What's wrong with Britain?

I'd hasten to say before starting that this isn't some exercise in an Australian being smug about the Mother Country. Let's face it, Australia seems to be heading in the same direction, just not as far down the road. I think. Well, I'm reasonably sure. I think.

And I know at times more can be made of stories of political correctness gone mad than is really justified, but all up there does truly appear to be a clear "signal."

First up we have Matthew Carter, a binman from Burnley, who has been told by the Pendle council to stop wearing a Cross of St George (ie the English flag) bandana because "it could be considered offensive and racist."

The national flag? Offensive and racist? To whom?

Now, as you can see from Mr Carter's photo above, he's not exactly your so-called "typical" white red-neck is he?

Ian McInery, the operational services manager for Pendle council, said that "We have made it clear to staff that they are not allowed to put stickers or flags on bin wagons or wear clothing which shows support for a particular team, group or country."

Okay, apart from the basic libertarian question to Mr McInery of just who are you to tell anybody, including your employees, that they can't show support for a "particular team, group or country," do you notice the really interesting thing going on here?

It's as if England for Mr McInery is just another country, of no special significance or provenance compared to, say, Upper Volta (or whatever that shithole is called these days. I had to use it - the best description I ever heard of the old Soviet Union was when The Economist years ago referred to it as "Upper Volta with rockets").

That the act of an Englishman - a black Englishman - in wearing the Cross of St George was qualitatively no different to the wearing of any other country's flag.

Tim Blair links to Pommygranate's open letter to the kind of insufferably overbearing minders of other people's business responsible for this nonsense.

For me, though it is hardly an original observation, the truly dangerous and insidious thing here is the increasing expectation that freedom of expression and the truth are now considered secondary and sacrificable to the greatest sin possible in our post-modern world - to cause offense.

To quote Pommygranate: "I despise your attempts to censor my right to speak, all in the name of not giving offence. Well, you offend me deeply, you mealy-mouthed jumped up middle class prick."

Now, I'm no fan of Senator Ross Lightfoot, but his "conviction" for offending some aboriginal lawyer by describing traditional aboriginal society as the most primitive on Earth, shows to what extent freedom of speech has been undermined even here.

Two things before returning to the Old Dart.

The lawyer didn't counter Senator Lightfoot's claims with any attempt at reasoned and rational argument. No, she immediately sought to silence him and to have him punished for daring to say something she disagreed with.

And how was this possible? By one of those cancers of modern society, the Equal Opportunities Commission. Maybe there were sound reasons for setting this up years ago, but if so, then it has outlived any usefulness it may have had and now seeks to justify its existence by looking for ever more marginal "abuses" to produce reports full of dodgy "research" that call for yet more government intrusion into people's lives.

And we just sit back and let it happen.

This and similar bodies are now effectively anti-social agencies, working against the best interests of society and the majority of its citizens.

Cue the Devon Racial Equality Council, funded by and affiliated to the Commission for Racial Equality.

Here is a perfect example of unelected middle class types, pursuing their irrational fixations with questions of race and "equality" with obsessive zeal, effectively taking on an anti-social role, even to the point of getting in the way of efforts to catch a rapist.

A rapist? But hang on a minute, why would inner-city progressives, unimpeachably "right" thinking, get in the way of the cops (however much they dislike and distrust these neo-fascist tools of the ruling classes) chasing some bastard man who has committed crimes against women (which is what men do, of course)?

Oh oh, there's a problem.

The man in question, Noorullah Seddiqi, is an Afghani.

So what would you do if you work for the Devon Racial Equality Council and found out that the police planned to put a reconstruction on ITV's Manhunt crime show in their efforts to catch Mr Seddiqi?

You raise fears about a possible "racial backlash" and a chief constable, (already burned by suggestions of bias), will just roll over and prefer to hinder his officers' efforts to catch a man charged with serious offenses.

And then there is this bit of insufferable arrogance from Sonia Francis-Mills, the director of the Council, "If they had contacted us earlier we may have been able to help track him down through people within the community." That is, keeping it all in house within the particular immigrant community, not the society at large (most of whom are racist bigots anyway....).

Ah, the sacred "community", the early 21st Century substitute for the "wisdom" of the noble savage and the tribe. If only the police had pleaded their case to the "community", all would have been well.

Who the hell does she think she is?

Naturally enough, the decision hasn't pleased victim support organisations.

Yvonne Traynor, of the Rape and Sexual Abuse
Support Centre, said the case set a dangerous precedent.

"I think that everybody is so afraid of being
labelled a racist that no one's taking into consideration the crimes that have
allegedly been committed here," she said.

As I say, these kinds of agencies are not only useless at producing anything beneficial for a society, they are positively harmful.

Get rid of them.