A nice little earner

 Tarique Ghaffur - said to have received £300,000 for "being sidelined"

My good friend the committed BNP campaigner Donna Treanor has obtained some interesting information from both the Metropolitan police and also from the Equality and Human Rights commission by means of Freedom of Information requests.

The results can be viewed at the foot of this posting and reveal some illuminating details

The first set of figures show the number of racial discrimination claims logged against the Metropolitan Police over each of the last five financial years and appear to indicate a consistent average of 40 cases a year, primarily brought by Police Officers, but also by Police Staff, Community Support Officers and also a small number by Traffic Wardens

Given the much publicised fact that the total number if ethnic minority officers in the Met only reached 3,000 in 2009, this figure is actually more significant than it first appears particularly in the post Macpherson police force 

More significant than the numbers however, are the figures relating to concluded cases which can also be viewed at the bottom of this posting, these show that only a tiny proportion of cases were actually lost by the Metropolitan Police Service, and of those which were, by far the majority were successfully appealed by the MPS. 

Of the rest a number were withdrawn, suggesting either a change of heart on the part of the complainant or, more likely, their advisers may have warned them there was scant chance of their claim succeeding.      

However, each year a significant number of cases were “settled” to a degree which does not make sense considering that when the MPS fight a case to its conclusion, they stand a statistically good chance of winning.

Settling is, of course, easier, especially when it is only taxpayer’s money which is being shelled out, and who is to know how many complainants have been encouraged in making unfounded claims on the strength of the Met’s penchant for settling out of court rather than fighting as case.

The figures which Donna obtained do not disclose the seniority of those making complaints or the size of the settlements paid out.  However, in view of the fact that former assistant commissioner Tarique Ghaffur accepted a settlement of £300,000 ($475,000) after he claimed he had merely been “sidelined” one can assume the settlements may have been quite generous.

All this at the taxpayer’s expense despite evidence based upon the outcomes of those cases which the Met have contested, that a large percentage of these claims are bogus.
    
The figures relate to just one of the 39 police forces in England, not to mention those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, together with the various other UK law enforcement agencies,   however, if these results are reflected in other forces and indeed across the public sector it is clear that vast sums are being paid out, not least in undefended settlements.

It should not be forgotten that compensation and out of court settlements are only a part of the cost of these proceedings. If one adds to that the cost of administering, adjudicating and defending such cases it is starkly obvious that the race discrimination industry is a very costly drain on the public purse, and a very unwelcome one in our current age of austerity.

Being the industrious individual that she is, Donna has also obtained a further set of figures by means of Freedom of Information legislation.  These show details of the cases of racial discrimination brought against that insidious government QUANGO the Equality and Human Rights Commission by its own staff.

The outcome of these are rather different than those brought against the Metropolitan police, and suggest to this writer that the EHRC have robustly defended themselves against all such claims and only settled in one case in which they paid out the relatively paltry sum of £2,000, a far cry from Assistant Commissioner Ghaffur’s lottery style winnings.

This is hardly surprising given how embarrassing it would be for an organisation allegedly dedicated to the enforcement of equality to be repeatedly found guilty of discriminating against its staff.

However, notwithstanding the number of cases which have been withdrawn, struck out or won by the EHRC, it is quite remarkable for an organization of its type, set up only four years ago this month that already fourteen members of staff have seen fit to formally raise allegations of racial discrimination against it.

It is debatable as to whether this says more about the organisation or the nature of those it employs.

Once again these cases have been administered, Judged and defended at taxpayers expense, and you can be sure that “Human Rights” lawyers do not come cheap.

As I have pointed out many times on this blog, we are constantly informed that migration to the UK has brought countless benefits, but it is becoming progressively more difficult to identify quantifiable evidence of such benefits.

There is self evidently no benefit to the tax payer in being required to subsidise these cases, and it is an indisputable fact that we would not have to fund these cases were we not living in an imposed multiracial society.

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Click on the images below to enlarge them

No. of Race Discrimination cases brought against the Met in the last 5 years

Concluded Race Discrimination cases

Race Discrimination cases brought against the EHRC

Cold blooded murder in South Africa

A 50-year-old man was murdered on his farm in Limpopo, last Tuesday, bringing the number of white South African farmers assassinated since the the ANC came to power in 1994 to at least 3,155, by some estimates the number killed is in fact now closer to 4,000.

The body of Douw Brummer, a well known livestock farmer, was discovered at the farm Goedgedacht, where he reportedly lived alone, in the Dwaalboom area of Limpopo

He reportedly lived alone. He had been shot in the head.

The Transvaal Agricultural Union security representative Pieter Roets said from all the traces it appeared as if the killers were laying in ambush waiting for Brummer. "It was cold-blooded murder,' he said

In addition to the growing numbers of farm killings, it is estimated that some 35,000 south Africa whites have been murdered since the dismantling of Apartheid, however, for warped ideological reasons the Western media continue to suppress the details

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News Report: http://www.farmitracker.com/reports/view/1927

Related articles: Are the SA police accomplices to Farm Murders?

