[kirklancaster]

I detest spitting, even people spitting in the street, so I find this incident reprehensible - if it did happen. Personally, I am not convinced that it did. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a highly intelligent woman, no 'shrinking violet, and an adept media manipulator, and I do not believe that she would not have whipped out her phone and recorded the incident - if not the actual incident itself, then at least the aftermath and most certainly the perpetrator - to be used to capitalise on at later times.

I know that incidents of racial abuse do occasionally occur, because videos do sometimes appear on YouTube, but they are not as prevalent as suggested, and I don't believe they are on the increase in general.

Alibhai-Brown has made herself a target for some degree of reactionary abuse because of all the thinly-veiled dogmatic views she broadcasts at every opportunity, and it is a fact that when someone so desires and secures the 'limelight', then they must accept the 'brickbats' as well as the 'bouquets'. Moderation is a sword which cuts both ways.

As for the underlying subject of 'integration' - it is a fallacy in general. Yes, there are different race families living in harmony in predominately 'white English' neighbourhoods, but these tend to be in middle to upper class areas and these 'different race' families in question tend to be white collar professionals.

Elsewhere in the UK, there are 'Ghettos'. This is a fact, and though there are diverse reasons for it, the main reason is that incoming immigrants gravitate towards their own kind who are already here.

This leads to 'states within a state' not genuine integration, and nowhere is it as crystalised as in Asian ghettos, where any non-Asian 'visitors' are viewed through chinks in curtains with deep suspicion, or by gangs of Asian youths outside corner shops with open hostility.

So, Mrs Alibhai-Brown remember when your spouting your camouflaged propagandist rhetoric, that like 'Moderation', 'Racial Intolerance' is also a 'sword which cuts both ways'. In addition, remember that if you can't stand the heat, don't keep fanning the flames.