Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
Now although I am far less invested in this 'woke' issue (I am still waiting for someone to define it properly for me) I can see commentators making exactly the same mistake again using exactly the same reasoning. You act as if all these questions are either/or - you either have to be concerned about the CoL crisis or about Wokeism. It is an inability to comprehend that people can, contrary to what you might think, walk and chew gum at the same time.
I have no idea where the woke issue is going because unlike the EU issue, beyond the most extreme examples which seem to be fairly few and far between, I don't understand the boundaries and the detailed concerns.
But I do observe OGH making exactly the same argument that he made a decade ago over another subject he was sceptical about which leads me to believe he might be making exactly the same mistake when interpreting the views of the wider public and their ability to judge many issues at the same time.
Fair points, but it was pretty easy to turn the EU referendum into a vote on issues which did concern enough people: immigration, foreigners telling us what do, and so on. Much harder to make wokeism about those.
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
The mistake is to think the vote in 2016 had anything to do with the EU
Not really. The mistake has usually been to think you understand any of the issues at all beyond repeating random tweets of them all day.
The emerging experience of the US is that point where "wokeism" becomes a significant political problem for the left and/or governing parties is where it becomes linked to child abuse. Until then it is a niche issue which most people are not bothered about.
On the broader issue, I think that the tories will be more effective in their "war on woke" as the opposition party. If the 'wokeism' is seen as coming from a left wing government, then it can become something its opponents rally around in opposition. The fact is, that for all their claims to the contrary, they have been in government for 12 years and have themselves been responsible for a lot of the 'woke' agenda.
Some of the transgender stuff is definitely starting to cross over into child abuse, which is why it’s such a controversial subject.
The political problem in the UK, watching from afar, is more one of inaction against the creeping spread of the wokery around the public sector, especially the escalating cost of the thousands of trainers and officers pushing the agenda. When the Home Office is hiring diversity managers, you can bet that the mandarins are doing their best to keep this from Ms Patel. It’s another symptom of the growing lack of control that ministers actually have over the departments they lead.
How many thousands of trainers and officers pushing woke agendas do you think that there are in the public sector? I genuinely have no idea. In our private sector company of 450 people we have an HR department of three. They spend all their time trying to hire and people in the business. Like offering work from home, a commitment to diversity is now a key element in attracting and retaining staff. What the Daily Mail would call wokery is just part and parcel of the battle for talent.
And therein lies the problem. Woke has no definition. It basically means "stuff I don't like or which makes me feel uncomfortable". And because of that a harmless public sector HR project that, for example, talks about inclusivity in the workplace becomes just as "woke" and dangerous as allowing blokes to claim they are women so they can get into women only places.
If you see all this as a fringe issue to do with 'promoting diversity' and dealt with by a few HR officers, then I am afraid you are probably misreading the enormous changes going on in society. If you are a large organisation, then you need to be actively engaged in questions like promoting gender equality at board level, having policies on relationships between staff, sexual harrassment policies, having racial diversity, disabled rights etc; social equality, trans inclusion/management policies, engaging with poor kids; otherwise you will get badly caught out at some point. These things also have to work in practice, it is no good having a policy on paper that doesn't work from the perspective of employees. In my experience, it hits complacent organisations like an avalanche when something goes wrong.
One of my objections to the idea that this problem is all about 'diversity officers' is that it is probably more productive all in all for large organisations to resource these issues through the employment of diversity officers (or similar), in the end. Otherwise the management are going to get continually drawn in to and distracted by the detail of these issues which will have an impact on performance.
As for the definition of 'woke', it is just a way of referring to a specific type of societal change. Its like the term 'progressive', it means different things to different people. But it isn't an answer to avoid having a discussion about something because it is difficult to define.
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
The mistake is to think the vote in 2016 had anything to do with the EU
Yes, all those remainer surrender-monkeys were simply scared to stand up for themselves!
Well I'm fairness we did screw it up. We lost the debate not least by focusing on the side of a bus.
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
Now although I am far less invested in this 'woke' issue (I am still waiting for someone to define it properly for me) I can see commentators making exactly the same mistake again using exactly the same reasoning. You act as if all these questions are either/or - you either have to be concerned about the CoL crisis or about Wokeism. It is an inability to comprehend that people can, contrary to what you might think, walk and chew gum at the same time.
I have no idea where the woke issue is going because unlike the EU issue, beyond the most extreme examples which seem to be fairly few and far between, I don't understand the boundaries and the detailed concerns.
But I do observe OGH making exactly the same argument that he made a decade ago over another subject he was sceptical about which leads me to believe he might be making exactly the same mistake when interpreting the views of the wider public and their ability to judge many issues at the same time.
... though the IPSOS unprompted poll is hard to argue with.
It has always been an unprompted poll. That is why OGH likes it so much and sees it as an indicator of the greatest concerns for people at present which can be matched against those same concerns over the last 50 years (and I understand that and accept it with caveats). The problem is that Mike has always pushed this line that just because something does not feature high on the list then people don't have concerns about it and it should be ignored. This was exactly the line he pushed for years before the referendum and look where that got him.
I don't know. There's a reason that Leave made the NHS a large part of their campaign. Might have something to do with it being higher up on the list of people's priorities. Clever of the Leave campaign to link it to the EU.
In terms of woke the question is whether they can link it to inflation, or an inability to fix inflation.
My wife has done 3 back to back Yougov surveys which frankly read like economics papers. What should be done about inflation, whose fault is it, what should the government be doing about the economy, what taxes should be cut, what about interest rates, on and on, she describes it as relentless. I wonder who all this is for. Its a bit late for the Tory leadership election.
The Liberal Democrats are preparing for government.
I wondered if SKS was still looking for ideas. He had one already this year which seemed to involve people poorer than me being asked to subsidise my heating bills at a quite unsustainable cost. He needs to cast his net a little wider.
Lol. That was such a terrible idea that it triggered a further increase in the Labour lead, and it will soon be pinched by the Tories as they struggle to think of anything better.
5% off VAT - today's kite being flown by the Truss lot will not cut it either. There is no VAT on food, so no saving there. Because for consumers VAT is not an add on, as the sales tax is in the US, but an integral part of the quoted price many businesses will just increase their margin - justifying to themselves it by reference to their increased costs. Whilst businesses may need more profit to survive this will not impress consumers AKA voters.
Truss, if successful, will have to adopt the Liberal Democrat's plan to limit the cost of energy already borrowed by SKS or she will be in real trouble very soon.
Mr. Observer, yes, I am uncomfortable with racism and sexism, and won't discard that discomfort to appease an ideology of idiocy.
Mr. Password, single father accurately describes Denethor, Theoden, and Elrond. And anyone who used that as the definition of those characters would be a cretin because, while accurate in itself, it utterly misses the point.
"What's your main character trait?" "I am black. And a woman."
It's absolutely tokenistic, ticking a diversity box and defining a role by a couple of demographics.
Black dwarves may or may not work within the world of Tolkien (if the showrunners had more knowledge of the lore and less intensity for their own political views they would've just set it in Harad and had a majority of the cast as non-white humans, but there we are) but a skin colour and trouser contents do not make a character. Yet that is the metric by which some judge such things, and the great positive extolled in the PR.
You might as well describe the Witch King of Angmar as an elderly man.
Anyway, time for me to go for a wander. Have fun kids.
There's been some criticism that the growth in medieval/fantasy TV fiction, and a strict interpretation on what is realistic for that setting, means that there is a shortage of roles for non-white actors. So it's a good thing to see non-white actors in such roles (though this isn't new, as the BBC's Merlin did it years ago, so I don't know why people would make a fuss about it).
Provided it doesn't become a boring plot point in the actual show I don't see that it is a problem. I couldn't give a toss what people say in the PR, given it was a criticism of LotR is not surprising they mentioned it.
There is a lunatic hard core who seem to want to find any reason at all to hate the new Rings of Power series and are picking on the skin colour of the actors as just another excuse to do this. What I find really funny is that these same critics are often citing the (in my view excellent) Peter Jackson films as support whilst ignoring the fact that exactly the same types of criticism were directed at Jackson for years because he hadn't stayed absolutely true to every word of the books (Glorfindel rescuing Frodo, elves at Helms Deep etc)
Haters have to hate.
Me? I am looking forward to it all immensely and will judge it on its drama and how true it 'feels' to the Tolkien world.
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
Now although I am far less invested in this 'woke' issue (I am still waiting for someone to define it properly for me) I can see commentators making exactly the same mistake again using exactly the same reasoning. You act as if all these questions are either/or - you either have to be concerned about the CoL crisis or about Wokeism. It is an inability to comprehend that people can, contrary to what you might think, walk and chew gum at the same time.
I have no idea where the woke issue is going because unlike the EU issue, beyond the most extreme examples which seem to be fairly few and far between, I don't understand the boundaries and the detailed concerns.
But I do observe OGH making exactly the same argument that he made a decade ago over another subject he was sceptical about which leads me to believe he might be making exactly the same mistake when interpreting the views of the wider public and their ability to judge many issues at the same time.
... though the IPSOS unprompted poll is hard to argue with.
It has always been an unprompted poll. That is why OGH likes it so much and sees it as an indicator of the greatest concerns for people at present which can be matched against those same concerns over the last 50 years (and I understand that and accept it with caveats). The problem is that Mike has always pushed this line that just because something does not feature high on the list then people don't have concerns about it and it should be ignored. This was exactly the line he pushed for years before the referendum and look where that got him.
I don't know. There's a reason that Leave made the NHS a large part of their campaign. Might have something to do with it being higher up on the list of people's priorities. Clever of the Leave campaign to link it to the EU.
In terms of woke the question is whether they can link it to inflation, or an inability to fix inflation.
No idea. I am not being disingenuous when I say I still don't get the arguments. Obviously there are individual issues which seem to be encompassed within the whole woke debate that I have some quite strong feelings about but half the time they would apparently put me in the 'woke' camp and half opposing it. So I can't really say how this one will fall. My commentary was more on the off hand dismissal of issues which is so familiar from the years prior to 2016.
The emerging experience of the US is that point where "wokeism" becomes a significant political problem for the left and/or governing parties is where it becomes linked to child abuse. Until then it is a niche issue which most people are not bothered about.
On the broader issue, I think that the tories will be more effective in their "war on woke" as the opposition party. If the 'wokeism' is seen as coming from a left wing government, then it can become something its opponents rally around in opposition. The fact is, that for all their claims to the contrary, they have been in government for 12 years and have themselves been responsible for a lot of the 'woke' agenda.
Some of the transgender stuff is definitely starting to cross over into child abuse, which is why it’s such a controversial subject.
The political problem in the UK, watching from afar, is more one of inaction against the creeping spread of the wokery around the public sector, especially the escalating cost of the thousands of trainers and officers pushing the agenda. When the Home Office is hiring diversity managers, you can bet that the mandarins are doing their best to keep this from Ms Patel. It’s another symptom of the growing lack of control that ministers actually have over the departments they lead.
No, the political problem in the UK, watching from the UK, is that the Conservative Party has gone full HYUFD and now only does what it wants rather than what people need. People are being left to drown in a tidal wave of rising bills, and this government has gone AWOL. This country is literally falling apart, they are in charge and don't seem to have noticed.
But metaphorically dunking "the woke" in the village pond to ascertain their innocence if they drown and guilt if they survive is an interesting diversion from the mundanity of the CoL crisis.
Maybe I'll pitch the idea as a gameshow to GBNews.
Well I'm fairness we did screw it up. We lost the debate not least by focusing on the side of a bus.
There was no campaign that could beat the lies of the Leavers.
Sunak has found the same problem. He has run a better campaign, with better staff and stronger arguments, and is going to lose badly to a pathetic tribute act.
The emerging experience of the US is that point where "wokeism" becomes a significant political problem for the left and/or governing parties is where it becomes linked to child abuse. Until then it is a niche issue which most people are not bothered about.
On the broader issue, I think that the tories will be more effective in their "war on woke" as the opposition party. If the 'wokeism' is seen as coming from a left wing government, then it can become something its opponents rally around in opposition. The fact is, that for all their claims to the contrary, they have been in government for 12 years and have themselves been responsible for a lot of the 'woke' agenda.
Some of the transgender stuff is definitely starting to cross over into child abuse, which is why it’s such a controversial subject.
The political problem in the UK, watching from afar, is more one of inaction against the creeping spread of the wokery around the public sector, especially the escalating cost of the thousands of trainers and officers pushing the agenda. When the Home Office is hiring diversity managers, you can bet that the mandarins are doing their best to keep this from Ms Patel. It’s another symptom of the growing lack of control that ministers actually have over the departments they lead.
How many thousands of trainers and officers pushing woke agendas do you think that there are in the public sector? I genuinely have no idea. In our private sector company of 450 people we have an HR department of three. They spend all their time trying to hire and people in the business. Like offering work from home, a commitment to diversity is now a key element in attracting and retaining staff. What the Daily Mail would call wokery is just part and parcel of the battle for talent.
And therein lies the problem. Woke has no definition. It basically means "stuff I don't like or which makes me feel uncomfortable". And because of that a harmless public sector HR project that, for example, talks about inclusivity in the workplace becomes just as "woke" and dangerous as allowing blokes to claim they are women so they can get into women only places.
If you see all this as a fringe issue to do with 'promoting diversity' and dealt with by a few HR officers, then I am afraid you are probably misreading the enormous changes going on in society. If you are a large organisation, then you need to be actively engaged in questions like promoting gender equality at board level, having policies on relationships between staff, sexual harrassment policies, having racial diversity, disabled rights etc; social equality, trans inclusion/management policies, engaging with poor kids; otherwise you will get badly caught out at some point. These things also have to work in practice, it is no good having a policy on paper that doesn't work from the perspective of employees. In my experience, it hits complacent organisations like an avalanche when something goes wrong.
One of my objections to the idea that this problem is all about 'diversity officers' is that it is probably more productive all in all for large organisations to resource these issues through the employment of diversity officers (or similar), in the end. Otherwise the management are going to get continually drawn in to and distracted by the detail of these issues which will have an impact on performance.
As for the definition of 'woke', it is just a way of referring to a specific type of societal change. Its like the term 'progressive', it means different things to different people. But it isn't an answer to avoid having a discussion about something because it is difficult to define.
I agree with just about every word of that. Businesses are embracing all of this because if they don't they will be left behind. And the public sector is also engaged in the battle to hire and retain talent. In fact, it's probably even more important in the public sector because very often it can't compete on salaries.
With this unnecessarily long leadership race the Tory party has once again proven it isn't fit for government. It should have been over three weeks ago with a new functioning government in place to give people clarity on the energy crisis and long term water shortage strategy.
