Getting a Clegg-Up.
A donkey-cart ride away from Abbottabad, the lawless Northern Pakistani region where Osama Bin Laden obligingly stepped directly in front of a ‘warning shot’ from US Navy Seals, there lived a poor farming family – the Afzals.
They had lived there for generations, steeped in the traditions, religion, cultures and customs of rural Pakistan, far from the reach of expensive US programmes designed to preach democracy, respect for the rule of law, and understanding of the laws and cultures of other countries.
Poorly educated, unsuited to Western technology, they took jobs in the city in the catering industry, wielding vast pots of ‘char’. Eventually they ended up in Birmingham, England, in a close-knit Muslim/Pakistani community.
There, Mrs Afzal gave birth to a son.
What would become of that son, in this unfamiliar land, with its strange laws and unfamiliar customs?
Some 50 years later, Nick Clegg, he of the liberal bent, is much exercised by the prospects for similar poverty stricken and ill educated families. Yesterday he was addressing the Sutton Trust, he said:
“Income and social class background have a significant impact on a child’s future life chances and there have been few signs of improvement in recent decades.”
He believes that Universities ‘must open their doors to the poor’ – not by lowering their fees, as you might imagine from the reference to ‘the poor’, but by lowering their educational requirements.
You couldn’t possibly expect someone from, say, the Afzal family, to be able to study at the same level as someone from a ‘rich and privileged background’. Where would they do their homework in that poverty stricken household? What if English was their second language, and they struggled to understand the lessons? It was unfair that they should be expected to compete with those from a ‘rich and privileged background’.
Snobbery, he says, is a ‘national religion’ as millions of children from poor families are denied good jobs because of ‘class attitudes’; if that is true, it is cause for national outrage, there is no place in a modern society for the baby son of Mrs Afzal to be denied a decent job simply because of snobbery regarding his parent’s background.
Part of the reason for all this liberal hand wringing over our ‘rigid class society’ is the effect of immigration; thousands of individuals with different backgrounds, different beliefs, different customs, are struggling to live according to our laws, our language, our culture. We must make it easier for them, so the meme goes; translate the gas bill into Urdu, provide an expensive translator to tell Mrs Afzal when to ‘push’ so that baby Afzal can be born healthy, not expect baby Afzal to learn that 2 + 2 equals four if he wants to go to University…
Otherwise, so we are told, we will continue to have problems like those experienced in Rochdale, of young men from villages in the lawless north west of Pakistan, grooming young white working class girls for sex. It is our own fault, we have not done enough to help these young men to integrate, haven’t given them good enough jobs, haven’t admitted them to our Universities.
It has taken expensive and highly trained legal brains years to come up with the ‘Forced Marriages Act’; to persuade the police to gather enough evidence to prosecute the Rochdale abusers; to beat a path through the closed ghettoes of northern mill towns and break down the wall of resilience to adapting to our cultures that our ‘snobbery’ has forced these poor working class youths from Pakistan into. Those driving this ‘new liberal thinking’ have finally been shamed into accepting that it is our culture that is to blame for the troubles that currently beset us, our snobbery which has led us to this position, and we must change.
So what did happen to baby Afzal? I’m glad you asked.
He’s not in Guantanamo Bay prison accused of being an international terrorist; not shown up as a suicide bomber in dusty Yemen; has never stood accused of being a child abuser; doesn’t appear to have ever hurled a petrol bomb into a city centre shop.
Surely he must be living quietly on benefits somewhere, with three wives and umpteen children – after all, he was born 50 years before the liberals decided that it was ‘our fault’. 50 years before anyone thought of lowering the University entrance requirements. 50 years before anybody put his parent’s gas bill in Urdu. 50 years before anybody suggested that perhaps our new found Muslim community should be held accountable for their illegal acts.
Funny you should have brought him up again – step forward Nazir Afzal. Head of the Crown Prosecution Service for North West England. Highly educated lawyer. Superb legal brain. Champion of property rights, and respect for the British law. The man who put the liberal establishment to shame by exposing the effects of their ‘multi-culturalism’.
Weird that, isn’t it? How could he possibly have achieved that position in our class ridden society? Now what do you think is holding the next generation back from emulating his example? Why the sudden need for a ‘Clegg-up’? Why isn’t Nazir Afzal being lauded all over the main stream media?
-
1
May 25, 2012 at 06:38 -
Good on Nazir Afzal.
Obviously his parents were smart.
Unlike the parents of poor Shafilia Ahmed who in 2003 was brutally murdered by her parents in front of her younger siblings, and dumped in a ditch in Cumbria.
Her crime? Liking British culture.
Why on Earth do foreigners – particularly Muslims – come to Britain in the first place if they are not willing to accept the culture, especially as it affects their children who are actually born British.
I thought they left Pakistan to escape barbarism, and embrace a better life through education and cultural metamorphosis.
Their ‘honour’ is more important though – whatever it is they feel that they can call honour……….daughter wants to have a boyfriend = ‘dishonour’ – murder daughter = ‘honour’!!!
What’s more, is it not correct that behaving in such a manner automatically makes these Pakistanis racist……….my daughter’s honour is vital, but I don’t mind sexually abusing a young white girl.
As long as dicks like Nick Clegg continue to champion multi-culturalism, young girls of all races – for it usually is girls – will continue to be abused and possibly murdered.
There will also be a back-lash from the natives.
-
2
May 25, 2012 at 21:51 -
The basic answer is that one is male and the other was female. Any society which classes its females as nothing more than chattels, burdens to be rid of as soon as the dowry can be obtained, or zombies destined to follow without question a tribal way of life when the rest of the world is progressing, deserves to die out. There is no decrying the intelligence and dedication of Mr Afzal in obtaining his dreams, but one wonders what he would make of any daughter wanting to live the life of her cotemporaries in a Western town or city?
