The BBC is quick to air grievances expressed about groups lobbying politicians…say the food industry or energy companies…but it seems they aren’t immune to a bit of arm twisting as they go nuclear to defend their gravy train license fee…..as Douglas Carswell points out in The Empire Strikes Back:

The magnificent Andrew Bridgen MP has tabled an amendment to the Deregulation Bill to make non-payment of the BBC license fee a civil, rather than a criminal offence. And quite right, too.

Now the £3.6 billion a year BBC empire has struck back.

In an unintentionally funny “briefing note” sent to naughty MPs minded to back the amendment, the BBC complains that “the BBC cannot turn off services for those who do not pay the licence fee”.

A ‘briefing note’ to MPs?

Perhaps, just like Prince Charle’s letters as demanded by the Guardian, we should be allowed to see all BBC ‘briefing notes’ to politicians….independent?  My backside.

Did you know that Miliband was going to hold a referendum on Europe?

If not you can’t have been listening to the BBC who trumpeted this apparent fact all day yesterday.

There does seem to be some confusion even amongst BBC journos about the meaning of Miliband’s little pledge.

John Pienaar, surprisingly perhaps,  drew a deep breath and actually criticised Miliband, saying that the….

‘Ed Miliband promise is extraordinarily tangled and is not meant to mean what it seems to mean’.

He later went on to say that Miliband’s plan was ‘incoherent’.

Contrast that with Nick Robinson who seems to lean ever more Labourwards these days:

Labour and Europe – is that clear now?

Robinson tells us that the message Miliband wants to get over is:

A message of reassurance to big business that a future Labour government will, unlike the Tories, not put Britain’s EU membership at risk.

At the same time, a message of reassurance to the wider electorate that no further powers will be given to Brussels without them getting a say in a referendum.

Is it though? That all sounds a bit pat and thought out.  Isn’t the message purely one that Miliband wants to stay in Europe and has taken it upon himself to make that decision….by himself….dodging the inconvenient problem of allowing the ‘People’ to have their democratic say on this weighty matter.

Miliband wants his cake and to eat it….stay in Europe but also give the diminishing hope of that long promised referendum that so many people want…..and thereby maybe win over a few gullible voters.

Robinson tells us that:

The result is nuanced and will be torn into by the Tories and their friends in the press who will claim there is now a simple choice between those who will guarantee you an in/out vote and those who won’t.

‘Nuanced’?  No it’s not, its quite clear as said….Miliband, the millionaire elitist, has decided the people get no vote.

As for the ‘Tories and their friends in the press’ comment…guess we know where Robinson is coming from here…..the tone of that suggesting any criticism of Miliband is ill-founded based on political prejudice rather than the fact Miliband has made a huge error….as Labour man Dan Hodges [Tory friend in the Press?] admits:

Ed Miliband hasn’t shown strength over Europe. He’s lost control of the narrative

Yesterday, watching Ed Miliband’s shambolic Euro referendum announcement, it finally occurred to me. Labour has no narrative. Or rather, it has no coherent narrative. And the elements of a narrative it does have bear absolutely no relation to reality.

Labour has no clarity of vision. That’s why there’s no settled narrative. There’s nothing to build a narrative around.

“We’re still just casting about,” one Labour MP fold me yesterday. “Cost of Living’s been tried and dumped. The Squeezed Middle’s been tried and dumped. Watch. There’s going to be a bit on child care and a bit on housing and then he’s going to run back to health. And when the Labour leader circles the wagons around the NHS you know the game’s up.”

Robinson was clearly reading the runes wrong and then he rounds off with this:

[Miliband] will invite voters to choose between a government led by David Cameron which he’ll claim would be obsessed with Europe and riven by splits over it and one led by him which would focus on what most people care about more – the economy, living standards and the NHS.

Odd how any BBC analysis always manages slip in critical comments about the Tories (obsessed with Europe…riven by splits) whilst Labour is associated with the good stuff….NHS, building the economy (ha ha ha) and living standards.

