Can British Pakistani Humza Yousaf Lead Scotland to Independence?

[Riaz Haq]

British Pakistani Humza Yousaf, 37, has made history. He has become the first Muslim to lead Scotland after winning the election of the Scottish National Party (SNP) to succeed Nicola Sturgeon. He is also the youngest person to be elected First Minister of Scotland. Humza's father was born in Pakistan and his mother in Kenya.  "We should all take pride in the fact that today we have sent a clear message, that your color of skin, your faith, is not a barrier to leading the country we all call home", he declared in his victory speech. Back in 2016, he took the oath as a member of the Scottish parliament in Urdu, Pakistan's national language.  Currently, there are 5 members of Pakistani origin serving in the Scottish Parliament and 29 in the British Parliament. 

Scottish Leader Humza Yousaf

Scottish Independence:

He has vowed to lead his nation to independence from Britain, now led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a British Indian. Channel 4 News quoted him as saying: "we will be the next generation that delivers independence of Scotland." The people of Scotland need independence now more than ever", he added.  Here's an excerpt of his victory speech:

"To those in Scotland who don’t yet share the passion I do for independence, I will aim to earn your trust by continuing to govern well, and earn your respect as First Minister by focussing on the priorities that matter to us all, and in doing so using our devolved powers to absolute maximum effect to tackle the challenges of the day. For those of us who do believe in independence, we will only win by making the case on the doorsteps. My solemn commitment to you is that I will kickstart our grassroots, civic-led movement and ensure our drive for independence is in 5th gear". 

60% of Scots Voted Against Brexit. Source: New York Times

Scots Against Brexit:

Recent YouGov poll shows that only 39% of Scottish voters support independence, while 47% wish to remain with the United Kingdom. Can Yousaf persuade more voters to support his goal of independence? He knows that an overwhelming majority of Scots voted against Brexit. This creates an opportunity based on the economic benefits of leaving the UK to join the European Union (EU). Ireland is a good example of a small country enjoying the huge benefits of access to the large European market. Ireland is now significantly wealthier than the UK. Many big American companies have established significant presence in the  Irish Republic to gain access to the EU market. They have created jobs, increased the tax base and brought technology to the Republic of Ireland. 

British Pakistani MPs. Source: Geo News

British Pakistani MPs and Peers:

There are 15 British Pakistani members of the House of Commons, and 14 in the House of Lords, the upper house of the British Parliament, bringing the total strength of British Pakistanis in the UK parliament to 29. Most of them are from very humble backgrounds in rural Pakistan. Majority of Pakistanis in the UK are from Mirpur and its surrounding villages in Azad Kashmir. They or their parents migrated to Britain when they were given compensation by the Pakistani government for their land to make way for the building of the massive Mangla Dam after the signing of the Indus Water Treaty between India and Pakistan in 1960. Five of the twelve British Pakistani MPs in the new parliament are from Azad Kashmir.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan:

In 2016,  Sadiq Khan was elected as mayor of London, making him the first Muslim mayor of a major western capital city. Mayor Sadiq Khan is also of Pakistani-origin. Khan's father migrated to Britain in the 1960s and worked as a London bus driver. Khan comes from a family of two generations of immigrants: His grandparents migrated from what is now India to the newly created state of Pakistan in 1947 and his parents migrated from Karachi to London in 1969. Sadiq Khan was born in London in 1970.

British Pakistanis' Struggles:

While the British Pakistanis have made some headway in the public sector in their new home, they continue to face discrimination, particularly in the private sector.  A 2016 study by the government’s Social Mobility Commission found that the "children of Bangladeshi and Pakistani origin in Britain have outperformed other ethnic groups to achieve rapid improvements at every level of education, but are significantly less likely to be employed in managerial or professional jobs than their white counterparts".

The study said that the "minority ethnic pupils (including Pakistanis) are outperforming white working class children in English tests throughout school, with white British teenagers coming bottom of the pile in the subject at GCSE level".

Pakistani Doctors in the West:

Pakistani doctors make up the third largest source of practicing physicians and surgeons in the United States.  Pakistan is also the second largest source of doctors of foreign origin serving in the United Kingdom, according to OECD. Indians make up 34% of the foreign doctors in Britain, followed by 11% from Pakistan.

