I used to laugh at the reactionary red faced Tory gammon when I saw them huffing and puffing on question time.
Now I laugh at so called democratic Socialists defending SKS huffing and puffing about foreign workers in the NHS like a red faced reactionary gammon, and telling climate change protestors to get up and go home like a reactionary red faced gammon.
It's sub-optimal for sure. But just checking - now it's Sunak not Johnson you are back to preferring Labour to the Tories, aren't you?
Neither of the Starmak's are getting my vote.
Do you intend to vote for the person with a red rosette no matter how reactionary their policies?
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
Fascinating and a bit revealing. I think the contrast is with mens football, where the black representation exceeds the average for the country. You can go down a rabbit hole asking why that is (are black people better footballers on average than white? What does that even mean?)
My private school was mainly white and asian pupils, the two big boy's sports were rugby & cricket. There was one black male pupil in my 6th form year - so even at the back end of the 90s that's a severe underrepresentation. With the big sports being cricket and rugby (Not football) though and that being common across private schools certainly up till the end of the decade (Perhaps things have changed now ?) and black pupils being under-represented in the private sector, it must mean an over-representation in the state sector where football is played so you'd expect black men to end up overepresented due to sport played at school maybe ? Not the only factor but I think the argument is generally correct.
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
Yes, I have done similar sums with panel shows. Taskmaster, for example, always has its ethnic minority contestant (though they are excitingly creative in this, with the Maori-heritage Rose Matafeo taking that role in series 9.) The typical line up would be four white, one non-white. Which isn't far off what you would expect. But what you wouldn't expect, statistically, would be over 14 series to never get an all-white line up. The chances of never, over the course of 14 series, having an all-white line up, assuming an 87% white population, are, if my maths is right, roughly 1 in 8,500. Richard Osman's House of Games, with four contestants rather than five, and churning through the series far faster, achieves feats of even greater mathematical improbability, although browsing the lists of contestants, there do appear to be a couple of all-white line ups. (The first four series was true to form, I think - 49 weeks of contestants without an all-white line up - the odds of achieving which by chance are roughly, I think, 1 in 714 trillion. But I think a couple of all white line ups have crept in since then.) In my long list of problems, this comes far, far down the list. I find it difficult to mind. But it clearly does happen.
Firstly, don't you think it is kind of sad to be worrying about this? Secondly, might it not be the case that ethnic minorities make up a larger proportion of the entertainment industry than the general population and therefore your calculations of the 'right' percentages are all wrong?
I mean, last night we spent ages chatting about toy soldiers and boardgames but counting the number of non-white faces on panel shows takes obscure pastimes to a whole new level.
I'm not worrying about it. I just enjoy maths. And when something happens which I think is statistically unlikely, I enjoy finding out exactly how statistically unlikely. (I used to drink with mathematicians, and working out probabilities of things, testing the assumptions we used, took up a large proportion of the evening.) I did consider the extent to which ethnic minorities are overrepresented in the entertainment industry. It becomes a slightly circular argument, because my impression of the entertainment industry is panels shows and adverts, which, etc. My guess is that ethnic minorities are overrepresented in entertainment amongst their age cohort, but this is probably balanced out by the fact that the proportion of ethnic minorities among the adult population is somewhat lower than the proportion of ethnic minorities among the whole population. But the mathematically interesting thing is when you ALWAYS see an ethnic minority in any group of four. It just doesn't happen by chance. (You don't, for example, always see someone from the North of England, and Northerners make up about a quarter of the British population.)
Personally I'd quite like everything state related (Local & central Gov't) to be linked to my NI number. Maybe that's just me though.
The problem is that the NI number database is an unreformable mess. There’s a lot of people with two NI numbers, and a lot of duplicates in the system. People have tried to FoI the government, who reply that they don’t have a clue how many of either scenario exists. It’s in at least the tens of thousands.
Just about the only solution to unique ID on government databases, is to start from scratch and have everyone verify themselves. Then you end up with an ID card database, just without the physical card.
Where ID cards might be a good idea, is for non-citizens to prove various entitlements. The problem is that it them becomes very easy to expand the system to everyone, and the Civil Service would be all over doing just that.
The big overrepresentation in adverts is of mixed race couples. I'd have thought as a % of the population they're still a very low number indeed. I can't recall many purely black & asian families on TV adverts tbh.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
I'm not claiming harm, but it is striking at the moment. Its certainly not random, and yes it is probably far easier for the Ad agencies. After all if statistically 80 % of families are all white, only one ad in 5 would have non-white actors - how do you choose which one? Don't bother- have mixed race in all. But it does shift perceptions.
I used to laugh at the reactionary red faced Tory gammon when I saw them huffing and puffing on question time.
Now I laugh at so called democratic Socialists defending SKS huffing and puffing about foreign workers in the NHS like a red faced reactionary gammon, and telling climate change protestors to get up and go home like a reactionary red faced gammon.
It's sub-optimal for sure. But just checking - now it's Sunak not Johnson you are back to preferring Labour to the Tories, aren't you?
There is also the fact that -
1) Provably (see the A level COVID fiasco and the resultant jump in university classes) the deliberate under training of medical staff has resulted in a large number of people not having a chance to go into good jobs. Guess which groups they come from?
2) Relying on overseas recruitment has fucked the healthcare systems in a number of countries - which have found themselves training staff who immediately leave.
Re 2)
I find, to my surprise, most of the medics who were at University with me are now working in the US, Australia, Canada or the Gulf States.
One particularly outspoken young socialist seems to have matured into a very well-paid consultant in Abu Dhabi.
Ultimately, the training of more doctors and medical staff in the UK (which is a good thing) is not going to fix things unless they are retained in the UK.
Because it is not just third world countries that find they are "training staff who immediately leave."
There is a shortage of medical staff worldwide. We have the potential, in this country, to train more medics than the NHS requires. Instead, we have an institutional policy of training less.
This *guarantees* that we need overseas staff.
Of course. But, because there is a "shortage of medical staff worldwide", then young well-trained medical staff can pick where they want to go.
And, even if trained in the UK, it will often not be the UK that retains the services.
So, we will still need overseas staff.
If the terms and conditions of employment of a doctor in say Australia are markedly better than in the UK ... why stay in the UK?
I approve of training more doctors in the UK, but to suggest it will make much difference to the NHS is fantasy.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
You can normalise by exposure without such an egregious "overshoot".
Personally I'd quite like everything state related (Local & central Gov't) to be linked to my NI number. Maybe that's just me though.
The problem is that the NI number database is an unreformable mess. There’s a lot of people with two NI numbers, and a lot of duplicates in the system. People have tried to FoI the government, who reply that they don’t have a clue how many of either scenario exists. It’s in at least the tens of thousands.
Just about the only solution to unique ID on government databases, is to start from scratch and have everyone verify themselves. Then you end up with an ID card database, just without the physical card.
Where ID cards might be a good idea, is for non-citizens to prove various entitlements. The problem is that it them becomes very easy to expand the system to everyone, and the Civil Service would be all over doing just that.
I was reflecting on Labour's recent embracing of right-wing culture war imagery like being tough on migrants, sending climate protestors to jail and surrounding himself with union flags, it led me to a conclusion: Starmer has reached the hug-a-hoodie stage of opposition.
Cameron famously sprinkled his schtick in the couple of years leading up to 2010 with several bits of imagery intended to appeal to lefties. Dog-sledding in Norway (I think?) to demonstrate his care for the planet, talking about the need to reform and understand juvenile delinquants etc. In hindsight of course this was mainly leftwashing, albeit built on a core value system of mild social liberalism, but I think it did the job of reassuring social liberals and centrists that this was a man they could do business with.
Starmer is now quite blatantly rightwashing, likely built on a core value system of traditional Labour authoritarianism, and I expect it will do the job of reassuring Tory-inclined floating voters.
Maybe every opposition that's been out of power for an extended period needs to reach the HAH stage before getting sufficient swing to score a change in government. In 1995-7 the HAH priority was demonstrating fiscal conservatism, whereas by 2010 it had become about cultural issues.
Maybe indeed we have the seeds of a grand unifying theory of British opposition, divided into 4 stages:
1. Wyle E Coyote period. Newly out of power, keeps doing broadly what it was doing before, still hasn't come to terms with being in opposition. Limited to a few soundbites such as "common sense revolution" or "squeezed middle" (Hague era, E Miliband era) 2. The descent into fundamentalism. Frustrated with being out of power and creaking at the seams, the party looks inwardly to try to discover its own purpose. The fundamentalists exploit the power vacuum caused by the departure of the ancienne regime to take over. (IDS, Corbyn, Foot - in which instance Labour jumped straight to stage 2 arguably because Callaghan was a form of stage 1, in office but scarcely in power) 3. The reform period. The party starts to look for ways back to coherence and voter appeal. The backlash against the damage done by the fundamentalists brings a reforming front bench into place, who work first to sort out the internal chaos and second to shore up the vote (Kinnock then Smith, Howard and early Cameron, early Starmer) 4. Hug a hoodie phase. finally tasting the possibility of forming a government, the party starts addressing itself with energy at the swing voting demographic. This tends to lead to them adopting approaches or imagery out of kilter with their traditional posture (Blair and Brown, Cameron, later Starmer).
'Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, revealed that an identity scheme was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”, arguing it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.'
Please don't, tud.
That dreadful mug, I mean. I'm not massively anti having some sort of ID card.
The problem with ID cards is never the ID cards. The last time round the problem was that they wanted to link all state held records together and make them accessible to any state official who claimed to need them. So anyone with access to the system would access to your entire life. Given that the sale of police records is a thing, what could possibly go wrong?
For extra laughs, the problem was acknowledged - records for "important" people would be sequestered in a special, hard to access sub-system.
It was a very noughties thing, that approach. Here is a problem - there must be an IT solution. And it must be large and expensive.
And as always the UK tries to reinvent the wheel. There are several national data systems out there which are secure and still allow major cost savings through proper storage and use of data. The British approach of combining paper and digital is the least secure and and least useful of all.
A good example is the UK tax system which, apart from being the longest tax code in the world, is also extremely expensive to administer. It costs the UK twenty times more per account than in Estonia, and that is a lot better than it was 15 years ago when it was closer to a hundred times.
The time and cost savings of being able to handle every interaction I have with the state online in Estonia is absolutely immense,"the worlds most digital society" TM is efficient and trusted. Also bear in mind that Russia tries to test the systems here to destruction on a daily basis, so cyber security is never an afterthought. Indeed the NATO cyber security protocols are "the Tallinn Manual".
At a time when the UK is going to be in deep economic trouble for possibly the next decade the idea that is is still OK to waste billions of Pounds of public money on ill conceived and frankly crappy government systems is clearly for the birds. It will take a politician with some kahunas to make the necessary investment however, especially since capital costs are so often found from general taxation. Its an expensive one time cost, but- done right- it saves a fortune.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
I'm not claiming harm, but it is striking at the moment. Its certainly not random, and yes it is probably far easier for the Ad agencies. After all if statistically 80 % of families are all white, only one ad in 5 would have non-white actors - how do you choose which one? Don't bother- have mixed race in all. But it does shift perceptions.
