Scotland has been named the most violent country in the developed world.A United Nations report claims more than 2,000 Scots are assaulted every week - almost 10 times official police figures.The study - which does not include figures for murder, muggings or sexual assaults - claims that together, England and Wales are the second most dangerous countries.
Experts say Britain's heavy-drinking habits are to blame.
The UN claims the attacks have been fuelled by a "booze and blades" culture
in the west of Scotland with the worst offenders being males aged between 15 and 25.Violent crime has doubled in the country over the past 20 years to a level comparable with crime-ridden cities like Rio de Janeiro.
By contrast, Japan was named in the UN report as the least violent nation, followed by Italy and Portugal.
Only 0.1% of Japanese have been victims of assault compared with 3% of Scots, 2.8% in England and Wales, and 2% in America.
The study is based on phone interviews with victims of crime in 21 countries.
UN spokesman Jan Van Dijk said: "Our survey is more accurate than the official figures because there is a huge proportion of crimes that go unreported.
"We have seen a trend in Scotland and the proportion has almost doubled since 1989 and risen 1.9% in 1996. This is very significant and is a clear upward trend."
Is it any wonder, then that if our indigenous culture fails, and our Protestant Christian religion is abandoned, then immigrant cultures with traditional customs will be forced to keep to their own way of life in order to set acceptable standards and even for their own protection.RACE relations chief Trevor Phillips will warn that Britain is "sleepwalking" into New Orleans-style segregation.
In a speech this week, the head of the Commission for Racial Equality, will argue racial divides are growing, with black and Muslim ghettos emerging in urban areas.
He will claim this "nightmare" is being fuelled by the aftermath of the July 7 terror attacks in London.
And, in a stark warning to Tony Blair, Mr Phillips will tell the Prime Minister his race relations policies are failing to tackle alienation and a drift towards extremism among minorities.
On Thursday, he will tell the Manchester Council for Community Relations that the experience of Hurricane Katrina is a lesson for Britain about the dangers of failing to integrate.
He will add: "We are becoming more unequal by ethnicity. If you look closely at the campuses of our most distinguished universities you can pick out the invisible 'No blacks may enter' messages."
Mr Philips will say that because of the so-called "white flight" from the cities, parts of Britain were "literal black holes into which nobody goes without fear".
Without action, we could end up in a "New Orleans-style Britain" of "ethnic and religious communities, eyeing each other uneasily over the fences of our differences. America is not our dream but our nightmare.
"When the hurricane hits - and it could be a recession rather than a natural disaster - those communities are set up for destruction."
Northern Ireland Secretary and former anti-apartheid activist Peter Hain said the situation is "worrying".
The MP, who was born in Kenya and grew up in South Africa said: "Compared to 20 years ago, when I came to Britain, there is much more racial tolerance and much more integration.
"But there is a tendency to congregate on a residential basis by ethnic group."
Lib Dem president Simon Hughes said: "We shouldn't generalise - it isn't a crisis."
Opening a major conference in London, Trevor Phillips said difficult questions on the future of British society were going unanswered.
The build-up to the event's opening was overshadowed by a boycott by London Mayor Ken Livingstone.
Some 900 delegates are attending the two-day event which will hear from 160 speakers from around the world.
Mr Phillips said that the Commission for Racial Equality's convention would look back on 30 years of race relations action - but also bring into sharp focus critical problems building up today.
|
If we want to change Britain then
all of Britain must be part of the debate and part of the solution
Trevor Phillips |
Mr Phillips, soon to head a new equalities super-watchdog, said the challenges included fears of growing ethnic segregation and isolation in some inner cities - and little contact between white people and those of other backgrounds.
"If we truly want to create a nation at ease with its diversity, are we facing up to the challenges of the future?" he said. "How do we cope with the rising frictions between people of difference races and faiths?"
'Real politics'
Mr Phillips repeated and defended his controversial warnings following the 2005 London suicide bombings that the UK was experiencing rising segregation.