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
No. That's the wrong way to look at it. The EU referendum was on a single issue. It had nothing to do with anything else so the relative importance of other topics was irrelevant. If a topic is low down your list of concerns but someone gave you a vote on it and nothing else, then it doesn't really matter how much you care about the issue - you have to choose. "What I'm most worried about is austerity and education", "Okay, but this vote is only about the EU", "Oh, that's all? I have a mild preference to leave, I'll vote that way". Similarly, the result of the F1 is of very little concern to me, I'm not that interested, but if someone asked me to name a preference as to who wins, I would probably pick Hamilton - clearly I'd be unable to pick Ipswich or the 49ers. However, if someone only wanted to talk about F1 over sports that really interest me, then I'll go talk to the other bloke.
In a GE, you've lots of issues to consider. If a party is not focussing on any of them (or not focussing enough) then you'll pick the one that is. Your point may have had more validity if you were speaking about the 2015 GE but even there the result turned on far more than a promise of a referendum.
With this unnecessarily long leadership race the Tory party has once again proven it isn't fit for government. It should have been over three weeks ago with a new functioning government in place to give people clarity on the energy crisis and long term water shortage strategy.
The energy price rise announcement was also known known. Old lady asleep at the wheel.
In it, both the Pennsylvania Senate and Gubernatorial races are covered.
So... Doug Mastriano is the Republican candidate for Governor, and he scores a +56 among Republicans for favourability.
Shapiro is the Democratic candidate, and he gets +68 among Democrats.
For the Senate, Fetterman manages +69 with Democrats.
And - with Republicans - Dr Oz manages (and I'm not making this up) just +15.
The fact it is not -100% given how dreadful a candidate he is is proof, if proof were needed, that slightly more than half of the Republicans are actually deranged.
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
No. That's the wrong way to look at it. The EU referendum was on a single issue. It had nothing to do with anything else so the relative importance of other topics was irrelevant. If a topic is low down your list of concerns but someone gave you a vote on it and nothing else, then it doesn't really matter how much you care about the issue - you have to choose. "What I'm most worried about is austerity and education", "Okay, but this vote is only about the EU", "Oh, that's all? I have a mild preference to leave, I'll vote that way". Similarly, the result of the F1 is of very little concern to me, I'm not that interested, but if someone asked me to name a preference as to who wins, I would probably pick Hamilton - clearly I'd be unable to pick Ipswich or the 49ers. However, if someone only wanted to talk about F1 over sports that really interest me, then I'll go talk to the other bloke.
In a GE, you've lots of issues to consider. If a party is not focussing on any of them (or not focussing enough) then you'll pick the one that is. Your point may have had more validity if you were speaking about the 2015 GE but even there the result turned on far more than a promise of a referendum.
My argument is not about the vote itself but about the way in which the impetus for the vote built in the years prior to 2016. A whilst OGH was claiming 'No one gives a Monkeys'.
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
No. That's the wrong way to look at it. The EU referendum was on a single issue. It had nothing to do with anything else so the relative importance of other topics was irrelevant. If a topic is low down your list of concerns but someone gave you a vote on it and nothing else, then it doesn't really matter how much you care about the issue - you have to choose. "What I'm most worried about is austerity and education", "Okay, but this vote is only about the EU", "Oh, that's all? I have a mild preference to leave, I'll vote that way". Similarly, the result of the F1 is of very little concern to me, I'm not that interested, but if someone asked me to name a preference as to who wins, I would probably pick Hamilton - clearly I'd be unable to pick Ipswich or the 49ers. However, if someone only wanted to talk about F1 over sports that really interest me, then I'll go talk to the other bloke.
In a GE, you've lots of issues to consider. If a party is not focussing on any of them (or not focussing enough) then you'll pick the one that is. Your point may have had more validity if you were speaking about the 2015 GE but even there the result turned on far more than a promise of a referendum.
How was the referendum on a single issue? People voted to give the government a kicking and give money to the NHS and have a voice for a change and send all these dark skinned people home and hope for a better future. Most people didn't have a clue what the EU did - it was just the totem offered to them as the focus of their anger.
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
No. That's the wrong way to look at it. The EU referendum was on a single issue. It had nothing to do with anything else so the relative importance of other topics was irrelevant. If a topic is low down your list of concerns but someone gave you a vote on it and nothing else, then it doesn't really matter how much you care about the issue - you have to choose. "What I'm most worried about is austerity and education", "Okay, but this vote is only about the EU", "Oh, that's all? I have a mild preference to leave, I'll vote that way". Similarly, the result of the F1 is of very little concern to me, I'm not that interested, but if someone asked me to name a preference as to who wins, I would probably pick Hamilton - clearly I'd be unable to pick Ipswich or the 49ers. However, if someone only wanted to talk about F1 over sports that really interest me, then I'll go talk to the other bloke.
In a GE, you've lots of issues to consider. If a party is not focussing on any of them (or not focussing enough) then you'll pick the one that is. Your point may have had more validity if you were speaking about the 2015 GE but even there the result turned on far more than a promise of a referendum.
My argument is not about the vote itself but about the way in which the impetus for the vote built in the years prior to 2016. A whilst OGH was claiming 'No one gives a Monkeys'.
And nobody did give a monkeys about the EU. That wasn't what the vote was about at all. Anyway, I don't see how this translates into the supposed woke problem - we can't vote to leave woke.
The emerging experience of the US is that point where "wokeism" becomes a significant political problem for the left and/or governing parties is where it becomes linked to child abuse. Until then it is a niche issue which most people are not bothered about.
On the broader issue, I think that the tories will be more effective in their "war on woke" as the opposition party. If the 'wokeism' is seen as coming from a left wing government, then it can become something its opponents rally around in opposition. The fact is, that for all their claims to the contrary, they have been in government for 12 years and have themselves been responsible for a lot of the 'woke' agenda.
Some of the transgender stuff is definitely starting to cross over into child abuse, which is why it’s such a controversial subject.
The political problem in the UK, watching from afar, is more one of inaction against the creeping spread of the wokery around the public sector, especially the escalating cost of the thousands of trainers and officers pushing the agenda. When the Home Office is hiring diversity managers, you can bet that the mandarins are doing their best to keep this from Ms Patel. It’s another symptom of the growing lack of control that ministers actually have over the departments they lead.
How many thousands of trainers and officers pushing woke agendas do you think that there are in the public sector? I genuinely have no idea. In our private sector company of 450 people we have an HR department of three. They spend all their time trying to hire and people in the business. Like offering work from home, a commitment to diversity is now a key element in attracting and retaining staff. What the Daily Mail would call wokery is just part and parcel of the battle for talent.
And therein lies the problem. Woke has no definition. It basically means "stuff I don't like or which makes me feel uncomfortable". And because of that a harmless public sector HR project that, for example, talks about inclusivity in the workplace becomes just as "woke" and dangerous as allowing blokes to claim they are women so they can get into women only places.
If you see all this as a fringe issue to do with 'promoting diversity' and dealt with by a few HR officers, then I am afraid you are probably misreading the enormous changes going on in society. If you are a large organisation, then you need to be actively engaged in questions like promoting gender equality at board level, having policies on relationships between staff, sexual harrassment policies, having racial diversity, disabled rights etc; social equality, trans inclusion/management policies, engaging with poor kids; otherwise you will get badly caught out at some point. These things also have to work in practice, it is no good having a policy on paper that doesn't work from the perspective of employees. In my experience, it hits complacent organisations like an avalanche when something goes wrong.
One of my objections to the idea that this problem is all about 'diversity officers' is that it is probably more productive all in all for large organisations to resource these issues through the employment of diversity officers (or similar), in the end. Otherwise the management are going to get continually drawn in to and distracted by the detail of these issues which will have an impact on performance.
As for the definition of 'woke', it is just a way of referring to a specific type of societal change. Its like the term 'progressive', it means different things to different people. But it isn't an answer to avoid having a discussion about something because it is difficult to define.
The growth in the HR department in my employer over the last few years is enormous. (And they currently have a further 5 positions advertised -- these are completely new jobs that did not even exist a few years ago).
And much of this is driven by -- as you say -- the "need to be actively engaged in questions like promoting gender equality at board level, having policies on relationships between staff, sexual harrassment policies, having racial diversity, disabled rights etc; social equality, trans inclusion/management policies, engaging with poor kids"
All of these policies inevitably generate complaints. Whether valid or invalid, all these complaints need investigation. And the investigation of just one such complaint (e.g. misogyny) can be extremely time consuming (& damaging).
And as far as I can see, HR still routinely find for senior management, whether they are innocent or no.
The senior management are all extremely "woke", at least ostensibly.
They tweet woke, and they enact policies (e.g., to encourage whistleblowing if an employee observes discrimination or bullying) that advertise their wokeness. But, it seems largely a charade.
In any investigation by the HR department (e.g., misogynistic bullying), HR always find for the management.
So, there is a lip service to "woke". The higher you go in the organisation, the greater is the public affirmation of wokeness. But, in private, there is no actual change in the behaviour of the organisation.
It is (I think) rather like the late stages of the Soviet Union.
Maybe "woke" works differently elsewhere, but in my organisation it is rather cynically used by white, highly affluent and well-connected (predominantly) males as a form of protective mimicry.
If I were now to point out that the top of the organisation is very white, or very middle-class in origin, the response is ready for me. Look how "woke" we are.
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
No. That's the wrong way to look at it. The EU referendum was on a single issue. It had nothing to do with anything else so the relative importance of other topics was irrelevant. If a topic is low down your list of concerns but someone gave you a vote on it and nothing else, then it doesn't really matter how much you care about the issue - you have to choose. "What I'm most worried about is austerity and education", "Okay, but this vote is only about the EU", "Oh, that's all? I have a mild preference to leave, I'll vote that way". Similarly, the result of the F1 is of very little concern to me, I'm not that interested, but if someone asked me to name a preference as to who wins, I would probably pick Hamilton - clearly I'd be unable to pick Ipswich or the 49ers. However, if someone only wanted to talk about F1 over sports that really interest me, then I'll go talk to the other bloke.
In a GE, you've lots of issues to consider. If a party is not focussing on any of them (or not focussing enough) then you'll pick the one that is. Your point may have had more validity if you were speaking about the 2015 GE but even there the result turned on far more than a promise of a referendum.
My argument is not about the vote itself but about the way in which the impetus for the vote built in the years prior to 2016. A whilst OGH was claiming 'No one gives a Monkeys'.
And nobody did give a monkeys about the EU. That wasn't what the vote was about at all. Anyway, I don't see how this translates into the supposed woke problem - we can't vote to leave woke.
Private schools in England accused of ‘gaming the system’ on lockdown exam results High GCSE and A-level grades awarded by teachers at independent schools in the pandemic fell dramatically after public exams
Robert Halfon, the Conservative chair of the education select committee, said this year’s results showed the private sector had “milked the system for all it was worth” in the pandemic .
Mr. Observer, yes, I am uncomfortable with racism and sexism, and won't discard that discomfort to appease an ideology of idiocy.
Mr. Password, single father accurately describes Denethor, Theoden, and Elrond. And anyone who used that as the definition of those characters would be a cretin because, while accurate in itself, it utterly misses the point.
"What's your main character trait?" "I am black. And a woman."
It's absolutely tokenistic, ticking a diversity box and defining a role by a couple of demographics.
Black dwarves may or may not work within the world of Tolkien (if the showrunners had more knowledge of the lore and less intensity for their own political views they would've just set it in Harad and had a majority of the cast as non-white humans, but there we are) but a skin colour and trouser contents do not make a character. Yet that is the metric by which some judge such things, and the great positive extolled in the PR.
You might as well describe the Witch King of Angmar as an elderly man.
Anyway, time for me to go for a wander. Have fun kids.
There's been some criticism that the growth in medieval/fantasy TV fiction, and a strict interpretation on what is realistic for that setting, means that there is a shortage of roles for non-white actors. So it's a good thing to see non-white actors in such roles (though this isn't new, as the BBC's Merlin did it years ago, so I don't know why people would make a fuss about it).
Provided it doesn't become a boring plot point in the actual show I don't see that it is a problem. I couldn't give a toss what people say in the PR, given it was a criticism of LotR is not surprising they mentioned it.
There is a lunatic hard core who seem to want to find any reason at all to hate the new Rings of Power series and are picking on the skin colour of the actors as just another excuse to do this. What I find really funny is that these same critics are often citing the (in my view excellent) Peter Jackson films as support whilst ignoring the fact that exactly the same types of criticism were directed at Jackson for years because he hadn't stayed absolutely true to every word of the books (Glorfindel rescuing Frodo, elves at Helms Deep etc)
Haters have to hate.
Me? I am looking forward to it all immensely and will judge it on its drama and how true it 'feels' to the Tolkien world.
I feel that fantasy is fantasy, and unless Tolkien described his characters as white, go for it. In something like Brother Cadfael, mediaeval Shrewsbury being portrayed as an ethnic melting pot, would bother me.
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
Now although I am far less invested in this 'woke' issue (I am still waiting for someone to define it properly for me) I can see commentators making exactly the same mistake again using exactly the same reasoning. You act as if all these questions are either/or - you either have to be concerned about the CoL crisis or about Wokeism. It is an inability to comprehend that people can, contrary to what you might think, walk and chew gum at the same time.
I have no idea where the woke issue is going because unlike the EU issue, beyond the most extreme examples which seem to be fairly few and far between, I don't understand the boundaries and the detailed concerns.
But I do observe OGH making exactly the same argument that he made a decade ago over another subject he was sceptical about which leads me to believe he might be making exactly the same mistake when interpreting the views of the wider public and their ability to judge many issues at the same time.
... though the IPSOS unprompted poll is hard to argue with.
It has always been an unprompted poll. That is why OGH likes it so much and sees it as an indicator of the greatest concerns for people at present which can be matched against those same concerns over the last 50 years (and I understand that and accept it with caveats). The problem is that Mike has always pushed this line that just because something does not feature high on the list then people don't have concerns about it and it should be ignored. This was exactly the line he pushed for years before the referendum and look where that got him.
I don't know. There's a reason that Leave made the NHS a large part of their campaign. Might have something to do with it being higher up on the list of people's priorities. Clever of the Leave campaign to link it to the EU.
In terms of woke the question is whether they can link it to inflation, or an inability to fix inflation.
No idea. I am not being disingenuous when I say I still don't get the arguments. Obviously there are individual issues which seem to be encompassed within the whole woke debate that I have some quite strong feelings about but half the time they would apparently put me in the 'woke' camp and half opposing it. So I can't really say how this one will fall. My commentary was more on the off hand dismissal of issues which is so familiar from the years prior to 2016.
You had a particular issue with EU Sovereignty issues, and you were prepared to pay the price with potentially diminished trade with our neighbours, and you acknowledged that. That is fine.
VoteLeave scapegoated the EU's social and fiscal profligacy for the wrongs of British society; immigration, foreigners, a failing NHS, failing education, social breakdown and criminality and all with no downside. It was an easy sell, particularly as even enthusiastic Europhiles like me also thought the EU was a "bit s***".
Now is woke a convenient scapegoat, but one less easy to pinpoint and define than was the EU? I think it is, and I think it less easy to pin the ills of the UK on a moveable and sometimes imaginary mirage. Finessing the argument by specifically blaming it on a tangible group might make it work better. Certainly Rochdale taxi drivers fit the bill, but chicks with dicks less so. Doubtless cynical politicians will try and make a link. I am less sure it will gain traction against the backdrop of a chaotic economy. Ironically had the economy been shot to hell in June 2016 I suspect Leave would have won even more bigly.