I also think that people are nervous about race and perceptions of bias. It's not a case of how to choose which 20% of adverts should have non-white families, so much as someone pondered the two-inch headline in the newspapers of "BIG SUPERMARKET CHAIN IN RACE ROW SHOCKER".
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
Fascinating and a bit revealing. I think the contrast is with mens football, where the black representation exceeds the average for the country. You can go down a rabbit hole asking why that is (are black people better footballers on average than white? What does that even mean?)
My private school was mainly white and asian pupils, the two big boy's sports were rugby & cricket. There was one black male pupil in my 6th form year - so even at the back end of the 90s that's a severe underrepresentation. With the big sports being cricket and rugby (Not football) though and that being common across private schools certainly up till the end of the decade (Perhaps things have changed now ?) and black pupils being under-represented in the private sector, it must mean an over-representation in the state sector where football is played so you'd expect black men to end up overepresented due to sport played at school maybe ? Not the only factor but I think the argument is generally correct.
My personal belief is that black kids are often strong and fast and get ahead early in the youth teams, and this carries through. There are other possibilities - middle and long distance running is dominted at international level by people from a very small part of Africa. Its possible that they have a genetic inheritance. Its also possible that the culture of long distance running as a way out of poverty is strong and they have role models to aspire too. In sprinting most top athletes are black - do they also have a genetic inheritance? Or is it more complex?
Joe Biden seems confused about how democracy works:
@POTUS You don’t get to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in pandemic loans and then attack my Administration for helping working folks get some relief.
I used to laugh at the reactionary red faced Tory gammon when I saw them huffing and puffing on question time.
Now I laugh at so called democratic Socialists defending SKS huffing and puffing about foreign workers in the NHS like a red faced reactionary gammon, and telling climate change protestors to get up and go home like a reactionary red faced gammon.
It's sub-optimal for sure. But just checking - now it's Sunak not Johnson you are back to preferring Labour to the Tories, aren't you?
Neither of the Starmak's are getting my vote.
Do you intend to vote for the person with a red rosette no matter how reactionary their policies?
Reflect on the hug a hoodie theory though and consider what Tory voters achieved by first voting in Cameron. In the space of a decade they managed to transform the UK into a right wing [hellhole/paradise - take your pick]. The first priority was to get a Tory elected, even one who went on husky dog sledding trips.
The big overrepresentation in adverts is of mixed race couples. I'd have thought as a % of the population they're still a very low number indeed. I can't recall many purely black & asian families on TV adverts tbh.
Also there is a super, turbo-charged overrepresentation of *beautiful* mixed race couples with seemingly angelic children. Plus a lazy dog which looks well-behaved and adorable.
Actually, the one reality show which probably does get it right in family composition and percentages (@Cookie? ) is Gogglebox. Very diverse but not sure any mixed families IIRC. Perhaps one with the family on the outlandish-coloured chairs - asian husband, white wife.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
I'm not claiming harm, but it is striking at the moment. Its certainly not random, and yes it is probably far easier for the Ad agencies. After all if statistically 80 % of families are all white, only one ad in 5 would have non-white actors - how do you choose which one? Don't bother- have mixed race in all. But it does shift perceptions.
I also think that people are nervous about race and perceptions of bias. It's not a case of how to choose which 20% of adverts should have non-white families, so much as someone pondered the two-inch headline in the newspapers of "BIG SUPERMARKET CHAIN IN RACE ROW SHOCKER".
Sadly I think you are right. Imagine, the Waitrose Christmas advert is a black family! The horror. The horror. Or worse, wearing hijabs...
On over-estimating the proportions of different groups. Back in the 1980s, when I was teaching sixth formers in a predominantly white British area, I used to ask them: 'What percentage of people in this country do you think are from minority ethnic backgrounds?". The answers, over many years and many students, ranged from 10% to 60%, with around 33% the average. At that time, the answer was around 6-7%.
At that time, the representation of ethnic minorities on TV etc. was very low. The idea that people exaggerate now because of 'positive discrimination' on TV is absurd. I suspect the poor estimates were more to do with tabloid coverage of so many 'foreigners' in our country.
I don't think it's absurd. It's part of the answer, along with news reporting, the papers, and a host of other things. There was a post much earlier which said that the country is very heterogeneous, and this is absoutely true. I grew up in a rural Wiltshire village (nothing other than white), attended a grammar school in Salisbury which had as many black students as students with only one hand. The village has barely changed, the school more so I think. And yet some cities in the UK are majority non-white.
'Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, revealed that an identity scheme was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”, arguing it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.'
Please don't, tud.
That dreadful mug, I mean. I'm not massively anti having some sort of ID card.
The problem with ID cards is never the ID cards. The last time round the problem was that they wanted to link all state held records together and make them accessible to any state official who claimed to need them. So anyone with access to the system would access to your entire life. Given that the sale of police records is a thing, what could possibly go wrong?
For extra laughs, the problem was acknowledged - records for "important" people would be sequestered in a special, hard to access sub-system.
I don't feel threatened by the idea - and I can see the benefits - but it wouldn't be a priority in my mind. We muddle along ok without them.
You should feel threatened by the idea that the chap investigating waste dumping for the local council would have access to peoples medical and tax and legal records.....
The concept was that demented. A fraudsters charter, for a start - one stop shopping for identity theft.
A single ID code that can be used to verify your identity on/off line is quite sensible. It's the other stuff that accreates around it, each time it is proposed.
That SuperLinked Card was never happening imo. But I'd oppose such a proposal if it ever looked like it might.
There's a balance here. Benefits vs Cost + Risk. And with the Risk you have to decide what is reasonable concern vs what is paranoia.
As I say, I'm agnostic on it. Maybe very marginally in favour but no way a priority what with all the other issues we face.
Very blasé to say something was never happening when it is exactly what was proposed. Not even slippery slope, it was being sold as the proposal.
You're being very "leopards eating faces" here.
My judgement - based on the parameters/constraints of politics, legal framework, behavioural science and technology - is that the sort of ID Card you're talking about here is not a realistic prospect. It's not blase, it's about "worry management" - ie allocating my worry resource according to assessed size of the threat. If I didn't do this I'd be a ball of angst and unable to function properly.
Personally I'd quite like everything state related (Local & central Gov't) to be linked to my NI number. Maybe that's just me though.
The problem is that the NI number database is an unreformable mess. There’s a lot of people with two NI numbers, and a lot of duplicates in the system. People have tried to FoI the government, who reply that they don’t have a clue how many of either scenario exists. It’s in at least the tens of thousands.
Just about the only solution to unique ID on government databases, is to start from scratch and have everyone verify themselves. Then you end up with an ID card database, just without the physical card.
Where ID cards might be a good idea, is for non-citizens to prove various entitlements. The problem is that it them becomes very easy to expand the system to everyone, and the Civil Service would be all over doing just that.
How can people have two NI numbers ?
It's a great way of dodging tax if you do.
It’s not a great way of dodging tax, it’s a great way of getting your affairs into a right mess!
“When she was speaking to HMRC, she realised that somehow she had two different NI numbers for both of the part time jobs she had been employed in, which she had worked for approx 20years (both incomes did not jointly amount to more than £9000 per year).
“I think the misunderstanding may have been because one of her part time jobs required her to present her passport, which is in her maiden name; therefore, one NI number was in her marital name and the other in her maiden.”
On over-estimating the proportions of different groups. Back in the 1980s, when I was teaching sixth formers in a predominantly white British area, I used to ask them: 'What percentage of people in this country do you think are from minority ethnic backgrounds?". The answers, over many years and many students, ranged from 10% to 60%, with around 33% the average. At that time, the answer was around 6-7%.
At that time, the representation of ethnic minorities on TV etc. was very low. The idea that people exaggerate now because of 'positive discrimination' on TV is absurd. I suspect the poor estimates were more to do with tabloid coverage of so many 'foreigners' in our country.
I don't think it's absurd. It's part of the answer, along with news reporting, the papers, and a host of other things. There was a post much earlier which said that the country is very heterogeneous, and this is absoutely true. I grew up in a rural Wiltshire village (nothing other than white), attended a grammar school in Salisbury which had as many black students as students with only one hand. The village has barely changed, the school more so I think. And yet some cities in the UK are majority non-white.
That said, as Tim says, the trimmings are the key. Gravy. (You get a ton of gravy off a capon.) Bramble jelly. Roast potatoes - as many as you can fit in the oven - cooked in goose fat. Roast parsnips. Carrots, soaked in a sugar and butter glaze. Leek and/or cauli in a cheese sauce. Roast red peppers with shallots. Sprouts, if you must (I dislike them but I like that they taste of Chistmas. I prefer them shredded and fried with pancetta and pine nuts.) Sausages. Sausagemeat. Pigs in blankets. Stuffing. My culinary highlight of the year. In all honesty I wouldn't particularly notice the lack if the turkey wasn't there at all.
That said, as Tim says, the trimmings are the key. Gravy. (You get a ton of gravy off a capon.) Bramble jelly. Roast potatoes - as many as you can fit in the oven - cooked in goose fat. Roast parsnips. Carrots, soaked in a sugar and butter glaze. Leek and/or cauli in a cheese sauce. Roast red peppers with shallots. Sprouts, if you must (I dislike them but I like that they taste of Chistmas. I prefer them shredded and fried with pancetta and pine nuts.) Sausages. Sausagemeat. Pigs in blankets. Stuffing. My culinary highlight of the year. In all honesty I wouldn't particularly notice the lack if the turkey wasn't there at all.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
You can normalise by exposure without such an egregious "overshoot".
Well, it's showing mixed race couples which is exposure how is that egregious. I did say that things overshoot and this may be one of those instances.
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
Fascinating and a bit revealing. I think the contrast is with mens football, where the black representation exceeds the average for the country. You can go down a rabbit hole asking why that is (are black people better footballers on average than white? What does that even mean?)
My private school was mainly white and asian pupils, the two big boy's sports were rugby & cricket. There was one black male pupil in my 6th form year - so even at the back end of the 90s that's a severe underrepresentation. With the big sports being cricket and rugby (Not football) though and that being common across private schools certainly up till the end of the decade (Perhaps things have changed now ?) and black pupils being under-represented in the private sector, it must mean an over-representation in the state sector where football is played so you'd expect black men to end up overepresented due to sport played at school maybe ? Not the only factor but I think the argument is generally correct.
Yes, historically there was a class bias within the racial groups, so for example black kids were under-represented at private schools, and therefore at rugby, cricket and other ‘middle class’ sports. I’m not sure I can name any black Britons in equestrian events, and only two car racing drivers - Lewis Hamilton, and Nic his brother.
I used to laugh at the reactionary red faced Tory gammon when I saw them huffing and puffing on question time.
Now I laugh at so called democratic Socialists defending SKS huffing and puffing about foreign workers in the NHS like a red faced reactionary gammon, and telling climate change protestors to get up and go home like a reactionary red faced gammon.
It's sub-optimal for sure. But just checking - now it's Sunak not Johnson you are back to preferring Labour to the Tories, aren't you?
Neither of the Starmak's are getting my vote.
Do you intend to vote for the person with a red rosette no matter how reactionary their policies?