Shoot the Whites: New hate Song

Response to Cameron's October (2011) Immigration Speech

From: Dr Frank Ellis

To: Mr David Cameron, Prime Minister MP

Date: 12^th October 2011 A.D.

Re: The Prime Minister’s Speech on Immigration delivered to the Institute of Government 10^th October 2011

Dear Mr Cameron

Mass immigration is not a natural disaster akin to some tsunami, drought or earthquake that periodically and unpredictably overwhelms a country. Mass immigration is a purely man-made phenomenon which is encouraged openly or covertly by people who benefit from it economically or by people who for ideological reasons wish to see England looking like some failed Third-World state, Pakistan, for example.

Mass immigration, especially mass non-white immigration, poses real dangers for the future of England. The idea that England can survive the mass, continual influx of hundreds of thousands of non-white immigrants is hideously naïve. As the white indigenous people of England are relentlessly displaced by the rapid and aggressive breeding of non-whites, the whole texture and nature of our towns and cities will be changed forever, is already changing, and, in some places, Bradford, Birmingham, whole swathes of London, have already changed for the worse.

I do not regard these huge, unprecedented changes, changes which were imposed on the white indigenous English without any consultation or any regard for England’s future, with no regard for the links to our past and heritage, as in any way beneficial. In every possible regard they are disastrous. As I have made clear to you before the changes brought about by mass, non-white immigration represent the racial, cultural, physical and psychological dispossession of the white indigenous English.

In what way, pray tell, do the indigenous English, especially those left in London, benefit from having their capital, my capital, overrun with non-whites? The short answer is that they do not benefit from being overrun by non-whites. They suffer from overcrowding, reduced quality in public services, noise, freakish behaviour, poor education provision as a consequence of schools overrun with immigrants, exceptionally high levels of crime and corruption and high taxes to pay for foreigners. Moreover, they are daily bombarded with BBC and other state-sponsored propaganda that they should actually be grateful for all these non-white immigrants being here. Furthermore, should the white indigenous English protest about what is happening to their country, they will be vilified as something monstrous when in fact their opposition to being dispossessed is entirely rational and moral, in every way normal. What is not normal, what is perverse, what is most decidedly unnatural is that white politicians such as you Mr Cameron are actively encouraging hordes of non-whites currently resident in England, and others swarming across our borders, to overwhelm our country. Mass, non-white immigration has not delivered a single benefit at all to the white indigenous English.

Your portrayal of the immigration debate as one dominated by extremes is itself extreme (and wrong) and designed to show you as the conciliator, the moderate with sensible proposals when in fact you have a long record of colluding with those who have sponsored mass non-white immigration. Some form of immigration subject to exceptionally tough controls is acceptable but the numbers involved should be very small indeed and it should be made clear that employment in England does not in any way imply a right to permanent residence. There are absolutely no benefits to be derived from the mass influx of unemployable Third-World immigrants. One of the main problems, especially with regard to Indian and Pakistani immigrants is the reliability of any qualifications. In the NHS this can literally be a matter of life and death or lead to operations which are bungled because they are carried out by incompetents. Remember Daniel Ubani, the Nigerian with a German passport? Ever heard of the Indian, Manjit Bhamra?

One of the weak links in your immigration proposal is that you show no understanding of the race factor. Race and race differences matter and they cannot be made not to matter by government diktat. Nor can endless race relations laws and amendments deny the basic consequences of race and race differences. Large numbers of non-whites in a white country will always be a permanent source of tension and very often violence. We see the evidence for this all over the world. That for most of her history our England has been racially homogenous has been a great blessing. Racial diversity is a curse. As the number of non-whites increases, as it has done grotesquely over the last 30 years, so the racial, social and economic stresses become ever harder to hide or to deny. Blacks engaging in looting and rapine are just obvious and visible examples of how mass, non-white immigration has failed and how the white population bears the costs, economic, cultural and psychological.

Immigration is not just about the on-going immigrant threat to England it must also face the problem of those who have come here in large numbers and who have managed to secure a British passport. They have come here and wish to stay because they enjoy a standard of living in a First-World economy that would be impossible in Pakistan or Africa. If the numbers involved were exiguous and all further non-white immigration was almost impossible except for a highly-qualified and suitable few then all the legitimate fears and worries about immigration would disappear. That the rational, logical, healthy and morally reasonable fears of the white English indigenous people with regard to mass, non-white immigration show no sign whatsoever of abating is because the problems associated with mass, non-white immigration – crime, corruption, child abuse, depraved honour killings and forced marriages violence, physical dispossession and overcrowding/overpopulation – are getting worse. On these trends the English will be reduced to a racial minority in their own country some time in this century. Do you really want that outcome for your children Mr Cameron? Immigration policy must therefore deal with two problems: one immediate; the other long term.

