Brian Reade Column: Blunkett blunders.Byline: Brian Reade Brian Reade is an award-winning writer who has two weekly opinion columns, one on sport, in the Daily Mirror. He is a left-wing republican with very outspoken views, and has interviewed many well known people, including Mohammed Ali. IT WASN'T very brave of David Blunkett David Blunkett (born 6 June 1947) is a British Labour Party politician and has been Member of Parliament for Sheffield Brightside since 1987. Blind since birth and from a poor family, he rose to become Education Secretary from 1997 to 2001, and then Home Secretary from 2001 to to wade into the taboo issue of race, but very cynical. The Home Secretary was supposed to be responding to last summer's pitched battles between Asian and white youths in three northern cities. Instead he pitched for the job of Tony Blair's successor by denouncing political correctness politically correct adj. Abbr. PC 1. Of, relating to, or supporting broad social, political, and educational change, especially to redress historical injustices in matters such as race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. - thus making right-wing commentators salivate sal·i·vate v. 1. To secrete or produce saliva. 2. To produce excessive salivation in. . Thanks to a well-leaked series of explosive soundbites, the main cause of these riots is perceived to be ignorant Asian immigrants who can't speak proper English, refuse to pledge allegiance to the Crown and allow their families to engage in female castration castration, removal of the sex glands of an animal, i.e., testes in the male, or ovaries and often the uterus in the female. Castration of the female animal is commonly referred to as spaying. and arranged marriages. It is a cruel and dangerous distortion of the truth. I visited Oldham twice last summer and spoke to Asian youths. They were second and third-generation Reebok-clad immigrants whose grasp of English and respect for wider society were no better or worse than most inner-city teenagers. The guilty immigrants Blunkett cites were at home or at prayer, distraught that their grandchildren GRANDCHILDREN, domestic relations. The children of one's children. Sometimes these may claim bequests given in a will to children, though in general they can make no such claim. 6 Co. 16. had ceased to tolerate the racism they accepted. It's because most Asian youths DO see Britain as their home, that they get angry at being twice as unlikely to get a job here as similarly qualified white kids. It's the poverty of opportunity in places such as Oldham and Burnley that sucks them into criminal violence. If those Asian youths were rebelling against anything specific, it was the very people Blunkett wants to whip into shape - their elders. How would sending pensioners to citizenship classes prevent the next riots? How would forcing all Asians to pledge allegiance to the Crown make Britain a better place to live in? How many Catholics in Northern Ireland Northern Ireland: see Ireland, Northern. Northern Ireland Part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland occupying the northeastern portion of the island of Ireland. Area: 5,461 sq mi (14,144 sq km). Population (2001): 1,685,267. would Blunkett force to do that? The true disgrace about his remarks is that they distract from the real problems facing people of all races forced to live in parts of Britain where traditional jobs have gone and the middle classes have moved out, leaving poor schools, poverty and crime. That a Labour Home Secretary should wage war against so-called political correctness rather than those problems is unforgivable. CAPTION(S): ROW: Blunkett |
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