Here's a video of Humza Yousaf taking oath as member of Scottish Parliament in Urdu:

https://youtu.be/NE_J8wzo6ko

https://www.youtube.com/embed/NE_J8wzo6ko"; title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>" height="315" src="https://img1.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" width="560" style="cursor: move; background-color: #b2b2b2;" /> 

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[Riaz Haq]

This week marks a watershed moment in a decade of discussion of “grooming gangs”: a much-anticipated Home Office report has concluded that there is no credible evidence that any one ethnic group is over-represented in cases of child sexual exploitation.

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/19/home-office-r...

For many in Britain today the term “grooming gang” immediately suggests Pakistani-heritage Muslim men abusing white girls, but the Home Office researchers now tell us that “research has found that group-based offenders are most commonly White”.


A powerful modern racial myth has been exploded. What started as a far-right trope had migrated into the mainstream, meeting little resistance along the way. In 2011, the Times and its chief investigative reporter, Andrew Norfolk, claimed to have uncovered a new ethnic crime threat, shrouded until then in a supposed “conspiracy of silence”.

The racial stereotype gained credence when the Quilliam Foundation, a controversial “counter-extremism” group, claimed that 84% of “grooming gang offenders” were Asian.

The “grooming gangs” narrative fed into the agenda of the far right, but it was not only there that the issue was racialised: the Labour MP Sarah Champion, for one, wrote a now notorious article in the Sun in 2017, for which she resigned as shadow equalities minister.

The two-year study by the Home Office makes very clear that there are no grounds for asserting that Muslim or Pakistani-heritage men are disproportionately engaged in such crimes, and, citing our research, it confirmed the unreliability of the Quilliam claim.



The horrific and widely reported crimes committed in places such as Rochdale, Oxford and Telford were real: but racist stereotyping and demonisation deflected from that.


The claims that “grooming gangs” were not properly investigated due to “political correctness” and a fear of being accused of racism are heavily undermined by decades of research highlighting the consistent over-policing of minority communities. What’s more, the whole history of the UK’s responses to child sexual exploitation and abuse is littered with failings – as shown by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, Operation Yewtree and numerous other investigations and inquiries. There were also regrettable consequences for child protection, since victims and offenders who don’t fit the stereotype can be overlooked.




This misdirected focus can be found in the Home Office report itself. Its title and executive summary both imply it covers “group-based child sexual exploitation” in the whole. But it fails to include a whole range of problems that might reasonably fit into that category, such as abuse that occurs online, and in schools, care homes and other institutions. Instead, it follows the crowd by dwelling on child sexual exploitation “in the community”. This construct is vaguely defined and poorly justified, although certainly more acceptable sounding than “grooming gangs” – the broadly equivalent term that has no legal meaning but plenty of racial and political baggage.



It might be tempting to think that, if nothing else, a decade of outrage had stimulated wider concern about child sexual exploitation. In truth, it has diverted resources and effort into wasteful paths while opportunities to address systemic barriers to prevention and improve victim support have been missed.



The claims that “grooming gangs” were not properly investigated due to “political correctness” and a fear of being accused of racism are heavily undermined by decades of research highlighting the consistent over-policing of minority communities. What’s more, the whole history of the UK’s responses to child sexual exploitation and abuse is littered with failings – as shown by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, Operation Yewtree and numerous other investigations and inquiries. There were also regrettable consequences for child protection, since victims and offenders who don’t fit the stereotype can be overlooked.

[Riaz Haq]

Home Secretary accused of 'parroting far-right myths' about British Pakistani men | The National

https://www.thenational.scot/news/23429688.home-secretary-accused-p...

Braverman’s language was condemned by Robina Qureshi, CEO of the refugee charity Positive Action in Housing (PAiH).

She called on the Home Secretary to apologise for her “gross misrepresentation”, describing her language around British Pakistani men as “unacceptable”.

The Tory MP blamed “political correctness” for authorities failing to tackle grooming gangs during a media round on Sunday morning.

The UK Government is expected to set out details on Monday of a plan to tackle grooming gangs and better protect children, which will include a consultation on introducing a mandatory duty on professionals working with children to report concerns about sexual abuse.