The threat posed to England by mass, non-white immigration is largely a consequence of immigrants exploiting legal instruments which oblige us to accept them. The obvious first step is to rescind all legislation that prevents or hinders the expulsion of immigrants. Your view, Mr Cameron, that ‘Britain will always be open to those who are seeking asylum from persecution’ is an outrageous proposition and one that has done so much to make it possible for immigrants to enter England under false pretences. It leaves us permanently vulnerable to events in other parts of the world over which we have no control but which when they lead to political collapse mean that we are obliged to permit hordes of so-called asylum seekers (criminals and illegal immigrants) to enter England and “enrich” us. This is something that must change if we are to have any chance of saving England. Leaving the EU must also be a very high priority.

The immediate problem is to prevent all further immigration. It must be a matter of the highest priority to hunt down, round up and to deport all illegal immigrants. If they have assets these can be seized to cover the costs of deportation. The next step is make it clear to non-whites currently resident in this country, especially blacks, that they shall not be permitted to enjoy any special status merely because they are non-whites. If large numbers of blacks are incarcerated, having been subjected to the due process of English law then that must be seen as an indication of a black predisposition to commit crime not some insidious racist plot as in the Marxist slander of institutional racism. Again, black educational failure reflects low mean black IQ – well documented – not a white conspiracy. Blacks will have to learn to live with their limitations. Whites are not responsible for black failure and the psychological terror aimed at whites, often by other whites, to make white society feel guilty for black failure should be dismissed out of hand.

The next step is to recognise that the welfare state has created a massive parasitic underclass. People who refuse to provide services in return for welfare handouts should be denied any money at all and housed in government hostels where they will receive basic survival provision and no more. This means a bed, basic food and a roof. For those who show willing there will be firmness but fairness and maybe at times some warmth. Those that riot can expect ruthless counter measures to restore order and discipline. Respect, dignity, status, self-esteem, a sense of achievement cannot be donated by charity: they have to be earned. The only politician in England who grasps these facts of life is Frank Field, a very honourable and decent man.

Other measures some of which I noted earlier this year can also be taken. First, long term, every effort must be made to encourage large numbers of non-whites to return to their own countries. Generous financial benefits and inducements can be made to encourage repatriation. Second, under no circumstances must there ever be an amnesty for illegal immigrants. Third, under no circumstances will the creation of an independent Islamic/Muslim state ever be permitted within the territory of the United Kingdom. Fourth, the provisions of Sharia are grossly incompatible with the legal, political and cultural traditions of England and shall not be permitted. Fifth, family migration cannot be used as an excuse to bring relatives to this country. People who cannot bear to be separated from their families should not separate themselves from their wife (wives) in Pakistan. That these individuals are allegedly in search of a better life is an irrelevance, an emotional red herring, and imposes no obligation, moral or legal, on England to end this self-induced separation.

When you say - ‘immigration is not just about people coming to live here for a while. Some will want to settle and then join us as fellow British citizens…’- you ignore one very important consideration. Do I, as a white Englishman, want these people to join me? What happens when I emphatically do not want these people to join me? How can millions of non-white immigrants just ‘join me’? The answer is they cannot and they must not be encouraged to believe that they are welcome to ‘join us’. I do not want to have to endure the psychologically distressing sight of English cities overrun with immigrants. And it is not just the cities that face invasion. The next attack wave to hit white England, currently being planned by your government, is the calculated destruction and concreting of the countryside, including the Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs) and National Parks. The aim here is to impose thousands of non-white immigrants on areas which have so far escaped them. And when your party has managed to tear up the planning laws – not a perfect legal instrument by any means – and given the red light to rapacious developers, what will be the result? The result will be hundreds of thousands of shoddy, high-density, anti-social housing units in the countryside. For the first time there is now the real risk that mosques, hitherto confined to cities, will appear in the countryside. It is a truly dreadful thought. The long term problems will be racial tension, soaring council taxes, more crime, certainly more violent crime and Third-World squalor in England’s ancient shires. And when hordes of blacks imported to Ludlow, Ripon, and why not Witney, as part of government policy, start to engage in a bit of looting and violence, because that is what they do in the hood, the liberals will explain this degenerate behaviour as arising from a lack of opportunities for ‘young black people’ in a market town: the rioters were alienated and misunderstood; it’s not the fault of the ‘young black people’. The final result of permitting the developers to run riot and to build these shanty towns will be the destruction of a priceless asset.

So Mr Cameron: it really is time to stop the talking, posing, the endless consulting and act.

Yours sincerely

Frank Ellis

The Destruction of an African Farm

Destruction of an African Farm – When the hyenas take over the Pridelands

By Mike Smith
9th of October 2011

The destruction of South African farms after blacks took over is legendary. It has been thoroughly recorded by Dr. Philip du Toit in his book The Great South African Land Scandal which can be read online or Downloaded from this link .

But this is not new. We have seen this destruction ever since Ghana got its independence from Britain in 1957, which lead in an era of decolonisation of Africa by the Europeans.

From Kenya, to Zimbabwe, to Congo to Angola and Mozambique, the same thing has happened everywhere in Africa. As soon as the blacks take over, destruction follows.

