Equality issues to the fore on Birmingham Council
This month's council meeting saw Mike Whitby, normally mild-mannered and affable, tear into Salma Yaqoob, the newly elected Respect Candidate. She questioned why there were no minority ethnic Cabinet Members or Chairs of Scrutiny. MIke's response was to tell her to move to Blackburn or Bolton which had witnessed intercommunal unrest and violence. He felt that Birmingham's response to the recent problems in Lozells were a model which had been noted nationally. From my experience Salma's observations were right on target and echoed a number of reports which show Birmingham to be a segregated city.
The Birmingham Stephen Lawrence enquiry, of which I was a member, noted precisely this, although thye Tories on group had great difficulty recognising the existence of some of the issues raised!
Meanwhile another new councillor, the wrongly appointed BNP candidate, was shown up to represent out worst fears by comments appearing on a web site. She denies saying that she won't be supporting England in the World Cup because of the presence of black players in the team. Evidently there are some other Sharons who have access to the site and posted the remarks.
The High Court has now decided on a recount of the ballot papers and this will take place in London. The sooner this nasty Party is removed from Birmingham, where it has never gained a seat, the better. The problem is if otherf parties are prepared to make remarks like Whitby's about Ms Yaqoob going elsewhere. who needs the BNP? Salma Yaqoob couldl be a great benefit to Birmingham City Council and bring about some much needed healing in community relations in he City.
Posted by John Tyrrell at June 8, 2006 09:23 PM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)