As I’ve said before, I’ve been there, as - it seems - have many PB-ers. It’s great that we can talk about it on here without shame or embarrassment. Sharing is part of curing. And the other parts of curing are the usual: exercise, good healthy food, fresh air, try and socialise if you can, but don’t curse yourself if you can’t, don’t refuse the happy pills if it gets that bad
Alcohol is a puzzler. All the medical advice says Don’t do it, booze makes it worse, it’s a depressant. And yet it numbs the pain, doesn’t it? And that is really quite helpful, at times. Each to their own
Most of all remember that depression is like bad weather. There isn’t THAT much you can do, but shelter and endure, but bad weather ALWAYS passes. Hunker down and sit it out
Morning! Sharing is definitely part of curing - its just that so many of my friends seem to have had a mental kicking for various reasons over the last few years. I think I've become increasingly prone to bouts of it but at least now I know the warning signs and can usually find a way to pull back from the edge of that drop into the pit.
What would be great would be if I could drop the 15kgs the happy pills added to my frame. OK so I could make better food / drink choices and I'm not as fit as I was, but I tried hard and nothing shifts it more than temporarily - we all seem to have a balanced weight that we come back to, and mine is just a chunk more than it was pre happy pills.
Hi there. The only way I found I lost weight was doing slimming world and sticking to it. Shed 4 stone and have kept a large portion of it off and although I am big I do regularly excercise. Run, cycle and walk.
I don’t know if it is because we are more aware of it now but I am very conscious of friends and colleagues mental health issues. Where I work we always seem to have a couple of people off with stress or mental health related issues.
My lovely sister has suffered from it and the black dog video someone else linked to was a great way of her to share with me what it was to her when I was trying to empathise with her.
One of the reasons I love old TV and love dipping into it is it takes me back to a time when life was simpler and less stressed. Nostalgia is a great thing. the real world is crap and work is very very stressful these days. Everywhere seems to be the same. Fewer and fewer people doing more and more work.
"The police must investigate No. 10 parties!" - The parties are investigated and BJ and others get fined. "Look at the good job the police did! And there's more to come!" - The police don't issue more fines to BJ, but others do get them. "The police have done a horrid job! The top people have got away with it!"
Perhaps the underlings who got done are not a victim of some stitch-up by No. 10 and the police, but victims of the get-Boris campaign?
Then add in Beergate: "The police have investigated! There's nothing to see here! It's all a put-up job by the Mail!" - It turns out that the Labour Party had lied. "Why does it matter? The police investigated?" - More evidence comes out. "Why does it matter? The police investigated? And the Mail's awful!" - The investigation is reopened. "It's a waste of police time to investigate this!"
etc, etc.
Anyone in particular or is this an impressionistic sweep over any number of posters? In any case, wasn't it Boris, inter alia, who wanted the police investigation to kick the Gray report down the road?
I am finding the report by sky and now gbnews odd. Boris should not be having private meeting with Sue Gray other than one where she is interviewing him and any meeting should be minuted (ideally recorded as the police do) and in front of a witness. Why would Sue Gray agree to this? It enables people to trash her report and challenge her ethics so it is completely negative for her.
they have to agree the whitewash of her report, Boris just showing her all the bits she had to remove.
Good morning Malc. Hope you are well and the weather is good up in your part of the world.
The Labour Party was set up in the first place to predominantly be a party for people with few or no qualifications. Why are they so unpopular with this group today?
I think that this is the more interesting question and the voting patterns of the US are remarkably similar in this respect with Republicans doing way better with lower socio-economic groups than you would expect. Deemocrats also find it easier to attract graduates than working class folk.
Age obviously has a lot to do with it but I don't think it is the whole answer. I think that you need to look at the policy mix. Graduates as a very broad generality believe in an activist state that can do good. Non graduates look at a state that is very good for those employed by it (disproportionately graduates, funnily enough) but which is pretty crap at doing much for them.
Where the State does express an interest it is disproportionately interested in minorities, in those with unusual sexual characteristics or proclivities, in the approved list of the oppressed. It shows almost no interest in the needs of the indigenous majority who get very little help or assistance with pretty tough lives. This may not be entirely true in fact but it is in the noise and in the media; it is what the graduates working in these organisations like to talk about obsessively. These non graduates find that a distinct turn off and are attracted to a party that treats the State as a part of the problem rather than the solution.
The answer from the left's point of view is to refocus the efforts of the State to those who actually need their help as opposed to being suitable for their well paid largesse. But, increasingly, they hold these people and their views in contempt. We saw this with Hilary in the US and of course in the Brexit arguments here. I don't think that they can bear going near the people that they claim to represent and once did in a dim and distant time.
This is in my view hitting the nail on the head absolutely. Help should be on a need basis not on a which checkbox you tick basis and yes we do need a state to act as a backstop. However far to often you find that when you need help you can't get it but you could if you ticked some boxes. A case in point is education...you will here people saying group x is being disadvantaged and not doing as well lets help them...when its white males from poor backgrounds deafened by silence. I am in no way saying those groups shouldn't be helped. I am saying help those most in need and target them rather than segregate them by gender faith sexuality colour.
We also should really be having the conversation. This is how much money the state has. This is how much each thing costs to do well. Pick what you want to do till it fills the money supply and the rest will have to rely on charities
The irony is that it is the modern Conservative party that is taxing people until the pips squeek, who think the answer to every problem is more State, whether it is more policemen, more doctors and nurses or more regulation. Even Gordon Brown didn't tax people as severely as this "Tory" government is. Which leaves the group I have sought to describe with my wild generalisations nowhere to go at all.
Precisely, I have been unable to vote since 2010. My constituency only ever seems to have a choice of LD, Lab or Con and they are all equally of the same mind when it comes to state spending.
Putting my money where my mouth is
the state should be spending on the following to fully fund them
Defence Rule of law - police, courts,prisons, borders Education - up to 18 and maybe subsidies for subjects we want people to take Health - though with designated activities you pay or you have insurance that pays. I am thinking for example driving insurance companies should pay, same for sports should be insurance and for safe ones will be cheap I suspect. Absolutely no to stuff like tattoo removal or ivf Standards setting Welfare state including benefits, pensions and social services
Once those are fully funded and actually functioning if we have money left over then we decide what else we should do with it
I don't wish to cause an excitement overload but on Sunday I shall be doing the morning thread on electoral reform and the afternoon thread on Scottish independence.
I’ll be driving back to London on Sunday, I’ll miss it! 😭
Wrong turn off the M25 and end up in Brighton?
No - I’ll miss TSE exciting new thread headers. I only came up North for one weekend intentionally I ran out of clean knickers days ago and have been going without.
I won’t have time for detours just wanting to hug my partner again!
No knickers saves time. You couldn't advise on public sector efficiency while you're at it?
Well I did on the last thread. As Farooq said, I’m as shameless as Boris.
Where is Farooq? I haven’t bullied him off PB 😕
I suppose it's possible I could get bullied off here, but it would need to be someone whose opinion I actually respected.
Well I respect you as being the sites most consistent poster, Farooq.
Consistently angry at something 🧌 GRRR! GRRR! 🤭
You're doing me an injustice. I'm consistently angry at everything.
Sounds exhausting.
It is, and I'm pretty angry at myself for letting it get to this point
Give us an example of something going well, that gives you joy when you think it, your mind in its happy place
My marriage is happy. I have an extensive range of quality whiskies in my cabinet. I'm pretty good at my job and it's interesting to me. I've found a really good pair of running trainers that fit and cushion exactly as I'd want.
The variation between scotch malt flavours is crazy, from something smooth like a 20yr old Old Pulteney - by far my favourite - to something more Smokey, and then on to far too Smokey for my taste. What do you say is your “comfort blanket” whiskey, to round off the perfect day?
none of that rubbish whiskey stuff, stick to the real thing "whisky". Mixing your metaphors there.
Good morning everyone. Where's all this about a potential strike on the railways come from?
We covered it a little on the previous thread. Basically, a union that has some pro-Russian loons in its leadership is planning strikes that will help derail an industry that is in sore need of help after Covid.
Yet again, a union is trying to devastate an industry.
Thanks; I'll have a look back at some point.
Although my natural ideological position is pro-trade unions.
How are the blue-tit chicks doing? Ours seem quite active, although there's, sadly, the sort of percentage loss that we usually see; at least one of ours appears to have died.
I am not anti-union. I am against some of the stupid things unions do at times. In the same way I'm not against management, but am against some of the stupid things management do.
But in this case, the strike seems to be very ill-timed. I'm also very suspicious of the leadership's stance and the strike's timing.
The blue tits are in fine fettle thanks. I think all eight have hatched, and both mum and dad are feeding them. It's amazing how fast they're growing, and the size of grubs they'll eat!
I've prepared the little 'un for the fact some, or all, may die, and it's led to some interesting conversations on the nature of life and death. For instance, if you have ten children, the loss of one or two 'matters' less than it does if you only have one or two, from a species point-of-view.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
You live there, I don't. I haven't been to the US since 1997 when I did a huge loop from one side to the other and back again on Amtrak. So I'm observing from afar, but what it looks like from here is that a significant chunk of America is bonkers.
They don't want to dismantle democracy, their target is modern civilisation. A "bible" led society where women know their place (bedroom / kitchen), undesirables (gays, non-whites) can be persecuted and worse, and the only ideas that are allowed to flourish are those invoked by "good men" like Tucker Carlson.
I understand what drives some of the GOP politicians. They want absolute power on a permanent basis. But they don't seem to understand that if they get their wish they'll be agaist the wall alongside the libruls and wokeists. Because they aren't good men, they're hypocrites looking to profit from the "bible" led autocracy they wish to create.
Not saying thats even a majority of GOP voters. Yet. But its building. The policies and positions get more and more extreme, their willingness to subvert and now attack democracy gets surer and stronger. No wonder they fly to Hungary to cheer Orban and Putin.
Good morning everyone. Where's all this about a potential strike on the railways come from?
Potential? I think up here we've had weekend strikes and do not travel warnings every weekend this year - the car has replaced any potential train use for my son's applicant days and I don't think Transpennine are alone in this - a national strike would be a merger and escalation of a number of ongoing disputes.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
I am not sure what is "Woke" about the Sabatini case. It reads to me to be a straightforward case of sexual harrassment. Or is refusing to tolerate sexual harrassment now "Woke"? If so what do the "anti-Woke" crowd want?
I would like everyone in science to read the painful, poignant description of what, exactly, Sabatini did to women under his mentorship. It should make you sick to your stomach. I don't think I could still be in science if I'd faced any of this. https://t.co/vJ5E7NWMEJ
These are of course a submission forming one side of the story only but, wow.
"The police must investigate No. 10 parties!" - The parties are investigated and BJ and others get fined. "Look at the good job the police did! And there's more to come!" - The police don't issue more fines to BJ, but others do get them. "The police have done a horrid job! The top people have got away with it!"
Perhaps the underlings who got done are not a victim of some stitch-up by No. 10 and the police, but victims of the get-Boris campaign?
Then add in Beergate: "The police have investigated! There's nothing to see here! It's all a put-up job by the Mail!" - It turns out that the Labour Party had lied. "Why does it matter? The police investigated?" - More evidence comes out. "Why does it matter? The police investigated? And the Mail's awful!" - The investigation is reopened. "It's a waste of police time to investigate this!"
etc, etc.
Anyone in particular or is this an impressionistic sweep over any number of posters? In any case, wasn't it Boris, inter alia, who wanted the police investigation to kick the Gray report down the road?
I am finding the report by sky and now gbnews odd. Boris should not be having private meeting with Sue Gray other than one where she is interviewing him and any meeting should be minuted (ideally recorded as the police do) and in front of a witness. Why would Sue Gray agree to this? It enables people to trash her report and challenge her ethics so it is completely negative for her.
Because he is her ultimate line manager? And there is no other thing to do unless resign if ordered to meet him? AFAICS she is just a civil servant, with no statutory roles or protections such as the police have.
"The police must investigate No. 10 parties!" - The parties are investigated and BJ and others get fined. "Look at the good job the police did! And there's more to come!" - The police don't issue more fines to BJ, but others do get them. "The police have done a horrid job! The top people have got away with it!"
Perhaps the underlings who got done are not a victim of some stitch-up by No. 10 and the police, but victims of the get-Boris campaign?
Then add in Beergate: "The police have investigated! There's nothing to see here! It's all a put-up job by the Mail!" - It turns out that the Labour Party had lied. "Why does it matter? The police investigated?" - More evidence comes out. "Why does it matter? The police investigated? And the Mail's awful!" - The investigation is reopened. "It's a waste of police time to investigate this!"
etc, etc.
You do know that is quite literally the Wail's position reversed. Attacks Labour's push on this - DON'T THEY KNOW THERE'S A WAR ON. Then 10 days of stories piling pressure on the police to do Starmer - one front page literally being TORY PRESSURE TO MAKE THE POLICE ACT. Then Starmer says "I'll quit" and they complain he's trying to pressure the police, then when newss breaks about the Met whitewhash its "WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY".
So you are right, but you're talking about the Tories.
Remember there is a very clear difference between the two sides. We have reams of evidence about Boris and Number 10 breaking the law over and over and over. She prepares a brutal report. Someone leans on the Met to provide cover. Which they do. With a narrow field of investigation. So that now the Gray report will come out and tear Number 10 apart the police have already found Him innocent by simply not investigating the hideous reportage and photos we're about to get. The establishment always looks after its own - if you are a civil servant with a gong you get protected whilst all your staff carry the can.#
If you want to gloat feel free. Not a good luck for the pro-establishment party as people starve.
Good morning everyone. Where's all this about a potential strike on the railways come from?
People don't like beign offered 2% or a little more when inflation is in two digits and HMG is increasing tax and NI. So they are striking here, there, and now increasingly everywhere.
But according to PBTories it's the SNP's fault north of the border and the unions' fault south of the border even when the nationalised operators are involved. No, I don't understand the logic. I didn't spot any discussion of Wales so maybe Mr Drakeford has escaped.
The Labour Party was set up in the first place to predominantly be a party for people with few or no qualifications. Why are they so unpopular with this group today?
I think that this is the more interesting question and the voting patterns of the US are remarkably similar in this respect with Republicans doing way better with lower socio-economic groups than you would expect. Deemocrats also find it easier to attract graduates than working class folk.
Age obviously has a lot to do with it but I don't think it is the whole answer. I think that you need to look at the policy mix. Graduates as a very broad generality believe in an activist state that can do good. Non graduates look at a state that is very good for those employed by it (disproportionately graduates, funnily enough) but which is pretty crap at doing much for them.
Where the State does express an interest it is disproportionately interested in minorities, in those with unusual sexual characteristics or proclivities, in the approved list of the oppressed. It shows almost no interest in the needs of the indigenous majority who get very little help or assistance with pretty tough lives. This may not be entirely true in fact but it is in the noise and in the media; it is what the graduates working in these organisations like to talk about obsessively. These non graduates find that a distinct turn off and are attracted to a party that treats the State as a part of the problem rather than the solution.
The answer from the left's point of view is to refocus the efforts of the State to those who actually need their help as opposed to being suitable for their well paid largesse. But, increasingly, they hold these people and their views in contempt. We saw this with Hilary in the US and of course in the Brexit arguments here. I don't think that they can bear going near the people that they claim to represent and once did in a dim and distant time.
This is in my view hitting the nail on the head absolutely. Help should be on a need basis not on a which checkbox you tick basis and yes we do need a state to act as a backstop. However far to often you find that when you need help you can't get it but you could if you ticked some boxes. A case in point is education...you will here people saying group x is being disadvantaged and not doing as well lets help them...when its white males from poor backgrounds deafened by silence. I am in no way saying those groups shouldn't be helped. I am saying help those most in need and target them rather than segregate them by gender faith sexuality colour.
We also should really be having the conversation. This is how much money the state has. This is how much each thing costs to do well. Pick what you want to do till it fills the money supply and the rest will have to rely on charities
The irony is that it is the modern Conservative party that is taxing people until the pips squeek, who think the answer to every problem is more State, whether it is more policemen, more doctors and nurses or more regulation. Even Gordon Brown didn't tax people as severely as this "Tory" government is. Which leaves the group I have sought to describe with my wild generalisations nowhere to go at all.
Precisely, I have been unable to vote since 2010. My constituency only ever seems to have a choice of LD, Lab or Con and they are all equally of the same mind when it comes to state spending.
Putting my money where my mouth is
the state should be spending on the following to fully fund them
Defence Rule of law - police, courts,prisons, borders Education - up to 18 and maybe subsidies for subjects we want people to take Health - though with designated activities you pay or you have insurance that pays. I am thinking for example driving insurance companies should pay, same for sports should be insurance and for safe ones will be cheap I suspect. Absolutely no to stuff like tattoo removal or ivf Standards setting Welfare state including benefits, pensions and social services
Once those are fully funded and actually functioning if we have money left over then we decide what else we should do with it
No funding for research? No funding for embassies or trade delegations? Who’s paying for elections to be conducted? Oh, are we defaulting on all our debt obligations then? Who pays for roads? Who pays for other transport infrastructure? Community centres? Libraries? Rubbish collection? Supporting economic development?
The Labour Party was set up in the first place to predominantly be a party for people with few or no qualifications. Why are they so unpopular with this group today?
I think that this is the more interesting question and the voting patterns of the US are remarkably similar in this respect with Republicans doing way better with lower socio-economic groups than you would expect. Deemocrats also find it easier to attract graduates than working class folk.
Age obviously has a lot to do with it but I don't think it is the whole answer. I think that you need to look at the policy mix. Graduates as a very broad generality believe in an activist state that can do good. Non graduates look at a state that is very good for those employed by it (disproportionately graduates, funnily enough) but which is pretty crap at doing much for them.
Where the State does express an interest it is disproportionately interested in minorities, in those with unusual sexual characteristics or proclivities, in the approved list of the oppressed. It shows almost no interest in the needs of the indigenous majority who get very little help or assistance with pretty tough lives. This may not be entirely true in fact but it is in the noise and in the media; it is what the graduates working in these organisations like to talk about obsessively. These non graduates find that a distinct turn off and are attracted to a party that treats the State as a part of the problem rather than the solution.
The answer from the left's point of view is to refocus the efforts of the State to those who actually need their help as opposed to being suitable for their well paid largesse. But, increasingly, they hold these people and their views in contempt. We saw this with Hilary in the US and of course in the Brexit arguments here. I don't think that they can bear going near the people that they claim to represent and once did in a dim and distant time.
This is in my view hitting the nail on the head absolutely. Help should be on a need basis not on a which checkbox you tick basis and yes we do need a state to act as a backstop. However far to often you find that when you need help you can't get it but you could if you ticked some boxes. A case in point is education...you will here people saying group x is being disadvantaged and not doing as well lets help them...when its white males from poor backgrounds deafened by silence. I am in no way saying those groups shouldn't be helped. I am saying help those most in need and target them rather than segregate them by gender faith sexuality colour.
We also should really be having the conversation. This is how much money the state has. This is how much each thing costs to do well. Pick what you want to do till it fills the money supply and the rest will have to rely on charities
The irony is that it is the modern Conservative party that is taxing people until the pips squeek, who think the answer to every problem is more State, whether it is more policemen, more doctors and nurses or more regulation. Even Gordon Brown didn't tax people as severely as this "Tory" government is. Which leaves the group I have sought to describe with my wild generalisations nowhere to go at all.
