Henry Nowak - I can’t breathe

No, lots of people allege two tier policing. Travellers in Ireland, ethnic minorities in the UK, etc etc etc. Its proving it which is more elusive.

Whether it applicable in this killing is debatable, but the notion of treating different ethnic groups unequally and differently seems to be baked into their police training and guidance. e.g.

https://www.lboro.ac.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2026/june/henry-nowak-police-review-anti-racism-guidance/

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/dei-equality-diversity-inclusion-policy-t6vg9jw7r

https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/equality-vs-equity-police-council-reviews-anti-racism-commitment/

Well, yes. I'm referring to a specific narrative pushed by the far right here as a wedge issue.

It's going to be reviewed so maybe let's see what comes of that. The family have denied that it's a racist issue. It's a murder and the officers deserve to be held accountable for the casual lack of concern they showed Henry Nowak. It couldn't be difficult to verify that he'd been stabbed but they weren't interested.

It's clear that Farage is only interested in this incident as far as it's a vehicle to increase his chances of political power. In his statement on the murder of Nowak, he doesn't take much time to get a broader accusation that this is all a result of mass immigration and successive governments' attempts to silence concerns about it by introducing hate speech laws. There is only a cursory bit at the start to address what a personal tragedy this is for the Nowak family and the heinous nature of the murder.

If there is a two-tier policing problem in the UK, that should absolutely be addressed because wrong is wrong regardless of your ethnicity, but I would worry that the backlash should Reform take power goes too far in the opposite direction where anyone non-white gets othered and brutalised without due cause, similar to the kind of thing that's been happening with ICE in Trump's America. I mean, Farage gave a speech a year or two ago where he endorsed the scrapping of a whole lot of human rights legislation in order to boot out illegal immigrants far more quickly. He framed it as the removal of red tape. Is it so hard to see how removing human rights legislation is a very easy slide into general authoritarianism? It doesn't take a history degree holder to see that it probably is.

The real truth of the matter is I think there is a sizable sector of the British population who is unhappy or uneasy with demographic changes that have been happening since the 1950s, whether it be people from the West Indies coming or those coming from India, Pakistan and several countries throughout Africa. The thing is that a lot of those people are now one, two or three generations deep in the country - British citizenship/passport holders and know no other country or belong to any other country. Even Reform tip-toes around this because they know that if they stripped away the dog-whistles on it, it'd be a much more fraught debate as the real stakes would be revealed. What do you do with a bunch of people you want out of your country but who legally have no other place to really go? History doesn't show a whole lot of pleasant answers to that question.

The thing is that a lot of those people are now one, two or three generations deep in the country - British citizenship/passport holders and know no other country or belong to any other country.

I don't think that's really the problem for most Brits, who IME are generally pretty tolerant, so much as those who have been there as long as you say, but who DO feel they belong to another country. For instance Chaudhry Sarwar who made his career in British politics - served as the Scottish Labour Member of Parliament for Glasgow for over a decade, then retired from UK politics in 2010 and went Pakistan where he became Governor of Punjab,for the Pakistan Muslim League. But only after first securing the Glasgow seat for his son Anwar to take over from him. Presumably Anwar will be wanting the Governor gig as well, when the time comes for that. It's hard to believe they really are interested only in furthering the interests of all the people of Glasgow Central.

Or Tulip Siddiq, who's enmeshed in a corruption scandal over land in Bangladesh with her aunt, the former PM of Bangladesh. Siddiq said in 2017 that she was British not Bangladeshi, but Bangladeshi officials said that she held Bangladeshi citizenship, had had multiple Bangladeshi passports, an ID card and that her name was on the voter registry. Her lawyer denied the Bangladeshi documents even existed, and suggested they were fabrications, but investigative journalists have documented evidence that she has a national identity card as a Bangladeshi citizen, is registered to vote in Bangladesh and holds a Bangladeshi passport.

And that's without getting into extreme cases like people who want to destroy Europe and/or set up a caliphate.

So I think it's unfair to suggest that it's just some sort of British xenophobia. There's a problem with some descendants of immigrants who seem to have a utilitarian approach to their British nationality - which is fine, as long as people aren't fooled into believing otherwise and, you know, electing them to represent their constituents rather than their "home" country.

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Chaudhry Sarwar was born in Pakistan and Tulip Siddiq had dual citizenship, afaik. I wouldn't really debate the idea that conflicts of interest should be looked at and acted upon in these cases, but the bit quoted was talking about people who don't possess dual nationality of any kind, so there is a difference.

