"Boris could well win. The public is gullible;
rich white folk and parts of the press love him."
rich white folk and parts of the press love him."
This is from Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's column today. How every typical of the leftist claptrap we have grown used to from those who think they know better than so-called 'ordinary people'. Gullibe? I think not. More like intelligent enough to distinguish between a stale old has-been lefty who has run out of ideas and presided over rampant cronyism, and a fresh new approach from a politician who connects with people of all backgrounds, classes and colours.
Oh, and I have news for Yasmin. There are some very 'rich black folk' in this country - and a joly good thing too. They've seized the opportunities Conservative politicians like Boris have presented them with. Why is it that Yasmin has to reduce everything to race?
How I wish the Crosstalk programme I used to do with Yasmin was still running. Love her dearly, but on this one she's wrong. Isn't it amusing how most of the left wing commentariat have already given up on
40 comments:
What is she channeling Obama?
She is so very wrong, but the phrase "Chip on the Shoulder" comes to mind.
On a +ve note, you were great yesterday.
What specific opportunities has Boris ever presented to a black person?
She correctly sees race as a defining factor. Many people will not vote for Boris because he is white and Christian, regardless of what his policies are.
But it's PC and socially acceptable to be a racist bigot, as long as you're not white -- and if Obama can get away with it, why not Yasmin?
I thought the first para was hard to disagree with - but I soon lost interest after that.
The article seems to be a 'don't vote for Boris because he is.....', rather that a 'please vote for Ken because he.....'.
Sadly, she typifies the up-themselves left-wing whingers who do not find our country to their tastes and are committed to remolding it in their own image.
Thanks God there are an increasingly large number of other role models from BME/immigrant communities who contribute so much that is positive with our country, rather than simply moaning and complaining.
Yasmin - get a life love.
"There are some very 'rich black folk' in this country - and a joly good thing too. They've seized the opportunities Conservative politicians like Boris have presented them with."
Would it be overly mischievous to suggest that one or two have got rich having seized the opportunities Ken Leavingsoon has presented them with, as well? :¬)
Totally agree Iain, but unfortunately people like yasmin and Darcus Howe et al are one-trick ponies. Everything's about race. Thank goodness that the population out there don't give a monkies and treat people on their merits, rather than what colour their skin is.
but in fairness, nearly all the comments left underneath are having a rather huge go at her, her opinions and her arguments. Except one that begins: "I totally agree...Yasmin has put the case against Boris eloquently...". Only if you look at the bottom, that one has been posted by "Yasmin".
Oh well.
In fairness to her, she acknowledges some of Ken's failings in the article which is more balanced than your own post would suggest.
So rather than just 'steaming up under the collar' which specific insinuation and accusation about Boris in the article do you think is inaccurate ?
Hers is a thoughtful article which deserves a thoughtful response if you don't agree with it. Otherwise there is a danger of the casual reader thinking that 'the cap must fit'...
Did you notice that quite a few of the "celebrities" who were listed as backing Livingstone have claimed their names were put forward without their consent?
Mr Jupitus quite rightly pointed out that nobody would be interested in his view of the mayoral elections as he hadn't lived in London for some years.
The Livingstone campaign must be desparate if they are inventing celebrity supporters.
this one hit a nerve. so much so that you've mistyped 'joly'.
"Did you notice that quite a few of the "celebrities" who were listed as backing Livingstone have claimed their names were put forward without their consent?"
Wow, Mr Anonymous. You're an avid reader of the Evening Standard's diary, aren't you?
I don't mind Yasmin calling Boris and his supporters "rich, white folks". It means its ok to call Yasmin a stupid brown woman.
You 'twitter' that you can't believe Harry Hill has won a comedy award.
That is likely to be because you have never seen him live. A few years ago we went with a group of work chums to see a number of comedians one autumn.
Harry Hill was the best of the bunch with even Jasper Carrott turning in a creditable performance. A lot of the more 'cool' performers were rubbish.
Worst of all was Alan Davies, who was absolute drivel. He is fine on QI, but he just ain't a stand-up comic.
Mr Hill has a touch of genius - it is a shame he doesn't really get to fully demonstrate it on TV.
