Who Are We Bowing Down To?

by Les May

'THAT’s not my question.'   It’s what Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee said when he told the BBC that there was concern among MPs that the Government appeared scared of the reaction of Pakistani mobs, adding that it must ask itself ‘very serious questions about who it was bowing down to’

Tugendhat has said that Asia Bibi was eligible for asylum in the UK ‘on every possible metric’.  He pointed out that the Government had willingly helped persecuted Muslims in the Balkans and defended the rights of homosexuals in countries where they are not tolerated, and added;  ’The idea that we shouldn’t change our policy in Pakistan simply because she is a Christian and simply because we are afraid of the mob strikes me as extremely odd’.

When the judge who freed her, Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, visited London last week he told MPs that she was not on an exit control list and was free to leave Pakistan with her family at any time.

Earlier this month Rehman Chishti the Conservative MP for Gillingham and Rainham, who is the son of an imam, quit as Party vice-chairman and trade envoy to Pakistan because of the Government’s refusal to offer refuge to Mrs Bibi and her family.

He has since said:  ‘She is free to leave but she needs a country to come forward, to morally and ethically do the right thing. I say this as clearly as I can – for the United Kingdom to say which other country would Asia Bibi like to go to is completely and utterly unacceptable, irrespective of what any other country may offer.  We have a moral obligation.  Why have we, in God’s name, not done the right thing to say – irrespective of what anyone else offers – we, the UK, will do the right thing in line with our great British values?  It was right for me to step down last week, when you try to get the Government to do the right thing and it would not do the right thing.'

He followed this up by pointing out that the Government willingly gave asylum to Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani Muslim shot by the Taliban for her work in campaigning for the education of girls, in spite of threats of reprisals.

When Asia Bibi’s husband, Ashiq Mashi, and her youngest daughter, Eisham Ashiq, who is 18, visited London in October, not a single British minister would meet the pair even in private.  To his great credit Rehman Chishti did meet them and has said that Eisham had tears in her eyes when he had to tell her that no one was interested in hearing her story.

The response of Theresa May and her government shames Britain.  It presents it as a weak nation unable to determine what happens within its own borders. Although I am happy to say I had a ‘good Sunday school education’, I am not a Christian, so in supporting Asia Bibi, I have no religious axe to grind.   But as an atheist I think I have something to fear from the feeble response from Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, the Prime Minister’s special envoy on freedom of religion and belief, who, speaking in the House of Lords during the launch of a report on global religious persecution defended the government in relation to the Asia Bibi case by saying ’It is entirely appropriate that maybe less is more’.  It was this which prompted Rehman Chishti to make the remarks I have quoted above.   It appears that some religions and (dis)beliefs are more equal than others to Lord Ahmed.

It’s not just this weak kneed government that deserves our censure.   The Labour party has been equally silent on this matter, as have the usually gobby women MPs, women journalists and professional feminists, who never miss any opportunity to parade their stance against ‘male oppression’.  Nor have we heard anything from those preening ‘activists’ who are always so ready to shout loudly about anything they can condemn as ‘Islamophobia’. 

 

How odd that apart from that by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, all the articles that I have read about the Bibi case seem to have been penned by men.

*********

Studies in the Anatomy of the British Left

by Brian Bamford

IT is now almost 50 years since Harold Garfinkel wrote his book 'Studies in Ethnomethodology' in 1967.  Garfinkel's book was a systematic attack on the kind of sociological and ideological thinking that was prevailing in much of the social sciences at that time, and which amounted to 'cookbook analysis'.  With a  functionalist or Marxist cookbook one didn't need to think critically or empirically about social phenomena or real life events; all one needed to do was to produce a suitable recipe to deal with the world.

In his essay in The Independent on the current thinking of the 'radical left' Bailey Lamon seems to have uncovered the latest facet of the phenomena of 'cookbook thinking' among some of the current half-baked student community of scholars at the beginning of the 21^st century.   Claiming to have been 'involved in activism since the Occupy Movement of 2011', Bailey Lamon makes a perceptive observation in which he contrasts the world of what he calls the 'oppressed groups,... such as the homeless, abused, addicted' with that of the half-baked students and activists, who in their wisdom claim to be able to diagnose the problems of those that suffer and to prescribe cures and generally to cleanse us all of our imperfections.  Mr. Lamon addresses the challenge to such clever-dick thinking which besets seemingly most of the British left:

'If you’ve ever worked with oppressed groups, such as people who are homeless, abused, addicted or suffering from mental health problems, there's one thing you learn straight away. They usually don't frame their worldviews in terms of academic theories students learn in gender studies classes in university. For the most part, they tend to not analyse their experiences in terms of systemic power and privilege, concepts such as “the patriarchy”, “white privilege”, or “heteronormativity”.

