The Boiling Frog: "Choc Ice"

Tuesday, 17 July 2012

"Choc Ice"

Racism connected with free speech is a subject I tend to stay away from on this blog, but the recent spat between a number of footballers on the issue of race and racism is a clear example of where we're going wrong in this country.

For the non football readers among my readers, English and Chelsea footballer John Terry was up in court recently for allegedly making the racist remark - f****** black, c***. It's with deep irony that the word which landed Terry before the courts was the one word I haven't removed - the word 'black'.

Nobody on the football field at the time heard the comment, even the player it was allegedly directed to. The trial only came about because of an off-duty copper who lip-read the comment on tv.

During the trial, at tax payers' expense, we subsequently had another English footballer; Rio Ferdinand - who understandably takes the issue of racism seriously - giving a running twitter account verdict of the 5 day trial, oblivious to the fact that Mr Terry is and was innocent and entitled to a fair trial.

When the verdict was returned, i.e. it couldn't be proved beyond reasonable doubt, Mr Ferdinand decided to endorse a racially-loaded term regarding the witness for the defence Mr Ashley Cole (who's black) 'choc ice. A term that is universally understood to mean 'black on the outside, white on the inside'. Unsurprisingly someone has complained:

A possible racist comment made against Chelsea footballer Ashley Cole is being investigated by Derbyshire Police.

A Twitter user, believed to be from Derbyshire, referred to Mr Cole as a "choc ice" on the social networking site over the weekend.

Manchester United's Rio Ferdinand then replied: "I hear you fella! Choc ice is classic hahahahahaha!!"

A Derbyshire Police spokeswoman said the force had received complaints "regarding alleged racist comments".

"These concerns will be fully investigated to establish whether any criminal offences have been committed," the spokeswoman added.

Obviously this brings up the legitimate criticism, or observation, of who draws the line with free speech and where to draw it. Once lines get drawn, anomalies appear left, right and centre. Be careful Mr Ferdinand for what you wish for - getting one of your own Twitter followers into trouble.

And it's precisely this culture that closes down debates such as immigration al la the excellent post from Witterings from Witney:

Challenges seem all the rage nowadays, what with Cameron receiving a hand delivered letter from the leader of a ‘political party’ (well, they consider themselves a political party hence my use of the term in inverted commas) challenging him to a debate on Britain’s relationship with ‘Europe’. Dan Hodges, Daily Telegraph, wishes to challenge anyone to a debate on the subject of immigration, but as one commentor – Davy – points out:

“You want a debate about immigration? Me too. Bring it on. Just as an observation, Dan, you’ve got the best part of sixty comments already and you haven’t engaged with any of them. If you say you want a debate, you’ve got one below. Step up, eh?”
And there we have another democratic failure when considering the state of our democracy. It is so easy for politicians to state that this country should remain in the EU as it is for ‘journalists’ to challenge anyone to a debate on immigration – and then to totally ignore the cries for a debate.

Mr Ferdinand defends himself by calling the usage of 'choc ice' a way of criticising someone of being fake - on those terms I would apply it to Dan Hodges - someone who pretends to want a debate on unlimited immigration but has absolutely no intention of following through with his 'wishes'...

5 comments:

bingobax@gmail.com17 July 2012 at 16:42
the absolute right to freedom of expression in whatever format, written verbal artistic or whatever carries with it the absolute expectation that at some point you are or may be offended.

sticks and stones and all that....

we have laws against actual physical assault (a form of offence methinks, totally unacceptable) but this is a pc culture where freedom of expression is ust in name only.....if only enough people accused of such offences of 'freedom of expression' were to utter in court "I hear no complaint" we might get somewhere in neutering this nonsense...
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WitteringsfromWitney17 July 2012 at 18:25
Ta for link, TBF.
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Robin17 July 2012 at 22:16
WE are told by the Gramscian PTB what to find offensive and what not to .
When Johnathan Ross (Wossy) and Russel Brand or whoever insulted Andreww Sachs , using crude carnal terms , the BBC managed to get across that some people were complaining who had not actually listened to the show .
Fair enough .
Then one of the news items on the BBC was about Spanish fans of a sporting event racially abusing a black participant .The tone was that I was supposed to be shocked .
But I had not seen or heard the abuse down in Spain .
Why should I be sensetive to one form of abuse I hear secondhand but not the other ?
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Anonymous18 July 2012 at 09:20
A hamfisted, amateurish, putrid attempt by the nutters of the liberal bleedin' hearts/diversity brigade/human rights harpies.

