Institutional Racism? Robert Braban
With a dysfunctional government into its tenth year, sharing a single report from a newspaper no longer scratches the surface of the day.
Perhaps the biggest of today’s scandals (21st February 2020) is the revelation that comes as no surprise, that the original Windrush draft report, by a team led HM Inspector of Constabulary Wendy Williams, recorded that the Home Office is Institutionally Racist.
The 2018 report is still going through a process on ‘Maxwellisation’ the process whereby those criticised in the report, including ministers, are given the opportunity to respond.
What the Times report refrains from pointing out is that this is the process by which those criticised call in favours, use blackmail and any other means legal or illegal, to effect changes. Sources report that in a general watering down, ‘institutionally Racist’ has been removed.
This report comes on a day when Britain’s Home Secretary and leading racist, is heavily criticised for serious bullying within her department. The allegations from ministers and senior civil servants are of ‘vile and aggressive’ behaviour going back more than five years.
Number 10 tries to dodge the issue by stating that no formal complaint has been made. Civil Service chiefs are quick to point out that this is because no mechanism exists by which complaints can be made. When asked whether this objectionable behaviour was new, a former minister responded: “No it bloody isn’t. It’s her. It’s precisely the same behaviour she showed five years ago at the Department for International Development.”
It must be a real bonus for a racist Prime Minister to have a committed racist and serial bully in a principal department. What better way to deflect the spotlight away from the root of the problem.
Not such a revelation is the report that despite government denials cuts in Police and CPS numbers HAVE resulted in a reduction in public safety. In an article full of supporting statistics it is reported that whereas in 2011 a total of 450,000 charges were brought for serious crimes, by 2019 that figure had dropped to 350,000. Over the same period reported crime rose from 4.3 millions to 6.1 millions.
When dishonesty is a principal element of government ethos, the old claim that ‘crime does not pay’ is no longer valid.
The government is promising to restore 20,000 of the cuts of 22,000 police officers, but the damage has been done. With the rise of right wing extremism in Europe and in Britain, reduced capability over recent years has allowed growth and establishment of criminal and terrorist activity that will now be far more difficult to eradicate, particularly with Britain’s new policy of isolationism.
Another report highlights the government’s unstated policy of creeping privatisation by pushing onto local authorities costs that should be accepted by central government.
The report states that Council Tax is scheduled in some areas to rise by 4%, way above the rate of inflation at a time when services are being slashed. It also points out that the highest rates of Council Tax are in the north of England.
It does not take a visionary to see that Johnson + Patel = Racist Immigration Policies = Dramatic Rises in costs or closure of more local authority services like care homes etc.
If you live in an area of wealth where Council tax revenues are high, you will get better services than in an area where there is greater poverty and council tax revenues are lower. Moreover, if you live in one of those poorer areas, particularly in the north, you will pay more as your council struggles to keep up. It’s creeping privatisation through the back door.
Finally, where the former Tory supporting Times tears into a government as it does this current third rate administration, things are pretty dire.