Reflect on the hug a hoodie theory though and consider what Tory voters achieved by first voting in Cameron. In the space of a decade they managed to transform the UK into a right wing [hellhole/paradise - take your pick]. The first priority was to get a Tory elected, even one who went on husky dog sledding trips.
Well, up to a point. For those with traditional right wing concerns like the strength of the economy, enabling free enterprise, tackling unaffordably high levels of public spending, law 'n' order, immigration, wokery, a well-funded military - it's hard to look at the period 2010-2022 and think "well thank goodness that's sorted".
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
You can normalise by exposure without such an egregious "overshoot".
What I don't get is why it is "egregious"? Who cares?
I wonder how the Just Stop Oil protesters got to the locations on the M25? A smokey diesel 4x4 perhaps?
With a vehicle powered by the vegetable oil left over from the hearty vegan fryup they ate to fortify themselves before spending an indefinite period above the motorway. Obviously.
I used to laugh at the reactionary red faced Tory gammon when I saw them huffing and puffing on question time.
Now I laugh at so called democratic Socialists defending SKS huffing and puffing about foreign workers in the NHS like a red faced reactionary gammon, and telling climate change protestors to get up and go home like a reactionary red faced gammon.
It's sub-optimal for sure. But just checking - now it's Sunak not Johnson you are back to preferring Labour to the Tories, aren't you?
There is also the fact that -
1) Provably (see the A level COVID fiasco and the resultant jump in university classes) the deliberate under training of medical staff has resulted in a large number of people not having a chance to go into good jobs. Guess which groups they come from?
2) Relying on overseas recruitment has fucked the healthcare systems in a number of countries - which have found themselves training staff who immediately leave.
Re 2)
I find, to my surprise, most of the medics who were at University with me are now working in the US, Australia, Canada or the Gulf States.
One particularly outspoken young socialist seems to have matured into a very well-paid consultant in Abu Dhabi.
Ultimately, the training of more doctors and medical staff in the UK (which is a good thing) is not going to fix things unless they are retained in the UK.
Because it is not just third world countries that find they are "training staff who immediately leave."
There is a shortage of medical staff worldwide. We have the potential, in this country, to train more medics than the NHS requires. Instead, we have an institutional policy of training less.
This *guarantees* that we need overseas staff.
Of course. But, because there is a "shortage of medical staff worldwide", then young well-trained medical staff can pick where they want to go.
And, even if trained in the UK, it will often not be the UK that retains the services.
So, we will still need overseas staff.
If the terms and conditions of employment of a doctor in say Australia are markedly better than in the UK ... why stay in the UK?
I approve of training more doctors in the UK, but to suggest it will make much difference to the NHS is fantasy.
Both GBs main 2 parties have dusted off the brown Drs go home placards.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
You can normalise by exposure without such an egregious "overshoot".
What I don't get is why it is "egregious"? Who cares?
You may not, but people out there (ok usually older, comment on it). Does it matter? not really, but it is striking, as I have said.
I used to laugh at the reactionary red faced Tory gammon when I saw them huffing and puffing on question time.
Now I laugh at so called democratic Socialists defending SKS huffing and puffing about foreign workers in the NHS like a red faced reactionary gammon, and telling climate change protestors to get up and go home like a reactionary red faced gammon.
It's sub-optimal for sure. But just checking - now it's Sunak not Johnson you are back to preferring Labour to the Tories, aren't you?
There is also the fact that -
1) Provably (see the A level COVID fiasco and the resultant jump in university classes) the deliberate under training of medical staff has resulted in a large number of people not having a chance to go into good jobs. Guess which groups they come from?
2) Relying on overseas recruitment has fucked the healthcare systems in a number of countries - which have found themselves training staff who immediately leave.
Re 2)
I find, to my surprise, most of the medics who were at University with me are now working in the US, Australia, Canada or the Gulf States.
One particularly outspoken young socialist seems to have matured into a very well-paid consultant in Abu Dhabi.
Ultimately, the training of more doctors and medical staff in the UK (which is a good thing) is not going to fix things unless they are retained in the UK.
Because it is not just third world countries that find they are "training staff who immediately leave."
There is a shortage of medical staff worldwide. We have the potential, in this country, to train more medics than the NHS requires. Instead, we have an institutional policy of training less.
This *guarantees* that we need overseas staff.
Of course. But, because there is a "shortage of medical staff worldwide", then young well-trained medical staff can pick where they want to go.
And, even if trained in the UK, it will often not be the UK that retains the services.
So, we will still need overseas staff.
If the terms and conditions of employment of a doctor in say Australia are markedly better than in the UK ... why stay in the UK?
I approve of training more doctors in the UK, but to suggest it will make much difference to the NHS is fantasy.
Most people don’t move to the other side of the world just because terms and conditions of employment are better. The vast majority of UK-trained healthcare professionals remain in the UK. Train more and there will be more around. The only fantasy here is believing people move country at the drop of a hat.
I wonder how the Just Stop Oil protesters got to the locations on the M25? A smokey diesel 4x4 perhaps?
With a vehicle powered by the vegetable oil left over from the hearty vegan fryup they ate to fortify themselves before spending an indefinite period above the motorway. Obviously.
But how did they cook the fry up? Over a campfire of foraged, sustainable timber I hope.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
You can normalise by exposure without such an egregious "overshoot".
Are you in favour of government regulation of who appears in adverts?
'Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, revealed that an identity scheme was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”, arguing it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.'
Please don't, tud.
That dreadful mug, I mean. I'm not massively anti having some sort of ID card.
The problem with ID cards is never the ID cards. The last time round the problem was that they wanted to link all state held records together and make them accessible to any state official who claimed to need them. So anyone with access to the system would access to your entire life. Given that the sale of police records is a thing, what could possibly go wrong?
For extra laughs, the problem was acknowledged - records for "important" people would be sequestered in a special, hard to access sub-system.
I don't feel threatened by the idea - and I can see the benefits - but it wouldn't be a priority in my mind. We muddle along ok without them.
You should feel threatened by the idea that the chap investigating waste dumping for the local council would have access to peoples medical and tax and legal records.....
The concept was that demented. A fraudsters charter, for a start - one stop shopping for identity theft.
A single ID code that can be used to verify your identity on/off line is quite sensible. It's the other stuff that accreates around it, each time it is proposed.
That SuperLinked Card was never happening imo. But I'd oppose such a proposal if it ever looked like it might.
There's a balance here. Benefits vs Cost + Risk. And with the Risk you have to decide what is reasonable concern vs what is paranoia.
As I say, I'm agnostic on it. Maybe very marginally in favour but no way a priority what with all the other issues we face.
Very blasé to say something was never happening when it is exactly what was proposed. Not even slippery slope, it was being sold as the proposal.
You're being very "leopards eating faces" here.
My judgement - based on the parameters/constraints of politics, legal framework, behavioural science and technology - is that the sort of ID Card you're talking about here is not a realistic prospect. It's not blase, it's about "worry management" - ie allocating my worry resource according to assessed size of the threat. If I didn't do this I'd be a ball of angst and unable to function properly.
Under the Brown government exactly this thing was proposed, planned and budgeted. The contracts to implement it were being tendered. The first, trial, ID cards were actually issued.
The Coalition government cancelled it.
It came up in the negotiations that led to the Coalition government. The Labour team, when they met the LibDems, included carrying on with the ID cards as one of their red line policies. Which, given the Lib Dems were opposed to the system was a bit... interesting.
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
Fascinating and a bit revealing. I think the contrast is with mens football, where the black representation exceeds the average for the country. You can go down a rabbit hole asking why that is (are black people better footballers on average than white? What does that even mean?)
My private school was mainly white and asian pupils, the two big boy's sports were rugby & cricket. There was one black male pupil in my 6th form year - so even at the back end of the 90s that's a severe underrepresentation. With the big sports being cricket and rugby (Not football) though and that being common across private schools certainly up till the end of the decade (Perhaps things have changed now ?) and black pupils being under-represented in the private sector, it must mean an over-representation in the state sector where football is played so you'd expect black men to end up overepresented due to sport played at school maybe ? Not the only factor but I think the argument is generally correct.
My personal belief is that black kids are often strong and fast and get ahead early in the youth teams, and this carries through. There are other possibilities - middle and long distance running is dominted at international level by people from a very small part of Africa. Its possible that they have a genetic inheritance. Its also possible that the culture of long distance running as a way out of poverty is strong and they have role models to aspire too. In sprinting most top athletes are black - do they also have a genetic inheritance? Or is it more complex?
You're probably wanting west african genes if you're in the sprints and east african for longer distances to the marathon but anyone* can succeed between 400 and 1500m I think.
Presumably that is one of those parody sites that so exercise Elon Musk.
Hard to tell really, this certainly sounds like Jurgen.
Jürgen Klopp admits that he’s concerned about the new ownership.
“For sure, this is not ideal,” the German told Soccer on Sunday. “I had to give Mr Ashley the Heimlich Maneuver during our first meeting, when a kebab he was eating went down the wrong pipe. Then he floored six cans of lager, passed out and shit his own trousers. This was all in the first five minutes.”
“He was choking on his own vomit when I left the boardroom,” added Klopp. “I was tempted to do a Walter White and let him die, but James Milner came running in and rolled him onto his side. That’s Milly all over. Heart of gold.”
I wonder how the Just Stop Oil protesters got to the locations on the M25? A smokey diesel 4x4 perhaps?
With a vehicle powered by the vegetable oil left over from the hearty vegan fryup they ate to fortify themselves before spending an indefinite period above the motorway. Obviously.
But how did they cook the fry up? Over a campfire of foraged, sustainable timber I hope.
Half a dozen volunteers on static bicycles driving dynamos. Must leave the timber for the beetles and the funghi.
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
Fascinating and a bit revealing. I think the contrast is with mens football, where the black representation exceeds the average for the country. You can go down a rabbit hole asking why that is (are black people better footballers on average than white? What does that even mean?)
My private school was mainly white and asian pupils, the two big boy's sports were rugby & cricket. There was one black male pupil in my 6th form year - so even at the back end of the 90s that's a severe underrepresentation. With the big sports being cricket and rugby (Not football) though and that being common across private schools certainly up till the end of the decade (Perhaps things have changed now ?) and black pupils being under-represented in the private sector, it must mean an over-representation in the state sector where football is played so you'd expect black men to end up overepresented due to sport played at school maybe ? Not the only factor but I think the argument is generally correct.
Yes, historically there was a class bias within the racial groups, so for example black kids were under-represented at private schools, and therefore at rugby, cricket and other ‘middle class’ sports. I’m not sure I can name any black Britons in equestrian events, and only two car racing drivers - Lewis Hamilton, and Nic his brother.
You are not wrong on the equestrian events. Jockeys, trainers, spectators (check Cheltenham out), show jumpers, dressage, eventers, you name it. Because as you say it is a pretty middle class sport. Plus it is largely of rural origin. And if you are an immigrant your first port of call is likely an urban centre, not deepest, darkest countryside and if you are surrounded by countryside then you are probably not minded to check out the local riding stables before the park/footie pitches/etc.
However equestrian events have been a trailblazer for womens' sports participation and equality.