Continue reading and view more images at Mike Smith's Political Commentary by clicking here. 

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Hat Tip: Laager

The forthcoming Panorama documentary- why I have refused to give an interview

By Richard Barnbrook

From what I hear, the documentary about the BNP is going to be damning, with the emphasis being on the financial irregularities that have been going on at Head Office.

I understand that a number of high-ranking ex-personnel have given interviews. I myself have been approached by the BBC on several occasions, but I have declined to comment.

The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly, any issues arising specifically from the unpaid printing bills in Barking are ‘sub judice.’ I made my position wholly clear when I submitted my application to the High Court earlier this year. My statement fully outlining the circumstances has been well-documented on the web and I have nothing further to add.

Secondly, regardless of the rights and wrongs committed by the current leadership, (and make no mistake, the wrongs if they are as alleged, can never be justified), the end result of the programme can only be bad in the long term, in so far as the overall impression gained by the public will be a negative one. As far as the casual viewer is concerned, we will all be tarred with the same brush.

Given what would seem to have been a deliberate and indefensible and attempt to bankrupt me, I have no regard left for the current Chairman. On the other hand, I do not wish to actively cause anyone affiliated with the nationalist cause harm. If the Chairman is as culpable as they say, then it is only a question of time. Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.

I hope that eventually, nationalists will each come to realise that all this negativity and feuding, however justified it may seem in the current circumstances, is only causing harm in the public’s perception and will make the come back, when it happens, that much harder. And I certainly don’t wish to be a part of anything that could hinder that.

South African Family of Three Executed

A 20 year black man has been  arrested for the murder of a white South African  couple and their 13 year old son. All the victims, whose bodies were found at their house on a Walkerville smallholding on Sunday afternoon had all been shot dead.

According to a police spokesman "The security door was opened. There was blood on the floor in almost all the rooms."

The body of Giraldine Viana, 46, was found in the main bedroom, she had been raped before being shot dead.

Her husband Tony, 50, was shot dead in the lounge. He was found on his stomach with his hands tied behind his back.

The body of their 13-year-old son Amaro was found in the bath with his hands tied behind his back. He was a Grade 7 pupil at Linmeyer Primary School.

Police believed they were killed on Saturday night.

The suspect is believed to be the son of a domestic worker employed by the Viana family.

Report at Farm Tracker 
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Hat tip: LE

The jobs white folk won't do

One of the great myths of our age, one repeated constantly in every white Western nation, is that immigrants do the jobs which natives of the particular nation, in our case, the English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish, will not do. As such, the implication is given, is that immigrants are essential to the continued well being of the host  nation.

What must things have been like before we lazy, work shy, Brits opened our doors and started ushering all these millions of willing dirty job doers in?

Here in Britain, of course, the older readers amongst us will doubtless recall how difficult and unpleasant it was to walk down the pavement during the great street sweeper shortage of 1964. Their parents before them lived for years without tasting a gooseberry or a Cox's pippin during the fruit picker famine in the 1930's 

Of course in the early 1950's, most families lost poorly loved ones when thousands of hospital patients died unnecessarily from starvation and neglect, just because there were no nurses to take care of them before the immigrants arrived.

Another thing which I find completely amazing is that there were so many more public toilets in our cities back in the days when nobody was prepared to clean them! Gosh life must have been unpleasant when our grandfathers got caught short!

Of course, as we all know the “jobs white folk won't do” claim is another of the huge lies like “the economic benefits of immigration” and “only white people can be racist” which the promoters of multiculturalism have managed  to insert into our folklore.

The fact is that, for a short while after they arrive, some immigrants are forced to do the jobs which:

a) employers don't want to pay a living wage for
b) nobody can afford to do at the salary offered unless they are prepared to live nine people to a bedsit. (or moonlight at Uncle Raj's convenience store)
      
The other claim, of course, is that immigrants bring skills which the locals don't have. This is an even more dubious claim and often quite a dangerous one, particularly when it comes to the health service, where political correctness requires that we pretend to treat medical qualifications obtained in Kampala or Islamabad as if they are worth more than a diploma in woodwork. Meanwhile the government save money by not having to train our own doctors, as its  ministers quietly pay their BUPA subscription, and pray they never get treated by a doctor who qualified in Kampala.

Some of the claims have more merit, such as in relation to the indisputably invaluable Polish plumbers. However, this is only because they possess skills which we have given up teaching our  own youngsters.  A situation which could be turned round in a year if the government wanted to do so.

As for Indian trained IT workers being better qualified than their UK counterparts is concerned, as anyone who has spent an hour on the phone to Bangalore attempting to solve a Broadband problem knows, that's a joke, they're just  a lot cheaper.

In any event as mass immigration has shown us, soon after arrival, far from doing the jobs English workers wont do, immigrants quickly end up doing the vast majority of the new jobs which the growing numbers of Unemployed UK workers would dearly love to do!
  

