Apparently Britain is a vicious and racist society:
Ethnic minorities living
in parts of Britain are now four times more likely to have suffered
from racism than they were before the last general election, according
to one of the most exhaustive studies of race and crime, undertaken by
The Observer .
Sounds like a good reason to bring back the Tories, eh? However, from this stunning lede, the story then deteriorates:
Between 2000 and 2004
racist incidents reported to the police in England and Wales – anything
from verbal abuse to the most vicious of assaults – rose from 48,000 to
52,700.
Ah, more like a 10% rise. Now this is just supposition on my part, but that could be accounted for by a rise in the seriousness with which people take such attacks, perhaps even by an expansion of the definition of what is and is not a racist attack.
North Wales Constabulary
recorded 80 racist incidents in 2000. Last year that jumped to 337,
meaning that more than 4 per cent of the region’s 6,000 ethnic
minorities experienced some form of racial intolerance.
Again, merely supposition on my part, but might it not be possible that this is a result of a change in policing habits?
In Cumbria, now
statistically the most racist region in England and Wales, reports of
racist incidents more than doubled, and have affected more than 6 per
cent of the population.
Really? I’d be surprised if 6% of the population of Cumbria were in fact "ethnic" and thus able to be so affected. As the population is some 490,000 that would imply 29,000 odd racist incidents….which when set against the above national figure looks a little odd. Of course, they mean 6% of the minority population, butsuch statements all too often take on a life of their own. How long before someone quotes this back to us, that 6% of the population has suffered from a racist attack?
Racism and racist attacks are a problem, one that should be addressed (to my mind by the simple application of the criminal law. An attack is an attack, whatever the colour of the participants or the motives for it.), but shoddy reporting of surveys like this doesn’t help very much.
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