What a weekend. I’ve been linked to by lots of lefty blogs (always a first time), been called a limp wristed, hand wringing liberal (a new experience). I’ve been called a stupid, ignorant bitch. I’ve been told I can’t do maths and alternatively patronised and slagged off for daring – yes daring – to call out Rod Liddle. I’m, apparently, bullying a poor unfortunate man having an extended mid-life crisis and I should leave him alone. Diddums.
In the row that’s unfolded I’ve been amazed at the arguments people have been making on both sides, but the most alarming is that people have been defending Rod by saying that (at least in London) blacks commit a disproportionate amount of the crime according to their distribution in the population.
That’s an argument. It’s probably backed up by statistics. And it’s been repeated ad infinitum by a lot of people who feel this urgent need to defend Rod Liddle.
But that’s not the argument Rod has made. His argument is that ‘the overwhelming majority’ of certain types of crimes are committed by black people, and that when horrible atrocities are committed we shouldn’t be surprised because, nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more.
What disgusted me is that when I checked the official figures I couldn’t find evidence to support this claim. Rod has not provided a source for his figures. He’s simply made a throwaway assertion without backing it up, behaving like any old crazy on the internet. He writes for the Spectator – he should aspire to better than tabloid bullshit like this.
The point is that the only rational response to Rod’s piece is to go look up the figures – which I did. I called Rod a shit for brains for making a fallacious argument. If rebutting the argument Rod actually made makes me a stupid, ignorant bitch then bring me the dunce’s cap, because I’m thick and I’m proud.
For the record I’m not a fan of multiculturalism, never have been. I think segregated communities are a recipe for disaster, separate schooling a complete nightmare, but then any ‘community’ is a dirty word for me anyway. I’m a full-on welfare crushin’, NHS dismantlin’, bureaucrat firin’, regulation destroyin’ swivelled eyed free market loon. I’m against ‘affirmative action’ and pro-freedom of speech. I’m against a no-platform policy for the BNP (although admittedly I’ve just dumped what looks like a BNP spammer in the spam bin. No free advertising for you, mate).
If all that makes me a Guardian readin’, water drinkin’, hand wringin’ lefty then… well…. guilty as charged I guess.
JuliaM said...
7 Dec 09 at 1:07 pm
“He writes for the Spectator – he should aspire to better than tabloid bullshit like this.”
As Ross points out here, he may simply be tailoring his comment to fit the prevailing wind?
Ray said...
7 Dec 09 at 1:18 pm
Is that the ‘all cows are animals, therefore all animals are cows’ fallacy? E.g. the vast majority of rapists are car drivers, therefore the vast majority of car drivers are rapists (etc.)
Tim Carpenter (LPUK) said...
7 Dec 09 at 1:27 pm
Rod needed to be called on his illogical assertions. If sincere, that shows him to have a lack of critical reasoning. If insincere, then I think you have used the right terminology.
Regardless, Rod comes out of this badly and there is no getting away from that.
Anna Raccoon said...
7 Dec 09 at 2:18 pm
They obviously just couldn’t think of the words ‘free thinking, independent woman’ when they needed them!
Shaun Pilkington said...
7 Dec 09 at 2:20 pm
It’s the Judge Dredd-ification of our law enforcement debate. Remember Judge Death? All crime is committed by the living so if living were a crime punishable by death then there could be no more crime. Ever.
It is the reasoning of the insane. And the ‘s’ in that last word is rather optional.
Elephant said...
7 Dec 09 at 2:26 pm
I’m mystified as to what you were ever doing in the Lib Dems.
Just saying.
Charlotte Gore said...
7 Dec 09 at 2:33 pm
Well I’m an atheist and anti-prohibition and really really like the ‘freedom from conformity’ bit of their constitution.
Shaun Pilkington said...
7 Dec 09 at 2:43 pm
I had the same in the Tories and it’s what stops me re-joining. The only factor in favour of rejoining is that there *are* libertarian oriented people in *every* party and they can, sometimes, theoretically, try and move the party in that direction. Or so the argument of the Tom Harris’s goes when arguing for ‘broad church’ groupings.
Maybe it’s right but the results have been piss poor. I doubt that the LPUK will do much as even relative interest-niche ‘behemoths’ like the ‘Greens’ or UKIP don’t really shift the terms of debate too much. So, like you, I don’t really know what to do. I pass my days working and getting the politics out of my system by talking to people on blogs, rather than boring my wife to the divorce courts.
But that doesn’t stop me wishing that there was an easy way of making us all more free…
Calum said...
7 Dec 09 at 3:50 pm
Calum’s first rule of blogging: if it’s a topic the Daily Mail would write about, don’t bother looking for intelligent commentary. Publish it, and turn comments off. Then smack yourself with a pillowcase full of rotten eels. It’s more fun and it gives the eels some exercise.
Jennie said...
7 Dec 09 at 5:10 pm
I love you, you incorrigible lefty (which, I would point out, Mat and I have been telling you you are for AGES)
asquith said...