The progressive destruction of “Change”

There he was on stage this week, that rather geeky little man with the disturbing stare who now leads the Labour Party, and he was chanting the same mantra they all keep repeating “I'm up for the fight to change Britain” he hooted in the unattractive nasal way he does, “Britain needs to change”.

They are all so addicted to that little word “change” aren’t they, they flourish it at every juncture and scatter it liberally through any speech, but what do they mean by it?

Look to the definitions of change in any dictionary and what will you find? – “alter, amend, transform, make different, transfer, substitute, replace” – not one of those words guarantees anything good will come from the process, just that it will not be the same when its done. 

Death brings change, disease and bad luck bring change, America's flawed Messiah promised “change” and that benighted nation is drowning in those changes as I write. For two generations or more Western politicians have promised change, indeed many have brought change, and how many of those changes are we any better for? Count the good ones on your hand and you'll find you still have fingers to spare.

Is it not true that the real “change” we need is the means of reversing all the ill thought through and many truly malevolent “changes” which have been forced upon us in recent decades.

Another word they all adore is “progressive”.  Politicians of all shades, red, yellow, green and blue all claim to be “progressive” and our media murmur the word as if with reverence, but has the “progress” they have brought been for good or ill?

Cancer is progressive, so is syphilis, woodworm, dry rot and dementia, and all of them bring friendlier changes than have the “progressive” politicians and reformers of our age.

But those people never were our friends.

Like the Communist revolutionaries and Frankfurt school plotters who came before them, the malevolent old men who came of age in the 1960's and 1970's and who rule us now, remain fixated with changing the world, and my God they have done so, although not for the better. Our betterment never was their plan. They have brought change in the form only of destruction, and that was, and remains, the whole point. What should replace that which they destroy is less relevant to them, in fact I doubt they even care, they remain obsessed with their all consuming hatred of the once great and powerful West, and that leaves little room for anything else.

It is a strange hatred these old men and women and their unattractive spawn feel for the history of the West inspired as it is by iconoclasm, a desire for anarchy and a deep self-loathing death wish. It is a hatred based on the myths, lies and calumny they have repeated so often they perhaps now even believe it themselves.

As the ugliest girl might hate the prettiest, not for her sins but for her beauty and her grace, they hate us not for our flaws but for our achievements.  We achieved what others could not, and in the eyes of the aging 60's revolutionaries that in itself means we are an evil they must destroy.

Theirs is a hatred entirely misplaced.  The West, and those of European, particularly Nordic and Anglo Saxon, origin has brought more benefit to humanity than any other group in the history of the world, in fact, by comparison with our contribution that of any other group is reduced to insignificance, assuming they indeed made any contribution at all.

If you look to the origins of any development or movement which has improved the general well being of mankind, you will almost certainly find at its core a white European male, or a white male of European ancestry, the same would not apply to any other group you may wish to name.

Those who hate the West point to the evil we have done, but by any standards the evil is minor when set against the good.

For every weapon which white men created they have made and distributed a million pills which have cured more diseases and saved more lives than died in all the wars in history.  For every slave which the white race once owned we were instrumental in the freedom of a hundred others, and every act of brutality we committed have been compensated for by a thousand acts of charity and benevolence.

No other group can even start to claim the same

To an overwhelming degree, white Westerners, especially white western males, have historically been a greater force for good than any other group.  However, it is white westerners, especially white men, who have been primarily undermined by the changes imposed upon our societies by, so called, progressives.   It is they, who have given so much, whom the progressives most hate.

Lesser men are marked for what they destroy, not for what they create, for more than half a century lesser men have ruled the West, and we see the trail of their destruction all around us.

The liars in the media tell us the Western Society is flawed and failing, yet it is not western society but its enemies which has brought us to where we are, our fault, if any, is our refusal to confront them or to call them on their lies.

And what lies they told us.

We were told that opening our borders to mass third world immigration would boost our economies and protect our pensions, how that lies has been exposed as the exact reverse has come to pass. Our economies are collapsing, they are in the worst state they have ever been and our once guaranteed pensions have become a fading and distant illusion.

Our services would collapse without immigration they told us, whereas in truth they are now collapsing beneath the ravenous influx which devours them.

We may, some of us feel briefly better off, but that is just an illusion, a temporary high bought on credit, money we borrowed, or which our government did, and its all about to fall around our ears. If you own nothing but debt, you own nothing.

The fabled benefits of immigration have been exposed for the lies they always were, and in the most devastating way. Yet our borders are still open, and still they come.  

Meanwhile, other states, the real and only beneficiaries of globalization, and the net exporters of immigrants, rather than importers, states Brazil, China and India boom and thrive at our expense.

We are the “racists” if we resist they chided, whilst they set about producing a hundred thousand books, movies and TV shows depicting us as vile and filled with hate, yet it is we who are the victims of race hate, we who are the main victims of race hate crimes and we who are being driven from our towns and cities, many, such as our capital, we have already all but surrendered.  It is we who are being ethnically cleansed.