A lunatic but forlorn suit, brought about to hammer Terry [who I've no sympathy for].
For an alleged 'racist' slur, or supposedly saying stuff which Ferdinand didn't hear [would you please].

Ferdinand senior[snigger] makes a clearly racist comment about 'his mate' and nowt will come of it - imagine the scenario if Terry had been caught referring to such frozen chocolate covered dairy products?
He'd be publicly flogged and then taken to Tyburn? - Notting Hill/Hampstead Heath gay dogging area and hanged.
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Edward Spalton19 July 2012 at 06:43
In virtually every society or "race" under the sun, most people have a preference for associating with others of their own kind. They have shared values and know what to expect of each other.

PC has converted this natural inclination into a manufactured crime of "racism" and put it on a par with throwing people into gas chambers - but only for the European peoples. In RAT (Racial Awareness Training) by local and government authorities, only white people can be guilty of it.

Until recent years, it was an understood function of government to prevent invasion. Now government is the main sponsor of demographic invasion on a huge scale. Andrew Neather's revelations showed that New Labour deliberately intended to create an irreversible shift in the composition of the population of this country - a shift which, they could reasonably expect, would have electoral benefits.
The government was, in fact "electing a new people".

PC was designed to stop people daring to express their opinions. In the 2005 election, I stopped counting the number of times when people on their own doorsteps started to tell me their minds and suddenly checked themselves, asking "Am I allowed to say that?"

Peter Sutherland's recent evidence to the House of Lords contained an incitement to speed up the process to break up the remaining homogeneity of the population in this and all other EU countries.. In the eyes of our masters, people are consumers and producers - nothing more. That is why, in the face of 1400 years of evidence to the contrary, they still see Islam as a "religion of peace".

A population divided into separate "communities" is more easily divided and ruled.
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EU quotes

"[There's no way Britain could accept that] the most vital economic forces of this country should be handed over to an authority that is utterly undemocratic and is responsible to nobody"
(British Prime Minister Clement Attlee in response to the Schuman Plan 1950)

"Parliament must...resign itself to becoming a rubber stamp."
(Lord Kilmuir, advice to Edward Heath, December 1960)

"We should frankly recognise this surrender of sovereignty and its purpose."
(Edward Heath, Hansard, 17 November 1966)

“America would welcome it if Britain should apply for full membership in the [EEC], explicitly recognising that the Rome treaty was not merely a static document but a process leading towards political unification.”
(George Ball Under-Secretary of State for JFK 1961)

"The single market was the theme of the Eighties; the single currency was the theme of the Nineties; we must now face the difficult task of moving towards a single economy, a single political unity".
(Romano Prodi, 13 April 1999)

"Let's imagine Europe is a football club and you join, but once you're in it you can't say let's play rugby". (French foreign minister Laurent Fabius)

"We perform the duties of freemen; we must have the privileges of freemen ..."
(Chartists 1836)

"The [Lisbon Treaty] is indeed a tidying -up exercise, it sweeps the rest of our sovereignty under the Brussels carpet".
(Lord Pearson)

"The Government’s guiding principle was...to swallow the lot and swallow it now."
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"I look forward to the day when the Westminster Parliament is just a council chamber in Europe."
(Kenneth Clarke, Conservative Chancellor in International Currency Review Vol 23 No 4 1996)

"The EU is the old Soviet Union dressed in Western clothes"
(President Gorbachev)

"Europe's power is easy to miss. Like an 'invisible hand', it operates through the shell of traditional political structures. The British House of Commons, British law courts, and British civil servants are still here, but they have all become agents of the European Union implementing European law. This is no accident."
(Mark Leonard co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the first pan-European think tank)

"We need to build a United States of Europe with the [EU] Commission as government".
(Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner 2014)

"A supranational union is a multinational political union where power is delegated to an authority by member states".
(Wikipedia)

“A coup d’état by a political class who did not believe in popular sovereignty”.
(Tony Benn on the European Communities Act 1972)

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(Jean Monnet, Father of EU')

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"Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises".
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(Treaty of Rome 1957)

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"This Treaty marks a new stage in the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe".
(Lisbon Treaty 2007)

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"[Norway] held a referendum [on the EU] that went the wrong way"
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"I have read some of [the Lisbon Treaty] but not all of it."
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(Edward Heath, lecture at Harvard, 1967)

“They must go on voting until they get it right.”
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"If you go through all the structures and features of this emerging European monster you will notice that it more and more resembles the Soviet Union."
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“I have never understood why public opinion about European ideas should be taken into account at all,”
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"I don’t want an ‘in or out’ referendum because I don’t think out is in Britain’s interests.”
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(Mary Ellen Synon, Bruges Group Annual Conference 2013)

