"The media is institutionally racist" says.... the chief constable of the Met police!

Sir Ian Blair, the country's most senior police chief, has apologised for saying that "almost nobody" could understand why the Soham murders became "the biggest story in Britain".

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner said he was sorry for his remarks about the murders of the two 10-year-old schoolgirls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, which have attracted widespread criticism.

He cited the case at a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority, in which he accused the media of "institutional racism" over its reporting of murders.

But speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, he said: "First of all, I obviously have to unreservedly apologise to anyone connected to the Soham murders, especially the parents of Holly and Jessica, for reigniting the story.

"It was not intended to diminish the significance of this dreadful crime, which is exactly how I described it on Thursday."

Here you are making an assumpion that race and class have nothing to do with each other, when in fact they have alot to do with each other.

examples? i don't think there was anything particularly posh about the soham girls.

"Here you are making an assumpion that race and class have nothing to do with each other, when in fact they have alot to do with each other.

-- Sarah S. (sara...), January 29th, 2006."

but this obviously isn't true -- the original poster said it had *more to do with* class than race, not 'it's about class not race'.

When is the plank going to be forced to resign ?

They weren't full-on posh, but they were nicely middle-class and came from a nicely middle-class town in a nicely middle-class county. Plus, as noted above, this case was pretty unusual in that TWO girls were involved at the same time. Plus it took place in the summer when nothing else was going on.

The classic example of the class divide is Milly Dowler — the week after she went missing, Metro carried one of their weekly missing person columns about a 14-year-old (white English) girl from Hackney who had not been seen for three months and had a history of running away from home. Nobody gave a fuck. Milly was from Walton on Thames and was well-behaved. Everyone knows her name now.

"Here you are making an assumpion that race and class have nothing to do with each other, when in fact they have alot to do with each other. "

Race and class can have plenty to do with each other, but it's not exclusive. Had the high-flying city lawyer in question been black, it would have still made the front pages more readily than the death of an asian shopkeeper.

BTW, according to Friday's Evening Standard the Met press office sent out 16 press releases about the lawyer's murder and 6 about the shopkeeper's murder. It's institutional racism, I tells you!

they were pretty regular folks, for the south east, iirc. soham isn't a 'nicely middle-class town', it's just a nowheresville like most places.

completely otm.

if your view of britain was entirely taken from what gets reported in its national media you'd think that no little black girls ever went missing (and the only ones who get murdered are killed in GANG SHOOTINGS)