A fond farewell to the Commission for Racial Equality

Less a rage against the dying of the light, more a prolonged, high-pitched whine of complaint and self-justification, the sound of a swarm of badly earthed strimmers, heard from a distance on an early autumn morning. The Commission for Racial Equality has issued its valedictory press release before its duties are acquired by the Commission for Equality and Human Rights next month. The new organisation, headed by Trevor Phillips, will co-ordinate all manner of whining on behalf of absolutely anybody who considers him- or herself to be oppressed and victimised and discriminated against by the vindictive white male hegemony. Good luck to it.

The CRE, meanwhile, has left us with a threat that 15 government departments may be taken to court — at our expense, presumably — because they haven’t checked the precise ethnic origin of everyone who works for them. There is no suggestion that the departments have discriminated against British Caribbeans, or British Bangladeshis, or British Static Travellers (yes, there really is that wonderful category); merely that they haven’t yet asked everyone if they’re properly and nicely white or not.