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Baroness Warsi on what it is we can all convalesce around

Baroness Warsi on Peston on Sunday, talking about “identity”:

Well there’s a big report coming out on Monday actually, a government report on integration, which tries to kind of unpick who it is we are, what it is that we can all convalesce around. …

It sounded as if she thought we had all been suffering from some sort of medical condition. Brexit? Perhaps she does think this, about that. But, she presumably had the word “coalesce” in mind.

At first I tried to type out what she had said from memory. But the only reason I was watching this was that my video machine had switched to it from something else, because it was about to record some rugby. And this machine can play back a recording even as it is still making it.

17 comments to Baroness Warsi on what it is we can all convalesce around

  • Dom

    “In a nutshell
    Whether you are black, brown, white, male, female or trans…..
    Integration is a middle class privilege &pass time”

    She can’t spell “pastime”?

    Btw, how does one become a member of the House of Lords?

  • Regional

    I think she meant farnarkle.

  • Mr Ed

    Dom,

    The Right Honourable Baroness is also a solicitor.

    I suspect that this is the report adumbrated.

    A government-commissioned review into British social integration found ethnic segregation is growing in some places.
    More emphasis should be put on British values, law and history in schools, and immigrants should take an “integration oath”, author Dame Louise Casey said.

    The report recommends:
    Schools should promote British values to help build integration, tolerance, citizenship
    More English classes for isolated groups
    A greater mixing among young people through activities such as sport
    New immigrants could have to swear “an oath of integration with British values and society”
    Councils should develop a list of indicators to highlight the potential breakdown of integration
    The government should support a new programme to help improve community cohesion

  • Runcie Balspune

    Her latest is

    My take on the Govts #Integration #Casey review. It’s got some good bits, a few bad bits and lots of confused bits ….

    A bit like her own tweets, really.

  • bobby b

    Having read the Exec Summary and part of the report, I think that “convalesce” fits her purposes just as well as “coalesce.”

    The report’s thesis is that society is currently quite sick. It’s well-supported.

  • Ljh

    If the Muslim community integrates, where would that leave their self-appointed spokespeople or Baroness Token herself? They need intermediaries, interpreters, diversity officers, hate crimes or face redeploying to the private sector. Shock! Horror!

  • Dom, in her case her founding of the Beatles and stint as manager of the England football team during its recent winning streak would all have been factored in to the decision to award her a peerage.

  • Runcie Balspune

    Btw, how does one become a member of the House of Lords?

    Whitewash a report on anti-semitism within your own party?

  • PeterT

    Runcie, that was Chakrabati wasn’t it?

  • Stonyground

    When it comes to the matter of integration, I would suggest that religiously segregated schools are a phenomenally stupid idea.

  • Dom

    So I take it you’re not voted into the House of Lords, just appointed. For life?

  • Detail is interesting, but we ask: What, exactly, is the BIG picture?
    What is the nature of this reality?
    What is the purpose of our journey?
    Where are we now?
    What’s coming up?
    Why is there so much evil in the world?
    Stuff like that.
    Would be interested in people’s thoughts:
    http://olivefarmercrete.blogspot.gr/2016/12/so-you-think-this-is-real.html

  • Mr Ed

    Dom,

    To get into the House of Lords, you are nominated by the Crown on the advice of the Prime Minister, but every nomination is passed to a commission for vetting to ensure that the Lefties can nobble anyone they dislike, er, I mean provide a roadblock to decent candidates, no, a check on abuses, and that’s it for life. £300 expenses a day for any day that the Lords sit and you sign in. And your children become ‘The Honourable…’.

    Once you are appointed, you can sit for life and enjoy Parliamentary Privilege, including immunity from lawsuits for remarks made in the House. Even being convicted of fraud over your expenses there will not disqualify you, and it takes an Act of Parliament to remove you, although a life peer can resign from the House and ceases to have the right to sit in the House, but keeps the title. Also, being in the Lords means that you can be appointed a Minister of the Crown if your face fits, to all posts bar Prime Minister and in political reality Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister).

  • Derek Buxton

    And just how did we get into this mess? Obviously our lousy education system. I note today that our pupils are not good at Maths, Science or Reading. Then there is the HoC, commoner they do not come. They too suffer from the same hindrances. No one with a few brain cells would have voted to give away the sovereignty of Parliament, or for the Climate Change Act. And they wonder why we do not trust them….or I hope they do, they lost our trust some time ago.

  • NickM

    Derek,
    Well, I can read and write and have two degrees in physics and astrophysics (could have had three degrees but Sheila wasn’t up for it). I am also rather good at maths and I mean the real stuff without numbers. I’m 43.

  • Answering Dom’s question (December 5, 2016 at 1:02 pm), further to Mr Ed’s reply (December 5, 2016 at 1:42 pm): in the good old days, lords were hereditary, not life peers, so while the first generation were (usually) chosen with an eye to politics, later inheritors of the title could be troublesome to the powers that be. (Being raised in a left-wing household doesn’t guarantee left-wing views, or vice versa: I was raised in a left-wing household.)

    Mrs Thatcher was the last to create a hereditary title (her recipient had no kids; it was a testing of the waters which might have led to another if things had been different.) Tony Blair “reformed” the House of Lords so only the government appointee life peers could vote. This turned an existing trend of life peers participating more than others into a totality. The Lords can only delay things (for up to a year IIRC) but Tony’s dumping ground for the refuse of the political class can be relied on to show a PC bias.

    It is not always bad of course: legislation sometimes benefits from Lord’s review, and individuals who no longer care about election sometimes do better things instead of worse. But there was more to be said for an essentially random bunch of people whose ancestors once were prominent than for a bunch of superannuated politicians with no more leavening than before of sports personalities, military men and suchlike outsiders.