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
No. That's the wrong way to look at it. The EU referendum was on a single issue. It had nothing to do with anything else so the relative importance of other topics was irrelevant. If a topic is low down your list of concerns but someone gave you a vote on it and nothing else, then it doesn't really matter how much you care about the issue - you have to choose. "What I'm most worried about is austerity and education", "Okay, but this vote is only about the EU", "Oh, that's all? I have a mild preference to leave, I'll vote that way". Similarly, the result of the F1 is of very little concern to me, I'm not that interested, but if someone asked me to name a preference as to who wins, I would probably pick Hamilton - clearly I'd be unable to pick Ipswich or the 49ers. However, if someone only wanted to talk about F1 over sports that really interest me, then I'll go talk to the other bloke.
In a GE, you've lots of issues to consider. If a party is not focussing on any of them (or not focussing enough) then you'll pick the one that is. Your point may have had more validity if you were speaking about the 2015 GE but even there the result turned on far more than a promise of a referendum.
My argument is not about the vote itself but about the way in which the impetus for the vote built in the years prior to 2016. A whilst OGH was claiming 'No one gives a Monkeys'.
And nobody did give a monkeys about the EU. That wasn't what the vote was about at all. Anyway, I don't see how this translates into the supposed woke problem - we can't vote to leave woke.
Remind us why you voted Leave?
Because we were politically a mile away from where the EU was going and would get spun off to the periphery eventually. Better for us to make the move than have it made for us.
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
No. That's the wrong way to look at it. The EU referendum was on a single issue. It had nothing to do with anything else so the relative importance of other topics was irrelevant. If a topic is low down your list of concerns but someone gave you a vote on it and nothing else, then it doesn't really matter how much you care about the issue - you have to choose. "What I'm most worried about is austerity and education", "Okay, but this vote is only about the EU", "Oh, that's all? I have a mild preference to leave, I'll vote that way". Similarly, the result of the F1 is of very little concern to me, I'm not that interested, but if someone asked me to name a preference as to who wins, I would probably pick Hamilton - clearly I'd be unable to pick Ipswich or the 49ers. However, if someone only wanted to talk about F1 over sports that really interest me, then I'll go talk to the other bloke.
In a GE, you've lots of issues to consider. If a party is not focussing on any of them (or not focussing enough) then you'll pick the one that is. Your point may have had more validity if you were speaking about the 2015 GE but even there the result turned on far more than a promise of a referendum.
My argument is not about the vote itself but about the way in which the impetus for the vote built in the years prior to 2016. A whilst OGH was claiming 'No one gives a Monkeys'.
And nobody did give a monkeys about the EU. That wasn't what the vote was about at all. Anyway, I don't see how this translates into the supposed woke problem - we can't vote to leave woke.
Remind us why you voted Leave?
Because we were politically a mile away from where the EU was going and would get spun off to the periphery eventually. Better for us to make the move than have it made for us.
So for you, it was about the EU, but not for the rest who are all lesser beings?
Mr. Observer, woke is when identity politics gets power. It demands not merely acceptance but that others agree with it (see the kneeling nonsense of BLM). It judges people by their skin colour and sex (see Rings of Power and the 'dwarf of colour' nonsense). It treats women and non-white people as inherently oppressed while happily being openly bigoted against white men (see RAF hiring practices, or the approach of the police to Rotherham and other such scandals). And if you oppose it you get labelled an -ist or -phobe (the Twitter equivalent of a school bully demanding you do something or 'you're gay').
In short, woke is opposed to equality. It embraces racism and sexism, but those are 'ok' because they're aimed at whites and men and the vaguely defined 'system' (contrary to laws which make it illegal to pay people differently based on demographics) is somehow tilted in their favour*.
It also has the deranged view that children too young to drink, have sex, have a job, or vote are mature enough to decide they want to change their sex. Even though this can lead to permanent sterilisation.
There's also the innumerate nonsense propagated by zealots and believed by credulous fools of the gender pay gap, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of how numbers work (or, indeed, the law).
Last but not least, it denies biological reality (the male advantage in terms of strength) to pretend that men who have become women can compete on a level playing field with those who actually have female genetics.
*It is statistically beneficial to be white rather than black in the justice system when it comes to sentencing. It's also useful to be female rather than male, attractive rather than ugly, and rich rather than poor. The sex difference is the biggest, I believe.
Paper tigers and straw men.
Woke is just about recognising structural prejudices in society.
It's also about Adams's Law of Technology (anything invented after you are thirty is an abomination) applied to society.
Every move to make society nicer (for want of a better word) has been loudly opposed beforehand. Sometimes because of genuine issues that need ironing out, but mostly because humans dislike change. And also, we don't like to have to note bits of nastiness that we have tolerated.
The other thing that happens is that the passing of generational batons is difficult. The still vigorous don't like the idea of letting the younger take over. They're not ready, they'll do it wrong and... it hints at our incoming mortality.
Much more comforting to poke fun at their foolishness.
I don't get the point about technology. My ten-year-old self (I am 61) would be blown away with the idea that everyone (not just Captain Kirk) would have a mobile phone, and at Google Earth and Sat Navs. I refer to using the "blue dot" on Google Maps as "James Bond mode".
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
No. That's the wrong way to look at it. The EU referendum was on a single issue. It had nothing to do with anything else so the relative importance of other topics was irrelevant. If a topic is low down your list of concerns but someone gave you a vote on it and nothing else, then it doesn't really matter how much you care about the issue - you have to choose. "What I'm most worried about is austerity and education", "Okay, but this vote is only about the EU", "Oh, that's all? I have a mild preference to leave, I'll vote that way". Similarly, the result of the F1 is of very little concern to me, I'm not that interested, but if someone asked me to name a preference as to who wins, I would probably pick Hamilton - clearly I'd be unable to pick Ipswich or the 49ers. However, if someone only wanted to talk about F1 over sports that really interest me, then I'll go talk to the other bloke.
In a GE, you've lots of issues to consider. If a party is not focussing on any of them (or not focussing enough) then you'll pick the one that is. Your point may have had more validity if you were speaking about the 2015 GE but even there the result turned on far more than a promise of a referendum.
My argument is not about the vote itself but about the way in which the impetus for the vote built in the years prior to 2016. A whilst OGH was claiming 'No one gives a Monkeys'.
And nobody did give a monkeys about the EU. That wasn't what the vote was about at all. Anyway, I don't see how this translates into the supposed woke problem - we can't vote to leave woke.
Remind us why you voted Leave?
Because we were politically a mile away from where the EU was going and would get spun off to the periphery eventually. Better for us to make the move than have it made for us.
So for you, it was about the EU, but not for the rest who are all lesser beings?
I quote the hundreds of people whose doors I knocked on, the thousands who gave their opinions in the run up. I quote the vote leave bus.
Banging on relentlessly about wokeism is just an indicator of immense privilege. It means you don’t have much else to concern yourself with.
It's also a tacit admission that you don't have any answers to the problems that are really affecting peoples lives
I assume you both think that organisations concentrating resources and mindshare on pro-woke policies have lost their way also? Should we therefore skim the fat of all the woke-warriors from any public or publicly-funded bodies, so that we can concentrate on bread and butter issues? That would be the logical outworking of these statements.
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
No. That's the wrong way to look at it. The EU referendum was on a single issue. It had nothing to do with anything else so the relative importance of other topics was irrelevant. If a topic is low down your list of concerns but someone gave you a vote on it and nothing else, then it doesn't really matter how much you care about the issue - you have to choose. "What I'm most worried about is austerity and education", "Okay, but this vote is only about the EU", "Oh, that's all? I have a mild preference to leave, I'll vote that way". Similarly, the result of the F1 is of very little concern to me, I'm not that interested, but if someone asked me to name a preference as to who wins, I would probably pick Hamilton - clearly I'd be unable to pick Ipswich or the 49ers. However, if someone only wanted to talk about F1 over sports that really interest me, then I'll go talk to the other bloke.
In a GE, you've lots of issues to consider. If a party is not focussing on any of them (or not focussing enough) then you'll pick the one that is. Your point may have had more validity if you were speaking about the 2015 GE but even there the result turned on far more than a promise of a referendum.
My argument is not about the vote itself but about the way in which the impetus for the vote built in the years prior to 2016. A whilst OGH was claiming 'No one gives a Monkeys'.
And nobody did give a monkeys about the EU. That wasn't what the vote was about at all. Anyway, I don't see how this translates into the supposed woke problem - we can't vote to leave woke.
Remind us why you voted Leave?
Because we were politically a mile away from where the EU was going and would get spun off to the periphery eventually. Better for us to make the move than have it made for us.
That's a piss poor argument if I may say so.
Nonetheless I am more interested in @williamglenn 's damascene conversion, when months after the vote he realised Brexit was the answer to our nation's problems.
Unfitness for office might be a lesser factor than opinion polls showing that Liz Truss is not the electoral silver bullet they'd hoped for, like John Major after Mrs Thatcher, or indeed Boris after Theresa May.
Or, more accurately, newspaper proprietors in this case.
Key points:
1. Every part of the justice system has been cuts and starved of resources - from police to prisons. The issues are not simply about legal aid.
2. Place statutory limits on how long suspects can be released under investigation in order to stop investigative drift.
3. Beef up police digital investigation units - digital evidence is now some of the most important evidence there is and a failure to investigate it is preventing investigations being done properly or at all.
4. Rebuild courts and open them. Every working day should be a day when courts have trials in them not, as now, often only 2 days a week.
5. A statutory right to a timely trial - within 6 months if the defendant is in prison, 12 months if on bail. If cases were dropped because the government could not do this, the government would pretty quickly reorder its priorities.
6. Remove the "innocence" tax and pay compensation to those wrongly convicted. The existence of the former and the failure to do the latter are an affront to decency and justice.
7. Invest in the system - many parts of the country have no Legal Aid solicitors at all; advocates are leaving in droves. Where will the judges of the future come from or the experienced prosecutors and defenders?
8. Stop the gimmicks. Passing more criminal laws or increasing sentences does nothing when the state can't even put those currently under investigation on trial in a timely manner.
The emerging experience of the US is that point where "wokeism" becomes a significant political problem for the left and/or governing parties is where it becomes linked to child abuse. Until then it is a niche issue which most people are not bothered about.
On the broader issue, I think that the tories will be more effective in their "war on woke" as the opposition party. If the 'wokeism' is seen as coming from a left wing government, then it can become something its opponents rally around in opposition. The fact is, that for all their claims to the contrary, they have been in government for 12 years and have themselves been responsible for a lot of the 'woke' agenda.
Some of the transgender stuff is definitely starting to cross over into child abuse, which is why it’s such a controversial subject.
The political problem in the UK, watching from afar, is more one of inaction against the creeping spread of the wokery around the public sector, especially the escalating cost of the thousands of trainers and officers pushing the agenda. When the Home Office is hiring diversity managers, you can bet that the mandarins are doing their best to keep this from Ms Patel. It’s another symptom of the growing lack of control that ministers actually have over the departments they lead.
How many thousands of trainers and officers pushing woke agendas do you think that there are in the public sector? I genuinely have no idea. In our private sector company of 450 people we have an HR department of three. They spend all their time trying to hire and people in the business. Like offering work from home, a commitment to diversity is now a key element in attracting and retaining staff. What the Daily Mail would call wokery is just part and parcel of the battle for talent.
And therein lies the problem. Woke has no definition. It basically means "stuff I don't like or which makes me feel uncomfortable". And because of that a harmless public sector HR project that, for example, talks about inclusivity in the workplace becomes just as "woke" and dangerous as allowing blokes to claim they are women so they can get into women only places.
If you see all this as a fringe issue to do with 'promoting diversity' and dealt with by a few HR officers, then I am afraid you are probably misreading the enormous changes going on in society. If you are a large organisation, then you need to be actively engaged in questions like promoting gender equality at board level, having policies on relationships between staff, sexual harrassment policies, having racial diversity, disabled rights etc; social equality, trans inclusion/management policies, engaging with poor kids; otherwise you will get badly caught out at some point. These things also have to work in practice, it is no good having a policy on paper that doesn't work from the perspective of employees. In my experience, it hits complacent organisations like an avalanche when something goes wrong.
One of my objections to the idea that this problem is all about 'diversity officers' is that it is probably more productive all in all for large organisations to resource these issues through the employment of diversity officers (or similar), in the end. Otherwise the management are going to get continually drawn in to and distracted by the detail of these issues which will have an impact on performance.
As for the definition of 'woke', it is just a way of referring to a specific type of societal change. Its like the term 'progressive', it means different things to different people. But it isn't an answer to avoid having a discussion about something because it is difficult to define.
I agree with just about every word of that. Businesses are embracing all of this because if they don't they will be left behind. And the public sector is also engaged in the battle to hire and retain talent. In fact, it's probably even more important in the public sector because very often it can't compete on salaries.
Yes - well that is true, and possibly explains why the public sector often leads on these issues. My own thinking on this, is that the "right" should be responding to the detail of what is going on, not just moaning about it or trying to 'wish the problem away'. The trouble, that you will be very familiar with looking at the background of the labour party, is that there is a type of 'extremist infiltration' in to the discourse, be this from trans, feminists, BLM activists etc who can pursue quite damaging and divisive agendas under the guise of 'equality and diversity', which can actually breed a lot of quiet resentment. For instance, there needs to be some way of addressing questions like the fact that there are losers from promoting gender equality in the workplace. This doesn't happen. The question just gets dismissed. But if you promote women to address a gender inequality problem (which is undoubtedly going on all the time), where does that leave men at the start or middle of their careers? There is no discussion of this without leading to some kind eventual resort to some kind of incel/manosphere etc slur. That is really one problem of very many. But in the end, the opportunity is there to create something genuinely inclusive and better than what existed before.
There are many well-paid jobs at the top of the Royal Household. I'd be more impressed by Charles, if they were not occupied by people drawn from a very small, very affluent, very well-connected portion of our society.
So, my problem with "woke" is when it changes nothing.
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
No. That's the wrong way to look at it. The EU referendum was on a single issue. It had nothing to do with anything else so the relative importance of other topics was irrelevant. If a topic is low down your list of concerns but someone gave you a vote on it and nothing else, then it doesn't really matter how much you care about the issue - you have to choose. "What I'm most worried about is austerity and education", "Okay, but this vote is only about the EU", "Oh, that's all? I have a mild preference to leave, I'll vote that way". Similarly, the result of the F1 is of very little concern to me, I'm not that interested, but if someone asked me to name a preference as to who wins, I would probably pick Hamilton - clearly I'd be unable to pick Ipswich or the 49ers. However, if someone only wanted to talk about F1 over sports that really interest me, then I'll go talk to the other bloke.
