Posts
I have been offline for a few days due to various technical problems that I will not bore you with but which will be resolved on 6th February when the broadband engineer is going to come (please) and fix the connection. Imagine my total lack of surprise when doing a search in the ‘news’ section of the Google search engine on the term Nuneaton and finding this piece of propaganda in the local Telegraph newspaper: - New service set up in Nuneaton and Bedworth for victims of racist abuse.
I recommend that you read the article. I cannot disagree with the following statement from Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council.
Borough council communities manager Rachel Jackson said: “People will now be able to report incidents of race and hate crime in venues that are familiar to them in their locality.
"No-one should tolerate race or hate crime and now with these reporting centres this will strengthen our ability as a community to deal with these issues and send a message to everyone that this sort of behaviour is not acceptable in society.”
To be honest I would probably have replaced “not acceptable” with ‘intolerable’.
Now I may be wrong but I doubt it when I say that:
At the end of last year Mr John Denham MP, Communities Secretary, launched a £12 fund to fight “extremism” in 130 deprived areas of the country. You may be naive enough to think that this is Islamic extremism as they are responsible for virtually all of the terrorist offences in recent years but you would be wrong. Mr Denham specified “far right extremism” and the 27 places so far listed reads as would a list of 27 places that the British National Party do well.
Both Warwickshire County Council and Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council are working within severe financial constraints. Both authorities have less money to spend this year than they did last and expect this pattern to repeat itself for the next few years.
It is a fact as I reported back in May 2009 that Racial incidents recorded in Nuneaton and Bedworth drop by more than half since BNP councillors were elected.
I find it strange that since the non British ethnic population of the borough is often reported as being way down in single figures, and with both councils facing tighter financial pressures annually, that the money has been ‘found’ to finance this service in an area where racial crimes dropped last year to one fifth of their target.
I also found it strange in that Social Scrutiny meeting last year to hear from the policeman present that the recording of racial crimes was going to change. I suspect that there will be a marked increase in racial incidents on the front pages of all of the local newspapers just before the next local election.
Time will tell!
I normally take the time to send out a press release but it is extremely rare that they are printed so on this occasion I shall alert the local press to this blog post and encourage them to contact me with questions.
Fingers crossed.
