Layer 486 . . . Literacy Crisis, Education, Dyslexia, Vulgar TV, China, Frozen Planet, Peaceful Protest and Resignation

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Thinking about the times we live in -

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.

All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.

Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education.

It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.

The little people must be sacred to the big ones, and it is from the rights of the weak that the duty of the strong is comprised.

The degree of civilisation is reflected by the quantity of the imagination.

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

The three great problems of this century; the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjection of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child by darkness.

The ox suffers, the cart complains

 - Victor Hugo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo

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I love this story -

Reality bites: China orders crackdown on 'vulgar' TV shows
State broadcasting watchdog orders curb on dating shows and talent contests in favour of 'morality building' output

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/25/china-crackdown-on-vulgar-tv

Sick of tacky reality shows with egotistic wannabes? Tired of formulaic talent contests for shameless show-offs? If you feel the prime time schedules are packed with lowest common denominator viewing, you are not alone.

Chinese officials share your pain and have ordered a curb on popular entertainment shows. Out go sexy dating shows and lurid programmes on crime. In come art appreciation, astronomy and weekly "morality building shows".

The new edict from the state broadcasting watchdog is expected to come into force on 1 January. Provincial channels will be allowed to show no more than two entertainment shows in the "golden time" between 7.30pm and 10pm, according to a report on the Chinese NetEase website. Particular types of programmes, such as dating shows, will be strictly limited; no more than 10 talent contests will be permitted nationwide per year, and each must be of a different kind.

"The State Administration of Radio Film and Television also encourages [broadcasters] to produce harmonious, healthy and mainstream programmes, such as culture and art appreciation, history, geography and astronomy, and [those addressing] public welfare," the report added.

We can all benefit from more enlightening and more enriching programmes on television. But what's this about being 'sick of tacky TV shows'? How can you get sick of something you can easily switch off? Maybe. But you can be sick of your family or your friends watching crap, and your TV at home being dominated by the choices 'voted' for by the majority.

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Frozen Planet

Fabulous David Attenborough programme on TV this week - Frozen Planet. Stunning photography - take a look at these photos on Yahoo:

http://uk.tv.yahoo.com/photos/frozen-planet-gallery-1319709281-slideshow/frozen-planet-ep-1-photo-1319708904.html

We need many more intelligent, enjoyable and accessible documentaries - at the cinema as well as on TV.

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Read all about it: Britain's shameful literacy crisis
So rioters shunned bookshops because they didn't offer anything they wanted? That points to a debilitating exclusion from a civilised culture

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/26/britains-shameful-literacy-crisis

Deborah Orr's final 'column' in G2 made me sit up and . . . despair. "Shameful". "Crisis"?

Test and exam scores are demonstrably better than they've ever been - and yet we have a shameful crisis on our hands, according to La Orr. Shock fucking horror.

You then take a look at the 8 pages of feedback on the website (by 6.00pm - 328 comments on this article on CiF. 370 this morning) . . . and despair.

Yes - we have a problem with literacy in this country. Since the introduction of the National Literacy Strategy test scores have gone up, and enthusiasm for reading and writing has gone down. Any connection there?, we ask ourselves. More and more literacy exercises and drills, more and more didactic teaching, more and more 'booster classes' . . . and fewer children reading for pleasure; fewer children writing for their own purposes and pleasure.

Yes - there are thousands of children eagerly consuming Harry Potter, but so what? It's what the less technically able and fluent readers are reading, if anything, that we need to be concerned about. Voracious readers - those who find the passing of tests a doddle in any case - will always find books they want to read. But how do we get the less able to become 'hooked on books'?

Not by giving them more of the same drills and tests, that's for sure. Not by failing to understand the psycho-linguistics of reading, the importance of all the cueing systems and not just 'synthetic' phonics, the importance of onset and rime, etc, that's for sure. We learn to read by reading - the same as we learn to ride a bike by riding it. But first of all we have to want to read, or ride the bike.

Still, we can all have an opinion, can't we? No matter never having tried to teach literacy to a group of thirty very needy 4, 5 and 6 year olds, or a reluctant 14 year old. No matter never having studied psycholinguistics. No matter never having worked with pupils with severe learning difficulties of various sorts. Let's all just jump up and down and shout "Crisis! Shameful!" - shall we?

Of course there are teachers who are poorly trained, poorly prepared, and even some who are poorly motivated and clearly inadequate in all sorts of ways. Add to the mix a 'literacy strategy' which is no more than a return to skilling and drilling . . . and we have a big problem.

