Convergence
I understand that New Labour feels it must pander to the public’s basest, most disgusting human instincts in order to consolidate its power. I realise only too well that the only way to stay at the top is by warming the cockles and stoking the fears of Daily Mail readers.
But I wonder if anybody (apart from say, Nick Griffin) feels the requisite glow of a job well done after hearing this:
Ms Blears, as well as being Minister of State for Crime, Security and Communities, is the constituency MP of Olive Mukaraguwiza, a Rwandan asylum seeker who, after living in the UK for three years, without warning found her home raided by police at 6am last Tuesday morning. She and her three children were packed off to Yarls Wood detention centre pending their deportation. On Friday they were bundled onto a plane in such a distraught state that the pilot refused to fly.
Did even the official who signed off on this think it was the right thing to do? Did he tick the box, go home for his tea and proudly tell his wife and kids what he’d done at the office that day? Did even Hazel Blears, a person who is never, ever wrong about anything ever, not feel a small wave of cold disquiet upon hearing this story? Did what’s left of her humanity not itch, even a little?
As I said in the comments at Europhobia, I try very, very, hard not to believe that New Labour are actually evil. But doesn’t this kind of petty, bureaucratic “efficiency” (ad nauseum) pretty much amount to the same thing?
It’s time to show these people the door. You won’t convince me the Tories would be any worse than this…
Posted on February 20th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
| See also • Obsolete: From the sublime to the ridiculous • Nearly time to buy that ticket to New Zealand? • That is the sound of inevitability |
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I suppose that it’s in the same of of ‘bureaucratic efficiency’ that Eichman and other notable bureaucrats demonstrated…?
Whilst understanding your reticence over calling all of New Labour evil (I disagree, myself: look at what they are doing!), can you find a better word to describe Ms Blears? If the cap fits…
Is this the wrong moment to reveal a project I’ve been working on for a while - an idiot nice of Blairwatch called Blearswatch. I think the lady sums up so much of what is brain-burstingly dumb about New Labour that she deserves her place in cyberspace.
The Tories would indeed be no worse than this. But New Labour evil? Don’t think so.
You are mistaking cluelessness for intent. Blair etc are confronted by ther own incompetence, their isolation from voters who are just not interested, a world that they think you can change from a think-tank and a focus group. But evil? Don’t give them such credit.
Sums up the train wreck that is New-Labour “Lets invade Iraq” project.
Consciously evil? Or just evil by default? That in the end is what is most despicable about this Labour government - that it does these things, not out of a burning ideological commitment or a sense of moral purpose - that would at least be understandable; but instead for the temporary sake a few good headlines and to outflank their party political opponents; that it acts so casually and so thoughtlessly, with such patent lack of understanding is what continues to both astonish and appal.
Beatroot, Bliar et al would like you to believe them incompetent - but you don’t achieve such an awesome and complete domination and dismantling of British politics over a decade by mistake…
It was a traditional view from those of us on the left of politics that ‘the tories are the enemy’.
That consensus seems to be slipping.
It takes more than incompetence to remove a lifetimes political allegience, as seems to have happened for many of us.
Oh and evilweeble, I can think of many more appropriate words to describe Blears… as I’m know you can:)
It’s the evil of banality.
We certainly wouldn’t be this evil these days! The Tories have an image that echoes back to Section 28 (I harp on, but it was a summary execution of freedom) which they really shouldn’t have these days!
Your mention of Nick Griffin gives me the flimsiest excuse to post this. In case anyone should feel any sympathy with David Irving today, posing as a poor vulnerable 67-year-old victim whose only crime happened almots 20 years ago, this is the latest entry on his website http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/index.html.
MR Irving remains incarcerated in a Viennese prison pending trial on February 20 for “offences” of a kind unknown in English law or truly democratic societies.
To date, Mr Irving - never idle ever diligent no matter adversity - has hand-written 600 pages of memoirs, “Irving’s War”. He has received “156 letters from anonymous Austrians and Germans who are thinking what they are denied the freedom of speech to say”. What kind of truth is so weak that it must imprison reasoning skeptics who dare to question it?
Just to point out that the “truth” being referred to here that is so “weak” is presumably the Holocaust.
“What kind of truth is so weak that it must imprison reasoning skeptics who dare to question it?”
Exactly. The extermination is fact, and there is no need to imprison anyone. I would however contest Irving’s assumption of being rational.
Just goes to show… I read that completely wrong. I read it as an assertion that the Holocaust was a weak truth. D’oh.
I shan’t be apologising to Mr Irving though…
I realise only too well that the only way to stay at the top is by warming the cockles and stoking the fears of Daily Mail readers.