The corollary is that it is not obvious why anyone should vote Labour. If Keir Starmer has any shiny new policies, he is keeping them close to his chest. Labour might want to invest more in the public services but the government is, or at least claims to be, already doing that, mainly because Boris pinched all the popular bits from Jeremy Corbyn's 2017 campaign.
Vote Labour to actually do the things Boris is only pretending to do, like build 40 new hospitals instead of 40 new hospital wards? Vote Labour to pay off Tory debt? Vote Labour and win a microwave?
The Labour Party was set up in the first place to predominantly be a party for people with few or no qualifications. Why are they so unpopular with this group today?
I think that this is the more interesting question and the voting patterns of the US are remarkably similar in this respect with Republicans doing way better with lower socio-economic groups than you would expect. Deemocrats also find it easier to attract graduates than working class folk.
Age obviously has a lot to do with it but I don't think it is the whole answer. I think that you need to look at the policy mix. Graduates as a very broad generality believe in an activist state that can do good. Non graduates look at a state that is very good for those employed by it (disproportionately graduates, funnily enough) but which is pretty crap at doing much for them.
Where the State does express an interest it is disproportionately interested in minorities, in those with unusual sexual characteristics or proclivities, in the approved list of the oppressed. It shows almost no interest in the needs of the indigenous majority who get very little help or assistance with pretty tough lives. This may not be entirely true in fact but it is in the noise and in the media; it is what the graduates working in these organisations like to talk about obsessively. These non graduates find that a distinct turn off and are attracted to a party that treats the State as a part of the problem rather than the solution.
The answer from the left's point of view is to refocus the efforts of the State to those who actually need their help as opposed to being suitable for their well paid largesse. But, increasingly, they hold these people and their views in contempt. We saw this with Hilary in the US and of course in the Brexit arguments here. I don't think that they can bear going near the people that they claim to represent and once did in a dim and distant time.
This is in my view hitting the nail on the head absolutely. Help should be on a need basis not on a which checkbox you tick basis and yes we do need a state to act as a backstop. However far to often you find that when you need help you can't get it but you could if you ticked some boxes. A case in point is education...you will here people saying group x is being disadvantaged and not doing as well lets help them...when its white males from poor backgrounds deafened by silence. I am in no way saying those groups shouldn't be helped. I am saying help those most in need and target them rather than segregate them by gender faith sexuality colour.
We also should really be having the conversation. This is how much money the state has. This is how much each thing costs to do well. Pick what you want to do till it fills the money supply and the rest will have to rely on charities
The irony is that it is the modern Conservative party that is taxing people until the pips squeek, who think the answer to every problem is more State, whether it is more policemen, more doctors and nurses or more regulation. Even Gordon Brown didn't tax people as severely as this "Tory" government is. Which leaves the group I have sought to describe with my wild generalisations nowhere to go at all.
Precisely, I have been unable to vote since 2010. My constituency only ever seems to have a choice of LD, Lab or Con and they are all equally of the same mind when it comes to state spending.
Putting my money where my mouth is
the state should be spending on the following to fully fund them
Defence Rule of law - police, courts,prisons, borders Education - up to 18 and maybe subsidies for subjects we want people to take Health - though with designated activities you pay or you have insurance that pays. I am thinking for example driving insurance companies should pay, same for sports should be insurance and for safe ones will be cheap I suspect. Absolutely no to stuff like tattoo removal or ivf Standards setting Welfare state including benefits, pensions and social services
Once those are fully funded and actually functioning if we have money left over then we decide what else we should do with it
I largely agree with that list. I might want to see some stats on the health ones to justify some exclusions. I would like to reduce the last one to a minimum by the adoption of a universal income, which would also reduce other govt costs and a radical reform of income tax.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
The Labour Party was set up in the first place to predominantly be a party for people with few or no qualifications. Why are they so unpopular with this group today?
I think that this is the more interesting question and the voting patterns of the US are remarkably similar in this respect with Republicans doing way better with lower socio-economic groups than you would expect. Deemocrats also find it easier to attract graduates than working class folk.
Age obviously has a lot to do with it but I don't think it is the whole answer. I think that you need to look at the policy mix. Graduates as a very broad generality believe in an activist state that can do good. Non graduates look at a state that is very good for those employed by it (disproportionately graduates, funnily enough) but which is pretty crap at doing much for them.
Where the State does express an interest it is disproportionately interested in minorities, in those with unusual sexual characteristics or proclivities, in the approved list of the oppressed. It shows almost no interest in the needs of the indigenous majority who get very little help or assistance with pretty tough lives. This may not be entirely true in fact but it is in the noise and in the media; it is what the graduates working in these organisations like to talk about obsessively. These non graduates find that a distinct turn off and are attracted to a party that treats the State as a part of the problem rather than the solution.
The answer from the left's point of view is to refocus the efforts of the State to those who actually need their help as opposed to being suitable for their well paid largesse. But, increasingly, they hold these people and their views in contempt. We saw this with Hilary in the US and of course in the Brexit arguments here. I don't think that they can bear going near the people that they claim to represent and once did in a dim and distant time.
This is in my view hitting the nail on the head absolutely. Help should be on a need basis not on a which checkbox you tick basis and yes we do need a state to act as a backstop. However far to often you find that when you need help you can't get it but you could if you ticked some boxes. A case in point is education...you will here people saying group x is being disadvantaged and not doing as well lets help them...when its white males from poor backgrounds deafened by silence. I am in no way saying those groups shouldn't be helped. I am saying help those most in need and target them rather than segregate them by gender faith sexuality colour.
We also should really be having the conversation. This is how much money the state has. This is how much each thing costs to do well. Pick what you want to do till it fills the money supply and the rest will have to rely on charities
The irony is that it is the modern Conservative party that is taxing people until the pips squeek, who think the answer to every problem is more State, whether it is more policemen, more doctors and nurses or more regulation. Even Gordon Brown didn't tax people as severely as this "Tory" government is. Which leaves the group I have sought to describe with my wild generalisations nowhere to go at all.
The corollary is that it is not obvious why anyone should vote Labour. If Keir Starmer has any shiny new policies, he is keeping them close to his chest. Labour might want to invest more in the public services but the government is, or at least claims to be, already doing that, mainly because Boris pinched all the popular bits from Jeremy Corbyn's 2017 campaign.
Vote Labour to actually do the things Boris is only pretending to do, like build 40 new hospitals instead of 40 new hospital wards? Vote Labour to pay off Tory debt? Vote Labour and win a microwave?
They need to go back to the free owl. I was seriously tempted.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
You live there, I don't. I haven't been to the US since 1997 when I did a huge loop from one side to the other and back again on Amtrak. So I'm observing from afar, but what it looks like from here is that a significant chunk of America is bonkers.
They don't want to dismantle democracy, their target is modern civilisation. A "bible" led society where women know their place (bedroom / kitchen), undesirables (gays, non-whites) can be persecuted and worse, and the only ideas that are allowed to flourish are those invoked by "good men" like Tucker Carlson.
I understand what drives some of the GOP politicians. They want absolute power on a permanent basis. But they don't seem to understand that if they get their wish they'll be agaist the wall alongside the libruls and wokeists. Because they aren't good men, they're hypocrites looking to profit from the "bible" led autocracy they wish to create.
Not saying thats even a majority of GOP voters. Yet. But its building. The policies and positions get more and more extreme, their willingness to subvert and now attack democracy gets surer and stronger. No wonder they fly to Hungary to cheer Orban and Putin.
Plenty of US non-whites, especially Hispanic Roman Catholics and Black Pentecostals are more bible based than many US whites, especially outside the South
As I’ve said before, I’ve been there, as - it seems - have many PB-ers. It’s great that we can talk about it on here without shame or embarrassment. Sharing is part of curing. And the other parts of curing are the usual: exercise, good healthy food, fresh air, try and socialise if you can, but don’t curse yourself if you can’t, don’t refuse the happy pills if it gets that bad
Alcohol is a puzzler. All the medical advice says Don’t do it, booze makes it worse, it’s a depressant. And yet it numbs the pain, doesn’t it? And that is really quite helpful, at times. Each to their own
Most of all remember that depression is like bad weather. There isn’t THAT much you can do, but shelter and endure, but bad weather ALWAYS passes. Hunker down and sit it out
Morning! Sharing is definitely part of curing - its just that so many of my friends seem to have had a mental kicking for various reasons over the last few years. I think I've become increasingly prone to bouts of it but at least now I know the warning signs and can usually find a way to pull back from the edge of that drop into the pit.
What would be great would be if I could drop the 15kgs the happy pills added to my frame. OK so I could make better food / drink choices and I'm not as fit as I was, but I tried hard and nothing shifts it more than temporarily - we all seem to have a balanced weight that we come back to, and mine is just a chunk more than it was pre happy pills.
I have had the same problem. Do these pills make you more lethargic or less prone to pushing yourself with exercise or just hungrier? I seem to suffer from all of these to varying extents. Its more than a bit depressing!
I've been off the skank for a little over a year now. I had been pushing myself physically during summer 2020 as the depression built - rode my bike across the Tees then the Tyne one day, then mentally collapsed fully into the pit the day after. I think I then associated that whole "lets get cycling" phase with depression as I've barely ridden since. Had been running pretty regularly until Covid hit, genuinely couldn't motivate myself even with the happy pills.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
I am not sure what is "Woke" about the Sabatini case. It reads to me to be a straightforward case of sexual harrassment. Or is refusing to tolerate sexual harrassment now "Woke"? If so what do the "anti-Woke" crowd want?
I would like everyone in science to read the painful, poignant description of what, exactly, Sabatini did to women under his mentorship. It should make you sick to your stomach. I don't think I could still be in science if I'd faced any of this. https://t.co/vJ5E7NWMEJ
The allegations about Russian soldiers conduct in Ukraine makes me sick to my stomach. Not this. It is a one sided list of allegations of inappropriate behaviour, put forward in a lawsuit by someone suing for damages for 'emotional distress' following a messy break up.
Our time would be better spent dealing with other, far more serious, things.
"The police must investigate No. 10 parties!" - The parties are investigated and BJ and others get fined. "Look at the good job the police did! And there's more to come!" - The police don't issue more fines to BJ, but others do get them. "The police have done a horrid job! The top people have got away with it!"
Perhaps the underlings who got done are not a victim of some stitch-up by No. 10 and the police, but victims of the get-Boris campaign?
Then add in Beergate: "The police have investigated! There's nothing to see here! It's all a put-up job by the Mail!" - It turns out that the Labour Party had lied. "Why does it matter? The police investigated?" - More evidence comes out. "Why does it matter? The police investigated? And the Mail's awful!" - The investigation is reopened. "It's a waste of police time to investigate this!"
etc, etc.
Anyone in particular or is this an impressionistic sweep over any number of posters? In any case, wasn't it Boris, inter alia, who wanted the police investigation to kick the Gray report down the road?
I am finding the report by sky and now gbnews odd. Boris should not be having private meeting with Sue Gray other than one where she is interviewing him and any meeting should be minuted (ideally recorded as the police do) and in front of a witness. Why would Sue Gray agree to this? It enables people to trash her report and challenge her ethics so it is completely negative for her.
they have to agree the whitewash of her report, Boris just showing her all the bits she had to remove.
Good morning Malc. Hope you are well and the weather is good up in your part of the world.
Morning Taz, all well here, hope you are the same. Weather looks reasonable at present , but it has been rough last few days so fingers crossed. We have had a lot of rain this last week.
"The police must investigate No. 10 parties!" - The parties are investigated and BJ and others get fined. "Look at the good job the police did! And there's more to come!" - The police don't issue more fines to BJ, but others do get them. "The police have done a horrid job! The top people have got away with it!"
Perhaps the underlings who got done are not a victim of some stitch-up by No. 10 and the police, but victims of the get-Boris campaign?
Then add in Beergate: "The police have investigated! There's nothing to see here! It's all a put-up job by the Mail!" - It turns out that the Labour Party had lied. "Why does it matter? The police investigated?" - More evidence comes out. "Why does it matter? The police investigated? And the Mail's awful!" - The investigation is reopened. "It's a waste of police time to investigate this!"
etc, etc.
Anyone in particular or is this an impressionistic sweep over any number of posters? In any case, wasn't it Boris, inter alia, who wanted the police investigation to kick the Gray report down the road?
I am finding the report by sky and now gbnews odd. Boris should not be having private meeting with Sue Gray other than one where she is interviewing him and any meeting should be minuted (ideally recorded as the police do) and in front of a witness. Why would Sue Gray agree to this? It enables people to trash her report and challenge her ethics so it is completely negative for her.
Because he is her ultimate line manager? And there is no other thing to do unless resign if ordered to meet him? AFAICS she is just a civil servant, with no statutory roles or protections such as the police have.
He would not want to put the strong arming , HOL offers in writing. Now he can just deny he ever said it.
I still maintain that many of these politicians must be secretly hoping that the place will ultimately burn down. They'd then be armed with an excuse for spending money on a shiny, modern replacement.
Itd make more sense. They made a decision, now have reopened and seemingly deferred it (things seem to have progressed bigger all in years) and whilst arguing about moving out was bound to happen (even though it'll be much quicker and cheaper), they wont even agree to the eminently sensible option of moving some of them across the street, which would also surely be quicker and cheaper, or elsewhere nearby.
"The police must investigate No. 10 parties!" - The parties are investigated and BJ and others get fined. "Look at the good job the police did! And there's more to come!" - The police don't issue more fines to BJ, but others do get them. "The police have done a horrid job! The top people have got away with it!"
Perhaps the underlings who got done are not a victim of some stitch-up by No. 10 and the police, but victims of the get-Boris campaign?
Then add in Beergate: "The police have investigated! There's nothing to see here! It's all a put-up job by the Mail!" - It turns out that the Labour Party had lied. "Why does it matter? The police investigated?" - More evidence comes out. "Why does it matter? The police investigated? And the Mail's awful!" - The investigation is reopened. "It's a waste of police time to investigate this!"
etc, etc.
You do know that is quite literally the Wail's position reversed. Attacks Labour's push on this - DON'T THEY KNOW THERE'S A WAR ON. Then 10 days of stories piling pressure on the police to do Starmer - one front page literally being TORY PRESSURE TO MAKE THE POLICE ACT. Then Starmer says "I'll quit" and they complain he's trying to pressure the police, then when newss breaks about the Met whitewhash its "WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY".
So you are right, but you're talking about the Tories.
Remember there is a very clear difference between the two sides. We have reams of evidence about Boris and Number 10 breaking the law over and over and over. She prepares a brutal report. Someone leans on the Met to provide cover. Which they do. With a narrow field of investigation. So that now the Gray report will come out and tear Number 10 apart the police have already found Him innocent by simply not investigating the hideous reportage and photos we're about to get. The establishment always looks after its own - if you are a civil servant with a gong you get protected whilst all your staff carry the can.#
If you want to gloat feel free. Not a good luck for the pro-establishment party as people starve.
I don't care if it's the Mail's position, or the opposite of it.
You were in denial over Beergate. I have no idea if Starmer or anyone else there will get a fine - the law appears to be so poorly written that pretty much anything could result. But it was clear the moment that it turned out that Labour had not told the truth about who had been there that the police investigation had not been thorough.
"The police must investigate No. 10 parties!" - The parties are investigated and BJ and others get fined. "Look at the good job the police did! And there's more to come!" - The police don't issue more fines to BJ, but others do get them. "The police have done a horrid job! The top people have got away with it!"
Perhaps the underlings who got done are not a victim of some stitch-up by No. 10 and the police, but victims of the get-Boris campaign?
Then add in Beergate: "The police have investigated! There's nothing to see here! It's all a put-up job by the Mail!" - It turns out that the Labour Party had lied. "Why does it matter? The police investigated?" - More evidence comes out. "Why does it matter? The police investigated? And the Mail's awful!" - The investigation is reopened. "It's a waste of police time to investigate this!"
etc, etc.
Anyone in particular or is this an impressionistic sweep over any number of posters? In any case, wasn't it Boris, inter alia, who wanted the police investigation to kick the Gray report down the road?
I am finding the report by sky and now gbnews odd. Boris should not be having private meeting with Sue Gray other than one where she is interviewing him and any meeting should be minuted (ideally recorded as the police do) and in front of a witness. Why would Sue Gray agree to this? It enables people to trash her report and challenge her ethics so it is completely negative for her.
The problem here is that there is no clear structure for how internal investigations are done in government and no clear understanding about the importance of the investigative team being independent, both in how they do the investigation and in the writing of their report.
I feel like crying with professional frustration every time I read how this so-called investigation has been done and the report written.
Doing investigations and writing worthwhile investigation reports is not something anyone, however clever, can do just like that.
I have been in a similar position where I had to do an investigation which involved interviewing the Group CEO as well as others to whom I ultimately reported and which could have resulted in criticism of them. You can only do this if you are trusted to be fiercely independent, left alone to get on with it, given the resources to do your job and you - and only you - write the report.
Now once it has been written it is fine to discuss its findings with those who need to see it - especially if actions will follow - and if, say, the regulators ask to read it (the nearest equivalent to publishing it). And you may well seek legal employment advice as well.
But you do not want to give the impression that you are being "leant on" because that undermines your credibility.
Difficult to know what is happening here, probably because there is no established structure for the whole process and so there is an element of making it up as they go along. Plus politics in a big "P" and little "p" sense as well. A lot of the civil servants will not be best pleased at being criticised and so Ms Gray May find herself a bit friendless there as well.
Incidentally, the rumoured bleating from some at the unfairness over whoever is being fined does not impress me. You cannot complain at politicians not following the law and then think their failings excuse yours. As for the "I was only following orders...." excuse, well .....
As I’ve said before, I’ve been there, as - it seems - have many PB-ers. It’s great that we can talk about it on here without shame or embarrassment. Sharing is part of curing. And the other parts of curing are the usual: exercise, good healthy food, fresh air, try and socialise if you can, but don’t curse yourself if you can’t, don’t refuse the happy pills if it gets that bad
Alcohol is a puzzler. All the medical advice says Don’t do it, booze makes it worse, it’s a depressant. And yet it numbs the pain, doesn’t it? And that is really quite helpful, at times. Each to their own
Most of all remember that depression is like bad weather. There isn’t THAT much you can do, but shelter and endure, but bad weather ALWAYS passes. Hunker down and sit it out
Morning! Sharing is definitely part of curing - its just that so many of my friends seem to have had a mental kicking for various reasons over the last few years. I think I've become increasingly prone to bouts of it but at least now I know the warning signs and can usually find a way to pull back from the edge of that drop into the pit.
What would be great would be if I could drop the 15kgs the happy pills added to my frame. OK so I could make better food / drink choices and I'm not as fit as I was, but I tried hard and nothing shifts it more than temporarily - we all seem to have a balanced weight that we come back to, and mine is just a chunk more than it was pre happy pills.
Hi there. The only way I found I lost weight was doing slimming world and sticking to it. Shed 4 stone and have kept a large portion of it off and although I am big I do regularly excercise. Run, cycle and walk.
I don’t know if it is because we are more aware of it now but I am very conscious of friends and colleagues mental health issues. Where I work we always seem to have a couple of people off with stress or mental health related issues.
My lovely sister has suffered from it and the black dog video someone else linked to was a great way of her to share with me what it was to her when I was trying to empathise with her.
