'Anti-racist laws 'have failed to remove the roots of everyday racism....
because they fail to address underlying everyday attitudes and behaviours, which frequently go unchallenged. These subtle and overt behaviours quickly become an expected part of everyday life. They are not publicly acknowledged, and constantly reappear.'

quote from The Joseph Rowntree Foundation

This season has seen a rash of '"THEY" are trying to take away "OUR" Christmas' banner headlines.

On closer inspection, like this story, the origins have been quite different.

The school mentioned above had to cope with requests from some parents for names of pupils in their children's class - a request they had to refuse, as it is against data protection laws!

The school has added that, 'The cost of so many cards is prohibitive for some families and we feel that children are often pressurised to act in the same way as their peers.'


However the speed with which these stories are taken up and presented by the more virulent far right-wing press is more than a little scary.
It appears that many of their readership are unwilling or incapable of reading below the trendy PC bashing headlines.

btw for those folks from outside the area, Rochdale is a town that has an Asian population of approximately 10% and in the last few years has been repeatedly targeted by the BNP.