'While many of these folks know that they're directly impacted by class inequality, they don't sit around pondering capitalism, reading Marx, or tackling the effects of “problematic behaviours”. They are not concerned with checking their privilege.  No.  They are busy trying to survive. Getting through the next day. Meeting their basic needs. They don't bother with policing their language and worrying about how their words might unintentionally perpetuate certain stereotypes.  They are more concerned with their voices being heard.'   
Young students today are desirous of passing exams and the easiest way to accomplish this is in finding some ideological formula or recipe knowledge to spout out pretentious doctrines and slogans such as 'patriarchy'; 'white privilege' or 'heteronormativity'.  What these bumptious people lack in experience of poverty; life in the workplace; the prison yard or living on the streets, they try to compensate by pseudo-intellectual blather.
Mr Lamon writes about some of the people he encountered in the Occupy Movement: 
'Yet I witness so many “activists” who ignore the realities of oppression despite saying that they care about those at the bottom of society.  They think that being offended by something is equal to experiencing prison time or living on the streets.  They talk about listening, being humble and not having preconceptions.  Yet they ignore the lived experiences of those who don’t speak or think properly in the view of university-educated social justice warriors, regardless of how much worse off they really are.'
These people are so convinced that they, and only they, have the key to the universe and that what they believe must be self-evident that they do not accept that their views should be subject to any form of forensic examination.  Consequently as we have noticed on many occasions they believe that they have the entitlement to coerce others to swallow whatever fashionable fad that they have embraced.
God help the British Left!
See http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-this-radical-activist-is-disillusioned-by-the-toxic-culture-of-the-left-a6895211.html 

Jobcentre worker brands mum of three ‘a scrounging bastard’ in answerphone rant!

Jobcentre worker accidentally leaves answerphone message seemingly branding mum of three a 'scrounging bastard that’s popping out kids like pigs'

 

"A mum of three from Beckenham was left shaken after a Bromley Jobcentre worker accidentally left an answerphone message seemingly accusing her of being a “scrounging bastard that’s popping out kids like pigs”, it has been reported.

Cecilia Garcia, 44, says she had to give up a job in finance following a difficult marital breakup to care for her three children. Unable to afford the rent, Mrs Garcia reached out for support from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP).

Last Friday, Mrs Garcia checked her answerphone messages and found a message from jobcentre worker Ann Goode, asking her to get in touch to discuss her benefits claim.
However, Goode didn’t hang up properly and can be heard angrily discussing the case with a colleague.

Unaware she was being recorded, Goode first began talking with her colleague about how much Mrs Garcia was receiving in benefits.

audioBoom: 'Offensive' Bromley Jobcentre voicemail left on Beckenham mum's phone
“That’s almost a thousand pounds a month – 12,000 a year”, she can be overheard saying.

The cruel and “offensive” jobcentre employee can then be heard referring to Mrs Garcia’s name.

“This is Cecilia Garcia. None of them are English names”, says Goode.

In reality, Mrs Garcia has dual Mexican-British nationality and all her three children – aged eight, six and four – were born in the UK.

Goode continues: “I don’t … I just don’t … why are we running around for these people?

“Do you know I resent even doing this work because if I had a person who said I really want a job, I want to go on your case load, yes, all the time, every day of the week.

“But not some scrounging bastard that’s popping out kids like pigs.”

“I’m going to get very politically incorrect this afternoon.”

Rather than being taken aback by Goode’s offensive comments, her jobcentre colleague can be heard saying: “You are, aren’t you? And I don’t blame you one bit”.

Speaking to News Shopper, Mrs Garcia said: “I got sick, I was so upset over the weekend.

“It is really offensive all the things that she says on the voicemail. And it sounds like the other person totally agrees with her.

“The fact that they say things like ‘oh they aren’t even English names’ – this goes beyond everything, saying I pop out kids like pigs.

“I have dual nationality, we did everything right, I’m not illegal. She shouldn’t express this about people from other backgrounds.”

Mrs Garcia says she noticed a change in people’s attitude toward those of a non-British background since the EU referendum.

“We could speak Spanish on the bus or train with no problems but now I tell my children not to speak Spanish in public places because I feel people looking at us like ‘what are they doing here?”, she said.

Mrs Garcia added: “Living on benefits you live on the edge. I study, I have a finance degree. I am trying to go back to work but I had to stop working because I have three children.

“I understand people say that a lot of people are taking benefits but not every single case is the same.”

A DWP spokesperson said they’re taking the incident “extremely seriously” and have launched an investigation."

Source:

Posted by Welfare Weekly 4th August 2016