Will ‘they’ ‘learn’ to tell the difference between Yvette C & Theresa May?
Will ‘they’ ‘learn’ to tell a bully in geek’s disguise from a Bullingdon C brat?
Will they laugh out loud at the very idea of being lectured by a political prat?
[To be continued]
The following item has been retrieved at 0955 GMT on Friday 14 December 2012 from the web site of the London Daily Telegraph for contextual reference for viewers and readers of the © Muhammad Haque Daily Ethical Commentary [above]:
Learn English Ed Miliband tells immigrants as he admits Labour failed to stop segregation
Ed Miliband will today call for more immigrants to learn English, as he admits Labour was wrong to believe people from different countries would "automatically" get along together.
9:17AM GMT 14 Dec 2012
In a key speech on immigration, the Labour leader will concede that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown allowed communities to become divided as millions of immigrants settled in Britain over the last decade.
Labour did "too little to tackle the realities of segregation in communities that were struggling to cope", he will say at an event in Tooting, south London.
Under new plans, Labour would spend more money on helping immigrants learn English than translation for non-essential services. It would make immigrant parents take responsibility for their children learning English and immigrants could be excluded from some "public facing" public sector jobs, such as nursing, unless they can speak English properly. Employers would also be banned from advertising for workers from specific ethnic groups.
The Labour leader will say there is no need for immigrants to give up their heritage as "people can be proudly, patriotically British without abandoning their cultural roots and distinctiveness."
But he will also reject the idea of divided communities. "We cannot be comfortable with separation. It blocks opportunities, leaving people at the margins. And it breeds ignorance, suspicion and prejudice," he will say.
His plans are part of Labour's "comprehensive strategy for integration". It is based on a vision of a society where "we overcome division without asking people to lose their sense of themselves - a Britain where people of all backgrounds, all races, all ethnicities, all cultures, can practice their own religion, continue their own customs, but also come together to forge a new and better identity."
Mr Miliband will once again acknowledge that his Labour predecessors got it wrong by failing to tackle concerns over mass immigration from Eastern Europe.
"We know there is anxiety about immigration and what it means for our culture," he will say. "The answer is not to sweep it under the carpet or fail to talk about it, nor is it to make promises that can't be kept. It is to deal with all of the issues that concern people."
He will also sympathise with communities worried about the "pace of change" in British life due to immigration, after the new census showed a million immigrants have settled in Britain over the last decade.
"The capacity of our economy to absorb new migrants has outrun the capacity of some of our communities to adapt," he will say.
"The last Labour government made mistakes in this regard. We have said we will learn lessons from eastern European migration and ensure maximum transitional controls in future. And we will look at how the Government's immigration cap works in practice.
"But I believe we can all cope with these pressures if we recognise them and understand how to respond."
Eric Pickles, the Communites Secretary, has long been saying that immigrants should learn to "speak like a native". He once told The House magazine: "In terms of wanting people, encouraging people, to be part of British society, they can't do that unless they have more than an understanding of English."
However, Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of Migration Watch, this morning said policies on English teaching do not go far enough to tackle problems cause by immigration.
"The net inflow under the last ten years of the Labour government was two million people, that’s the population of Birmingham, the entire population of Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool," he told BBC Radio Four's Today Programme.
"Those numbers are absolutely huge. The scale of immigration has been allowed to get completely out of control, I think that's obvious, and they knew it. I mean, we said this ten years ago we said it would be two million and the census last week has proved us to be right.
"It’s simply not enough, frankly. I don’t want to be ungracious, but it’s frankly not enough to pop up now and say ‘we’ll do something about English language teaching’. We’re left with an enormous problem of integration and this is, such as we’ve seen so far of this speech, these measures are, by comparison with that, pretty trivial."
Sadiq Khan, the shadow justice secretary, said some nurses and care workers do not have good enough English, as he expanded on Labour's plans to help public sector workers to get better language skills.
“The care sector’s a good example where you’ve got care sector workers doing excellent work, some of whose English isn’t proficient," he told BBC Radio Four's Today Programme. "And there’s been a concern expressed – especially by the elderly, who obviously speak and understand English – not being able to communicate with their care sector workers."
He said language skills are important to help people integrate.
“It’s a simple thing, your ability to talk to your neighbour," he said. "If you’re a parent, your ability to communicate with the teachers at your primary to see how young Johnny or young Ali’s doing at that school relies upon a good grasp of English."
Councils have a role to play in helping immigrants learn English, Mr Khan suggested. “Local authorities up and down the country spend a lot of money translating, for example, local newspapers into other languages," he said.
"Why not use that money instead to teach local people how to speak English? They can read the local paper in English and do all the other huge benefits and enjoyable things you can do by being able to read the language."
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