"As a nation we are becoming more ethnically segregated by residence - and inequality is being amplified by our separate lives. It is true that some areas are more integrated, but only in the sense that one black person joining an all-white tennis club integrates it.
|
We may have been too ready in
the past to focus on separate provision -
and not ready enough to ask how to get people to come together Ruth Kelly Communities Secretary |
"The real crisis lies in the areas which the middle-class minorities are leaving behind - areas which are becoming more and more ethnically concentrated and exclusive."
Mr Phillips said his warning was not made to grab headlines - but to alert people that those likely to lose out most were the very minorities stuck in these communities.
"If we want to change Britain then all of Britain must be part of the debate and part of the solution," he said.
"And that means that people of all races, all colours, all faiths and all stations in life have a role to play. This is what we mean by moving race from the margins to the mainstream - moving from protest to real politics."
The event is being boycotted by London Mayor Ken Livingstone.
Enoch Powell
Mr Livingstone, who has clashed frequently with Mr Phillips, had been expected to attend as mayor of one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world.
But in a letter to the CRE chief, Mr Livingstone said Mr Phillips was using inflammatory language and alarming headlines which would damage community relations.
One conference session entitled 'Rivers Of Blood: did Enoch Powell get it right?' was dropped before the event opened.
The CRE said it was disappointed by the snub and said that the mayor's criticism was part of a sustained campaign against the commission.
Ruth Kelly, the Communities and Local Government Secretary, opened the conference saying ministers were now asking whether too much attention had been given to individual minorities rather than to projects to build unity in society.
"We may have been too ready in the past to focus on separate provision - and not ready enough to ask how to get people to come together," said Ms Kelly.
"It is not cultural diversity itself which is being questioned. The issue is one of balance between preserving a distinctive identity and closer integration.
"We must respect difference but this must not been at the expense of having a society and local communities without a common purpose."
Tony Blair has lavished praise on David Cameron for his refusal to exploit the issue of immigration since he became Tory leader.
The Prime Minister abandoned party political rivalries to call for a mature debate on multiculturalism.
He said: "It is great that in British politics today no mainstream party plays the race card. It is not conceivable, in my view, that this leader of the Conservative Party would ever misuse the debate on immigration.
"And that is both a tribute to him and to the common culture of tolerance we have established ... There will naturally be debates about the rules for migration - what they should be and how they are enforced.
"But I don't think in this country there's any appetite for turning such a debate into an attack - explicit or implied - on immigrants."
Mr Blair's comments are in stark contrast to his accusation at the last election that, under Michael Howard, the Tories played on fears over asylum and immigration. He said then: "The Tory party have gone from being a one-nation party to being a one-issue party."
A spokesman for Mr Cameron said
last night: "It's important in
politics that people are constructive and work together when they
agree. But there will be plenty on times when we disagree with the
Prime Minister."
Tony Blair has told immigrants they have a "duty to integrate" and said immigrants should stay away unless they are prepared to accept Britain's traditional tolerance of other faiths.
The Prime Minister said it was "plain common sense" to ban face veils in jobs that depend on communication, dismissed suggestions that sharia law should be adopted anywhere in Britain and called on mosques that excluded women to "look again at their practices".
He also announced a crackdown on public money for ethnic minority groups that did not promote integration and urged faith schools to build bridges with other religions.
In a strongly-worded lecture on integration, Mr Blair mounted a wide-ranging defence of multiculturalism, but insisted that its success depended on Britons of all backgrounds respecting the nation's "essential values".
He singled out a "new and virulent form of ideology associated with a minority of our Muslim community" for threatening racial harmony in the United Kingdom.
"Most Muslims are proud to be British and Muslim and are thoroughly decent, law-abiding citizens. But it is a problem with a minority of that community, particularly originating from certain countries."
He drew a parallel between white supporters of the British National Party and Muslims who shun integration. Mr Blair complained that public money had been too easily handed out to organisations "tightly bonded around religious, racial or ethnic identities".
He added: "In the future, we will assess bids from groups of any ethnicity or any religious denomination, also against a test, where appropriate, of promoting community cohesion and integration."
