Response to racist TEFL blog

We are including this a blog primarily to distance ourselves from the "TEFL tradesman". There is a larger issue here that the type of sentiments expressed on the blog in question are heard, in varying degrees, throughout the TEFL industry. These ideas need to be confronted.

We took part in the successful campaign to win backpay for Marta and while we might appreciate the extra research you've done, we'd appreciate if you did it without all the racist sh*t in there.

Let’s be clear: Farhan is a scumbag, but him being Asian is irrelevant. British bosses ignore employment law all the time (we know because we've had disputes with them about it). The practices we helped challenge at Speak Up happen at language schools all around London everyday. The only difference is that Marta fought back.

As for sexism, that's endemic in Britain: two women a week are killed by their partner or ex-partner, 1 in 3 girls experience unwanted touching at school and 30,000 women are sacked every year for getting pregnant. Women are still, on average, paid between 10% and 34% less than men for the same job. So don't come with that 'civilised country' nonsense.

Your attempt to pin all this on the national background of Farhan is not only racist, it's an offense to all women living in Britain who are affected by sexism on a daily basis.

We’re glad you’ve now challenged the person who left the racist epithet in the comments under your blog. That person clearly doesn’t give a toss about TEFL workers and is just some scumbag looking for an excuse to mouth off on the internet. However, you should probably consider what in your writing made that person think it was acceptable to post such disgusting, racist language in the first place.

The bottom line is this: we have Muslim and non-Muslim workmates and will always stand with any of them against dodgy TEFL bosses. Because when it comes to fighting back, ethnicity and religion don’t come into it.

- The Angry Language Brigade