In a GE, you've lots of issues to consider. If a party is not focussing on any of them (or not focussing enough) then you'll pick the one that is. Your point may have had more validity if you were speaking about the 2015 GE but even there the result turned on far more than a promise of a referendum.
My argument is not about the vote itself but about the way in which the impetus for the vote built in the years prior to 2016. A whilst OGH was claiming 'No one gives a Monkeys'.
And nobody did give a monkeys about the EU. That wasn't what the vote was about at all. Anyway, I don't see how this translates into the supposed woke problem - we can't vote to leave woke.
Remind us why you voted Leave?
Because we were politically a mile away from where the EU was going and would get spun off to the periphery eventually. Better for us to make the move than have it made for us.
That's a piss poor argument if I may say so.
Nonetheless I am more interested in @williamglenn 's damascene moment, when months after the vote he realised Brexit was the answer to our nation's problems.
Mr. Observer, yes, I am uncomfortable with racism and sexism, and won't discard that discomfort to appease an ideology of idiocy.
Mr. Password, single father accurately describes Denethor, Theoden, and Elrond. And anyone who used that as the definition of those characters would be a cretin because, while accurate in itself, it utterly misses the point.
"What's your main character trait?" "I am black. And a woman."
It's absolutely tokenistic, ticking a diversity box and defining a role by a couple of demographics.
Black dwarves may or may not work within the world of Tolkien (if the showrunners had more knowledge of the lore and less intensity for their own political views they would've just set it in Harad and had a majority of the cast as non-white humans, but there we are) but a skin colour and trouser contents do not make a character. Yet that is the metric by which some judge such things, and the great positive extolled in the PR.
You might as well describe the Witch King of Angmar as an elderly man.
Anyway, time for me to go for a wander. Have fun kids.
There's been some criticism that the growth in medieval/fantasy TV fiction, and a strict interpretation on what is realistic for that setting, means that there is a shortage of roles for non-white actors. So it's a good thing to see non-white actors in such roles (though this isn't new, as the BBC's Merlin did it years ago, so I don't know why people would make a fuss about it).
Provided it doesn't become a boring plot point in the actual show I don't see that it is a problem. I couldn't give a toss what people say in the PR, given it was a criticism of LotR is not surprising they mentioned it.
There is a lunatic hard core who seem to want to find any reason at all to hate the new Rings of Power series and are picking on the skin colour of the actors as just another excuse to do this. What I find really funny is that these same critics are often citing the (in my view excellent) Peter Jackson films as support whilst ignoring the fact that exactly the same types of criticism were directed at Jackson for years because he hadn't stayed absolutely true to every word of the books (Glorfindel rescuing Frodo, elves at Helms Deep etc)
Haters have to hate.
Me? I am looking forward to it all immensely and will judge it on its drama and how true it 'feels' to the Tolkien world.
I feel that fantasy is fantasy, and unless Tolkien described his characters as white, go for it. In something like Brother Cadfael, mediaeval Shrewsbury being portrayed as an ethnic melting pot, would bother me.
Oddly enough, at least one 'black' character features heavily in the Cadfael books. Cadfael's son, Oliver de Bretagne was born to a Syrian mother. In the TV series I think he was played by a white man. Ellis Peters quite skilfully includes him in a way that makes sense.
Also, ISTR traders from abroad travel to a Shreswbury fair in one of the books.
The emerging experience of the US is that point where "wokeism" becomes a significant political problem for the left and/or governing parties is where it becomes linked to child abuse. Until then it is a niche issue which most people are not bothered about.
On the broader issue, I think that the tories will be more effective in their "war on woke" as the opposition party. If the 'wokeism' is seen as coming from a left wing government, then it can become something its opponents rally around in opposition. The fact is, that for all their claims to the contrary, they have been in government for 12 years and have themselves been responsible for a lot of the 'woke' agenda.
Some of the transgender stuff is definitely starting to cross over into child abuse, which is why it’s such a controversial subject.
The political problem in the UK, watching from afar, is more one of inaction against the creeping spread of the wokery around the public sector, especially the escalating cost of the thousands of trainers and officers pushing the agenda. When the Home Office is hiring diversity managers, you can bet that the mandarins are doing their best to keep this from Ms Patel. It’s another symptom of the growing lack of control that ministers actually have over the departments they lead.
How many thousands of trainers and officers pushing woke agendas do you think that there are in the public sector? I genuinely have no idea. In our private sector company of 450 people we have an HR department of three. They spend all their time trying to hire and people in the business. Like offering work from home, a commitment to diversity is now a key element in attracting and retaining staff. What the Daily Mail would call wokery is just part and parcel of the battle for talent.
And therein lies the problem. Woke has no definition. It basically means "stuff I don't like or which makes me feel uncomfortable". And because of that a harmless public sector HR project that, for example, talks about inclusivity in the workplace becomes just as "woke" and dangerous as allowing blokes to claim they are women so they can get into women only places.
You’re intellectually lazy Woke is a contemporary religion, like an updated Islam or Christianity, which means it is vast, and touches many things, in good and bad ways - often really bad. It is therefore amorphous and hard to define in a sentence or two
That doesn’t mean it does not exist, nor does it make Woke trivial. Quite the opposite
When defining Woke I find this infographic highly useful
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
No. That's the wrong way to look at it. The EU referendum was on a single issue. It had nothing to do with anything else so the relative importance of other topics was irrelevant. If a topic is low down your list of concerns but someone gave you a vote on it and nothing else, then it doesn't really matter how much you care about the issue - you have to choose. "What I'm most worried about is austerity and education", "Okay, but this vote is only about the EU", "Oh, that's all? I have a mild preference to leave, I'll vote that way". Similarly, the result of the F1 is of very little concern to me, I'm not that interested, but if someone asked me to name a preference as to who wins, I would probably pick Hamilton - clearly I'd be unable to pick Ipswich or the 49ers. However, if someone only wanted to talk about F1 over sports that really interest me, then I'll go talk to the other bloke.
In a GE, you've lots of issues to consider. If a party is not focussing on any of them (or not focussing enough) then you'll pick the one that is. Your point may have had more validity if you were speaking about the 2015 GE but even there the result turned on far more than a promise of a referendum.
How was the referendum on a single issue? People voted to give the government a kicking and give money to the NHS and have a voice for a change and send all these dark skinned people home and hope for a better future. Most people didn't have a clue what the EU did - it was just the totem offered to them as the focus of their anger.
There are a lot of completely unsupported assertions in that post. And really, after six years (three and a hald of them on here) I'm not really into Remainer on Remainer action at this late date.
BoJo is still around like a fading fart that no one wants to talk about. It means the couple of no-marks battling for the leadership have no chance to do anything constrictive for another fortnight. Even in his leaving, Boris is damaging the Tories.
But I have a genuine question. When did it become the governments' job to protect everyone from any inflationary spikes? This is a new one on me. As a boomer, I never expected to receive shed loads of cash as my right. I won't complain and this doesn't make me hanker back for the fifties.
If the government offers no support the following happens:
Millions of people cant pay their bills. Other millions who just about can pay decide to join a payment strike in solidarity. Courts already have a multi year backlog so are of no use enforcing payments (even with no backlog wouldn't help with the can't pays. The energy suppliers legally have to continue supplying energy to people who are not paying them for the energy. The energy suppliers cannot afford to pay the companies they buy from so go bankrupt. The remaining energy suppliers are then told to take on the debts of the bankrupt suppliers and go bust themselves. The country has no energy suppliers and we join the Taliban in trying to create a pre industrial revolution society.
At some point in the chain the government simply has to step in. It may as well get ahead of the problems!
In the short term the government can supply support but in the longer term it needs to expand energy supply. That includes franking for gas and nuclear as well as renewables. That is the only way longer term to cut energy bills without an ever larger government deficit. That goes foe the entire West too so they reduce their dependence on Russian energy
Well I'm fairness we did screw it up. We lost the debate not least by focusing on the side of a bus.
There was no campaign that could beat the lies of the Leavers.
Sunak has found the same problem. He has run a better campaign, with better staff and stronger arguments, and is going to lose badly to a pathetic tribute act.
You might have a point. I would like to think not, but you only have to look across the water at Trump and wonder why his support is not exactly zero. It seems putting out thousands of easily provable lies does work for a significant number of people.
The impact of comparing a school 100 metres race where you give the prize to the child who comes second to FPTP v AV during the AV referendum is another example. It was not comparing like with like because adding another runner into a 100m dash does not impact the performance of the winner or second placed runner unlike in a FPTP election, so it is just not the same, but it works and those making the comparison must have known this was a lie. But hey that is politics.
There are many well-paid jobs at the top of the Royal Household. I'd be more impressed by Charles, if they were not occupied by people drawn from a very small, very affluent, very well-connected portion of our society.
So, my problem with "woke" is when it changes nothing.
So you reckon Charles should have rejected the invitation to guest edit on the basis that he doesn't have enough senior black employees?
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
No. That's the wrong way to look at it. The EU referendum was on a single issue. It had nothing to do with anything else so the relative importance of other topics was irrelevant. If a topic is low down your list of concerns but someone gave you a vote on it and nothing else, then it doesn't really matter how much you care about the issue - you have to choose. "What I'm most worried about is austerity and education", "Okay, but this vote is only about the EU", "Oh, that's all? I have a mild preference to leave, I'll vote that way". Similarly, the result of the F1 is of very little concern to me, I'm not that interested, but if someone asked me to name a preference as to who wins, I would probably pick Hamilton - clearly I'd be unable to pick Ipswich or the 49ers. However, if someone only wanted to talk about F1 over sports that really interest me, then I'll go talk to the other bloke.
In a GE, you've lots of issues to consider. If a party is not focussing on any of them (or not focussing enough) then you'll pick the one that is. Your point may have had more validity if you were speaking about the 2015 GE but even there the result turned on far more than a promise of a referendum.
My argument is not about the vote itself but about the way in which the impetus for the vote built in the years prior to 2016. A whilst OGH was claiming 'No one gives a Monkeys'.
And nobody did give a monkeys about the EU. That wasn't what the vote was about at all. Anyway, I don't see how this translates into the supposed woke problem - we can't vote to leave woke.
Remind us why you voted Leave?
Because we were politically a mile away from where the EU was going and would get spun off to the periphery eventually. Better for us to make the move than have it made for us.
That's a piss poor argument if I may say so.
Nonetheless I am more interested in @williamglenn 's damascene conversion, when months after the vote he realised Brexit was the answer to our nation's problems.
I acquired doubts about the EU and decided to give the electorate the benefit of them.
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
No. That's the wrong way to look at it. The EU referendum was on a single issue. It had nothing to do with anything else so the relative importance of other topics was irrelevant. If a topic is low down your list of concerns but someone gave you a vote on it and nothing else, then it doesn't really matter how much you care about the issue - you have to choose. "What I'm most worried about is austerity and education", "Okay, but this vote is only about the EU", "Oh, that's all? I have a mild preference to leave, I'll vote that way". Similarly, the result of the F1 is of very little concern to me, I'm not that interested, but if someone asked me to name a preference as to who wins, I would probably pick Hamilton - clearly I'd be unable to pick Ipswich or the 49ers. However, if someone only wanted to talk about F1 over sports that really interest me, then I'll go talk to the other bloke.
In a GE, you've lots of issues to consider. If a party is not focussing on any of them (or not focussing enough) then you'll pick the one that is. Your point may have had more validity if you were speaking about the 2015 GE but even there the result turned on far more than a promise of a referendum.
My argument is not about the vote itself but about the way in which the impetus for the vote built in the years prior to 2016. A whilst OGH was claiming 'No one gives a Monkeys'.
And nobody did give a monkeys about the EU. That wasn't what the vote was about at all. Anyway, I don't see how this translates into the supposed woke problem - we can't vote to leave woke.
Remind us why you voted Leave?
Because we were politically a mile away from where the EU was going and would get spun off to the periphery eventually. Better for us to make the move than have it made for us.
So for you, it was about the EU, but not for the rest who are all lesser beings?
Rochdale has already excused his error.
For months after the vote you got a barrow load of "likes" from me for your erudite analysis on the folly of voting Leave, and then suddenly it all changed. Why the U turn?
Private schools in England accused of ‘gaming the system’ on lockdown exam results High GCSE and A-level grades awarded by teachers at independent schools in the pandemic fell dramatically after public exams
Robert Halfon, the Conservative chair of the education select committee, said this year’s results showed the private sector had “milked the system for all it was worth” in the pandemic .
This is the same error OGH made vis a vis “the EU as an issue”. Because it never appeared as “the EU” in the top 5 public concerns, he dismissed it. Oops
Woke and the Culture Wars are highly unlikely to significantly influence the next UK GE. There are more pressing issues for now
But the one after that? Very possible. For evidence we just need to look at the USA, which is 10 years deeper into the KulturKrieg. Elections (eg Virginia) are already being won and lost on Woke, it might decide the presidency in 2024 (either way)
The emerging experience of the US is that point where "wokeism" becomes a significant political problem for the left and/or governing parties is where it becomes linked to child abuse. Until then it is a niche issue which most people are not bothered about.
On the broader issue, I think that the tories will be more effective in their "war on woke" as the opposition party. If the 'wokeism' is seen as coming from a left wing government, then it can become something its opponents rally around in opposition. The fact is, that for all their claims to the contrary, they have been in government for 12 years and have themselves been responsible for a lot of the 'woke' agenda.
Some of the transgender stuff is definitely starting to cross over into child abuse, which is why it’s such a controversial subject.
The political problem in the UK, watching from afar, is more one of inaction against the creeping spread of the wokery around the public sector, especially the escalating cost of the thousands of trainers and officers pushing the agenda. When the Home Office is hiring diversity managers, you can bet that the mandarins are doing their best to keep this from Ms Patel. It’s another symptom of the growing lack of control that ministers actually have over the departments they lead.
How many thousands of trainers and officers pushing woke agendas do you think that there are in the public sector? I genuinely have no idea. In our private sector company of 450 people we have an HR department of three. They spend all their time trying to hire and people in the business. Like offering work from home, a commitment to diversity is now a key element in attracting and retaining staff. What the Daily Mail would call wokery is just part and parcel of the battle for talent.
And therein lies the problem. Woke has no definition. It basically means "stuff I don't like or which makes me feel uncomfortable". And because of that a harmless public sector HR project that, for example, talks about inclusivity in the workplace becomes just as "woke" and dangerous as allowing blokes to claim they are women so they can get into women only places.
If you see all this as a fringe issue to do with 'promoting diversity' and dealt with by a few HR officers, then I am afraid you are probably misreading the enormous changes going on in society. If you are a large organisation, then you need to be actively engaged in questions like promoting gender equality at board level, having policies on relationships between staff, sexual harrassment policies, having racial diversity, disabled rights etc; social equality, trans inclusion/management policies, engaging with poor kids; otherwise you will get badly caught out at some point. These things also have to work in practice, it is no good having a policy on paper that doesn't work from the perspective of employees. In my experience, it hits complacent organisations like an avalanche when something goes wrong.
