Or he would be if he were a conservative. Conservatives are not allowed to notice any differences between blacks and whites:
"Tony Blair yesterday claimed the spate of knife and gun murders in London was not being caused by poverty, but a distinctive black culture. His remarks angered community leaders, who accused him of ignorance and failing to provide support for black-led efforts to tackle the problem. One accused him of misunderstanding the advice he had been given on the issue at a Downing Street summit.
Black community leaders reacted after Mr Blair said the recent violence should not be treated as part of a general crime wave, but as specific to black youth. He said people had to drop their political correctness and recognise that the violence would not be stopped "by pretending it is not young black kids doing it". It needed to be addressed by a tailored counter-attack in the same way as football hooliganism was reined in by producing measures aimed at the specific problem, rather than general lawlessness.
Mr Blair's remarks are at odds with those of the Home Office minister Lady Scotland, who told the home affairs select committee last month that the disproportionate number of black youths in the criminal justice system was a function of their disproportionate poverty, and not to do with a distinctive black culture.....
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British hospital banned hot cross buns to avoid offending non-Christians
Hospital staff claim they were banned from handing out hot cross buns this Easter in case they upset non-Christians. The decision disappointed patients at Poole Hospital in Dorset and angered catering staff. In an email to their local paper, sent on Good Friday, catering staff said: 'We the kitchen staff of Poole Hospital were disgusted to find that the patients were not getting hot cross buns this morning. "The manager of the catering department said he was worried about the ethnic minorities that work here." The workers, who did not want to be named, said they had been inundated with calls from nurses on the wards asking why there were no buns this year.
Eventually hospital bosses relented and they were distributed on Easter Monday. A spokesman for Poole Hospital NHS Trust denied, however, that the absence of hot cross buns on Good Friday was anything to do with political correctness. She claimed: "We do apologise to patients who missed out on their hot cross buns on Good Friday. "This was due to an oversight by the catering manager who forgot to order them in time. It was nothing to do with religious beliefs. "The buns were handed out on Easter Monday instead."
Hot cross buns have been eaten on Good Friday for centuries. They are believed by some historians to pre- date Christianity, although they were not called "hot cross buns" until the late 18th century. They should contain no eggs or dairy products so those who are observing Lent in the traditional way are able to eat them.
This is not the first time they have been the source of controversy. After the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century the English monarchy saw the buns as a symbol of Catholicism because they were baked from the consecrated dough used to make communion wafers. But an attempt to ban them failed because they were so popular. Queen Elizabeth I eventually passed a law permitting bakeries to sell them, but only at Easter and Christmas.
Representatives of other religions in the Poole area did not see any problem with serving the buns in hospital. Rabbi Neil Amswych from the Bournemouth Reform Synagogue said: "I don't eat hot cross buns for two reasons. "One is that it is a Christian custom and the second reason is that I am on a diet. "But I don't see why they shouldn't be available. After all, we're in a Christian country and the state religion is Christianity. "They shouldn't be force-fed, but there is no reason why they shouldn't be available. "Perhaps they should offer other ethnic foods - that might be a nice gesture. They could offer latkes for the festival of Chanukah, which is in December. They are oily potato pancakes and very nice."
There have been many examples of official bodies attempting to remove the religious message from Christian festivals in the name of political correctness. Birmingham Council notoriously called its festive celebrations "Winterval" while Luton advertised its Christmas lights as "luminos". Christmas cards sent out by public bodies have, almost without exception, been stripped of any Christian references. Last year's Christmas stamps bore no trace of the Bible story.
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More on the British experience of immigrants
Traffic on the northbound M1 was forced to a halt on Easter Monday after all lanes were blocked by a gang of men armed with baseball bats, bottles and knives who attacked two people in another car, police said yesterday. Motorists watched as four cars that had been travelling in a convoy stopped across the northbound motorway near junction 15 in Northamptonshire, blocking it completely.
