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Labour's Ginger Racism

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Labour's Ginger Racism

Postby Distant on Sat Oct 30, 2010 7:37 pm

There is something funny about a woman born in London with a silver spoon in her mouth who comes to Oban to tell people that a Scottish MP isn’t welcome and is a “ginger rodent” Perhaps she should run back to her big country pile in Suffolk and stop claiming to speak for the Scots.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... odent.html

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politi ... n_Scotland

http://www.liberal-vision.org/2010/10/3 ... l/#respond

It would be interesting to know if this would have fallen foul of her own Equality Act had she said it England or Wales?
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Re: Labour's Ginger Racism

Postby RedCelt69 on Sun Oct 31, 2010 9:25 am

"Now, many of us in the Labour Party are conservationists and we all love the red squirrel," Ms Harman said. "But there is one ginger rodent which we never want to see again in the Highlands – Danny Alexander."

Explain what is wrong with her jokey comment, please. Fascination abounds.
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Re: Labour's Ginger Racism

Postby macgamer on Sun Oct 31, 2010 12:26 pm

RedCelt69 wrote:Explain what is wrong with her jokey comment, please. Fascination abounds.

Labour apparatchiks do not have a sense of humour ;) so she clearly meant it. I listened to her actually words and her tone was quite malignant rather than 'jokey', but I'm sure than Danny Alexander is used to it by now.

The real humour was in Danny Alexander's reply:

"I am proud to be ginger and rodents do valuable work cleaning up mess others leave behind. [The] red squirrel deserves to survive, unlike Labour."

All though it was Nick Clegg himself who started the comparison of Danny Alexander and Beaker:

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Re: Labour's Ginger Racism

Postby RedCelt69 on Sun Oct 31, 2010 1:34 pm

macgamer wrote:Labour apparatchiks do not have a sense of humour ;) so she clearly meant it. I listened to her actually words and her tone was quite malignant rather than 'jokey', but I'm sure than Danny Alexander is used to it by now.

I wish there were such things as souls, so I can tell you that you don't have one.

That was jokey. I'd pretend that it was delivered with malignance, but the ConDems are doing far more damage than you - and yours is self-inflicted.

macgamer wrote:The real humour was in Danny Alexander's reply:

You have no soul.
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Re: Labour's Ginger Racism

Postby jollytiddlywink on Sun Oct 31, 2010 4:24 pm

macgamer wrote:I listened to her actually words and her tone was quite malignant rather than 'jokey', but I'm sure than Danny Alexander is used to it by now.


And you can be relied upon as an expert on malevolent tone.

How unusual it is to come on the Sinner and find macgamer standing up for a minority group.
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Re: Labour's Ginger Racism

Postby RedCelt69 on Sun Oct 31, 2010 5:08 pm

I'm still trying to work out how Harman's comment can be called racist.

Conservationists like red squirrels.
Squirrels are rodents.
Danny Alexander is red-haired.
Danny Alexander is a rodent.
He's not welcome (here) in the Highlands.

It's tenuous and of dubious comedic ascerbity... but it isn't racist.

Hair samples have shown that Neanderthals had ginger hair. There's lots of ginger people in Scotland.

Now - that's a vaguely racist joke, but as a Scot I'm not even slightly offended. If a ConDem had said it, I might have managed to take offence, but then again it is easy to take offence at something said by someone you don't like. Which is all this ridiculous media-trickle is about; someone I don't like said something I can (at a very great stretch) describe as racist.

Silly people looking for prejudice when there wasn't any prejudice there...

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Re: Labour's Ginger Racism

Postby macgamer on Sun Oct 31, 2010 8:30 pm

RedCelt69 wrote:You have no soul.

That might explain a few things. I do try to avoid ad hominem attacks, my Gordon Brown attacks excepted - perhaps I went a bit too far there. I'm not as 'evil' in real life as my Sinner persona may suggest I might be.

Although the real difference between Harman's jibe and Alexander's retort is that the former's was ad hominem and the latter humour at the expense of the Labour party, which takes itself far to seriously.

I agree Harman's jibe wasn't racist, just a bit questionable given where she was and who she used to be; unless it was supposed to be comic irony who knows, a bit of comic irony is healthy I suppose.
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Re: Labour's Ginger Racism

Postby Hennessy on Tue Nov 02, 2010 6:33 pm

Jesus I think I'm agreeing with Redcelt here. So she called him a ginger nut, big deal. I hope it's the beginning of the loosening of tightly tied tongues across the country and a bit of light ridicule never hurt anyone. I see no public morality or standards of public life issue here. It seems that people up and down the country just enjoy being upset by frivolous, meaningless nonsense.

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Re: Labour's Ginger Racism

Postby beeny on Wed Nov 03, 2010 7:41 am

Since every red top flagging up 'Scotland/Scot/Scottish' in their title has displayed this story, I too have been struggling to see exactly how it is racist. Is insulting one person racist now? Wow, the boundaries really are shifting.

Besides, Harman, did unfortunately have a point. Thanks to the actions of the Lib Dems (of which Danny Alexander is a member), the Conservative party now have back door access to Scotland which is unthinkable given the nationwide disapproval of the party; a disapproval so strong that I believe the BBC showed a documentary on why the Conservatives would never be elected in Scotland, just before the General Election in May.

That Danny Alexander has lamentably become a very public figurehead of the spending cuts - flanked by Grinning Skull Osbourne - and is a Scots man, he inevitably became the butt of Harman's joke, which was designed to insult the Lib Dems in general. Ill-advised? yes. True? Sadly, yes.
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Re: Labour's Ginger Racism

Postby Distant on Mon Nov 29, 2010 11:15 pm

The point being made is that Harman is the patron saint of PC. If this were a Tory mocking a Labour red head (Blears for example) there would be condemnation of any comment as a rasist action with inches of guardian columns devoted to some form of Nazi reference.

Most people are happy to see the comment as a joke that didn't really work just it is a little hard to swallow from Harman. If the position were reversed she would not be asking for someone to be given the benifit of the doubt.

On the issue of People being welcome in the Highlands, Labour have no Westminster seats in the Highlands it is all Lib Dems and SNP so how is a London based Labour MP able to say who is or is not welcome there? Judging by election results Labout are not.
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