One of my objections to the idea that this problem is all about 'diversity officers' is that it is probably more productive all in all for large organisations to resource these issues through the employment of diversity officers (or similar), in the end. Otherwise the management are going to get continually drawn in to and distracted by the detail of these issues which will have an impact on performance.
As for the definition of 'woke', it is just a way of referring to a specific type of societal change. Its like the term 'progressive', it means different things to different people. But it isn't an answer to avoid having a discussion about something because it is difficult to define.
I agree with just about every word of that. Businesses are embracing all of this because if they don't they will be left behind. And the public sector is also engaged in the battle to hire and retain talent. In fact, it's probably even more important in the public sector because very often it can't compete on salaries.
Yes - well that is true, and possibly explains why the public sector often leads on these issues. My own thinking on this, is that the "right" should be responding to the detail of what is going on, not just moaning about it or trying to 'wish the problem away'. The trouble, that you will be very familiar with looking at the background of the labour party, is that there is a type of 'extremist infiltration' in to the discourse, be this from trans, feminists, BLM activists etc who can pursue quite damaging and divisive agendas under the guise of 'equality and diversity', which can actually breed a lot of quiet resentment. For instance, there needs to be some way of addressing questions like the fact that there are losers from promoting gender equality in the workplace. This doesn't happen. The question just gets dismissed. But if you promote women to address a gender inequality problem (which is undoubtedly going on all the time), where does that leave men at the start or middle of their careers? There is no discussion of this without leading to some kind eventual resort to some kind of incel/manosphere etc slur. That is really one problem of very many. But in the end, the opportunity is there to create something genuinely inclusive and better than what existed before.
Back on topic, the war on woke won't put food on the table or heat in the radiator. Nobody will care because they will be too busy trying to survive the winter.
This is the same error OGH made vis a vis “the EU as an issue”. Because it never appeared as “the EU” in the top 5 public concerns, he dismissed it. Oops
Woke and the Culture Wars are highly unlikely to significantly influence the next UK GE. There are more pressing issues for now
But the one after that? Very possible. For evidence we just need to look at the USA, which is 10 years deeper into the KulturKrieg. Elections (eg Virginia) are already being won and lost on Woke, it might decide the presidency in 2024 (either way)
Plus of course if Ukraine wins its liberation war in the next year and sanctions are ended or the West expands its own energy supplies then cost of living will be less of an issue.
Cost of living is of course the greater short term issue but longer term Woke as a cultural issue will likely still be there
This is the same error OGH made vis a vis “the EU as an issue”. Because it never appeared as “the EU” in the top 5 public concerns, he dismissed it. Oops
Woke and the Culture Wars are highly unlikely to significantly influence the next UK GE. There are more pressing issues for now
But the one after that? Very possible. For evidence we just need to look at the USA, which is 10 years deeper into the KulturKrieg. Elections (eg Virginia) are already being won and lost on Woke, it might decide the presidency in 2024 (either way)
On this I agree with you also. Not because I think woke is an issue, unlike you (depending upon how you define 'issue'), but because it can become an issue (whether it should be or not).
If many more become of your view, it would be utterly stupid of people like me, who think you are wrong, to ignore it. We would be sticking our heads in the sand.
Or, more accurately, newspaper proprietors in this case.
Key points:
1. Every part of the justice system has been cuts and starved of resources - from police to prisons. The issues are not simply about legal aid.
2. Place statutory limits on how long suspects can be released under investigation in order to stop investigative drift.
3. Beef up police digital investigation units - digital evidence is now some of the most important evidence there is and a failure to investigate it is preventing investigations being done properly or at all.
4. Rebuild courts and open them. Every working day should be a day when courts have trials in them not, as now, often only 2 days a week.
5. A statutory right to a timely trial - within 6 months if the defendant is in prison, 12 months if on bail. If cases were dropped because the government could not do this, the government would pretty quickly reorder its priorities.
6. Remove the "innocence" tax and pay compensation to those wrongly convicted. The existence of the former and the failure to do the latter are an affront to decency and justice.
7. Invest in the system - many parts of the country have no Legal Aid solicitors at all; advocates are leaving in droves. Where will the judges of the future come from or the experienced prosecutors and defenders?
8. Stop the gimmicks. Passing more criminal laws or increasing sentences does nothing when the state can't even put those currently under investigation on trial in a timely manner.
Just on number 3, beefing up digital investigations. Aiui one problem is that any incident can generate hundreds of hours of cctv evidence, most of which turns out to be of little evidential use (say, because the suspect turned left instead of right, but cctv from the right turn has to be checked).
A more subtle problem is many police officers are not very good at recognising fuzzy images in the dark. You will probably recall the media fuss about super-recognisers a few years back; this is the opposite. Thanks to the drama doc Four Lives, we know this was an issue in Stephen Port's case, where police switched to following the wrong man on cctv. AI is probably not much help for tracking people, though ANPR helps enormously with cars (or cars on main roads). Recruiting an army of WFH volunteers to trawl through cctv would raise information security issues.
To your list, I'd add speeding up "ordinary" forensic evidence handling, and perhaps revisiting the issue of central, specialist units which do indeed help fight major crime but can denude local police divisions of expertise and experience.
Back on topic, the war on woke won't put food on the table or heat in the radiator. Nobody will care because they will be too busy trying to survive the winter.
When has that ever made a difference to scapegoats in the past?
We know scapegoating works because people prefer easy answers to difficult ones, and we've seen it work time after time.
"The one that is massively over-represented at all levels of the RAF and has enjoyed the benefit of overwhelming structural preference since the organisation was founded."
So the way to combat that is to continue it .but with the roles reversed?
Not sure that doesn't smack of hypocrisy. What exactly does a diversity officer do? Make sure we have equal numbers of every characteristic we can think of.
Is that a job for a grown-up?
Not worth worrying about and it won't affecr me anyway.
The emerging experience of the US is that point where "wokeism" becomes a significant political problem for the left and/or governing parties is where it becomes linked to child abuse. Until then it is a niche issue which most people are not bothered about.
On the broader issue, I think that the tories will be more effective in their "war on woke" as the opposition party. If the 'wokeism' is seen as coming from a left wing government, then it can become something its opponents rally around in opposition. The fact is, that for all their claims to the contrary, they have been in government for 12 years and have themselves been responsible for a lot of the 'woke' agenda.
Some of the transgender stuff is definitely starting to cross over into child abuse, which is why it’s such a controversial subject.
The political problem in the UK, watching from afar, is more one of inaction against the creeping spread of the wokery around the public sector, especially the escalating cost of the thousands of trainers and officers pushing the agenda. When the Home Office is hiring diversity managers, you can bet that the mandarins are doing their best to keep this from Ms Patel. It’s another symptom of the growing lack of control that ministers actually have over the departments they lead.
How many thousands of trainers and officers pushing woke agendas do you think that there are in the public sector? I genuinely have no idea. In our private sector company of 450 people we have an HR department of three. They spend all their time trying to hire and people in the business. Like offering work from home, a commitment to diversity is now a key element in attracting and retaining staff. What the Daily Mail would call wokery is just part and parcel of the battle for talent.
And therein lies the problem. Woke has no definition. It basically means "stuff I don't like or which makes me feel uncomfortable". And because of that a harmless public sector HR project that, for example, talks about inclusivity in the workplace becomes just as "woke" and dangerous as allowing blokes to claim they are women so they can get into women only places.
If you see all this as a fringe issue to do with 'promoting diversity' and dealt with by a few HR officers, then I am afraid you are probably misreading the enormous changes going on in society. If you are a large organisation, then you need to be actively engaged in questions like promoting gender equality at board level, having policies on relationships between staff, sexual harrassment policies, having racial diversity, disabled rights etc; social equality, trans inclusion/management policies, engaging with poor kids; otherwise you will get badly caught out at some point. These things also have to work in practice, it is no good having a policy on paper that doesn't work from the perspective of employees. In my experience, it hits complacent organisations like an avalanche when something goes wrong.
One of my objections to the idea that this problem is all about 'diversity officers' is that it is probably more productive all in all for large organisations to resource these issues through the employment of diversity officers (or similar), in the end. Otherwise the management are going to get continually drawn in to and distracted by the detail of these issues which will have an impact on performance.
As for the definition of 'woke', it is just a way of referring to a specific type of societal change. Its like the term 'progressive', it means different things to different people. But it isn't an answer to avoid having a discussion about something because it is difficult to define.
The growth in the HR department in my employer over the last few years is enormous. (And they currently have a further 5 positions advertised -- these are completely new jobs that did not even exist a few years ago).
And much of this is driven by -- as you say -- the "need to be actively engaged in questions like promoting gender equality at board level, having policies on relationships between staff, sexual harrassment policies, having racial diversity, disabled rights etc; social equality, trans inclusion/management policies, engaging with poor kids"
All of these policies inevitably generate complaints. Whether valid or invalid, all these complaints need investigation. And the investigation of just one such complaint (e.g. misogyny) can be extremely time consuming (& damaging).
And as far as I can see, HR still routinely find for senior management, whether they are innocent or no.
The senior management are all extremely "woke", at least ostensibly.
They tweet woke, and they enact policies (e.g., to encourage whistleblowing if an employee observes discrimination or bullying) that advertise their wokeness. But, it seems largely a charade.
In any investigation by the HR department (e.g., misogynistic bullying), HR always find for the management.
So, there is a lip service to "woke". The higher you go in the organisation, the greater is the public affirmation of wokeness. But, in private, there is no actual change in the behaviour of the organisation.
It is (I think) rather like the late stages of the Soviet Union.
Maybe "woke" works differently elsewhere, but in my organisation it is rather cynically used by white, highly affluent and well-connected (predominantly) males as a form of protective mimicry.
If I were now to point out that the top of the organisation is very white, or very middle-class in origin, the response is ready for me. Look how "woke" we are.
I don't doubt what you are saying, but an organisation like this is probably one step away from catastrophe; because it is now so difficult to 'shut down and silence' a disgruntled and aggrieved employee on social media etc. If they have smoking gun evidence that demonstrates the organisations commitments to diversity are a sham, then the whole ship is sunk.
Sadly OGH has learnt nothing from all those years prior to the EU referendum.
He would come on here every month or so pointing out that people 'Didn't give a Monkeys' about the EU as an issue and it was pointless the Government being concerned about it. Then of course 2016 came along.
No. That's the wrong way to look at it. The EU referendum was on a single issue. It had nothing to do with anything else so the relative importance of other topics was irrelevant. If a topic is low down your list of concerns but someone gave you a vote on it and nothing else, then it doesn't really matter how much you care about the issue - you have to choose. "What I'm most worried about is austerity and education", "Okay, but this vote is only about the EU", "Oh, that's all? I have a mild preference to leave, I'll vote that way". Similarly, the result of the F1 is of very little concern to me, I'm not that interested, but if someone asked me to name a preference as to who wins, I would probably pick Hamilton - clearly I'd be unable to pick Ipswich or the 49ers. However, if someone only wanted to talk about F1 over sports that really interest me, then I'll go talk to the other bloke.
In a GE, you've lots of issues to consider. If a party is not focussing on any of them (or not focussing enough) then you'll pick the one that is. Your point may have had more validity if you were speaking about the 2015 GE but even there the result turned on far more than a promise of a referendum.
My argument is not about the vote itself but about the way in which the impetus for the vote built in the years prior to 2016. A whilst OGH was claiming 'No one gives a Monkeys'.
And nobody did give a monkeys about the EU. That wasn't what the vote was about at all. Anyway, I don't see how this translates into the supposed woke problem - we can't vote to leave woke.
Remind us why you voted Leave?
Because we were politically a mile away from where the EU was going and would get spun off to the periphery eventually. Better for us to make the move than have it made for us.
That's a piss poor argument if I may say so.
Nonetheless I am more interested in @williamglenn 's damascene conversion, when months after the vote he realised Brexit was the answer to our nation's problems.
I acquired doubts about the EU and decided to give the electorate the benefit of them.
Was Trump being a fan, big fan, of Brexit any influence, or is it too difficult to plot the twin courses of your Damascene conversions?
I suppose a reverse ferret on a Damascene conversion would be called heading back to Jerusalem.
This is the same error OGH made vis a vis “the EU as an issue”. Because it never appeared as “the EU” in the top 5 public concerns, he dismissed it. Oops
Woke and the Culture Wars are highly unlikely to significantly influence the next UK GE. There are more pressing issues for now
But the one after that? Very possible. For evidence we just need to look at the USA, which is 10 years deeper into the KulturKrieg. Elections (eg Virginia) are already being won and lost on Woke, it might decide the presidency in 2024 (either way)
On this I agree with you also. Not because I think woke is an issue, unlike you (depending upon how you define 'issue'), but because it can become an issue (whether it should be or not).
If many more become of your view, it would be utterly stupid of people like me, who think you are wrong, to ignore it. We would be sticking our heads in the sand.
Look at De Santis. A cunning and successful politician who would surely be the GOP prez nominee (and likely president) if the odious Trump wasn’t in the way
“Florida is where Woke comes to die”
He attacks Wokeness at all times. Because he knows it’s a very important issue which agitates voters. He doesn’t do it because he’s a weird crank
I suspect a lot of the dismissal of Wokeness on here comes from people who simply don’t understand it, because they are
1. Too old to really grasp a strange new thing 2. A bit dim 3. On the left, so they are blind to its implications as they see it as a purely good thing with some silly interpretations. Like “political correctness gone mad” in the 80s. This is so wrong. Woke is way way more profound than that. It’s a new way of perceiving human society
But they're correct. The basis of any peace talks should be:
1) The recovery of all occupied Ukrainian territory. 2) Credible security guarantees; stronger than the 1994 Budapest rubbish. 3) War reparations to Ukraine. 4) The Black Sea fleet to leave Crimea. 5) Repatriation of everyone who has been forcibly deported from Ukraine to Russia if they choose; and all children. 6) War crime prosecutions of Russians.
Or, more accurately, newspaper proprietors in this case.
Key points:
1. Every part of the justice system has been cuts and starved of resources - from police to prisons. The issues are not simply about legal aid.
2. Place statutory limits on how long suspects can be released under investigation in order to stop investigative drift.
3. Beef up police digital investigation units - digital evidence is now some of the most important evidence there is and a failure to investigate it is preventing investigations being done properly or at all.
4. Rebuild courts and open them. Every working day should be a day when courts have trials in them not, as now, often only 2 days a week.
5. A statutory right to a timely trial - within 6 months if the defendant is in prison, 12 months if on bail. If cases were dropped because the government could not do this, the government would pretty quickly reorder its priorities.
6. Remove the "innocence" tax and pay compensation to those wrongly convicted. The existence of the former and the failure to do the latter are an affront to decency and justice.
7. Invest in the system - many parts of the country have no Legal Aid solicitors at all; advocates are leaving in droves. Where will the judges of the future come from or the experienced prosecutors and defenders?
8. Stop the gimmicks. Passing more criminal laws or increasing sentences does nothing when the state can't even put those currently under investigation on trial in a timely manner.