The Prime Minister said that "equality of respect and treatment for all citizens" was a key British value.
He spoke of the frustration of some Muslim women at being barred from certain mosques and insisted: "Those that exclude the voice of women need to look again at their practices."
Mr Blair said that no British citizen could legitimately expect to stand outside the law as set down by Parliament. "There is no question of the UK allowing the introduction of religious law in the UK."
He said it was important faith schools taught "tolerance and respect" for other religions and announced that the Department for Education and Skills would examine ways of ensuring that happened. He added: "We will also encourage all faith schools to construct a bridge to other cultures by twinning with schools from another faith."
The Prime Minister re-entered the controversy over women wearing face veils by pointing out that Jack Straw's disclosure that he asked for them to be removed in constituency surgeries had been backed by the Mufti of Egypt, its interpreter of Islamic law.
"It is really is a matter of plain common sense that when it is an essential part of someone's work to communicate directly with people, being able to see their face is important."
Mr Blair defined British values as "belief in democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, equal treatment for all, respect for this country and its shared heritage".
Dominic Grieve, the Tories' community cohesion spokesman, described
the speech as a remarkable turnaround. "Many of the problems ... he
addresses are at least in part the consequence of a philosophy of
divisive multiculturalism and political correctness that has been
actively promoted by the Labour Party over many years at both national
and local government levels," he said.
FEBRUARY 20th 2007
Today we were
treated to an examplen of the twisted logic of those who think that
multiculturalism means 'anything goes'. A proposal has emerged from a
government department studying the problems of integration, that
immigrant workers and spouses should be required to learn English and
to know some basic English before they came to live here. As someone
who 30 years ago went to live in France for over 15 years I find this
reasonable - I would not have dreamt of doing that without speaking
fluent if initially grammatically substandard French. But today we
heard spokespersons for immigrants claiming this was absurd on the
grounds that we now have a multicltural and multilingual society!
If logic and reason
are to have any meaning, that should mean that people should be
prepared to be, at the very least, knowledgable of the language,
culture law and history of the country in which they choose to live and
which is good enough to accept them and allow them to benefit from its
services, facilities, job opportunities and protection. I think the
proposal is long overdue.
FEBRUARY 14th 2008
It is a year since
I had anything new to add here, but two events give rise to quite a lot
of feeling in the UK public.
The first in the
Archbishop's lecture to some legal eagles that was overheard by the
press, in which he was understood to have said that elements of Sharia
Law would inevitably, eventually, be incorporated into UK law.
Unsurprisingly this caused a rumpus - see SHARIA
LAW
IN THE UK
The second is the
proposal by Muslims in Oxford that a mosque in that city should
broadcast through loudspeakers the traditional Musllim call to prayer.
I can't think of anything more certain to irritate the rest of the
citizens, including all other religions and agnostics and atheists,
than that.
FEBUARY 15th 2008
This morning's Woman's Hour (BBC Radio 4) on Multiculturalism is the
subject of comments in the ETHNICITY
file
FEBRUARY 8th 2010
Sikhs should be allowed to wear their ceremonial daggers - known as Kirpans - to school and other public places, Britain's first Asian judge has said.
There have been a number of cases of Sikhs being refused entry to venues because they wear the Kirpan or other religious artefacts.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8500712.stm
A comment to the above news item says:
"It is the right of
every
young girl and boy to be educated at the
school of their choice.
For
him or her to be refused admission on that
sort of ground, as far as I'm concerned, is quite wrong.
It would seem to me that if a school has
rules on dress, or the carriage of knives, with which a student
disagrees, then it would not be the 'school of their choice'. It is
impossible to insist on choice of schools unless there are schools to
choose from. To choose a school, or even a country, in order to change
it to your own way of thinking and living, is not an idea that makes a
lot of sense to me, let alone a right.
OCTOBER 17th 2010
Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, announces Multiculturalism has
failed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11559451
Her critics say her remarks are "Unhelpful". They also happen to be
true.
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