However, on Sunday, Braverman singled out British Pakistani men over concerns about grooming gangs as she accused authorities of turning a “blind eye” to signs of abuse over fears of being labelled “racist” or “bigoted”.

The Home Secretary said that the “systematic and institutional failure to safeguard the welfare of children when it comes to sexual abuse” was one of the biggest scandals in British history.

“What’s clear is that what we’ve seen is a practice whereby vulnerable white English girls, sometimes in care, sometimes who are in challenging circumstances, being pursued and raped and drugged and harmed by gangs of British Pakistani men who’ve worked in child abuse rings or networks,” she told the Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme on Sky News.



“It’s now down to the authorities to track these perpetrators down without fear or favour relentlessly and bring them to justice.



“We’ve seen institutions and state agencies, whether it’s social workers, teachers, the police, turn a blind eye to these signs of abuse out of political correctness, out of fear of being called racists, out of fear of being called bigoted.”

Charity boss Qureshi blasted the remarks, said they were “unacceptable” and demanded an apology for the “gross misrepresentation” of the Pakistani community.

She said: "The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has reached a new low.



“Her remarks are in direct contradiction to her own Department’s research, which found that most groups of child sex offenders tend to be white men under the age of 30.

“She is openly parroting far-right myths about racial groups and amplifying them into national trends.

“Her commentary is unacceptable, and I call on her to apologise for her gross misrepresentations of our communities.”

Qureshi said Braverman’s comments were “grossly offensive” to the thousands of law-abiding British Pakistanis living in the UK, and noted that newly elected First Minister of Scotland Humza Yousaf is of Pakistani descent.

“Yet she displays all the tact of a bull in a china shop,” Qureshi added.



“Her comments are tantamount to inciting racist violence which is a criminal offence. “Parliament must reign in this government minister who openly tells mistruths in the face of her own Department’s research.



“Sadly, this Home Secretary appears to be on a mission to cause as much offence as possible to those of immigrant stock, and to appease her far right voter base.

“Yet the irony for her is that the far right don’t want brown or black immigrants, or their children, or her, in this country or in positions of power.”



It comes after the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse last year described sexual abuse of children as an “epidemic that leaves tens of thousands of victims in its poisonous wake”.

The seven-year inquiry into institutional failings in England and Wales concluded that people in positions of trust should be compelled by law to report child sexual abuse.

The report found that there was currently “a marked absence of a cohesive set of laws and procedures in England and in Wales that require individuals working with children to report child sexual abuse”.

[Riaz Haq]

Mohammad Ramzan falsely accused in grooming case

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cumbria-64950862

A woman who falsely claimed she was raped by multiple men and trafficked by an Asian grooming gang has been jailed for eight-and-a-half years.

Eleanor Williams sparked protests in her Cumbrian home town of Barrow after posting photos on social media of injuries she said were from beatings.

But Preston Crown Court heard she inflicted the wounds herself using a hammer.

Williams, 22, was found guilty of perverting the course of justice.

A two-day sentencing hearing was told three men Williams falsely accused over a three-year period tried to take their own lives after being targeted and suffering "hell on earth".

[Riaz Haq]

Craig Murray -
@CraigMurrayOrg
This is incredible. The Home Office's own extensive study found that there is no ethnic group particularly involved in paedophile grooming, and that most organised paedophile groups are white.
Braverman is truly disgusting.

https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/1642656137928404993?s=20

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/dec/analysis-new-home-office-report...

The study finds no credible evidence for a far-right stereotype that has spread widely in the media, writes Dr Ella Cockbain (UCL Security & Crime Science) in an article co-authored with Dr Waqas Tufail for The Guardian.

[Riaz Haq]

What’s Not on Sunak’s To-Do List? Ending Racism
Analysis by Pankaj Mishra | Bloomberg

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/whats-not-on-sunaks-to-do-l...

Two weeks ago, the United Kingdom was thrown into economic chaos by Kwasi Kwarteng, its first Black chancellor of the Exchequer. A floundering Tory party has now tasked Rishi Sunak, the UK’s first Brown prime minister, to clean up the mess. But racial progress, let alone political and economic stability, is not in sight yet.