-
3
May 25, 2012 at 22:39 -
Ummm… I think the late Ms. Ahmed’s parents are being tried in court at present, therefore have not yet been formally found guilty of anything…
Just saying!
There are some success stories; individual’s overcoming extreme odds to triumph magnificently – such as Kalpana Saroj’s rise from low caste Dalit child bride to multi-millionairess – through sheer hard work and determination. Mr. Afzal is another case in point. Grim determination and sheer hard work have won him an appropriate appointment.
Another post out of the top drawer… Excellent!!
-
-
4
May 25, 2012 at 07:08 -
Admitting ill-educated people into university doesn’t achieve anything, except perhaps making it harder for academically-gifted youngsters to spread their wings.
-
5
May 25, 2012 at 07:35 -
Arguing from the particular to the general is rarely convincing.
-
6
May 25, 2012 at 08:21 -
I think I am banned so I am probably wasting my time.
No you cannot expect someone from rural Pakistan to study at the same level as an Etonian, even though they may be more intelligent. Life chances matter.
Obviously you get the odd genius who beats the odds. Self-motivated freaks. God bless ‘em.
Please stop being silly.
-
7
May 25, 2012 at 11:07 -
James – should the lame and the asthmatic have equal rights to serve in the front line of the armed services? Should the obese have equal rights to compete in the olympic 100m? Should the tone deaf have equal rights to play in the world’s best orchestras? Should the ham-fisted have equal rights to work in the finest craft workshops? Should the innumerate have equal rights to work as an accountant?
Horses for courses, James. If the education of some is inadequate to win them a place in universities, that may well reflect on the quality of primary and secondary education they were forced to endure.
-
8
May 25, 2012 at 12:11 -
I always prefer Doctors as more relevant to individuals lives.
Who would like be treated by Doctors who because they were from poor backgrounds were required to reach lower standards before they are allowed to treat you? If not why is this acceptable in any other walk of life where the effects can be as dramatic just not ncessarily as easily identified?
-
-
-
9
May 25, 2012 at 09:12 -
I am minded of an article in the guardian about a piece of educational research. The researcher asked what were the eventual outcomes for those children who came from such poor homes that they qualified for free school meals. There was one ethnic group that outperformed all others, English Chinese. Maybe the outcome is determined by family coherence, aspiration, and determination and not the ‘odd genius who beats the odds.’
-
10
May 25, 2012 at 09:39 -
The trouble with problem solving that it is easy to attach oneself to eureka solutions.
Like is very rarely like that.
Problems are often caused by lots of things, some having a big effect, many small, so it’s hard work to get the best solutions. Add in the variability of dear old humans and that eureka solution suddenly looks even less credible.
Must be very hard for a handwringing wet with little experience outside the world of Westminster. -
11
May 25, 2012 at 09:46 -
Nice one Anna,
I’ve always thought it’s how bright the individual is. It’s got nothing to do with anything else.
All the best
David
-
12
May 25, 2012 at 11:10 -
Brilliant. Only the priviliged advocate levelling down; the real go getters from the “lower” or disadvantaged advocate elitism and strive to be part of that elite.
That is why Grammar Schools were the greates engine of social mobility, and one of the reasons our establsihment strives to wipe the out. -
14
May 25, 2012 at 11:58 -
It’s a pity Clegg never had sufficient educational opportunities in his formative years – he might otherwise have learnt useful facts instead of absorbing the bleeding heart liberal shit he now dumps on us.
-
15
May 25, 2012 at 13:43 -
Whilst Clegg’s argument is debatable its obverse is undeniably true.
Were it not for the accident of his birth and privileged upbringing, one could speculate as to what role in society he would have achieved by his own ability. I would suggest flipping burgers somewhere, shoulder to shoulder with others likewise currently over promoted. Feel free to add their names yourself. -
17
May 25, 2012 at 15:18 -
Not forgetting that a lot of the privileged, are educated way above their level of intelligence.
-
18
May 25, 2012 at 15:36 -
Maybe they’re just more inclined to take the opportunities presented to them. Given that primary and secondary education is compulsory, what stops the ‘poorer’ from doing just as well as the ‘richer’?
-
19
May 25, 2012 at 18:50 -
Contacts. The old school tie, old chap.
-
20
May 25, 2012 at 19:43 -
Contacts don’t give you good academic results at school.
There’s something of an ongoing debate (for example) about Oxbridge entrants being predominantly from public and independent schools. Given that the exams sat by both public and maintained sector are the same, why the disproportionate underachievement in parts of the maintained sector? Can’t all be down to contacts – there must be a motivational element as well.
-
21
May 25, 2012 at 20:16 -
You’re right that contacts don’t improve your academic chances. I was responding to your first line in the previous comment you made. The privelegedd may be more inclined to seize opportunities, because they get more opportunities, through contacts.
-
-
-
-
-
22
May 25, 2012 at 15:55 -
Simple answer, grammar schools, in which bright children who wanted to work and receive an education unhindered by peer group pressure to conform with the uneducated, ineducable herd.
-
23
May 25, 2012 at 19:33 -
Quite right. Free grammar school education for anyone of any religion or class that met the entrance requirements was the great engine of social mobility in much of the 20th century, until short-sighted and bigoted politicians, most but sadly not all, of the ‘progressive left’ (sic) destroyed it all in in a wanton blitzkreig.
-
-
25
May 25, 2012 at 18:10 -
Nick’s announcement is quite out-of-date.
It is obvious that many “unis” have been admitting poorly-educated students and producing poorly educated graduates for many years. Most bachelor level degrees these days barely reach the standard of a 1960′s A-level.
-
26
May 26, 2012 at 02:14 -
And how effective is the Crown Prosecution Service for North West England
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }