Ghetto Britain: After Nigel Farage claimed the streets of Oldham were 'split down the middle', troubling dispatch reveals how his dog whistle politics are being fuelled by a far more complex division

Glodwick Road — in the heart of Oldham — is where, not so long ago, a pub with the unusual name of Live And Let Live could be found.

The message of hope and tolerance was printed in big, bold letters at the entrance. You couldn’t miss it.

The building, at No 141, is still there. But it has been converted into a children’s nursery serving the now predominantly Asian neighbourhood. On display, in the front window, is a photograph of the local mosque, next to the rather sweet caption: ‘My mummy comes here.’ Some of the area’s best-known shops — such as Bhatti Fabrics and Hussain & Sons Cash & Carry — are also pictured.

The transformation of the premises, from Boddingtons-run tavern, to Muslim bridalwear store, to nursery — with places for 200 youngsters, around 80 per cent from Muslim families — reflects the seismic cultural and demographic changes which have taken place, not just in Oldham, a former mill town on the outskirts of Manchester, but in other towns.



The findings were an embarrassment for Tony Blair, during whose time in office net annual immigration quadrupled reaching an average of 247,000 a year.

Few could have predicted that when Nigel Farage, taking a break from campaigning with his new Brexit Party, rose to give a speech on the other side of the Atlantic at Lock Haven University in rural Pennsylvania, the spotlight would once again return to Oldham.

‘Let me take you to a town called Oldham in the North of England,’ he began in his own inimitable way, ‘where literally on one side of the street everybody is white and on the other side of the street everybody is black. The twain never actually meet, there is no assimilation. These, folks, are divided societies in which resentments build and grow.’

Farage knows Oldham because, as Ukip leader, he fought a by-election here but failed to unseat Labour.

Not surprisingly, his comments were met with condemnation in some quarters. Oldham MP Jim McMahon accused him of trying to ‘stoke up tensions and create division’ with his ‘us and them’ rhetoric.

Millions were spent on regeneration projects. Yet, an ethnicity report by Oldham Council, based on census data and updated as recently as January, found that ‘geographical segregation, particularly between white and Pakistani and white and Bangladeshi, is exceptionally high and showing little sign of improvement’.

Because parents generally choose to send their children to the nearest school, ‘geographical segregation’ has resulted, inevitably, in ‘educational segregation’ with classes remaining overwhelmingly monoculture; in other words, either almost exclusively white or exclusively non-white, depending on your post code.

Now, as then, Oldham, remains racially divided. Anyone who has spent time in Savile Town in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, or Bradford or Luton or the Leeds suburb of Beeston will surely be quietly nodding their heads in agreement.

The highest concentration of Muslims is in Glodwick. One of the residents who answered the door to me was a woman, in traditional Islamic dress, who could not speak English; her son, 22-year-old Aqil, told me she had arrived in the country from Pakistan when she was in her 20s. She was now 60.


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6990645/Ghetto-Britain-complex-division-Nigel-Farages-dog-whistle-politics.html

I go to Oldham to shop pretty regularly. There are undoubtedly a lot of Muslims living and working in the area.
I have never felt there is an obvious divide between Muslim and none Muslim, it's just a busy bustling market town where people get on with doing what they do....at least that's what I see.

Whatever the mix, just look at the state of that street!

this is what happens when you let barbarians from incompatible cultural backgrounds invade your country and THEN allow them to form insular cultural/religious strongholds.

it wouldnt be a problem is their cultural backgrounds were compatible, if you look at spain or france, they is a large british expat populations and yet there is no aparthied, there is no "us VS them"

smelly-bandit wrote:this is what happens when you let barbarians from incompatible cultural backgrounds invade your country and THEN allow them to form insular cultural/religious strongholds.

it wouldnt be a problem is their cultural backgrounds were compatible, if you look at spain or france, they is a large british expat populations and yet there is no aparthied, there is no "us VS them"  

Barbarians?

Was it not the Romans, that invaded this country and helped advanced society?

The real problem was Abrahamic religions. It is what helped bring down the fall of the Roman empire and they were certainly barbaric

I mean, considering you are a Boer. Your people invaded and changed the lives of the people of South Africa. Yet because you are the low life racist piece of shit that you are. You never valued African peoples lives lost.

You argue on culture and claim to hold a superior view on this. Frankly, it shows what an immature child you are. Top be civilized. Means respecting other cultures and being able to criticise them. Yet you claim that our society, is based on some bullshit claim of judaeo-christian bullshit

There is an apartheid in your world view. You never look to help educate problems. You look to eradicate them through hate

Maybe you need to ask yourself, if you are indeed civilized

As the religious bable you belive in, is very much connected in what you most fear, islam

You both share the same bullshit fear based beliefs. They simple are more dogmatic than you are

Nothing worse some than country bumpkin white supremacist claiming to stand for what it is to be civilized

The irony is staggering

I would seriously love to understand what you think it means to be civilized?

The floor is yours

Tommy and Smelly like to regularly whine about Britain's supposedly "high immigration" levels...

When the cold hard truth of the matter is that only aroumd 7% of Brits were born overseas..

Compared with around 24% of Australia's permanent residents, and between 15 and 20% of some other former 'colonies', the likes of NZ, Canada, the USA, and those Caribbean countries.

The anti-immigration Brit' snowflakes around NewsFix seem to be operating on the idea that if you keep on repeating the same old lies for long enough, than a lot more people will start to believe you..

Syl wrote:I go to Oldham to shop pretty regularly. There are undoubtedly a lot of Muslims living and working in the area.
I have never felt there is an obvious  divide between Muslim and none Muslim, it's just a busy bustling market town where people get on with doing what they do....at least that's what I see.

There's a bit of a difference between a shopping areas and a residential one. Most people just want to live happily and get on with their lives. But if there was true integration there would be no Asian only or White only areas.

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:

Tommy and Smelly like to regularly whine about Britain's supposedly "high immigration" levels...

When the cold hard truth of the matter is that only aroumd 7% of Brits were born overseas..



Compared with around 24% of Australia's permanent residents, and between 15 and 20% of some other former 'colonies', the likes of NZ, Canada, the USA, and those Caribbean countries.

The anti-immigration Brit' snowflakes around NewsFix seem to be operating on the idea that if you keep on repeating the same old lies for long enough, than a lot more people will start to believe you..

Either you are ignorant of the facts, or you are deliberately posting lies...!?


In 2017, the UK population was 14.4% foreign-born (up from 9% in 2004) and 9.6% foreign citizens (up from 5% in 2004)

More…Foreign-born people constituted 41% of Inner London’s population in 2017 

HoratioTarr wrote:

Syl wrote:I go to Oldham to shop pretty regularly. There are undoubtedly a lot of Muslims living and working in the area.
I have never felt there is an obvious  divide between Muslim and none Muslim, it's just a busy bustling market town where people get on with doing what they do....at least that's what I see.

There's a bit of a difference between a shopping areas and a residential one.  Most people just want to live happily and get on with their lives.  But if there was true integration there would be no Asian only  or White only  areas.

True, I do just see the town centre, but you can  usually get the feel of a place from where people congregate, and Oldham has a friendly bustling vibe.