‘A 2009 poll by Gallup found that British Muslims have zero tolerance towards homosexuality. “None of the 500 British Muslims interviewed believed that homosexual acts were morally acceptable,” the Guardian reported in May that year.’  Mehdi Hasan

Dan Hodges in the Telegraph asks:

Why did the BBC censor a debate about gay Muslims?

The programme was conducting a live debate last night in the Birmingham Mosque, in which people are invited to submit video clips on various current affairs issues, which are then debated by an invited panel.

One of the questions was from Asifa Lahore, who self-describes as “Britain’s first and only gay Muslim drag queen”. The question Asifa wanted answered was: “When will it be accepted to be Muslim and gay?”

The question was shown, and then just as the panel appeared to be preparing to debate the issue, the BBC presenter Rick Edwards announced, “We were going to debate that question but today after speaking to the mosque they have expressed deep concerns with having this discussion here… so we’ll move on to our next question.”

The program is called “Free Speech”. Its website boasts that “Britain is a democracy where we can say what we want. So let’s say it”.

Let’s say it? Let’s say it unless you’re a gay Muslim appearing on the BBC.

Dan Hodges obviously never watches the BBC  [As indicated by this article: The BBC isn’t anti-Tory. It’s anti-government] as he finishes with this:

It’s not the BBC’s job to pander to censorship or prejudice. The corporation has some serious explaining to do.

And as Raheem Kassam noted:

No one batted an eye-lid. Even amongst the predominantly ‘liberal left’ panel, no one said a word. Not the Liberal Democrat peer, not the Huffington Post editor, not the left-wing comedian, and not even the transgender rights activist.

All appeasers and apologists….the old cultural cringe….or as ‘Jim Watford’ says in the comments to Kassam’s article:

From the Telegraph at 18:42:

David Cameron condemns ‘barbaric’ missile attack on Israel

Prime Minister David Cameron condemns “indiscriminate” attack as 50 missiles from Gaza Strip fired into southern Israel during official visit

David Cameron tonight condemned a “barbaric” missile attack on Israel that struck on the first day of his visit to the country.

From the BBC at 18:56, their Frontpage report:

Prime minister’s belief in Israel ‘unbreakable’

Way, way down at the bottom the BBC manages to refer to the barrage:

In front of the assembled members of the press Mr Cameron condemned rocket attacks from Gaza which Mr Netanyahu had referred to in his opening remarks of the news conference.

And that was that….no quotes about barbaric indiscriminate targeting of civilians and children.

The BBC does deign to give us a further report, at 22:15…tucked away in the world news as a small headline….this is what they tell us Cameron said:

British Prime Minister David Cameron, on a visit to Israel, condemned the rocket attack.

“They are a reminder once again of the importance of maintaining and securing Israel’s future and the security threats that you face, and you have Britain’s support in facing those security threats,” he said.

And that was that….no quotes about barbaric indiscriminate targeting of civilians and children.

Bit quicker off the ball reporting an Israeli air response….as I type at 23:32:

Israeli planes hit Gaza in response to rocket strikes

Funnily enough that makes it to the Frontpage unlike the rocket barrage.

This though does feature on the Frontpage in a large box of its own:

Features

Suburbia to Syria

The Briton who drove a truck bomb into a prison

On 6 February, Abdul Waheed Majeed, from Crawley in West Sussex, drove a truck bomb into the gates of a prison in Syria. Does his death represent everything that the government fears about radicalisation on a foreign battlefield?

But was he a violent jihadist, just waiting for his chance – either at home or abroad?

“My brother was not a terrorist. My brother was a hero,” says Hafeez Majeed.

“If I could put it like this, if my brother had been a British soldier and there were British people in that prison, I know he would have been awarded the posthumous Victoria Cross.

“My brother paid the full price with his life for what he did. He was not a threat to the British public and never has been a threat to the British public.”

The BBC…you can rely on it to glorify and excuse the Jihadists.

As David has mentioned the BBC has been particularly fawning about Bob Crow so far….he is presented as a roguish lad with none of the tough  realities behind his actions given any credence…..Thatcher was immediately, within minutes of her death, being denounced as divisive and hated, Crow is apparently ‘loved and respected’.  Pienaar has been glossing over all the complaints targeted at Crow….his high salary, living in a council house, his holiday as the union was about to strike….Crow was just a loveable rogue.

