science Sub-committee say is a load of liberal propaganda comes back to bite us – but I can’t be certain. After all, in all those type of films, New York is always one of the first places to go and, judging by the pictures on the news, it might be time for me to stock up on tinned goods.

Yes, Hurricane Sandy has been and gone and left the city that never sleeps looking a little hung-over and that’s before we get into what she did to New Jersey. But now as the clean-up begins all eyes turn to next Tuesday and possible the most divisive and partisan presidential election of the last twenty years.

 But here again, Sandy has had an effect. Up until the first debate, there was no doubt that Obama would win. Romney was partisan, flip flopping, uncharismatic and, as covered in this blog, had managed to insult everyone from Israel to the UK. The only real question was how few electoral votes could he conceivably get? Then the first debate happened and despite strong performances by the President in the second and third ones, Romney managed to close the gap.

Which is where Sandy kicks in.

The storm puts Romney at a real political disadvantage. He can’t campaign without looking like he cares more about politics than people, yet without access to any actual power – he’s not a sitting Governor anymore after all – there is little he can do other than kick his heels and give the press the occasional soundbite.

Obama meanwhile has had a chance not only to look Presidential and professional, but also to actually get something done. He does after all control the federal government, which in this case means FEMA – the Federal Emergency Management Agency – and his swift action has earned him praise not only from the Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg but New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who up until this point was one of Romney’s most vocal supporters.

And, of course, not only is Romney not in a position to exercise any power, but the comments about FEMA that he made during the Primaries – that it should be dismantled and its duties handed over to private companies – will come back to haunt him. If he doubled down on them he would come off as heartless, instead he praised it and once again looked weak and indecisive.

I am in no way saying that a super storm is a good idea, and no politician would wish for something like this to happen so close to an election where it might hinder people from getting out to vote. Nevertheless, if Obama does win re-election next Tuesday by even a small margin, then I think he will be thanking his lucky stars that Hurricane Sandy hit land precisely when it did.