Congratulations and well done to Iain Dale for breaking this story:

EXCLUSIVE: Press Stand Accused of Illegal ActivityFollowing up my story yesterday (HERE) on the scandalous conduct of many of our national newspapers and journalists I can now exclusively reveal the contents of a report to be submitted to Parliament tomorrow by the Information Commissioner, which outlines the extent to which our national newspapers - and their journalists - are breaking the law to obtain confidential information illegally.

1. Daily Mail - 952 incidents by 58 different journalists
2. Sunday People - 802 incidents by 50 different journalists
3. Daily Mirror - 681 incidents by 45 different journalists
4. Mail on Sunday - 266 incidents by 33 different journalists
5. News of the World - 182 different incidents by 19 different journalists

Yesterday on Lord Ashcroft.com it was revealed through a Freedom of Information request that 305 different journalists had been identified during Operation Motorman as using one particular agency to obtain confidential information like telephone records, bank account details and medical records.

Iain’s first run at this - linked in the excerpt above - also points to the press having (allegedly) gained access to information from the Police National Computer.

No real surprise to see the Daily Mail topping the list.

Just sit back, relax, and marvel at the genius that is Beau Bo D’or…

Inappropriately Altered Character used in Internet Values Test

I’m usually hopeless at maintaining my blogroll, but having a spare minute of two I’ve made a couple of additions that are worth flagging up.

First there’s Political Penguin, local guy, just finding his feat as a blogger, and someone I know as one of the good guys from the real world, so well worth a visit (if you’re Labour-inclined, that is).

And then there’s ThaLondonDiaries, which are blogged by Scrybe who is, if you’ll excuse the language for a moment, just plain straightforward fucking impressive and a bloody good egg to boot.

There are good day. There are bad days. And then there are those days that just make you despair of the infantile character of the human race…

A Tory councillor who suggested gay people were paedophiles was given a conditional discharge today.

Peter Willows, who has been a councillor in the UK’s self-styled gay capital Brighton and Hove for 12 years, made the comment at a mayor-making reception in May.

The 75-year-old was asked by the editor of a gay magazine whether he thought a gay councillor was a paedophile, Brighton Magistrates’ Court was told.

“James Ledward asked Willows, ‘Do you think Paul’s a paedophile?”‘ prosecutor David Packer said.

“Willows replied to that with, ‘I know you are not Paul [Elgood], it’s the other gays’.” The barrister said the words “equated gay people with paedophiles”.

Willows, who the court heard has “fixed, traditional views on marriage, church and families”, was found guilty of using threatening, abusive or insulting works or behaviour or disorderly behaviour within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress after a day-long trial.

He had denied the charge, which was brought under Section 5 of the Public Order Act. Chairwoman of the Bench Pauline Quinton said: “It’s quite clear that you did use the word gays not guys, despite your denial.

“Because you knew that both men were gay…your remarks would inevitably be insulting.”

But she added that the comments were not borne from hostility towards people who were gay. Willows was given a conditional discharge and told to pay £250 costs.

Yeah, right guys. That’s real fucking clever isn’t it. Let’s stitch-up the local homophobic dinosaur and teach the reprehensible old scrote a fucking lesson he’ll never forget.

Whatever you might personally think of Willows’ views of the gay community, and frankly equating homosexuality and paedophilia is about as a foul as such views get, if our pair of fearless gay avengers think they’ve somehow struck a blow against the evils of homophobia then they’re a bigger pair of prize idiots than even this case has makes them look.

The only thing that this kind of sanctimonious crap ever achieves is to harden attitudes. No one who harbours an irrational hatred against the gay community is going to ever read a story like this and come away from it with the idea that maybe their view of the world is just that bit fucked-up and offensive. Their sympathies will automatically lie with Willows, who they’ll see as having been royally stitched up by a pair of conniving queers and then dragged into court to be publicly humiliated and pilloried for being a ‘traditionalist’.

They couldn’t have done much worse if they’d beaten the living shit out of the old codger on the spot.
That’s just real fucking clever isn’t it. Sending a very public message to the prejudiced that simply confirms and reinforces their prejudices; one that bolsters their belief that the system is already being stacked against them. Fuck the moral high ground, let’s just have a bit of petty revenge on the antiquated old twat, who, if the content of this letter from the local business community about this incident is anything to go by…

Whilst collectively we are supporters of all political parties and indeed none, we cannot help but note that repeated comments have been made against the city’s diverse communities over the years by Peter Willows and too often gone unchallenged. Last year we saw the good work of our local LGBT Police Team undermined by his unwise comments. Sadly, last month he failed to support a council motion to mark the International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO), with the flying of the rainbow flag from Brighton Town Hall. Through the letters to the editor page in the Argus he has been critical of the Pride celebrations and in his latest outburst he suggests LGBT people are not normal and paedophiles.

…is already doing a damn fine job of painting himself into a corner and making himself look like a complete arsehole all by himself and without your assistance.

And as for crap like this, from the same letter…

We call on Councillor Willows to resign from the Council. He is not fit to make decisions which affect the City’s 35,000 strong LGBT population. Furthermore we call on the Conservatives to expel him from their party, and demonstrate that the recent commitments of their national leadership to communities such as ours are not just hollow words, but are followed through with deeds.

Yet again, we seem to be forgetting that we still live in a fucking democracy and that the only right and proper place for dealing with such matters is the ballot box.