The good news is that the profession as a whole is capable of working this out for themselves and doing something about it - should the politicians and the pundits care to piss off and allow good schools and those who know what they're talking about to spread best practice, instead of having tinpot 'solutions' rammed down their throats by bureaucrats. Take a look at Finland, Canada and Denmark if you don't believe me. Learn how an education system ought to be run - for the real benefit of pupils and teachers.

Incidentally - there was an interesting programme on the radio this week that said very positive things about so-called dyslexics, who are normally seen as kids and adults with grave disabilities. It seems those with difficulties with literacy are often excellent communicators, often talented and creative in other ways, and often strong in '3D spatial reasoning ability'. Often these 'dyslexics' become brilliant in their own field, once they've discovered their true strengths and passions.

The question is - do schools enable these pupils to discover their other gifts and talents, and enable them to unleash their energy and creativity? Indeed, do schools do so for ANY of their pupils?

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Canon of St Paul's: church cannot answer peaceful protest with violence

In his first interview since his resignation, the Reverend Giles Fraser says he was unable to reconcile his conscience with the breakup of the Occupy London camp

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/27/st-pauls-canon-occupy-london-camp

Fraser said he decided to resign on Wednesday when he realised he could not reconcile his conscience with the possibility of the church and the Corporation of London combining to evict the protesters from the land outside the cathedral, some of which is jointly owned with the City.

"The church cannot answer peaceful protest with violence," said Fraser, adding that it was apparent that the Corporation of London was clearer than the cathedral authorities about its desire to see the protesters moved on.

"I cannot countenance the idea that this would be about [the eviction of] Dale Farm on the steps of St Paul's.

"I would want to have negotiated down the size of the camp and appeal to those there to help us keep the cathedral going, and if that mean that I was thereby granting them some legal right to stay then that is the position I would have had to wear."

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Layer 282 . . . Witch Hunts, Balls, Ofsted, The Big Debate and The Big Society

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Another excellent column by Jenni Russell this week -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/13/baby-p-case-good-witch-hunt?

The Baby P inquiry shows witch-hunts still thrive

The pressure was on Ed Balls to serve up a head to the howling crowd – and the public checks to ensure calm utterly failed

The version of events we'd been fed – that the chief responsibility for the tragedy could fairly be laid at the door of one highly incompetent and publicly vilified executive, Sharon Shoesmith – turned out to be frighteningly unreliable.

Instead, we read about pressure on Ofsted to produce the results the secretary of state required, endless rewritings of a supposedly independent report until it did exactly that, and the stunning failure of Ofsted to produce any of the evidence of this happening until the court hearings dealing with it had ended. We can't afford to ignore a sequence of events that suggests how easily the government can manipulate information to suit its purposes, and how responsive public servants can be to political and media demands. They can't be relied upon, on this evidence, to be disinterested searchers after truth and solutions when things go wrong. Some simply want to protect themselves from criticism and find someone to blame.

In response to this, and a comment I posted, 1nn1t posted this excellent piece -

   @Oxzen

We can only remain hopeful that one day people who were involved in or are aware of school inspections where there was collusion between Ofsted and local authority officers to condemn and get rid of particular headteachers will have the courage to come forward with the evidence.

Ofsted has from from the beginning. Remember Islington Green:

    Chris Woodhead, a now-discredited former chief inspector of schools for Ofsted, condemned Islington Green as a "failing school" after ignoring the judgement of senior inspectors.

The leader of Ofsted, now and at the time of the Haringey case, is Christine Gilbert

    Divorced from her first husband, she met then councillor and later government minister Tony McNulty when she was Director of Education for the London Borough of Harrow. The couple married in September 2002 in Hammersmith and Fulham.

In Yorkshire Ofsted is used by LEAs as an attack dog to drive out heads. The story goes like this:

LEA and Head don't get on.

Ofsted starts programme of snap inspections.

LEA institutes agressive discussions of Osted reports.

More snap inspections - easily failed because, eg "the school Safeguarding Policy Document wasn't provided to the Inspectors within x minutes of their requesting it" or "The school has carried out all necessary CRB checks but the information has been stored separately rather than on "a single central record"." or more:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7530212/Top-public-schools-fail-new-inspections.html

More agressive discussions. Heads by now suffering from stress.

Head called to meeting with big cheeses in Town Hall. Cheeses propose to Head that he take early retirement on grounds of sickness with pension enhancement.

