Wednesday, March 18, 2015


At last! A man who dares to tell the truth about race: Ex-race tsar says silencing of debate has done devastating harm to Britain



Britain is silencing debate on race issues by ‘intimidating’ those who dare to ask questions, according to the former equalities watchdog.

In a devastating critique of a culture of misguided political correctness, Trevor Phillips said far too many people felt unable to speak their minds because they feared being branded racist.

The former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission said that people would have to become ‘more ready to offend each other’ as the price of free speech.

In a hard-hitting article ahead of a TV documentary on race issues to be aired later this week, Mr Phillips attacked the ‘racket’ of multiculturalism which took root under Tony Blair’s government. He said:

The inability to discuss racial issues contributed to child grooming scandals in cities such as Rotherham and Rochdale, because authorities ‘turned a blind eye’;

Silence on racial issues led to the failure to take action to save Victoria Climbie;

A film commissioned to warn young people of the dangers of grooming was suppressed because it featured an Asian perpetrator abusing white girls;

He was accused of being ‘fatuous’ by senior New Labour figures when he warned of the dangers of multiculturalism;

Multiculturalism has become a ‘racket’ in many parts of the country, with self-styled community leaders battling for funds which prop up their authority and entrench segregation.

Mr Phillips was for a decade the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality and its successor, the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

However, in the same TV documentary Tony Blair refused to admit that his decision to open the doors to EU migration in 2004 was a mistake.

The former prime minister said the influx would have ‘happened anyway’ and it ‘made sense at the time’ to open our borders when France and Germany kept their controls.

Last night MPs welcomed the comments from Trevor Phillips, a man who was once at the pinnacle of the politically-correct establishment

Philip Hollobone, Conservative MP for Kettering, said: ‘For once, Trevor Phillips is right. Political correctness has acted as a huge deterrent to people speaking their mind on the important issues of the day.

'The vast majority of people in Britain are not racist, but they are concerned about immigration and about crimes committed by certain sections of the community.’

Philip Davies, the Tory MP for Shipley, said: ‘I’m always grateful when a sinner repents. Some of us have been castigated for years for speaking out, and I hope the tide is turning even among those who upheld political correctness in the past.’

In his article, Mr Phillips listed a range of areas where he suggested political correct ideas and multiculturalism had made things worse.

He put the failure of people to speak out down to fact that the ‘modern secular sin of being a racist, or its religious cousin an anti-semite or Islamophobe, is by far the worst crime of which you can be accused’.

Mr Phillips is a former television executive who became a Labour politician and then a front man for Tony Blair’s government as it tried to deal with ethnic and religious tensions.

However he dropped his ambitions for a political career and became head of the Commission for Racial Equality in 2003 and went on to the EHRC.

He was a central figure in the retreat from multiculturalism – the left-wing doctrine which encouraged migrants to keep their own culture rather than integrate into British ways.

After the 2005 London bombings he warned the country was ‘sleepwalking towards segregation’.

He earned £112,000 a year for a three-and-a-half day week at the EHRC, stepping down in 2012.

In his interview with the Channel 4 documentary, Things We Can’t Say About Race That Are True, Mr Blair insisted he was prepared to argue in favour of immigration.

Hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans came here because his government opted not to impose transitional controls 11 years ago.

The foreign secretary at the time, Jack Straw, has since conceded the policy was a ‘spectacular mistake’, while Ed Miliband has also said the party ‘got it wrong’ on immigration.

Last year former Labour home secretary David Blunkett warned of increasing public fears about immigration. Tory MP Mr Davies said: ‘Tony Blair must be the only person in the country who does not think it was a mistake.’

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Sen. Rand Paul: ‘You Can Be a Minority Because You’re an Evangelical Christian’

Speaking at Bowie State University in Bowie, Md., on Friday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said one can be a minority because of their skin color or their “ideology,” adding that “you can also be a minority because you’re an evangelical Christian.”

“You can be a minority because of the shade of your skin, or you can be a minority because of the shade of your ideology. You can be a minority because you’re African American or Hispanic, but you can also be a minority because you’re an evangelical Christian,” Paul said told the audience at the oldest historically black university.

He was speaking about the importance of the Bill of Rights to protect “the least popular,” saying it’s not necessarily for the prom queen or quarterback – although it will apply to them too. “I think we have to pay more attention to the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is there to protect all of us,” Paul said.

“Those who are popular among you will always do fine. It’s for the least popular among you. It’s for those who might have unorthodox ideas. It’s precisely for minorities,” Paul said.

