Writer displays an ‘I’m all right, Jack’ attitude

I WAS disappointed at the tone and contents of Mr FB Lobo’s letter (“Time for correspondent to get off his soapbox”, Mailbox, April 5) replying to Mr Suresh Chauhan’s letter of April 3.

It was good to know that Mr Lobo, like Mr Chauhan, benefited by living in the UK.

How, however, the two writers have bought into the values of British society obviously differs.

In spite of his success, Mr Chauhan remains concerned that the values of equal opportunity for all citizens other than himself, whatever their ethnicity, origin, or status are, is not obfuscated by the Report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities.

Mr Lobo, by contrast, prefers to regard his own individual success as proof of the authenticity of its findings – rather resonant, it seems to me, of an ‘I’m all right, Jack’ attitude.

What he was oblivious to, however, is that the end of his own letter undermines his own argument by focusing on Diane Abbott MP, herself black – and, as reported by Amnesty International, the recipient of half the abusive tweets of all of the tweets received by Members of Parliament.

My own feelings about the report are largely influenced by the fact that one of the most outspoken critics of it is Lord Simon Woolley, who until July 2020 was himself the chairman of the No. 10 Race Disparity Unit.

Coincidentally or not, this was around the time that the report was actually commissioned, whereupon Dr Tony Sewell (renowned for his opinion that “evidence for institutional racism is somewhat flimsy”) was put in charge.

And he was put in charge, moreover, by a Prime Minister of “piccaninnies” and “watermelon smiles” fame…

Need we say more?

Michael Tully, Glen Parva