If Willows had aired his appaling views in a public arena then, fair enough, you’ve got damn good cause for complaint through the appropriate channels, starting with his local Conservative Association and the Leader of the Tory group on the council - in case you haven’t already worked this out, demanding that the Tories live up to the ‘recent commitments of their national leadership’ means jack shit if they’re only expected to do that with the fucking media breathing down their necks. The real test of the Tory’s commitment to equality (and that of any political party or other organisation) is whether or not they can manage to clean the shit out of their stables without being put under that kind of pressure. Commitments to equality mean something only if such commitments are both made and acted upon voluntarily, if people do the right thing because they want to, not because they’re backed into a corner and forced to.

But in this case, Willows didn’t make his comments in public, he made them at a public function, but in what looks for all the world like a private conversation, and only then in response to a deliberately leading question.

The only mitigation for the decision to take this public is if a complaint was, in fact, made to local Tories, and they refused to deal with it or take action against Willows. In that case, then you have some justification for taking things further - although your next step should have the Tory Central Office or perhaps the Standards Board - must as I loathe their getting involved in such matters.

However, when it comes to talking bollocks, its this part of the letter from the business community that completely takes the fucking biscuit…

Finally, we ask the Police to investigate these comments and act on what we believe to be inflammatory language intended to incite hatred. Such comments are highly destructive to community relations.

What the fuck?

So far as one can tell from the reports of the trial, it would seem that the only people present at the time these remarks were made - at least in earshot - were Willows, Ledward and Elgood, the latter pair both being gay men.

So if Willows intend to incite hatred with his remarks, who was it who was supposed to respond to this incitement? Elgood or Ledward.

I suppose it must a Elgood, as Willows clearly excludes him from the ‘charge’ that homosexuality and paedophilia are synonymous…

Nah. Still don’t make sense. Still sounds like a load of overheated and hysterical bollocks to me.

And the moral of this story?

Look, if you really, seriously think that someone’s private and personal opinions are so downright fucking appalling that they absolutely deserve a come-uppance then, for fuck’s sake, just give them the rope and let them hang themselves.

Don’t get caught tieing the noose and kicking the chair out from under them - that only makes you look like a cunt, not them.

Apropos of my last post and the Honourable Member (in its double entendre sense) for Monmouth, David - with a nonentit-’e’ Davies - Laban Tall has kindly popped up in the comments and pointed me towards this fine example of David’s unquestioned commitment to equality and tolerance.

Sunday, August 28, 2005 - More PC nonsense

A story in the Telegraph revealed that a £48000 lottery grant is being used to make a film about the “traditions” of gypsy travellers.

The film will be shown to schoolchildren in Hampshire. I have written the following letter to the chief executive of the Lottery.

If my application is unsuccesful (as I suspect it will be) it might at least prompt them to think about the double standards they apply when handing out barrel loads of cash to groups who want preferential treatment.

Copy of Letter to Carole Souter Director Heritage Lottery Fund 7 Holbein Place London:

I am writing to you in the hope that you might see fit to consider my interesting, vital and culturally-relevant application for a grant from the “Your Heritage” scheme.

Following on from the £48,000 you gave for the production of a video aimed at giving schoolchildren a greater understanding of the culture and traditions of “Gypsy Travellers,” I am very keen to commission an equally “useful” and “informative” piece of film that will serve to educate said “gypsy travellers” on some of the ancient traditions and communal practices of another group of people, who we might called “settled folk”.

I use the term to describe that large group of people in Britain who opt to live their lives in houses or flats. Although large in number “settled folk” often face prejudice and misunderstanding from gypsy travellers when they come into contact with them.

I should like my film to focus on such issues as the importance which the “settled community” place on property rights, their rigid adherence to an ancient code which they refer to as “planning regulations,” and the time honoured custom of clearing up one’s rubbish. Should time allow we could also include a section about the cardboard circle which settled folk purchase annually from post offices and use to adorn their vehicles - known as a tax disc.

The film could then be distributed to traveller sites across the country to give travellers an insight into the customs of the settled community. I am sure you will agree that this film will be as worthwhile and relevant as the one currently being made in Hampshire. I look forward to receiving confirmation that you find this project acceptable and will ask a film maker to get in touch.

Now I could make a few smart arse observations about pot and kettles, living in glass houses or ‘you’re a fine one to talk’, but instead I think I’ll simply borrow a word or two from John Cooper Clarke:

What kind of creature bore you
Was is some kind of bat
They can’t find a good word for you,
but I can…

TWAT.

In every hyperventilated political ’scandal’ there is, inevitably, backbench MP on the make and desperate to get his name in the paper, and the Tory MP for Monmouth, David Davies, has to be one of the more desperate examples of a political nonentity you’re likely to find anywhere at the moment.

Here, this is him - take a good look…

And before anyone get’s the idea that I’ve been playing with Photoshop (again) he’s apparently sitting on a balcony at an election count in that photo, and not in the dock - just so no one (i.e. PragueTory) gets any more dumb ideas and starts emailing the press to claim that this nasty wickle blogger’s trying to make a fine upstanding Tory MP look like a criminal. Just thought I’d mention that, to be on the safe side, you know - never underestimate the political venality of some Tories and all that.

But back to David Davies, who’s the MP for Monmouth in Wales and (apparently) the party’s deputy leader in Wales - which sounds impressive until you look at how many seats the Tory’s have actually got in Wales and realise that all this means is that he came second in a three horse race.