"No government dependent on a democratic vote could possibly agree in advance to the sacrifices which any adequate plan for European Union must involve. The people must be led slowly and unconsciously into the abandonment of their traditional economic defences, not asked…"
(Peter Thorneycroft, former Tory MP)

"[Bailouts are] expressly forbidden in the treaties by the famous no-bailout clause. De facto, we have changed the treaty."
(French Europe minister Pierre Lelouche)

"The transfer by the States from their domestic legal system to the Community legal system of the rights and obligations arising under the Treaty carries with it a permanent limitation of their sovereign rights... against which a subsequent act incompatible with the concept of the Community cannot prevail"
(ECJ Case 6/64)

"[The EU Constitution represents] a visible move in only one direction...from intergovernmentalism to supranationalism...and this should be explained to the people of Europe"
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"European integration is fortunately a train moving too fast for anyone to stop it."
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(Gisela Stuart, Labour MP June 2009)

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"...within ten years 80% of our economic legislation, perhaps even fiscal and social as well’ would come from the EU."
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(Memo by MAFF to House of Lords European Communities Committee 1995)

"...we must now face the difficult task of moving towards a single economy, a single political unity."
(Romano Prodi, President of EU Commission 1999)

"The day of the nation state is over."
(Roman Herzog, German president, 1996)

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"The [EU] Council of Ministers will have far more power over the budgets of member states than the federal government in the United States has over the budget of Texas."
(Jean-Claude Trichet, current head of the European Central Bank)

"One must never forget that monetary union, which the two of us were the first to propose more than a decade ago, is ultimately a political project. It aims to give a new impulse to the historic movement toward union of the European states"
(Giscard d’Estaing, who drafted the EU Constitution 1997)

"The process of monetary union goes hand in hand, must go hand in hand, with political integration and ultimately political union. EMU [economic and monetary union] is, and always was meant to be, a stepping stone on the way to a united Europe"
(Wim Duisenberg, first president of the EU Central Bank)

"Once the interlude of [WWI] was over, [countries] all went back to the rules and customs of traditional parliamentary democracies. I felt out of my depth."
(Jean Monnet 'Father of Europe')

"We need to build a United States of Europe with the [EU] Commission as government."
(Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner 2014)

"We had imagined a political 'grand design', a new international order..."
(Jean Monnet 'Father of Europe')

"I like the English style of life. I feel more at home here in London"
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(Jean Monnet, 'Father of Europe')

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(Jean Monnet, 'Father of Europe')

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(Lady Thatcher, Statecraft)

"There is no question of Britain losing essential national sovereignty”
(Ted Heath)

Euro quotes

"Euro has done more to enforce budgetary discipline in rest of Europe than any number of exhortations from IMF or OECD".
(Nick Clegg, 2002)

"We're happy to give the Greeks anything, just not money".
(German MEP Markus Ferber 2010)

"The Euro has been a rock of stability... Joining the single currency would be a major step".
(Labour MEP, Richard Corbett, 2009)

"The single currency... marks stability and growth and is crucial to high levels of growth and employment".
(Tony Blair 1998)

"Britons will come round to the idea [joining the euro] once they’ve handled euro money".
(Adam Boulton Sunday Times, 2001)

"Staying out of the Euro will mean progressive economic isolation for Britain".
(Peter Mandelson, 2003)

"The European Union must take a decisive step towards a federal economic government, with common fiscal policies and a larger budget, if it is to save the euro".
(Andrew Duff Lib Dem MEP 2011)

"A European currency will lead to member nations transferring their sovereignty over financial and wage policy as well as monetary affairs".
(Hans Tietmeyer, head of the Bundesbank, 1991)

The single currency is the greatest abandonment of sovereignty since the foundation of the European Community: the decision is of an essentially political nature".
(Felipe Gonzalez, a Spanish former PM, 1998)

"The euro area now represents a pole of stability for those countries participating in it by protecting them from speculation and financial turmoil. It is strengthening the internal market and contributing to the maintenance of healthy fundamental figures, fostering sustainable growth".
(European Council conclusions, 2001)

"We must enter the euro with a clean sheet on all the criteria".
(Then Greek Finance Minister, Yannis Papantoniou, 1999)

"The reality of the euro has exposed the absurdity of many anti-European scares while increasing the public thirst for information. Public opinion is already changing…as people can see the success of the new currency on the mainland".
(Kenneth Clarke MP, 2002)

"The euro is a great success, and in today’s global economy, the pound is no longer an important currency. If we are not careful, we could become like Iceland in the next financial crisis".
(BT Group Chairman, Sir Michael Rake, 2009)