The single greatest “change” they have brought about is the way they have forced us to give up our homelands to a massive third world invasion, and it is this, above all else, which is destroying us.  A few short decades ago all the great powers of this planet were Western powers, we now face a situation whereby it is expected that within twenty to thirty years only 25% of the planet's wealth will be held by the West. That is a great result if you believe in egalitarianism irrespective of merit, but not if you care about the future of the West, or indeed the future of our planet.

The great achievement of the egalitarian lobby will be to have placed 75% of the world's wealth in the hands of totalitarian governments and immensely rich third world plutocrats, for whom human rights is an alien and ludicrous concept.

This is a politically manufactured outcome achieved through the “changes” our leaders have forced down our unwilling throats and by their special brand of “progress” which they beguiled us into believing would improve our lot.

As the west crumbles and declines, how can they still claim that mass third immigration brings us benefit when clear evidence to the contrary is all around us. Yet they still claim it, and crazy as it seems, there are some who still believe it.

It's a lie, and, in most respects, it always was.

The super rich achieve a short term benefit from mass immigration because it depresses the wages they have to pay, a few politicians benefit by virtue of the votes which their imported constituency bring.  However, beyond that small and unattractive coterie of corruption and contempt, nobody else benefits in any way.

There is no widespread benefit from mass immigration, it is a vehicle for change that's all was intended for. But of a change which only brings destruction, and the only purpose of which is to replace what was already there, nothing more.  

That any good should come from that process was never the plan.               

Global Architecture: Incongruous Excrescences

By David Hamilton
(First published at The New English Review)

One of Edmund Burke's famous quotes from Reflections on the Revolution in France sums up the contemporary official attitude to architecture and planning: “I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.” This is the universal versus the particular.

I am promoting a Conservative view of architecture and town planning which advocates the design of new buildings by developing from the traditional styles that already exist in diverse towns and cities rather than forcing incongruous buildings into a round hole: the exploitation of cities across the world for a Global style of architecture. There is enough disjuncture in British urbiscapes as it is after the Second World War blitzes and sixty years of depredations by local councils without adding incongruous excrescences to it.

It is difficult to get a hearing for a non-orthodox idea. The Liberal-Marxist online journal Spiked would not use an article I wrote as an alternative view to an article praising The Shard. They complimented it but asked me to chop it down and send it as letter! Why suppress a different point of view? The catalyst was an interesting piece by Tim Abrahams. (1)

Mr. Abraham's essay is enthusiastic about skyscrapers for London and gives an insight the background to the design of The Shard. It was originally planned to be an even taller building but planning permission was refused in 2000. The developers then brought in a new architect, Renzo Piano, to get the project through because Lord Rogers, who Piano had worked with on the Pompidou Centre in Paris, was an adviser to the London mayor, Ken Livingstone, who was keen to change London.

Livingstone had also supported the plans the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council had to redesign Sloane Square by creating two large piazzas connected with the buildings on each side of the square to replace the isolated central space. Livingstone also had plans to redesign ten of London's famous Squares. The residents of Sloane Square are highly articulate and professional people and defeated the plan. However ordinary communities have to suffer constant change and being uprooted.

Funding for The Shard is from Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company, who, agreed to provide a funding facility to LBQ Ltd, the Jersey registered holding company that is developing the Shard and London Bridge Place. The quantum of the loan is not disclosed.

Karl Sharro, a London based architect also mocked Prince Charles in an article for Spiked. It is a classic of modern ideological thinking and contempt for a country's traditions and the style of architecture that has developed there with the usual mocking arrogance and wild hyperbole. (2)

The Shard will be three times the height of St. Paul's Cathedral, thus cocking a snook at Prince Charles, who is a great lover of the magnificent Cathedral with its prominent dome.

The topic sentences in Mr. Abrahams article were:”the Shard is a feat of engineering and an important reminder that construction is a complex process. The revealing of the innards of the building has captured the imagination of visitors and residents of London: many have been enthralled at realising the process behind building skyscrapers, which are built around a concrete lift core."

When evaluating contemporary buildings reviewers commonly confuse engineering with architecture. The second sentence about “revealing the innards of the building” tells us it is part of a contemporary fashion.

Renzo Piano in naming the building used the term of contempt for “The Shard” coined by English Heritage, the advisory body to the government on historical preservation, his opponents, – The Shard!

Like other new skyscrapers it caters for the new rich. I am no Egalitarian but what we are seeing is the overthrow of local people and their culture and traditions for wealthy people who will not mix with them. The cost for an apartment at the tapered top of the building will be around £10million.

The contemporary fad is not only to build ugly, but silly or just ridiculous buildings that are bizarre and without character. The Selfridges building in Birmingham's Bullring Shopping Centre was voted the ugliest building in the country. It looks like a giant silver slug oozing past the Shopping Centre, and it glowers inhospitably at visitors entering the city.