Conditions of offer by cheeses:

1 Impending retirement not to be mentioned to staff/pupils/parents.

2 Retirement will take effect from this next mid-term Friday afternoon.

3 The 'retiring' head will sign a gagging contract preventing him disclosing anything of the events, circumstances and terms of his sudden departure.

Some heads have refused such offers. They then receive a series of off-the-record chats and phone calls from senior LEA staff pointing out to them the advantages of accepting the 'retirement offer'.

Why, do you imagine, so few teachers any longer wish to become Head Teachers?

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Back to the Election - and the Big Debate

Tonight's the night - the moment political anoraks have been waiting for - the first of the 'debates' between between Brown, Cameron and Clegg, live on ITV.

The Tories are in big trouble, and I think they know it. What's more there's nothing they can do about it. Their brand is what it is.

The further this election goes on, and the more that voters come to realise that Clegg, Cable, Hughes, Ashdown and co are a decent bunch of people with genuine social democratic and liberal instincts, the more that many of these voters will make up their minds to switch their votes from the despised New Labour to the Lib Dems instead of to the other "major" party, with huge consequences for Tory hopes in the marginal and "winnable" seats.

What's more, as the campaign rolls forward, the Green Party and its very able leadership will attract not only protest voters but also those who like what they see in terms of policies that the Labour party should have but forward but in fact haven't.

Voters are not as stupid and as fickle as politicians often think, and the memory of Thatcher will last for more than a generation or two. During the years of the Thatcher ascendency the Tory party congratulated itself on having such a political colossus as their leader - right up to the point when they and everyone else suddenly realised that she was a true nutter who had exposed Toryism in all its true character by smashing the lingering post-war social-democratic consensus, with terrible consequences for British industry and the majority of the working class electorate. John Major, by winning an election, made matters worse for the long-term good of the Tory party and not better, since it was on his watch that the 'bastards' and the sleazeballs of Torydom were thoroughly exposed.

So mark my words - by the time this election takes place the Lib Dem share of the vote will have gone up by around 5% and the Greens by 3%, with the Tories down by 8% on current projections. What's more, the Lib Dems started the last campaign at around 18% and put on 6 percentage points, whereas this time they're starting from 24%. And this time they have the benefit of being the party of Vince Cable, who was virtually the only politician who foresaw the financial crash, and has become the man most voters would like to have as chancellor.

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On the Today programme one of the presenters reminded us of one of the dictums of Groucho Marx - "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them - I have others."

A Hazel Bloody Blears interview was broadcast in which she was asked whether or not it's surprising that people are turned off politics thanks to the expenses scandals, Iraq, etc, - to which she replied, unsurprisingly, in her usual pathetic and useless way, by saying that people feel "excluded" because politicians too often speak in jargon.

So here's someone who's clearly learned a lesson. Her answer to all of this nation's ills is that politicians just have to stop speaking in jargon - and then all will be well again with our political culture.

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Meanwhile, in the Guardian, Marina Hyde's campaign trail has taken her to the launch of the UKIP manifesto:

Kicking off the launch proper, the deputy-leader, David Campbell-Bannerman, promised policies "from animal welfare to pubs" – truly, the full gamut of thinking from Y to Z.

When Farage announced he would be devoting his energies to standing against the speaker, John Bercow, in Buckingham, the party's top job was taken over by former Tory peer Lord Pearson of Rannoch, the sort of patrician dullard you pray not to be seated next to at dinner.

Before long, it was on to Ukip's proposed ban of the burqa and niqab in public "and some private" buildings. How were they going to enforce that?

"We haven't said private buildings," countered Pearson.

Well you have. It's in your manifesto. "Have we?" his lordship wondered of his more junior colleagues. Doubtless he'll get round to reading the 15-page document in good time.

Tag-teaming Pearson was the more seasoned media hand Nigel Farage, who has an enduring line in misplaced confidence. "I don't want to be rude about the other parties – that's not my style," he smiled knowingly, in the manner of a man who fondly imagines he has a style other than "affable berk".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/13/general-election-ukip-manifesto-launch

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Simon Hoggart, meanwhile, was at the launch of the Tory manifesto:

DIY government? It's scary

The Tories launched their manifesto in Battersea power station, site of the Pink Floyd album cover with the flying pig.

Finally David Cameron introduced the Conservative manifesto, which is a dark blue hardback and looks like a tombstone. The theme is that the next government can save money by getting people to do the work themselves, whether taking planning decisions, holding elected representatives to account, saving local pubs and post offices, appointing the chief constable, checking wasteful public expenditure online or founding new schools.

