11:27am Thursday 15th September 2011 in United Kingdom news By Asian Image reporter
Should we be surprised that Baroness Flather is so out of touch? Should we be surprised that Baroness Flather is so out of touch?
Let us be totally clear about this. These comments have would not have looked out of place in a Nazi propaganda news broadcast.
Just because Baroness Flather has Ethnic heritage does that make it alright?
If there ever was a reason for reforming the house of Lord then this was it.
Whilst Tory peer Baroness Flather may think that she is speaking out against political correctness she has simply proved how out of touch she actually is.
The Baroness has been widely quoted as saying, The minority communities in this country, particularly the Pakistanis and the Bangladeshis, have a very large number of children and the attraction is the large number of benefits that follow the child.
Nobody likes to accept that, nobody likes to talk about it because it is supposed to be very politically incorrect.
She further employed the age old tactic of divide and rule to compare Pakistani and Bangladeshi families unjustly with Indians and Jews.
Indians have fallen into the pattern here. They do not have large families because they are like the Jews of old. They want their children to be educated. This is the other problem there is no emphasis on education in the Pakistani and Bangladeshi families.
Similar claims were against the Jewish people 70 years ago.
The worrying thing is it comes from a person who is a minority herself. And even more worrying she uses a comparison with the Jews as defense for her comments.
If anyone would to ascertain such preposterous claims they would be rightly lambasted. But the Baroness has managed to get her claims a level of credibility due her ethnic race.
All decent minded folk, feel her comments are totally unfounded and are clearly designed to demonize and marginalize an already beleaguered community.
Over the last decade, attacks on communities like the Pakistani and Bangladeshi community have become common practice amongst the more privileged members of our society.
The Baronesss comments echo the thoughts of the ruling classes who were part of the Indian elite. These people were very much part of the establishment that enslaved India.
But rather than look at why she said this let us explore if the Baroness actually did her homework before making such claims.
Even a basic analysis of the facts, rejects her misguided and offensive assertion. Using the most recent research compiled by the Runnymede Trust, although the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities have a higher birth rate than the rest, they have dramatically fallen in the last ten years.
The average for both communities is below 3 and is close to the perceived family average of 2.4 Her central point was that families in these two communities deliberately have larger families in order to obtain more Welfare Benefits; Yet nowhere in her arguments is there any recognition of the dramatic fall in birth rates in the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities which have declined by nearly 50% in the period from 1981 to 2006.
Baroness Flather also states disapprovingly that families in these two communities do not encourage their children into education, yet according to the Report 'An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK' by the National Equality Panel, 18% of Pakistanis and 14% of Bangladeshis have undertaken higher education. Is this figure high enough? Maybe not, but the issue is not about targeting individual ethnic groups, but trying to establish why and what can be done to raise rates.
Nowhere in Baroness Flathers argument is there any recognition of the impact of unemployment and low household income on the ability of a person or members of a specific community to access continued and higher education, particularly in the current period when unemployment is rising alarmingly, household income is dropping at an astonishing rate and the cost of education itself is skyrocketing.
Looking at unemployment figures in general, according to the Office For National Statistics, unemployment rates amongst ethnic minority men are around 13% as compared to white male unemployment at 6%; When it comes to the figures for women it is 24% for ethnic minority women.
According to the Observer in 2009, 75% of all white people of working age in Britain have a job, whilst the corresponding figure for those of working age in Pakistani & Bangladeshi communities is under 50%; And it should be noted, most of these people without a job were actually born and brought up in this country.
It is hardly surprising that access to higher education and home ownership are really difficult issues for members of the Pakistani and Bengladeshi communities, as is the case of course with those people in Britain who are in a similar economic position.
Without jobs, is it any wonder that people finish up on benefits and are trapped in an ever increasing spiral of poverty and little hope.