Sunak’s biography (he moved straight from Oxford to Goldman Sachs and then Stanford University and hedge funds) belongs quintessentially to the rarefied world of metropolitan globalization. What is remarkable about Sunak and Kwarteng, the Eton-educated son of Ghanaian immigrants, is that they entered a gilded global class with a swiftness and assurance that would have been inconceivable to those who first arrived in Britain from its former colonies in the 1950s and 1960s.

Writing to his wife in 1953, V.S. Naipaul, a Hindu from Trinidad who became arguably Britain’s greatest postwar writer, described how he, though Oxford-educated, was considered only “for jobs as porters in kitchens, and with the road gangs.” Humiliation and despair remained commonplace experiences for people who emigrated to Britain decades after Naipaul and who worked, proverbially, twice as hard to get half as far as White Britons. Sunak, whose middle-class parents paid for him to go to snotty Winchester College, admitted in an interview in 2020 that racist abuse “stings in a way that very few other things have.”

But individual escapes from collective dishonor — through hedge-funding or marriage into a billionaire’s family — don’t amount to general social progress. Hopes that Sunak’s move to 10 Downing Street has brought closer a post-racial future may prove as cruelly premature as the fantasies ignited by Barack Obama’s elevation to the White House in 2008.

For one, Sunak’s task seems impossible. He is expected to salvage a society, politics and economy profoundly damaged by his own party’s openly racist and mendacious campaign for Brexit. In the contest for prime-ministership last month, Tory party members rejected Sunak, despite the fact that his opponent, Liz Truss, was a self-proclaimed “thrill-seeker,” who loved to “embrace the chaos.”

The overwhelmingly White and elderly Tories chose an obviously loose cannon to be prime minister at least partly because Sunak has, as he himself confessed good-humoredly during his campaign, a “great tan.” Last week, a large proportion of them wanted Boris Johnson to return. As their mortgages rise and their pensions shrink, they might decide that the first Hindu and richest prime minister ever is as much of an undesirable imposition as the first Black chancellor, chosen by Truss to unleash chaos in the UK.

[Riaz Haq]

What’s Not on Sunak’s To-Do List? Ending Racism
Analysis by Pankaj Mishra | Bloomberg

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/whats-not-on-sunaks-to-do-l...

In any case, a few over-promoted non-White people are by no means guaranteed to diminish mainstream prejudice against the great majority of their compatriots. Marrying Prince Harry, Meghan Markle was widely supposed to nudge Britain as well as the Royal Family into accepting a multi-racial future. As it happened, the arrival of a dark-skinned princess in Buckingham Palace provoked Britain’s race-baiting press into a frenzy, forcing her to leave the country altogether.

Britain’s xenophobic political and media culture is more willing to accommodate those who indulge its basest instincts, such as the two successive Tory Home secretaries of Indian origin, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman. They stridently advertised their loathing of immigration and risked breaking international law with their scheme to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda. “I would love to have a front page of the Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda,” Braverman claimed at the Tory party conference early this month, shortly before she was sacked by Truss for breaching a ministerial code. “That’s my dream, it’s my obsession.” The daughter of immigrants from the Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Goa, Braverman nearly derailed the UK’s trade deal with India by complaining that it would increase immigration from her parents’ homeland.

Undoubtedly, the Tory party, long stigmatized as “nasty,” needs a fresh identity and purpose. And Sunak, the son of Hindu immigrants from Africa, could awaken his peers to an irrevocably interdependent world.

But Sunak is unlikely to vacate their hard-right positions: He campaigned for Brexit, fully supports the Rwanda policy and has just reappointed Braverman as Home secretary. There are good reasons to suspect that he would retard rather than accelerate Britain’s much-needed transition to a sober state of mind.

He revealed during his summer campaign for prime minister that he is not above stoking culture wars against those Braverman last week denounced as “tofu-eating wokerati.” Indeed, facing a long economic recession with diminishing resources and no popular mandate, Sunak may have little choice. Uncontrollable economic crises are pushing traditional right-wing politicians everywhere into demagogic rhetoric about immigrants, wokeness, cancel culture and more.

Celebrations over a Hindu’s ascent to the UK’s highest political office are thus misplaced. Sunak, too, could end up merely proving, like his recent Tory colleagues of Indian ancestry, that some colored folks are prepared to work twice as hard as White people to demonstrate their hard-right credentials.