Ken Livingstone only had nice things to say about him according to the BBC…..

Mr Johnson’s predecessor Ken Livingstone told the BBC the “endless strain of being a media hate figure” may have taken a toll on Mr Crow.

And Crow wasn’t a serious threat to anything he was much misrepresented by those with an agenda….

Mr Crow’s class-based politics made him a regular cartoon villain for some newspapers.

The nearest the BBC comes to the truth is in this ‘Magazine’ article:

Bob Crow, who has died at the age of 52, was an intensively divisive figure. But he was easily the best-known trade unionist in the UK.

To his admirers he was a working-class hero and fighter who stood up for his members and won. To his enemies he was a bully who inflated his workers’ wages by bringing misery upon commuters.

In the eyes of his opponents, Crow’s achievements were gouged by exploiting his position in order to inflict misery on travellers. But to his members it was a testament to his tactical acumen, negotiating skills and mastery of industrial relations.

But such views were not reflected in the news and other coverage as I listened today.

The Telegraph gets the tone about right:

Bob Crow – obituary

Bob Crow was the belligerent RMT leader whose tough tactics were loved by union members but hated by commuters

He had John Prescott, a former official of the union, expelled for failing to renationalise the railways, then resigned from the board of Transport for London after the exasperated mayor, Ken Livingstone, urged workers to cross the RMT’s latest picket line. In 2004 Labour expelled the RMT from the party.

But what about cuddly Ken, did he always think such nice thoughts about Bob?  From the Guardian:

Tube strike: how Bob got on with Ken

I think that the right to strike is our second most important right after the right to vote. What appals me about the RMT is that by misusing the strike weapon, basically as a bullying technique rather than to resolve a genuine and irreconcilable difference, they undermine that. It certainly would not be right, I don’t think, to impose on people in Unite and the TSSA the loss of their right to strike because a small handful of people on the RMT executive are behaving rather more like a protection racket than a proper industrial union.

Not as if the BBC didn’t know that…from 2009:

Even the former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said in 2007 the RMT executive behaved more like a “protection racket than a proper industrial union”.

So far they have managed to avoid repeating Ken’s previous thoughts today.

An irony is that it may have been privatisation of the railways that gave Crow so much power, the BBC tells us….though he surely would have had more over a nationalised monopoly:

Ralph Darlington, professor of employment relations at Salford University, says the union’s confrontational style can be traced back to rail privatisation.

“I think we could characterise the RMT as one of the most militant and left-wing unions in Britain. The politicisation has come about in the face of the challenges which they feel they have faced.”

What of Crow’s communist ideals?:

“When I see Ronaldo earns half a million quid a month and people say train drivers are greedy working nine hours downstairs in them temperatures – nah, I think it’s the rate for the job. The reality is it’s a jungle out there.”

So its dog eat dog and damn everyone else as long as his union members get their pay rise.

The boy done good but there was a price to pay…..the BBC loved his tough negotiating stance ignoring the threats and just telling us how wonderfully successful his last minute negotiation were…the reality was a bit different, not quite so romantic:

Often his first step was a strike ballot, with negotiations only on the eve of disruption, if then. He once told West End retailers who warned that another Tube strike would put them out of business that they would be “casualties of war”.

Retailers…pah…who needs them…they just feed the greed,  materialism and consumerism that is destroying society and the planet.  No wonder the BBC likes him.

Nick Robinson at least recognises that Bob has been transformed into a second ‘Saint Bob’…..though he thinks it is more to do with Crow’s admirable belligerence and entrenched opinions rather than what is more likely…the romantic appeal amongst the BBC trots of someone who opposed the Bosses……

Bob Crow: Public enemy number one or national treasure?

No-one, of course, likes to speak ill of the dead but there are other reasons why Bob Crow may appear to have been transformed overnight from public enemy number one to a national treasure.

This was a man who knew what he thought, knew whose side he was on and knew who the enemy were – in an era when that can be said of a shrinking number of people in public life.