I used to laugh at the reactionary red faced Tory gammon when I saw them huffing and puffing on question time.
Now I laugh at so called democratic Socialists defending SKS huffing and puffing about foreign workers in the NHS like a red faced reactionary gammon, and telling climate change protestors to get up and go home like a reactionary red faced gammon.
It's sub-optimal for sure. But just checking - now it's Sunak not Johnson you are back to preferring Labour to the Tories, aren't you?
Neither of the Starmak's are getting my vote.
Do you intend to vote for the person with a red rosette no matter how reactionary their policies?
Reflect on the hug a hoodie theory though and consider what Tory voters achieved by first voting in Cameron. In the space of a decade they managed to transform the UK into a right wing [hellhole/paradise - take your pick]. The first priority was to get a Tory elected, even one who went on husky dog sledding trips.
I understand the idea
Its just not for me.
Having waited 2 years for SKS to actually come up with a policy he is just rehashing all the shit ones like ID cards from the end of the last New Labour Govt before they were voted out.
ID cards would not have helped when Kinnock locked himself in a car to avoid being breathalysed and they would not have helped when Starmer fled the scene of a car accident before he could be breathalysed.
I used to laugh at the reactionary red faced Tory gammon when I saw them huffing and puffing on question time.
Now I laugh at so called democratic Socialists defending SKS huffing and puffing about foreign workers in the NHS like a red faced reactionary gammon, and telling climate change protestors to get up and go home like a reactionary red faced gammon.
It's sub-optimal for sure. But just checking - now it's Sunak not Johnson you are back to preferring Labour to the Tories, aren't you?
There is also the fact that -
1) Provably (see the A level COVID fiasco and the resultant jump in university classes) the deliberate under training of medical staff has resulted in a large number of people not having a chance to go into good jobs. Guess which groups they come from?
2) Relying on overseas recruitment has fucked the healthcare systems in a number of countries - which have found themselves training staff who immediately leave.
Re 2)
I find, to my surprise, most of the medics who were at University with me are now working in the US, Australia, Canada or the Gulf States.
One particularly outspoken young socialist seems to have matured into a very well-paid consultant in Abu Dhabi.
Ultimately, the training of more doctors and medical staff in the UK (which is a good thing) is not going to fix things unless they are retained in the UK.
Because it is not just third world countries that find they are "training staff who immediately leave."
There is a shortage of medical staff worldwide. We have the potential, in this country, to train more medics than the NHS requires. Instead, we have an institutional policy of training less.
This *guarantees* that we need overseas staff.
Of course. But, because there is a "shortage of medical staff worldwide", then young well-trained medical staff can pick where they want to go.
And, even if trained in the UK, it will often not be the UK that retains the services.
So, we will still need overseas staff.
If the terms and conditions of employment of a doctor in say Australia are markedly better than in the UK ... why stay in the UK?
I approve of training more doctors in the UK, but to suggest it will make much difference to the NHS is fantasy.
Most people don’t move to the other side of the world just because terms and conditions of employment are better. The vast majority of UK-trained healthcare professionals remain in the UK. Train more and there will be more around. The only fantasy here is believing people move country at the drop of a hat.
Its clear we need to train more - but that's not easy. Its takes time, money and staff to train them. And this is happening to an extent, with expanded medical school places etc. There still needs to be training in later career stages.
There is a small risk. Pharmacy underwent a boom in schools of pharmacy around 20 years ago. Suddenly a lot more pharmacists around. Suddenly rates of pay, notably for locum shifts, plummeted. Then pharmacy became a less desirable profession. It became harder to recruit students. Some schools closed.
We are in a bit of a rebound right now - the pandemic has helped. But the future is still uncertain.
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
Fascinating and a bit revealing. I think the contrast is with mens football, where the black representation exceeds the average for the country. You can go down a rabbit hole asking why that is (are black people better footballers on average than white? What does that even mean?)
My private school was mainly white and asian pupils, the two big boy's sports were rugby & cricket. There was one black male pupil in my 6th form year - so even at the back end of the 90s that's a severe underrepresentation. With the big sports being cricket and rugby (Not football) though and that being common across private schools certainly up till the end of the decade (Perhaps things have changed now ?) and black pupils being under-represented in the private sector, it must mean an over-representation in the state sector where football is played so you'd expect black men to end up overepresented due to sport played at school maybe ? Not the only factor but I think the argument is generally correct.
My personal belief is that black kids are often strong and fast and get ahead early in the youth teams, and this carries through. There are other possibilities - middle and long distance running is dominted at international level by people from a very small part of Africa. Its possible that they have a genetic inheritance. Its also possible that the culture of long distance running as a way out of poverty is strong and they have role models to aspire too. In sprinting most top athletes are black - do they also have a genetic inheritance? Or is it more complex?
You're probably wanting west african genes if you're in the sprints and east african for longer distances to the marathon but anyone* can succeed between 400 and 1500m I think.
*Well not anyone
I'd be lapped twice during a 1500m event. I blame my parents.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
You can normalise by exposure without such an egregious "overshoot".
Well, it's showing mixed race couples which is exposure how is that egregious. I did say that things overshoot and this may be one of those instances.
It's showing pretty much exclusively mixed race couples (with some exceptions for same-sex couples). That is an egregious level of "overshoot".
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
You can normalise by exposure without such an egregious "overshoot".
What I don't get is why it is "egregious"? Who cares?
Remember how this got brought up this morning? It affects how people see the country.
I used to laugh at the reactionary red faced Tory gammon when I saw them huffing and puffing on question time.
Now I laugh at so called democratic Socialists defending SKS huffing and puffing about foreign workers in the NHS like a red faced reactionary gammon, and telling climate change protestors to get up and go home like a reactionary red faced gammon.
It's sub-optimal for sure. But just checking - now it's Sunak not Johnson you are back to preferring Labour to the Tories, aren't you?
Neither of the Starmak's are getting my vote.
Do you intend to vote for the person with a red rosette no matter how reactionary their policies?
No, if Labour were to look more reactionary than the Cons I'd take a pass. Hasn't ever happened but you never know.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
You can normalise by exposure without such an egregious "overshoot".
Are you in favour of government regulation of who appears in adverts?
Nothing says "cabinet government" like the Prime Minister studiously not speaking to one of the Cabinet Ministers so that this statement can be tortuously forced to be true.
Did he put his fingers in his ears when Williamson spoke?
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
Fascinating and a bit revealing. I think the contrast is with mens football, where the black representation exceeds the average for the country. You can go down a rabbit hole asking why that is (are black people better footballers on average than white? What does that even mean?)
My private school was mainly white and asian pupils, the two big boy's sports were rugby & cricket. There was one black male pupil in my 6th form year - so even at the back end of the 90s that's a severe underrepresentation. With the big sports being cricket and rugby (Not football) though and that being common across private schools certainly up till the end of the decade (Perhaps things have changed now ?) and black pupils being under-represented in the private sector, it must mean an over-representation in the state sector where football is played so you'd expect black men to end up overepresented due to sport played at school maybe ? Not the only factor but I think the argument is generally correct.
My personal belief is that black kids are often strong and fast and get ahead early in the youth teams, and this carries through. There are other possibilities - middle and long distance running is dominted at international level by people from a very small part of Africa. Its possible that they have a genetic inheritance. Its also possible that the culture of long distance running as a way out of poverty is strong and they have role models to aspire too. In sprinting most top athletes are black - do they also have a genetic inheritance? Or is it more complex?
You're probably wanting west african genes if you're in the sprints and east african for longer distances to the marathon but anyone* can succeed between 400 and 1500m I think.
*Well not anyone
I'd be lapped twice during a 1500m event. I blame my parents.
Must be your fault. We all came from East Africa, after all....
That said, as Tim says, the trimmings are the key. Gravy. (You get a ton of gravy off a capon.) Bramble jelly. Roast potatoes - as many as you can fit in the oven - cooked in goose fat. Roast parsnips. Carrots, soaked in a sugar and butter glaze. Leek and/or cauli in a cheese sauce. Roast red peppers with shallots. Sprouts, if you must (I dislike them but I like that they taste of Chistmas. I prefer them shredded and fried with pancetta and pine nuts.) Sausages. Sausagemeat. Pigs in blankets. Stuffing. My culinary highlight of the year. In all honesty I wouldn't particularly notice the lack if the turkey wasn't there at all.
Not a lot there for the vegans...
No. My sister in law's partner has very specific dietary requirements, which get more specific by the year. She avoids gluten and is now vegetarian. I can cheerfully cater to this, but she prefers to just bring her own meal and add the odd parnsip or leek. I think, mentally, she has quite a difficult relationship with food and ruling out most foods enables her to be very controlled with what she eats. She doesn't really drink either. This strikes me as very joyless but she is as jolly and garrulous as everyone else at the table.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
You can normalise by exposure without such an egregious "overshoot".
Well, it's showing mixed race couples which is exposure how is that egregious. I did say that things overshoot and this may be one of those instances.
It's showing pretty much exclusively mixed race couples (with some exceptions for same-sex couples). That is an egregious level of "overshoot".
What's outstandingly bad or shocking, or in archaic terms remarkably good about it? Its a non-factor on my life, I couldn't care less.
If it wasn't for being on this website I'd never have even noticed mixed race couples on adverts. Partially because I don't notice or care about the race of people on adverts, partially because this is 2022 and I almost never watch adverts anyway.
Stream and there's no adverts normally, or if you're watching a series link you can fast forward the ads.
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
Fascinating and a bit revealing. I think the contrast is with mens football, where the black representation exceeds the average for the country. You can go down a rabbit hole asking why that is (are black people better footballers on average than white? What does that even mean?)
My private school was mainly white and asian pupils, the two big boy's sports were rugby & cricket. There was one black male pupil in my 6th form year - so even at the back end of the 90s that's a severe underrepresentation. With the big sports being cricket and rugby (Not football) though and that being common across private schools certainly up till the end of the decade (Perhaps things have changed now ?) and black pupils being under-represented in the private sector, it must mean an over-representation in the state sector where football is played so you'd expect black men to end up overepresented due to sport played at school maybe ? Not the only factor but I think the argument is generally correct.
My personal belief is that black kids are often strong and fast and get ahead early in the youth teams, and this carries through. There are other possibilities - middle and long distance running is dominted at international level by people from a very small part of Africa. Its possible that they have a genetic inheritance. Its also possible that the culture of long distance running as a way out of poverty is strong and they have role models to aspire too. In sprinting most top athletes are black - do they also have a genetic inheritance? Or is it more complex?
You're probably wanting west african genes if you're in the sprints and east african for longer distances to the marathon but anyone* can succeed between 400 and 1500m I think.
*Well not anyone
I'd be lapped twice during a 1500m event. I blame my parents.
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
Fascinating and a bit revealing. I think the contrast is with mens football, where the black representation exceeds the average for the country. You can go down a rabbit hole asking why that is (are black people better footballers on average than white? What does that even mean?)