One of the reasons I love old TV and love dipping into it is it takes me back to a time when life was simpler and less stressed. Nostalgia is a great thing. the real world is crap and work is very very stressful these days. Everywhere seems to be the same. Fewer and fewer people doing more and more work.
I'd heard people talk about the black dog, or a black cloud. It always sounded odd and hard to grasp until it hits. For those of you lucky enough not to have been there, consider a paralysing mist that descends over your head, muffling the world around you so that its muted, hard to see properly and apparently running in slow motion. I can sit there fully aware of it, and actually a little in awe of the breakdown in my senses - the first time I distinctly remember thinking "so this is what a nervous breakdown feels like" in the middle of it.
You can't move. Think. Feel. Someone had disconnected your brain from being able to control everything external. So you just sit, paralysed in this space that you're no longer in control of. Until eventually it lifts a little and you regain a little motor control. OK so thats only my experience but others seem to have described similar. Don't happen that often, my primary mental crash symptom is breathing gets harder, eyes wide a little more and I have to focus very hard on breathing very hard, usually with my hands (primarily the right) shaking like I've got late stage Parkinsons.
Until I went on the happy pills had been suffering bouts of what I believe was anxiety attacks - breathing, shaking, palpitations - on and off for a couple of years. Aware there was a cliff edge close by with a black pit beyond, but managed to avoid it until the post bike ride crash I described on an earlier post where for that whole day I simply could not function. At all.
Why don't people get mental health? Because from the outside you probably look fine. Ish. So people just assume you are. During my descent in summer 2020 I realised nobody could see how bad I was so decided to try and show it. Created a laminated sign which I stuck on the wall behind me, over my shoulder on the endless Zoom meetings I was having in my dining room. With numbers on it. Took the best part of a week before someone asked what the numbers were. "Its the day number. How many days I have been stuck here talking to you"...
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
You live there, I don't. I haven't been to the US since 1997 when I did a huge loop from one side to the other and back again on Amtrak. So I'm observing from afar, but what it looks like from here is that a significant chunk of America is bonkers.
They don't want to dismantle democracy, their target is modern civilisation. A "bible" led society where women know their place (bedroom / kitchen), undesirables (gays, non-whites) can be persecuted and worse, and the only ideas that are allowed to flourish are those invoked by "good men" like Tucker Carlson.
I understand what drives some of the GOP politicians. They want absolute power on a permanent basis. But they don't seem to understand that if they get their wish they'll be agaist the wall alongside the libruls and wokeists. Because they aren't good men, they're hypocrites looking to profit from the "bible" led autocracy they wish to create.
Not saying thats even a majority of GOP voters. Yet. But its building. The policies and positions get more and more extreme, their willingness to subvert and now attack democracy gets surer and stronger. No wonder they fly to Hungary to cheer Orban and Putin.
Plenty of US non-whites, especially Hispanic Roman Catholics and Black Pentecostals are more bible based than many US whites, especially outside the South
They are bible based. Note that I didn't refer to them. I referred to "Bible" based. The hypocrites who scream loudly I FOLLOW JESUS yet have a Bible that only contains Genesis, Leviticus, Revelation and any other odd verse that suggests we stone gays, fags and uppity women.
The Labour Party was set up in the first place to predominantly be a party for people with few or no qualifications. Why are they so unpopular with this group today?
I think that this is the more interesting question and the voting patterns of the US are remarkably similar in this respect with Republicans doing way better with lower socio-economic groups than you would expect. Deemocrats also find it easier to attract graduates than working class folk.
Age obviously has a lot to do with it but I don't think it is the whole answer. I think that you need to look at the policy mix. Graduates as a very broad generality believe in an activist state that can do good. Non graduates look at a state that is very good for those employed by it (disproportionately graduates, funnily enough) but which is pretty crap at doing much for them.
Where the State does express an interest it is disproportionately interested in minorities, in those with unusual sexual characteristics or proclivities, in the approved list of the oppressed. It shows almost no interest in the needs of the indigenous majority who get very little help or assistance with pretty tough lives. This may not be entirely true in fact but it is in the noise and in the media; it is what the graduates working in these organisations like to talk about obsessively. These non graduates find that a distinct turn off and are attracted to a party that treats the State as a part of the problem rather than the solution.
The answer from the left's point of view is to refocus the efforts of the State to those who actually need their help as opposed to being suitable for their well paid largesse. But, increasingly, they hold these people and their views in contempt. We saw this with Hilary in the US and of course in the Brexit arguments here. I don't think that they can bear going near the people that they claim to represent and once did in a dim and distant time.
This is in my view hitting the nail on the head absolutely. Help should be on a need basis not on a which checkbox you tick basis and yes we do need a state to act as a backstop. However far to often you find that when you need help you can't get it but you could if you ticked some boxes. A case in point is education...you will here people saying group x is being disadvantaged and not doing as well lets help them...when its white males from poor backgrounds deafened by silence. I am in no way saying those groups shouldn't be helped. I am saying help those most in need and target them rather than segregate them by gender faith sexuality colour.
We also should really be having the conversation. This is how much money the state has. This is how much each thing costs to do well. Pick what you want to do till it fills the money supply and the rest will have to rely on charities
The irony is that it is the modern Conservative party that is taxing people until the pips squeek, who think the answer to every problem is more State, whether it is more policemen, more doctors and nurses or more regulation. Even Gordon Brown didn't tax people as severely as this "Tory" government is. Which leaves the group I have sought to describe with my wild generalisations nowhere to go at all.
Precisely, I have been unable to vote since 2010. My constituency only ever seems to have a choice of LD, Lab or Con and they are all equally of the same mind when it comes to state spending.
Putting my money where my mouth is
the state should be spending on the following to fully fund them
Defence Rule of law - police, courts,prisons, borders Education - up to 18 and maybe subsidies for subjects we want people to take Health - though with designated activities you pay or you have insurance that pays. I am thinking for example driving insurance companies should pay, same for sports should be insurance and for safe ones will be cheap I suspect. Absolutely no to stuff like tattoo removal or ivf Standards setting Welfare state including benefits, pensions and social services
Once those are fully funded and actually functioning if we have money left over then we decide what else we should do with it
No funding for research? No funding for embassies or trade delegations? Who’s paying for elections to be conducted? Oh, are we defaulting on all our debt obligations then? Who pays for roads? Who pays for other transport infrastructure? Community centres? Libraries? Rubbish collection? Supporting economic development?
Extrapolating current trends, that's where we're likely to end up- a health and care system with Trident missiles, as someone wittier than me put it.
When it's put that starkly, you have to fear for future generations- where is the investment in infrastructure so that the economy can continue to grow? But that's been implicit for a while; whenever they have been presented with a choice between genteel stagnation and preparing about the future, Britain has gone for the genteel short term option.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
I’m not sure I understand your point (1)?
If the top set is all one colour (at the risk of stereotyping let’s say Asian Americans) BUT that is based on merit, how is that tokenism. Tokenism would be adding a student who is less skilled in order to change that?
Rochdale Pioneers, thank you for such a heartfelt and brilliant post. Wow.
Mental ill health is awful. You feel so powerless over it. Your post will I hope help people on here to understand more and there are fellow travellers on this deep, dark, road.
Please reach out when you can. As you say, sharing is part of the way of finding help.
"The police must investigate No. 10 parties!" - The parties are investigated and BJ and others get fined. "Look at the good job the police did! And there's more to come!" - The police don't issue more fines to BJ, but others do get them. "The police have done a horrid job! The top people have got away with it!"
Perhaps the underlings who got done are not a victim of some stitch-up by No. 10 and the police, but victims of the get-Boris campaign?
Then add in Beergate: "The police have investigated! There's nothing to see here! It's all a put-up job by the Mail!" - It turns out that the Labour Party had lied. "Why does it matter? The police investigated?" - More evidence comes out. "Why does it matter? The police investigated? And the Mail's awful!" - The investigation is reopened. "It's a waste of police time to investigate this!"
etc, etc.
You do know that is quite literally the Wail's position reversed. Attacks Labour's push on this - DON'T THEY KNOW THERE'S A WAR ON. Then 10 days of stories piling pressure on the police to do Starmer - one front page literally being TORY PRESSURE TO MAKE THE POLICE ACT. Then Starmer says "I'll quit" and they complain he's trying to pressure the police, then when newss breaks about the Met whitewhash its "WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY".
So you are right, but you're talking about the Tories.
Remember there is a very clear difference between the two sides. We have reams of evidence about Boris and Number 10 breaking the law over and over and over. She prepares a brutal report. Someone leans on the Met to provide cover. Which they do. With a narrow field of investigation. So that now the Gray report will come out and tear Number 10 apart the police have already found Him innocent by simply not investigating the hideous reportage and photos we're about to get. The establishment always looks after its own - if you are a civil servant with a gong you get protected whilst all your staff carry the can.#
If you want to gloat feel free. Not a good luck for the pro-establishment party as people starve.
I don't care if it's the Mail's position, or the opposite of it.
You were in denial over Beergate. I have no idea if Starmer or anyone else there will get a fine - the law appears to be so poorly written that pretty much anything could result. But it was clear the moment that it turned out that Labour had not told the truth about who had been there that the police investigation had not been thorough.
it would be good for you to be consistent.
I am being consistent. There was a prime fascie case against Johnson which the Met now appear to have investigated primarily to sweep under the carpet. There was not one against Starmer, and the "evidence" was not sufficient to suggest the law had been broken.
That Durham plod are now reinvestigating is as much because it became politically untenable for them not to do so as because there is anything to investigate.
I still think there is nothing to see and expect nobody to get fined. Buit if I'm wrong they fall on their sword and leave the stage. Which is more than can be said for Bonzo and his Clown Car circus. We're going to get the Gray report. Reams of it. Photos and all. And people like you will say "nothing to see here" for the various events the Met haven't even investigated because no fines have been issued.
I'm quite happy with the consistency of my position. Which on all things is apply the rules equally.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
I am not sure what is "Woke" about the Sabatini case. It reads to me to be a straightforward case of sexual harrassment. Or is refusing to tolerate sexual harrassment now "Woke"? If so what do the "anti-Woke" crowd want?
I would like everyone in science to read the painful, poignant description of what, exactly, Sabatini did to women under his mentorship. It should make you sick to your stomach. I don't think I could still be in science if I'd faced any of this. https://t.co/vJ5E7NWMEJ
The allegations about Russian soldiers conduct in Ukraine makes me sick to my stomach. Not this. It is a one sided list of allegations of inappropriate behaviour, put forward in a lawsuit by someone suing for damages for 'emotional distress' following a messy break up.
Our time would be better spent dealing with other, far more serious, things.
Sexual harrassment in the work place is not 'a messy break up'. A lot of the allegations in the paper are based upon the findings of the MIT investigation, they are not random stories.
It is perfectly possible to be both in favour of safe workplaces for women and against Russian war crimes.
As I’ve said before, I’ve been there, as - it seems - have many PB-ers. It’s great that we can talk about it on here without shame or embarrassment. Sharing is part of curing. And the other parts of curing are the usual: exercise, good healthy food, fresh air, try and socialise if you can, but don’t curse yourself if you can’t, don’t refuse the happy pills if it gets that bad
Alcohol is a puzzler. All the medical advice says Don’t do it, booze makes it worse, it’s a depressant. And yet it numbs the pain, doesn’t it? And that is really quite helpful, at times. Each to their own
Most of all remember that depression is like bad weather. There isn’t THAT much you can do, but shelter and endure, but bad weather ALWAYS passes. Hunker down and sit it out
Morning! Sharing is definitely part of curing - its just that so many of my friends seem to have had a mental kicking for various reasons over the last few years. I think I've become increasingly prone to bouts of it but at least now I know the warning signs and can usually find a way to pull back from the edge of that drop into the pit.
What would be great would be if I could drop the 15kgs the happy pills added to my frame. OK so I could make better food / drink choices and I'm not as fit as I was, but I tried hard and nothing shifts it more than temporarily - we all seem to have a balanced weight that we come back to, and mine is just a chunk more than it was pre happy pills.
Hi there. The only way I found I lost weight was doing slimming world and sticking to it. Shed 4 stone and have kept a large portion of it off and although I am big I do regularly excercise. Run, cycle and walk.
I don’t know if it is because we are more aware of it now but I am very conscious of friends and colleagues mental health issues. Where I work we always seem to have a couple of people off with stress or mental health related issues.
My lovely sister has suffered from it and the black dog video someone else linked to was a great way of her to share with me what it was to her when I was trying to empathise with her.
One of the reasons I love old TV and love dipping into it is it takes me back to a time when life was simpler and less stressed. Nostalgia is a great thing. the real world is crap and work is very very stressful these days. Everywhere seems to be the same. Fewer and fewer people doing more and more work.
I'd heard people talk about the black dog, or a black cloud. It always sounded odd and hard to grasp until it hits. For those of you lucky enough not to have been there, consider a paralysing mist that descends over your head, muffling the world around you so that its muted, hard to see properly and apparently running in slow motion. I can sit there fully aware of it, and actually a little in awe of the breakdown in my senses - the first time I distinctly remember thinking "so this is what a nervous breakdown feels like" in the middle of it.
You can't move. Think. Feel. Someone had disconnected your brain from being able to control everything external. So you just sit, paralysed in this space that you're no longer in control of. Until eventually it lifts a little and you regain a little motor control. OK so thats only my experience but others seem to have described similar. Don't happen that often, my primary mental crash symptom is breathing gets harder, eyes wide a little more and I have to focus very hard on breathing very hard, usually with my hands (primarily the right) shaking like I've got late stage Parkinsons.
Until I went on the happy pills had been suffering bouts of what I believe was anxiety attacks - breathing, shaking, palpitations - on and off for a couple of years. Aware there was a cliff edge close by with a black pit beyond, but managed to avoid it until the post bike ride crash I described on an earlier post where for that whole day I simply could not function. At all.
Why don't people get mental health? Because from the outside you probably look fine. Ish. So people just assume you are. During my descent in summer 2020 I realised nobody could see how bad I was so decided to try and show it. Created a laminated sign which I stuck on the wall behind me, over my shoulder on the endless Zoom meetings I was having in my dining room. With numbers on it. Took the best part of a week before someone asked what the numbers were. "Its the day number. How many days I have been stuck here talking to you"...
Sharing is curing...!
Your vivid descriptions make it clear to me that I have been lucky enough to have no more than the merest touch of it. Enough to recognise your description but not thankfully the whole thing. Look after yourself.
I still maintain that many of these politicians must be secretly hoping that the place will ultimately burn down. They'd then be armed with an excuse for spending money on a shiny, modern replacement.
Itd make more sense. They made a decision, now have reopened and seemingly deferred it (things seem to have progressed bigger all in years) and whilst arguing about moving out was bound to happen (even though it'll be much quicker and cheaper), they wont even agree to the eminently sensible option of moving some of them across the street, which would also surely be quicker and cheaper, or elsewhere nearby.
The whole thing makes me spitting mad.
The issue is the media
Headline “What Cost of Living Crisis? Government Spends £13 Billion on Fancy Offices For MPs”
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
I am not sure what is "Woke" about the Sabatini case. It reads to me to be a straightforward case of sexual harrassment. Or is refusing to tolerate sexual harrassment now "Woke"? If so what do the "anti-Woke" crowd want?
I would like everyone in science to read the painful, poignant description of what, exactly, Sabatini did to women under his mentorship. It should make you sick to your stomach. I don't think I could still be in science if I'd faced any of this. https://t.co/vJ5E7NWMEJ
The allegations about Russian soldiers conduct in Ukraine makes me sick to my stomach. Not this. It is a one sided list of allegations of inappropriate behaviour, put forward in a lawsuit by someone suing for damages for 'emotional distress' following a messy break up.
Our time would be better spent dealing with other, far more serious, things.
Sexual harrassment in the work place is not 'a messy break up'.
It is perfectly possible to be both in favour of safe workplaces for women and against Russian war crimes.
Thank you for this. As a victim of rape, I'm apparently told I am supposed to be a "survivor", there is nothing remotely trivial about it.
The man got a long prison sentence and was released half way through. I was not so lucky. It has affected everything in my life since (and is the context for why I sometimes come out with angry remarks about men).
Interesting observation from last night's Gary Numan concert. First time I had seen him live, and they were seriously on it. I know he is open about his autism and I would never have guessed. They came on and played for 90 minutes non-stop. And I do mean non-stop. Thrashed away the whole time without even a "hello". Nothing.
He was quite happy to soak up the crowd and the at times deafening "NU-MAN, NU-MAN" chants. But thats as much as he can do. We got a "thanks" when they came back on for encores. yet on Twitter he's ebullient, and said what an amazing crowd we were. So can't talk to people, but is happy to talk one-way to strangers.
Mrs RP is also autistic (and lets be honest I'm on the spectrum but can't be bothered at 45 to get diagnosed as I know how to map my brain against society inputs/outputs) and must talk to her about what I saw, was fascinating.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
Had similar experience with a UK university where I have a honorary/voluntary position. Compulsory diversity and equality training even for such as me. Part of it was exactly your (1). But much of it was equally practical. How to treat others with respect and understanding - for instance, 'banter' which is really racism, or those who are having depression. But also how to deal with things if you see anything seriously going wrong - e.g. fraud or, to take another topical example, safeguarding minors and students/sexual exploitation etc. Don't sit on your thumb or try to sort it out yourself but take it to the correct member of staff.
There were basic tests to make sure the message had got through, and not that easy or obvious either.
Generally very efficient, focussed and not at all what many "anti-woke" like to pretend it is. There will of course be further training for actual staff, line managers and so on, but the university certainly made its views very plain, and nobody will have any excuse for transgressions. Moreover, the university has made a good step in reducing its own legal vulnerability, both as an institution and indirectly through its staff's and students' behaviour.
I still maintain that many of these politicians must be secretly hoping that the place will ultimately burn down. They'd then be armed with an excuse for spending money on a shiny, modern replacement.
Itd make more sense. They made a decision, now have reopened and seemingly deferred it (things seem to have progressed bigger all in years) and whilst arguing about moving out was bound to happen (even though it'll be much quicker and cheaper), they wont even agree to the eminently sensible option of moving some of them across the street, which would also surely be quicker and cheaper, or elsewhere nearby.
The whole thing makes me spitting mad.
The issue is the media
Headline “What Cost of Living Crisis? Government Spends £13 Billion on Fancy Offices For MPs”
It was and is never going to be a popular decision. Hence the delays happening long before the recent spike of concerns around cost of living.
But the longer they take to make a decision the more expensive it will become (they also clearly lean on selecting the more expensive option as they dont want to move out).
Either bite the bullet (as they had seemed to, but now reversed) and do it or be clear they intend to do nothing and stop wasting time on discussion of it.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
You live there, I don't. I haven't been to the US since 1997 when I did a huge loop from one side to the other and back again on Amtrak. So I'm observing from afar, but what it looks like from here is that a significant chunk of America is bonkers.
They don't want to dismantle democracy, their target is modern civilisation. A "bible" led society where women know their place (bedroom / kitchen), undesirables (gays, non-whites) can be persecuted and worse, and the only ideas that are allowed to flourish are those invoked by "good men" like Tucker Carlson.
I understand what drives some of the GOP politicians. They want absolute power on a permanent basis. But they don't seem to understand that if they get their wish they'll be agaist the wall alongside the libruls and wokeists. Because they aren't good men, they're hypocrites looking to profit from the "bible" led autocracy they wish to create.