Just on number 3, beefing up digital investigations. Aiui one problem is that any incident can generate hundreds of hours of cctv evidence, most of which turns out to be of little evidential use (say, because the suspect turned left instead of right, but cctv from the right turn has to be checked).
A more subtle problem is many police officers are not very good at recognising fuzzy images in the dark. You will probably recall the media fuss about super-recognisers a few years back; this is the opposite. Thanks to the drama doc Four Lives, we know this was an issue in Stephen Port's case, where police switched to following the wrong man on cctv. AI is probably not much help for tracking people, though ANPR helps enormously with cars (or cars on main roads). Recruiting an army of WFH volunteers to trawl through cctv would raise information security issues.
To your list, I'd add speeding up "ordinary" forensic evidence handling, and perhaps revisiting the issue of central, specialist units which do indeed help fight major crime but can denude local police divisions of expertise and experience.
There are pretty good systems already available (I have used them) for analysing digital evidence (texts, chats, emails etc). It is both a question of resources: people and machine tools and effective training and well conducted focused investigations.
The key point is that politicians spend their time passing laws and uttering slogans but do nothing about ensuring that the police, CPS, lawyers, judges and others have the actual tools to do the job they are meant to be doing.
And so we have an increasingly Potemkin justice system.
The emerging experience of the US is that point where "wokeism" becomes a significant political problem for the left and/or governing parties is where it becomes linked to child abuse. Until then it is a niche issue which most people are not bothered about.
On the broader issue, I think that the tories will be more effective in their "war on woke" as the opposition party. If the 'wokeism' is seen as coming from a left wing government, then it can become something its opponents rally around in opposition. The fact is, that for all their claims to the contrary, they have been in government for 12 years and have themselves been responsible for a lot of the 'woke' agenda.
Some of the transgender stuff is definitely starting to cross over into child abuse, which is why it’s such a controversial subject.
The political problem in the UK, watching from afar, is more one of inaction against the creeping spread of the wokery around the public sector, especially the escalating cost of the thousands of trainers and officers pushing the agenda. When the Home Office is hiring diversity managers, you can bet that the mandarins are doing their best to keep this from Ms Patel. It’s another symptom of the growing lack of control that ministers actually have over the departments they lead.
How many thousands of trainers and officers pushing woke agendas do you think that there are in the public sector? I genuinely have no idea. In our private sector company of 450 people we have an HR department of three. They spend all their time trying to hire and people in the business. Like offering work from home, a commitment to diversity is now a key element in attracting and retaining staff. What the Daily Mail would call wokery is just part and parcel of the battle for talent.
And therein lies the problem. Woke has no definition. It basically means "stuff I don't like or which makes me feel uncomfortable". And because of that a harmless public sector HR project that, for example, talks about inclusivity in the workplace becomes just as "woke" and dangerous as allowing blokes to claim they are women so they can get into women only places.
If you see all this as a fringe issue to do with 'promoting diversity' and dealt with by a few HR officers, then I am afraid you are probably misreading the enormous changes going on in society. If you are a large organisation, then you need to be actively engaged in questions like promoting gender equality at board level, having policies on relationships between staff, sexual harrassment policies, having racial diversity, disabled rights etc; social equality, trans inclusion/management policies, engaging with poor kids; otherwise you will get badly caught out at some point. These things also have to work in practice, it is no good having a policy on paper that doesn't work from the perspective of employees. In my experience, it hits complacent organisations like an avalanche when something goes wrong.
One of my objections to the idea that this problem is all about 'diversity officers' is that it is probably more productive all in all for large organisations to resource these issues through the employment of diversity officers (or similar), in the end. Otherwise the management are going to get continually drawn in to and distracted by the detail of these issues which will have an impact on performance.
As for the definition of 'woke', it is just a way of referring to a specific type of societal change. Its like the term 'progressive', it means different things to different people. But it isn't an answer to avoid having a discussion about something because it is difficult to define.
The growth in the HR department in my employer over the last few years is enormous. (And they currently have a further 5 positions advertised -- these are completely new jobs that did not even exist a few years ago).
And much of this is driven by -- as you say -- the "need to be actively engaged in questions like promoting gender equality at board level, having policies on relationships between staff, sexual harrassment policies, having racial diversity, disabled rights etc; social equality, trans inclusion/management policies, engaging with poor kids"
All of these policies inevitably generate complaints. Whether valid or invalid, all these complaints need investigation. And the investigation of just one such complaint (e.g. misogyny) can be extremely time consuming (& damaging).
And as far as I can see, HR still routinely find for senior management, whether they are innocent or no.
The senior management are all extremely "woke", at least ostensibly.
They tweet woke, and they enact policies (e.g., to encourage whistleblowing if an employee observes discrimination or bullying) that advertise their wokeness. But, it seems largely a charade.
In any investigation by the HR department (e.g., misogynistic bullying), HR always find for the management.
So, there is a lip service to "woke". The higher you go in the organisation, the greater is the public affirmation of wokeness. But, in private, there is no actual change in the behaviour of the organisation.
It is (I think) rather like the late stages of the Soviet Union.
Maybe "woke" works differently elsewhere, but in my organisation it is rather cynically used by white, highly affluent and well-connected (predominantly) males as a form of protective mimicry.
If I were now to point out that the top of the organisation is very white, or very middle-class in origin, the response is ready for me. Look how "woke" we are.
I don't doubt what you are saying, but an organisation like this is probably one step away from catastrophe; because it is now so difficult to 'shut down and silence' a disgruntled and aggrieved employee on social media etc. If they have smoking gun evidence that demonstrates the organisations commitments to diversity are a sham, then the whole ship is sunk.
The continued un-sunk-ness of numerous organisations suggests that to be wrong.
"The one that is massively over-represented at all levels of the RAF and has enjoyed the benefit of overwhelming structural preference since the organisation was founded."
So the way to combat that is to continue it .but with the roles reversed?
Mr. Observer, yes, I am uncomfortable with racism and sexism, and won't discard that discomfort to appease an ideology of idiocy.
Mr. Password, single father accurately describes Denethor, Theoden, and Elrond. And anyone who used that as the definition of those characters would be a cretin because, while accurate in itself, it utterly misses the point.
"What's your main character trait?" "I am black. And a woman."
It's absolutely tokenistic, ticking a diversity box and defining a role by a couple of demographics.
...
Anyway, time for me to go for a wander. Have fun kids.
(Morning all)
Yes - of course it's tokenistic. Simplistic tokenism, and some bizarre politics, are staples of 'equality' and 'diversity' campaigns.
Elrond is a bit of a stretch as a single dad - when their mum was captured and killed the kids were already around 2100 years old.
On LOTR (or whatever the new version is called) why be worried? If it is any good it will persist, if not it will vanish down the plughole.
I'd say that it is actually treating LOTR like a very modest Shakespeare - the themes can be reinterpreted again and again around a story to meet the values, opinions an prejudices of those doing the reinvention. Very successful management by the 'Tolkien Estate', perhaps?
Private schools in England accused of ‘gaming the system’ on lockdown exam results High GCSE and A-level grades awarded by teachers at independent schools in the pandemic fell dramatically after public exams
Robert Halfon, the Conservative chair of the education select committee, said this year’s results showed the private sector had “milked the system for all it was worth” in the pandemic .
Posh folk milking the system? I’m shocked I tells ya.
Though I note grammar schools results last week were still 8% higher than pre pandemic
Oh here we go again. Money is pumped into grammar schools. They are better resourced than mainstream comprehensives, so their results should be better.
My key points every time we debate this nonsense is a) selection at 11 is evil and b) selection at 11 resulting in wealthy parents paying for their children to cram to pass the test is not meritocratic.
Comprehensives should be grammar schools for all not secondary moderns for all.
On topic I don't totally disagree but one reason why the culture war stuff works is because you can strike an actual contrast between the parties, so as long as you're on the thicker side of the wedge it doesn't matter too much if it's not top of the voters' agenda.
For instance, the thing the voters care most about right now is inflation, but the Tories and Labour have basically the same policy to deal with inflation, which is nothing, because there's nothing they can do. Whereas if the British government wanted to pass a law requiring effeminate-looking boys to do body-building or whatever it is that old people have currently got a bee in their bonnet about they could actually pass that law.
This is the same error OGH made vis a vis “the EU as an issue”. Because it never appeared as “the EU” in the top 5 public concerns, he dismissed it. Oops
Woke and the Culture Wars are highly unlikely to significantly influence the next UK GE. There are more pressing issues for now
But the one after that? Very possible. For evidence we just need to look at the USA, which is 10 years deeper into the KulturKrieg. Elections (eg Virginia) are already being won and lost on Woke, it might decide the presidency in 2024 (either way)
On this I agree with you also. Not because I think woke is an issue, unlike you (depending upon how you define 'issue'), but because it can become an issue (whether it should be or not).
If many more become of your view, it would be utterly stupid of people like me, who think you are wrong, to ignore it. We would be sticking our heads in the sand.
Look at De Santis. A cunning and successful politician who would surely be the GOP prez nominee (and likely president) if the odious Trump wasn’t in the way
“Florida is where Woke comes to die”
He attacks Wokeness at all times. Because he knows it’s a very important issue which agitates voters. He doesn’t do it because he’s a weird crank
I suspect a lot of the dismissal of Wokeness on here comes from people who simply don’t understand it, because they are
1. Too old to really grasp a strange new thing 2. A bit dim 3. On the left, so they are blind to its implications as they see it as a purely good thing with some silly interpretations. Like “political correctness gone mad” in the 80s. This is so wrong. Woke is way way more profound than that. It’s a new way of perceiving human society
I accept the first part of your post. I'm guessing you know more about it than me.
Re the 2nd half of your post (why people here don't understand it) I think that is too simplistic. With one obvious exception, people who post here are not dim. I agree they do tend to be older, although not particularly older than you and many will have younger children. I have a 21 and 26 year old. One working in HR the other doing a Ph.D. at Cambridge living with a girlfriend doing the same. So both immersed in potential woke. Not a dicky bird on it.
Regarding point 3 I accept that could be the case because that is my view so it would be silly to deny it as a possibility. However I am one who really gets upset by political correctness so you would think I would be wound up by woke and I'm not.
Private schools in England accused of ‘gaming the system’ on lockdown exam results High GCSE and A-level grades awarded by teachers at independent schools in the pandemic fell dramatically after public exams
Robert Halfon, the Conservative chair of the education select committee, said this year’s results showed the private sector had “milked the system for all it was worth” in the pandemic .
Posh folk milking the system? I’m shocked I tells ya.
Though I note grammar schools results last week were still 8% higher than pre pandemic
Oh here we go again. Money is pumped into grammar schools. They are better resourced than mainstream comprehensives, so their results should be better.
My key points every time we debate this nonsense is a) selection at 11 is evil and b) selection at 11 resulting in wealthy parents paying for their children to cram to pass the test is not meritocratic.
Comprehensives should be grammar schools for all not secondary moderns for all.
No they aren't particularly, plenty of comprehensive academies have more funding than grammar schools and grammars also lack the facilities of private schools and often still have outdoor classrooms.
There is no such thing as grammar schools for all as grammar schools by definition are selective. Indeed many of the old grammar schools that did not become private schools but comprehensives became closer to secondary modern schools than what they were previously.
Most grammars also have selection at 13 and 16. Even if you don't back a wholesale return to selective state education we at least need to allow parents to ballot to open new grammars rather than just ballot to close them as now.
One thing Truss, a parent with girls at grammar school, has been good at is promising to enable the expansion of grammar schools
Mr. Observer, yes, I am uncomfortable with racism and sexism, and won't discard that discomfort to appease an ideology of idiocy.
Mr. Password, single father accurately describes Denethor, Theoden, and Elrond. And anyone who used that as the definition of those characters would be a cretin because, while accurate in itself, it utterly misses the point.
"What's your main character trait?" "I am black. And a woman."
It's absolutely tokenistic, ticking a diversity box and defining a role by a couple of demographics.
Black dwarves may or may not work within the world of Tolkien (if the showrunners had more knowledge of the lore and less intensity for their own political views they would've just set it in Harad and had a majority of the cast as non-white humans, but there we are) but a skin colour and trouser contents do not make a character. Yet that is the metric by which some judge such things, and the great positive extolled in the PR.
You might as well describe the Witch King of Angmar as an elderly man.
Anyway, time for me to go for a wander. Have fun kids.
There's been some criticism that the growth in medieval/fantasy TV fiction, and a strict interpretation on what is realistic for that setting, means that there is a shortage of roles for non-white actors. So it's a good thing to see non-white actors in such roles (though this isn't new, as the BBC's Merlin did it years ago, so I don't know why people would make a fuss about it).
Provided it doesn't become a boring plot point in the actual show I don't see that it is a problem. I couldn't give a toss what people say in the PR, given it was a criticism of LotR is not surprising they mentioned it.
There is a lunatic hard core who seem to want to find any reason at all to hate the new Rings of Power series and are picking on the skin colour of the actors as just another excuse to do this. What I find really funny is that these same critics are often citing the (in my view excellent) Peter Jackson films as support whilst ignoring the fact that exactly the same types of criticism were directed at Jackson for years because he hadn't stayed absolutely true to every word of the books (Glorfindel rescuing Frodo, elves at Helms Deep etc)
Haters have to hate.
Me? I am looking forward to it all immensely and will judge it on its drama and how true it 'feels' to the Tolkien world.
My biggest complaint about the LoR films was turning Frodo into a non stop victim.
On topic I don't totally disagree but one reason why the culture war stuff works is because you can strike an actual contrast between the parties, so as long as you're on the thicker side of the wedge it doesn't matter too much if it's not top of the voters' agenda.
For instance, the thing the voters care most about right now is inflation, but the Tories and Labour have basically the same policy to deal with inflation, which is nothing, because there's nothing they can do. Whereas if the British government wanted to pass a law requiring effeminate-looking boys to do body-building or whatever it is that old people have currently got a bee in their bonnet about they could actually pass that law.
“whatever if is that old people have currently got a bee in their bonnet about”
This airy dismissal is so unintelligent. It demeans PB
Is it “old people” who have “a bee in their bonnets” about the trans invasion of female spaces? No
Private schools in England accused of ‘gaming the system’ on lockdown exam results High GCSE and A-level grades awarded by teachers at independent schools in the pandemic fell dramatically after public exams
Robert Halfon, the Conservative chair of the education select committee, said this year’s results showed the private sector had “milked the system for all it was worth” in the pandemic .
Posh folk milking the system? I’m shocked I tells ya.
Though I note grammar schools results last week were still 8% higher than pre pandemic
Oh here we go again. Money is pumped into grammar schools. They are better resourced than mainstream comprehensives, so their results should be better.
My key points every time we debate this nonsense is a) selection at 11 is evil and b) selection at 11 resulting in wealthy parents paying for their children to cram to pass the test is not meritocratic.
Comprehensives should be grammar schools for all not secondary moderns for all.
No they aren't particularly, plenty of comprehensive academies have more funding than grammar schools and grammars also lack the facilities of private schools and often still have outdoor classrooms.
