Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.
(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Thursday 15 September 2011

Indians In The UK Are Like Jews, Says Life Peer

In a debate in the House of Lords on major changes to the welfare system, the first Asian woman to become (in 1990) a life peer, Tory-turned-crossbencher Baroness Flather (pictured), who was born in Lahore before the creation of Pakistan, has drawn an analogy between the Jewish and Indian communities in the United Kingdom.

Like the Jews, she told the Lords, Indians value education and limit the size of their families, reflecting British mores.

By contrast, she pointed out, immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh continue, as is customary in the subcontinent, where traditionally parents have had to depend on their sons to support them in their old age, to have large numbers of children, far more than the British average:
 "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.
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.
I really feel that for the first two children there should be a full raft of benefits, for the third child three-quarters and for the fourth child a half."
The baroness, who added that immigrant families must stop having lots of children "as a means of improving the amount of money they receive or getting a bigger house," has certainly highlighted a factor in the notable underachievement at school of British children of Pakistani and Bangladeshi background, as well as (though she did not mention this) a demographic reality that worries large numbers of people in the UK - not only owing to fears of an erosion of British culture and creeping islamification, but of the deleterious impact on the environment of a small and overcrowded island that population explosion is having. (Where, now, is that 1960s and 1970s slogan that was used to browbeat British couples into having a maximum of two children each - "Zero Population Growth"?)

But Baroness Flather's reasoned and reasonable remarks were met that "political correctness" that she cited.  Thus, in his summing up in the debate, welfare reform minister Lord Freud pointedly ignored her contributions, and Lord McKenzie, the Opposition work and pensions spokesman, complained: "I had not expected the treatise on the family sizes of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities and hope I don't again."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14909062 
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23986942-asian-peer-in-children-for-benefits-row.do 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2037172/Baroness-Shreela-Flather-Migrants-having-big-families-claim-benefits.html?ito=feeds-newsxml 

2 comments:

  1. It will be interesting whether the Australian experiment with new (uncapped) baby incentives has a disproportionate spur in some communities and therefore more timebombs in the suburbs.

    That however is also too politically-incorrect to mention.

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