Not saying thats even a majority of GOP voters. Yet. But its building. The policies and positions get more and more extreme, their willingness to subvert and now attack democracy gets surer and stronger. No wonder they fly to Hungary to cheer Orban and Putin.
Plenty of US non-whites, especially Hispanic Roman Catholics and Black Pentecostals are more bible based than many US whites, especially outside the South
They are bible based. Note that I didn't refer to them. I referred to "Bible" based. The hypocrites who scream loudly I FOLLOW JESUS yet have a Bible that only contains Genesis, Leviticus, Revelation and any other odd verse that suggests we stone gays, fags and uppity women.
Its why I dislike the term Fundamentalist. They have a complete misunderstanding of what the fundamentals are.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
Had similar experience with a UK university where I have a honorary/voluntary position. Compulsory diversity and equality training even for such as me. Part of it was exactly your (1). But much of it was equally practical. How to treat others with respect and understanding - for instance, 'banter' which is really racism, or those who are having depression. But also how to deal with things if you see anything seriously going wrong - e.g. fraud or, to take another topical example, safeguarding minors and students/sexual exploitation etc. Don't sit on your thumb or try to sort it out yourself but take it to the correct member of staff.
There were basic tests to make sure the message had got through, and not that easy or obvious either.
Generally very efficient, focussed and not at all what many "anti-woke" like to pretend it is. There will of course be further training for actual staff, line managers and so on, but the university certainly made its views very plain, and nobody will have any excuse for transgressions. Moreover, the university has made a good step in reducing its own legal vulnerability, both as an institution and indirectly through its staff's and students' behaviour.
The idea that people need lessons in treating other people with respect and understanding is the most patronising thing I've ever heard.
I still maintain that many of these politicians must be secretly hoping that the place will ultimately burn down. They'd then be armed with an excuse for spending money on a shiny, modern replacement.
Itd make more sense. They made a decision, now have reopened and seemingly deferred it (things seem to have progressed bigger all in years) and whilst arguing about moving out was bound to happen (even though it'll be much quicker and cheaper), they wont even agree to the eminently sensible option of moving some of them across the street, which would also surely be quicker and cheaper, or elsewhere nearby.
The whole thing makes me spitting mad.
The issue is the media
Headline “What Cost of Living Crisis? Government Spends £13 Billion on Fancy Offices For MPs”
It was and is never going to be a popular decision. Hence the delays happening long before the recent spike of concerns around cost of living.
But the longer they take to make a decision the more expensive it will become (they also clearly lean on selecting the more expensive option as they dont want to move out).
Either bite the bullet (as they had seemed to, but now reversed) and do it or be clear they intend to do nothing and stop wasting time on discussion of it.
The building is clearly not fit for purpose. Endless discussion is the only way to defer making a decision.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
I’m not sure I understand your point (1)?
If the top set is all one colour (at the risk of stereotyping let’s say Asian Americans) BUT that is based on merit, how is that tokenism. Tokenism would be adding a student who is less skilled in order to change that?
Your "BUT that is based on merit" is carrying a lot of weight. It rarely is based on merit.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
I’m not sure I understand your point (1)?
If the top set is all one colour (at the risk of stereotyping let’s say Asian Americans) BUT that is based on merit, how is that tokenism. Tokenism would be adding a student who is less skilled in order to change that?
Before and after are being conflated, I think. The point, I imagine, is to train the students all of them to their full potential irrespective of parental or social background.
Having monochromatic sets (except perhaps at the very beginning, if recruited on potential as much as performance) is a major warning flag that that is not happening and that some students are only there as tokens - they should not be allowed to remain that way.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
Had similar experience with a UK university where I have a honorary/voluntary position. Compulsory diversity and equality training even for such as me. Part of it was exactly your (1). But much of it was equally practical. How to treat others with respect and understanding - for instance, 'banter' which is really racism, or those who are having depression. But also how to deal with things if you see anything seriously going wrong - e.g. fraud or, to take another topical example, safeguarding minors and students/sexual exploitation etc. Don't sit on your thumb or try to sort it out yourself but take it to the correct member of staff.
There were basic tests to make sure the message had got through, and not that easy or obvious either.
Generally very efficient, focussed and not at all what many "anti-woke" like to pretend it is. There will of course be further training for actual staff, line managers and so on, but the university certainly made its views very plain, and nobody will have any excuse for transgressions. Moreover, the university has made a good step in reducing its own legal vulnerability, both as an institution and indirectly through its staff's and students' behaviour.
The good officers and courses have plenty of focus on practicalities and the advantages to everyone of that. The bad ones just harangue and lecture about theories. The latter are easy to spot as they only seem to care about promoting some opinion at you, the former to actually develop ways of working with you.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
You live there, I don't. I haven't been to the US since 1997 when I did a huge loop from one side to the other and back again on Amtrak. So I'm observing from afar, but what it looks like from here is that a significant chunk of America is bonkers.
They don't want to dismantle democracy, their target is modern civilisation. A "bible" led society where women know their place (bedroom / kitchen), undesirables (gays, non-whites) can be persecuted and worse, and the only ideas that are allowed to flourish are those invoked by "good men" like Tucker Carlson.
I understand what drives some of the GOP politicians. They want absolute power on a permanent basis. But they don't seem to understand that if they get their wish they'll be agaist the wall alongside the libruls and wokeists. Because they aren't good men, they're hypocrites looking to profit from the "bible" led autocracy they wish to create.
Not saying thats even a majority of GOP voters. Yet. But its building. The policies and positions get more and more extreme, their willingness to subvert and now attack democracy gets surer and stronger. No wonder they fly to Hungary to cheer Orban and Putin.
Plenty of US non-whites, especially Hispanic Roman Catholics and Black Pentecostals are more bible based than many US whites, especially outside the South
They are bible based. Note that I didn't refer to them. I referred to "Bible" based. The hypocrites who scream loudly I FOLLOW JESUS yet have a Bible that only contains Genesis, Leviticus, Revelation and any other odd verse that suggests we stone gays, fags and uppity women.
Its why I dislike the term Fundamentalist. They have a complete misunderstanding of what the fundamentals are.
I thought fundamentalism in an American context was a specifically 19th century development emphasising reliance on the original texts and putting more weight on the OT than Episcopalians (who focus on the new covenant).
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
Had similar experience with a UK university where I have a honorary/voluntary position. Compulsory diversity and equality training even for such as me. Part of it was exactly your (1). But much of it was equally practical. How to treat others with respect and understanding - for instance, 'banter' which is really racism, or those who are having depression. But also how to deal with things if you see anything seriously going wrong - e.g. fraud or, to take another topical example, safeguarding minors and students/sexual exploitation etc. Don't sit on your thumb or try to sort it out yourself but take it to the correct member of staff.
There were basic tests to make sure the message had got through, and not that easy or obvious either.
Generally very efficient, focussed and not at all what many "anti-woke" like to pretend it is. There will of course be further training for actual staff, line managers and so on, but the university certainly made its views very plain, and nobody will have any excuse for transgressions. Moreover, the university has made a good step in reducing its own legal vulnerability, both as an institution and indirectly through its staff's and students' behaviour.
The idea that people need lessons in treating other people with respect and understanding is the most patronising thing I've ever heard.
When you are dealing with teenagers the lesson needs to be made very forcibly, including the full range of situations involved. That was very clear.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
I’m not sure I understand your point (1)?
If the top set is all one colour (at the risk of stereotyping let’s say Asian Americans) BUT that is based on merit, how is that tokenism. Tokenism would be adding a student who is less skilled in order to change that?
Your "BUT that is based on merit" is carrying a lot of weight. It rarely is based on merit.
Sure - but we are talking about a school dividing pupils into sets. How would they do that except on, say, test results and possibly teacher assessments?
I still maintain that many of these politicians must be secretly hoping that the place will ultimately burn down. They'd then be armed with an excuse for spending money on a shiny, modern replacement.
Itd make more sense. They made a decision, now have reopened and seemingly deferred it (things seem to have progressed bigger all in years) and whilst arguing about moving out was bound to happen (even though it'll be much quicker and cheaper), they wont even agree to the eminently sensible option of moving some of them across the street, which would also surely be quicker and cheaper, or elsewhere nearby.
The whole thing makes me spitting mad.
The issue is the media
Headline “What Cost of Living Crisis? Government Spends £13 Billion on Fancy Offices For MPs”
It was and is never going to be a popular decision. Hence the delays happening long before the recent spike of concerns around cost of living.
But the longer they take to make a decision the more expensive it will become (they also clearly lean on selecting the more expensive option as they dont want to move out).
Either bite the bullet (as they had seemed to, but now reversed) and do it or be clear they intend to do nothing and stop wasting time on discussion of it.
I have vague hopes that the new improved building will overlook the need for a House of Lords. Everything else we have tried for the last 100 years have failed so lets try the planners.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
I am not sure what is "Woke" about the Sabatini case. It reads to me to be a straightforward case of sexual harrassment. Or is refusing to tolerate sexual harrassment now "Woke"? If so what do the "anti-Woke" crowd want?
I would like everyone in science to read the painful, poignant description of what, exactly, Sabatini did to women under his mentorship. It should make you sick to your stomach. I don't think I could still be in science if I'd faced any of this. https://t.co/vJ5E7NWMEJ
The allegations about Russian soldiers conduct in Ukraine makes me sick to my stomach. Not this. It is a one sided list of allegations of inappropriate behaviour, put forward in a lawsuit by someone suing for damages for 'emotional distress' following a messy break up.
Our time would be better spent dealing with other, far more serious, things.
Sexual harrassment in the work place is not 'a messy break up'. A lot of the allegations in the paper are based upon the findings of the MIT investigation, they are not random stories.
It is perfectly possible to be both in favour of safe workplaces for women and against Russian war crimes.
Yes - but the MIT 'independent' investigation is alleged to be a sham, a biased kangaroo court. So the edifice is built on nothing. That, as I understand it, is Sabatini's defence. So actually, if you want to find out the truth, you would need to consider both sides- not just follow the zeitgeist.
"The police must investigate No. 10 parties!" - The parties are investigated and BJ and others get fined. "Look at the good job the police did! And there's more to come!" - The police don't issue more fines to BJ, but others do get them. "The police have done a horrid job! The top people have got away with it!"
Perhaps the underlings who got done are not a victim of some stitch-up by No. 10 and the police, but victims of the get-Boris campaign?
Then add in Beergate: "The police have investigated! There's nothing to see here! It's all a put-up job by the Mail!" - It turns out that the Labour Party had lied. "Why does it matter? The police investigated?" - More evidence comes out. "Why does it matter? The police investigated? And the Mail's awful!" - The investigation is reopened. "It's a waste of police time to investigate this!"
etc, etc.
You do know that is quite literally the Wail's position reversed. Attacks Labour's push on this - DON'T THEY KNOW THERE'S A WAR ON. Then 10 days of stories piling pressure on the police to do Starmer - one front page literally being TORY PRESSURE TO MAKE THE POLICE ACT. Then Starmer says "I'll quit" and they complain he's trying to pressure the police, then when newss breaks about the Met whitewhash its "WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY".
So you are right, but you're talking about the Tories.
Remember there is a very clear difference between the two sides. We have reams of evidence about Boris and Number 10 breaking the law over and over and over. She prepares a brutal report. Someone leans on the Met to provide cover. Which they do. With a narrow field of investigation. So that now the Gray report will come out and tear Number 10 apart the police have already found Him innocent by simply not investigating the hideous reportage and photos we're about to get. The establishment always looks after its own - if you are a civil servant with a gong you get protected whilst all your staff carry the can.#
If you want to gloat feel free. Not a good luck for the pro-establishment party as people starve.
I don't care if it's the Mail's position, or the opposite of it.
You were in denial over Beergate. I have no idea if Starmer or anyone else there will get a fine - the law appears to be so poorly written that pretty much anything could result. But it was clear the moment that it turned out that Labour had not told the truth about who had been there that the police investigation had not been thorough.
it would be good for you to be consistent.
I am being consistent. There was a prime fascie case against Johnson which the Met now appear to have investigated primarily to sweep under the carpet. There was not one against Starmer, and the "evidence" was not sufficient to suggest the law had been broken.
That Durham plod are now reinvestigating is as much because it became politically untenable for them not to do so as because there is anything to investigate.
I still think there is nothing to see and expect nobody to get fined. Buit if I'm wrong they fall on their sword and leave the stage. Which is more than can be said for Bonzo and his Clown Car circus. We're going to get the Gray report. Reams of it. Photos and all. And people like you will say "nothing to see here" for the various events the Met haven't even investigated because no fines have been issued.
I'm quite happy with the consistency of my position. Which on all things is apply the rules equally.
No, you are being utterly inconsistent: as your claims of 'sweeping under the carpet' above shows.
ISTR you were very keen to say that there was zero reason for Durham Police to reopen the case on beergate. Even when it was pointed out that the police had not had the full information on who had been there, you said it was irrelevant.
Then the police reopened the case because of the new information that had come forward. *You* were the one who was attempting to sweep something under the carpet.
I also have zero idea whether Starmer et al will get fined, cleared, or something in between. But at least there will have been a proper investigation - one you wanted to deny.
The Labour Party was set up in the first place to predominantly be a party for people with few or no qualifications. Why are they so unpopular with this group today?
I think that this is the more interesting question and the voting patterns of the US are remarkably similar in this respect with Republicans doing way better with lower socio-economic groups than you would expect. Deemocrats also find it easier to attract graduates than working class folk.
Age obviously has a lot to do with it but I don't think it is the whole answer. I think that you need to look at the policy mix. Graduates as a very broad generality believe in an activist state that can do good. Non graduates look at a state that is very good for those employed by it (disproportionately graduates, funnily enough) but which is pretty crap at doing much for them.
Where the State does express an interest it is disproportionately interested in minorities, in those with unusual sexual characteristics or proclivities, in the approved list of the oppressed. It shows almost no interest in the needs of the indigenous majority who get very little help or assistance with pretty tough lives. This may not be entirely true in fact but it is in the noise and in the media; it is what the graduates working in these organisations like to talk about obsessively. These non graduates find that a distinct turn off and are attracted to a party that treats the State as a part of the problem rather than the solution.
The answer from the left's point of view is to refocus the efforts of the State to those who actually need their help as opposed to being suitable for their well paid largesse. But, increasingly, they hold these people and their views in contempt. We saw this with Hilary in the US and of course in the Brexit arguments here. I don't think that they can bear going near the people that they claim to represent and once did in a dim and distant time.
This is in my view hitting the nail on the head absolutely. Help should be on a need basis not on a which checkbox you tick basis and yes we do need a state to act as a backstop. However far to often you find that when you need help you can't get it but you could if you ticked some boxes. A case in point is education...you will here people saying group x is being disadvantaged and not doing as well lets help them...when its white males from poor backgrounds deafened by silence. I am in no way saying those groups shouldn't be helped. I am saying help those most in need and target them rather than segregate them by gender faith sexuality colour.
We also should really be having the conversation. This is how much money the state has. This is how much each thing costs to do well. Pick what you want to do till it fills the money supply and the rest will have to rely on charities
The irony is that it is the modern Conservative party that is taxing people until the pips squeek, who think the answer to every problem is more State, whether it is more policemen, more doctors and nurses or more regulation. Even Gordon Brown didn't tax people as severely as this "Tory" government is. Which leaves the group I have sought to describe with my wild generalisations nowhere to go at all.
Precisely, I have been unable to vote since 2010. My constituency only ever seems to have a choice of LD, Lab or Con and they are all equally of the same mind when it comes to state spending.
Putting my money where my mouth is
the state should be spending on the following to fully fund them
Defence Rule of law - police, courts,prisons, borders Education - up to 18 and maybe subsidies for subjects we want people to take Health - though with designated activities you pay or you have insurance that pays. I am thinking for example driving insurance companies should pay, same for sports should be insurance and for safe ones will be cheap I suspect. Absolutely no to stuff like tattoo removal or ivf Standards setting Welfare state including benefits, pensions and social services
Once those are fully funded and actually functioning if we have money left over then we decide what else we should do with it
No funding for research? No funding for embassies or trade delegations? Who’s paying for elections to be conducted? Oh, are we defaulting on all our debt obligations then? Who pays for roads? Who pays for other transport infrastructure? Community centres? Libraries? Rubbish collection? Supporting economic development?
If the money has run out after the essentials then it is privately funded. There is only so much money you can take off people. When it is spent it is spent simple as that. Let us not forget most transport infrastructure, was built with private money oringally, the same with universities and libraries and research. Why do you think its bad saying this is the money we have lets spend it on essentials first. Then if we have money left over we can spend it on nice to haves. As for rubbish collection and community centres....not the job of central government. Thats council stuff and we are talking central government here.
Someone wisely said the other day its not we are underfunding the state as its taking more and more off our money. It is the fact the state is trying to do too much with the result that everything is underfunded. So lets do the essentials right. If we have money left over we can spend it on nice to haves.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
Let's talk about "the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us". I know lots of brilliant scientists who left academia. They are mostly young women. They left because of
- bullying - insecure employment - sexual harassment
I know other scientists who are still working as such, but who are denied the opportunities they need to excel. This is because of
- bullying - sexism - target-driven funding
The American Conservative doesn't appear interested in writing about them however.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
You live there, I don't. I haven't been to the US since 1997 when I did a huge loop from one side to the other and back again on Amtrak. So I'm observing from afar, but what it looks like from here is that a significant chunk of America is bonkers.
They don't want to dismantle democracy, their target is modern civilisation. A "bible" led society where women know their place (bedroom / kitchen), undesirables (gays, non-whites) can be persecuted and worse, and the only ideas that are allowed to flourish are those invoked by "good men" like Tucker Carlson.
I understand what drives some of the GOP politicians. They want absolute power on a permanent basis. But they don't seem to understand that if they get their wish they'll be agaist the wall alongside the libruls and wokeists. Because they aren't good men, they're hypocrites looking to profit from the "bible" led autocracy they wish to create.
Not saying thats even a majority of GOP voters. Yet. But its building. The policies and positions get more and more extreme, their willingness to subvert and now attack democracy gets surer and stronger. No wonder they fly to Hungary to cheer Orban and Putin.
Plenty of US non-whites, especially Hispanic Roman Catholics and Black Pentecostals are more bible based than many US whites, especially outside the South
They are bible based. Note that I didn't refer to them. I referred to "Bible" based. The hypocrites who scream loudly I FOLLOW JESUS yet have a Bible that only contains Genesis, Leviticus, Revelation and any other odd verse that suggests we stone gays, fags and uppity women.
Its why I dislike the term Fundamentalist. They have a complete misunderstanding of what the fundamentals are.
I am a christian. Deliberately with a small c. I dislike profoundly the hypocrisy and holier-than-thou approach I see from so many supposedly faithful people who don't seem to understand the basics as you say.
The hardest fundamental is forgiveness. I find it amazing when you hear of the relative of someone murdered talking to the media saying they forgive the assailant (who has just been jailed) because their faith commands them to. That's massive - I know it's not our place to judge but we all do.
And the other hard one is humility. "I was wrong" and "I'm sorry" seem to be impossible for some people to understand never mind say. The world would be so much better if people were able to wind their necks back in a little, accept they got something wrong and the people who were on the end of it were able to forgive and move on. That's not to say you have to forgive and forget - no, the biggest lessons in life means you can't forget or you lose the valuable lesson you took from whatever it was that happened.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
I’m not sure I understand your point (1)?
