Diane Abbott on This Week: The Mauling After The Night Before
This is painful but important to watch, Diane Abbott struggles to answer very tough questions from Andrew Neil on the “This Week” sofa last night.
It was indeed very harsh and caught Diane unaware which has led some to claim foul play. I can’t say it is unfair for legitimate political questions to be asked on a topical political programme.
Watch:
State of Emergency in Jamaica: Citizen Media Follows the Standoff
By Janine Mendes-Franco from Global Voices
Home made barricades are manned by people armed with AK47s (Credit: BBC Worldwide Flickr Photostream)
A study in extremes is perhaps how the last 24 hours in the Caribbean region could be adequately described: As Trinidad and Tobago peacefully went to the polls and elected its first female Prime Minister, Jamaica was facing more violent unrest.
What should I say to Margaret Hodge tonight?
This is your one and only chance to use me as a proxy to put your thoughts and feelings across to Margaret Hodge MP for Barking, and Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Tonight I am speaking at a post-show discussion of “A Day at the Racists” at the Finborough Theatre, SW10. I’m going to ask her to apologise for claiming in the Observer in May 2007 that immigrants were the reason that white working class people couldn’t get council housing in Barking & Dagenham.
In response to Rod Liddle
TMPOnline Editor, Justin Baidoo responds to Rod Liddle’s infamous Spectator blog on Multi-culturalism and claims of Liddle’s racism.
Rod Liddle’s blog post entitled “Benefits of a multi-cultural Britain” attributes most of the high profile social ills (knife and gun crime, violent sexual crimes) to African Caribbean males. Aside from this being factually incorrect, he goes on the next day in response to a post on Diane Abbott’s blog to state that he hates racism and in an attempt to appear non-racist quotes Diane Abbott and Trevor “segregate black boys” Phillips which he portrays that they make similar points to his argument which he says is based on cultural rather than racist values.
Here he is being disingenuous, by deriding and highlighting the only contributions an ethnic group has brought to society as “rap music, goat curry”and laden “us” (read: indigenous whites) with an “alien” culture, it cannot be viewed by the impartial reader that he is giving an honest though brutal critique with problems in a community. He is denigrating the African-Caribbean community and suggesting that London would be better off without them.
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How Abbottgate restored white victimhood in order to brush the issue of racism under the carpet
By Koos Couvee
The media storm Hackney MP Diane Abbott caused last week as a result of her ‘divide and rule’ comment on Twitter is indicative of the ways in which Britain’s political elite is still able to turn issues of race and racism to its advantage and brush the lived reality of so many black Britons under the carpet.
When Diane Abbott tweeted: “White people love playing ‘divide & rule’ We should not play their game #tacticasoldascolonialism”, she was not referring to 19th century colonialism, which is what she later said to defend her comment. Firstly, if that were the case she would have put the sentence in the past tense. Secondly, the tweet came as part of a conversation about present day politics with Hackney based freelance journalist Bim Adewunmi, who had expressed concern to Abbott about what she perceived to be the red herring ‘black community’.
Conservative blogger Harry Cole, who at times also refers to himself as a journalist, eloquently summed up the deep pain and outrage felt by white people as a result of Abbott’s tweet in his debate with race and human rights activist Lee Jasper on Sky News. He told viewers that Abbott’s comments were derogatory to an entire ethnic group, based on the colour of their skin. Indeed, Cole pointed out, racism works both ways and should not have been used as a political tool by the opportunistic Hackney MP.
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