My private school was mainly white and asian pupils, the two big boy's sports were rugby & cricket. There was one black male pupil in my 6th form year - so even at the back end of the 90s that's a severe underrepresentation. With the big sports being cricket and rugby (Not football) though and that being common across private schools certainly up till the end of the decade (Perhaps things have changed now ?) and black pupils being under-represented in the private sector, it must mean an over-representation in the state sector where football is played so you'd expect black men to end up overepresented due to sport played at school maybe ? Not the only factor but I think the argument is generally correct.
Yes, historically there was a class bias within the racial groups, so for example black kids were under-represented at private schools, and therefore at rugby, cricket and other ‘middle class’ sports. I’m not sure I can name any black Britons in equestrian events, and only two car racing drivers - Lewis Hamilton, and Nic his brother.
You are not wrong on the equestrian events. Jockeys, trainers, spectators (check Cheltenham out), show jumpers, dressage, eventers, you name it. Because as you say it is a pretty middle class sport. Plus it is largely of rural origin. And if you are an immigrant your first port of call is likely an urban centre, not deepest, darkest countryside and if you are surrounded by countryside then you are probably not minded to check out the local riding stables before the park/footie pitches/etc.
However equestrian events have been a trailblazer for womens' sports participation and equality.
Horseracing in particular imports a great number of jockeys from Ireland. It may be in future we see more Asian jockeys because we are starting to see more Asian stable staff (wages are low and hours long).
On over-estimating the proportions of different groups. Back in the 1980s, when I was teaching sixth formers in a predominantly white British area, I used to ask them: 'What percentage of people in this country do you think are from minority ethnic backgrounds?". The answers, over many years and many students, ranged from 10% to 60%, with around 33% the average. At that time, the answer was around 6-7%.
At that time, the representation of ethnic minorities on TV etc. was very low. The idea that people exaggerate now because of 'positive discrimination' on TV is absurd. I suspect the poor estimates were more to do with tabloid coverage of so many 'foreigners' in our country.
I don't think it's absurd. It's part of the answer, along with news reporting, the papers, and a host of other things. There was a post much earlier which said that the country is very heterogeneous, and this is absoutely true. I grew up in a rural Wiltshire village (nothing other than white), attended a grammar school in Salisbury which had as many black students as students with only one hand. The village has barely changed, the school more so I think. And yet some cities in the UK are majority non-white.
There's a tendency in media to think that the whole country is like London.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
You can normalise by exposure without such an egregious "overshoot".
Are you in favour of government regulation of who appears in adverts?
This is the problem with the right these days. They're obsessed with identity politics, right down to analysing representations within the media (which used to be an obsession of the left, e.g. the Glasgow Media Group in the 1980s). Us on the left, however, are more relaxed and don't even notice representation on TV.
(Mind you, I'm disgusted at how rarely Albanians appear on mainstream TV, given that we are apparently awash with them at the moment. That is a disgrace),
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
You can normalise by exposure without such an egregious "overshoot".
Well, it's showing mixed race couples which is exposure how is that egregious. I did say that things overshoot and this may be one of those instances.
It's showing pretty much exclusively mixed race couples (with some exceptions for same-sex couples). That is an egregious level of "overshoot".
My wife questioned me on this casually the other week, that how come every single couple portrayed in UK TV ads is an inter-racial couple? Many mixed couples in TV dramas as well.
I think it starts out as trying to prevent certain groups from feeling excluded, but then descends into a totally un-representative absurdity.
Half a dozen volunteers on static bicycles driving dynamos. Must leave the timber for the beetles and the funghi.
Lot of copper in dynamos...
Where was it mined and how was it transported?
Ah well. I hear that's causing some tension between the "Just Stop Oil" group and a new offshoot, calling themselves "Oil Be Gone".
The OBG insist that all copper used should be recycled from copper pots and pans liberated from pretentious middle class kitchens, while the JSO still want to be able to go home to their parents for Sunday dinner.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
You can normalise by exposure without such an egregious "overshoot".
Well, it's showing mixed race couples which is exposure how is that egregious. I did say that things overshoot and this may be one of those instances.
It's showing pretty much exclusively mixed race couples (with some exceptions for same-sex couples). That is an egregious level of "overshoot".
What's outstandingly bad or shocking, or in archaic terms remarkably good about it? Its a non-factor on my life, I couldn't care less.
If it wasn't for being on this website I'd never have even noticed mixed race couples on adverts. Partially because I don't notice or care about the race of people on adverts, partially because this is 2022 and I almost never watch adverts anyway.
Stream and there's no adverts normally, or if you're watching a series link you can fast forward the ads.
You can't fast forward the ads in a series on catch-up on Ch4 or ITV. Are you trying to tell me you didn't watch Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins?!!
I used to laugh at the reactionary red faced Tory gammon when I saw them huffing and puffing on question time.
Now I laugh at so called democratic Socialists defending SKS huffing and puffing about foreign workers in the NHS like a red faced reactionary gammon, and telling climate change protestors to get up and go home like a reactionary red faced gammon.
It's sub-optimal for sure. But just checking - now it's Sunak not Johnson you are back to preferring Labour to the Tories, aren't you?
There is also the fact that -
1) Provably (see the A level COVID fiasco and the resultant jump in university classes) the deliberate under training of medical staff has resulted in a large number of people not having a chance to go into good jobs. Guess which groups they come from?
2) Relying on overseas recruitment has fucked the healthcare systems in a number of countries - which have found themselves training staff who immediately leave.
Re 2)
I find, to my surprise, most of the medics who were at University with me are now working in the US, Australia, Canada or the Gulf States.
One particularly outspoken young socialist seems to have matured into a very well-paid consultant in Abu Dhabi.
Ultimately, the training of more doctors and medical staff in the UK (which is a good thing) is not going to fix things unless they are retained in the UK.
Because it is not just third world countries that find they are "training staff who immediately leave."
There is a shortage of medical staff worldwide. We have the potential, in this country, to train more medics than the NHS requires. Instead, we have an institutional policy of training less.
This *guarantees* that we need overseas staff.
Of course. But, because there is a "shortage of medical staff worldwide", then young well-trained medical staff can pick where they want to go.
And, even if trained in the UK, it will often not be the UK that retains the services.
So, we will still need overseas staff.
If the terms and conditions of employment of a doctor in say Australia are markedly better than in the UK ... why stay in the UK?
I approve of training more doctors in the UK, but to suggest it will make much difference to the NHS is fantasy.
Most people don’t move to the other side of the world just because terms and conditions of employment are better. The vast majority of UK-trained healthcare professionals remain in the UK. Train more and there will be more around. The only fantasy here is believing people move country at the drop of a hat.
Its clear we need to train more - but that's not easy. Its takes time, money and staff to train them. And this is happening to an extent, with expanded medical school places etc. There still needs to be training in later career stages.
There is a small risk. Pharmacy underwent a boom in schools of pharmacy around 20 years ago. Suddenly a lot more pharmacists around. Suddenly rates of pay, notably for locum shifts, plummeted. Then pharmacy became a less desirable profession. It became harder to recruit students. Some schools closed.
We are in a bit of a rebound right now - the pandemic has helped. But the future is still uncertain.
Indeed - for example, quite a few of the pandemic "bulge" in medical students won't have a training place when they finish. We need the whole conveyor belt - school to qualified.
The NHS has projections for how many staff it will need, going out to a decade from now.
The people being failed by the current system are those who don't manage to struggle to the top of the failing parts of the State education system.
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
Fascinating and a bit revealing. I think the contrast is with mens football, where the black representation exceeds the average for the country. You can go down a rabbit hole asking why that is (are black people better footballers on average than white? What does that even mean?)
My private school was mainly white and asian pupils, the two big boy's sports were rugby & cricket. There was one black male pupil in my 6th form year - so even at the back end of the 90s that's a severe underrepresentation. With the big sports being cricket and rugby (Not football) though and that being common across private schools certainly up till the end of the decade (Perhaps things have changed now ?) and black pupils being under-represented in the private sector, it must mean an over-representation in the state sector where football is played so you'd expect black men to end up overepresented due to sport played at school maybe ? Not the only factor but I think the argument is generally correct.
My personal belief is that black kids are often strong and fast and get ahead early in the youth teams, and this carries through. There are other possibilities - middle and long distance running is dominted at international level by people from a very small part of Africa. Its possible that they have a genetic inheritance. Its also possible that the culture of long distance running as a way out of poverty is strong and they have role models to aspire too. In sprinting most top athletes are black - do they also have a genetic inheritance? Or is it more complex?
You're probably wanting west african genes if you're in the sprints and east african for longer distances to the marathon but anyone* can succeed between 400 and 1500m I think.
*Well not anyone
I'd be lapped twice during a 1500m event. I blame my parents.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
You can normalise by exposure without such an egregious "overshoot".
Are you in favour of government regulation of who appears in adverts?
Why would you think I might be?
You’re complaining about the matter as if it’s something that should be controlled.
I wonder how the Just Stop Oil protesters got to the locations on the M25? A smokey diesel 4x4 perhaps?
With a vehicle powered by the vegetable oil left over from the hearty vegan fryup they ate to fortify themselves before spending an indefinite period above the motorway. Obviously.
I was thinking about them yesterday. They seem to have quite decent kick and to be secured via a high quality line. Which leads you to the answer - leave them up there. Everyone is happy. They get to protest and the traffic keeps on flowing.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
You can normalise by exposure without such an egregious "overshoot".
Well, it's showing mixed race couples which is exposure how is that egregious. I did say that things overshoot and this may be one of those instances.
It's showing pretty much exclusively mixed race couples (with some exceptions for same-sex couples). That is an egregious level of "overshoot".
What's outstandingly bad or shocking, or in archaic terms remarkably good about it? Its a non-factor on my life, I couldn't care less.
If it wasn't for being on this website I'd never have even noticed mixed race couples on adverts. Partially because I don't notice or care about the race of people on adverts, partially because this is 2022 and I almost never watch adverts anyway.
Stream and there's no adverts normally, or if you're watching a series link you can fast forward the ads.
You can't fast forward the ads in a series on catch-up on Ch4 or ITV. Are you trying to tell me you didn't watch Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins?!!
Good grief, another "celebrity" show. The abundance in so called "celebrity" shows is a worse problem on TV than any racial profiling in adverts ever could be.
Never seen it sorry.
And having ranted about celebrity shows, I have to say that my better half watches I'm a Celeb. That's about the only time adverts are played in our house.
Nothing says "cabinet government" like the Prime Minister studiously not speaking to one of the Cabinet Ministers so that this statement can be tortuously forced to be true.
Did he put his fingers in his ears when Williamson spoke?
So we know if Dom Cummings has sounded off about Williamson yet? His interventions on this sort of thing are always fun. I don’t know if he’s a fan but would assume not.
'Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, revealed that an identity scheme was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”, arguing it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.'
Please don't, tud.
That dreadful mug, I mean. I'm not massively anti having some sort of ID card.
The problem with ID cards is never the ID cards. The last time round the problem was that they wanted to link all state held records together and make them accessible to any state official who claimed to need them. So anyone with access to the system would access to your entire life. Given that the sale of police records is a thing, what could possibly go wrong?
For extra laughs, the problem was acknowledged - records for "important" people would be sequestered in a special, hard to access sub-system.