If the top set is all one colour (at the risk of stereotyping let’s say Asian Americans) BUT that is based on merit, how is that tokenism. Tokenism would be adding a student who is less skilled in order to change that?
Before and after are being conflated, I think. The point, I imagine, is to train the students all of them to their full potential irrespective of parental or social background.
Having monochromatic sets (except perhaps at the very beginning, if recruited on potential as much as performance) is a major warning flag that that is not happening and that some students are only there as tokens - they should not be allowed to remain that way.
Agree with the objective in para 1.
However the read in para 2 is troubling. Your proposal seems to be “if it remains monochromatic then some of the students should be held back to stop that being the case.” I would say “if it remains monochromatic we, the school, need to look at why we are failing the other kids by not helping them achieve their full potential”
If the sets are chosen on anything other than objective criteria that is very dangerous
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
Had similar experience with a UK university where I have a honorary/voluntary position. Compulsory diversity and equality training even for such as me. Part of it was exactly your (1). But much of it was equally practical. How to treat others with respect and understanding - for instance, 'banter' which is really racism, or those who are having depression. But also how to deal with things if you see anything seriously going wrong - e.g. fraud or, to take another topical example, safeguarding minors and students/sexual exploitation etc. Don't sit on your thumb or try to sort it out yourself but take it to the correct member of staff.
There were basic tests to make sure the message had got through, and not that easy or obvious either.
Generally very efficient, focussed and not at all what many "anti-woke" like to pretend it is. There will of course be further training for actual staff, line managers and so on, but the university certainly made its views very plain, and nobody will have any excuse for transgressions. Moreover, the university has made a good step in reducing its own legal vulnerability, both as an institution and indirectly through its staff's and students' behaviour.
The idea that people need lessons in treating other people with respect and understanding is the most patronising thing I've ever heard.
It's not patronising at all, we teach children and young people how to treat others. Do you think that always takes? That as adults all are respectful and understanding? What is a church but trying to teach people how to treat others, often preaching treating others with respect and understanding?
How arrogant of you to assume no one has anything to learn once they're an adult.
I consider myself pretty unwoke, to the extent it's a thing, and examples exist of these sorts of courses being wasted of time just promoting a political message, but the idea people, all of us, cannot be aided by guidance on how to behave is ridiculous. Do you think people spring fully formed into the world and cannot learn new ways? That some people might not realise if they are disrespectful?
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
Had similar experience with a UK university where I have a honorary/voluntary position. Compulsory diversity and equality training even for such as me. Part of it was exactly your (1). But much of it was equally practical. How to treat others with respect and understanding - for instance, 'banter' which is really racism, or those who are having depression. But also how to deal with things if you see anything seriously going wrong - e.g. fraud or, to take another topical example, safeguarding minors and students/sexual exploitation etc. Don't sit on your thumb or try to sort it out yourself but take it to the correct member of staff.
There were basic tests to make sure the message had got through, and not that easy or obvious either.
Generally very efficient, focussed and not at all what many "anti-woke" like to pretend it is. There will of course be further training for actual staff, line managers and so on, but the university certainly made its views very plain, and nobody will have any excuse for transgressions. Moreover, the university has made a good step in reducing its own legal vulnerability, both as an institution and indirectly through its staff's and students' behaviour.
Yes, very similar to what we get at the Hospital and University as part of our mandatory training. More about establishing rules and culture of the workplace than anything, and with no ideological agenda.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
I’m not sure I understand your point (1)?
If the top set is all one colour (at the risk of stereotyping let’s say Asian Americans) BUT that is based on merit, how is that tokenism. Tokenism would be adding a student who is less skilled in order to change that?
Before and after are being conflated, I think. The point, I imagine, is to train the students all of them to their full potential irrespective of parental or social background.
Having monochromatic sets (except perhaps at the very beginning, if recruited on potential as much as performance) is a major warning flag that that is not happening and that some students are only there as tokens - they should not be allowed to remain that way.
Agree with the objective in para 1.
However the read in para 2 is troubling. Your proposal seems to be “if it remains monochromatic then some of the students should be held back to stop that being the case.” I would say “if it remains monochromatic we, the school, need to look at why we are failing the other kids by not helping them achieve their full potential”
If the sets are chosen on anything other than objective criteria that is very dangerous
Thanks - 'not allowed to remain that way' was meant to mean 'get taught to their potential so they don't all stay in the bottom set any longer' (obvs some may still do so in practice). So yes, I agree with the way you put it!
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
Had similar experience with a UK university where I have a honorary/voluntary position. Compulsory diversity and equality training even for such as me. Part of it was exactly your (1). But much of it was equally practical. How to treat others with respect and understanding - for instance, 'banter' which is really racism, or those who are having depression. But also how to deal with things if you see anything seriously going wrong - e.g. fraud or, to take another topical example, safeguarding minors and students/sexual exploitation etc. Don't sit on your thumb or try to sort it out yourself but take it to the correct member of staff.
There were basic tests to make sure the message had got through, and not that easy or obvious either.
Generally very efficient, focussed and not at all what many "anti-woke" like to pretend it is. There will of course be further training for actual staff, line managers and so on, but the university certainly made its views very plain, and nobody will have any excuse for transgressions. Moreover, the university has made a good step in reducing its own legal vulnerability, both as an institution and indirectly through its staff's and students' behaviour.
Yes, very similar to what we get at the Hospital and University as part of our mandatory training. More about establishing rules and culture of the workplace than anything, and with no ideological agenda.
Interesting observation from last night's Gary Numan concert. First time I had seen him live, and they were seriously on it. I know he is open about his autism and I would never have guessed. They came on and played for 90 minutes non-stop. And I do mean non-stop. Thrashed away the whole time without even a "hello". Nothing.
He was quite happy to soak up the crowd and the at times deafening "NU-MAN, NU-MAN" chants. But thats as much as he can do. We got a "thanks" when they came back on for encores. yet on Twitter he's ebullient, and said what an amazing crowd we were. So can't talk to people, but is happy to talk one-way to strangers.
Mrs RP is also autistic (and lets be honest I'm on the spectrum but can't be bothered at 45 to get diagnosed as I know how to map my brain against society inputs/outputs) and must talk to her about what I saw, was fascinating.
Look after yourself and remember you have friends here.
At times when I felt lonely and down during the Covid isolation spending time on here was a help.
Not much else as can do but offer you this picture of a Japanese wisteria flowering outside my kitchen - Ikoyama Fuji. The colour is beautiful but its scent is amazing. I find sensual pleasures such as sight or smell very reassuring when troubled - perhaps because they pull you back to something very basic and unmediated.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
I am not sure what is "Woke" about the Sabatini case. It reads to me to be a straightforward case of sexual harrassment. Or is refusing to tolerate sexual harrassment now "Woke"? If so what do the "anti-Woke" crowd want?
I would like everyone in science to read the painful, poignant description of what, exactly, Sabatini did to women under his mentorship. It should make you sick to your stomach. I don't think I could still be in science if I'd faced any of this. https://t.co/vJ5E7NWMEJ
The allegations about Russian soldiers conduct in Ukraine makes me sick to my stomach. Not this. It is a one sided list of allegations of inappropriate behaviour, put forward in a lawsuit by someone suing for damages for 'emotional distress' following a messy break up.
Our time would be better spent dealing with other, far more serious, things.
Sexual harrassment in the work place is not 'a messy break up'. A lot of the allegations in the paper are based upon the findings of the MIT investigation, they are not random stories.
It is perfectly possible to be both in favour of safe workplaces for women and against Russian war crimes.
Yes - but the MIT 'independent' investigation is alleged to be a sham, a biased kangaroo court. So the edifice is built on nothing. That, as I understand it, is Sabatini's defence. So actually, if you want to find out the truth, you would need to consider both sides- not just follow the zeitgeist.
Well, if the investigation was really a sham, then Sabatini can make a claim under employment law for an unfair dismissal... oh, hold on, he's in the US, where American Conservatives have spent decades making sure employees are largely powerless. Maybe the American Conservative website should do an article on that.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
I am not sure what is "Woke" about the Sabatini case. It reads to me to be a straightforward case of sexual harrassment. Or is refusing to tolerate sexual harrassment now "Woke"? If so what do the "anti-Woke" crowd want?
I would like everyone in science to read the painful, poignant description of what, exactly, Sabatini did to women under his mentorship. It should make you sick to your stomach. I don't think I could still be in science if I'd faced any of this. https://t.co/vJ5E7NWMEJ
Part of the issue is the initial story I read yesterday was totally different to this version of events. I do not know the truth, although the court proceedings seem likely far closer to reality.
As someone who works at uni, teaches undergrads and post grads and had has researchers in my group, I am extremely aware of what is appropriate and what is not.
Sadly, some years ago, we lost a colleague who seemingly behaved in a similar manner to Sabatini (phd student pregnancy, lots of complaints etc). In the end he commuted suicide at a tragically young age.
Being surrounded by attractive intelligent women who look up to you can be challenging for some men. It’s crucial to keep boundaries where they should be and not get confused about the nature of the often genuine friendships and mentoring that can happen.
And the moral of the story - get all the facts before flying into outrage mode.
I still maintain that many of these politicians must be secretly hoping that the place will ultimately burn down. They'd then be armed with an excuse for spending money on a shiny, modern replacement.
Itd make more sense. They made a decision, now have reopened and seemingly deferred it (things seem to have progressed bigger all in years) and whilst arguing about moving out was bound to happen (even though it'll be much quicker and cheaper), they wont even agree to the eminently sensible option of moving some of them across the street, which would also surely be quicker and cheaper, or elsewhere nearby.
The whole thing makes me spitting mad.
The issue is the media
Headline “What Cost of Living Crisis? Government Spends £13 Billion on Fancy Offices For MPs”
It was and is never going to be a popular decision. Hence the delays happening long before the recent spike of concerns around cost of living.
But the longer they take to make a decision the more expensive it will become (they also clearly lean on selecting the more expensive option as they dont want to move out).
Either bite the bullet (as they had seemed to, but now reversed) and do it or be clear they intend to do nothing and stop wasting time on discussion of it.
The building is clearly not fit for purpose. Endless discussion is the only way to defer making a decision.
Precisely. And as someone who doesn't like taking decisions, one thing that really annoys me is when those who asked to become decision takers shirk taking decisions.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
I am not sure what is "Woke" about the Sabatini case. It reads to me to be a straightforward case of sexual harrassment. Or is refusing to tolerate sexual harrassment now "Woke"? If so what do the "anti-Woke" crowd want?
I would like everyone in science to read the painful, poignant description of what, exactly, Sabatini did to women under his mentorship. It should make you sick to your stomach. I don't think I could still be in science if I'd faced any of this. https://t.co/vJ5E7NWMEJ
The allegations about Russian soldiers conduct in Ukraine makes me sick to my stomach. Not this. It is a one sided list of allegations of inappropriate behaviour, put forward in a lawsuit by someone suing for damages for 'emotional distress' following a messy break up.
Our time would be better spent dealing with other, far more serious, things.
Sexual harrassment in the work place is not 'a messy break up'. A lot of the allegations in the paper are based upon the findings of the MIT investigation, they are not random stories.
It is perfectly possible to be both in favour of safe workplaces for women and against Russian war crimes.
Yes - but the MIT 'independent' investigation is alleged to be a sham, a biased kangaroo court. So the edifice is built on nothing. That, as I understand it, is Sabatini's defence. So actually, if you want to find out the truth, you would need to consider both sides- not just follow the zeitgeist.
Well, if the investigation was really a sham, then Sabatini can make a claim under employment law for an unfair dismissal... oh, hold on, he's in the US, where American Conservatives have spent decades making sure employees are largely powerless. Maybe the American Conservative website should do an article on that.
The issue is more that he is being prevented from getting another job by protestors and by the NIH threatening to withdraw funding.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
Had similar experience with a UK university where I have a honorary/voluntary position. Compulsory diversity and equality training even for such as me. Part of it was exactly your (1). But much of it was equally practical. How to treat others with respect and understanding - for instance, 'banter' which is really racism, or those who are having depression. But also how to deal with things if you see anything seriously going wrong - e.g. fraud or, to take another topical example, safeguarding minors and students/sexual exploitation etc. Don't sit on your thumb or try to sort it out yourself but take it to the correct member of staff.
There were basic tests to make sure the message had got through, and not that easy or obvious either.
Generally very efficient, focussed and not at all what many "anti-woke" like to pretend it is. There will of course be further training for actual staff, line managers and so on, but the university certainly made its views very plain, and nobody will have any excuse for transgressions. Moreover, the university has made a good step in reducing its own legal vulnerability, both as an institution and indirectly through its staff's and students' behaviour.
The idea that people need lessons in treating other people with respect and understanding is the most patronising thing I've ever heard.
If you have ever been involved with a workplace disciplinary investigation then you would see that many people do not treat colleagues with respect and understanding. Making such training mandatory does not stop such instances, as my own NHS shows. Making such training mandatory does mean that no one can use as a defence that they didn't know the rules or procedures.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
That sounds somewhat different an experience, from that of a former PBer with a private American school that was documented here.
IIRC the now-former head teacher wanted to tell all the white kids that they are racist, and should see American history as defined by the slavery for which they should be held accountable.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
Had similar experience with a UK university where I have a honorary/voluntary position. Compulsory diversity and equality training even for such as me. Part of it was exactly your (1). But much of it was equally practical. How to treat others with respect and understanding - for instance, 'banter' which is really racism, or those who are having depression. But also how to deal with things if you see anything seriously going wrong - e.g. fraud or, to take another topical example, safeguarding minors and students/sexual exploitation etc. Don't sit on your thumb or try to sort it out yourself but take it to the correct member of staff.
There were basic tests to make sure the message had got through, and not that easy or obvious either.
Generally very efficient, focussed and not at all what many "anti-woke" like to pretend it is. There will of course be further training for actual staff, line managers and so on, but the university certainly made its views very plain, and nobody will have any excuse for transgressions. Moreover, the university has made a good step in reducing its own legal vulnerability, both as an institution and indirectly through its staff's and students' behaviour.
The idea that people need lessons in treating other people with respect and understanding is the most patronising thing I've ever heard.
It's not patronising at all, we teach children and young people how to treat others. Do you think that always takes? That as adults all are respectful and understanding? What is a church but trying to teach people how to treat others, often preaching treating others with respect and understanding?
How arrogant of you to assume no one has anything to learn once they're an adult.
I consider myself pretty unwoke, to the extent it's a thing, and examples exist of these sorts of courses being wasted of time just promoting a political message, but the idea people, all of us, cannot be aided by guidance on how to behave is ridiculous. Do you think people spring fully formed into the world and cannot learn new ways? That some people might not realise if they are disrespectful?
The way I look at it is that I have absolutely no desire to cause unnecessary offence, indeed that understates it: I want to show people respect and courtesy. I am a very, very long way from omniscient too. If I can avoid carelessly causing someone distress or accidently insulting them because of some implication in my language that I was simply unaware of I would of course want to do so: who wouldn't?
I am much more resistant to the limitation of ideas but again I would want to both understand why some might think that idea offensive and to be capable of discussing these ideas without causing gratuitous distress or insult. I am very open to advice on these matters and do not consider it patronising in the least.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
Had similar experience with a UK university where I have a honorary/voluntary position. Compulsory diversity and equality training even for such as me. Part of it was exactly your (1). But much of it was equally practical. How to treat others with respect and understanding - for instance, 'banter' which is really racism, or those who are having depression. But also how to deal with things if you see anything seriously going wrong - e.g. fraud or, to take another topical example, safeguarding minors and students/sexual exploitation etc. Don't sit on your thumb or try to sort it out yourself but take it to the correct member of staff.
There were basic tests to make sure the message had got through, and not that easy or obvious either.
Generally very efficient, focussed and not at all what many "anti-woke" like to pretend it is. There will of course be further training for actual staff, line managers and so on, but the university certainly made its views very plain, and nobody will have any excuse for transgressions. Moreover, the university has made a good step in reducing its own legal vulnerability, both as an institution and indirectly through its staff's and students' behaviour.
The idea that people need lessons in treating other people with respect and understanding is the most patronising thing I've ever heard.
It's not patronising at all, we teach children and young people how to treat others. Do you think that always takes? That as adults all are respectful and understanding? What is a church but trying to teach people how to treat others, often preaching treating others with respect and understanding?
How arrogant of you to assume no one has anything to learn once they're an adult.
I consider myself pretty unwoke, to the extent it's a thing, and examples exist of these sorts of courses being wasted of time just promoting a political message, but the idea people, all of us, cannot be aided by guidance on how to behave is ridiculous. Do you think people spring fully formed into the world and cannot learn new ways? That some people might not realise if they are disrespectful?
Also, the courses I took were aimed at all people in the uni - and especially new students. Many of whom need to grow up asap and realise they are not in the playground any more. (I certainly did, all those years ago, and could have done with a similar course ...).
Though part of it was also to make people realise that some situations can be unacceptably disrespectful: such as workplace or student union 'banter'. Or at least make less easy the excuse 'I didn't realise'.
I still maintain that many of these politicians must be secretly hoping that the place will ultimately burn down. They'd then be armed with an excuse for spending money on a shiny, modern replacement.
Itd make more sense. They made a decision, now have reopened and seemingly deferred it (things seem to have progressed bigger all in years) and whilst arguing about moving out was bound to happen (even though it'll be much quicker and cheaper), they wont even agree to the eminently sensible option of moving some of them across the street, which would also surely be quicker and cheaper, or elsewhere nearby.
The whole thing makes me spitting mad.
The issue is the media
Headline “What Cost of Living Crisis? Government Spends £13 Billion on Fancy Offices For MPs”
It was and is never going to be a popular decision. Hence the delays happening long before the recent spike of concerns around cost of living.
But the longer they take to make a decision the more expensive it will become (they also clearly lean on selecting the more expensive option as they dont want to move out).
Either bite the bullet (as they had seemed to, but now reversed) and do it or be clear they intend to do nothing and stop wasting time on discussion of it.
I have vague hopes that the new improved building will overlook the need for a House of Lords. Everything else we have tried for the last 100 years have failed so lets try the planners.
I'm more concerned that theyd fall for the trick that the political culture will be transformed by the building they meet in, and decide it was the old fashioned wallpaper and straight lines holding them back or something, so go for something 'new', regardless of quality.
Plus lets be honest, any new building would be shoddily constructed, massively over budget and behind schedule anyway.
I still maintain that many of these politicians must be secretly hoping that the place will ultimately burn down. They'd then be armed with an excuse for spending money on a shiny, modern replacement.
Itd make more sense. They made a decision, now have reopened and seemingly deferred it (things seem to have progressed bigger all in years) and whilst arguing about moving out was bound to happen (even though it'll be much quicker and cheaper), they wont even agree to the eminently sensible option of moving some of them across the street, which would also surely be quicker and cheaper, or elsewhere nearby.
The whole thing makes me spitting mad.
It makes no sense to do anything other than have them all move out. Rent the QEII centre and set up something there for a couple of years. Re-purpose any empty space in Whitehall as offices.
The cost does seem astonishing though, it would be definitely be cheaper to knock down large chunks of the building and re-build a replica to modern building codes. The Burj Khalifa only cost $2bn, and it’s half a mile high! (No asbestos all over the site there though).