It can’t be easy for young David to make his mark in Westminster - not only is he one of the intake elected in 2005 but he has the desperate misfortune of having a name only an ‘e’ removed from the far more illustrious and well known David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary (and the ‘e’ is not a drug reference, either - fuck me you have to be soooo careful these days), so if he does manage to pop up from behind the media parapet from time to time and get his name mentioned in the press the most people will think they’re talking about the other David Davis.

“David Davies said what? You mean the David Davis, the guy that ran for the Tory leadership? Oh. There are two of them… MP for Monmouth, you say… who’s he?”

He does, however, ask a lot of Parliamentary questions, 412 thus far in his parliamentary career at £134 a pop - so that’s £55,000 worth of worth of questions in a little over 18 months including a most illuminating series in which managed to ask every single government department in turn (individual questions every time) about their total expenditure of taxi fares in the last five years…

…look, can we stop there for a second.

Why the fuck can’t this kind of banal information just be put automatically on an internal website for MPs (at a considerably reduced cost) without all the time, trouble and expense of a question in the House. Surely, most of this stuff is so routine that its been asked loads of time before, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to predict what this years of crop of banalities and likely to ask in advance and have the information ready in advance.

Oh, and if David’s so desperate to find a cheap Taxi firm, why not just ring Yellow fucking Pages at 40p a minute?

But that’s by the by, because his sole significance here is that he’s the Tory rent-a-gob making noises about reporting Bob Piper to the Commission for Racial Equality for reposting an image on his blog that was first posted here and judging from the information on his parliamentary career to date (provided, as ever, by They Work For You) that’s more excitement than he’s had in the last 18 months.

Mind you, I don’t suppose it helps his public profile that thanks to the bizarre nature of some Parliamentary conventions, he contrived to make his maiden speech in the Commons (which must be on a non-political topic) in the middle of a Foreign Affairs and Defence debate, rising to speak on the history of Monmouth since the Middle Ages right in between discussions of extraordinary rendition and international development. I guess parliament just has this way of making newbies look like total idiots.

That’s the thing about the media - no overheated non-story is complete without its Sir tufton Bufton to huff and puff in the background about how terrible it all is and how something must/will be done - blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda. All about as real as everything else over the last few days. Just another dickhead jumping on the bandwagon in the hope of getting his fifteen minutes of fame… because Andy pwomised.

What a load of bollocks!

By far the most ridiculous element in this whole furore has been the faux outrage this has supposedly cause in Tory ranks.

David ‘Who’s he? No not that one.’ can’t even report the right guy to the CRE.

The Daily Mail have made claims that Bob (and I guess me as well) was taking a shot at the Tory’s efforts to be more inclusive of ethnic minorities, an allegation that never once came up in debate - at least until we a dumb fucker turned up to parrot it at me, having read the Mail’s half-arsed interpretation of events - not even from the Tory bloggers who swarmed all over Bob’s blog - I guess that just shows why PragueTory et al are just bloggers and not tabloid journalists. No imagination.

That’s really sad, when you think about it. Not having sufficient imagination to work for a tabloid.

By far the most ridiculous arguments, however, are those that are trying to conflate this ‘incident’ with Ellenor Bland’s recent faux pas, in which she was caught out emailing ‘The Illegal Immigrant’s Poem’ from her own mailbox and the stock claim that ‘A Tory would never have got away with this’, which sadly has cropped up amongst a few Labour bloggers as well and, perhaps, says rather more about them than it does about either Bob or myself.

These two things seem to run together, as the general allegation seems to be that Labour and the Lib-Dems don’t ‘play fair’ with the Tories on race issues and are far too quick to (hypocritically) play the ‘racism card’ and swarm all over Tories who might inadvertantly drop a bit of bollock, like dear Ellenor.

That may well be true - in general terms - but is that really a valid excuse?

Does joining a political party really mean that one loses all trace of individual identity (no Blair jokes, please - I’ve heard them all before, trust me) and all capacity to think for themselves (and yes, I will grant you Hazel Blears on that one) or should we not still be trying to treat people as individuals?

You see, again we’re back to stereotypes again. Over the last few days its been Labour-this, Labour-that, Labour-the-other - for the last few days, Bob, and to a lesser extent myself, became nothing more than generic and entirely stereotypical Labour supporters, and in some cases even ‘New Labour supporters’ (come on guys, leave off the fucking insults) even though I doubt that anyone who actually reads either of our blogs could consider us to be representative of some sort of generic Labour supporter of the kind that does routinely chuck in the racism card at the drop of a hat. I’m not going to say that there aren’t the odd one or two Labour bloogers out there to whom such a charge could be fairly and reasonably levelled, but no one stopped to ask, ‘well, are either of these two bloggers really a part of all that blind political tribalism?’

Bob, you’ll have to judge for yourself - I don’t think he is - but as for me, well ask yourself this, just how ‘tribal’ is someone who habitually refers to the current Labour Home Secretary as Dr Demento (whoops, there I go again) and has recently decribed the Party Chairman as both a ‘demented ginger weeble’ and, after a particularly awful appearance on Question Time, as having wobbled around in her seat like a meerkat doing an impression of Stevie Wonder.

Would a Tory blogger have ‘got away’ with posting a picture of Tony Blair in Blackface? Probably not - there are as many ‘tribalists’ as our side of the political fence as there are on theirs. But then that’s not really the question that should be asked - that question is ‘is there any to suggest that this guy might join in with that kind of thing?’.