I picked up on this too - it would be interesting to see what parallels exist between the 'don't let Boris win - he's a nut' pieces now coming from pro-Ken sources and the similar pieces in support of Frank Dobson back when Ken was the maverick outsider running for office.
"connects with people of all backgrounds, classes and colours"
You are joking, aren't you?
She's doing a wonderful job.
Stop dissing her.
By the time she is finished no-one who is white OR rich will vote for Ken.
So that's Ken finished.
sockpuppet said...
"I totally agree...Yasmin has put the case against Boris eloquently...". Only if you look at the bottom, that one has been posted by "Yasmin". Oh well
There is more than one Yasmin in the world.
Hmmm still no mention of this Iain
http://playpolitical.typepad.com/london_mayor/2008/04/boris-johnson-f.html
No interest in, 'Gay Issues' obviously.
With the polls settled down into no clear lead for either,
they haven't given up on Ken, they're just talking up their turnout.
Y A-B crops up regularly on Dateline London and her anti-racism motor is compounded with an enduring grievance towards societies that are predominantly white. Like Julie Birchill and class, regardless of subject she'll return to this theme, in the way roads head to Rome.
She must have been shaped by experience and British history's left a legacy of love-hate attitudes around the world, but I now find it increasingly irksome to quietly endure the hate bit. It must be old age setting in.
She does make a number of good points about Boris though. He really is all over the place.
Just about everyone describes this as a democratic process to elect the least flawed candidate. And what a shame that is.
Disappointing from Yasmin .She, of course , married a relatively rich white man spurning the enormous temptation to live a more traditional Muslim life for a woman ,(*cough*). She must know the very great problems with Ken Living stone and it leaves a bad taste for a Liberal Muslim to side with someone who is cynically anti semitic will take the arm of terrorist financiers, the IRA , gay haters and those with an interest in dividing London along racial and ethic lines .
Her life is built on crossing those lines and joining the mainstream Her views are therefore disgusting posturing having benefited from exactly the sort of opportunities Boris would like all those trapped in ghettoes by corrupt and self appointed “Community Leaders “
PS ....actually she knows less than I do about ordinary Muslim Londoners she is only a posh émigré from Uganda kicked out by the blacks and a very good example of how colour is highly misleading .Perhaps she would like to go back to Uganda in view of all those terrible "rich white people "
There is more than one Yasmin in the world.
yeah, but I doubt there is more than one which agrees with YAB.
Or maybe I was pointing out a mildly amusing coincidence? Who knows.
Or maybe, anon, you are YAB herself trolling and I claim my £5.
Will someone please check her 'sell by date' and then dump her with the rest of the rubbish...
Iain, why must you always respond to alternative views in such a disrespectful way?
It does you no favours - and it does the Conservative Party no favours. It's so undignified.
A convincing counter argument would be far more constructive. But then again I know hard that would be for the Tories...
:)
Don't usually post here... but this is completely and totally not true.
It's fact that some ethnic minorities vote labour, though not all. All this does is try to polarize black and asian groups to go out and vote new labour, which otherwise would not.
This sounds an all too familar tune that the Obama campaign did in the US just before South Carolina.
If Conservative politicians are so good at extending opportunity, why did social mobility almost disappear on Thatcher's watch? Why is it that a child born in a place like this in 1985 (my own year of birth) has demonstrably less of a chance than one born in 1955?
It's not to late to admit that BoJo is an embarassment who couldn't run a bath and switch to the Lib Dems.
Perhaps Ms Alibhai-Brown would do well to consider the measured expose and analysis by that celebrated professor of mathematics, Thomas Lehrer. Here is his pithy discourse on the issues:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlJ8ZCs4jY&feature=related
I read plenty of "leftist claptrap" but this article made me viscerally angry. Maybe I'm just not on guard against it today or maybe it really is worse than normal. Anyway I shall go and make some tea and try to calm down.
"Asquith"... In case you hadn't noticed, social mobility seems to have vanished in parallel with the grammar schools.
I cannot imagine why you give this vacuous, dreary (get rid of the scarves, sweetheart. I mean this kindly) agenda-driven woman space. Although, reading about her is easier on the eye than looking at her fat self on that couch on 18 Doughty Street, she still irritates, like a rash, as she spews out hostile, paint-by-numbers vacuities.