The BBC were quick to fill the airwaves with critical comment about C4’s ‘Benefits Street’….not so quick to mention this dangerous programme from C4:

Channel 4 News removes video report from their website after it emerges four of the five ‘normal’ people questioned were from the same marketing agency

Channel 4 News has removed a video from its website after it emerged that four of the five people it interviewed about police relations in Brixton were employed by the same marketing company.

It was deleted from the Channel 4 News website on Sunday after questions were raised over how representative the video could be when the majority of those interviewed were employed by youth marketing company Livity.

The report featured five interviews with apparently random members of the local community, all of whom were critical of relations between the public and the police.

Only one of the four interviewees, youth development mentor Naomi Brown, was credited with having a connection with Livity, with the fifth person interviewed being Lee Jasper – the former chief race advisor to London Mayor Ken Livingstone.

The video was presented by Channel 4 News reporter Jordan Jarrett-Bryan, a former professional wheelchair basketball player who was previously youth editor of the Livity-run publication Live Magazine.

Why is such programming dangerous?  Because it encourages the view that Black people are always the victims of racism whether it comes to not getting something they want or policing or being England captain.

Conservative MP Rob Wilson condemned the broadcaster, saying: ‘This is very disappointing from Channel 4 News. A distorted report could have been very unhelpful, indeed inflammatory, and I hope the people concerned have learnt an important lesson.’

Perhaps the BBC does not report this telling story because they don’t want to give the impression that much of the ‘discontent’ is activist driven and hyped.

But C4 isn’t alone in promoting that grievance driven thinking…Macpherson of course is the most significant purveyor of that excuse…but the BBC isn’t above claiming or allowing the thought to develop that Black people are victims of racism, and, if not obvious racism, then it must be unintentional, unwitting or unconscious racism.  Sol Campbell claims the FA is unconsciously racist…as he has no evidence of actual racism….a Kafkaesque accusation that is impossible to disprove and is used solely to abuse white people….ironically stereotyping them in a racist fashion.

Victoria Derbyshire had Sol Campbell on today to explain his recent comments…she wasn’t exactly hard hitting in her questions allowing him to get away with comments that clearly contradict what he claims.

Campbell originally said this, as reported by the BBC:

“I believe if I was white, I would have been England captain for more than 10 years – it’s as simple as that.”

He’s now saying this….

“People took the 10-year thing too literally, read too much into it and were too quick to comment on it.”

…and that he only meant that he should have captained England more than 3 times.

But that’s not what he said…and he has been roundly condemned, even by other black players, hence his rapid retreat.

But Derbyshire let that slide and didn’t press him on it…until much later when a caller had to do her job for her….and the later news bulletins started reporting his new line without reference to he old as if it had never been said.

Campbell says he was so brilliant that he deserved to be captain….and yet Bobby Charlton (106 appearances) only captained 3 games, Wayne Rooney (89 appearances) has only captained 2 games, Alf Ramsey 3 times (32 appearances), Frank Lampard 3 times (109 appearances)….Campbell made 73 appearances and captained 3 times.

Campbell is talking out of his backside when he claims racism is the reason he only captained England 3 times.

Oh…maybe Sol’s right…look, Sir Bobby Charlton kept appearing in photographs with black people…maybe that’s why he was only given the captaincy 3 times…just like Sol.

Derrbyshire asked Campbell about claims he was gay….Campbell replied that he wasn’t the normal lad about town footballer…he ‘didn’t fit’ which is why such claims arose.

Perhaps Derbyshire might have asked…is that maybe why you weren’t asked to be captain so often…not colour but personality…you didn’t fit in with the team?  But she didn’t.

Campbell claimed a sponsor asked him if he was gay (10:42 ish), and who was disappointed to hear he wasn’t as it would have been a good ‘selling point’ for their media campaign…Campbell said he hoped that sort of attitude has changed.  Would have thought that was an attitude to encourage if you wanted to promote gay friendly attitudes.

When Derbyshire did ask him about his attitude and his claims of racism he said he had every right to make them because this is what he felt.  Well that’s OK then…no need for proof.

She didn’t challenge him on that though you might have thought she would….is it right that Campbell can make unfounded allegations of racism, accusing people running the FA of being racist, and somehow that isn’t slander or libel?