In my case the answer’s no - as mnay of those who’ve kindly posted supportive messages in the last few days know all to well.

How I’d respond to an image like that all depend on context - on what the image is trying to say. Is it making a political statement, offering up a bit of social commentary, talking about race relations in an intelligent way. And most importantly, who is talking about and why.

Let’s not be mistaken, if a Tory, or anyone else for that matter, did produce a ‘blacked-up’ image of Tony Blair (or anyone else) as a means of denigrating Black people or deriding Black culture, then not only is such an image racist but you’ll find me up at the head of the queue to lay into the wanker responsible.

If, however, its just a pisstake of Blair or a play on racially loaded imagery to make a valid point, then no, I’m not going to lay into someone for that. In fact my inclination would be applaud their bravery to taking on a taboo in an intelligent manner and defend them and their actions - even against members of my own party.

You see I have this unfortunate habit of thinking for myself - try it some time, you might just get to enjoy it.

Do Tories get handled with unnecessary roughness if and when they make a bit of faux pas around race?

Some probably do, but then any sympathy I might have in such circumstances tends to be mitigated by the fact that their rather iffy reputation is largely a rod they’ve made for their own back.

The area in which I live, oddly enough, is famous (or notiorious, depending on you point of view) for having played host to the most nakedly racist by-election campaign fought by a mainstream political party - the Tories - in the modern era. A campaign so racist that it prompted Malcolm X to the visit the town (this was not long before he was assassinated.

That was back in the 1960s, more than 40 years ago but still within living memory for some, and something that people round here still remember vividly. You see the Tory candidate at the time, Peter Griffiths, had a nice catchy campaign slogan which he put on his literature:

“If you want a Nigger for a Neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour’

- awww, how sweet, it even ryhmes.

Smethwick, the town in question, actually has a bit of a strange history in that respect - despite being the most ethnically-mixed area in Sandwell, it also ranks amongst its former MPs one Sir Oswald Moseley.

I guess that unless you’re local, or you have an interest in the history of such things, that particular campaign has been rather forgotten, having been overshadowed by Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, given just a few years later.

Then there was Tebbit’s ‘Cricket Test’ and, more recently, the massive over-concentration on immigration in general election campaigns and even the marked for ordinary Tory members to get themselves into a bit of strife by saying the wrong thing.

Younger Tories may well feel that most of that is now ancient history and that they, and the party, have moved on and turned over a new leaf. Good for them…

…but that doesn’t mean either that their party’s past misdemeanours aren’t going to follow them for while longer or that their party’s unfortunate reputation when it comes to equality and race relations isn’t one of its own contrivance.

Sorry guys, you’re going to have to do a bit more that push a new model Toff front and centre and carry out a bit of tokenistic jiggery-pokery with your selection procedures to slough the reputation you’ve created for yourself over the years - coming on all self-righteous about race is not going to make that much difference, at least not for a while. It just leaves you looking like a bunch of sanctimonious arseholes.

(And don’t think for a minute that I’m suggesting that my own party is 100% squeaky clean right down the last individual member - it isn’t, we’re just rather better at keeping our own minority of idiots in check and out of situations where they can fuck up in public)

The comparisons made between this latest artifical furore and the situation that Ellenor Bland found herself in are simply absurd.

For one thing, the poem she was emailing around is quite clearly racist in its tone and intent, although thanks to the coyness of the media coverage I can’t be certain of the exact version she sent out - it comes in many different variants - but this is one version fo the poem from the US, that’s been doing the rounds in racist circles over on that side of the pond.

Illegal Immigrants Poem

I cross ocean, poor and broke,
Take bus, see employment folk.
Nice man treat me good in there,
Say I need to see welfare..

Welfare say, “You come no more,
We send cash right to your door.”
Welfare checks, they make you wealthy,
Medicaid it keep you healthy!

By and by, I got plenty money,
Thanks to you, American dummy.
Write to friends in motherland,
Tell them ‘come fast as you can.’
They come in turbans and Ford trucks,
I buy big house with welfare bucks
They come here, we live together,
More welfare checks, it gets better!
Fourteen families, they moving in,
But neighbor’s patience wearing thin.
Finally, white guy moves away,
Now I buy his house, and then I say,

“Find more aliens for house to rent.”
And in the yard I put a tent.
Send for family they just trash,
But they, too, draw the welfare cash!

Everything is very good,
And soon we own the neighborhood.
We have hobby it’s called breeding,
Welfare pay for baby feeding.

Kids need dentist? Wife need pills?
We get free! We got no bills!
American crazy! He pay all year,
To keep welfare running here.

We think America darn good place!
Too darn good for the white man race.
If they no like us, they can scram,
Got lots of room in Pakistan.

The difference between that poem and the image of Cameron in Blackface should be obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together. The poem sets out to denigrate and deride migrants in everything from is affectation of a form of pidgin English to its depiction of them as workshy spongers who bleed the welfare system dry and breed like rabbits.

Does having e-mailed that to a few people make Ellenor Bland a racist?

My immediate reaction is ‘how the fuck should I know, I’ve never met the woman’.

