At the end of the story, though, there is a comment from a Conservative MP which is jaw-dropping, eithre in its stupidity (the kind interpretation) or its deliberate racial provokation:
Someone should tell Mr Mercer that everyone has an ethnic background. You can't recruit people who don't have an ethnic background - which he seems to want - because there are no such people.MP Patrick Mercer, Tory terrorism advisor, told us last night: "This discovery by MI5 comes as no surprise to me.
"Recruiting ethnic people into key public sector organisations— in place to protect us—is a risk."Our vetting procedures have to be toughened before it's too late." (3)
And his strange idea that white Britons - I assume he thinks have no ethnic background - no ganga, curry or funny hats - are somehow blameless and sin free and carry no risk, is just weird and wrong. Everyone is potentially dodgy, dishonest or wicked. Suggesting brown people are more so than anyone else is dog whistling.
This just after I'd decided David Cameron probably hadn't been doing some whistling of his own over theLabour's Auschwitz 'gimmick' (4). All of which shows that that if Cameron isn't a vicious little racist, or an ammoral power hungry toad, his party is still full of them.
1 - 'Terror moles at the Met,' by Ryan Sabey in The News of the World, undated article. (http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/0903_alqaeda.shtml)
2 - As described previously on lefthandpalm: http://lefthandpalm.blogspot.com/2007/07/daily-mail-mid-brow-tabloid-with.html
3 - As per #1, above.
4 - As described previously on lefthandpalm: http://lefthandpalm.blogspot.com/2008/02/tory-dog-whistling-on-holocaust.html and http://lefthandpalm.blogspot.com/2008/02/dog-whistling-dave-ii.html.
2 comments:
When Patrick Mercer said that to allow ethnic people into key public sector organisations is a risk I think he was referring to Muslims regarded to be from a different race. Go to YouTube and you will see that some of them are fanatics bent on bloodshed. They want to rule the world, kill every Jew and force their religion upon us.
I always had reservations about allowing Muslims into our country ungratefully they shouted "Islam will dominate the world" and "Muslims in the UK support Taliban" and "God bless Hitler" along with "Islam the future for Britain" whilst they torched the red, white and blue flag of the United Kingdom.
I don't think that interpretation stands up to scrtiny - he referred specifically to 'ethnic people' being 'a risk.' No qualifications there. It was either dementedly stupid or deliberately evil - the dog whistling I mentioned. Might have been both stupid and evil, I suppose.
That the man still has any sort of standing - even if it is only as a nedbulous 'terrorism advisor' - after saying something that venal indicates how supine the British media have become. Especially since he's got form for making nasty comments about dusky-skinned Britons.
What happened to the noble tradition of hounding racist fools?
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