*sigh* Really, must you use this stereotype? Some of my best friends are Daily Mail readers, and all that. My mum reads the bloody Daily Mail, and she’s more gung-ho about the destruction of civil liberties than I am. Anyway, I thought you lot were sworn enemies of the Murdoch press? The Sun and The Times are far worse at playing the government’s PR wing than the Mail.
Sorry - in a particularly touchy mood today…
Sorry, Andrew but I’m with Stephen Fry on the subject of the Daily Mail. It’s a hateful, dispiriting rag (does it reflect the views of the readers or vice versa?) that people buy because it flatters their vanity. They won’t buy a redtop, wanting something they perceive as upmarket, but can’t fold a broadsheet in order to read it on the bus. And yes, my parents read it as well.
The whole abject alarmist, foreigner-frightened, reactionary piece of crap should be fired from a cannon. With the Sun and The Times.
The Tories wouldn’t be any worse than this?
You are either taking the piss, under 25 or you’ve got Alzheimers.
Do I detect a Labour politician?
Yaaaaaaaaaay!
Bob, old bean, Thatcher left office 16 years ago, Major 9 years ago (and Major wasn’t really all that bad anyway). The Tories have had a serious overhaul of personnel in the last decade.
Yes, they’re still a bit shit, yes they still have their problems, yes they might be worse. But your argument is simply “better the devil you know”. How about finally getting your party off its illiberal arse and giving us something positive to vote FOR, rather than against? That’s all Blair’s ever done - vote for us or the Tories will get back in, vote for us or the terrorists will will. It’s all shite.
Oh, and just in case you return, don’t bother attempting to patronise me, as seems to be your style. Having just had a gander at your blog it’s evident that you have less than half the intellect required to engage in a serious debate with people who know what they’re talking about. Which is probably why you’re still only a councillor.
(Oooh, that was bitchy… I’m annoyed though, so ner…)
Bob, I’ll have to plead to none of the above.
But come on. Why aren’t you and the likes of you going ballistic over this kind of thing? The next opportunity people get to give Blair a slap, people like you are (I’m sincerely sorry to say) going to lose your jobs.
How many votes do you think this sorry tale has actually won for your party?
nosemonkey, that was uncalled for. Politics should be more than about getting to the top. Councillors are valuable people as a class.
(But in BPs case it’s still 1974 sociology class - his blog is hilarious).
Justin - up to three million people fled Rwanda after the 1994 genocide. It seems to have taken the family until 2002-3 to arrive, if they’ve been here three years. The UNHCR have been repatriating Rwandans since 2003 and there are ‘only’ 140,000 or so in the neighbouring countries (many of whom have deported refugees under much worse circumstances than described here). The country has been declared ’safe’.
Is it your view that anybody who can afford the fare here and can then hang on for a year or two has a right of residence ?
Or is it that women and children never should be put through such an (admittedly distressing) ordeal. Would it be OK for a man ?
Should, say, social services never therefore seperate parent and child, surely as dreadful a feeling as exists ?
Neither is an unreasonable view - I’d just like to know - seriously -why you think what has happened is so disgusting. Without the ‘if you don’t know, it’s pointless trying to explain’ please.
Because throwing somebody out of a country with no warning is in itself a disgusting thing to do. Doing it in the early hours with a police raid, as if it were a war criminal being arrested rather than a harmless mother with children, is filthy.
Anybody who doesn’t see that has lost their awareness that the objects of these actions are human.
So if I overstay on my tourist visa to the States (as some friends have done in the past - to work illegally there) it would be wrong to arrest me without giving me warning first ? In fact a ‘disgusting thing to do’ ?
Not sporting to wake me up in the middle of the night ? A ‘filthy act’ which fails to recognise my humanity ? I’m harmless too.
Justin ?
Laban,
If the details are correct on this story, and you obviously haven’t read them, then the woman in question didn’t come to the UK to escape the genocide but instead to get away from an abusive husband who managed to find her and the children everytime they moved to a different location in Rwanda.
We can argue the toss as to where, when and how she should have claimed asylum but I would say that the Home Office a) knowing the details of her case and b) being human beings, could have treated this case a little more sensitively than dragging the woman and her children from their home at dawn.
She’s not a tourist and there are, it would seem, extenuating circumstances for treating her a little more gently. And I’d say that if the case was about a man. And who’s talking about separating the mother and children? As far as I can see the whole family are in Yarls Wood.
All I’m asking is that a clearly frightened woman and her children not be treated like criminals and maybe with, y’know, a little compassion.
But hey, I’m an emotional guy. prone to being sentimental when I see people being treated badly. Embarrassing isn’t it?
