Gary Monro’s blog

Ontario province in Canada already has faith-based tribunals for family disputes in Catholic and Jewish communities. More fool them. Now they’re offering Muslims the opportunity to apply Sharia law to the same.

Ontario is considering a report which recommends that it allow sharia religious arbitration for issues such as divorce and child custody.

The government insists that the process would only have its roots in sharia and that the equal rights of women would continue to be protected under Canadian law.

… many Muslims believe that because Canada is a secular country, its legal system makes it difficult for them to govern themselves by the laws of their religion.

The protests are well under way.

Opponents say the proposed arbitration process will violate women’s rights.

Approval would make Ontario the only Western jurisdiction to adopt a form of sharia arbitration.

Homa Ar-Jomand, campaign protest co-ordinator, believes that the system should be completely secular.

“We strongly believe that Islam has never been moderated,” she said, adding that faith-based arbitration of family disputes is not relevant in the modern world.

If they succeed in Ontario will we in the UK be branded Islamaphobic if we don’t also permit this kind of thing?

Keep the church - and other religions - and the state seperate. It’s the only way.

[Thanks, A Tangled Web]

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) has plans to move its offices to Newport, Wales. Unions are reporting the ONS to the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), accusing it of racist social engineering.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is accused of “social engineering” by two Whitehall unions because it is arguing that one of the benefits of the relocation would be “to improve the ethnic mix of the Newport area” by moving its own staff there.

Improve the ethnic mix of the Newport area? In what way ‘improve’? What are the actual benefits? Will the residents of Newport be consulted on this improvement? Have they been asking for it?

The dispute has arisen because under the Race Relations Act all departments must draw up a race equality impact assessment when they want relocate large numbers of staff.

Its resolution will have wide ranging implications for plans to move up to 20,000 civil servants out of London over the next three years.

The ‘worry’ is that Newport won’t be able to provide the ONS with the desired quotas of non-whites. Here’s some more Labour-speak:

“Replacements for these staff could not be recruited in Newport in the same racial mix, because of the composition of Newport, nor could they be recruited from Cardiff or Bristol for the same reason.

“As a consequence, the proportion of ethnic minority staff employed by ONS overall would be considerably lower and this would have an adverse effect on racial equality.”

Bloody selfish Welsh, eh? I guess Newport is an area that the BBC would describe as hideously white.

A spokesman for ONS said: “We reject the complaint that we are trying to introduce social engineering by moving people from ethnic minorities down to Newport as totally out of proportion.”

So it’s not untrue? Just ‘out of proportion’?

“We have told the CRE we are planning a number of initiatives to try and solve the problem,” the spokesman said. “We intend to invite our staff to a series of tea parties to explain the move and are offering to pair up staff with “buddies” to help them move from London to Newport.We are also going to advertise in all the Welsh universities, to encourage students from ethnic minorities to come and work at ONS in Newport.”

That’s a great job of promoting racial equality you’re doing there, chaps. I think you need to think a little more clearly about who exactly is doing the social engineering…

It’s a question that’s being asked. Is it worth recreating what was there before?

The city’s romance is not the reality for most who live there. It’s a poor place, with about 27 percent of the population of 484,000 living under the poverty line, and it’s a black place, where 67 percent are African-American.

The state of Louisiana rates 47 percent of New Orleans schools as “Academically Unacceptable” and another 26 percent are under “Academic Warning.”

The police inspire so little trust that witnesses often refuse to testify in court. University researchers enlisted the police in an experiment last year, having them fire 700 blank gun rounds in a New Orleans neighborhood one afternoon. Nobody picked up the phone to report the shootings. Little wonder the city’s homicide rate stands at 10 times the national average.

New Orleans puts the “D” into dysfunctional. Only a sadist would insist on resurrecting this concentration of poverty, crime, and deplorable schools.

A number of factors mitigate against New Orleans becoming viable. The city’s geographical condition - low-lying, over-settled, ex-swamp, hurricane-prone - means that hurricane Katrina isn’t necessarily the worst it can get. Many of those with home insurance may realise this and decide to rebuild elsewhere - that will include many of New Orleans’ main professionals - and tax-payers: doctors, lawyers, professors and so on. The Wall Street Journal thinks many businesses will relocate completely.

The destruction wrought by Katrina may turn out to be “creative destruction,” to crib from Joseph Schumpeter, for many of New Orleans’ displaced and dispossessed. Unless the government works mightily to reverse migration, a positive side-effect of the uprooting of thousands of lives will to be to deconcentrate one of the worst pockets of ghetto poverty in the United States.

On paper the arguments make sense. However, the human factor is the intangible that can make all the difference. People - even those who know how bad things are in New Orleans - may still not want to live somewhere else. Even if it were easy to move them elsewhere New Orleans is where they have a lifetime of friends, family, experiences and memories. The irresistible pulls the city has on its inhabitants may well be the undoing of a large-scale removal plan.