Ken is white working class Londoner. No wonder the BNP hate him LOL.
I would like to put in a complaint to someone - there must be a quango to handle this - that, as a white ex-grammar school heterosexual male who is a very much lapsed Catholic (I last took confession over forty years ago), born of an Irish mother and brought up in London, I am not eligible to join the firing squad that will eventually rid us of Yasmin Alibi-For-Brown and her ilk.
That woman is such a waste of space that Gordon Brown could build at least three eco-towns on the site that her ego currently occupies.
"I don't mind Yasmin calling Boris and his supporters "rich, white folks". It means its ok to call Yasmin a stupid brown woman."
This thoroughly unpleasant woman, inflicted on us because Amin kicked her out...and, as all know, we tend to accept all sorts of crap...has spent her life here slagging this country & its institutions and playing the 'race card' at every opportunity. This stupid brown racist woman is needed here as much as the grocer, Fayed.
Pogo, I'm sceptical about grammar schools. I speak as someone who passed the 11+ and was offered a scholarship but ended up at a comprehensive anyway. (Having grown up on a sink estate, I didn't really know what a grammar school was, and wanted to go to the same school as everyone else: in retrospect a strange decision, but it's the way a young mind in limited circumstances works).
When the row ignited within the Tory party, we heard all this. Only a very few from deprived families will go to grammar schools. The majority are middle-class and are generally, at this point in time, at better than average comprehensives.
Think. Why did Thatcher abolish so many grammar schools as education secretary and not bring them back as PM? Basically because they weren't popular. Not even among the affluent, because a lot of children from wealthy families are not intelligent. And when the Tories announced that they won't reintroduce grammar schools on a nationwide basis, the usual t***s complained but most people either didn't care or supported it. The 11+ was a vicious, unjust and wasteful system. And I passed it.
The Lib Dems have been speaking about social mobility again. It is our issue. It doesn't call for just throwing more money at the problem (Labour) or barking at them how they should pull themselves together because they're on their own now (Conservative), because both systems are wantonly inefficient.
I never tire of telling people that I support a market economy in a globalised world,because people never tire of misrepresenting me as some communist. But it is imperative that people have a fair chance. Yes, people will lose their jobs, but the education and training should be there for them to get new jobs. And rather than having millions on the minimum wage, provide them with such skills as will enable them to command a high wage in the marketplace. And that did not happen in the 80s, and it sure as shite isn't happening now.
The very core of my liberalism is a conviction that people are not somehow inferior just because they are born and grow up in straitened circumstances. As someone from one of the worst-off areas in Europe, I should know. It's my issue and I reserve the right to talk about it at great length, provided I can be arsed :)
PS-
Don't infer from this that I agree with Alibhai-Brown or Labour. Neither of them speak for me!
"What specific opportunities has Boris ever presented to a black person?"
The same opportunities he's presented to a white, brown or yellow person, of course.
Or did you really mean to imply that black people are inferior and need a helping hand to reach their goals, unlike any other race?
I am a stupid brown woman in this country blaming whites for everything because blacks threw me out of their country. Take no notice of me.
Yasmin, you've got the right idea. Perhaps we could have a civil partnership and you could give me everything I've longed for. All the fulfilment in my life that I've vainly sought on this blog.
BTW, Ali-Baba Gruesome, white people have owned this country for thousands of years. White people developed this country. White people invented everything you use in your daily life. White people developed the laws you live under and that protect you.
If you don't like white people, you are extremely free to go somewhere else. A request for help with your ticket would provoke an Niagara of cash. Why not try it?
BTW, you posturing bully, would you go to China and complain that the Chinese might vote a Chinese person in? No? You wouldn't dare?
Verity 1:11 pm - Inadequate, humour-free, envious troll alert - labouriously tapping out another lump of steaming boredom. Why does it bother?
Attention: Two alerts. One, the inept troll who imagines it can imitate me has done an illegal wee on this thread just above my legitimate post. Bad dog!
Two, the uppity token Ali-Baba who might now wish to cease pecking out drab, predictable, repetitive (according to people robust enough to read them) pieces in The Guardian and go and work with the poor in the Hindu Kush or wherever. Somewhere where she won't have to be assaulted by white faces, especially in their own country.
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