One of the most annoying and frustrating characteristics of the zealots described on our recent Grumpy Page is that they never, ever, admit that anyone who opposes them is anything but stupid, evil and in the pay of "big oil".
Do you ever hear George Monbiot saying "Yes, I don't agree with Viscount Monckton, but I have to admit he's a very clever fellow and many of his arguments have some merit"? Do we ever read on Brake's so-called "road safety" website about the vast majority of drivers who go about their business calmly, considerately and safely?
Do the soi-disant "experts" who advise the government on health issues ever come clean and admit that the majority of fat people are healthy, active and lead long and happy lives? Will any of them admit that they have yet to find a single, solitary properly-documented case of someone dying from passive smoking? Or that children brought up in the 1950s when buses, trains and cinemas reeked with cigarette smoke and the atmosphere outside was heavy with pollution from coal-fires, industry and steam trains, had a far lower incidence of asthma than today's coddled infants?
And this, of course, is their strength. They are successful in their ambition to rule our lives and make us all toe their various lines, because they never admit they're wrong, they never admit anyone else could be right, they never give in to facts or common-sense or evidence. They just grind away relentlessly until the rest of us give in from pure exhaustion. It's exactly the same procedure used by police and intelligence services the world over. Also by most women.
Trouble is, those of us who try to oppose them, those of us who actually bother to look at the evidence, those of us who cling to the inconvenient truth (if you'll forgive the expression), are defeated by our very reasonableness. We lose precisely because we aren't fanatics, we aren't zealots, we don't behave like Nazis, we aren't self-righteously cloaked in moral rectitude - and this weakens our case.
That doesn't mean we're wrong, though. Being reasonable, weighing the evidence and deciding accordingly, is what we do. And it's what we want everyone else to do. So we have to keep clinging to this outmoded rationale even when it shoots us in the foot. Because it's the right thing to do.
So, we feel it's only right and proper to pay credit where credit is due, and this week it's due to Mohammed Shafiq, a Muslim leader and director of the Ramadhan Foundation.
He has accused the police of failing to tackle Asian gangs suspected of prostituting young white girls. Officers are accused of being "over cautious" when investigating Muslim criminals because they fear being branded racist. He says the police are differentiating between criminals on the basis of race because they are driven by fear of race riots in places like Blackburn and Oldham.
His comments in this week's Panorama reignite a massively controversial issue which exploded over a Channel 4 documentary in 2004. The programme, which claimed Asian men in Bradford were grooming under age white girls for prostitution, was pulled from C4's schedules because police claimed at the time that it could provoke racial violence during the local election campaign.
Now the BBC has risked the wrath of police officials and campaigners (my italics: get this, there are actually people who think it's OK to campaign for the right of Pakistani men to rape and pimp white children!) by airing a programme on the same issue. Speaking as part of the Panorama investigation which aired last night, Shafiq said "These are criminals. They should be treated as criminals. They are not Asian criminals, they are not Muslim criminals, they are not white criminals. They are criminals and they should be treated as criminals." He said that some of the criminals were Asian gangs looking to supplement their income, after the cost of drugs has fallen over the last few years.
He went on "I am the only Muslim leader in the UK that speaks up against this sort of thing and I do it because these teenage girls are somebody's sisters and they are somebody's daughters. I have got two daughters and I wouldn't want that to happen to my daughters. If there is a drug dealer grooming a white teenager into prostitution then I don't want the police service or local authority not to be open about it."
There has been some exposure in the press of this appalling crime-wave before. Local newspapers in East Lancashire even mounted a campaign about it, but this is the first time it's been aired nationally by one of the main TV channels. The "grooming" of young girls begins at school, using good-looking, well-dressed older Pakistani boys as bait. They then hand the girls over to older family-members to be used as prostitutes.
Philip Davies, MP for Shipley, says "Everybody is affected by political correctness. Young girls are having their lives threatened and ruined because people pussyfoot around and are too scared to do anything in case they make a mistake and are accused of racism. That's why we have to tackle the culture of political correctness everybody is affected by and I think the police are probably more affected and hamstrung by it than most organisations."
Professor David Barrett of University of Bedfordshire claimed evidence suggested that those operating the practice were "absolutely" likely to get away with it. The programme controversially revealed the ethnic pattern of crime which is largely Asian in northern England, Afro-Caribbean in the West Midlands and elsewhere white, Turkish and Kurdish.
There are about 5,000 British children being used as prostitutes. Under Secretary of State for Police Vernon Coaker admitted that there have only been 44 convictions for grooming and pimping children since 2003.
And the government's answer?
Predictable, sadly. They're going to introduce a new "target". That'll make a big difference, I don't think. And they'll publish a video for use in schools - their usual knee-jerk reaction when faced with a problem; shove it onto the schools and hope it goes away. Read the full report here.
So, full marks to Mohammed Shafiq. Oops, shot myself in the foot again!
You can watch the Panorama programme here.
The GOS says: While I'm at it, I might as well make another grudging commendation.
Driving home the other day I heard on the radio a Neue Arbeit
He was Liam Byrne, Immigration Minister. He was well-spoken, fluent and reasonable. He was extremely clear about the distinction between EU immigrants and those from elsewhere, and how their treatment should differ. He didn't shout or hector, he didn't bully, he didn't try to make out that he was right and had always been so and always would be and that everyone else was wrong. He didn't say it was all the fault of the last Tory government. He took opposing arguments seriously, argued against the ones he disagreed with, and accepted some he couldn't fault. In an interview about uncontrolled immigration he used phrases like "we don't want them" and "they can go straight back home again", which seemed rather rash. God, it was almost as though he was a real person.
That's not to say he was right about everything, of course. He wasn't. But his rationality came like a breath of fresh air.
Plainly his days are numbered. Far too reasonable, and not nearly "zealous" enough. I expect the announcement of his resignation any minute.
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