7 Dec 09 at 6:17 pm
“He writes for the Spectator – he should aspire to better than tabloid bullshit like this”
Surely the fact that he writes for the Spectator, which is utter wank shite, is what has caused the steady degeneration in his writing?
Just imagine the hectoring & bullying that must be happening in their office- who can withstand it?
Gregory said...
7 Dec 09 at 10:44 pm
“It’s the Judge Dredd-ification of our law enforcement debate. Remember Judge Death? All crime is committed by the living so if living were a crime punishable by death then there could be no more crime. Ever. It is the reasoning of the insane. And the ’s’ in that last word is rather optional.”
Society has a right to law and order.
So, the operating rules are ‘whatever it takes’. It is not that rare a judicial strategy.
So if the prisons are over-crowded, you leave bodies at the side of the road.
The state usually kicks in with death squads just after the community ventures begin operating.
For the state to survive, it has to hood up.
Gregory
John Demetriou said...
8 Dec 09 at 12:36 am
Good piece.
I’m starting to like the look of your politics these days Charlotte. I reckon there’s much common ground between Boaty & D and yourself.
I agreed with you about Liddle, by the way.
Oh, and when people slag you off for being right wing one minute, and left wing the next, it’s probably because you’re in the right.
Laban said...
8 Dec 09 at 9:29 am
But Charlotte, you still haven’t told me where you found your figures. I couldn’t see owt like that in the doc wot you linked to, which mostly seemed concerned with arrests, stop&search etc – not convictions.
Even if you cheat and just focus on London, the overall number of crimes committed by whites is 53.1%. In fact, the only category of crime in which black people commit the most crimes is in robbery, for which they account for 58% in London.
You said you’d tell me if I told you where Rod Liddle got his from ! How should I know ? But while I’m not qualified to say where he got his stats from, you should be able to say where you got yours from.
Not that I’m not defending Wod here – far from it …
http://ukcommentators.blogspot.com/2008/10/rod-vs-rachel-gift-that-keeps-on-giving.html
Charlotte Gore said...
8 Dec 09 at 10:04 am
They don’t publish figures based on convictions broken down by crime – they do publish arrest figures, like I said, on page 85.
Leon Greenwell said...
8 Dec 09 at 12:22 pm
I wasn’t sure who Rodd Liddle might be, so google it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Liddle
The explanation is Nunthorpe and Guisborough, Teeside, and the SWP
Nunthorpe is the slop-out trough of Europe – the only good news there has ever been in the North-East was the Kaiser shelling West Hartlepool in 1917
The SWP are dementedly committed to controlling ‘education’(sic) through drug rackets in Universities, thus engendering the ghetto crime culture he is claiming to be criticising
Southie said...
8 Dec 09 at 3:56 pm
December 16, 1914 was the day of the evil deed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rememberscarborough.jpg
Southie
Charlotte Gore said...
8 Dec 09 at 4:01 pm
I think Liddle’s socialist history isn’t remotely surprising really. :S
David Davis_libertarian Alliance said...
8 Dec 09 at 6:02 pm
I know that Rod Liddle isn’t “one of us”. He did work for the BBC didn’t he, once?
But that doesn’t really work for me, for Pope Benedict XVIII had, (some say, like the Stig) to “join the Hitler Youth”. Anyway, Liddle got fired.
The point I was making in my comment on Charlotte’s last piece just below about this, was that Liddle is perhaps articulating what loads of disenfranchised people think is happening. He may be wrong in detail, but he’s saying what many people, not of the intellectual blogosphere and not pundits, think is going on.
If they are wrong, somebody has got to trumpet the fact, and soon, before it’s too late.
Jennie said...
8 Dec 09 at 8:43 pm
Awww Charlotte, you deleted Tom’s baseless assertions and ridiculous ad hominems! I wanted to point and laugh at him!
John Booth said...
9 Dec 09 at 8:08 am
Charlotte, hang in there. You were absolutely right to call out that bigoted piece of dogshit on his blatant racism. Ignore the trolls and carry on saying the truth.
Laban said...
9 Dec 09 at 10:09 am
Hi Charlotte – thanks for that. So the figures you quoted are for arrests, not convictions, and ‘the overall number of crimes committed by whites’ is actually a number of arrests.
Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer not to assume that everyone arrested is guilty. And I thought you were a classical liberal …
There are some figures available, although not totally up to date, at the House of Commons website. Google for
Home Affairs Committee “Young Black People and the Criminal Justice System” – three pdfs – there may be more.
One doc, “Young Black People and the Criminal Justice System, The Statistical Evidence” gives overall figures – I think for England and Wales. Black males are certainly heavily “over-represented” given their proportion of the population.
There’s also this :
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs06/s95race05.pdf
which shows for example that in 2004 London Crown Courts (tend to be used for the most serious crimes) 3,993 white people were convicted and 3,031 black. Alas no similar figures for magistrates courts, nor were the London figures broken down by type of offence.