London Caves to Political Correctness

When President Trump traveled to Paris to celebrate Bastille Day last week many of us believed that he was snubbing Great Britain. By all appearances it is true. Why would he want to travel to a city led by a weak-kneed and feckless leader like Sadiq Khan. To my eye, you can read weakness in Khan’s facial expressions.

Thanks to Khan, or to whomever else you wish, London is buckling under the weight of political correctness. One would like to have believed that, what with Brexit, the Brits would have stood tall and proud in defense of their great culture, but apparently the lure of political correctness was too tempting. London’s mayor prefers appeasement. He is happily bending over to defend Islam.

Martin Daubney describes London’s cultural degeneration, beginning with its willingness to eliminate distinctions between the sexes:

Both intellectually and literally, Londoners are dying under the weight of a virulent dose of political correctness.

Last week, Transport for London pointlessly buckled to LGBT activists and banned the quintessentially British (and universally polite) phrase, “ladies and gentlemen” from its station announcements.

Its replacement – “good afternoon, everyone” – is deemed more “inclusive” and “gender neutral,” although even that might offend those with multiple personality disorders.

But this is 2017, and who’d be surprised if TfL went the whole hog and integrated Xe pronouns into its announcements, or renamed ‘sexist’ Tube stations such as Cockfosters and Shepherd’s Bush? (They could re-name Seven Sisters station Seven Persons).

Political correctness made its way to King’s College London. It decided to rid itself of portraits of accomplished white people, because they made the non-white people feel unwelcome:

On Friday, this rot spread, when academics at King’s College London decided to swap portraits of its founders for a “wall of diversity,” after Professor Patrick Leman, the Institute’s dean of education, claimed “busts of white, bearded men” were “intimidating” and “alienating” to BME students.

Some concluded any student who felt “intimidated” by a statue probably didn’t deserve a University place at all.

We know that when people fail to excel the reason must be their hurt feelings. The university has now become an infirmary.

And, of course the mayor has chosen to curtail the police department’s ability to stop and frisk suspected criminals. Why? Because the policy aims at more minority youth than anyone else. The fact that said youth commit a disproportionate share of crime does not seem to matter.

Daubney writes:

This obsession with political correctness is not only turning London into a laughing stock, it’s actively killing Londoners.

The clearest example is the British Police’s Stop And Search scheme. Designed to allow police to frisk suspects for concealed weapons, it has long been hated by critics as “racist,” who correctly point out that 65% of searches are on black men, who are six times more likely to be searched.

Sensing an opportunity to appeal to minority communities, in 2015, while running for London Mayor, Sadiq Khan vowed to “do everything in my power to cut stop and search”.

In the year to the end of March 2016, there were 387,448 stop and search procedures conducted by police in England and Wales, a fall of 28% on the previous 12 months.

Fewer stop and searches meant more crime. It’s the price of virtue signallinig:

In that same period, London’s Metropolitan Police announced that gun crime in London had soared 42% and knife crime 24%. Recorded crime was up across virtually every category, with a total 4.5% increase to nearly 774,737 offences.

Who’d have thought a 28% drop in searches might result in a 24% boom in knife crime? Clearly not London’s Mayor. In one school in his city, 3/4 of ten-year-olds said they knew somebody who carried a knife.

Who is committing these crimes? Daubney has the statistics:

British police don’t like to publish crime by race or ethnicity. But when data has been obtained under Freedom Of Information Acts, it’s shown that in the City Of London, 36% of knife crime is perpetrated by black people, who only make up around 13% of London’s 8.6 million populace.

Furthermore, 24% of stabbing victims are black men.

You could conclude it’s reasonable to stop and search those most likely to be knife criminals. Surely, if black lives truly mattered to London’s Mayor, he would ramp up Stop And Search to help stop black men being disproportionately killed or jailed.

What is Mayor Khan doing about this? Why, he is declaring war against Islamophobia:

Instead, in April – at the end of a week that saw eight fatal stabbings in the Capital, two less than a mile from my home – Khan trumpeted his new £1.7m “online hate crime hub”.

Some wondered: does London’s Mayor seriously prioritise cutting nasty tweets over fatal stabbings?

Similarly, Khan has rejected Prevent, the British government’s only anti-terror strategy, as “toxic” adding “it’s seen by some communities as spying and snooping”.

In the wake of the London Bridge terrorist attack that left eight ordinary Londoners murdered in the streets by ISIS jihadists, Khan took every opportunity to remind us Islamophobic “hate crimes” –that included tweets – had increased fivefold.

Is London burning? Or have the British lost their minds?