That in a nutshell sums up the problem….claims of racism are allowed to be made, whether against the police or the FA or society in general, purely on the basis of what someone believes or wants to believe.

Channel Four’s little charade adds fuel to the fire, encouraging the belief that Blacks are suffering racism everywhere, especially at the hands of the police…..all of which is highly dangerous adding to the paranoia and giving a spur to those who seek to inflame any situation.

Hot on the heals of Humphrys’ admission that the BBC promotes the all conquering EU we have this prime example of that type of thinking in action:

The BBC should say it is based in Manchester instead of Salford in a bid to boost the area’s international reputation, one of the corporation’s star presenters has said.

Evan Davis said it was a ‘serious problem’ for Manchester that areas such as Salford – home to the BBC at MediaCity UK since 2011 – and Trafford refused to be called Manchester.

Salford mayor slammed Mr Davis’s comments – saying it was ‘quite surprising that a journalist wants to rewrite the geography of the country’.

He added: “What really is confusing is when a media pundit tries to shift the boundaries of the city. The Quays are in Salford – they always have been and always will be and people know that.

“People clearly won’t know about Salford if we remove all mention of it from the map.

“This view is typical of a London-centric view of the world. Fortunately the British isles is more diverse than London and a handful of big cities. Our strength in the north lies is our diversity, not in all being the same.”

Ah those xenophobic Little Salfordians, not wanting to lose their identity and be engulfed and absorbed by a giant neighbour.

The BBC…celebrating diversity and difference except when it’s not.

John Humphrys has admitted the BBC is biased in favour of the EU….it has ‘bought into the ideal’

I thought the EU had been the one doing the buying….

The millions in EU funding the BBC tried to hide

John Humphrys says:

Chris Warburton stands in for Victoria Derbyshire this week.

He was discussing this (10:41):

BBC to argue for licence fee to be linked to inflation

The Sunday Times reported that the BBC had a preference for a subscription model of funding.

The BBC have leapt on that suggestion and denied it vigorously….

“The report recommends that the BBC pursue an inflationary licence fee increase with greater commercial revenue. No subscription model is recommended.”

Unfortunately one of those involved in the funding review, David Elstein, didn’t ‘rule out’ a subscription model..indeed he seemed pretty enthusiastic about it saying the BBC would ‘do pretty well out of it’..…and if avoiding the license fee is de-criminalised then the subscription model is probably the best method…not to use it would be ‘slow suicide’….though he suggests the proposal to decriminalise is merely a negotiating tactic by the government…despite many MPs actually urging it.

However he was very enthusiastic about the subscription model.

Elstein is ‘A long-time critic of the licence fee who believes the BBC should be funded by subscription’  and he made some interesting comments (in Jan 2014) about the license fee in light of the BBC’s recent claim that de-criminalising the license fee might lead to a drop in funding…

“Just a 1% increase in evasion would lead to the loss of around £35m, the equivalent of around 10 BBC local radio stations.”

Elstein points out that [discussing the BBC’s reporting, or non-reporting, of immigration]:

“It’s not a happy place to be when you are one of the very few public organisations directly benefiting from the unlimited expansion of the population.

“It’s not [the BBC’s] decision, there’s nothing they can do about it. It is a side product of a certain social phenomenon [and] the BBC might benefit.”

Elstein said the growth in single person households over the last two decades had a similar impact on BBC funding, leading to a “50% rise in the number of households paying the licence fee”.

Wonder how many local radio stations were funded by that increase!

Janet Daley in the Telegraph isn’t impressed by the BBC’s ‘ideal’ license fee + inflation:

The BBC wants even more money

Bizarrely, the BBC itself has chosen this moment to suggest that its licence fee should not simply be protected in future but that it should be unfrozen and (wait for it) linked to inflation. And in addition to requesting these automatic rises in the licence fee – which would mean that every increase in the cost of living would push up the cost of television-viewing – they also plan to introduce paid-for services to compete with iTunes and netflix. What planet, as they say, are these people on?

