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Presumably you consider the independent and the guardian to be the "establishment media". I think thats attributing undue influence to them both. The Guardian is equally, if not more, critical of new labour than the majority of papers. If these papers were the establishment, and some vague pro-ethnic minority agenda was among estqablishment values, then i doubt we would find our establishment party trying to exploit ethnic tensions so brazenly as Labour attempted to in the recent by-election.
Of considerably more influence on people and policy are the tabloid press, who can hardly be accused of covering such stories selectively (or certainly not in the way you are suggesting livingstone and the guardian have been).
I have to admit I have not detected any of the bias you mention in the BBC, I dont see it as much now but im sure you will be able to enlighten me.
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it's scarcely credible you've failed to detect bias in the bbc which has been found guility of a PC bias and set of assumptions by internal reports, external reports, out of the mouths of senior figures there...numerous of which have been members of the labour party. i guess it comes back to my point that it's hard to distinguish the orthodoxy when it's so pervasive. i will agree however, that they are not in the tabloid class of the guardian or ken's brazen mendacity.
speaking of brazen; as for the guardian and the indy, they - the former especially - are brazenly the establishment press, being the papers of the islington set who run labour.
they may have criticised labour - from the metropolitan liberal position - on the iraq war (the party, in the final analysis, needs to compromise with reality in the way it's constituent class never have to, but that is the eternal condition of all flavours of the left) - but that was in boom times. it's nakedly partisan tactics in the london mayoral contest and over the crewe election have discredited it in the eyes of many.
you can rail about the sun all you like, but it's the guardian readers that run this country.
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I dont think I do go too far. I said its ridiculous to attribute the problem to any particular ethnic group. It is ridiculous. I agree that culturally specific factors within afflicted communities need to be examined. However since we have seen similar problems across Britain and Ireland, Western Europe and beyond among communites of different ethnic make-ups, I think it is folly to dismiss the characteristics the afflicted areas share in common. And one of these is not ethnicity.
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not sure what to make of this, you seem to simultaneously agree and disagree with me.
what would be ridiculous would be to dismiss as coincidence the problem with black violence in london. i continue to suspect that there is indeed an ethnic dimension; namely that black boys ape the tropes of american 'gangsta' culture, presented to them via hip hop. in this i am in line with black thinkers on both sides of the pond. white liberals tend to scoff but then i suspect they're so used to living vicariously and avoiding consequences, that it's hard for them to conceive how street kids may respond to these messages.
anyway, i may be wrong, but it's one line of enquiry. but to dismiss that one section of the community clearly seems to have a problem seems to me to be a poor subsitute for critical thought.
up here there is clearly something awry in strathclyde meanwhile; it's less clear to me what that might be; while poverty is inevitably the backdrop like you say, their is poverty on tayside, in edinburgh and so on, but our youth violence doesn't tend to be so lethal, thank goodness.
finally i would say that i all of us who consider ourselves to be progressive so say a big fuck you to pc sensibilities - in this area like so many others they seem to me to be an impediment to helping those they seek to patronise.