"I think the eurozone has turned the corner".
(Then French Economy Minister, Christine Lagarde, 29 January 2011)

"I believe that, within the next twelve months, we will have averted contagion and stabilised the eurozone".
(German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, 30 December 2011)

"We cannot be members of the single market without being part of the single currency, the euro...In life, fighting for a minority view is sometimes dangerous and painful. But when you know you are right, and when so much of our national prosperity depends on it, we should expect our political leaders to act".
(Virgin Group Chairman, Richard Branson, 2000)

"We are writing to make clear our concerns about the implications for business if the Government rules out membership of the euro for the lifetime of this Parliament. Such a decision would be damaging for British-based businesses, British employees and the British economy as a whole".
(WPP Group CEO, Sir Martin Sorrell, et al., 2003)

"A single currency, introduced at the appropriate time, will reduce costs for businesses that trade or invest across Europe...More investment in growing
businesses means more employment".
(Then BP Chairman, Lord David Simon, 1997)

"Joining the euro would increase our incomes and thus our standard of living...Now the countries of Europe have taken one more step towards making a truly unified market, using only one currency. If again we delay joining, we again risk falling further behind".
(Former Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, former CBI Director General, Lord Adair Turner, et al., 2002)

"Staying out of the euro will mean progressive economic isolation for Britain. It will mean fewer foreign businesses investing here, fewer good jobs being created and less trade being done with our European partners".
(Former Business Secretary, Lord Peter Mandelson, 2003)

"Britain should join the euro within the next few years in order to enhance British power and influence".
(Centre for European Reform Director, Charles Grant, 2001)

"Joining EMU would offer multiple benefits...The euro would be good for jobs".
(Then TUC Secretary General, John Monks, 2003)

"As time goes on, people will increasingly see that there is a price to be paid for remaining outside the euro".
(Former Labour Party leader, Neil Kinnock, 2002)

"The euro may well come to be regarded in the coming years as part of the answer to saving the City from permanent decline. It was easy to dismiss the fledgling euro as a ‘toilet currency’ before we realised our own economic growth was built on sand".
(Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, 2009)

"Obviously joining a currency that everybody in Europe - including soon all the new European Union members - are using, a currency that American and Japanese and overseas businesses understand, has to make sense".
(Then UK Europe Minister, Denis MacShane, 2003)

"The euro, despite gloomy predictions from anti-Europeans, has proved to be a success".
(Former Lib Dem leader, Charles Kennedy, 2002)

"In reality the economic integration between Britain and the Continent is so close, and we have confirmed this because we all belong to the common market, that it can't be good in the long run to stay out of such a cardinal element as the currency union".
(Then German Finance Minister, Hans Eichel, 2002)

"There are no real benefits and some real costs to the UK of monetary independence... it makes sense from a financial stability perspective for the UK to contract out monetary policy to the ECB".
(Citigroup Chief Economist, Willem Buiter, 2007)

"Taking part in EMU would improve policy and performance enough to eliminate many of the strains that sceptics predict would emerge without the safety valve of devaluation".
(BBC Trust Vice Chairman, Diane Coyle OBE, 1997)

"The euro is like a breastplate that will become more and more resistant. The stability of the currencies within its area is without question".
(Then EU Monetary Affairs Commissioner, Yves Thibault de Silguy, 1998)

"The strict rules attached to the euro could emerge as one of the best ways to persuade the markets that we will put Humpty Dumpty back together again, put the public finances in order".
(Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, 2009)

"The question of entering the euro is worth a lot more to Britain than the wild anti-federalist fantasies peddled by those who think Britain should have nothing to do with Europe. Nobody of any consequence in Europe wants to create a federal super-state".
(Former Business Secretary, Lord Peter Mandelson, 2003)

The British Government Knew The Consequences In 1971

Foreign and Commonwealth Office 30/1048 - 1971

...the transfer of major executive responsibilities to the bureaucratic Commission in Brussels will exacerbate popular feeling of alienation from government. To counter this feeling, strengthened local and regional democratic processes within the member states and effective Community regional economic and social policies will be essential.

Parliamentary sovereignty will be affected as we have seen. But the need for Parliament to play an increasing (if perhaps more specialised) role may develop. Firstly, although a European Parliament might in the longest term become an effective, directly elected democratic check upon the bureaucracy, this will not be for a long time, and certainly not in the decade to come. In the interval, to minimise the loss of democratic control it will be important that the British Parliamentarians should play an effective role both through the British membership in the European Parliament and through the processes of the British Parliament itself.

Test

Tuesday, 17 July 2012

"Choc Ice"

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