Up to 15 men got out and milled around on the road. Four or five of them descended on a Ford Focus they had forced to stop and then attacked the car, the driver and a front-seat passenger. Northamptonshire Police said that they believed that the attack, which took place at about 1.15pm, must have been planned, although the occupants of the Focus told officers that it was unprovoked and they had no idea why they had been singled out. The police are trying to discover if there was an earlier incident before the attack that could have provoked road rage, and are studying closed-circuit television footage from the motorway. A spokesman for Northamptonshire Police said that it was unlikely the attack had not been planned. "We are looking to see if there had been some sort of road-rage incident before this particular incident took place," he said.
The four Asian men in the Focus were travelling north when they noticed that they were being followed by a lime-green Rover 200. They were flashed and pelted with bottles, which bounced off the car, before the Rover cut them up and forced them to stop. The hard shoulder and the roadway itself were then blocked by three other vehicles - a black Audi A3, a black Toyota Prius and possibly a red Audi A3. A crowd of black men, aged between 20 and 30, and wearing black clothing, gold chains and bracelets, spilt on to the road as the attack began.
The driver and his passengers were not badly hurt and the attackers, who are thought to have been driving from London, got back into their cars and sped away.
Northamptonshire Police alerted other forces farther along the M1 but the convoy was not spotted again. Officers were examining film yesterday from motorway cameras and were carrying out checks on registration numbers yesterday. Northamptonshire Police said that other similar incidents may have happened elsewhere on the motorway.
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APPALLING BRITISH IDIOCY
Schools should not “over discipline” persistently unruly pupils for fear of alienating them and should instead hand out praise five times more often than punishments, the Government has said. New guidance on school discipline published yesterday cautions teachers against repeatedly praising only “the same good pupils”, suggesting that rewards also be given to persistent miscreants who show an improvement in behaviour, however small. It cites research recommending a “rewards/sanctions ratio of at least 5:1”. Rewards might include “good news” postcards sent home, “special privileges” or “prizes”. “Striking the right balance between rewarding pupils with consistently good behaviour and those achieving substantial improvement in their behaviour is important. This can help improve relations with parents who have become tired of receiving letters and phone calls when things go wrong,” the guidance states.
It also advises teachers to take account of pupils’ race and culture when telling them off, suggesting that they go easy on those insubordinate youngsters for whom being “loud” or “overfamiliar” may be a cultural norm or “social style”. Teachers should understand the importance of showing respect to children from racial or religious backgrounds for whom public humiliation is seen as particularly shameful. In these cases, staff should not use language that might humiliate youngsters in front of their friends.
In other areas the guidance advocates a tougher approach, encouraging teachers to give Saturday and after-school detention and to punish pupils who make false allegations against teachers. It has been published to accompany new legal powers enabling teachers to use “reasonable force” to restrain violent children, confiscate mobile phones and punish pupils for poor behaviour on their way to and from school.
But critics described the guidance as “soft”, stating that most teachers already knew how to use positive reinforcement techniques. The document coincided yesterday with a threat of strikes by the National Union of Teachers unless schools speed up the process for expelling violent or abusive pupils.
David Willetts, the Shadow Education Secretary, said that the new guidance could be resented by pupils if it implied that bad behaviour brought rewards. He said that if school children could see badly behaved pupils being praised “then the school’s policy would lose all credibility”.
Alan Smithers, Professor of Education at the University of Buckingham, said the move could encourage perverse behaviour. “Children and parents will be quick to pick up on false praise. That simply devalues the use of encouraging words. The key thing is that it has to be honest feedback. As a soft approach it won’t work because children and their parents will soon pick up that it’s false. “If you reward the children who have been poorly behaved for behaving well you might actually be getting children who have been perfectly happy behaving well to behave badly in order to pick up the rewards.”
Robert Whelan, deputy director of the thinktank Civitas, said: “The idea that teachers have to take account of a child’s ethnicity when disciplining them is racist. It’s telling teachers they have to treat children differently according to their skin colour.”
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