0040 Hrs GMT
London
Saturday 25 July 2009
It is a very strange news item indeed.
The BBC is definitely losing its touch. Had it a touch before?!
Putting on their online news site an item based on a lazy programme hosted by the in-house family entrepreneur David Dimbleby is not good enough. In fact it is an insult to the people who have paid the licence fee.
In future, the licence fee may be paid far less regularly than has been the case for decades.
One reason for the BBC’s losing the licence fee monopoly is that the Corporation is becoming ridiculously incompetent.
The BBC ought to have known better than to spread the fantasy that the East London people needed an arm-chair sloppy programme to be told about life in East London this week.
President Barack Obama has waded deep into an increasingly bitter race row by saying that a white police officer "acted stupidly" in arresting a renowned black Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates, after he forced the door of his own home.
The president's additional comments about a long history of police racism amid accusations that one of the country's most prominent African-American scholars was detained only because he is black has dampened enthusiasm for claims that Obama's election takes America "post-racial".
Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct after neighbours called the police when they saw him and a black taxi driver attempting to force the jammed front door of his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
What transpired is disputed but after producing identification to show that he was at his own house, a row ensued in which Gates demanded an officer's name and badge number and accused him of racial profiling. The police sergeant then arrested him for disorderly conduct.
"This is what happens to black men in America!" Gates yelled to a crowd outside his house as he was handcuffed. Charges were later dropped.
"The Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home," he said. "What I think we know, separate and apart from this incident, is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. And that's just a fact."
Obama had earlier lightened the mood by wondering what would happen if he were trying to break in to his own home.
"Here, I'd get shot," he said of the White House.
But Obama's comment was also taken as an observation about the assumptions white police officers make about black men in responding to reports of criminal behaviour.
Gates said he was pleased with the president's support.
"I think it was brilliant," he said in an interview with the broadcaster Tavis Smiley. "It is a great speech about race, and race relations, particularly between black people and white people at the beginning of the 21st century."
Gates said the arrest made him aware of how minorities are vulnerable "to capricious forces like a rogue policeman".
But the police officer at the centre of the row, Sergeant James Crowley, told a Boston radio station that he won't be apologising and that it is "disappointing that he [Obama] waded into what should be a local issue".
"I know what I did was right," he said.
Other officials were prepared to apologise to Gates, including the mayor of Cambridge, Denise Simmons, who called him to say that the arrest was "regrettable and unfortunate". The state governor, Deval Patrick, said he was troubled and upset over the incident.
Gates has won considerable support from other academics, some of whom have said that there is a mistaken belief among some white Americans that the country is moving beyond racial issues after Obama's election.
Gates agrees.
"I thought the whole idea that America was post-racial and post-black was laughable from the beginning. There is no more important event in the history of black people in America than the election of Barack Obama ... but that does not change the percentage of black men in prison, the percentage of black men harassed by racial profiling," he told the New America Foundation.
"There haven't been fundamental structural changes in America. There's been a very important symbolic change and that is the election of Barack Obama. But the only black people who truly live in a post-racial world in America all live in a very nice house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue [the White House]."
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~21~RS~)
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His janitor should have abused him by putting his janitor boot, there, where the sun don't shine.
The guy is a moron.
His facile and plainly insincere sound bite will offend REAL victims everywhere.
Vile is the only word for him.
We have to weed out the roots of this problem, Freemason Walt Disney has been promoting sex under our noses for years with their subliminal messages, and silly us have been feeding it to our kids,
I know the link here for the three of them is Freemasonary, not at local level but up there at Illuminati level (33rd degree)
But with a Gov't who are heavily involved with freemasonary what chance have we got ? And please don't post a comment saying The Pope or the black pope (Adolfo Nickolas) have nothing to do with Freemasonary, because it will only show you have not done your research.
And since this is about Galloway, surely he should name and shame the individual?
Giving a bad name to school jannies if you ask me.
he cant be faulted for his timing, as you read about many who have bottled it up for years sadly there are others who take it to the grave and some who have let it force them into an early grave, i dont think he would stoop so low as to lie about somthing like that, but then again, nothing would surprise me about this moron!
he needs to come out with times and a name, after taking the 1st step, hewill have to walk on! that may be where he is believed fully!