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Is it really racist to want an English-speaking cab driver?

Wednesday, 3rd February 2010

Rod Liddle says that the outrage directed at a taxi firm for advertising ‘English spoken here’ serves only to strengthen white working-class resentment — and the BNP

And it is a resentment which will find its outlet when the Neanderthals of the BNP next come a-calling. This is no joke, and no idly made allegation; you talk to the local white population in Dagenham or Keighley or Stoke, those areas where the BNP has made considerable inroads, and you will find that it is not an immigrant population which arouses their ire, per se; it is the simple and sometimes wrong-headed but often quite correct notion that everything is stacked against them, the white working class. That whatever they do is wrong, even speaking that awful thing called English. That even to aspire to speaking English, or to think it might be a good idea, seeing that we all live here, in England, that itself is not on really. Let everyone speak their own language and be encouraged to do so; let there be no imperialistic linguistic hegemony.

There are lots of drivers from ethnic minorities where I live — Poles, Afghans, Iraqis, Czechs. One of them, an Afghan, the other night was driving me home from the station through the moonlit, excruciatingly English countryside of the Wiltshire downs. We had talked on the way about the mujahedin, the desolation of the war, the corrupt government of Hamid Karzai, and also how Swindon Town were in a false position challenging for the playoffs in League One, how they should be down somewhere near the middle of the table.

Suddenly an animal skittered across the road in front of us, tearing from copse to copse, tawny, low-slung, nimble and determined in the headlights, like a cool and very sussed dog. The driver looked at me in wonderment as I said, ‘Muntjac’. He pulled over to the side of the road, stopped the car and said: ‘Tell me the name of the animal again.’ And I told him, muntjac, a sort of deer. A deer which came here a long time ago, turn of the 20th century, and quickly adapted. I love muntjac. He wrote the word ‘muntjac’ down in a notebook and looked up at me smiling: ‘I am still learning,’ he said, ‘and I want to learn.’ Good for you, mate, good for you. But don’t tell those people down in Southampton.

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Comments Post comment

C Cole

February 4th, 2010 1:04pm Report this comment

Great article. Reading the conclusion, one feels that "muntjac" would be a good shorthand for the sort of people - or should that be "sheeple"? Sorry - who take such immense, self-righteous pleasure in bleating that someone or something is "raaaaacccissst" on the slightest pretext. So slight, in fact, that on closer examination there turns out to be no rational pretext whatever for their no doubt heartfelt cries.

Jez

February 4th, 2010 3:24pm Report this comment

It's too late Rod.

The runnaway train is going to hit those buffers i reckon.

Most things revolutionary that have been given to us via the educated minority of the class of 68' has been proven to be shaky at the best and outright crap at the worst.

Architecture, foreign policy regarding Africa especially (Zimbabwe?), Industrial neglect, subversion of culture / heritage / tradition..

-then there's this multicultural thing.

Irreversable- and with an infinate social ripple effect.

david smith 1

February 4th, 2010 4:22pm Report this comment

I asked an indignant middle aged liberal exactly what was racist about saying English spoken here. Cue more blustering indignation and a final cry of " I am not racist!"
No logical argument. Just unreason and blind emotion. There really is no hope any more. They are all raving mad.

Alfred the OK

February 5th, 2010 11:22am Report this comment

It's all too late. As per usual, the total over reaction by the hand-wringers has lead to more marginalisation of the white indigenous population, and given yet another open goal to the BNP.

C Cole

February 5th, 2010 5:57pm Report this comment

@ david smith 1

That's why the result of the next general election is potentially so important. I understand why you say there's no hope, but if there's ever going to be a cultural shift away from the idiocies of the New Labour era it has to be reflected in the country at large turning away from the Harpersons of this world and towards something more sensible and realistic. As other commentators have pointed out, Cameron and Co can't afford to debate Broon and Co on their own terms - they have to signal to the electorate that theirs is a different approach altogether. The problem with that, of course, is that Labour has spent its years in power building up a huge client state at taxpayers' expense. But there are a lot of people out there waiting for the Tories to send out the right signals.

OldS.B.

February 7th, 2010 9:28am Report this comment

I actually resent being in a cab where all the radio/phone conversations are in some foreign tongue. IF I were paranoid, I could imagine that an ambush was being laid for me.... But simply as an Army pensioner, and OAP, I do feel extremely uncomfortable with it. I have no argument with the US insistence that 'If you want to live and work here, you speak our tongue!' Why should a patient in one of our hospitals be able to require an interpretor for doctors' rounds? Or for any other dealings with local or national authorities? And NO, I have never, nor will I be, a member or voter/supporter of the BNP. Just an old Englishman - and proud to be so!

Geoff Miller

February 8th, 2010 9:11am Report this comment

For too long now the cry of "racist" has been a form of Mace. Spray the word around and everyone falls down. Discussion over.

It has been used to provide cover for mass migration, multiculturalism, Islamic Jihad, the breakdown of British society and the oppression of the indigenous British.

Its effectiveness is now greatly diminished as are the ad hominem insults thrown at BNP members as being Neanderthals, thugs, nazis etc. that people like Liddle must utter in order to keep their bosses sweet - and their jobs.

The British working class, and many in the middle class, have had enough. More than enough. Now we are getting angry.

It's BNP for me - no matter what you call me. There is NO other party that represents the British people.

It is the ONLY honest political party in the UK. Other parties are either stuffed with Marxists (and we all know about the millions who died in Marxist genocides in the last century) or global capitalists who think we are all just "economic units". That is when they aren't busy fiddling their expenses, taking backhanders or engaged in postal voting fraud, gerrymandering and spin.

And that is the REAL scandal!

stephen maybery

February 9th, 2010 11:20am Report this comment

Racism is the designer sin of choice amongst the metropolitan elite. And on this topic the elite are as ignorant of the facts as they are on most other things. All societies are racist to one degree or another, and I should know as I have lived amongst enough of them. Racism is a natural facit of the human condition and can no more be legislated against than one can pass laws benning flatulence, though Harriet Harman would probably give it a go.

Philip, London

February 9th, 2010 12:08pm Report this comment

Last time I got into a cab at Balham (from an offfice known affectionately by myself and friends as 'Taliban Taxis' - you'll know why if you know it), I got a lecture from the driver on how the Government 'shouldn't be spending all the bloody money on the Afghanistan, innit?'.

By the time he managed to get me home (I ended up providing the directions eventually, after his GPS gave up the ghost) it felt like I'd been on a trip to the Kandahar Valley and back, not to the top of Streatham Hill.

A. MacAulay

February 14th, 2010 8:49am Report this comment

If a taxi driver could earn enough to buy a house, start a family and put the kids through school and go on holiday abroad at least once a year, then foreigners wouldn't have a chance, would they?

You want English? Pay more.

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