Here is a suggestion for what it might do. Instead of demanding a licence fee from every owner of a computer or smart phone (which it is, believe it or not, considering), it should make the consumption of BBC content on any device dependent on having a licence. It should be simple enough to introduce: in order to log on to the BBC website, or to access iPlayer, you would need to supply your licence number – just as you have to do now with most subscription-only web services. That way, anyone who wanted to use any BBC service on any platform would have to pay the fee. But you would have a choice. And it is only that – giving the consumer a real choice – that will bring BBC funding into the twenty-first century.

Sounds simple and effective.

Another interesting interview (11:27) was with Alistair Morgan, brother of Daniel Morgan, a private detective investigating police corruption, murdered in 1987….possibly, and significantly you might think, just as he was about to expose that corruption.  Alistair Morgan suggests that if the botched investigation into his brother’s murder had been properly examined the subsequent investigation into Stephen Lawrence’s murder would not have also been ‘botched’ if lessons had been learned.

As Daniel Morgan was white that kind of suggests that botched police investigations are not solely, if at all, related to ‘race’ of the victim…and it should be noted that Morgan was murdered in 1987, the government, despite a long campaign by the family, only initiated an inquiry concerning the police investigation in 2013…compare that to the Lawrence case…Stephen Lawrence murdered in 1993, a review was announced only 4 years later in 1997….and Lawrence’s mother is now a ‘Baroness’  on the strength of her campaigning….though other matters  may have influenced that.

I haven’t paid the Macpherson Report much attention, assuming its conclusions about ‘institutional racism’ to be knee jerk politically correct appeasement of the Black community.

Having started to read it nothing has so far disabused me of that…nor has anything reported about the police investigation….more corruption, incompetence and arse covering than racism by the Police.

The BBC of course are more than happy to unquestioningly label it all as ‘institutional racism’…..more on that when I have completed reading the report…but in the meantime some more police ‘racism’ to chew on……Stephen Lawrence’s murder was a tragedy but just one amongst many….and one amongst many where the police or the establishment failed the victims, black or white…..and yet only one gets the massive attention and the claims of game changing importance resulting from the case……seems that many more are forgotten…….

Is it because she was black?:

Horse trainer sues murder police who ‘framed her for murder’ over lover’s bonfire death

Why did the police refuse to accept this was a racist attack?:

Boy’s fight to prove attack by Asian gang was racist

And this….a 73 year old white gangsta?:

Police pay 73-year-old driver £20,000 after officers smashed his Range Rover’s window and windscreen for driving without a seatbelt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNDqmZyApRo

As said more incompetence and corruption than racism at the bottom of police failure.

From the Sunday Times in 2006 (£)….lest we forget in the deluge of coverage over Stephen Lawrence:

 
The hidden white victims of racism

Last week’s horrifying trial of three Asians is part of a worrying trend, says Brendan Montague
No one who saw Angela Donald giving her dignified statement that “justice had been done” outside the High Court in Edinburgh as the racist murderers of her 15-year-old son were jailed last week could feel anything but sympathy. For Margaret Massey there was more, though — a sense of fellow-feeling and anger.

Kriss Donald was snatched off the street by an Asian gang and subjected to a terrible ordeal: beaten, stabbed, doused in petrol and set ablaze. Massey’s son Lee, a rugby player, was also the subject of a racially motivated attack when he was set upon by a gang of Iraqi asylum seekers “out looking for someone” to hurt.

He and two friends were stabbed in a car park in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, in October 2003. Lee was then thrown into the air and suffered devastating brain injuries when one of the gang used a car to run him down. Three years later he has not fully recovered.

Massey still feels aggrieved that — in her view — the police inquiry was hindered by political correctness because officers feared that reporting that a white man had been so brutally attacked by asylum seekers would further fuel racial tensions following several such brawls in the area.
“The police didn’t charge 13 members of the gang even though I believe there was some evidence,” she says.
“If our Lee had run over one of the Iraqis he would have been arrested right away and sent to prison for the rest of his life. The police are nervous when white people are attacked. In this area this is happening more and more often.”

The killing of Stephen Lawrence 13 years ago sparked off an orgy of soul-searching throughout liberal Britain.