The poem certainly is racist but without knowing more about her and the context in which the poem was sent out to people I can’t say whether her actions are motiviated by or indicate any real racist intent. Sure, if there was something else in the email to support the contention that she made be racist, derogatory remarks of her own contrivance and made of her own violition, then maybe I could make a judgment, but on its own and on the strength of the poem alone I really can’t say whether she’s racist or not. It just be a email she’d received from someone and forwarded on to others without comment (or thinking).

What I can say is that she’s a fucking idiot on several grounds:

- for not appreciating just how racist the content of the poem is

- for forwarding it one to others

- for being dumb enough to forward the fucking thing from her own e-mail box instead on an anonymous Hotmail account.

And I think I can also say, fairly safely, that she appears rather naive when it comes to matters of race, ethnicity and identity. Why else would they try something so obviously dumb as the Fuckwit Defence - “And we have friends who are Asian. I wouldn’t be rude to them.”

Sorry Ellenor, but that’s not really a defence in this case. Just because you wouldn’t racially abuse someone to their face is not proof-postive that you aren’t racist, just as forwarding this email doesn’t prove that you are.

That being said, on this occasion, the Lib Dems provided the rent-a-gob:

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem chair of campaigns and communications, has asked the CRE to rule on whether the message conformed with the watchdog’s guidelines to political parties and individuals in elected public office.

“It is totally unacceptable for elected representatives to be distributing this kind of material. Racism has absolutely no place in British politics and I am asking the CRE to advise on what further action can be taken,” he said.

Which all seems a bit excessive, if you ask me. Her political career’s already nicely down the shitter and you want to rub her nose in it even further. Fuck off!

Offensive as the poem is, it does fall some considerable way short of anything like incitement to racial hatred, which would, quite rightly, demand further action and as far as I can see she (or her husband, who she claims actually forwarded the email using her account - guess he’s in the fucking doghouse, big time, if that’s true) was acting in a private capacity - it doesn’t look to me as if she prefaced the email ‘Dear Constituent’, so what the fuck it should have to do with the ‘watchdog’, which I suspect is a reference to the Standards Board, is beyond me.

Well not, beyond me, as I’m fully that the SBE can get involved, but only because its guidelines a drawn far too widely - if her constituent’s think she’s racist or just a complete idiot, they’ll get a chance to tell her so and vote her out of office the next time she comes up for re-election. So let them decide what to do with her and keep the bureaucrats out of it.

And of course, Davey’s asking the CRE to advise on what further action can be taken - and beyond laying criminal charges, which would get laughed out of court if they even got that far, I can’t see what else the CRE could advise Davey to do, apart from to fuck off and stop bothering them with trivial matters that have already been more than adequately dealt with just to make a political point at the Tories expense.

Just like PragueTory have been laying it on thick with Bob Piper to make a political point at his, and the Labour Party’s expense.

It might be politics, but I don’t have to like it - nor do I have to put up with it and do/say nothing, which is why I’ve already posted a message to Bob, who’s sadly decided to take a (hopefully short) break from blogging, to the effect that should the CRE or Standards Board come calling then not only am I backing him all the way, but I’ll stand up for him and make any representations necessary, even at the price of shedding my own anonymity as a blogger.

That’s solidarity - a word we used to use a lot in Labour circles, although I’m beginning to wonder whether some of our current members either know or understand what it really means. Not swarming all over someone, or something, to make a pathetic political point or to try to elevate yourself into the next Guido or Iain Dale, but standing by someone you know to be a damn good person, to have a good heart to be committed to doing the right thing - and someone who’s honest enough to try and be himself and not just toe the party line and play safe.

I’ll leave the last word, as I often do, to a quotation, which I’d hope some people might just muse upon if and when they come to consider what any of this has to say about the state of our current political culture.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and the whole world would soon be blind and toothless. - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

UPDATE:

One thing I should have said at the time I wrote this, which echoes my comments on the later post about Peter Willows.

Unless Ellenor Bland (or her badly in-the-dog-house husband, if what she says is true) did something mind-bogglingly stupid, like send the e-mail to a journalist, then someone, somewhere down the line ratted her out to the press - which is pretty fucking low in my estimation if it was done without first giving the Tories the chance to sort this out for themselves.

Again, the only mitigation here would have been a refusal by the Tories to respond to or act upon an ‘internal’ complaint about conduct, or a genuinely held and well-founded belief either that such a complaint would not be dealt with appropriately or that Bland is a raving fascist wingnut better suited to life in the BNP.

In the absence of either mitigiating factor, the right thing to do was to report the matter to her Local Association and Tory group (and because she was up for a slot as a parliamentary candidate, to Tory Central Office) and give them a chance to deal with it.

And again, I should repeat, that if the Tories are to throw off their reputation as the nasty party, they need to be given some space to deal with their quota of unreconstructed idiots and headbangers of their own violition - commitments to equality mean fuck all if they only come into play because the press are screaming, its what the Tories do off their own bat that actually matters and will demonstrate whether they’re really making progress or not.

A bit of light relief before going back to more important matters.

I’ve received two emails in the last 24 hours, that must amount to the worst phising attempt in history.

Prezado cliente, address omitted ,seu e-mail está expirando. Você tem o prazo de (48 horas) para efetuar o procedimento de recadastramento. Caso não seja realizado esse procedimento, seu E-mail será automaticamente cancelado.
Para sua maior comodidade lhe damos o direito de escolher se irá reativar ou cancelar o seu endereço virtual.

Siga as instruções abaixo.

Recadastrar E-Mail
O recadastramento será efetuado na ativação do seu SMTP.
Para fazer a reativação do seu E-mail basta click no link abaixo.