I don't feel threatened by the idea - and I can see the benefits - but it wouldn't be a priority in my mind. We muddle along ok without them.
You should feel threatened by the idea that the chap investigating waste dumping for the local council would have access to peoples medical and tax and legal records.....
The concept was that demented. A fraudsters charter, for a start - one stop shopping for identity theft.
A single ID code that can be used to verify your identity on/off line is quite sensible. It's the other stuff that accreates around it, each time it is proposed.
That SuperLinked Card was never happening imo. But I'd oppose such a proposal if it ever looked like it might.
There's a balance here. Benefits vs Cost + Risk. And with the Risk you have to decide what is reasonable concern vs what is paranoia.
As I say, I'm agnostic on it. Maybe very marginally in favour but no way a priority what with all the other issues we face.
Very blasé to say something was never happening when it is exactly what was proposed. Not even slippery slope, it was being sold as the proposal.
You're being very "leopards eating faces" here.
My judgement - based on the parameters/constraints of politics, legal framework, behavioural science and technology - is that the sort of ID Card you're talking about here is not a realistic prospect. It's not blase, it's about "worry management" - ie allocating my worry resource according to assessed size of the threat. If I didn't do this I'd be a ball of angst and unable to function properly.
Under the Brown government exactly this thing was proposed, planned and budgeted. The contracts to implement it were being tendered. The first, trial, ID cards were actually issued.
The Coalition government cancelled it.
It came up in the negotiations that led to the Coalition government. The Labour team, when they met the LibDems, included carrying on with the ID cards as one of their red line policies. Which, given the Lib Dems were opposed to the system was a bit... interesting.
A SuperCard to be carried at all times, produced on demand, giving access to all aspects of your personal data inc tax and medical records? - That isn't my recall of what was planned. Don't misunderstand, I know there are risks with an ID Card. But I also know you need to distinguish reasonable concern from paranoia. If it ever comes up again that's what I'll aim to do.
Nothing says "cabinet government" like the Prime Minister studiously not speaking to one of the Cabinet Ministers so that this statement can be tortuously forced to be true.
Did he put his fingers in his ears when Williamson spoke?
So we know if Dom Cummings has sounded off about Williamson yet? His interventions on this sort of thing are always fun. I don’t know if he’s a fan but would assume not.
It’s hard to tell unless you get past the first 23,000 words of the relevant blog post. I think most have given up trying.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
You can normalise by exposure without such an egregious "overshoot".
Are you in favour of government regulation of who appears in adverts?
Why would you think I might be?
You’re complaining about the matter as if it’s something that should be controlled.
No, not at all. I dont think the government can do everything - nor do I think it should do everything that it can do.
I wonder how the Just Stop Oil protesters got to the locations on the M25? A smokey diesel 4x4 perhaps?
With a vehicle powered by the vegetable oil left over from the hearty vegan fryup they ate to fortify themselves before spending an indefinite period above the motorway. Obviously.
But how did they cook the fry up? Over a campfire of foraged, sustainable timber I hope.
Half a dozen volunteers on static bicycles driving dynamos. Must leave the timber for the beetles and the funghi.
I wonder how the volunteers got the energy to pedal those bicycles?
Six large big mac meals with milkshakes and fries, from the drive through I suppose. That's sustainable isn't it?
I used to laugh at the reactionary red faced Tory gammon when I saw them huffing and puffing on question time.
Now I laugh at so called democratic Socialists defending SKS huffing and puffing about foreign workers in the NHS like a red faced reactionary gammon, and telling climate change protestors to get up and go home like a reactionary red faced gammon.
It's sub-optimal for sure. But just checking - now it's Sunak not Johnson you are back to preferring Labour to the Tories, aren't you?
There is also the fact that -
1) Provably (see the A level COVID fiasco and the resultant jump in university classes) the deliberate under training of medical staff has resulted in a large number of people not having a chance to go into good jobs. Guess which groups they come from?
2) Relying on overseas recruitment has fucked the healthcare systems in a number of countries - which have found themselves training staff who immediately leave.
Re 2)
I find, to my surprise, most of the medics who were at University with me are now working in the US, Australia, Canada or the Gulf States.
One particularly outspoken young socialist seems to have matured into a very well-paid consultant in Abu Dhabi.
Ultimately, the training of more doctors and medical staff in the UK (which is a good thing) is not going to fix things unless they are retained in the UK.
Because it is not just third world countries that find they are "training staff who immediately leave."
There is a shortage of medical staff worldwide. We have the potential, in this country, to train more medics than the NHS requires. Instead, we have an institutional policy of training less.
This *guarantees* that we need overseas staff.
Of course. But, because there is a "shortage of medical staff worldwide", then young well-trained medical staff can pick where they want to go.
And, even if trained in the UK, it will often not be the UK that retains the services.
So, we will still need overseas staff.
If the terms and conditions of employment of a doctor in say Australia are markedly better than in the UK ... why stay in the UK?
I approve of training more doctors in the UK, but to suggest it will make much difference to the NHS is fantasy.
Most people don’t move to the other side of the world just because terms and conditions of employment are better. The vast majority of UK-trained healthcare professionals remain in the UK. Train more and there will be more around. The only fantasy here is believing people move country at the drop of a hat.
I think you are an academic at one of the London Colleges, no?
So, you know perfectly well young people do move country at the drop of a hat. They move to where they can get a job with the best terms and conditions.
Look at your faculty, especially the ones aged under 45.
Ultimately, every country in the world needs doctors. Like academics, it is a global marketplace.
'Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, revealed that an identity scheme was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”, arguing it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.'
Please don't, tud.
That dreadful mug, I mean. I'm not massively anti having some sort of ID card.
The problem with ID cards is never the ID cards. The last time round the problem was that they wanted to link all state held records together and make them accessible to any state official who claimed to need them. So anyone with access to the system would access to your entire life. Given that the sale of police records is a thing, what could possibly go wrong?
For extra laughs, the problem was acknowledged - records for "important" people would be sequestered in a special, hard to access sub-system.
I don't feel threatened by the idea - and I can see the benefits - but it wouldn't be a priority in my mind. We muddle along ok without them.
You should feel threatened by the idea that the chap investigating waste dumping for the local council would have access to peoples medical and tax and legal records.....
The concept was that demented. A fraudsters charter, for a start - one stop shopping for identity theft.
A single ID code that can be used to verify your identity on/off line is quite sensible. It's the other stuff that accreates around it, each time it is proposed.
That SuperLinked Card was never happening imo. But I'd oppose such a proposal if it ever looked like it might.
There's a balance here. Benefits vs Cost + Risk. And with the Risk you have to decide what is reasonable concern vs what is paranoia.
As I say, I'm agnostic on it. Maybe very marginally in favour but no way a priority what with all the other issues we face.
Very blasé to say something was never happening when it is exactly what was proposed. Not even slippery slope, it was being sold as the proposal.
You're being very "leopards eating faces" here.
My judgement - based on the parameters/constraints of politics, legal framework, behavioural science and technology - is that the sort of ID Card you're talking about here is not a realistic prospect. It's not blase, it's about "worry management" - ie allocating my worry resource according to assessed size of the threat. If I didn't do this I'd be a ball of angst and unable to function properly.
Under the Brown government exactly this thing was proposed, planned and budgeted. The contracts to implement it were being tendered. The first, trial, ID cards were actually issued.
The Coalition government cancelled it.
It came up in the negotiations that led to the Coalition government. The Labour team, when they met the LibDems, included carrying on with the ID cards as one of their red line policies. Which, given the Lib Dems were opposed to the system was a bit... interesting.
A SuperCard to be carried at all times, produced on demand, giving access to all aspects of your personal data inc tax and medical records? - That isn't my recall of what was planned. Don't misunderstand, I know there are risks with an ID Card. But I also know you need to distinguish reasonable concern from paranoia. If it ever comes up again that's what I'll aim to do.
I'm not sure paranoia is the right word. Paranoia would be 'government wants this tool for nefarious ends'. My view was more 'I don't believe that there won't be dozens of negative unintended consequences as a result of this proposal'.
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
What if you look at the percentages of those groups for women in their twenties, rather than the population as a whole? Does it make much difference?
I make it 81% total "White" for 18-29 year olds (men and women) 11% "Asian" 4% "Black" 3% "Mixed" and almost 1.5% "Other" So a starting 11 with just under 9 players white total Just over 1 Asian And almost one player black or mixed or other.
I used to laugh at the reactionary red faced Tory gammon when I saw them huffing and puffing on question time.
Now I laugh at so called democratic Socialists defending SKS huffing and puffing about foreign workers in the NHS like a red faced reactionary gammon, and telling climate change protestors to get up and go home like a reactionary red faced gammon.
It's sub-optimal for sure. But just checking - now it's Sunak not Johnson you are back to preferring Labour to the Tories, aren't you?
There is also the fact that -
1) Provably (see the A level COVID fiasco and the resultant jump in university classes) the deliberate under training of medical staff has resulted in a large number of people not having a chance to go into good jobs. Guess which groups they come from?
2) Relying on overseas recruitment has fucked the healthcare systems in a number of countries - which have found themselves training staff who immediately leave.
Re 2)
I find, to my surprise, most of the medics who were at University with me are now working in the US, Australia, Canada or the Gulf States.
One particularly outspoken young socialist seems to have matured into a very well-paid consultant in Abu Dhabi.
Ultimately, the training of more doctors and medical staff in the UK (which is a good thing) is not going to fix things unless they are retained in the UK.
Because it is not just third world countries that find they are "training staff who immediately leave."
There is a shortage of medical staff worldwide. We have the potential, in this country, to train more medics than the NHS requires. Instead, we have an institutional policy of training less.
This *guarantees* that we need overseas staff.
Of course. But, because there is a "shortage of medical staff worldwide", then young well-trained medical staff can pick where they want to go.
And, even if trained in the UK, it will often not be the UK that retains the services.
So, we will still need overseas staff.
If the terms and conditions of employment of a doctor in say Australia are markedly better than in the UK ... why stay in the UK?
I approve of training more doctors in the UK, but to suggest it will make much difference to the NHS is fantasy.
Most people don’t move to the other side of the world just because terms and conditions of employment are better. The vast majority of UK-trained healthcare professionals remain in the UK. Train more and there will be more around. The only fantasy here is believing people move country at the drop of a hat.
I think you are an academic at one of the London Colleges, no?
So, you know perfectly well young people do move country at the drop of a hat. They move to where they can get a job with the best terms and conditions.
Look at your faculty, especially the ones aged under 45.
Ultimately, every country in the world needs doctors. Like academics, it is a global marketplace.
Some people move at the drop of a hat.
Most don't, as they have family or other connections (or even just inertia) that prevents it.
Nothing says "cabinet government" like the Prime Minister studiously not speaking to one of the Cabinet Ministers so that this statement can be tortuously forced to be true.
Did he put his fingers in his ears when Williamson spoke?
So we know if Dom Cummings has sounded off about Williamson yet? His interventions on this sort of thing are always fun. I don’t know if he’s a fan but would assume not.
It’s hard to tell unless you get past the first 23,000 words of the relevant blog post. I think most have given up trying.