Paul said there are “all kinds of reasons that you can have minority opinions that need to be protected.” He described an example of where the Bill of Rights was not considered in protecting the rights of the unpopular – specifically, American terrorist suspects detained indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay without a trial.

“We have something now in America called indefinite detention. This means that an American citizen can be indefinitely placed in prison and sent to Guantanamo Bay forever without a trial, and I had this debate with another senator on the floor, and I said, ‘Really? You can send an American citizen to Guantanamo Bay with no trial forever?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, if they’re dangerous,’” Paul recounted.

Paul said it “begs the question” of “who gets to decide who’s dangerous and who’s not dangerous, and who should be afraid of this.”

“Anybody think that you might want to be afraid if you’re Jewish? Have people ever seen any kind of animus towards the Jewish people? Anybody ever think there was any animus towards African Americans in our country? Anybody ever think there’s been an animus towards any kind of minority in our country ought to be concerned about incarceration without a trial?” Paul asked.

Paul said he doesn’t think President Barack Obama will “round up people” based on race. A provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) first signed into law in 2012 allows the military to indefinitely detain individuals without trial, and remained on the books last year. Obama signed the 2014 NDAA into law at the end of 2013.

“I don’t think he will do that, and that’s what he said when he signed the legislation. He said, ‘I’m a good man, and I will never do this.’ I’m not questioning whether the president’s a good man. I’m questioning whether you want a law on the book that requires our leaders to be good people,” Paul added.

SOURCE






Britain's disgusting RSPCA again

Reminscent of PETA

As porcine pensioners go, Mr Pig had life sorted. He had his own landscaped island, a river to hurl himself into when the fancy took him, a muddy beach on which to wallow, two cosy wooden homes lined with straw and sawdust, dozens of ducks and geese to harass and an endless supply of lovingly steamed vegetables.  Not forgetting, of course, the daily company of his owner, or ‘Dad’, Bob Skinner.

‘He was a good pig and I loved him. I’d sit with him every evening and chat to him. He was my only companion, my best friend. He knew everything about me,’ says Bob, 63.

‘The worst thing God got wrong is he never fixed it for animals to chat back. But I understand animals. So I could feel what Mr Pig was feeling, know what he was thinking.’

Sadly, no longer.  Today, Mr Pig’s two homes are empty. His island is quiet. The ducks are waddling about without fear. Because Mr Pig was carted off by the RSPCA — who had been tipped off that he looked unwell by Environmental Agency staff working in the area. Then, as the Mail reported last week, they held him in a compound for two days, and secretly killed him. Without telling Bob.

What’s worse, they accused Bob of animal cruelty and applied to court to have him barred from keeping animals in the future.

Last week, after months of anguish, Bob was cleared by magistrates in Bournemouth of malicious intent. They refused to ban him from keeping animals and gave him a conditional discharge on the basis he paid the RPSCA’s prosecution costs.

Today, with Britain’s best-loved animal charity accused of bullying tactics and turning into a political pressure group, Bob feels vindicated, but remains heartbroken.

He eulogises about Mr Pig (who at 20 is believed to have been the world’s oldest rare breed kunekune pig) at every opportunity.

‘He was a good pig but as ugly as sin — you couldn’t get any uglier. And he was a grumpy old sod and smelly and naughty as hell — always stealing food and smashing down fences. But I really loved him.’

Their bond, if unusual, appears genuine. Despite Mr Pig’s appalling personal hygiene, Bob spent hours hugging and tickling him at home in Corfe Mullen, Dorset.

He bought special eye-washes and bathed his pink piggy eyes. He steamed Mr Pig’s vegetables because his teeth were wonky. And, in the summer, Bob would often sit and eat steamed vegetables with him.  ‘Happy days!’ he says.

So when, last autumn, Mr Pig seemed under par and developed what looked like a nasty sore on his face, Bob was worried. ‘He was struggling. I could just see that life was a bit of a pain. So I got my friend Dave over. He’s a slaughterman, not a vet, but knows all there is to know about pigs.’

Dave diagnosed an abscess, told Bob to bathe it regularly and keep a close eye. ‘I knew his days were numbered, but he was still eating and trotting about. His time wasn’t quite up yet,’ says Bob.

Sadly, the RSPCA officials felt otherwise. On that fateful November day, Bob returned home to find a notice pinned to the gate saying ‘something along the lines of: ‘Please phone this number, we’ve got your pig.’

‘I was put through to a call centre. A call centre?’ he almost yells. ‘It’s a charity, not British Gas!’