Recastramento do E-mail ( address omitted )

Cancelar E-Mail
Caso queria cancelar essa conta será necessário desativar o SMTP ou esperar 48horas para o cancelamento automatico.
Para fazer o cancelamento do seu E-mail basta click no link abaixo.

Cancelamento do E-mail ( address omitted )

Now you should be able to spot the obvious problem with this email - it’s in Portugese - well the Brazilian varient of Portugese, which is a bit of non-starter.

What the email, from grupoarroba@email.com, is trying to tell is that my Gmail account is about to expire and that unless I click their link and give them my password, it’ll stop working in the next 48 hours.

Now being wise in the ways of phishing I’d ignore this anyway, but what makes this attempt rather amusing is that the sender has not even gone to the effort of trying to make the e-mail look as if its actually come from Google even though the email box to which is was sent and which it claims will expire is a Gmail account - no logo, not even a fake Google e-mail address.

In short, they might as well have sent an email that read ’send us your password, you thick bastard’ and achieve much the same effect.

Damn, even the phishers are getting dumber by the minute.

Sorry. got to quickly post this - just noticed a bit of incoming from Adam Boulton’s blog on Sky about the Cameron image (after much Tory lobbying to get it up there) - had a look at the comments and found about half the posters to date would rather talk about why the Black and White Minstrel Show is no longer on the telly!

Trust the British people to do the unexpected and put everything into perspective.

Hahahahahahaha.

It say’s a lot, I think, about the general banality of political culture in the UK that you really have to hang it out there and take risks just to try an get people to think about what they see, read, listen to and watch.

Yes, I produce an image parodying the Tories recent ‘Tosser’ Campaign that has proved to be controversial – not because the image itself is that controversial but because it was reposted to his own blog by a Labour Councillor, who understood quite a lot about what the image was driving at, and then used, by people who didn’t, as a stick to beat him with for their own political advantage.

Fucking depressing isn’t it – one more topic joins the long list on which its seemingly impossible to make a challenging statement or ask difficult questions without it all degenerating into a dick-swinging contest.

Just think for a minute of all the different things its nigh on impossible to debate rationally, without the politicos taking over and using it as a point-scoring contest to show who’s best at sucking up to the tabloid press?

How about the ‘war on drugs’?

There’s a fair old body of opinion out in the real world that takes the view that maybe legalising some, or even all drugs, might just turn out to be the lesser of two evils, that while no one really wants to see people fucking up their lives through drug addiction, many of worst ills that drugs bring, particularly in terms of crime, and especially organised crime, might be better tackled if we remove the one thing that feeds their profits and incentivises the drugs trade more than anything else – prohibition.

It an argument that may have merit, if only we were ever allowed to hear it, But the mere mention of even talking about legalising drugs send the tabloids in spasms of indignation, the political pissing contest kicks of, with everyone claiming that everyone else is ‘soft on crime’ and the debate goes nowhere, entirely drowned out by the very people who should, more than anyone else, be leading this debate and considering what it might have to offer.

Any while politicians fall over themselves to pander to the tabloids and wave their ‘I’m tougher on crime than you are’ credentials at each other, people die on Britain’s streets because of badly-cut smack, homes are burgled and people mugged to pay for drug habits that could be treated by rehab, and the drug barons get richer, and richer, and richer…

Our blind adherence to the ‘tough on crime’ credo is even, right now, putting the lives of British servicemen at risk in a foreign land, Afghanistan.

This is not difficult to figure out.

For many Afghani farmers, the only cash crop they can grow that gives then a living income is opium. These are people whose hearts and minds we should have been winning over to ‘our side’, but instead we go in there and start torching their sole livelihood and means of making ends meet – or rather we carry on doing that, as before we through them out, the Taliban were doing the same thing (at the West’s instigation), and the rest, as they say is history. A quick volte face from the Taliban, who now just lurve heroin because it both wins them the hearts and minds of the farmer’s whose fields we’ve been merrily burning and finances their arms expenditure, and whoops! Before you know it the Taliban are back, they’re bad and they’re gaining more support than ever.

And the few bright sparks who popped up to point out that this is exactly what would happen if we went all slash and burn on their fields without providing an alternative means of earning a living and that maybe we’d be better off buying their opium for pharmaceutical use and not torching it? Well they we quickly silenced, weren’t they, because is part of the ‘war on drugs’ and that means that you have to be ‘tough on crime’ – but not so tough on this particular cause of crime it seems.

One can see the same thing in so many other debates. A senior Police officer publicly pilloried in the media for daring to suggest that the word ‘paedophile’ refers specifically to adults with a sexual interest in prepubescent children – which is both its literal and ‘professional’ meaning within the field of psychology – and not to anyone and everyone who has sex with someone under the legal age of consent (16). The Times, of all papers, actually ran a poll asking whether it was right for Police officer to suggest that not all instances of underage sex are actually acts of ‘paedophilia’, even though they could have got the answer out of a dictionary.

Israel? Palestine? Don’t even try to go there. Each side has its own official narrative in which they’re the squeaky clean good guys (and victims) and the other side the evil villainous fascists, and any suggestion that maybe, in the real world, things aren’t quite so clear or straightforward is leapt upon immediately from both directions. That whole debate must surely be unique – the only debate in which is possible to be both anti-Semitic and Islamophobic at the same time, just for suggesting that neither side is absolutely perfect.