There is no such thing as grammar schools for all as grammar schools by definition are selective. Indeed many of the old grammar schools that did not become private schools but comprehensives became closer to secondary modern schools than what they were previously.
Most grammars also have selection at 13 and 16. Even if you don't back a wholesale return to selective state education we at least need to allow parents to ballot to open new grammars rather than just ballot to close them as now.
One thing Truss, a parent with girls at grammar school, has been good at is promising to enable the expansion of grammar schools
And you claim you don't rehash arguments or complain about me doing so.
You do it over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Private schools in England accused of ‘gaming the system’ on lockdown exam results High GCSE and A-level grades awarded by teachers at independent schools in the pandemic fell dramatically after public exams
Robert Halfon, the Conservative chair of the education select committee, said this year’s results showed the private sector had “milked the system for all it was worth” in the pandemic .
Posh folk milking the system? I’m shocked I tells ya.
Though I note grammar schools results last week were still 8% higher than pre pandemic
Oh here we go again. Money is pumped into grammar schools. They are better resourced than mainstream comprehensives, so their results should be better.
My key points every time we debate this nonsense is a) selection at 11 is evil and b) selection at 11 resulting in wealthy parents paying for their children to cram to pass the test is not meritocratic.
Comprehensives should be grammar schools for all not secondary moderns for all.
No they aren't particularly, plenty of comprehensive academies have more funding than grammar schools and grammars also lack the facilities of private schools and often still have outdoor classrooms.
There is no such thing as grammar schools for all as grammar schools by definition are selective. Indeed many of the old grammar schools that did not become private schools but comprehensives became closer to secondary modern schools than what they were previously.
Most grammars also have selection at 13 and 16. Even if you don't back a wholesale return to selective state education we at least need to allow parents to ballot to open new grammars rather than just ballot to close them as now.
One thing Truss, a parent with girls at grammar school, has been good at is promising to enable the expansion of grammar schools
But the whole system is fundamentally morally wrong. Anyway I can't be bothered to argue with you. It's stage one of restoring capital punishment!
ALSO, and MORE IMPORTANTLY, how would you inform someone if you REALLY had a bee in your bonnet? Like, you’re wearing a bonnet, and there’s a big bee trapped inside, buzzing his tits off? And you want someone to help?
Private schools in England accused of ‘gaming the system’ on lockdown exam results High GCSE and A-level grades awarded by teachers at independent schools in the pandemic fell dramatically after public exams
Robert Halfon, the Conservative chair of the education select committee, said this year’s results showed the private sector had “milked the system for all it was worth” in the pandemic .
Posh folk milking the system? I’m shocked I tells ya.
Though I note grammar schools results last week were still 8% higher than pre pandemic
Oh here we go again. Money is pumped into grammar schools. They are better resourced than mainstream comprehensives, so their results should be better.
My key points every time we debate this nonsense is a) selection at 11 is evil and b) selection at 11 resulting in wealthy parents paying for their children to cram to pass the test is not meritocratic.
Comprehensives should be grammar schools for all not secondary moderns for all.
No they aren't particularly, plenty of comprehensive academies have more funding than grammar schools and grammars also lack the facilities of private schools and often still have outdoor classrooms.
There is no such thing as grammar schools for all as grammar schools by definition are selective. Indeed many of the old grammar schools that did not become private schools but comprehensives became closer to secondary modern schools than what they were previously.
Most grammars also have selection at 13 and 16. Even if you don't back a wholesale return to selective state education we at least need to allow parents to ballot to open new grammars rather than just ballot to close them as now.
One thing Truss, a parent with girls at grammar school, has been good at is promising to enable the expansion of grammar schools
And you claim you don't rehash arguments or complain about me doing so.
You do it over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Oh the irony.
I don't rehash arguments from old threads straight onto the next one unlike you no.
However obviously the same arguments will often apply on the same topic
Private schools in England accused of ‘gaming the system’ on lockdown exam results High GCSE and A-level grades awarded by teachers at independent schools in the pandemic fell dramatically after public exams
Robert Halfon, the Conservative chair of the education select committee, said this year’s results showed the private sector had “milked the system for all it was worth” in the pandemic .
Posh folk milking the system? I’m shocked I tells ya.
Though I note grammar schools results last week were still 8% higher than pre pandemic
Oh here we go again. Money is pumped into grammar schools. They are better resourced than mainstream comprehensives, so their results should be better.
My key points every time we debate this nonsense is a) selection at 11 is evil and b) selection at 11 resulting in wealthy parents paying for their children to cram to pass the test is not meritocratic.
Comprehensives should be grammar schools for all not secondary moderns for all.
No they aren't particularly, plenty of comprehensive academies have more funding than grammar schools and grammars also lack the facilities of private schools and often still have outdoor classrooms.
There is no such thing as grammar schools for all as grammar schools by definition are selective. Indeed many of the old grammar schools that did not become private schools but comprehensives became closer to secondary modern schools than what they were previously.
Most grammars also have selection at 13 and 16. Even if you don't back a wholesale return to selective state education we at least need to allow parents to ballot to open new grammars rather than just ballot to close them as now.
One thing Truss, a parent with girls at grammar school, has been good at is promising to enable the expansion of grammar schools
But the whole system is fundamentally morally wrong. Anyway I can't be bothered to argue with you. It's stage one of restoring capital punishment!
No it isn't morally wrong to support academic selection in education but somehow morally right to support selection by house price, parental wealth and church attendance which is what we effectively have now in most areas which no longer have grammar schools.
Private schools in England accused of ‘gaming the system’ on lockdown exam results High GCSE and A-level grades awarded by teachers at independent schools in the pandemic fell dramatically after public exams
Robert Halfon, the Conservative chair of the education select committee, said this year’s results showed the private sector had “milked the system for all it was worth” in the pandemic .
Posh folk milking the system? I’m shocked I tells ya.
Though I note grammar schools results last week were still 8% higher than pre pandemic
Oh here we go again. Money is pumped into grammar schools. They are better resourced than mainstream comprehensives, so their results should be better.
My key points every time we debate this nonsense is a) selection at 11 is evil and b) selection at 11 resulting in wealthy parents paying for their children to cram to pass the test is not meritocratic.
Comprehensives should be grammar schools for all not secondary moderns for all.
No they aren't particularly, plenty of comprehensive academies have more funding than grammar schools and grammars also lack the facilities of private schools and often still have outdoor classrooms.
There is no such thing as grammar schools for all as grammar schools by definition are selective. Indeed many of the old grammar schools that did not become private schools but comprehensives became closer to secondary modern schools than what they were previously.
Most grammars also have selection at 13 and 16. Even if you don't back a wholesale return to selective state education we at least need to allow parents to ballot to open new grammars rather than just ballot to close them as now.
One thing Truss, a parent with girls at grammar school, has been good at is promising to enable the expansion of grammar schools
And you claim you don't rehash arguments or complain about me doing so.
You do it over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Oh the irony.
I don't rehash arguments from old threads straight onto the next one unlike you no.
However obviously the same arguments will often apply on the same topic
Clearly I haven't read the rules of PB which says if you post something at the end of a thread I'm not allowed to respond in the next thread. Could you forward those rules please because most of us seem unaware of them.
The Jamóns are worried about not being kissed again.
Frankly for a possible future cabinet minister it demeans her more than anything
When are we going to get grown up politics
In the days when I was trying to put myself about whether or not the girl was a Tory was not the first question I asked. Admittedly I didn't go to Young Conservative meetings!
ALSO, and MORE IMPORTANTLY, how would you inform someone if you REALLY had a bee in your bonnet? Like, you’re wearing a bonnet, and there’s a big bee trapped inside, buzzing his tits off? And you want someone to help?
No one would understand you
“Help, I’ve got a bee in my bonnet”
“Yes, I know, aggressive cyclists”
“No. Really. I’ve got a bee. IN MY BONNET”
“Shut up about cyclists FFS”
"Take your effing bonnet off, let the bee escape, and stop making it everyone else's problem you attention-seeking nutcase," would, I think, be an appropriate response.
Private schools in England accused of ‘gaming the system’ on lockdown exam results High GCSE and A-level grades awarded by teachers at independent schools in the pandemic fell dramatically after public exams
Robert Halfon, the Conservative chair of the education select committee, said this year’s results showed the private sector had “milked the system for all it was worth” in the pandemic .
Posh folk milking the system? I’m shocked I tells ya.
Though I note grammar schools results last week were still 8% higher than pre pandemic
Oh here we go again. Money is pumped into grammar schools. They are better resourced than mainstream comprehensives, so their results should be better.
My key points every time we debate this nonsense is a) selection at 11 is evil and b) selection at 11 resulting in wealthy parents paying for their children to cram to pass the test is not meritocratic.
Comprehensives should be grammar schools for all not secondary moderns for all.
No they aren't particularly, plenty of comprehensive academies have more funding than grammar schools and grammars also lack the facilities of private schools and often still have outdoor classrooms.
There is no such thing as grammar schools for all as grammar schools by definition are selective. Indeed many of the old grammar schools that did not become private schools but comprehensives became closer to secondary modern schools than what they were previously.
Most grammars also have selection at 13 and 16. Even if you don't back a wholesale return to selective state education we at least need to allow parents to ballot to open new grammars rather than just ballot to close them as now.
One thing Truss, a parent with girls at grammar school, has been good at is promising to enable the expansion of grammar schools
But the whole system is fundamentally morally wrong. Anyway I can't be bothered to argue with you. It's stage one of restoring capital punishment!
Arguing with Franco Fan would drive anybody to support capital punishment… for total morons.
Private schools in England accused of ‘gaming the system’ on lockdown exam results High GCSE and A-level grades awarded by teachers at independent schools in the pandemic fell dramatically after public exams
Robert Halfon, the Conservative chair of the education select committee, said this year’s results showed the private sector had “milked the system for all it was worth” in the pandemic .
Posh folk milking the system? I’m shocked I tells ya.
Though I note grammar schools results last week were still 8% higher than pre pandemic
Oh here we go again. Money is pumped into grammar schools. They are better resourced than mainstream comprehensives, so their results should be better.
My key points every time we debate this nonsense is a) selection at 11 is evil and b) selection at 11 resulting in wealthy parents paying for their children to cram to pass the test is not meritocratic.
Comprehensives should be grammar schools for all not secondary moderns for all.
No they aren't particularly, plenty of comprehensive academies have more funding than grammar schools and grammars also lack the facilities of private schools and often still have outdoor classrooms.
There is no such thing as grammar schools for all as grammar schools by definition are selective. Indeed many of the old grammar schools that did not become private schools but comprehensives became closer to secondary modern schools than what they were previously.
Most grammars also have selection at 13 and 16. Even if you don't back a wholesale return to selective state education we at least need to allow parents to ballot to open new grammars rather than just ballot to close them as now.
One thing Truss, a parent with girls at grammar school, has been good at is promising to enable the expansion of grammar schools
Oh please, god. Let it stop. Not grammar schools again.
One of the problems with diversity programmes is that they can all too often slide into simply saying the right things rather than actually doing them, thus annoying both those who wonder what's the point of the programmes and those they are ostensibly meant to help.
It’s as if what matters most is not goodness but the appearance of it.
Take an example: at my last place of work, there was a fair amount of effort within the Legal and Compliance department to help women in their careers and it is one of those departments where there were a lot of women, certainly more than on the trading floor. And yet by the time I left I was the only woman who had been promoted to Managing Director in the department doing a full-time job with a family. Redundancy programmes had lost a swathe and others went part-time. Some of that was choice, of course, but a choice informed by how hard it was to make it otherwise. A study showed that it took longer for women to be put forward for promotion than men of the same experience and ability. That creates a vicious loop because not seeing women in senior positions makes it harder for younger women to imagine themselves in similar positions, to push forward, to find mentors etc.
Role models really help - and that goes for all groups. I did quite a few talks in my later years to womens networks sharing my experience / useful tips / things I'd wished I'd known when younger. Much of what I said could apply to others who don't appear to fit in and it is not about being anti-other groups more about recognising your own worth and not allowing yourself to be pigeonholed.
And, yet, on paper the firm had all the right diversity policies, photos, days of action etc. It was all largely show to make those at the top feel better. IMO we focus too much on how people feel and the look of things rather than the hard-edged reality of people's lives and practical ways of helping them.
Private schools in England accused of ‘gaming the system’ on lockdown exam results High GCSE and A-level grades awarded by teachers at independent schools in the pandemic fell dramatically after public exams
Robert Halfon, the Conservative chair of the education select committee, said this year’s results showed the private sector had “milked the system for all it was worth” in the pandemic .
Posh folk milking the system? I’m shocked I tells ya.
Though I note grammar schools results last week were still 8% higher than pre pandemic
Oh here we go again. Money is pumped into grammar schools. They are better resourced than mainstream comprehensives, so their results should be better.
My key points every time we debate this nonsense is a) selection at 11 is evil and b) selection at 11 resulting in wealthy parents paying for their children to cram to pass the test is not meritocratic.
Comprehensives should be grammar schools for all not secondary moderns for all.
No they aren't particularly, plenty of comprehensive academies have more funding than grammar schools and grammars also lack the facilities of private schools and often still have outdoor classrooms.
There is no such thing as grammar schools for all as grammar schools by definition are selective. Indeed many of the old grammar schools that did not become private schools but comprehensives became closer to secondary modern schools than what they were previously.
Most grammars also have selection at 13 and 16. Even if you don't back a wholesale return to selective state education we at least need to allow parents to ballot to open new grammars rather than just ballot to close them as now.
One thing Truss, a parent with girls at grammar school, has been good at is promising to enable the expansion of grammar schools
Oh please, god. Let it stop. Not grammar schools again.
Private schools in England accused of ‘gaming the system’ on lockdown exam results High GCSE and A-level grades awarded by teachers at independent schools in the pandemic fell dramatically after public exams
Robert Halfon, the Conservative chair of the education select committee, said this year’s results showed the private sector had “milked the system for all it was worth” in the pandemic .
Posh folk milking the system? I’m shocked I tells ya.
Though I note grammar schools results last week were still 8% higher than pre pandemic
Oh here we go again. Money is pumped into grammar schools. They are better resourced than mainstream comprehensives, so their results should be better.
My key points every time we debate this nonsense is a) selection at 11 is evil and b) selection at 11 resulting in wealthy parents paying for their children to cram to pass the test is not meritocratic.
Comprehensives should be grammar schools for all not secondary moderns for all.
No they aren't particularly, plenty of comprehensive academies have more funding than grammar schools and grammars also lack the facilities of private schools and often still have outdoor classrooms.
There is no such thing as grammar schools for all as grammar schools by definition are selective. Indeed many of the old grammar schools that did not become private schools but comprehensives became closer to secondary modern schools than what they were previously.
Most grammars also have selection at 13 and 16. Even if you don't back a wholesale return to selective state education we at least need to allow parents to ballot to open new grammars rather than just ballot to close them as now.
