I should know better, but I fell of my chair when I read the extraordinary story about Sussex Tory Councillor John Cherry. He's the NIMBY racist who caused a minor shit storm in his reaction to the news that a South London Academy was going to set up a boarding school - for inner city kids - in his little patch of Middle England.
In an echo of the Smethick by-election Cherry says that the prospect of letting these kids - who he says will be 98% Black and Asian - out into the local villages will create a 'sexual volcano.'
He does concede that it wouldn't be so bad if these bussed-in 'ethnics' were Chinese or Indian because apparently these groups have a hard-working academic ethic. But he is quite clear that he doesn't want any Pakaistanis - because that group are 'uncertain what hard work is'.
Sadly, the interaction of class, culture and institutional racism means that there is a grain of truth in his observations about the over and under achievement of various groups. Although if he did his homework further he'd have found that one of the most under-achieving groups of all is the "white British'.
Councillor Cherry has swiftly apologised and resigned and the Tories are of course now desperately back-peddling. Cherry's views certainly don't sit well with the metro-savvy Notting Hill-ite wing. But I suspect that Cherry just said what many of the Tory loyalists in the shires actually think.
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