Outsider Tirade Goes On

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FORAY Sunday, November 15, 2009 Email Print

Outsider tirade goes on

Venkata Vemuri

Immigration is a sensitive word to utter in Westminster ever since Nick Griffin of the right-wing British National Party came on BBC’s Question Time. One, Prime Minister Gordon Brown finds to his annoyance, he cannot either swallow or spit it out. But ever since Griffin said the country’s population would shortly cross 70 million if the immigrants were not kept out, there has been a churning in Labour ranks on how to deal with the issue.Someone in Brown’s team must have suggested that the way out with minimum political damage is to acknowledge that uncontrolled immigration is problematic. A private poll by the Unite trade union showed that immigration is the most burning political issue for Labour supporters with the potential of turning them towards even the BNP, or not making them vote at all.And the Prime Minister spoke out, promising to tighten the immigration rules by reducing the number of professions which can recruit from outside Europe. It was, perhaps, his first speech on the issue of immigration since he took office.Here is what he said: “We will remove more occupations and therefore thousands more posts from the list of those eligible for entry under the points-based system.” The BBC thinks engineers, skilled chefs and care workers could be among the affected professionals.But Brown’s next utterance on the larger immigration debate unmasks his real motive in speaking about immigration without any, as the media says, news peg. “I have never agreed with the lazy elitism that dismisses immigration as an issue, or portrays anyone who has concerns about immigration as a racist. Immigration is not an issue for fringe parties nor a taboo subject.It is a question at the heart of our politics, a question about what it means to be British; about the values we hold dear and the responsibilities we expect of those coming into our country; about how we secure the skills we need to compete in the global economy; about how we preserve and strengthen our communities.”The British media was quick to point out that the speech will be seen as an effort to give meaning to his promise of “British jobs for British workers”. Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said: “Gordon Brown's speech had a completely hollow ring to it. This is the Government that tried to cover up a deliberate policy of increasing immigration and the Prime Minister's comments show that he has no idea about how to deal with the whole question of immigration now.”Your turn, Griffin. Creating waves Surfers of Bournemouth on England’s south coast always complained that their coast gets poor-quality waves. So the city council parted with £3 million for an artificial surf reef. Europe’s first. The reef opened recently after the completion of a two-year construction project, 200 metres offshore and to the east of Boscombe Pier, the main beach head of Bournemouth, which saw 55 giant sandbags covering an area the size of a football pitch laid on the sea floor.When winds sweep the coast, the ensuing groundswells — which used to slump on to the beach as weak waves earlier — are helped by the reef to turn into head-high waves which are ridable. The council feels it will have its return on investment in no time as hundreds of surfers now throng the beach.Vigil 24X7A British citizen is watched and monitored by the State surveillance apparatus like no other in the world. And now comes a law which requires telecom companies and Internet service providers to keep a record of every customer’s personal communications, showing who they are contacting, when, where and which websites they are visiting.As per the new rules, known as the Intercept Modernisation Programme, public authorities will not be able to view the contents of these emails or phone calls, but they can see the Internet addresses, dates, times and users of telephone numbers and texts.They will not require the permission of a judge or a magistrate to access the information, but simply the authorisation of a senior police officer or the equivalent of a deputy head of department at a local authority.But there is little support for the law among the public. The British Home Office admitted last week that only a third of respondents to its six-month consultation on the issue supported the new proposal, with half of them fearing that the scheme lacked sufficient safeguards to protect the highly personal data from abuse.The Conservatives made known their opposition by describing the move as “Mission Creep”. Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights body Liberty, warned: “Law-abiding people have sustained too many blanket attacks on their privacy and they’ve had enough.” Queer bandsBritish teen girls may be banned from wearing harmless looking, prettily coloured jelly bracelets that are freely available in stores. The problem is not with the bracelets, but a sexual game they are associated with.Apparently each colour denotes a type of sexual act. And when a boy snaps a bracelet with a particular colour, the girl will have to perform the act that colour denotes. A yellow bracelet denotes a simple hug. A blue one means oral sex. Other colours signify escalating grades of sexual activity. A black bracelet means going the whole way.These are popularly known as “shag bands” which have become popular across the country and parents are horrified that even children who do not understand the significance of wearing them – primary schoolers as young as 8 – are aware of what the bands signify.The concept of the “shag band” is not new. There were similar bracelets in the ’80s and ‘90s and were known in some schools in the UK as “f*** me” bracelets. In the USA they are called “snopes”.The protests have already begun. The leading voice is of Mary Creagh, MP from Wakefiled in northern England, who wants the bands banned. “There is nothing intrinsically wrong with plastic bracelets — you can’t ban plastic bands — but there is something offensive about packaging and marketing something as a ‘shag band’ and having it on sale unrestricted,” she says.The Carmarthenshire County Council, in Wales, has moved to ban the bracelets, which sell for as little as 75p for a pack of six.But one teacher on the Times Educational Supplement website writes: “They are bracelets — nothing more, nothing less. If the kids wearing them want to attach silly labels to them, let them. I very much doubt they actually act on it.”