If you look back at recent decades in Britain from the 'rivers of blood' speech by Enoch Powell, through to the National Front stuff in the 70s through the 80s, to a die-down in the 90s, and then more tensions coming in the wake of 9/11 and 7/7, and then the BNP suddenly making a bit of a comeback, then Tommy Robinson and Brexit and the current situation, I wouldn't say that tolerance is a monolithic characteristic of any nation. I think it more ebbs and flows based on the current situation and political atmosphere, and people who rubbed along together at one time, despite recognised cultural/ethnic differences, can turn on each other very quickly in the wrong circumstances.

And this is not a situation I'd trust the likes of Farage to manage. Given his irresponsible rhetoric/promises about Brexit, I regard him as precisely no less full-of-shít than the politicians he currently criticises on mass immigration policy, and it's possible for the UK to have a third way on the matter that cuts off unwanted immigration without needing to scrap human rights laws and risk promoting a more hostile atmosphere to ethnic minorities in Britain who, through no fault of their own, can't really be sent anywhere else.

Surely Nowak's death point to a huge failure of policing and dealing with an emergency situation?

For what reason was he handcuffed first before receiving any medical attention given that he was unarmed? And it surely shouldn't have taken so long to determine that he was stabbed and grieviously injured? All the while his assailant, who was armed, was treated with kid gloves.

It's a shocking scenario to countenance. And it appears that there is some managing of the communication of the facts in a vain attempt to brush the situation under the carpet in case tensions are further flamed.

We need to be very careful here in Ireland to not blindly follow the same path as our neighbours across the Irish sea.

The left in this country are a joke, and crucially escape any hard questioning by the media on their hypocrisy. They were trying to incite a BLM style protest recently when a career criminal died during apprehension by security staff and yet conveniently ignored the murder of a gay man that happened at the same time. A man who was murdered for no other reason than being gay. The left fought hard for gay rights in the country but quickly moved on to the next cause celebre. Their politicking disgusts me.

Straight to the fabricated victimhood. A man is dead and this is your response. Be honest, you couldn't care less.

I don't disagree with you with regards to Farage. He is playing very dangerous politics. Inciting division and playing politics with the tragic murder or a young man. Farage should be criticised for that.

What I can't abide by is the hypocrisy. The left are just as bad with playing politics and inciting division in society. The did so with the murder of George Floyd. And the likes of Ruth Coppinger who was politicking with the death of Yves Sakila. The far left should be criticised just as harshly as the far right. Both extremes are stirring up division along racial lines.

One of the security guards involved in that incident was black, is he racist?

A couple of years ago 2 gay men were beheaded by am Iraqi Muslim imigrant in Sligo. But of course according to you Pride month is needed due to "the right", you're just making yourself look really stupid and are probably just trolling at this stage.

So more both sides and whataboutery. Repeating nonsense does not make it true.

The real test of the so-called 2-tier policing allegation is not the rate at which different groups are stopped: it should be more about the percentage of those stopped who are charged with a crime and the percentage of those charged who are found guilty.

Coppinger was pretty measured and reasonable. She didn't say anything outrageous, it was entirely anti violence. Do you just not like her saying that racism is a problem in Ireland? I pointed to the murder of Josip Strop last year by an Irish who prided himself on being a racist and xenophobe but you didn't even seem to acknowledge it, Strop was also gay.

Can you point to Coppinger saying something equivalent to “I suggest the rest of us respond to this with pure cold rage,”? Also worth noting that Farage remained entirely silent after the murder of Jo Cox by Britain First. His response to the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a police officer was “We must not allow the tragic murder of a young woman to turn into attacks on men and attacks on the police.”. I'm not a fan of Coppinger but it's laughable to liken her in any way to Farage.

You keep selling yourself as a centrist btw and I don't think nobody is buying it, particularly after you seemed to imply the left have a thing against white heterosexuals.

She's pretty clearly not calling for violence but is calling for protest. There's nothing wrong with her doing that. She is expressing legitimate concerns. The resultant protests have been peaceful btw. So no, you're engaging in a false equivalence. The fact you can't see how radically different the rhetoric is, isn't a great reflection on your supposedly centrist critical perspective.

Exactly. It's a false equivalence.

Incidentally, Farage was promoting this the day Jo Cox was stabbed to death by Thomas Mair:

I'm amazed that people are still at the moderate centrist shtick. It's a bit like saying Wassup in this day and age.

Farage clearly wants another go at the Southport riots. So does Yaxley-Lennon. The grift never stops.