[Riaz Haq]

As of 2016, there were 12,454 Pakistani doctors and 45,830 Indian doctors out of 215,630 total in the United States.


https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryId=68336

India 45,830

Pakistan 12,454

Grenada 10,789

Philipines 10,217

Dominica 9,974

Mexico 9,923

Canada 7,765

Dominican Republic 6,269

China 5,772

UAE 4,635

Egypt 4,379

------------

Total Foreign Doctors in UK 66,211

India 18,953

Pakistan 8,026

Nigeria 4,880

Egypt 4,471

Foreign Doctors in Canada 25,400:

South Africa 2,604

India 2,127

Ireland 1,942

UK 1,923


US 1,263


Pakistan 1,087

[Riaz Haq]

#British #Pakistani elected Mayor of #Bolton, #UK. Ayub was born in the small village of Ghora, Kotli, Azad #Kashmir. He came from #Pakistan to Bolton in 1972 at age 15. He worked #textile mills, #manufacturing & transport sector & local gov't
https://www.bolton.gov.uk/councillors-mayor/mayor#:~:text=The%20May....

Ayub was born in the small village of Ghora, Kotli, Azad Kashmir. He came to live in Bolton in 1972 at the age 15.

Ayub has worked in various sectors including Textile mills, manufacturing, commercial and later in the transport sector and local government for last 40 years.

Ayub was elected to Bolton Council in 2006 and has represented Great Lever Ward for the last 17 years. He has served as Vice Chairman of the Planning Committee, Cabinet member for Highways & Transport, Audit, Corporate and Place scrutiny Committee. He has also served as a Governor of Bolton Islamic Girls School.

Mohammed Ayub will be the first Bolton Mayor of Kashmiri origin and is exceptionally proud to be Bolton’s First Citizen. Ayub has chosen his wife Zaibun Nisa to be his Mayoress, they have been married for 45 years. Originally born in Pakistan, Zaibun has lived in the UK for many years. They have 6 beautiful children and 14 grandchildren.

[Riaz Haq]

Why Pakistani students benefit the most from going to university

https://theconversation.com/why-pakistani-students-benefit-the-most...

By Beth Daley
Editor and GM

The benefits are especially large for (British) Pakistani students, with an estimated boost to average earnings of more than a third by age 30. Adding up predicted gains over the whole life cycle and taking into account taxes and student loans, we found that doing a degree is worth around £200,000 for Pakistani students – around twice the average return for all students we calculated in previous work.

This is not because Pakistani graduates have especially high earnings. In fact, the opposite is true: Pakistani graduates have the lowest graduate earnings of all ethnic groups, with typical earnings at age 30 of £23,000 for men and £19,000 for women.

How The Conversation is different: We explain without oversimplifying.
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Instead the reason is that – based on comparing similar people who did and didn’t go to university – Pakistani graduates would have earned much less had they not gone to university. Typical earnings at age 30 of Pakistani men and women who did not go to university are only £13,000 for men and £11,000 for women.

An important factor explaining the large earnings gains for Pakistani graduates (compared to not attending university) appears to be that Pakistani students are more likely than White British students to choose subjects with good job prospects at university, such as business, law, or pharmacology. They are also less likely to choose degrees with low or negative financial returns, such as creative arts.



These findings appear to contradict a claim in the government’s recent race commission report. According to the report, an explanation for the low graduate earnings of many ethnic minority groups is that “ethnic minority students, and especially Black students, from lower social status backgrounds are not being well advised on which courses to take at university”.

Our findings suggest that the opposite is true for South Asian students, as they tend to study more lucrative subjects than white students. We also find no evidence that black students choose lower-return subjects than white students. This does not mean that poor career advice is not a problem – but it doesn’t seem to affect ethnic minorities disproportionately.

The government’s report also suggests that ethnic minorities have low graduate earnings because they attend less selective universities. It is true that students from ethnic minorities – especially black students – are more likely to attend lower tariff universities, and that graduates of these institutions earn less than other graduates.

But importantly, this does not mean that these universities offer low returns. Many graduates of these institutions would have had much lower earnings still if they had not gone to university at all. Overall, we found no evidence that ethnic minorities’ institution choices lower their gains from attending university.