Earlier this month, as part of my ongoing series comparing bone-headed bureaucracy in both the United States and United Kingdom, I wrote a post about a moronic green-energy subsidy program in the U.K. that was so convoluted that nobody in the entire country signed up for it.
Only government could be so bloody incompetent that it can’t even do a good job of giving away subsidies and handouts.
Since I’m a big believer if fairness (properly defined), I normally take turns in this series, first featuring an example of government stupidity in the U.K., followed by an example of foolish bureaucracy in the U.S., and so on and so on.
But I have to break the pattern. Check out these excerpts from a story about English bureaucrats deciding that a foster family no longer could take of kids because they support the United Kingdom Independence Party, which doesn’t believe in unlimited immigration.
The husband and wife, who have been fostering for nearly seven years, said they were made to feel like criminals when a social worker told them that their views on immigration made them unsuitable carers. …Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip, described the actions of Rotherham borough council as “a bloody outrage” and “political prejudice of the very worst kind”. …The couple, who do not want to be named to avoid identifying the children they have fostered, are in their late 50s and live in a neat detached house in a village in South Yorkshire. The husband was a Royal Navy reservist for more than 30 years and works with disabled people, while his wife is a qualified nursery nurse. Former Labour voters, they have been approved foster parents for nearly seven years and have looked after about a dozen different children, one of them in a placement lasting four years. They took on the three children — a baby girl, a boy and an older girl, who were all from an ethnic minority and a troubled family background — in September in an emergency placement. They believe that the youngsters thrived in their care. The couple were described as “exemplary” foster parents: the baby put on weight and the older girl even began calling them “mum and dad”. However, just under eight weeks into the placement, they received a visit out of the blue from the children’s social worker at the Labour-run council and an official from their fostering agency. They were told that the local safeguarding children team had received an anonymous tip-off that they were members of Ukip. The wife recalled: “I was dumbfounded. Then my question to both of them was, ‘What has Ukip got to do with having the children removed?’ “Then one of them said, ‘Well, Ukip have got racist policies’. The implication was that we were racist. [The social worker] said Ukip does not like European people and wants them all out of the country to be returned to their own countries. “I’m sat there and I’m thinking, ‘What the hell is going off here?’ because I wouldn’t have joined Ukip if they thought that. I’ve got mixed race in my family. I said, ‘I am absolutely offended that you could come in my house and accuse me of being a member of a racist party’.”
What a disgusting mix of ideological bias and political correctness.
I agree that government officials shouldn’t place children in homes where there’s racism. So if the bureaucrats discovered that a household had people from the English equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan or the New Black Panther Party, then it’s understandable and appropriate that they don’t get to take care of foster children.
But I’ve met many people from UKIP and I keep close track of what’s happening in the English political world. From everything that I can tell, UKIP is a mainstream political party that seems most concerned about the loss of sovereignty to the European Union.
Are there some racists in UKIP? I’m sure that some exist, just as there racists in the Labour Party, Conservative Party, and Liberal Democratic Party. And, for what it’s worth, there are some racist Republicans and some racist Democrats. Like other collectivist impulses, racism is probably an inherent flaw in the human species.
But I’m digressing. The purpose of this post is to express disgust at bureaucrats in England who decided that belonging to UKIP automatically meant a foster family was racist. Even worse, these bureaucrats then took three children from this family, which means they put political correctness and ideological bias ahead of the best interests of the kids.
Let’s hope that those children aren’t now stuck in an orphanage or some other sub-standard form of institutionalized care.
P.S. If you want to be entertained and to learn more about UKIP, I’ve posted some remarkable videos of their MEPs as they speak at the European Parliament.
Farage is the head of UKIP, and he completely skewers the head bureaucrats of the European Commission in this speech.
His most famous speeches specifically eviscerated the “damp dishrag” of the European Commission.
Here’s Nigel Farage mocking European bailouts.
And since you know my favorite issue is tax competition, you’ll understand why I like these two short speeches by UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom.
[…] Moreover, do you trust the government to make wise decisions? That’s an especially relevant question in the case of the United Kingdom, where kids actually have been removed from a home because the parents didn’t believe in unlimited immigration. […]
[…] battle, with the United Kingdom recently throwing down the gauntlet with a decision to take kids away from their foster family because the mom and dad didn’t believe in unlimited immigration. The United States responded by […]
[…] battle, with the United Kingdom recently throwing down the gauntlet with a decision to take kids away from their foster family because the mom and dad didn’t believe in unlimited […]
[…] Denying children a home because the foster family didn’t believe in unlimited immigration. […]
[…] Denying children a home because the foster family didn’t believe in unlimited immigration. […]
[…] British bureaucrats took some kids away from their foster family because the parents didn’t believe in unlimited immigration, and, second, the U.K. government […]
This wasn’t just one bureaucrat over-reaching their authority. Here’s the Director defending it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20475321
Yes, the Council are now “investigating”, but probably only because there’s an election there on Thursday (the town’s MP having resigned after being caught fiddling his expenses on an even greater scale than usual).
What a place!
HI Dan: You may be being a wee bit unfair to the U.K.here, as this does not seem much different than the various local American politicians who want to prevent Chick-Fil-A from opening franchises in their towns because they do not like the political views of the company’s owner. The poster is great, though.
Why have the council workers not been named, and their names even removed? When you name such people, the publicity makes it less likely they’ll act in such an outrageous manner again.
Don’t you want to do all you can to discourage such behaviour?
An update for you, Rotherham council have now said there will be an inquiry into this case. And senior members of ALL political parties have called for an investigation and said the actions of the council were wrong
This story is terrible in itself. But to make matters even worse it was that same local council bureaucracy who turned a blind eye to paedophile gangs abusing children under its care.
(warning – link not suitable for children; in fact only suitable for those with strong stomachs)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2207756/Police-turned-blind-eye-South-Yorkshire-sex-grooming-gangs-decade.html
It seems they are happy with children being left with paedophiles, but not with UKIP members.
…. “racism” is probably an inherent flaw in the Human Species ….
Either that or its just a word used by the inherently flawed to dissuade disagreement!