Camdcen New Journal - Letters: Brown better

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Camden New Journal - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published:28 June 2007

Blair goes, but will Brown be better?

• SO it is goodbye at last to Tony Blair. Muslims in Camden and throughout the country will not be sorry. We hoped for much better of him in 1997. We could not have been let down more completely.
Thanks to Mr Blair, Muslims are not now welcomed as decent fellow citizens, but treated as suspected terrorists. Thanks to him, racism has got worse in Britain rather than better.
Thanks to Mr Blair, young Muslims still have poorer education and worse job prospects. And thanks to him, some 150 British soldiers have been killed in Iraq, more than 650,000 Iraqis have been slaughtered, and more than two million have been forced to flee their country.
Blair’s “war on terrorism” has not made Britain safer, but more dangerous for everybody, Muslims included.
Having always done too little to promote integration, Mr Blair now says it is Muslims’ fault that we have not managed to become integrated on our own.
His minister, Ruth Kelly, is encouraging cuts in the language and translation services, which are needed to help immigrants and ethnic minorities whose English is not good. Cutting the services, she argues, will make immigrants learn English.
That is like saying you should close hospitals because they only encourage people to be sick or cut bus services to make people take more exercise by walking.
This is what New Labour has come to under Blair – and sadly I do not expect Gordon Brown will be any better since he has tamely gone along with Blair for the last 10 years.
CLLR FARUQUE ANSARI
Lib Dem, Kentish Town

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, Camden New Journal, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@camdennewjournal.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Tuesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number. Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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