Blears takes on the MCB

TGF UKIP

Can't wait for Fergus' post!

adrian drummond

I'm no fan of Blears but would support this move of hers all the way. Pity the government had not taken a more robust stance with the MCB in recent years, thereby preventing the current position.

mac

Good for Hazel Blears. You're right, Dispiritingly, there'll be a conspicuous lack of support from her pusillanimous colleagues. It's a cert that slippery Straw will prevaricate in his usual manner and and Miliband will weasel-word any statement he makes. Peter Wilby's open support for Daud Abdullah will doubtless set the pattern for the lefty fifth columnists:

http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2009/04/british-bald-wine-war-grey
(see the 3rd segment).

David

"She is the embodiment of the decent left."

She really is not. If anything, she's the embodiment of the vicious, class-obsessed, nannying, bitter and resentful to success leftie we have all come to know so well. She's right on this particular issue, but still a nasty piece of work.

Hawkeye

Good grief! For once Hazel's doing the right thing. My opinion of her has just improved massively (she was starting from a very low base).

Roger Thornhill

Maybe you should alter the statement to "on this occasion she is the embodiment of the decent parliamentarian". This has nothing to do with her being "Left", in fact Authoritarians (and that includes Lefties) sit more comfortably with Islamists (q.v. Livingstone) in more areas than they would admit to themselves.

However it is long overdue to call the MCB on their stances. All too often they make mealy-mouthed platitudes about "innocents" when there are those who consider any non-Muslim quite the opposite. They don't fool me but they have had a pretty good run in far too many corners.

AndyLeeds

They should have told the MCB to go stuff themselves years ago. Sick of all this pandering to a marginal pressure group. Muslims should realize they are British first and Muslim second. Time they grew up.

strapworld

This IS a courageous step for a Labour politician. BUT is it just fluff before the local and EU elections?

If not then why have the Labour Government authorised the ridiculous fire brigade uniform with a turban, headscarf and skirt? That was just playing to the gallery (however small that gallery is!)

If Ms Blears is being honest then she will have the vast majority of British people on her side.

Dr Abdullah needs to learn that his is a minority which by its actions wants to control us all! and they will not.

He should be told SUE!

Michael Booth

Go Hamster Go!!!!

Verity

Adrian Drummond - Pity the government allowed it to exist.

What does the gobby, incident-prone Inayat have to say about this?

JohnAnt

Credit where it's due. I dislike Blears, but she's got guts to face down the awful MCB.
Interesting to see all the Labour MPs and ministers lining up behind her. Not.

Fergus Pickering

I refuse to rise to TGF's bait, except to say I TOLD YOU SO. But why is it particularly courageous. The worst that can happen is that the lovely Hazel will be branded racist. But, as I have said before, most of us who are old enough to have formed our own opinions are racist, atleast according to the definition now in vogue. We prefer our own people to foreigners. It is a natural thing, we opine, to prefer those we know and understand to the stranger who stands outside our gates. Or nowadays inside. The Scots hate/dislike/don't much care for the English. Most Europeans find the French get on their pip. Of course there are now ADDITIONAL and very serious, cogent reasons for disliking and fearing muslims, not ebery muslim, but muslims in the round. A substantial proportion of them are, after all, out to kill us. We wish they would go away, do we not? We wish they would go away to onwe of the FIFTY-SEVEN countries that espouse their ways, for instance (and this way have special weight with the divine Hazel) locking up their women, killing their women, throwing acid in the faces of their women, marrying their women off in childhood to hiorrible old men, mutilating their women etc etc, and leave our country to us and our silly notions of freedom, democracy, respect for the law etc etc. And Hazel, it appears, is on our side, unlike her fellow international socialists. Welcome aboard, dear lady. One sinner that repenteth and all that.

David Ossitt

David

You are right a very nasty nasty piece of work.

AndyLeeds.

British first and Muslim second.

Are they? I think most of them are foreigners, in every sence of the word.

Heidi Gloom

Opportunism. She’s noticed the change in the arc of the pendulum of awareness. She is dipping her toe into the pool of piranha’s to see if there are enough who are prepared not to bite the legs of opportunity off. Anyway I thought she was now known as Hazel Blearkat!

Nicholas

Fergus, the English are perhaps amongst the last people on earth that it is acceptable to discriminate against whether by the pejorative epiphets of the Left, the legislative consequences of devolution or the regional impositions of the EUSSR. It is perhaps a measure of the tolerance and goodwill of the English, I hesitate to describe it as apathy, that they generally accept this treatment and that there has not arisen an armed resistance to the oppression.

Verity

Something has to be done about this ignorant, illiterate understanding of the word "racist". (I suspect Lord Rumba of Rio knows how race is defined - i.e., genetically, thus Islam is a willingly entered into belief system, not a "race"). Caucasians cannot be "racist" against each other.

There are only six (I believe) races in the whole of humanity. That is around 5bn people have the characteristics of one genetic strain. Calling the French "Froggies" cannot be racist as they are the same race as us.

It is this manipulative rendering of language meaningless that is one of the major crimes of this vile, authoritarian, thought fascist, heavy fisted regime. I wish immense ill fortune to every one of them. (I might give Hazel Blears a pass if she is true to her word.)