Blatant Racism Alive And Well In London

[mikey4444]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24516762

I noticed the irony of an obviously foreign letting agent, discriminating against a black under-cover reporter. We don't seem to have come very far from the days when signs saying " No Black, No Dogs and No Irish" were common place in Britain.

[youngmafbog]

The link has no details whatsoever. Have i missed something?

[mikey4444]

I have just checked the link ymb, and it works for me. Here it is again ::

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24516762

[youngmafbog]

All I get is this

//An undercover BBC investigation has exposed letting agents who are selecting tenants for landlords by their race.

Secret filming in London reveals techniques many letting agents claim they use.

Under the Equality Act 2010, it is illegal for businesses to refuse to provide a service based on ethnicity.

Guy Lynn reports.//

Must be something blocking it for me. Thanks for looking though.

[FredPuli43]

That's all I get, too. Wonder what the excuse for discrimination was. It may be like sexism at the Bar. Chambers of barristers would take women barristers to do divorce work, because one party was always female, most petitioners were women, and the man didn't mind because he thought a woman acting for him would know how to attack his wife. But the chambers wouldn't take women to do crime "because the clients wouldn't like it" and the same applied to other work. It was not the chambers, you see, but the third parties who were sexist !

[jno]

you're supposed to play the clip (short) at the top of the page; click on the arrow.

[Booldawg]

'isms' are still alive and well everywhere. Had to take a days emergency leave last week to look after my daughter who was too ill to go to school. When the office girls do it, its a case of 'yeah, come back when you're ready - dont worry about using leave days' with me it was met by sarcastic comments and hostility. Obviously looking after your daughter is not 'mans' work!

[vulcan42]

click on this in the link
Read more
London letting agents 'refuse black tenants'

[Baldric]

Video at top of link works fine here!

[Peter Pedant]

You also have ghettos chambers,
doncha Freddie

Chambers solely comprised of blacks, jews and roman catholics - and chuck a few Lesbians in as well....

I look on lawyers as - does he know his stuff ?
a bit like, a surgeon - can he do this operation ?

others dont - never gone for the smoochie smoochie bit when I am paying £200 /hr.

[FredPuli43]

We used to get black chambers, PP. There was nowhere else for black barristers to go, such was the discrimination; one, in my early days, was known as 'jungle chambers', which became a generic term for them all. They were usually in Lincoln's Inn, otherwise known for Chancery chambers, because, historically, Lincoln's Inn had been the first Inn of Court that did not require students to have proven knowledge of Latin and so it got students, members of the Inn, from outside Britain before the others. The old rhyme was "Inner Temple for the rich man/ Middle for the poor/Lincoln's for the [N-word!]/ Gray's Inn for the ***" (Gray's had no Chambers, so rich men's daughters were sent there, with a view to finding a rich husband but with no intention of practising )

Never heard of Jewish or Catholic chambers, though I did hear of one that only took men with a First from Balliol !

[FredPuli43]

Oh dear, the censor strikes : Gray's Inn for the [rhymes with Hoare] !

[LazyGun]

I think I might go visit Grays Inn then - see how many rich mens daughters I can spot :)

[sandyRoe]

Are there any radical chambers? I was wondering where Michael Mansfield hung his wig + gown after a hard days work.

[sandyRoe]

Did the Rumpole stories give a true account of the workings of the law in London?

[FredPuli43]

Just realised my first wife was a member of Gray's Inn. Either her plan worked or it didn't, but she was Welsh and it was a tradition for the Welsh students to join Gray's. .Best not to ask what her reason was, though! My second was of Lincoln's but at least she was white !

[FredPuli43]

Sandy, Rumpole was true ! Really, it was, and written by a a practising QC. Rumpole himself was exactly like my old pupil master, later His Honour Judge Bolland; always wearing a waistcoat covered in cigarette ash, liked a quick whisky at lunch, had a wife who we never saw but whom he always spoke of in terms which translated into "she who must be obeyed".......But he had a fund of common sense, could see a weakness in a case as though it was obvious to all, was a good cross-examiner, mainly because he had the common touch and witnesses trusted him, and knew far more law than his appearance would ever suggest. And he had ring craft. I once saw him lie in order to get his appeal shifted from one Appeal Court ("They'll never find for us, with that judge in charge") to another (" Let's get this one; one of them dissented in our favour on the law and he's now in charge"). He won the appeal. That's what the job is about.

And there are 'radical' chambers (human rights etc), just as there are chancery chambers, tax chambers, shipping chambers, patent chambers, European law chambers and all the rest.

[bazwillrun]

Its not racist its business

If you have a record of certain people doing certain things you dont want then you rightly learn a lesson and dont deal with them.

If these people dont want to let out properties to a particular group because they have had problems with them then its their perogative and right to decide who they let to, ie people less likey to cause problems and expense.

Once bitten twice shy

[Bazile]

Just like it's your perogative not to let any of your rooms in your B&B to a gay person ? Right - ho

[mikey4444]

Baz...complete drivel, and you know it. Its just blatant racism. Its not
" their prerogative and right to decide" Its against the law, and has been for many, many years.

Shame on you for siding with these racists.

[FredPuli43]

Michael Mansfield has this reputation as a human rights man but, in reality, he is just a very good criminal law QC who happens to have won, or been briefed in, certain notable cases in that field.

That happens to many of us. A friend belonged to the sewage bar (membership about one) because he won a reported case about sewage, so every council, seeing that triumph, went to him about cases involving sewage and effluent disposal, for evermore. I used to get the cases about horses and about betting fraud, and usually found myself against other counsel similarly afflicted. We did do other work, but had a reputation for doing that.