These excrescences or an unattractive or superfluous addition or feature, have no lineage and grow out of no tradition but seemingly erupt like boils with no relation to the local character or the aggregate of features and traits that form the local ambience of an area and its community. A community no less than an individual has a particular nature from its past, its history, local culture and traditions. These universal buildings are growths that undermine and jar with the local ambience. They usually open with protests from local residents and calls for them to be demolished immediately.

Some examples of Global architecture: Lord Rogers', Millennium Dome (now the 02 Arena) in London, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, USA, and the Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea - these are buildings which undermine the local character of the different areas and weaken local cultures and traditions and thereby dissociate local people. The Ryugyong Hotel was unoccupied for two decades, might never have been occupied.

It has 3,000 rooms, a series of three grey 328-foot long concrete wings shaped into a steep pyramid, with 75 degree sides that rise to an apex of 1,083 feet, known as The Hotel of Doom (also The Phantom Hotel and The Phantom Pyramid). In 1987, Baikdoosan Architects and Engineers made an optimistic start but over twenty years later, despite North Korea investing more than two percent of its gross domestic product in the project, it was never occupied, opened, nor ever finished.

Global buildings are constructed in diverse communities but share common features: they are extremely expensive, most were thought to be futuristic designs, and they divide opinion amongst local residents, architects, and the wider public. They are neither popular nor respected and are mocked and given nicknames because they do not look like what they are supposed to be. They have the effect of reducing the prestige of a city and making it look odd or silly. They are exciting for a time but it is a temporary excitement, yet the loss of prestige is permanent as the cities become disjointed by piecemeal developments and the local communities dissociated. This is not the grandeur of the great cathedrals, built in a higher cause, the glory of God, which is why they pointed to the heavens; but overstatement, arrogance, built to aggrandize individuals or an architects company or by interest groups to the detriment of a town or city.

Another Global horror is The Cube in Birmingham, the traditional home of both cold and grey as well as silly buildings. It has been said that the architects who designed Birmingham were influenced by the cigarette packets and cigarette lighters they had on their desks because so many of the city's buildings were shaped like cigarette packets and cigarette lighters. The Cube self-promotion blurb bears no relation to the common perception:

    “Standing tall on the architectural world stage, The Cube, has transformed Birmingham’s skyline, raised its global profile and signifies a new era in the city’s evolution.”

  It is instructive that these buildings always win awards. Just listen to this gushing twaddle: “inspired by the vision of award winning architect, Ken Shuttleworth, this most prestigious landmark building animates the canal side offering cutting edge design and breathtaking views in a designer neighbourhood”... apparently, its “intricate glowing tessellations blanket the exterior facade, to be admired from afar. Inside this fascinating ‘jewellery box”.

Like The Shard it aims for the new elitism – “a rich mix of slick residential apartments, exclusive retail, extensive office space, boutique hotel, private spa, a hi-tech automated car park and the city’s first rooftop restaurant reside.” Upmarket is the American term which refers to what we would in England describe as vulgar: money without taste.

The Cube is seen as “prestigious, world famous architecture such as London’s Swiss building known as ‘The Gherkin’, Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank and 55 Baker Street. A confident statement for a confident city.” To most people it just looks silly.

Architecture gives an impression of a place in people's minds. It makes a statement as they say. Birmingham was voted the ugliest city in the country in a national poll. That followed the city's Bullring Shopping Centre and Central Library being named as the number one and two ugliest buildings in the country. That was the current “Brutalist” library from 1974.

A new Library is being built but this is not so much ugly as ridiculous. It looks like Colditz wrapped in barbed wire. (3) Birmingham, it is said, used to look like Paris until the irrational scheme in the 1950s to make it an international city left it decultured and without an identity - an example to the rest of the country of what not to do.

Manchester is at it too! They have several which exemplify my point about these universal styles disjointing the overall ambience. Islington Wharf is one.

Heron Tower in London is another rupture of the character of the city and our inherited architectural traditions. It dwarfs St. Paul's Cathedral and the little Georgian church of St Botolph, Bishopsgate, and its surrounding churchyard, which are just over the road. It stands next to The Gherkin and The Cheese Grater who stand incongruous in London like The Three Witches from Macbeth.

Architect KPF designed the building which has upset people because it is another one dwarfing St. Paul's Cathedral. It is yet another skyscraper destroying London's character and presenting a muddled and disjointed skyline devoid of charm, grace and beauty but redolent with muddled and incompatible buildings. It has a 70,000 litre aquarium and what is becoming an obligatory shark. If Burj Dubai has gimmicks then these must follow suit.

St Paul's is one of the most beautiful building in London and, despite the high-rise buildings around it, you can still visualise what it would have looked like when it was built - a beautiful big Swan surrounded by ducks. London's officials are allowing the destruction of that.

In March 2007, it was stated that Heron had signed a funding deal with the State General Reserve Fund of the Sultanate of Oman to provide the equity for the development. Skanska, the firm that built The Gherkin, were main contractor.