All of which brings me on to the subject of race, ethnicity and identity – and that image of course, which looks like this?

Is it racist, as some allege? Is it offensive? Ill-conceived? Just plain dumb?

And if it’s any of those things, in your opinion, then why?

That’s one of the most interesting, and not entirely unexpected things to emerge out of all this, the apparent inability of those complaining about that image to articulate their complaint in an meaningful sense – the basic presumption seems to be that merely having an opinion is sufficient to merit action being taken, without any effort whatsoever to explain, justify or validate that opinion.

The genesis of that image is not racism – I’ve been involved in anti-racist activism for more than 20 years on and off – but sheer frustration with the depressing state of public and official dialogue surrounding issues of race, ethnicity and identity. Yes, for my new found Tory fans, this is a lefty who’s thoroughly pissed off with the whole state of the ‘race relations industry’ in this country, and more pissed off than most because its something I’ve seen at work, up close and personal, good and bad, for a hell of a long-time.

I’m sick of the bullshit. Sick of the artificial taboos, the lines that no one dare cross for fear of causing offence, even if one is self-evidently capable of debating difficult and challenging issues with confidence and in their proper context. I’m sick of people relying on political correctness and trite euphemisms, by far the worst of which is “The ‘N’ word’ to cover their arses because they’re either too stupid to understand the real issues or too scared of inadvertently offending the stupid by saying something that might just be a bit controversial.

I’m sick of a system that for all its good intentions and all the good work that individuals within it do, is too often let down by its own intellectual dishonesty and inability to deal with the realities of racism.

I’m sick of the double standards and the hypocrisy, of dealing with too few honest, genuine people and far too many sanctimonious arseholes.

What I’m into is equality. Genuine, honest-to-goodness treat everyone the same equality, not the kind of ‘some people are a bit more equal than others because they’ve been oppressed in the past’ equality that some seem content to peddle under the guise of ‘promoting good race relations’.

Some of the responses I’ve had in the last day or two are just ridiculous?

It’s offensive. Why? Because it offends black people? Why? …… (no reply).

What is this, some kind of conditioned Pavlovian response? We’re all dogs that should yap and drool when someone rings the right (or wrong) bell? Can no one think for themselves anymore and articulate a coherent argument.

I mean FFS, the image plays with Blackface, the stereotype of the ‘Nigger Minstrel’ – I couldn’t have thrown you all an easier bone to gnaw on and yet no one would come right out and say, “it’s offensive, because…”. Jeebus, if you’re that short of an argument there’s a page on Wikipedia that explains it all for you.

Oh, and while we’re on that subject, how many people are aware that as well as Blackface, there are old theatrical traditions that take in Yellowface (oriental), Brownface (Indian, which most might recognise, but also Hispanic), Redface (Native American) and even Whiteface (not in the context of clowns but as is black performers singing ‘white’ songs in white pancake make-up – Arthur ‘Dooley’ Wilson, who played Sam in Casablanca, got his nickname from his signature tune, an Irish song called ‘Mr Dooley’ which he performed in Whiteface)?

How many people have noticed just how often Blackface is used in Tom and Jerry cartoons when a character gets blown-up – even if Boomerang are starting to edit out some instances in which its used, albeit inconsistently? What do you say if you’re watching TV with your kids and that comes on? Oh no, don’t look its racist, or Ha-ha the cat got it again?

Or maybe you look at that in context, think about how old many of the cartoons are and how they belong to a different era with different sensibilities, so maybe you’ll just let it pass.

Blackface is a cultural artefact, one with racist origins certainly but also with context – and context is what this is all about.

The image says nothing at all about Black people, or what it means to be Black – which is why everything in the image is fake. Completely artificial from start to finish, from beginning to end.

It’s been suggested that the references to ‘Homeboy’, ‘Niggahs’ and ‘Is it because I’s Black?’ were somehow putting words into Cameron’s mouth and suggesting he might stoop to saying such things. Of course he wouldn’t – I don’t think he’s that stupid and even if he were, someone would manage to stop him before he dropped such an obvious bullock. But then but for the last ‘remark’ which is a direct reference to Ali G (and a clue that this is about fakery) I have seen white people talk to Black youths and refer to them as ‘Homeboy’ and even ‘Nigga’ in the mistaken belief that they were somehow ‘talking their language’, ‘relating to them’ and ‘trying to engage with them’ - talk about making you fucking cringe when you see it as well, I just stick to hello and take it from there.

Why do some people make such idiotic mistakes? Because show them a Black youth and what they see is a stereotype, not a real person – and you have no idea how much I fucking hate that kind of thing.

The image plays around with a stereotype to show just how absurd and ridiculous stereotypes are and does so in a way that risks causing offence to some Black people as a price of almost certainly offending some Tories.

Why?

Because – and this is my opinion – the stereotypical orange permatanned wideboy used in the original ‘Tosser’ campaign is no less absurd, ridiculous and, to some, offensive – but then no one cared about that stereotype did they? All they were concerned with was whether ‘tosser’ is offensive.

I also chose Cameron, knowing that a few Tories would squeal and cry foul. I could just as easily have used Blair, with the same intent but with lesser effect – both are completely remote from the world I’m talking about. Bit of hint, guys – If every hospital you visit in your job smells of fresh paint, then you don’t live in the real world.