The what the government should do, is sell specific bonds for the project so that’s it’s explicitly not being paid for out of current public money. Think of it as a 50-year mortgage on the new building.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
I am not sure what is "Woke" about the Sabatini case. It reads to me to be a straightforward case of sexual harrassment. Or is refusing to tolerate sexual harrassment now "Woke"? If so what do the "anti-Woke" crowd want?
I would like everyone in science to read the painful, poignant description of what, exactly, Sabatini did to women under his mentorship. It should make you sick to your stomach. I don't think I could still be in science if I'd faced any of this. https://t.co/vJ5E7NWMEJ
The allegations about Russian soldiers conduct in Ukraine makes me sick to my stomach. Not this. It is a one sided list of allegations of inappropriate behaviour, put forward in a lawsuit by someone suing for damages for 'emotional distress' following a messy break up.
Our time would be better spent dealing with other, far more serious, things.
Sexual harrassment in the work place is not 'a messy break up'. A lot of the allegations in the paper are based upon the findings of the MIT investigation, they are not random stories.
It is perfectly possible to be both in favour of safe workplaces for women and against Russian war crimes.
Yes - but the MIT 'independent' investigation is alleged to be a sham, a biased kangaroo court. So the edifice is built on nothing. That, as I understand it, is Sabatini's defence. So actually, if you want to find out the truth, you would need to consider both sides- not just follow the zeitgeist.
Well, if the investigation was really a sham, then Sabatini can make a claim under employment law for an unfair dismissal... oh, hold on, he's in the US, where American Conservatives have spent decades making sure employees are largely powerless. Maybe the American Conservative website should do an article on that.
Since when was the American Conservative a source of objectivity ?
There is some erroneous thinking which is common to see in the comments on this website. That is, that bad things on the left can be excused because bad things on the right have also gone on. This type of thinking has very deep roots in the west over the twentieth century, manifesting itself in sympathy towards left wing progressive projects, like communism and particularly the soviet union. The tolerance towards quite extreme left wing thinking since 2020, manifesting itself in the infiltration of many different institutions, is essentially just a continuation of that.
If you are going to preserve liberal democracy and prevent authoritarianism from taking hold, you have to deal with the attacks on it from both left and the right.
The Labour Party was set up in the first place to predominantly be a party for people with few or no qualifications. Why are they so unpopular with this group today?
I think that this is the more interesting question and the voting patterns of the US are remarkably similar in this respect with Republicans doing way better with lower socio-economic groups than you would expect. Deemocrats also find it easier to attract graduates than working class folk.
Age obviously has a lot to do with it but I don't think it is the whole answer. I think that you need to look at the policy mix. Graduates as a very broad generality believe in an activist state that can do good. Non graduates look at a state that is very good for those employed by it (disproportionately graduates, funnily enough) but which is pretty crap at doing much for them.
Where the State does express an interest it is disproportionately interested in minorities, in those with unusual sexual characteristics or proclivities, in the approved list of the oppressed. It shows almost no interest in the needs of the indigenous majority who get very little help or assistance with pretty tough lives. This may not be entirely true in fact but it is in the noise and in the media; it is what the graduates working in these organisations like to talk about obsessively. These non graduates find that a distinct turn off and are attracted to a party that treats the State as a part of the problem rather than the solution.
The answer from the left's point of view is to refocus the efforts of the State to those who actually need their help as opposed to being suitable for their well paid largesse. But, increasingly, they hold these people and their views in contempt. We saw this with Hilary in the US and of course in the Brexit arguments here. I don't think that they can bear going near the people that they claim to represent and once did in a dim and distant time.
This is in my view hitting the nail on the head absolutely. Help should be on a need basis not on a which checkbox you tick basis and yes we do need a state to act as a backstop. However far to often you find that when you need help you can't get it but you could if you ticked some boxes. A case in point is education...you will here people saying group x is being disadvantaged and not doing as well lets help them...when its white males from poor backgrounds deafened by silence. I am in no way saying those groups shouldn't be helped. I am saying help those most in need and target them rather than segregate them by gender faith sexuality colour.
We also should really be having the conversation. This is how much money the state has. This is how much each thing costs to do well. Pick what you want to do till it fills the money supply and the rest will have to rely on charities
The irony is that it is the modern Conservative party that is taxing people until the pips squeek, who think the answer to every problem is more State, whether it is more policemen, more doctors and nurses or more regulation. Even Gordon Brown didn't tax people as severely as this "Tory" government is. Which leaves the group I have sought to describe with my wild generalisations nowhere to go at all.
Precisely, I have been unable to vote since 2010. My constituency only ever seems to have a choice of LD, Lab or Con and they are all equally of the same mind when it comes to state spending.
Putting my money where my mouth is
the state should be spending on the following to fully fund them
Defence Rule of law - police, courts,prisons, borders Education - up to 18 and maybe subsidies for subjects we want people to take Health - though with designated activities you pay or you have insurance that pays. I am thinking for example driving insurance companies should pay, same for sports should be insurance and for safe ones will be cheap I suspect. Absolutely no to stuff like tattoo removal or ivf Standards setting Welfare state including benefits, pensions and social services
Once those are fully funded and actually functioning if we have money left over then we decide what else we should do with it
No funding for research? No funding for embassies or trade delegations? Who’s paying for elections to be conducted? Oh, are we defaulting on all our debt obligations then? Who pays for roads? Who pays for other transport infrastructure? Community centres? Libraries? Rubbish collection? Supporting economic development?
If the money has run out after the essentials then it is privately funded. There is only so much money you can take off people. When it is spent it is spent simple as that. Let us not forget most transport infrastructure, was built with private money oringally, the same with universities and libraries and research. Why do you think its bad saying this is the money we have lets spend it on essentials first. Then if we have money left over we can spend it on nice to haves. As for rubbish collection and community centres....not the job of central government. Thats council stuff and we are talking central government here.
Someone wisely said the other day its not we are underfunding the state as its taking more and more off our money. It is the fact the state is trying to do too much with the result that everything is underfunded. So lets do the essentials right. If we have money left over we can spend it on nice to haves.
When we talk about private money originally building universities and infrastructure... well, for centuries, "private money" meant the monarchy and aristocracy, who were effectively functioning as the state before we moved to democracy.
Local government (England figures) receives about a quarter of its funding from central government. If you're chopping that, could you just clarify if you are happier with higher council tax or which bin collection days you want dropped?
Under your plan, we're still defaulting on our debt obligations. We've still shut all our embassies overseas (or is private money paying for those?). Our economy is tanking without government support through research (see Mazzucato's work). Welfare costs are rising given there's no support for economic development to help create jobs, there's no support for individuals in further education so they get themselves back in the labour market. Our national energy infrastructure fails. Our food security disappears...
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
Had similar experience with a UK university where I have a honorary/voluntary position. Compulsory diversity and equality training even for such as me. Part of it was exactly your (1). But much of it was equally practical. How to treat others with respect and understanding - for instance, 'banter' which is really racism, or those who are having depression. But also how to deal with things if you see anything seriously going wrong - e.g. fraud or, to take another topical example, safeguarding minors and students/sexual exploitation etc. Don't sit on your thumb or try to sort it out yourself but take it to the correct member of staff.
There were basic tests to make sure the message had got through, and not that easy or obvious either.
Generally very efficient, focussed and not at all what many "anti-woke" like to pretend it is. There will of course be further training for actual staff, line managers and so on, but the university certainly made its views very plain, and nobody will have any excuse for transgressions. Moreover, the university has made a good step in reducing its own legal vulnerability, both as an institution and indirectly through its staff's and students' behaviour.
The idea that people need lessons in treating other people with respect and understanding is the most patronising thing I've ever heard.
It's not patronising at all, we teach children and young people how to treat others. Do you think that always takes? That as adults all are respectful and understanding? What is a church but trying to teach people how to treat others, often preaching treating others with respect and understanding?
How arrogant of you to assume no one has anything to learn once they're an adult.
I consider myself pretty unwoke, to the extent it's a thing, and examples exist of these sorts of courses being wasted of time just promoting a political message, but the idea people, all of us, cannot be aided by guidance on how to behave is ridiculous. Do you think people spring fully formed into the world and cannot learn new ways? That some people might not realise if they are disrespectful?
The way I look at it is that I have absolutely no desire to cause unnecessary offence, indeed that understates it: I want to show people respect and courtesy. I am a very, very long way from omniscient too. If I can avoid carelessly causing someone distress or accidently insulting them because of some implication in my language that I was simply unaware of I would of course want to do so: who wouldn't?
I am much more resistant to the limitation of ideas but again I would want to both understand why some might think that idea offensive and to be capable of discussing these ideas without causing gratuitous distress or insult. I am very open to advice on these matters and do not consider it patronising in the least.
There's patronizing examples out there. Offensive ones even. But the principle of doing it is not either of those things.
Thats why we can and should criticise or condemn the terrible examples, even if they are a minority. Because it distracts from the actually useful examples.
I have given talks on diversity. Pretty well received they were.
Not ideological at all but essentially about good manners, doing unto others etc and not making assumptions about people based on the superficial. We all need reminding of this from time to time.
There probably is a lot of undiverse "Diversity" nonsense being peddled. But if we teach people to challenge and think for themselves, then we can deal with that as well, without needing to fall into the arms of those like Orban and others wishing to impose a very conformist and unpleasant-to-minorities type of society.
As I’ve said before, I’ve been there, as - it seems - have many PB-ers. It’s great that we can talk about it on here without shame or embarrassment. Sharing is part of curing. And the other parts of curing are the usual: exercise, good healthy food, fresh air, try and socialise if you can, but don’t curse yourself if you can’t, don’t refuse the happy pills if it gets that bad
Alcohol is a puzzler. All the medical advice says Don’t do it, booze makes it worse, it’s a depressant. And yet it numbs the pain, doesn’t it? And that is really quite helpful, at times. Each to their own
Most of all remember that depression is like bad weather. There isn’t THAT much you can do, but shelter and endure, but bad weather ALWAYS passes. Hunker down and sit it out
Morning! Sharing is definitely part of curing - its just that so many of my friends seem to have had a mental kicking for various reasons over the last few years. I think I've become increasingly prone to bouts of it but at least now I know the warning signs and can usually find a way to pull back from the edge of that drop into the pit.
What would be great would be if I could drop the 15kgs the happy pills added to my frame. OK so I could make better food / drink choices and I'm not as fit as I was, but I tried hard and nothing shifts it more than temporarily - we all seem to have a balanced weight that we come back to, and mine is just a chunk more than it was pre happy pills.
Here’s a pic of my office this morning. Might help moods around here
More seriously, thanks for your account of your Black Dog. It seems to bite people in very different ways. I don’t get the shakes or anxiety attacks, when it is really bad (and that is very rare, thank god) I become kind of inert. I drag myself out of bed if I can but then I just sit there, slumped. Staring at nothing. Bleak and immobile
One weird thing is that it is physically painful. A pain somewhere in my spine. Or my chest. Like heartbreak. Bloody horrible
And of course when it is really bad, all the genuinely good advice: exercise, see people, eat well, becomes irrelevant as you have no energy nor desire nor ability to do anything. Except maybe drink booze (and that is where booze can be an issue, although it does numb the pain)
But it did pass. Like the rain. My improvement was achingly slow but noticeable. One day I went for a walk. Then a longer walk. Then I saw a friend. Chatted with a neighbour. Slow slow slow but i resurfaced. Probably took six months from beginning to end of the nasty stuff
I still get glimpses even now - like acid flashbacks - ugh
In which case I am going to look at this amazing view, drink more coffee, and do some work. That also helps: work. Raises the self esteem
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
I’m not sure I understand your point (1)?
If the top set is all one colour (at the risk of stereotyping let’s say Asian Americans) BUT that is based on merit, how is that tokenism. Tokenism would be adding a student who is less skilled in order to change that?
Before and after are being conflated, I think. The point, I imagine, is to train the students all of them to their full potential irrespective of parental or social background.
Having monochromatic sets (except perhaps at the very beginning, if recruited on potential as much as performance) is a major warning flag that that is not happening and that some students are only there as tokens - they should not be allowed to remain that way.
Agree with the objective in para 1.
However the read in para 2 is troubling. Your proposal seems to be “if it remains monochromatic then some of the students should be held back to stop that being the case.” I would say “if it remains monochromatic we, the school, need to look at why we are failing the other kids by not helping them achieve their full potential”
If the sets are chosen on anything other than objective criteria that is very dangerous
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
I am not sure what is "Woke" about the Sabatini case. It reads to me to be a straightforward case of sexual harrassment. Or is refusing to tolerate sexual harrassment now "Woke"? If so what do the "anti-Woke" crowd want?
I would like everyone in science to read the painful, poignant description of what, exactly, Sabatini did to women under his mentorship. It should make you sick to your stomach. I don't think I could still be in science if I'd faced any of this. https://t.co/vJ5E7NWMEJ
The allegations about Russian soldiers conduct in Ukraine makes me sick to my stomach. Not this. It is a one sided list of allegations of inappropriate behaviour, put forward in a lawsuit by someone suing for damages for 'emotional distress' following a messy break up.
Our time would be better spent dealing with other, far more serious, things.
Sexual harrassment in the work place is not 'a messy break up'. A lot of the allegations in the paper are based upon the findings of the MIT investigation, they are not random stories.
It is perfectly possible to be both in favour of safe workplaces for women and against Russian war crimes.
Yes - but the MIT 'independent' investigation is alleged to be a sham, a biased kangaroo court. So the edifice is built on nothing. That, as I understand it, is Sabatini's defence. So actually, if you want to find out the truth, you would need to consider both sides- not just follow the zeitgeist.
Well, if the investigation was really a sham, then Sabatini can make a claim under employment law for an unfair dismissal... oh, hold on, he's in the US, where American Conservatives have spent decades making sure employees are largely powerless. Maybe the American Conservative website should do an article on that.
Since when was the American Conservative a source of objectivity ?
There is some erroneous thinking which is common to see in the comments on this website. That is, that bad things on the left can be excused because bad things on the right have also gone on. This type of thinking has very deep roots in the west over the twentieth century, manifesting itself in sympathy towards left wing progressive projects, like communism and particularly the soviet union. The tolerance towards quite extreme left wing thinking since 2020, manifesting itself in the infiltration of many different institutions, is essentially just a continuation of that.
If you are going to preserve liberal democracy and prevent authoritarianism from taking hold, you have to deal with the attacks on it from both left and the right.
You're the one who posted the article from the American Conservative. If we agree it's not a source of objectivity, great! We can all agree that it's spouting nonsense about the Sabatini case.
As for "extreme left wing thinking", I'm proposing that the US adopt a system of employment law like that in the UK. I hardly think that equates with a proletariat revolution.
I still maintain that many of these politicians must be secretly hoping that the place will ultimately burn down. They'd then be armed with an excuse for spending money on a shiny, modern replacement.
Itd make more sense. They made a decision, now have reopened and seemingly deferred it (things seem to have progressed bigger all in years) and whilst arguing about moving out was bound to happen (even though it'll be much quicker and cheaper), they wont even agree to the eminently sensible option of moving some of them across the street, which would also surely be quicker and cheaper, or elsewhere nearby.
The whole thing makes me spitting mad.
It makes no sense to do anything other than have them all move out. Rent the QEII centre and set up something there for a couple of years. Re-purpose any empty space in Whitehall as offices.
Why does it even need to exist? The MPs could have shit offices above a Ladbrokes in their constiuencies, debate on Zoom and vote on an app. I don't think we'd be conspicuously less well governed if that were the arrangement,
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
Had similar experience with a UK university where I have a honorary/voluntary position. Compulsory diversity and equality training even for such as me. Part of it was exactly your (1). But much of it was equally practical. How to treat others with respect and understanding - for instance, 'banter' which is really racism, or those who are having depression. But also how to deal with things if you see anything seriously going wrong - e.g. fraud or, to take another topical example, safeguarding minors and students/sexual exploitation etc. Don't sit on your thumb or try to sort it out yourself but take it to the correct member of staff.
There were basic tests to make sure the message had got through, and not that easy or obvious either.
Generally very efficient, focussed and not at all what many "anti-woke" like to pretend it is. There will of course be further training for actual staff, line managers and so on, but the university certainly made its views very plain, and nobody will have any excuse for transgressions. Moreover, the university has made a good step in reducing its own legal vulnerability, both as an institution and indirectly through its staff's and students' behaviour.
The idea that people need lessons in treating other people with respect and understanding is the most patronising thing I've ever heard.
It's not patronising at all, we teach children and young people how to treat others. Do you think that always takes? That as adults all are respectful and understanding? What is a church but trying to teach people how to treat others, often preaching treating others with respect and understanding?
How arrogant of you to assume no one has anything to learn once they're an adult.
I consider myself pretty unwoke, to the extent it's a thing, and examples exist of these sorts of courses being wasted of time just promoting a political message, but the idea people, all of us, cannot be aided by guidance on how to behave is ridiculous. Do you think people spring fully formed into the world and cannot learn new ways? That some people might not realise if they are disrespectful?
The way I look at it is that I have absolutely no desire to cause unnecessary offence, indeed that understates it: I want to show people respect and courtesy. I am a very, very long way from omniscient too. If I can avoid carelessly causing someone distress or accidently insulting them because of some implication in my language that I was simply unaware of I would of course want to do so: who wouldn't?
I am much more resistant to the limitation of ideas but again I would want to both understand why some might think that idea offensive and to be capable of discussing these ideas without causing gratuitous distress or insult. I am very open to advice on these matters and do not consider it patronising in the least.
There's patronizing examples out there. Offensive ones even. But the principle of doing it is not either of those things.
Thats why we can and should criticise or condemn the terrible examples, even if they are a minority. Because it distracts from the actually useful examples.
Like everything in life this can be done well or badly but the principle is both right in itself and, as @Foxy pointed out, essential if people are then going to be held to account.
"The police must investigate No. 10 parties!" - The parties are investigated and BJ and others get fined. "Look at the good job the police did! And there's more to come!" - The police don't issue more fines to BJ, but others do get them. "The police have done a horrid job! The top people have got away with it!"
Perhaps the underlings who got done are not a victim of some stitch-up by No. 10 and the police, but victims of the get-Boris campaign?
Then add in Beergate: "The police have investigated! There's nothing to see here! It's all a put-up job by the Mail!" - It turns out that the Labour Party had lied. "Why does it matter? The police investigated?" - More evidence comes out. "Why does it matter? The police investigated? And the Mail's awful!" - The investigation is reopened. "It's a waste of police time to investigate this!"
etc, etc.
You do know that is quite literally the Wail's position reversed. Attacks Labour's push on this - DON'T THEY KNOW THERE'S A WAR ON. Then 10 days of stories piling pressure on the police to do Starmer - one front page literally being TORY PRESSURE TO MAKE THE POLICE ACT. Then Starmer says "I'll quit" and they complain he's trying to pressure the police, then when newss breaks about the Met whitewhash its "WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY".
So you are right, but you're talking about the Tories.
Remember there is a very clear difference between the two sides. We have reams of evidence about Boris and Number 10 breaking the law over and over and over. She prepares a brutal report. Someone leans on the Met to provide cover. Which they do. With a narrow field of investigation. So that now the Gray report will come out and tear Number 10 apart the police have already found Him innocent by simply not investigating the hideous reportage and photos we're about to get. The establishment always looks after its own - if you are a civil servant with a gong you get protected whilst all your staff carry the can.#
If you want to gloat feel free. Not a good luck for the pro-establishment party as people starve.