KPF are an International architectural practice recognised for design excellence and innovation in their buildings throughout the world, with offices in New York, London, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, & Abu Dhabi

One of the ugliest muddles I have ever seen is St. George's Wharf, in London. How architects can be so crass, planners be so benighted and local councillors so contemptuous of their cities, defeats me. To the contrary, St. George's website rejoices that:

    ”With breathtaking views and stunning apartments, shimmering on the waterfront with its fantastic architecture and design, St George Wharf is one of the most sought after riverside developments in London! “

The views may well be “breathtaking” but the architecture and design are repulsive.

There have been breaks in architectural styles when a new style takes over throughout history but these excrescences bear no relation at all to precious styles, neighbouring buildings nor the characteristic scale and are destroying the character, ambience and culture our towns and cities.

Jean Nouvel's One New Change in the City is another muddle that is ruining local character by being dumped between two historic Wren churches - St Mary le Bow and St Paul's. (4)

A standard development that has the usual high street shopping malls and a champagne bar which show the lack of imagination of planners, developers and architects. A Victor Heal building was demolished to make way for it. Like the others its has a stunning view, but only from the inside looking out. If any should make a mistake and look the other way they would be appalled.

In an interview with The Guardian, The City of London's planning officer, Peter Rees, said the shopping centre would help confirm that the City has shed its bowler-hatted image. "The City has become a much more rounded place. The quality of food available and the entertainment and leisure facilities have improved, and we're bringing shopping back to the City. It's not just a place to work any longer." It certainly is not just a place to work. It is being turned into a place with diminishing character and identity whose main attraction to visitors now is somewhere to go be disappointed. Whoever thought London was city of bowler-hatted people?

The Strata building plopped in the middle of The Elephant and Castle is out of place, a freak alone in a run down area not regenerating it but mocking it. It would have been better renovating the existing buildings from the 1960s, which are generally sound but neglected.

One Hyde Park cost £500 million and took five years for architects 3XN and AEW to build. It has been described as a:” "Great location but money can't buy you taste!"and derided by Building Design for having "sterile gardens", "desolate spaces" and the "barren feel of a corporate plaza."

BBC's Salford-based regional headquarters by Wilkinson Eyre, Chapman Taylor and Fairhurst Design Group cost £600 million to build and was described by Building Design editor Ellis Woodman: “Visiting Media City UK, it is hard to see how the corporation could set their aspirations any lower. How uncreative can a 'Creative Quarter' be?"

As a reminder of what beauty and grandeur are I have added a view of St. Paul's from down the River Thames showing two of the ugly sisters waiting for the third, Heron Tower, to join them. It shows clearly the ruining of the London skyline. Nearby is a host of threatening cranes: The cranes of destruction.

We have a sense of beauty, balance and harmony from God and these new buildings contravene that. We are being dissociated from our communities in towns and cities by architecture that jars with and offends our inborn need to belong and for the familiar. Contemporary architecture dissociates people and makes them feel out of place in their home towns. Our Urbiscapes are being disjointed by new developments that have no relation to their surroundings or preceding buildings. To Aristotle the golden mean was the desirable middle between the extremes of excess and deficiency. To the Greeks the Mean was an attribute of beauty which, they believed, had three aspects: symmetry, proportion, and harmony. That is a useful way to judge new buildings. I would also look for character, something individual but which nevertheless fits in. Scale is important as our traditional scale here is different from that in other countries. The great buildings were superior to contemporary ones because they made proficient use of decoration and ornament as our Cathedrals and churches show.

What architects need to do, be they international or otherwise, is respect the character of the towns and cities they are designing for and and develop continuity not turn them into characterless muddles with disjunctive buildings nor is it necessary to let architectural anarchy ruin harmony, balance and proportion. The local authorities are supposed to represent their communities not international corporations. I mentioned Aristotle now it is time to mention Plato. What is happening here is as he warned in book eight, chapter four of his famous work The Republic, our democracy is becoming an oligarchy.

I have written previously that: "Local councillors are only elected by a minority of voters and are not therefore fully representative of the public and we need an office appointed by the Crown like a lord lieutenant with responsibility for protecting communities not factions of it. The Office of the Lord-Lieutenant dates from the 16th Century and has the force of tradition behind it at a time when we are victims of unrestrained change for profit at our communities’ expense.”

That was offering a Conservative vision for the future but what can be done now, in practice, is to campaign for a return to local democracy where the elected officials put the interests of their communities first.

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(1) Tim Abrahams is associate editor of Blueprint, the UK’s leading magazine of architecture and design

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10008/

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/issues/C20/

http://www.europe-re.com/system/main.php?pageid=2616&articleid=13019

http://www.building.co.uk/news/work-begins-to-lift-shard%E2%80%99s-spire-into-place/5025132.article

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/jan/30/shard-renzo-piano-london-bridge

(2) http://karlsharro.co.uk/ambition-architecture.htm

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7915/

(3) http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/cs/Satellite/library-of-birmingham?packedargs=website%3D4&rendermode=live

(4) http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/oct/20/one-new-change-st-pauls

http://www.knowledgeoflondon.com/modern.html