When he finally got through, he was told the relevant officer only worked until 4pm. Finally, after two days of missed calls (on both sides), the officer paid another house-visit.  ‘It was very strange, like a formal interview,’ says Bob. ‘He kept asking all these accusatory questions.’

Until suddenly, about halfway through, he dropped the bombshell. Mr Pig had already been euthanised.

Bob goes all pink just recounting it. ‘I had to rush up to my sitting room and cry my eyes out.

‘Why didn’t they wait to speak to me? Why would you do that if you’re a charity — a charity that people give money to so they can do good work?

‘Who taught this man to be Adolf Hitler — because that’s how I feel he’s behaved.’ To compound matters, Bob faced the court case. ‘I couldn’t understand it. I love animals!’

It is the latest in a worrying line of similar prosecutions. Last year, the RSPCA were accused of bullying when a cat called Claude was put down without his owners’ consent after RSPCA officers declared him too thin and matted.

Elsewhere, Diane and Dean Webb had their 33 show cats and kittens taken away after charity officers raided their home in Barrow upon Trent, Derbyshire, and prosecuted them for neglecting the animals — charges a judge rejected.

Bob has adored animals since he was a boy and for 30 years he ran Dorset’s largest pet shop, routinely paying owners over the odds for animals he felt were in danger, and until recently kept thousands of butterflies, ducks, geese, black swans, dogs and, of course, Mr Pig.

His relationship with Mr Pig began when it was chosen as a Christmas present by Bob’s then young daughter, Kimberley. ‘I learned a long time ago the trick with women is to get them what they want,’ says Bob. ‘No point trying to be brave or clever.’

At six weeks old, Mr Pig was furry, toothy and barely a foot long.

For the first three months, he lived in the room beneath the first floor sitting room in Bob’s £1 million grade II-listed home.

The smell was overwhelming. ‘He was smelly, but Kim really loved him, even when she hugged him and he’d wee on her posh school uniform.’

So Bob built a sty and Mr Pig moved in. Along with a distraught Kim — although she could only bear the stench for one night.

Soon after, Bob built another sty, and gave the precious piggy his own 1.6-acre island, which he accessed through the garden, past a row of plastic toadstools and across the River Stour on a little bridge.

And that’s how he lived for nearly 20 years — eating sweet potatoes, chasing geese, stealing eggs, raiding barbecues and entertaining the hundreds of guests who stayed in Bob’s holiday cottage over the years.

Bob cared for Mr Pig deeply.  When he got fat, Bob put him on a diet. ‘I thought: “I’m going to come home one day and you’ll be dead from a heart attack you bugger and then there’ll only be me left.” ’

At one stage, when Bob thought Mr Pig was lonely — ‘like any man, he’d wander round and round his island looking for a female’ — he bought a sow in for company.

But she was younger and friskier and smashed down a fence in her excitement to embrace him. ‘He was terrified,’ says Bob. ‘He just wanted a bit of company, nothing racy. He was just like me — I’d rather a cup of tea these days. So that marriage didn’t work.’

Neither did Bob’s. Seven years ago, Bob’s wife Davina left him. ‘Suddenly, me and Mr Pig, we were both abandoned. He didn’t like my ex-wife and the feeling was mutual. When she left with our girls, Mr Pig and I only had each other — so we became best friends.’

Which all sounds a touch melodramatic, but Bob claims he saw Mr Pig as his link to his suddenly estranged daughters Kimberley and older sister Kirsten. ‘I’ve not seen them for years, but I know how much they loved him. So I loved him, too.’

Talking of love, Bob has enjoyed little luck lately. There was a short period of internet dating, which he describes as ‘Not good’.

And, briefly, a girlfriend called Hazel, who bought Mr Pig strawberries. ‘But I’m like Mr Pig, I’m not easy to live with,’ he says. ‘I don’t like women moving my things.  ‘And I get a bit engrossed when I’m doing my carpentry.’

Bob is a highly skilled carpenter by trade and has single-handedly renovated the mill house. He works on the wooden interiors of super yachts and makes exquisite furniture.

Back in the Seventies, he sold Elton John a coffee table for £7,000. ‘He’d seen the one I’d done for Tom Jones and wanted one with a hidden drawer.’ Elton later sold it for £14,000.  ‘That was a bit cheeky. It’s not as if he needed the money.’

Bob is also, by his own account, ‘an annoyingly good cook. I think it puts women off’.