One thing Truss, a parent with girls at grammar school, has been good at is promising to enable the expansion of grammar schools
And you claim you don't rehash arguments or complain about me doing so.
You do it over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Oh the irony.
I don't rehash arguments from old threads straight onto the next one unlike you no.
However obviously the same arguments will often apply on the same topic
Clearly I haven't read the rules of PB which says if you post something at the end of a thread I'm not allowed to respond in the next thread. Could you forward those rules please because most of us seem unaware of them.
Most people who aren't as obsessive as you would realise endlessly rehashing old arguments onto the next thread again and again is relentlessly tedious whether within the rules or not
Comments
Much harder to make wokeism about those.
One of my objections to the idea that this problem is all about 'diversity officers' is that it is probably more productive all in all for large organisations to resource these issues through the employment of diversity officers (or similar), in the end. Otherwise the management are going to get continually drawn in to and distracted by the detail of these issues which will have an impact on performance.
As for the definition of 'woke', it is just a way of referring to a specific type of societal change. Its like the term 'progressive', it means different things to different people. But it isn't an answer to avoid having a discussion about something because it is difficult to define.
In terms of woke the question is whether they can link it to inflation, or an inability to fix inflation.
Truss, if successful, will have to adopt the Liberal Democrat's plan to limit the cost of energy already borrowed by SKS or she will be in real trouble very soon.
Haters have to hate.
Me? I am looking forward to it all immensely and will judge it on its drama and how true it 'feels' to the Tolkien world.
Kids arriving at school cold and hungry.
What the fuck has this country become?
Maybe I'll pitch the idea as a gameshow to GBNews.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/features/give-a-child-a-breakfast/lesson-hunger-24-children-every-2652139
2013: The lesson is hunger: 2.4 children in every class arrived at school hungry today
Sunak has found the same problem. He has run a better campaign, with better staff and stronger arguments, and is going to lose badly to a pathetic tribute act.
This is utterly deluded. Two months ago, three quarters of Tory MPs thought him unfit for office. A few weeks of photos of him on the beach, and now they believe him the man to handle this monumental crisis? I don't buy it
https://twitter.com/Gilesyb/status/1563806695628972038/photo/1
In a GE, you've lots of issues to consider. If a party is not focussing on any of them (or not focussing enough) then you'll pick the one that is. Your point may have had more validity if you were speaking about the 2015 GE but even there the result turned on far more than a promise of a referendum.
And much of this is driven by -- as you say -- the "need to be actively engaged in questions like promoting gender equality at board level, having policies on relationships between staff, sexual harrassment policies, having racial diversity, disabled rights etc; social equality, trans inclusion/management policies, engaging with poor kids"
All of these policies inevitably generate complaints. Whether valid or invalid, all these complaints need investigation. And the investigation of just one such complaint (e.g. misogyny) can be extremely time consuming (& damaging).
And as far as I can see, HR still routinely find for senior management, whether they are innocent or no.
The senior management are all extremely "woke", at least ostensibly.
They tweet woke, and they enact policies (e.g., to encourage whistleblowing if an employee observes discrimination or bullying) that advertise their wokeness. But, it seems largely a charade.
In any investigation by the HR department (e.g., misogynistic bullying), HR always find for the management.
So, there is a lip service to "woke". The higher you go in the organisation, the greater is the public affirmation of wokeness. But, in private, there is no actual change in the behaviour of the organisation.
It is (I think) rather like the late stages of the Soviet Union.
Maybe "woke" works differently elsewhere, but in my organisation it is rather cynically used by white, highly affluent and well-connected (predominantly) males as a form of protective mimicry.
If I were now to point out that the top of the organisation is very white, or very middle-class in origin, the response is ready for me. Look how "woke" we are.
High GCSE and A-level grades awarded by teachers at independent schools in the pandemic fell dramatically after public exams
Robert Halfon, the Conservative chair of the education select committee, said this year’s results showed the private sector had “milked the system for all it was worth” in the pandemic .
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/aug/28/private-schools-england-gaming-system-lockdown-exam-results-gcse-a-level-grades
Posh folk milking the system? I’m shocked I tells ya.
VoteLeave scapegoated the EU's social and fiscal profligacy for the wrongs of British society; immigration, foreigners, a failing NHS, failing education, social breakdown and criminality and all with no downside. It was an easy sell, particularly as even enthusiastic Europhiles like me also thought the EU was a "bit s***".
Now is woke a convenient scapegoat, but one less easy to pinpoint and define than was the EU? I think it is, and I think it less easy to pin the ills of the UK on a moveable and sometimes imaginary mirage. Finessing the argument by specifically blaming it on a tangible group might make it work better. Certainly Rochdale taxi drivers fit the bill, but chicks with dicks less so. Doubtless cynical politicians will try and make a link. I am less sure it will gain traction against the backdrop of a chaotic economy. Ironically had the economy been shot to hell in June 2016 I suspect Leave would have won even more bigly.
My ten-year-old self (I am 61) would be blown away with the idea that everyone (not just Captain Kirk) would have a mobile phone, and at Google Earth and Sat Navs.
I refer to using the "blue dot" on Google Maps as "James Bond mode".
Nonetheless I am more interested in @williamglenn 's damascene conversion, when months after the vote he realised Brexit was the answer to our nation's problems.
Key points:
1. Every part of the justice system has been cuts and starved of resources - from police to prisons. The issues are not simply about legal aid.
2. Place statutory limits on how long suspects can be released under investigation in order to stop investigative drift.
3. Beef up police digital investigation units - digital evidence is now some of the most important evidence there is and a failure to investigate it is preventing investigations being done properly or at all.
4. Rebuild courts and open them. Every working day should be a day when courts have trials in them not, as now, often only 2 days a week.
5. A statutory right to a timely trial - within 6 months if the defendant is in prison, 12 months if on bail. If cases were dropped because the government could not do this, the government would pretty quickly reorder its priorities.
6. Remove the "innocence" tax and pay compensation to those wrongly convicted. The existence of the former and the failure to do the latter are an affront to decency and justice.
7. Invest in the system - many parts of the country have no Legal Aid solicitors at all; advocates are leaving in droves. Where will the judges of the future come from or the experienced prosecutors and defenders?
8. Stop the gimmicks. Passing more criminal laws or increasing sentences does nothing when the state can't even put those currently under investigation on trial in a timely manner.
My own thinking on this, is that the "right" should be responding to the detail of what is going on, not just moaning about it or trying to 'wish the problem away'.
The trouble, that you will be very familiar with looking at the background of the labour party, is that there is a type of 'extremist infiltration' in to the discourse, be this from trans, feminists, BLM activists etc who can pursue quite damaging and divisive agendas under the guise of 'equality and diversity', which can actually breed a lot of quiet resentment.
For instance, there needs to be some way of addressing questions like the fact that there are losers from promoting gender equality in the workplace. This doesn't happen. The question just gets dismissed.
But if you promote women to address a gender inequality problem (which is undoubtedly going on all the time), where does that leave men at the start or middle of their careers?
There is no discussion of this without leading to some kind eventual resort to some kind of incel/manosphere etc slur.
That is really one problem of very many.
But in the end, the opportunity is there to create something genuinely inclusive and better than what existed before.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62701624
There are many well-paid jobs at the top of the Royal Household. I'd be more impressed by Charles, if they were not occupied by people drawn from a very small, very affluent, very well-connected portion of our society.
So, my problem with "woke" is when it changes nothing.
Also, ISTR traders from abroad travel to a Shreswbury fair in one of the books.
That doesn’t mean it does not exist, nor does it make Woke trivial. Quite the opposite
When defining Woke I find this infographic highly useful
https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1458781564964331520?s=21&t=Kz7_F9FBFs5AhJsrH309Qg
The impact of comparing a school 100 metres race where you give the prize to the child who comes second to FPTP v AV during the AV referendum is another example. It was not comparing like with like because adding another runner into a 100m dash does not impact the performance of the winner or second placed runner unlike in a FPTP election, so it is just not the same, but it works and those making the comparison must have known this was a lie. But hey that is politics.
I'm not sure why that would be better.
For months after the vote you got a barrow load of "likes" from me for your erudite analysis on the folly of voting Leave, and then suddenly it all changed. Why the U turn?
This is the same error OGH made vis a vis “the EU as an issue”. Because it never appeared as “the EU” in the top 5 public concerns, he dismissed it. Oops
Woke and the Culture Wars are highly unlikely to significantly influence the next UK GE. There are more pressing issues for now
But the one after that? Very possible. For evidence we just need to look at the USA, which is 10 years deeper into the KulturKrieg. Elections (eg Virginia) are already being won and lost on Woke, it might decide the presidency in 2024 (either way)
Cost of living is of course the greater short term issue but longer term Woke as a cultural issue will likely still be there
If many more become of your view, it would be utterly stupid of people like me, who think you are wrong, to ignore it. We would be sticking our heads in the sand.
A more subtle problem is many police officers are not very good at recognising fuzzy images in the dark. You will probably recall the media fuss about super-recognisers a few years back; this is the opposite. Thanks to the drama doc Four Lives, we know this was an issue in Stephen Port's case, where police switched to following the wrong man on cctv. AI is probably not much help for tracking people, though ANPR helps enormously with cars (or cars on main roads). Recruiting an army of WFH volunteers to trawl through cctv would raise information security issues.
To your list, I'd add speeding up "ordinary" forensic evidence handling, and perhaps revisiting the issue of central, specialist units which do indeed help fight major crime but can denude local police divisions of expertise and experience.
We know scapegoating works because people prefer easy answers to difficult ones, and we've seen it work time after time.
So the way to combat that is to continue it .but with the roles reversed?
Not sure that doesn't smack of hypocrisy. What exactly does a diversity officer do? Make sure we have equal numbers of every characteristic we can think of.
Is that a job for a grown-up?
Not worth worrying about and it won't affecr me anyway.
I suppose a reverse ferret on a Damascene conversion would be called heading back to Jerusalem.
“Florida is where Woke comes to die”
He attacks Wokeness at all times. Because he knows it’s a very important issue which agitates voters. He doesn’t do it because he’s a weird crank
I suspect a lot of the dismissal of Wokeness on here comes from people who simply don’t understand it, because they are
1. Too old to really grasp a strange new thing
2. A bit dim
3. On the left, so they are blind to its implications as they see it as a purely good thing with some silly interpretations. Like “political correctness gone mad” in the 80s. This is so wrong. Woke is way way more profound than that. It’s a new way of perceiving human society
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraines-six-key-conditions-for-peace-talks-with-putins-russia/
But they're correct. The basis of any peace talks should be:
1) The recovery of all occupied Ukrainian territory.
2) Credible security guarantees; stronger than the 1994 Budapest rubbish.
3) War reparations to Ukraine.
4) The Black Sea fleet to leave Crimea.
5) Repatriation of everyone who has been forcibly deported from Ukraine to Russia if they choose; and all children.
6) War crime prosecutions of Russians.
The key point is that politicians spend their time passing laws and uttering slogans but do nothing about ensuring that the police, CPS, lawyers, judges and others have the actual tools to do the job they are meant to be doing.
And so we have an increasingly Potemkin justice system.
Yes - of course it's tokenistic. Simplistic tokenism, and some bizarre politics, are staples of 'equality' and 'diversity' campaigns.
Elrond is a bit of a stretch as a single dad - when their mum was captured and killed the kids were already around 2100 years old.
On LOTR (or whatever the new version is called) why be worried? If it is any good it will persist, if not it will vanish down the plughole.
I'd say that it is actually treating LOTR like a very modest Shakespeare - the themes can be reinterpreted again and again around a story to meet the values, opinions an prejudices of those doing the reinvention. Very successful management by the 'Tolkien Estate', perhaps?
My key points every time we debate this nonsense is a) selection at 11 is evil and b) selection at 11 resulting in wealthy parents paying for their children to cram to pass the test is not meritocratic.
Comprehensives should be grammar schools for all not secondary moderns for all.
When are we going to get grown up politics
For instance, the thing the voters care most about right now is inflation, but the Tories and Labour have basically the same policy to deal with inflation, which is nothing, because there's nothing they can do. Whereas if the British government wanted to pass a law requiring effeminate-looking boys to do body-building or whatever it is that old people have currently got a bee in their bonnet about they could actually pass that law.
Re the 2nd half of your post (why people here don't understand it) I think that is too simplistic. With one obvious exception, people who post here are not dim. I agree they do tend to be older, although not particularly older than you and many will have younger children. I have a 21 and 26 year old. One working in HR the other doing a Ph.D. at Cambridge living with a girlfriend doing the same. So both immersed in potential woke. Not a dicky bird on it.
Regarding point 3 I accept that could be the case because that is my view so it would be silly to deny it as a possibility. However I am one who really gets upset by political correctness so you would think I would be wound up by woke and I'm not.
There is no such thing as grammar schools for all as grammar schools by definition are selective. Indeed many of the old grammar schools that did not become private schools but comprehensives became closer to secondary modern schools than what they were previously.
Most grammars also have selection at 13 and 16. Even if you don't back a wholesale return to selective state education we at least need to allow parents to ballot to open new grammars rather than just ballot to close them as now.
One thing Truss, a parent with girls at grammar school, has been good at is promising to enable the expansion of grammar schools
And the dwarf mockery stuff
“whatever if is that old people have currently got a bee in their bonnet about”
This airy dismissal is so unintelligent. It demeans PB
Is it “old people” who have “a bee in their bonnets” about the trans invasion of female spaces? No
You do it over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Oh the irony.
No one would understand you
“Help, I’ve got a bee in my bonnet”
“Yes, I know, aggressive cyclists”
“No. Really. I’ve got a bee. IN MY BONNET”
“Shut up about cyclists FFS”
However obviously the same arguments will often apply on the same topic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9Dk2emDU0o&t=775s
Admittedly I didn't go to Young Conservative meetings!
It’s as if what matters most is not goodness but the appearance of it.
Take an example: at my last place of work, there was a fair amount of effort within the Legal and Compliance department to help women in their careers and it is one of those departments where there were a lot of women, certainly more than on the trading floor. And yet by the time I left I was the only woman who had been promoted to Managing Director in the department doing a full-time job with a family. Redundancy programmes had lost a swathe and others went part-time. Some of that was choice, of course, but a choice informed by how hard it was to make it otherwise. A study showed that it took longer for women to be put forward for promotion than men of the same experience and ability. That creates a vicious loop because not seeing women in senior positions makes it harder for younger women to imagine themselves in similar positions, to push forward, to find mentors etc.
Role models really help - and that goes for all groups. I did quite a few talks in my later years to womens networks sharing my experience / useful tips / things I'd wished I'd known when younger. Much of what I said could apply to others who don't appear to fit in and it is not about being anti-other groups more about recognising your own worth and not allowing yourself to be pigeonholed.
And, yet, on paper the firm had all the right diversity policies, photos, days of action etc. It was all largely show to make those at the top feel better. IMO we focus too much on how people feel and the look of things rather than the hard-edged reality of people's lives and practical ways of helping them.