But we have never quite acknowledged that violence comes from both sides. Gavin Hopley, 19, was kicked to death by up to eight Asian men in Oldham in February 2002. Six men were convicted of violent disorder and theft offences but no one has been convicted of his murder.
An Asian gang was also responsible for the violent killing of 17-year-old Ross Parker, who was savagely stabbed with hunting knives during an attack in Peterborough in 2001. David Lees, 23, was run over and killed during a fight between whites and a gang of Asians in Prestwich, Manchester, only last month.

There has been numerous inquiries and new legislation since the Lawrence case and almost everyone concerned with race relations will confirm that policing in cases involving race has improved immeasurably since that tragic event.

However, the debate about the white victims of racist attacks seems to have progressed no further in the past 10 years — because of fears of “political correctness” and the threat of the far right making political capital out of personal tragedy.

Sir Ian Blair, Britain’s most senior police officer, even attacked the press as “institutionally racist” in January this year because cases such as the killing of Tom ap Rhys Pryce, the solicitor, had gained more publicity than the equally terrible death on the same day of Balbir Matharu, who had tried to stop thieves ripping the radio from his car.

An extensive search of national and regional newspaper reports, however, shows that cases involving black and minority ethnic victims are widely reported, while there is an almost total boycott of stories involving the white victims of similar attacks. Is this because newspapers fear their reports appearing on BNP leaflets, or because the police are less likely to issue appeals for help?

Peter Fahy, chief constable of Cheshire police and spokesman on race issues for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: “A lot of police officers and other professionals feel almost the best thing to do is to try and avoid [discussing such attacks] for fear of being criticised. This is not healthy.”

The silence means it is impossible to know how many white people are victims of racist attacks in today’s multicultural Britain and whether they are right to feel aggrieved that the attacks they suffer do not appear to get the same recognition as those of black victims.
Take the case of Christopher Yates, who had been out celebrating a birthday with a group of friends in London and, concerned about their safety, insisted on taking some of the women he was with to a bus stop during a cool November evening two years ago.

Without warning, the 30-year-old office worker was viciously assaulted by a gang of drunken Asian men — Sajid Zulfiqar, Zahid Bashir and Imran Maqsood — who stamped on his head, smashing every bone in his face before killing him.

After the murder the attackers shouted in Urdu, “We have killed the white man — that will teach an Englishman to interfere in Paki business.” Despite this appalling racism, the three were never convicted for committing a race crime — which would have meant a heavier sentence.

This led to comparisons with the brutal and unprovoked murder of Anthony Walker, a young black man who was attacked when walking to a bus stop in Liverpool with a female friend. The 18-year-old was bludgeoned with an ice axe by Paul Taylor and Michael Barton, both white, and died later in hospital.

The attack was undoubtedly racially motivated, but the fact that Taylor and Barton received sentences nine and three years longer respectively than their equally racist counterparts in London has led to suspicions that racist attacks against whites and non-whites are treated differently in the courts.

At the same time there is growing concern that attacks by Asians and other ethnic minorities have been steadily increasing, leaving some white people feeling too scared to enter city areas dominated by Asians and other minority ethnic groups.

Figures recently published under the Freedom of Information Act seem to support such fears: of the 58 people killed because of the colour of their skin between 1995 and 2004, almost half were described as white.

The British Crime Survey reveals that in 2004, 87,000 people who described themselves as black or minority ethnic (BME) had been victims of what they believed was a racially motivated crime. They had suffered 49,000 violent attacks, with 4,000 being wounded.

At the same time a staggering 92,000 white people also said that racism was the cause of an attack or crime they had suffered. The number of violent attacks against whites reached 77,000, while the number of white people who reported being wounded was five times the number of black and minority ethnic victims at 20,000.

The truth is hard to get at: Jenny Bourne, of the Institute of Race Relations, says its figures show only eight white victims of racially motivated killings between 1995 and 2004: “The Kriss Donald case involved an Asian gang which had been involved in violence already. These cases are incredibly rare compared with the number of racist attacks on minorities which take place every day.”

What is clear is that unless the attacks on whites are reported and discussed, the truth about what is happening out there will remain hazy.