"It's about we, the people!" said Mr Cameron, with great conviction and terrible grammar. "We're all in this together. Join us, in forming the next government of Britain."

Gosh, life is going to be busy under the Tories. It's lucky their campaign against waste means there will be mass sackings. Otherwise nobody would have the time to do everything the "Big Society" demands of us.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/13/conservative-manifesto-simon-hoggarts-sketch

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Labour, Tories and Lib Dems clash ahead of key TV debate

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/14/general-election-tv-debates-row

Gordon Brown has received a boost on the eve of today's televised leaders' debate after more than 50 economists from around the world signed a letter backing his handling of the economy. The letter, from 58 academics, was organised by Labour, and comes as a response to a letter from business leaders criticising Labour's planned increase in national insurance.

The British signatories include the Labour peers Lords Layard and Peston; the crossbench peer Lord Skidelsky, who is the biographer of John Maynard Keynes; and Sir David Hendry, a fellow of Nuffield College Oxford. They are supporters of a Keynesian stimulus for the economy.

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Gordon Brown admits banks needed more regulation

PM says the government should have been tougher on the banks

Gordon Brown has admitted mistakes in regulating the banks, accusing the City of lobbying against greater scrutiny before the financial crisis plunged Britain into recession.

Brown had previously blamed the scale of the recession mainly on the international financial crisis and the refusal of other countries to agree to tighter international surveillance of the banks.

In an ITV interview due to be broadcast tonight, Brown admits he had been influenced by bankers' lobbying.

"In the 1990s, the banks, they all came to us and said, 'Look, we don't want to be regulated, we want to be free of regulation.' ... And all the complaints I was getting from people was, 'Look you're regulating them too much.'

"The truth is that globally and nationally we should have been regulating them more. So I've learnt from that."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/13/gordon-brown-banking-sector-regulation

WFTYS. We fucking told you so!

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Deborah Orr

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/15/government-govern-affairs-powerful

[Here's] the part missing from David Cameron's vision of a grassroots-up, sober, self-help society. It was not ordinary people who needed the state to keep them in line – fearful authoritarian religious leaders did that. It was the ruling elite, who abused their power without restraint, that made "big government" necessary.

All Britain wants or needs really, is a government that will persuade the powerful that it is right to behave in a manner that is responsible, humane and generous, and help the people who can't help themselves.

We have had 13 years of a government that thought it could do the latter, without doing the former. Come 6 May, we might just end up with a government that is eager to do neither.

'stonepark' commented with this quotation:

"Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men,we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we had no delinquents.Without a prison, there can be no delinquents.
We had no locks nor keys and therefore among us there were no thieves.When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket,he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift.We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property.We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth.We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white men arrived and I don't know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society."

John (Fire) Lame Deer
Sioux Lakota - 1903-1976

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Drunkeness, Violence and Spiritual Intelligence

Also on the Today programme this week was a piece about our culture of drunkeness and violence - and STILL nobody has any answers, other than more crackdowns and "toughness".

How long will it take before people in general and politicians in particular begin to admit that we have to begin at the beginning - with young children in school - helping them to develop emotional intelligence, social intelligence and spiritual intelligence, together with a capacity for lovingkindness, a belief in the value of meditation, and a determination to be non-violent?

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Pope in the Poop

The pope should stand trial

Why is anyone surprised when Christopher Hitchens and I call for the prosecution of the pope? There is a clear case to answer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/13/pope-prosecution-dawkins?

Sexual abuse of children is not unique to the Roman Catholic church, and Joseph Ratzinger is not one of those priests who raped altar boys while in a position of dominance and trust. But as so often it is the subsequent cover-ups, even more than the original crimes, that do most to discredit an institution, and here the pope is in real trouble.

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Layer 209 . . . Diversity, Equality, Social Justice, the BNP and Anti Racism

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So the leader of the BNP finally made his appearance on the BBC's Question Time last night and thereby brought about television's political event of the year. He came across as what he undoubtedly is – a not very bright, sweaty, shifty, smarmy, evasive, appalling toad of a human being, full of nasty and half-witted ideas and ambitions. It was interesting the way he claimed he was now hated by the real Nazis in this country because he's now holding back from any overtly racist speeches and provocations, and now confines himself to trying to be the man who stands up for the white working classes whose welfare and wellbeing have been ignored by the 'multiculturalism' of the mainstream parties.