I just went on to Twitter to check and the answer is no. Nothing on Gavin.
Most of his posts are very boring. He’s clearly pro-Musk vis a vis Twitter, and a lab leak fan. A bit of AI (stable diffusion) chat too.
Tesla is recalling just over 40,000 2017-2021 Model S and Model X vehicles that may experience a loss of power steering assist when driving on rough roads or after hitting a pothole https://reut.rs/3E9CN7R
I blame TV. Every advert that shows a couple or family is now seemingly mixed race. I get that the advertisers are trying to represent the market but really - is this the only or indeed best way to do it? And then there is the shows like Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Woodworking etc. If there are 10 contestests there will be a guarateed quota of LGBTQ+, ethnic background etc etc (as the figures show, far in excess of reality (2% gay/lesbian does not mean every show has to have one.). So if you watch TV there is a normallisation of the high numbers in the survey that does not match reality.
Note - I have no issue with anyones ethnicity, sexual orientation, choice of partner, but it is striking how different TV is from the real country.
During the Women's Euro competition the England team got a bit of stick for their lack of diversity and representation. This made me curious and I looked up some figures (for England and Wales as that's how the ONS records them) and concluded that the Women's team was quite close to being representative of the population, and was much more representative than the Men's team is.
Basically if you ignore the socio-economic aspects that influence participation in football an England Women's 11 should have 9 white players per match, 1 player of Asian descent, and a black player only every third match, with the other two matches being a white player of non-British descent (Irish and Eastern European mainly).
The group that actually stands out as being unrepresented in my opinion is players of Asian descent.
Fascinating and a bit revealing. I think the contrast is with mens football, where the black representation exceeds the average for the country. You can go down a rabbit hole asking why that is (are black people better footballers on average than white? What does that even mean?)
My private school was mainly white and asian pupils, the two big boy's sports were rugby & cricket. There was one black male pupil in my 6th form year - so even at the back end of the 90s that's a severe underrepresentation. With the big sports being cricket and rugby (Not football) though and that being common across private schools certainly up till the end of the decade (Perhaps things have changed now ?) and black pupils being under-represented in the private sector, it must mean an over-representation in the state sector where football is played so you'd expect black men to end up overepresented due to sport played at school maybe ? Not the only factor but I think the argument is generally correct.
My personal belief is that black kids are often strong and fast and get ahead early in the youth teams, and this carries through. There are other possibilities - middle and long distance running is dominted at international level by people from a very small part of Africa. Its possible that they have a genetic inheritance. Its also possible that the culture of long distance running as a way out of poverty is strong and they have role models to aspire too. In sprinting most top athletes are black - do they also have a genetic inheritance? Or is it more complex?
You're probably wanting west african genes if you're in the sprints and east african for longer distances to the marathon but anyone* can succeed between 400 and 1500m I think.
*Well not anyone
I'd be lapped twice during a 1500m event. I blame my parents.
Were you carrying them?
My problem is that my genes are too tight to run in.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
You can normalise by exposure without such an egregious "overshoot".
Are you in favour of government regulation of who appears in adverts?
This is the problem with the right these days. They're obsessed with identity politics, right down to analysing representations within the media (which used to be an obsession of the left, e.g. the Glasgow Media Group in the 1980s). Us on the left, however, are more relaxed and don't even notice representation on TV.
(Mind you, I'm disgusted at how rarely Albanians appear on mainstream TV, given that we are apparently awash with them at the moment. That is a disgrace),
Kosovar Albanians are overrepresented in pop music, if that’s any consolation. There’s Dua Lipa, Rita Ora, Bebe Rexha…
Joe Biden seems confused about how democracy works:
@POTUS You don’t get to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in pandemic loans and then attack my Administration for helping working folks get some relief.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
Yes. Used to be Diversity was a non-issue about because minorities were not seen as worth bothering about. Now Diversity has become a mandatory issue that MUST be thought about. The optimistic end state - but as you say not around the corner - is it becoming again a non-issue because all are equal and nobody even notices.
Have we noted that today is the final (?) part of the case where Mermaids (with support from the Good Law Project) are attempting to have charitable status removed from the LGB Alliance.
Nothing says "cabinet government" like the Prime Minister studiously not speaking to one of the Cabinet Ministers so that this statement can be tortuously forced to be true.
Did he put his fingers in his ears when Williamson spoke?
So we know if Dom Cummings has sounded off about Williamson yet? His interventions on this sort of thing are always fun. I don’t know if he’s a fan but would assume not.
The only fan in Williamson's life is the one that cools his office.....
The most obvious way to fix the NHS staff shortage, is to train more staff. The obvious way to retain staff, is to make said education tuition-free, so long as one agrees to spend say 15 years working in the NHS.
Bonus points is they can create enough places to be able to attract overseas students, who could be given a similar financial incentive to stay in the UK when they graduate.
My out-of-the-box thinking on NHS recruitment, is to set up a full NHS teaching hospital in Mumbai or Manila, staffed by retired NHS managers on secondment. It would train people there to UK standard qualifications, support the local community with subsidised healthcare, and to offer NHS jobs with UK visas for the graduates - at a much lower cost than establishing another hospital in the UK.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
You can normalise by exposure without such an egregious "overshoot".
Are you in favour of government regulation of who appears in adverts?
This is the problem with the right these days. They're obsessed with identity politics, right down to analysing representations within the media (which used to be an obsession of the left, e.g. the Glasgow Media Group in the 1980s). Us on the left, however, are more relaxed and don't even notice representation on TV.
(Mind you, I'm disgusted at how rarely Albanians appear on mainstream TV, given that we are apparently awash with them at the moment. That is a disgrace),
Kosovar Albanians are overrepresented in pop music, if that’s any consolation. There’s Dua Lipa, Rita Ora, Bebe Rexha…
Disgraceful. The music industry needs to take a hard look at its blatant pro-Albanianism.
Many adverts do include improbably (according to the stats I have no doubt) diverse family groupings.
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
You can normalise by exposure without such an egregious "overshoot".
Well, it's showing mixed race couples which is exposure how is that egregious. I did say that things overshoot and this may be one of those instances.
It's showing pretty much exclusively mixed race couples (with some exceptions for same-sex couples). That is an egregious level of "overshoot".
What's outstandingly bad or shocking, or in archaic terms remarkably good about it? Its a non-factor on my life, I couldn't care less.
If it wasn't for being on this website I'd never have even noticed mixed race couples on adverts. Partially because I don't notice or care about the race of people on adverts, partially because this is 2022 and I almost never watch adverts anyway.
Stream and there's no adverts normally, or if you're watching a series link you can fast forward the ads.
You can't fast forward the ads in a series on catch-up on Ch4 or ITV. Are you trying to tell me you didn't watch Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins?!!
Good grief, another "celebrity" show. The abundance in so called "celebrity" shows is a worse problem on TV than any racial profiling in adverts ever could be.
Never seen it sorry.
And having ranted about celebrity shows, I have to say that my better half watches I'm a Celeb. That's about the only time adverts are played in our house.
Bang goes the Roberts family plan not to pay the licence fee.
Wrt the Senate election, it's easy to forget that Pennsylvania is currently a Republican seat. If they win it tonight it's a hold not a gain. The Democrats have a good chance of gaining it.
'Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, revealed that an identity scheme was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”, arguing it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.'
Please don't, tud.
That dreadful mug, I mean. I'm not massively anti having some sort of ID card.
The problem with ID cards is never the ID cards. The last time round the problem was that they wanted to link all state held records together and make them accessible to any state official who claimed to need them. So anyone with access to the system would access to your entire life. Given that the sale of police records is a thing, what could possibly go wrong?
For extra laughs, the problem was acknowledged - records for "important" people would be sequestered in a special, hard to access sub-system.
I don't feel threatened by the idea - and I can see the benefits - but it wouldn't be a priority in my mind. We muddle along ok without them.
You should feel threatened by the idea that the chap investigating waste dumping for the local council would have access to peoples medical and tax and legal records.....
The concept was that demented. A fraudsters charter, for a start - one stop shopping for identity theft.
A single ID code that can be used to verify your identity on/off line is quite sensible. It's the other stuff that accreates around it, each time it is proposed.
That SuperLinked Card was never happening imo. But I'd oppose such a proposal if it ever looked like it might.
There's a balance here. Benefits vs Cost + Risk. And with the Risk you have to decide what is reasonable concern vs what is paranoia.
As I say, I'm agnostic on it. Maybe very marginally in favour but no way a priority what with all the other issues we face.
Very blasé to say something was never happening when it is exactly what was proposed. Not even slippery slope, it was being sold as the proposal.
You're being very "leopards eating faces" here.
My judgement - based on the parameters/constraints of politics, legal framework, behavioural science and technology - is that the sort of ID Card you're talking about here is not a realistic prospect. It's not blase, it's about "worry management" - ie allocating my worry resource according to assessed size of the threat. If I didn't do this I'd be a ball of angst and unable to function properly.
Under the Brown government exactly this thing was proposed, planned and budgeted. The contracts to implement it were being tendered. The first, trial, ID cards were actually issued.
The Coalition government cancelled it.
It came up in the negotiations that led to the Coalition government. The Labour team, when they met the LibDems, included carrying on with the ID cards as one of their red line policies. Which, given the Lib Dems were opposed to the system was a bit... interesting.
A SuperCard to be carried at all times, produced on demand, giving access to all aspects of your personal data inc tax and medical records? - That isn't my recall of what was planned. Don't misunderstand, I know there are risks with an ID Card. But I also know you need to distinguish reasonable concern from paranoia. If it ever comes up again that's what I'll aim to do.
The linked databases were the whole problem - that and giving access to everything to everyone using the system. Hence the LIbDems vocal opposition, and the David Davis etc.
Just imagine the fun the police could have when investigating people with loud shirts in built up areas, possessing an offensive wife etc etc
I work in IT and I know what was being implemented. It was utterly insane - unless you were a government bureaucrat who wanted to be able to identify and track people as they do in bad TV/films.
Comments
Do you intend to vote for the person with a red rosette no matter how reactionary their policies?
However, as with many things it may be that we are seeing an overshoot. From decades of few, or no, or comic non-white faces (I also understand that the non-white population was smaller) to plenty.
It is normalising by exposure a diverse population. So that if you live for example in an all-white village in Wiltshire you are not going to have a heart attack if you come up on a day trip to London and see non-white faces, many of them, on the tube.
One day, I hope not too far but I suspect very far into the future we will all be colour blind and the characters in adverts will be wholly random. But we are not there yet so I see no harm and a great deal of benefit in this activity.
Not the only factor but I think the argument is generally correct.
I just enjoy maths. And when something happens which I think is statistically unlikely, I enjoy finding out exactly how statistically unlikely.
(I used to drink with mathematicians, and working out probabilities of things, testing the assumptions we used, took up a large proportion of the evening.)
I did consider the extent to which ethnic minorities are overrepresented in the entertainment industry. It becomes a slightly circular argument, because my impression of the entertainment industry is panels shows and adverts, which, etc. My guess is that ethnic minorities are overrepresented in entertainment amongst their age cohort, but this is probably balanced out by the fact that the proportion of ethnic minorities among the adult population is somewhat lower than the proportion of ethnic minorities among the whole population.