I don't care if it's the Mail's position, or the opposite of it.
You were in denial over Beergate. I have no idea if Starmer or anyone else there will get a fine - the law appears to be so poorly written that pretty much anything could result. But it was clear the moment that it turned out that Labour had not told the truth about who had been there that the police investigation had not been thorough.
it would be good for you to be consistent.
I am being consistent. There was a prime fascie case against Johnson which the Met now appear to have investigated primarily to sweep under the carpet. There was not one against Starmer, and the "evidence" was not sufficient to suggest the law had been broken.
That Durham plod are now reinvestigating is as much because it became politically untenable for them not to do so as because there is anything to investigate.
I still think there is nothing to see and expect nobody to get fined. Buit if I'm wrong they fall on their sword and leave the stage. Which is more than can be said for Bonzo and his Clown Car circus. We're going to get the Gray report. Reams of it. Photos and all. And people like you will say "nothing to see here" for the various events the Met haven't even investigated because no fines have been issued.
I'm quite happy with the consistency of my position. Which on all things is apply the rules equally.
I'm actually going to reply again and say that some of the stuff you've written above is rubbish.
"That Durham plod are now reinvestigating is as much because it became politically untenable for them not to do so as because there is anything to investigate."
Yeah, right. Even Starmer himself cannot say for sure whether he broke the law or not. I am therefore unsure how you can say there is nothing to investigate. Are you a bigger-brained lawyer than Starmer?
"And people like you will say "nothing to see here" "
LOL. No. *You* are the one saying 'nothing to see here' about Durham. See above.
I still maintain that many of these politicians must be secretly hoping that the place will ultimately burn down. They'd then be armed with an excuse for spending money on a shiny, modern replacement.
Itd make more sense. They made a decision, now have reopened and seemingly deferred it (things seem to have progressed bigger all in years) and whilst arguing about moving out was bound to happen (even though it'll be much quicker and cheaper), they wont even agree to the eminently sensible option of moving some of them across the street, which would also surely be quicker and cheaper, or elsewhere nearby.
The whole thing makes me spitting mad.
It makes no sense to do anything other than have them all move out. Rent the QEII centre and set up something there for a couple of years. Re-purpose any empty space in Whitehall as offices.
Why does it even need to exist? The MPs could have shit offices above a Ladbrokes in their constiuencies, debate on Zoom and vote on an app. I don't think we'd be conspicuously less well governed if that were the arrangement,
"Vote on app"
That is such a really, really terrible idea, even for MPs.
Apologies for the mixed reply above! On StillWaters' point that, "If the sets are chosen on anything other than objective criteria that is very dangerous"...
OK, imagine if a teacher or school goes, "This kid has potential, but their family is poor, they don't have a good study environment at home, but they will do well if stretched, so I'm going to give them a place in the top set, and this other kid, who just made it into the top set because mummy and daddy paid for tons of extra tuition, they don't have the same potential, so I'll put them in the next set down."
Do you view that sort of decision as OK or as dangerous? It's based on objective criteria. We know these family and social factors, and paid tutoring, impact on pupils' performance on school exams. We can objectively assess them.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
I am not sure what is "Woke" about the Sabatini case. It reads to me to be a straightforward case of sexual harrassment. Or is refusing to tolerate sexual harrassment now "Woke"? If so what do the "anti-Woke" crowd want?
I would like everyone in science to read the painful, poignant description of what, exactly, Sabatini did to women under his mentorship. It should make you sick to your stomach. I don't think I could still be in science if I'd faced any of this. https://t.co/vJ5E7NWMEJ
The allegations about Russian soldiers conduct in Ukraine makes me sick to my stomach. Not this. It is a one sided list of allegations of inappropriate behaviour, put forward in a lawsuit by someone suing for damages for 'emotional distress' following a messy break up.
Our time would be better spent dealing with other, far more serious, things.
Sexual harrassment in the work place is not 'a messy break up'. A lot of the allegations in the paper are based upon the findings of the MIT investigation, they are not random stories.
It is perfectly possible to be both in favour of safe workplaces for women and against Russian war crimes.
Yes - but the MIT 'independent' investigation is alleged to be a sham, a biased kangaroo court. So the edifice is built on nothing. That, as I understand it, is Sabatini's defence. So actually, if you want to find out the truth, you would need to consider both sides- not just follow the zeitgeist.
As a general rule, those sanctioned by an investigation often question the process rather than accept their guilt. No one appeals when they are let off.
Either way, the Sabatini case is one of allegations of sexual harrassment in the work place, I don't see that as a "Woke" issue, so don't see his downfall as an issue of "Woke gone mad".
No Australian PM has won two elections in a row since 2004. Parties have, but they've changed the leader just before the election.
Indeed, if Scott Morrison manages it today then he will join John Howard and Bob Hawke as the only 2 Australian PMs to win more than 1 general election in the last 40 years.
Labor start as favourites but looks like both parties are leaking votes to Independents while Labor also leaking them to the Greens
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
You live there, I don't. I haven't been to the US since 1997 when I did a huge loop from one side to the other and back again on Amtrak. So I'm observing from afar, but what it looks like from here is that a significant chunk of America is bonkers.
They don't want to dismantle democracy, their target is modern civilisation. A "bible" led society where women know their place (bedroom / kitchen), undesirables (gays, non-whites) can be persecuted and worse, and the only ideas that are allowed to flourish are those invoked by "good men" like Tucker Carlson.
I understand what drives some of the GOP politicians. They want absolute power on a permanent basis. But they don't seem to understand that if they get their wish they'll be agaist the wall alongside the libruls and wokeists. Because they aren't good men, they're hypocrites looking to profit from the "bible" led autocracy they wish to create.
Not saying thats even a majority of GOP voters. Yet. But its building. The policies and positions get more and more extreme, their willingness to subvert and now attack democracy gets surer and stronger. No wonder they fly to Hungary to cheer Orban and Putin.
My experience of US is that black people still getting imprisoned for offences that white people get let off with a shrug of the shoulders. And this is among a peer group of highly educated graduates. Don't be black and gay in America folks.
"What exists — what people have created — is a system that allows certain favored people to position themselves as victims, and destroy those they have come to hate. Aside from the human tragedy here, think of the scientific discoveries that are now denied to us, because of this vengeful woman, and this vengeful, unjust system we have created — a system that is a Machine incapable of dealing with humanity, in all its complexity.
I have been hearing in private correspondence, and in this blog’s comments section, some people saying that they don’t recognize what America has become, and that they are exploring ways to leave. Others — I’m thinking of a friend who is a very well known academic — says that no matter what, he is staying to fight to the bitter end. The incredible thing is that we are having these conversations at all. I can do the work I do just fine here, for now, but if I were and up-and-coming Joshua Katz or David Sabatini, I would start looking to start my career in Europe or elsewhere abroad, where they aren’t as insane as Woke America has become.
And listen: the thing you see so clearly if you live any time abroad, as I have done in Hungary over the past year, is that America remains a cultural powerhouse, exporting our own insanity to the world. One of the reasons I strongly support Hungarian PM Viktor Orban is that he is not intimidated by any of it, and he understands the need to use what power he has as the country’s political leader to defy this insanity, and to prevent it from taking root in his country.
What I hope to see in our country is a Republican Party come to power on a platform of actively rolling back wokeness, institutionally and otherwise. Not just opposing it rhetorically, but using the power of the state to push it back, hard. No more Joshua Katzes. No more David Sabatinis. No more martyrs to this totalitarian ideology that is destroying our ability to live together as broken human beings."
I usually consider myself pretty anti-woke, but when I read this kind of shit it puts me right into the opposite camp. If you're prepared to dismantle democracy over trans-bathrooms, then maybe it's not woke that's the problem.
Just following up on this, because it makes me so angry. The rallying cry in this piece is "No more Joshua Katzes".
OK Fine. Joshua Katz lost a prestigious, but non-paying honorory position, at a private university for writing an unwoke article.
Lots of people have lost actual paying jobs at private Brigham Young University or at Liberty University for arguing that homosexuality should not be illegal.
Where is the cry about the stifling of debate when it is people expressing those views? If it's bad that Princetown said "no you can't have this position because you wrote this article", then it shold be just as bad when it is the other way around.
Freedom of speech is not just for those who agree with us.
At least with Ukraine they can't cite Putin as the answer anymore. They are stuck with Victor Orban. Interestingly, Orban is a total mystery - no one serious has ever studied him. It seems all to be propoganda, one way or the other. I'm reading Fiona Hill's book about Putin, and its good that we have that. A fascinating read.
I would say that, as a general rule, the 'woke' stuff is just as bad as the insane right wing stuff - but the former is best understood as a response to the latter, which has been around for longer.
My children are going to a new (expensive) Los Angeles private school next term.
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
The alarming thing in my mind was that you thought the presentation would be anything different to what you described. Maybe you've been brainwashed too.
It's not patronising at all, we teach children and young people how to treat others. Do you think that always takes? That as adults all are respectful and understanding? What is a church but trying to teach people how to treat others, often preaching treating others with respect and understanding?
How arrogant of you to assume no one has anything to learn once they're an adult.
I consider myself pretty unwoke, to the extent it's a thing, and examples exist of these sorts of courses being wasted of time just promoting a political message, but the idea people, all of us, cannot be aided by guidance on how to behave is ridiculous. Do you think people spring fully formed into the world and cannot learn new ways? That some people might not realise if they are disrespectful?
The way I look at it is that I have absolutely no desire to cause unnecessary offence, indeed that understates it: I want to show people respect and courtesy. I am a very, very long way from omniscient too. If I can avoid carelessly causing someone distress or accidently insulting them because of some implication in my language that I was simply unaware of I would of course want to do so: who wouldn't?
I am much more resistant to the limitation of ideas but again I would want to both understand why some might think that idea offensive and to be capable of discussing these ideas without causing gratuitous distress or insult. I am very open to advice on these matters and do not consider it patronising in the least.
I am more cynical. I don't want to cause offence in my dealings with people, but this is because I am thinking primarily of self preservation. I've seen for many years of my career that disgruntled people can latch on to anything to feign and fabricate offence; and whereas such complaints where once brushed off as trivial, now they can be potentially career destroying.
My latest insight, with the trans issue, is don't call anyone Mr or Mrs x. Just call them by their first name. The repurcussions of not calling someone by their proper title, even in a supposedly formal setting, are far less significant than that which may arise through misgendering them.
I think we should all try and avoid sexism, racism, ageism etc - even though it is rooted very deeply within our psychology. But the idea that we can ultimately avoid offence is laughably utopian, because it will always reconstruct itself in some way.
I still maintain that many of these politicians must be secretly hoping that the place will ultimately burn down. They'd then be armed with an excuse for spending money on a shiny, modern replacement.
Itd make more sense. They made a decision, now have reopened and seemingly deferred it (things seem to have progressed bigger all in years) and whilst arguing about moving out was bound to happen (even though it'll be much quicker and cheaper), they wont even agree to the eminently sensible option of moving some of them across the street, which would also surely be quicker and cheaper, or elsewhere nearby.
The whole thing makes me spitting mad.
It makes no sense to do anything other than have them all move out. Rent the QEII centre and set up something there for a couple of years. Re-purpose any empty space in Whitehall as offices.
The cost does seem astonishing though, it would be definitely be cheaper to knock down large chunks of the building and re-build a replica to modern building codes. The Burj Khalifa only cost $2bn, and it’s half a mile high! (No asbestos all over the site there though).
The what the government should do, is sell specific bonds for the project so that’s it’s explicitly not being paid for out of current public money. Think of it as a 50-year mortgage on the new building.
The building wouldn't be great security though...
Imagine a default. The government is going to be reluctant to let some hedge fund seize the mother of parliaments... and then what is your alternative use?
The Labour Party was set up in the first place to predominantly be a party for people with few or no qualifications. Why are they so unpopular with this group today?
I think that this is the more interesting question and the voting patterns of the US are remarkably similar in this respect with Republicans doing way better with lower socio-economic groups than you would expect. Deemocrats also find it easier to attract graduates than working class folk.
Age obviously has a lot to do with it but I don't think it is the whole answer. I think that you need to look at the policy mix. Graduates as a very broad generality believe in an activist state that can do good. Non graduates look at a state that is very good for those employed by it (disproportionately graduates, funnily enough) but which is pretty crap at doing much for them.
Where the State does express an interest it is disproportionately interested in minorities, in those with unusual sexual characteristics or proclivities, in the approved list of the oppressed. It shows almost no interest in the needs of the indigenous majority who get very little help or assistance with pretty tough lives. This may not be entirely true in fact but it is in the noise and in the media; it is what the graduates working in these organisations like to talk about obsessively. These non graduates find that a distinct turn off and are attracted to a party that treats the State as a part of the problem rather than the solution.
The answer from the left's point of view is to refocus the efforts of the State to those who actually need their help as opposed to being suitable for their well paid largesse. But, increasingly, they hold these people and their views in contempt. We saw this with Hilary in the US and of course in the Brexit arguments here. I don't think that they can bear going near the people that they claim to represent and once did in a dim and distant time.
This is in my view hitting the nail on the head absolutely. Help should be on a need basis not on a which checkbox you tick basis and yes we do need a state to act as a backstop. However far to often you find that when you need help you can't get it but you could if you ticked some boxes. A case in point is education...you will here people saying group x is being disadvantaged and not doing as well lets help them...when its white males from poor backgrounds deafened by silence. I am in no way saying those groups shouldn't be helped. I am saying help those most in need and target them rather than segregate them by gender faith sexuality colour.
We also should really be having the conversation. This is how much money the state has. This is how much each thing costs to do well. Pick what you want to do till it fills the money supply and the rest will have to rely on charities
The irony is that it is the modern Conservative party that is taxing people until the pips squeek, who think the answer to every problem is more State, whether it is more policemen, more doctors and nurses or more regulation. Even Gordon Brown didn't tax people as severely as this "Tory" government is. Which leaves the group I have sought to describe with my wild generalisations nowhere to go at all.
Precisely, I have been unable to vote since 2010. My constituency only ever seems to have a choice of LD, Lab or Con and they are all equally of the same mind when it comes to state spending.
Putting my money where my mouth is
the state should be spending on the following to fully fund them
Defence Rule of law - police, courts,prisons, borders Education - up to 18 and maybe subsidies for subjects we want people to take Health - though with designated activities you pay or you have insurance that pays. I am thinking for example driving insurance companies should pay, same for sports should be insurance and for safe ones will be cheap I suspect. Absolutely no to stuff like tattoo removal or ivf Standards setting Welfare state including benefits, pensions and social services
Once those are fully funded and actually functioning if we have money left over then we decide what else we should do with it
No funding for research? No funding for embassies or trade delegations? Who’s paying for elections to be conducted? Oh, are we defaulting on all our debt obligations then? Who pays for roads? Who pays for other transport infrastructure? Community centres? Libraries? Rubbish collection? Supporting economic development?
If the money has run out after the essentials then it is privately funded. There is only so much money you can take off people. When it is spent it is spent simple as that. Let us not forget most transport infrastructure, was built with private money oringally, the same with universities and libraries and research. Why do you think its bad saying this is the money we have lets spend it on essentials first. Then if we have money left over we can spend it on nice to haves. As for rubbish collection and community centres....not the job of central government. Thats council stuff and we are talking central government here.
Someone wisely said the other day its not we are underfunding the state as its taking more and more off our money. It is the fact the state is trying to do too much with the result that everything is underfunded. So lets do the essentials right. If we have money left over we can spend it on nice to haves.
When we talk about private money originally building universities and infrastructure... well, for centuries, "private money" meant the monarchy and aristocracy, who were effectively functioning as the state before we moved to democracy.
Local government (England figures) receives about a quarter of its funding from central government. If you're chopping that, could you just clarify if you are happier with higher council tax or which bin collection days you want dropped?
Under your plan, we're still defaulting on our debt obligations. We've still shut all our embassies overseas (or is private money paying for those?). Our economy is tanking without government support through research (see Mazzucato's work). Welfare costs are rising given there's no support for economic development to help create jobs, there's no support for individuals in further education so they get themselves back in the labour market. Our national energy infrastructure fails. Our food security disappears...
So your solution then is to fund everything craply and let it fall apart. We cannot continue this way. Your way has been tried for the last 40 years and has left us with shit everything so pardon me if I tell your way to go take a hike. We have tried it . It failed your idea are a complete and utter waste of time as the last 4 decades have proved so excuse me when I tell you to take a hike because you are wrong and we have empirical proof you are wrong.
"The police must investigate No. 10 parties!" - The parties are investigated and BJ and others get fined. "Look at the good job the police did! And there's more to come!" - The police don't issue more fines to BJ, but others do get them. "The police have done a horrid job! The top people have got away with it!"
Perhaps the underlings who got done are not a victim of some stitch-up by No. 10 and the police, but victims of the get-Boris campaign?
Then add in Beergate: "The police have investigated! There's nothing to see here! It's all a put-up job by the Mail!" - It turns out that the Labour Party had lied. "Why does it matter? The police investigated?" - More evidence comes out. "Why does it matter? The police investigated? And the Mail's awful!" - The investigation is reopened. "It's a waste of police time to investigate this!"
etc, etc.
You do know that is quite literally the Wail's position reversed. Attacks Labour's push on this - DON'T THEY KNOW THERE'S A WAR ON. Then 10 days of stories piling pressure on the police to do Starmer - one front page literally being TORY PRESSURE TO MAKE THE POLICE ACT. Then Starmer says "I'll quit" and they complain he's trying to pressure the police, then when newss breaks about the Met whitewhash its "WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY".
So you are right, but you're talking about the Tories.
Remember there is a very clear difference between the two sides. We have reams of evidence about Boris and Number 10 breaking the law over and over and over. She prepares a brutal report. Someone leans on the Met to provide cover. Which they do. With a narrow field of investigation. So that now the Gray report will come out and tear Number 10 apart the police have already found Him innocent by simply not investigating the hideous reportage and photos we're about to get. The establishment always looks after its own - if you are a civil servant with a gong you get protected whilst all your staff carry the can.#
If you want to gloat feel free. Not a good luck for the pro-establishment party as people starve.
I don't care if it's the Mail's position, or the opposite of it.
You were in denial over Beergate. I have no idea if Starmer or anyone else there will get a fine - the law appears to be so poorly written that pretty much anything could result. But it was clear the moment that it turned out that Labour had not told the truth about who had been there that the police investigation had not been thorough.
it would be good for you to be consistent.
I am being consistent. There was a prime fascie case against Johnson which the Met now appear to have investigated primarily to sweep under the carpet. There was not one against Starmer, and the "evidence" was not sufficient to suggest the law had been broken.
That Durham plod are now reinvestigating is as much because it became politically untenable for them not to do so as because there is anything to investigate.
I still think there is nothing to see and expect nobody to get fined. Buit if I'm wrong they fall on their sword and leave the stage. Which is more than can be said for Bonzo and his Clown Car circus. We're going to get the Gray report. Reams of it. Photos and all. And people like you will say "nothing to see here" for the various events the Met haven't even investigated because no fines have been issued.
I'm quite happy with the consistency of my position. Which on all things is apply the rules equally.
I'm actually going to reply again and say that some of the stuff you've written above is rubbish.
"That Durham plod are now reinvestigating is as much because it became politically untenable for them not to do so as because there is anything to investigate."