Gary Younge wrote a superb column in yesterday's Guardian on this issue:

When you watch the BNP on TV, just remember: Jack Straw started all this
To set New Labour against Griffin is simply putting the cause against the symptom

Three years ago this month Jack Straw argued his case for urging Muslim women who attend his MP's surgery to remove their niqab. He said that he wanted to start a debate. In this, at least, he was successful.

The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy said "the veil is an invitation to rape"; the Daily Mail columnist Allison Pearson said women who wear "nose bags on their faces ... have no place on British streets"; the then shadow home secretary David Davis argued that Muslims were encouraging voluntary apartheid.

And so Muslim women passed, in the public imagination, from being actually among the group most likely to be racially attacked to ostensibly being a primary cause of social strife . . .

There is little doubt that once the BNP is on Question Time, Jack Straw – or indeed anyone in the New Labour hierarchy – is in no position to take the fight to it. The same is true for most of the rest of the British political establishment that will be represented on the panel – they have either actively colluded or passively acquiesced in the political trajectory of the past decade.

But it is no accident that this happened on New Labour's watch and no small irony that Jack Straw should set himself up as Griffin's opponent.

Economically, its neoliberal policies have resulted in growing insecurity, rising unemployment, child poverty and inequality that have alienated the poor and made the middle class feel vulnerable. Politically, its lies over the war, stewardship of the expenses scandal and internal bickering have produced widespread cynicism with our political culture.

Meanwhile New Labour's race-baiting rhetoric gave the state's imprimatur to the notion that Britain's racial problems were not caused by racism but the existence of non-white, non-Christian and non-British people. This provided little material solace but plenty of vulnerable scapegoats.

Having inflated racism's political currency, New Labour vacated the electoral market so that others with a more ostentatious style might more freely spend it. Once they had made these ideas respectable it was only a matter of time before a party reached a position where it too would earn sufficient respectability to appear on prime time.

New Labour marginalised the white working class, assuming they had nowhere else to go, only to find some of them rush into the arms of the far right.

New Labour extinguished all hope of class solidarity and singularly failed to provide principled anti-racist alternatives, leaving a significant section of the white working class to seek cheap refuge in racism and xenophobia. In their identity they see not the potential for resistance against corruption and injustice, but only a grievance. They don't trust government and don't see any alternatives. The coming election simply provides the choice between two parties that share the intent to slash public spending, after the gift of billions to bankers.

Under such circumstances setting Straw – and the rest of the political class – against Griffin is simply putting the cause against the symptom without any suggestion of an antidote.

This has been New Labour's problem all along. While they have long recognised that racism is a problem, it never seemed to occur to them that anti-racism might be the solution.

The BNP's victories are a product of our politics. Its defeat, when it comes, will necessarily be a product of a change in our politics. But since New Labour's politics enabled the BNP, it is in no position to disable it. The BNP is a bottom feeder. But the system is rotting from the head down.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/21/jack-straw-bnp-griffin-hain
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The most interesting contributions made to the programme last night came from the Conservative party representative, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion and Social Action. How clever of Cameron to have given this post to this particular individual, who even retains a trace of a Yorkshire accent. And I mean clever in a good way.

http://www.sayeedawarsi.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayeeda_Warsi,_Baroness_Warsi

She was the only one who seemed alert to the fact that, as Gary Younge so rightly says, the white working classes have plenty to be angry about after 12 years of New Labour. Namely, “growing insecurity, rising unemployment, child poverty and inequality that have alienated the poor and made the middle class feel vulnerable”. Add to that list inadequate, expensive, unafforable and scarce housing, too many inadequate schools that alienate and frustrate their children, a minimum wage that's not only too low but is also seen as a maximum by far too many employers, inadequate State pensions, fewer and less well funded job pension schemes, the threat of a higher retirement age, repressive trade union representation, billions blown on becoming a surveillance society, billions blown on illegal wars and support for the the Bush regime, etc, etc. All of this alongside the well-off and wealthy sections of society becoming even more wealthy as a result of this government's business-friendly and laissez-faire policies, allowing the property bubble to inflate, and so on.

So the Baroness is right – there are plenty of legitimate grievances to address in order to deal with the anger of the working classes in general, and the lower middle classes as well – not just the white sections of those who are less well-off and downright impoverished.