Surely the point Blears should address is this. No system of rules is perfect, and invariant compliance has the possibility of being both morally and legally wrong, or both, as Eichman discovered. The immigration and asylum process in this country is imperfect, as the presence of thousands of sadistic pimps trafficking Eastern European girls demonstrates. All public servants have the opportunity to take decisions outside the rules, provided they do so openly and are willing to take the consequences.
There is a case, to my mind a very strong case, for saying that three children who have been here for three years and are well established in the education system should not be summarily and forcibly removed from the country. If they are in the responsible care of a parent, then the parent too should be allowed to stay - for all practical purposes, indefinitely. Fuck Eichman.
I haveb’t read the details - because as everyone points out the MSM aren’t covering the story.
3,000 miles seems an excessive distance to escape an abusive husband. If the potential for abuse justifies asylum then every woman in Saudi Arabia is entitled to it. I won’t even start on Sudan, Iran, etc. We might find the place gets a little crowded.
While it may be that this has been handled cack-handedly, I can’t agree with your commenters that hanging on for a few years entitles you to residence. If it does, put those settlements back in Gaza please, pronto.
I too don’t like to see such things, and am prone to sentimentality. But I’m trying to model myself more on one of those camp guard chappies - unspeakable brutality by day, Schubert lieder at night with the tears pouring down my face
Whether she’s entitled to residence or not has nothing to do with the way in which she’s been treated. It’s not any sort of justification for dawn raids and expulsion without warning. The fact that people can argue as if it were demonstrates my point about a lack of humanity. There is such a thing as a sense of proportion and you do not, if you possess it, treat a harmless mother with exactly the same degree of ruthlessness (and why, please, is it necessary to arrest at 6am, in order to confuse and terrify and prevent the calling of lawyers?) as one would do a terrorist suspect.
Mind you, given what happened at Stockwell…
I do not understand the connection with ‘bureaucratic efficiency’. Is it any more efficient to arrest a family at 6am than it is at 11am? And I’m sceptical of the ‘without warning’ bit too. Was this really the first she knew that the authorities considered her family to be in the UK illegally? Or do you mean that she should have been warned “we’re coming to arrest you tomorrow”?
But Justin I do share your fear that you are heading towards a massive and catastrophic stress-induced brain embolism. Perhaps I can persuade you that things might not be as bad with the world as you feel.
Let’s accept that the authorities acted abominably in this instance, with no mitigating factors.
My question is, how many such instances tell us that we are being ruled by bad’uns? If we had the government that you would wish us to have - let’s say that you and people that you respect and trust were put in charge - how many instances like this would occur on your watch?
Some, I’d hazard. Even if you personally set new policy goals, reviewed all operating procedures, and interviewed all employees and designed new training programmes, you’d still get some instances either of honest mistakes, culpable errors or malicious actions. (In an earlier post you were complaining about how dull most jobs are. Well, there are a lot of morons about, and if you want them to have interesting jobs, you can’t help occasionally put a moron somewhere he or she can do some damage. Unless your complaint was about nice people lacking interesting jobs, and you weren’t thinking of morons).
So what frequency of terrible incidents tell us that we have a bad lot in charge? Presumably there is some frequency of terrible incidents that we should actually be pleased about (perhaps that which you would hope to achieve if you were in charge). How do you know where what we have today under Labour sits on the scale that starts with “as good as could ever be expected� and ends with “ruled by evil cretins nightmare�? I think I know where you think we stand, but I’m less sure of your basis for that.
You spend your time rooting out instances where the govt looks to be a fault (a bit like shooting fish in a barrel) - perhaps you are committing what a statistician would call a sampling error? That is by focussing on just slice of what goes on, you may have formed an exaggerated view of the how bad things are. Things really might not be so terrible. Or put another way, perhaps things are not much worse than can be expected – and there’s no sense getting worked up about things that are as good as can be expected.
Hopefully this insight may allow you to step back from the brink of aneurysm.
I should add the caveat that it does not follow from this argument that everything this govt. does is defensible or that every bad incident is of no concern. Also, you have to make a distinction between the big picture and the individual instance. It is perfectly consistent, for example, to be very happy with a police force that has the lowest levels of corruption ever seen anywhere, and still come down on corrupt policemen like a ton of bricks. So Justin when you find instances of shitty behaviour, nothing I have written here excuses that instance.
It’s not any sort of justification for dawn raids and expulsion without warning.
I can see the argument against dawn raids (although presumably that’s the best way of making sure the people you are deporting are at the address you think they are.
But why should people be given warning before expulsion from the country? Surely warnings just increase the chance they disappear into the ether?
It sounds to me like this has been handled extraordinarily insensitively. But it is Justin’s position, that doesn’t seem to deny the legality, more the morality of the actions, that is the justifiable one here.
Not the one that seems to be prevalent among other commenters that warning should be given before deportation.