Yeah, right. Even Starmer himself cannot say for sure whether he broke the law or not. I am therefore unsure how you can say there is nothing to investigate. Are you a bigger-brained lawyer than Starmer?
"And people like you will say "nothing to see here" "
LOL. No. *You* are the one saying 'nothing to see here' about Durham. See above.
If as I expect Durham Plod once again say "this was not an offence" then there truly was nothing to see. No break of the law. And if I'm wrong then they quit and I say "I was wrong". And will cry laughing at the horrible mess Labour have put themselves in.
As for surety in legal cases, whilst you can believe your case is very strong there is always the potential that either your understanding of the law is wrong or the jury make a finding because they can, or judges can have lapses.
I assume that as a leading lawyer Starmer isn't going have done a "whoops I had no idea" like Bonzo. So we will see will we not.
Comments
I don’t know if it is because we are more aware of it now but I am very conscious of friends and colleagues mental health issues. Where I work we always seem to have a couple of people off with stress or mental health related issues.
My lovely sister has suffered from it and the black dog video someone else linked to was a great way of her to share with me what it was to her when I was trying to empathise with her.
One of the reasons I love old TV and love dipping into it is it takes me back to a time when life was simpler and less stressed. Nostalgia is a great thing. the real world is crap and work is very very stressful these days. Everywhere seems to be the same. Fewer and fewer people doing more and more work.
the state should be spending on the following to fully fund them
Defence
Rule of law - police, courts,prisons, borders
Education - up to 18 and maybe subsidies for subjects we want people to take
Health - though with designated activities you pay or you have insurance that pays. I am thinking for example driving insurance companies should pay, same for sports should be insurance and for safe ones will be cheap I suspect. Absolutely no to stuff like tattoo removal or ivf
Standards setting
Welfare state including benefits, pensions and social services
Once those are fully funded and actually functioning if we have money left over then we decide what else we should do with it
https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal/2022/guide/pendulum
But in this case, the strike seems to be very ill-timed. I'm also very suspicious of the leadership's stance and the strike's timing.
The blue tits are in fine fettle thanks. I think all eight have hatched, and both mum and dad are feeding them. It's amazing how fast they're growing, and the size of grubs they'll eat!
I've prepared the little 'un for the fact some, or all, may die, and it's led to some interesting conversations on the nature of life and death. For instance, if you have ten children, the loss of one or two 'matters' less than it does if you only have one or two, from a species point-of-view.
They don't want to dismantle democracy, their target is modern civilisation. A "bible" led society where women know their place (bedroom / kitchen), undesirables (gays, non-whites) can be persecuted and worse, and the only ideas that are allowed to flourish are those invoked by "good men" like Tucker Carlson.
I understand what drives some of the GOP politicians. They want absolute power on a permanent basis. But they don't seem to understand that if they get their wish they'll be agaist the wall alongside the libruls and wokeists. Because they aren't good men, they're hypocrites looking to profit from the "bible" led autocracy they wish to create.
Not saying thats even a majority of GOP voters. Yet. But its building. The policies and positions get more and more extreme, their willingness to subvert and now attack democracy gets surer and stronger. No wonder they fly to Hungary to cheer Orban and Putin.
So you are right, but you're talking about the Tories.
Remember there is a very clear difference between the two sides. We have reams of evidence about Boris and Number 10 breaking the law over and over and over. She prepares a brutal report. Someone leans on the Met to provide cover. Which they do. With a narrow field of investigation. So that now the Gray report will come out and tear Number 10 apart the police have already found Him innocent by simply not investigating the hideous reportage and photos we're about to get. The establishment always looks after its own - if you are a civil servant with a gong you get protected whilst all your staff carry the can.#
If you want to gloat feel free. Not a good luck for the pro-establishment party as people starve.
But according to PBTories it's the SNP's fault north of the border and the unions' fault south of the border even when the nationalised operators are involved. No, I don't understand the logic. I didn't spot any discussion of Wales so maybe Mr Drakeford has escaped.
Vote Labour to actually do the things Boris is only pretending to do, like build 40 new hospitals instead of 40 new hospital wards? Vote Labour to pay off Tory debt? Vote Labour and win a microwave?
As with all private LA schools, they have a "diversity" officer, and if you want your children to be accepted, one has to turn up and listen to the various presentations.
I dreaded the diversity one, especially given all I had read (particularly from @Leon).
So... come the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was not on white guilt for slavery but:
(1) We want diversity, so the school likes like the community, but that cannot be at the expense of academic excellence. If the top maths set is one colour and the bottom one another, that isn't promoting diversity, that's promoting tokenism.
(2) Diversity is not just about the colour of your skin. If you're on this call, you're already privileged. Your kids are privileged that you own a computer. They're privileged that you care enough about their education to sit through 100 presentations from 100 schools. Privilege manifests itself in many ways, and it is important that our kids understand how fortunate they are.
Our time would be better spent dealing with other, far more serious, things.
The whole thing makes me spitting mad.
You were in denial over Beergate. I have no idea if Starmer or anyone else there will get a fine - the law appears to be so poorly written that pretty much anything could result. But it was clear the moment that it turned out that Labour had not told the truth about who had been there that the police investigation had not been thorough.
it would be good for you to be consistent.
I feel like crying with professional frustration every time I read how this so-called investigation has been done and the report written.
Doing investigations and writing worthwhile investigation reports is not something anyone, however clever, can do just like that.
I have been in a similar position where I had to do an investigation which involved interviewing the Group CEO as well as others to whom I ultimately reported and which could have resulted in criticism of them. You can only do this if you are trusted to be fiercely independent, left alone to get on with it, given the resources to do your job and you - and only you - write the report.
Now once it has been written it is fine to discuss its findings with those who need to see it - especially if actions will follow - and if, say, the regulators ask to read it (the nearest equivalent to publishing it). And you may well seek legal employment advice as well.
But you do not want to give the impression that you are being "leant on" because that undermines your credibility.
Difficult to know what is happening here, probably because there is no established structure for the whole process and so there is an element of making it up as they go along. Plus politics in a big "P" and little "p" sense as well. A lot of the civil servants will not be best pleased at being criticised and so Ms Gray May find herself a bit friendless there as well.
Incidentally, the rumoured bleating from some at the unfairness over whoever is being fined does not impress me. You cannot complain at politicians not following the law and then think their failings excuse yours. As for the "I was only following orders...." excuse, well .....
You can't move. Think. Feel. Someone had disconnected your brain from being able to control everything external. So you just sit, paralysed in this space that you're no longer in control of. Until eventually it lifts a little and you regain a little motor control. OK so thats only my experience but others seem to have described similar. Don't happen that often, my primary mental crash symptom is breathing gets harder, eyes wide a little more and I have to focus very hard on breathing very hard, usually with my hands (primarily the right) shaking like I've got late stage Parkinsons.
Until I went on the happy pills had been suffering bouts of what I believe was anxiety attacks - breathing, shaking, palpitations - on and off for a couple of years. Aware there was a cliff edge close by with a black pit beyond, but managed to avoid it until the post bike ride crash I described on an earlier post where for that whole day I simply could not function. At all.
Why don't people get mental health? Because from the outside you probably look fine. Ish. So people just assume you are. During my descent in summer 2020 I realised nobody could see how bad I was so decided to try and show it. Created a laminated sign which I stuck on the wall behind me, over my shoulder on the endless Zoom meetings I was having in my dining room. With numbers on it. Took the best part of a week before someone asked what the numbers were. "Its the day number. How many days I have been stuck here talking to you"...
Sharing is curing...!
It's over for the Conservatives.
This will be mocked but it is. The atmosphere reminds me of 1992-7.
When it's put that starkly, you have to fear for future generations- where is the investment in infrastructure so that the economy can continue to grow? But that's been implicit for a while; whenever they have been presented with a choice between genteel stagnation and preparing about the future, Britain has gone for the genteel short term option.
If the top set is all one colour (at the risk of stereotyping let’s say Asian Americans) BUT that is based on merit, how is that tokenism. Tokenism would be adding a student who is less skilled in order to change that?
Mental ill health is awful. You feel so powerless over it. Your post will I hope help people on here to understand more and there are fellow travellers on this deep, dark, road.
Please reach out when you can. As you say, sharing is part of the way of finding help.
That Durham plod are now reinvestigating is as much because it became politically untenable for them not to do so as because there is anything to investigate.
I still think there is nothing to see and expect nobody to get fined. Buit if I'm wrong they fall on their sword and leave the stage. Which is more than can be said for Bonzo and his Clown Car circus. We're going to get the Gray report. Reams of it. Photos and all. And people like you will say "nothing to see here" for the various events the Met haven't even investigated because no fines have been issued.
I'm quite happy with the consistency of my position. Which on all things is apply the rules equally.
It is perfectly possible to be both in favour of safe workplaces for women and against Russian war crimes.
Headline “What Cost of Living Crisis? Government Spends £13 Billion on Fancy Offices For MPs”
The man got a long prison sentence and was released half way through. I was not so lucky. It has affected everything in my life since (and is the context for why I sometimes come out with angry remarks about men).
He was quite happy to soak up the crowd and the at times deafening "NU-MAN, NU-MAN" chants. But thats as much as he can do. We got a "thanks" when they came back on for encores. yet on Twitter he's ebullient, and said what an amazing crowd we were. So can't talk to people, but is happy to talk one-way to strangers.
Mrs RP is also autistic (and lets be honest I'm on the spectrum but can't be bothered at 45 to get diagnosed as I know how to map my brain against society inputs/outputs) and must talk to her about what I saw, was fascinating.
Polls close in eastern states at 9am UK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOTiJkg1voo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87r-1JKz7E4
https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal-election-2022/
Can Labor hold on for a win, or will this be another "Kellner's Law" election as in 2019?
What impact will the "teal independents" have?
Thanks,
DC
There were basic tests to make sure the message had got through, and not that easy or obvious either.
Generally very efficient, focussed and not at all what many "anti-woke" like to pretend it is. There will of course be further training for actual staff, line managers and so on, but the university certainly made its views very plain, and nobody will have any excuse for transgressions. Moreover, the university has made a good step in reducing its own legal vulnerability, both as an institution and indirectly through its staff's and students' behaviour.
But the longer they take to make a decision the more expensive it will become (they also clearly lean on selecting the more expensive option as they dont want to move out).
Either bite the bullet (as they had seemed to, but now reversed) and do it or be clear they intend to do nothing and stop wasting time on discussion of it.
Having monochromatic sets (except perhaps at the very beginning, if recruited on potential as much as performance) is a major warning flag that that is not happening and that some students are only there as tokens - they should not be allowed to remain that way.
So Seventh Day Adventists, Baptists, etc.
ISTR you were very keen to say that there was zero reason for Durham Police to reopen the case on beergate. Even when it was pointed out that the police had not had the full information on who had been there, you said it was irrelevant.
Then the police reopened the case because of the new information that had come forward. *You* were the one who was attempting to sweep something under the carpet.
I also have zero idea whether Starmer et al will get fined, cleared, or something in between. But at least there will have been a proper investigation - one you wanted to deny.
Someone wisely said the other day its not we are underfunding the state as its taking more and more off our money. It is the fact the state is trying to do too much with the result that everything is underfunded. So lets do the essentials right. If we have money left over we can spend it on nice to haves.
- bullying
- insecure employment
- sexual harassment
I know other scientists who are still working as such, but who are denied the opportunities they need to excel. This is because of
- bullying
- sexism
- target-driven funding
The American Conservative doesn't appear interested in writing about them however.
The hardest fundamental is forgiveness. I find it amazing when you hear of the relative of someone murdered talking to the media saying they forgive the assailant (who has just been jailed) because their faith commands them to. That's massive - I know it's not our place to judge but we all do.
And the other hard one is humility. "I was wrong" and "I'm sorry" seem to be impossible for some people to understand never mind say. The world would be so much better if people were able to wind their necks back in a little, accept they got something wrong and the people who were on the end of it were able to forgive and move on. That's not to say you have to forgive and forget - no, the biggest lessons in life means you can't forget or you lose the valuable lesson you took from whatever it was that happened.
Don't forget. But try to forgive.
That was thought for the day...
However the read in para 2 is troubling. Your proposal seems to be “if it remains monochromatic then some of the students should be held back to stop that being the case.” I would say “if it remains monochromatic we, the school, need to look at why we are failing the other kids by not helping them achieve their full potential”
If the sets are chosen on anything other than objective criteria that is very dangerous
How arrogant of you to assume no one has anything to learn once they're an adult.
I consider myself pretty unwoke, to the extent it's a thing, and examples exist of these sorts of courses being wasted of time just promoting a political message, but the idea people, all of us, cannot be aided by guidance on how to behave is ridiculous. Do you think people spring fully formed into the world and cannot learn new ways? That some people might not realise if they are disrespectful?
At times when I felt lonely and down during the Covid isolation spending time on here was a help.
Not much else as can do but offer you this picture of a Japanese wisteria flowering outside my kitchen - Ikoyama Fuji. The colour is beautiful but its scent is amazing. I find sensual pleasures such as sight or smell very reassuring when troubled - perhaps because they pull you back to something very basic and unmediated.
Anyway, take care.
As someone who works at uni, teaches undergrads and post grads and had has researchers in my group, I am extremely aware of what is appropriate and what is not.
Sadly, some years ago, we lost a colleague who seemingly behaved in a similar manner to Sabatini (phd student pregnancy, lots of complaints etc). In the end he commuted suicide at a tragically young age.
Being surrounded by attractive intelligent women who look up to you can be challenging for some men. It’s crucial to keep boundaries where they should be and not get confused about the nature of the often genuine friendships and mentoring that can happen.
And the moral of the story - get all the facts before flying into outrage mode.
That is troubling
IIRC the now-former head teacher wanted to tell all the white kids that they are racist, and should see American history as defined by the slavery for which they should be held accountable.
I am much more resistant to the limitation of ideas but again I would want to both understand why some might think that idea offensive and to be capable of discussing these ideas without causing gratuitous distress or insult. I am very open to advice on these matters and do not consider it patronising in the least.
Though part of it was also to make people realise that some situations can be unacceptably disrespectful: such as workplace or student union 'banter'. Or at least make less easy the excuse 'I didn't realise'.
Plus lets be honest, any new building would be shoddily constructed, massively over budget and behind schedule anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOTiJkg1voo
The cost does seem astonishing though, it would be definitely be cheaper to knock down large chunks of the building and re-build a replica to modern building codes. The Burj Khalifa only cost $2bn, and it’s half a mile high! (No asbestos all over the site there though).
The what the government should do, is sell specific bonds for the project so that’s it’s explicitly not being paid for out of current public money. Think of it as a 50-year mortgage on the new building.
There is some erroneous thinking which is common to see in the comments on this website. That is, that bad things on the left can be excused because bad things on the right have also gone on. This type of thinking has very deep roots in the west over the twentieth century, manifesting itself in sympathy towards left wing progressive projects, like communism and particularly the soviet union. The tolerance towards quite extreme left wing thinking since 2020, manifesting itself in the infiltration of many different institutions, is essentially just a continuation of that.
If you are going to preserve liberal democracy and prevent authoritarianism from taking hold, you have to deal with the attacks on it from both left and the right.
Local government (England figures) receives about a quarter of its funding from central government. If you're chopping that, could you just clarify if you are happier with higher council tax or which bin collection days you want dropped?
Under your plan, we're still defaulting on our debt obligations. We've still shut all our embassies overseas (or is private money paying for those?). Our economy is tanking without government support through research (see Mazzucato's work). Welfare costs are rising given there's no support for economic development to help create jobs, there's no support for individuals in further education so they get themselves back in the labour market. Our national energy infrastructure fails. Our food security disappears...
Thats why we can and should criticise or condemn the terrible examples, even if they are a minority. Because it distracts from the actually useful examples.
Not ideological at all but essentially about good manners, doing unto others etc and not making assumptions about people based on the superficial. We all need reminding of this from time to time.
There probably is a lot of undiverse "Diversity" nonsense being peddled. But if we teach people to challenge and think for themselves, then we can deal with that as well, without needing to fall into the arms of those like Orban and others wishing to impose a very conformist and unpleasant-to-minorities type of society.
More seriously, thanks for your account of your Black Dog. It seems to bite people in very different ways. I don’t get the shakes or anxiety attacks, when it is really bad (and that is very rare, thank god) I become kind of inert. I drag myself out of bed if I can but then I just sit there, slumped. Staring at nothing. Bleak and immobile
One weird thing is that it is physically painful. A pain somewhere in my spine. Or my chest. Like heartbreak. Bloody horrible
And of course when it is really bad, all the genuinely good advice: exercise, see people, eat well, becomes irrelevant as you have no energy nor desire nor ability to do anything. Except maybe drink booze (and that is where booze can be an issue, although it does numb the pain)
But it did pass. Like the rain. My improvement was achingly slow but noticeable. One day I went for a walk. Then a longer walk. Then I saw a friend. Chatted with a neighbour. Slow slow slow but i resurfaced. Probably took six months from beginning to end of the nasty stuff
I still get glimpses even now - like acid flashbacks - ugh
In which case I am going to look at this amazing view, drink more coffee, and do some work. That also helps: work. Raises the self esteem
As for "extreme left wing thinking", I'm proposing that the US adopt a system of employment law like that in the UK. I hardly think that equates with a proletariat revolution.
"That Durham plod are now reinvestigating is as much because it became politically untenable for them not to do so as because there is anything to investigate."
Yeah, right. Even Starmer himself cannot say for sure whether he broke the law or not. I am therefore unsure how you can say there is nothing to investigate. Are you a bigger-brained lawyer than Starmer?
"And people like you will say "nothing to see here" "
LOL. No. *You* are the one saying 'nothing to see here' about Durham. See above.
That is such a really, really terrible idea, even for MPs.
Which means they'll probably go for it...
OK, imagine if a teacher or school goes, "This kid has potential, but their family is poor, they don't have a good study environment at home, but they will do well if stretched, so I'm going to give them a place in the top set, and this other kid, who just made it into the top set because mummy and daddy paid for tons of extra tuition, they don't have the same potential, so I'll put them in the next set down."
Do you view that sort of decision as OK or as dangerous? It's based on objective criteria. We know these family and social factors, and paid tutoring, impact on pupils' performance on school exams. We can objectively assess them.
I found that to be useful advice throughout my life.
Either way, the Sabatini case is one of allegations of sexual harrassment in the work place, I don't see that as a "Woke" issue, so don't see his downfall as an issue of "Woke gone mad".
Labor start as favourites but looks like both parties are leaking votes to Independents while Labor also leaking them to the Greens
It’s Charlie’s Coffee and Brunch bar. By the harbour. I’ll get you an espresso
My latest insight, with the trans issue, is don't call anyone Mr or Mrs x. Just call them by their first name. The repurcussions of not calling someone by their proper title, even in a supposedly formal setting, are far less significant than that which may arise through misgendering them.
I think we should all try and avoid sexism, racism, ageism etc - even though it is rooted very deeply within our psychology. But the idea that we can ultimately avoid offence is laughably utopian, because it will always reconstruct itself in some way.
Imagine a default. The government is going to be reluctant to let some hedge fund seize the mother of parliaments... and then what is your alternative use?
As for surety in legal cases, whilst you can believe your case is very strong there is always the potential that either your understanding of the law is wrong or the jury make a finding because they can, or judges can have lapses.
I assume that as a leading lawyer Starmer isn't going have done a "whoops I had no idea" like Bonzo. So we will see will we not.