But mostly he liked ‘just sitting quietly with Mr Pig’. Today, staring at the empty sties, thoughts of his final days still haunt Bob. ‘His little world was small. He’d never been off the property before. He must have been thinking: “Where’s Dad? Has he abandoned me?”  ‘It was the most appallingly distressing end to his life.’

Sadly, the furore is still not quite over. Bob wants to bring Mr Pig’s body home. But the RSPCA have said that, by law, he must wait 21 days. ‘I’m angry and I just want my pig back,’ he says. ‘It will be really sad when he returns, but at least then he’ll be home.’

There will be a cremation, followed by the burial of the ashes beneath a specially commissioned gravestone in the garden plus a plaque in the house: ‘Mr Pig lived here. The longest living pig.’  ‘It’s only what he deserves.’

Bob denies he allowed Mr Pig to suffer unnecessarily. ‘Absolute bloody rubbish. I’m not a bad person.’ In fact, he had everything planned — the moment Mr Pig was incapable of trotting across the bridge, he would say a proper goodbye and Dave the slaughterman would be asked to ‘sort him out’.  ‘But he wasn’t ready. There was nothing wrong with him, other than the fact he was old, like me.’

What Bob didn’t know, until after the RSPCA’s vets had carried out a biopsy, was that despite his perkiness, Mr Pig had cancer.

‘I thought it was an abscess. But it still wasn’t his time. Is that what will happen to us all — sorry Bob, you’re old, so time’s up. But we won’t tell your family for a couple of days because we only work ten till four.’

It has clearly been a difficult week. He dearly wants to honour Mr Pig — and for the RSPCA ‘to start acting like human beings and stop prosecuting innocent animal lovers’.

But most of all, he wants his daughters to get back in touch.

Today, the mill house is up for sale. Bob isn’t sure where he’ll go next but, as he puts it: ‘There’s no point being at home now. I’ve got nobody to talk to about my day any more. Nobody to console me. ‘Life is just so much poorer without Mr Pig.’

SOURCE






Hollywood Targets the Catholic Priest

On March 4, on the nation's most religion-mocking channel, Comedy Central, the late-night game show "@Midnight" featured the comedian Neal Brennan. Host Chris Hardwick asked a question about confession, to which Brennan responded, "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned, I went to Catholic school growing up. While I was never molested, I did f—— a few priests."

The Catholic League points out this isn't original for Brennan. On the premiere of his own standup show on Comedy Central, which aired Jan. 19, 2014, Brennan commented that he went to Catholic school for 12 years. "No, I didn't get molested, I f——- a few priests, but I didn't get molested."

The Fox comedy "The Mindy Project" on March 10 featured a priest played by ... Stephen Colbert. Colbert's priest was a man who turned away from a very sinful past, which is certainly possible. A turn from moral degradation to holiness might even be inspiring. Not so with this one. This priest began his sermon by boasting he'd had sex with 275 women and had used "crazy drugs." He chest-thumped about this at a funeral Mass.

Colbert's priest was the usual Catholic nightmare, all about punishing, even excommunicating believers for using birth control and having premarital sex. "Trust me," he sermonized, "these little sins are just a straight a path to hellfire as all that really cool stuff I used to do."

Then there was the Feb. 26 season finale of the ABC drama "How To Get Away with Murder." A priest was accused of murdering another priest. The guilty priest told the defense team he killed an older priest in his parish by pounding his skull in with a blunt golden object — the thurible, which holds the incense used in the Mass. They showed one of the show's law-student characters insisting, "Not all priests are pedophiles," with another shooting back, "Since when?"

The priest who was killed had confessed to abusing a teenage boy who later hung himself. The plot is not just offensive. It's dishonest. After a decade-plus of reform by the Catholic Church — including an order to priests to break the seal of confession to report child abuse — the priest still says, "I thought about breaking the sacrament, reporting what he told me, but I know they'd just transfer him."

TV producers insist their stories "reflect reality, claiming even they're "ripped from the headlines." Well, there are other religious traditions that collide with human frailty.

In recent weeks, newspapers have reported some eye-opening stories: the Washington rabbi who admitted to taping a large number of married women getting naked in the ritual bath called a mikvah; the female Episcopalian bishop in Baltimore with a history of drunk driving who struck and killed a bicyclist; and a Chicago imam charged with a pattern of sexual abuse of women and girls.

There will be no Hollywood plot lines based on these headlines. Tinseltown tradition suggests these real-life plots just aren't "real" enough — which is to say, interesting enough — for television. Were these offenses committed by Catholic priests, it would be a different story altogether. They are in the Hollywood bull's-eye at all times

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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