Its situations like these where the public discourse around race, ethnicity and identity descends into hypocrisy, if not outright farce. It’s okay to play with some stereotypes – to label poor, white, working class people as chavs and wideboys and have a damn good laugh, but chuck in a stereotype relating to a Black minority community and the knives are out straight away and the machinery of the race relations industry swings into action to demand that ‘something must be done’.

Unlike a lot of people who consider themselves to be anti-racist activists, I’ve spent most of my time working in white, working class communities – you know, that’s the place where the racism is, not the offices of the local authority, and I’ve seen first hand just how this kind of hypocrisy impacts on those communities, how it creates a sense of injustice (real or imagined) and a feeling that equality isn’t something for them, its just for Black people.

It isn’t, and I’ve never believed that, but you try telling that to someone who’s derided for being a pig ignorant white chav and has to just sit there and take it, because no one give a toss whether they’re made a figure of fun or exposed to public derision, and yet at the first hint of a slur on someone from a Black community, people are seen to crawling all over the situation to right a terrible wrong. Is it any wonder, that some of these people start listening to the messages put out by the likes of the BNP and start swallowing all their crap about how the country is being ‘taken over by foreigners’.

When was the last time you saw the CRE complain about an offensive white stereotype, other than when nationalism came into it and the complainant was something like Welsh, or Scottish? When did you last see a race equality body out working on a mainly white council estate? And if you have seen one doing that, or work for one that does it, please say so – I know of a few that could learn something useful from you!

Sorry, but if you got the idea into your head that being White and English means that you’re somehow automatically privileged and part of the dominant power elite in society then you haven’t been to a fucking council estate in a long time, if ever. Poor and powerless is poor and powerless no matter where you’re from or what your ethnic background might be.

So I took an image that I knew would rankle, added a few sarky comments, put it up and let it swing for a while, expecting that any blowback would come to only one place – here. I honestly thought that anyone else would else would think the image too hot to touch, and forgot in doing so, about people like Bob Piper who are smart enough to understand the nuances of the images, understand what I was up to and supportive enough to try and pull with me on this.

That’s the one thing I regret here, that Bob’s good intentions dragged him into this and have caused him problems that he doesn’t deserve and would not even have had were he not a Labour councillor – make no mistake this has only become a media ‘issue’ because of Bob’s public office, had he not reposted the image, this would have stayed safely online as a debate between bloggers, which is where it was intended to stay.

Why didn’t I say any of this in the first place, you might think? Perhaps if I’d have explained from the outset, then it would have kicked off like this?

Well that rather misses the point, because one of the real problems of this kind of debate is that people too often respond in a fashion that reflects how they want to be, and be seen, and not how they really are. If you explain what you’re about then many people don’t react naturally or honestly, they react in a way that they think puts them in a good light. They don’t say ‘that’s offensive’, they say ‘ah, I see what you’re doing’ and you lose the authenticity of the reaction. And without that authenticity it becomes impossible to drive the point home and shake people preconceptions about how they see the world.

Sometimes a shock is necessary to wake people up and make them think.

So, I’m not going to apologise for shocking a few people or even offending one or two along the way – if you thought, or even still think, that the image is racist then good for you, just try to think about why you see it that way. Is it because you thought about it or are you just buying in to a narrative promoted by others?

Actually, scratch that, slightly – there is one person who’s commented here who does deserve an apology for the offence caused, one that would have been forthcoming a little sooner had she not gone for insufferably smug in her remarks, and that’s Morag the Mindbender who, if she is, indeed, who the information left behind here when she commented suggest she is, has rather more cause than most to consider the Blackface image as being offensive. I’m not going to reveal anything more about her identity, but my understanding is that she has spent a considerable amount of time, in the past, living in the United States, where the cultural and historical connotations of Blackface are considerable more marked, more recent and much closer to the surface of the debate around race, ethnicity and identity. Writing for a primarily UK audience, one forgets that some cultural artefacts that appear remote enough to be played with reasonably safely on this side of the pond (and there is always a modicum of risk, anyway) are not quite so remote to those who lived in or are from the US – an omission that stems from my own Anglo-centric perspective, as I’m talking here about the public discourse in the UK and not the US.

And that’s part one – and I’ve got to go do a few family things now. Part 2, which expands on some of the themes here will be along later.

Oh FFS - I suppose this is what you get when you have Daily Mail readers turning up.

No, it is not racist or offensive, but it does reveal a nastyish mindset that adds to the cynical image that politics already has. For many years now, Labour has made generalised accusations that the Tories are racist. Now that Cameron is actively trying to reach out to all voters, no matter what colour their skins are, Labourites start deriding him for it. I think it stems from the fact that the Labourites have lost the Race Card, which they have always used a stick to beat the Tories with (something very patronising for black Tories who has always been insulted as Uncle Tom types)

For the record, the claim in the Daily Mail that all this has something to do with lampooning Cameron’s efforts to encourage more people from ethnic minorities to join the Tory Party is a load of bollocks - at least as far as what was posted here and how it was posted.

That’s their interpretation - certainly not mine, and they’ve been forwarded a complaint by e-mail to that effect.

Its also not about Labour ‘losing the race card’ to Cameron - in fact its not about Labour anything at all and I’m getting a bit off with all this half-arsed political partisanry.

Look, just to prove a point that, unlike some people, I don’t just swallow the party line and regurgitate it wholesale, here’s a few images I did earlier… Lets see if these make the Daily fucking Mail.