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Press Release from Nirj Deva DL MEP |
2nd
March 2008 |
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MEP
blasts minister on Proms outrage |
Following Culture Minister Margaret Hodge's comments that the Proms
are too exclusive Nirj Deva, MEP blasts Labour's nannying nentality.
Nirj Deva MEP:
"Margaret Hodge is talking nonsense - one of her specialities.
"Yet again, another Labour attempt to be so politically correct that
we are now being imprisoned in a intellectual gulag where we have to
thing twice before we speak out, twice before we have a drink, three
times before we smoke a cigarette, and five times before we think
for ourselves. Surely we are born in freedom in a free country and
permitted by this Labour government to enjoy the best of Britain
without feeling guilty about it.
"Those of us who have chosen to come to Britain out of our free will
have done so because we want to be a part of the British nation.
Those of us who succeed the most having arrived here are those who
have accepted that we have a shared culture, a shared history and a
shared value system. And I say this when we are celebrating
Commonwealth Day. What Margaret Hodge is talking about is not about
culture but her own narrow sense of class.
"It is outrageous to suggest that a British Asian, a British West
Indian or a British African cannot appreciate and enjoy and derive
the same pleasures from the Proms, that we cannot enjoy Elgar,
Vaughan Williams, Holst, Benjamin Britten etc. I presume she also
thinks that Zubin Mehta is an Englishman born and bred and Dame Ki
ri Te Kanawa comes from the East Midlands. The last time culture was
so overtly perverted for political reasons was by the Third Reich
and the Soviet Union both forcing everyone to be politically correct
and conform to a master view.
"I am particularly sorry that this point has been made by Margaret
Hodge whose own background is so vastly cosmopolitan, whose own
parents were Jewish refugees and who chose to be British and
therefore she should, perhaps more than anyone else, recognise that
we can all be a part of British culture because British culture
belongs to all of us."
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