These working class people are hardly likely to turn to the Conservatives, or even the Lib Dems to address their problems and express their anger. So who do they turn to?
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Deborah Orr also had an excellent piece in the Guardian [G2] yesterday:

Diversity and equality are not the same thing

Racism, homophobia and sexism are on the wane, but Britain is more unequal than ever

The progressive agenda may have faltered in many respects over recent decades. But in challenging the evils of racism, homophobia and sexism, fantastic success has been achieved. Mainstream British attitudes, in the last 30 years, have been transformed. David Cameron, consummate public relations man that he is, recognises that a Conservative party that seems too male, too white, too straight, has an image problem.

Except that diehard critics of the Conservatives – people who would never vote for them – tend to dislike Cameron's party because it is seen as representing the interests of the privileged, whatever their race, gender or sexual orientation may be. Identity politics may have set out to promote equality. But the Conservative leadership has embraced not equality, but diversity.

This is social progress, of course. But it is not the progress that the left once envisaged. On the contrary, in the same time as the argument for diversity has made such strides, the increased equality that was assumed to be part of its goal, has not materialised at all. Instead, inequality in Britain is now much greater than it was prior to the success of its various "equality" campaigns.

Increased inequality is rightly understood as a consequence of the enthusiastic adoption of neoliberal economic policies, by both of the governments of the mainstream parties. But less honestly acknowledged is the fact that diversity is entirely compatible with neoliberalism. The growth stimulated by the promotion of skilled female employment, the economic advantages of immigration, the consuming power of the "pink pound" – these are the aspects of "liberation" that have been most amorously embraced by the political mainstream, in part because they chime so fortuitously with neoliberal economic goals.

Does this matter? Is it important to understand that diversity and equality are different things, and that they are sometimes even at odds with each other? After all, the rooting out of discrimination achieves social justice, whether in the name of diversity or equality.

It matters very much indeed, because the strange fruit of the confusion can be seen on Question Time tonight, personified by the leader of the British National party, Nick Griffin, who deliberately utilises the general increase in inequality to advance his anti-diversity, racist agenda. And even the very people who abhor his crude and frightening racism most find it hard to rebut his central thesis – that the white working class in Britain has had a raw deal over the last 30 years.

Rebuttal indeed is pointless. The important thing to remember is that the black working class, the female working class, the gay working class, the disabled working class and the elderly working class, have had a similarly difficult time, under Labour and under the Conservatives. Certainly all of those other groups have been lavished with attention under Labour in the form of legislation that protects their minority rights in the name of diversity, in a way that the white working class has not. But the real reason why the BNP is able to make capital out of racist assertions is because immigrants are the only group that has been overtly utilised as a tool to promote economic inequality. That's the link.

Since the Empire Windrush arrived in 1948 – the year Griffin promotes as the point when Britain's prelapsarian idyll ended – immigrant labour has been deliberately used to keep unskilled wages low. While the promotion of diversity has successfully staved off some of the most socially catastrophic consequences of such a divisive economic strategy, it has also ushered in a wrong-headed belief that immigrants are the actual cause of inequality, rather than merely part of the means of creating that highly competitive, fear-of-failure motivated, neoliberal economy that is such a splendid motor of empty "growth".

Many commentators have pointed out that under the strictures of "political correctness" the only group that can any longer be unabashedly despised is the white working class. A number of well-meaning critics suggested that with the character Vicky Pollard, the creators of Little Britain were doing just that. Some surprise was expressed when rightwinger Ferdinand Mount took up this general thesis, in his book Mind The Gap: Class In Britain Now.

But there is nothing in this to be surprised about. The application of the mores of identity politics cannot help the white working class. Even if the idea that the white working class is a special-interest cultural group that needs to be "respected" were successfully promulgated, this would advance only "diversity", and legitimise extreme economic inequality as an inescapable fact of life such as skin-colour, gender or sexual orientation.

This is exactly why the Daily Telegraph, before Karen Matthews was exposed as the kidnapper of her daughter Shannon, was at  pains t to portray Dewsbury as a vibrant community chock-full of Blitz-spirited decency, rather than an economically abandoned hellhole teeming with poverty-induced depression, mental illness, substance abuse, ignorance and desperation. It's just a sophisticated and identity-politics-informed reworking of that old saw: "The poor will always be with us."

Sure, some people will always be less rich than others. But less of a gulf between rich and poor should be a social goal because it makes us all happier, as a plethora of statistics have been marshalled to illustrate in Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's important new book, The Spirit Level.

Yet who in the political mainstream is advancing this argument? Even Barack Obama, the world's most potent embodiment of the advance of diversity, has trouble setting out, let alone winning, the equality argument.

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