But the mathematically interesting thing is when you ALWAYS see an ethnic minority in any group of four. It just doesn't happen by chance. (You don't, for example, always see someone from the North of England, and Northerners make up about a quarter of the British population.)
Just about the only solution to unique ID on government databases, is to start from scratch and have everyone verify themselves. Then you end up with an ID card database, just without the physical card.
Where ID cards might be a good idea, is for non-citizens to prove various entitlements. The problem is that it them becomes very easy to expand the system to everyone, and the Civil Service would be all over doing just that.
I can't recall many purely black & asian families on TV adverts tbh.
And, even if trained in the UK, it will often not be the UK that retains the services.
So, we will still need overseas staff.
If the terms and conditions of employment of a doctor in say Australia are markedly better than in the UK ... why stay in the UK?
I approve of training more doctors in the UK, but to suggest it will make much difference to the NHS is fantasy.
It's a great way of dodging tax if you do.
If you know, you know.
Cameron famously sprinkled his schtick in the couple of years leading up to 2010 with several bits of imagery intended to appeal to lefties. Dog-sledding in Norway (I think?) to demonstrate his care for the planet, talking about the need to reform and understand juvenile delinquants etc. In hindsight of course this was mainly leftwashing, albeit built on a core value system of mild social liberalism, but I think it did the job of reassuring social liberals and centrists that this was a man they could do business with.
Starmer is now quite blatantly rightwashing, likely built on a core value system of traditional Labour authoritarianism, and I expect it will do the job of reassuring Tory-inclined floating voters.
Maybe every opposition that's been out of power for an extended period needs to reach the HAH stage before getting sufficient swing to score a change in government. In 1995-7 the HAH priority was demonstrating fiscal conservatism, whereas by 2010 it had become about cultural issues.
Maybe indeed we have the seeds of a grand unifying theory of British opposition, divided into 4 stages:
1. Wyle E Coyote period. Newly out of power, keeps doing broadly what it was doing before, still hasn't come to terms with being in opposition. Limited to a few soundbites such as "common sense revolution" or "squeezed middle" (Hague era, E Miliband era)
2. The descent into fundamentalism. Frustrated with being out of power and creaking at the seams, the party looks inwardly to try to discover its own purpose. The fundamentalists exploit the power vacuum caused by the departure of the ancienne regime to take over. (IDS, Corbyn, Foot - in which instance Labour jumped straight to stage 2 arguably because Callaghan was a form of stage 1, in office but scarcely in power)
3. The reform period. The party starts to look for ways back to coherence and voter appeal. The backlash against the damage done by the fundamentalists brings a reforming front bench into place, who work first to sort out the internal chaos and second to shore up the vote (Kinnock then Smith, Howard and early Cameron, early Starmer)
4. Hug a hoodie phase. finally tasting the possibility of forming a government, the party starts addressing itself with energy at the swing voting demographic. This tends to lead to them adopting approaches or imagery out of kilter with their traditional posture (Blair and Brown, Cameron, later Starmer).
https://twitter.com/stu_actor/status/1589950232778792960?s=61&t=RSyaHjCGx_GiCLG0zO_2HQ
A good example is the UK tax system which, apart from being the longest tax code in the world, is also extremely expensive to administer. It costs the UK twenty times more per account than in Estonia, and that is a lot better than it was 15 years ago when it was closer to a hundred times.
The time and cost savings of being able to handle every interaction I have with the state online in Estonia is absolutely immense,"the worlds most digital society" TM is efficient and trusted. Also bear in mind that Russia tries to test the systems here to destruction on a daily basis, so cyber security is never an afterthought. Indeed the NATO cyber security protocols are "the Tallinn Manual".
At a time when the UK is going to be in deep economic trouble for possibly the next decade the idea that is is still OK to waste billions of Pounds of public money on ill conceived and frankly crappy government systems is clearly for the birds. It will take a politician with some kahunas to make the necessary investment however, especially since capital costs are so often found from general taxation. Its an expensive one time cost, but- done right- it saves a fortune.
In sprinting most top athletes are black - do they also have a genetic inheritance? Or is it more complex?
Actually, the one reality show which probably does get it right in family composition and percentages (@Cookie? ) is Gogglebox. Very diverse but not sure any mixed families IIRC. Perhaps one with the family on the outlandish-coloured chairs - asian husband, white wife.
A smokey diesel 4x4 perhaps?
https://www.taxationweb.co.uk/forum/2-ni-numbers-t34223.html
“When she was speaking to HMRC, she realised that somehow she had two different NI numbers for both of the part time jobs she had been employed in, which she had worked for approx 20years (both incomes did not jointly amount to more than £9000 per year).
“I think the misunderstanding may have been because one of her part time jobs required her to present her passport, which is in her maiden name; therefore, one NI number was in her marital name and the other in her maiden.”
One party state.
Gavin Williamson attended cabinet this morning.
PM's spox says "serious allegations" emerged this morning, but not aware of "any formal complaint" being made.
But Rishi Sunak hasn't spoken directly to Williamson since allegations made.
https://twitter.com/mikeysmith/status/1589955695784636416
The Coalition government cancelled it.
It came up in the negotiations that led to the Coalition government. The Labour team, when they met the LibDems, included carrying on with the ID cards as one of their red line policies. Which, given the Lib Dems were opposed to the system was a bit... interesting.
*Well not anyone
Jürgen Klopp admits that he’s concerned about the new ownership.
“For sure, this is not ideal,” the German told Soccer on Sunday. “I had to give Mr Ashley the Heimlich Maneuver during our first meeting, when a kebab he was eating went down the wrong pipe. Then he floored six cans of lager, passed out and shit his own trousers. This was all in the first five minutes.”
“He was choking on his own vomit when I left the boardroom,” added Klopp. “I was tempted to do a Walter White and let him die, but James Milner came running in and rolled him onto his side. That’s Milly all over. Heart of gold.”
However equestrian events have been a trailblazer for womens' sports participation and equality.
In response, they said they want to consider all proper processes before commenting further.
https://trib.al/ecixuwi
📺 Sky 501 and YouTube https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1589957553558999041/video/1
Its just not for me.
Having waited 2 years for SKS to actually come up with a policy he is just rehashing all the shit ones like ID cards from the end of the last New Labour Govt before they were voted out.
ID cards would not have helped when Kinnock locked himself in a car to avoid being breathalysed and they would not have helped when Starmer fled the scene of a car accident before he could be breathalysed.
There is a small risk. Pharmacy underwent a boom in schools of pharmacy around 20 years ago. Suddenly a lot more pharmacists around. Suddenly rates of pay, notably for locum shifts, plummeted. Then pharmacy became a less desirable profession. It became harder to recruit students. Some schools closed.
We are in a bit of a rebound right now - the pandemic has helped. But the future is still uncertain.
Where was it mined and how was it transported?
Don't they?
Did he put his fingers in his ears when Williamson spoke?
My sister in law's partner has very specific dietary requirements, which get more specific by the year. She avoids gluten and is now vegetarian. I can cheerfully cater to this, but she prefers to just bring her own meal and add the odd parnsip or leek. I think, mentally, she has quite a difficult relationship with food and ruling out most foods enables her to be very controlled with what she eats. She doesn't really drink either.
This strikes me as very joyless but she is as jolly and garrulous as everyone else at the table.
/ɪˈɡriːdʒəs/
adjective
1. outstandingly bad; shocking.
"egregious abuses of copyright"
2. ARCHAIC remarkably good.
What's outstandingly bad or shocking, or in archaic terms remarkably good about it? Its a non-factor on my life, I couldn't care less.
If it wasn't for being on this website I'd never have even noticed mixed race couples on adverts. Partially because I don't notice or care about the race of people on adverts, partially because this is 2022 and I almost never watch adverts anyway.
Stream and there's no adverts normally, or if you're watching a series link you can fast forward the ads.
(Mind you, I'm disgusted at how rarely Albanians appear on mainstream TV, given that we are apparently awash with them at the moment. That is a disgrace),
I think it starts out as trying to prevent certain groups from feeling excluded, but then descends into a totally un-representative absurdity.
The OBG insist that all copper used should be recycled from copper pots and pans liberated from pretentious middle class kitchens, while the JSO still want to be able to go home to their parents for Sunday dinner.
The NHS has projections for how many staff it will need, going out to a decade from now.
The people being failed by the current system are those who don't manage to struggle to the top of the failing parts of the State education system.
Never seen it sorry.
And having ranted about celebrity shows, I have to say that my better half watches I'm a Celeb. That's about the only time adverts are played in our house.
Six large big mac meals with milkshakes and fries, from the drive through I suppose.
That's sustainable isn't it?
So, you know perfectly well young people do move country at the drop of a hat. They move to where they can get a job with the best terms and conditions.
Look at your faculty, especially the ones aged under 45.
Ultimately, every country in the world needs doctors. Like academics, it is a global marketplace.
Paranoia would be 'government wants this tool for nefarious ends'.
My view was more 'I don't believe that there won't be dozens of negative unintended consequences as a result of this proposal'.
https://twitter.com/TpyxaNews/status/1589887000668041216
https://twitter.com/brokenbottleboy/status/1589524581018406912
According to the 2011 census
https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnicity/demographics/age-groups/latest
I make it 81% total "White" for 18-29 year olds (men and women)
11% "Asian"
4% "Black"
3% "Mixed"
and almost 1.5% "Other"
So a starting 11 with just under 9 players white total
Just over 1 Asian
And almost one player black or mixed or other.
Most don't, as they have family or other connections (or even just inertia) that prevents it.
Most of his posts are very boring. He’s clearly pro-Musk vis a vis Twitter, and a lab leak fan. A bit of AI (stable diffusion) chat too.
Fortune-teller Tarot says his conscription will be 'seriously delayed'
Happy man returns home
Receives an immediate mobilisation notice
Returns to fortune teller, beats him up
Gets arrested, mobilisation delayed
https://twitter.com/maxfras/status/1589925514038611968/photo/1
Have we noted that today is the final (?) part of the case where Mermaids (with support from the Good Law Project) are attempting to have charitable status removed from the LGB Alliance.
The hearing is being tweeted here:
https://twitter.com/tribunaltweets/status/1589912824742281218
Background here. One charity attempting to remove the charitable status of another seems to be unprecedented.
https://tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/mermaids-vs-lgb-alliance-and-the
Bonus points is they can create enough places to be able to attract overseas students, who could be given a similar financial incentive to stay in the UK when they graduate.
My out-of-the-box thinking on NHS recruitment, is to set up a full NHS teaching hospital in Mumbai or Manila, staffed by retired NHS managers on secondment. It would train people there to UK standard qualifications, support the local community with subsidised healthcare, and to offer NHS jobs with UK visas for the graduates - at a much lower cost than establishing another hospital in the UK.
Just imagine the fun the police could have when investigating people with loud shirts in built up areas, possessing an offensive wife etc etc
I work in IT and I know what was being implemented. It was utterly insane - unless you were a government bureaucrat who wanted to be able to identify and track people as they do in bad TV/films.
Well done to whichever country’s James Bond that was.