The thing with any of these exhibits that I am sure portray outdated stereotypes and a certain element of "white saviour", if you were really serious about education and telling an accurate story etc (rather than really driven by a political / cultural marxism), you simply add a load of additional info around the exhibit that states the context and that this comes from a different eta, we have thankfully moved on etc.
They claim they “tried to do that”, but in the end a collection gathered by one rich white guy was just too toxic to tolerate, and also the whole idea of medicine - in a medical museum - perpetuates the idea that “health is normal” and is thus ableist
So it had to go
These were their genuine reasons
Doesn’t look good for the Tate when this bitch takes over there
For CycleFree (and others), I would like to offer this possible clue: I would guess that most of Jeffrey Epstein's victims did not have fathers in their lives. I don't have any practical way to investigate that myself, and fear that possibility is unlikely to attract the attention of those who could, journalists, prosecutors, academics, and so on.
The thing with any of these exhibits that I am sure portray outdated stereotypes and a certain element of "white saviour", if you were really serious about education and telling an accurate story etc (rather than really driven by a political / cultural marxism), you simply add a load of additional info around the exhibit that states the context and that this comes from a different eta, we have thankfully moved on etc.
They claim they “tried to do that”, but in the end a collection gathered by one rich white guy was just too toxic to tolerate, and also the whole idea of medicine - in a medical museum - perpetuates the idea that “health is normal” and is thus ableist
So it had to go
These were their genuine reasons
Doesn’t look good for the Tate when this bitch takes over there
The thing is to just boycott these museums and find the fuddiest, stuffiest museum possible and go there until they get back to doing what they are supposed to do
Nicely argued header, but based on a basic misapprehension - that the only way to make Brexit work is to make it less. This is demonstrably false. The best way to make it work is to diverge in areas where it's in out interests to do so, to lay aside European restrictions where they were cumbersome, and to solve the NI issue, preferably by negotiating with the EU, but if not, reserving the right to act unilaterally. Brexit can only be allowed to work if those wielding power can bring themselves to say goodbye to EU law and projects - we saw how unwilling they are to do this with the unprecedented civil service call for EU law to remain in force. These people do not want to run a post-EU country.
It’s rare to see such a vacuous point being made so forcefully. What EU restrictions and laws are hampering the country still? If you want to unilaterally ignore the NI Protocol all you will end up doing is putting the border in land and what benefit will that provide?
The EU waterways directive is afaik still enforced in full by the Environment agency, making it almost impossible to dredge, and thus opening the possibility of winter flooding.
This legislation also opposes the building of new water infrastructure including reservoirs, that are badly needed with a rising population. Instead of the necessary infrastructure, we're now given adverts advising us to shower for less time (at least in Scotland), which is, again, from the waterways directive, and is the sort of grotesque anti-human garbage that should have been tossed the minute we signed the divorce papers.
HS2 is an EU rail project. It is even rumoured to be part-funded by the EU, though I cannot find any verification of that. It is a crushing dead weight on the Exchequer and should be binned. It's quite clear that with the current shower, of people were starving on the streets it still wouldn't be.
On the CAP, Boris's Government made a lot of 'breaking out' of the CAP, but actually, there's no difference in policy:
It's the same deeply misguided set of incentives that put rewilding ahead of food security. Liz had big changes planned here - as we know, the blob has now reasserted itself, so that won't happen for now.
On energy - it's clear to all that we need a strategy to be self sufficient in energy - we cannot be dependent on the continent, which is itself short of energy and dependent on Russian gas. It is also clear that our grid needs to be upgraded, to make more use of remote wind installations that are currently getting paid to switch off. So why is the National Grid building expensive interconnectors to Germany? https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/new-cable-between-germany-and-uk-advances-europes-integrated-power-system
Simply because it is a move toward a single energy market. A move that was never in Britain's interests and can now thankfully be scrapped and the resources redeployed - but it isn't.
Interconnectors means the ability to import and export energy as required. Because of their cost compared to capacity, you can easily have over capacity on them. Which means they become an insurance plan for things going wrong - see the sale of electricity to France at the moment to cover issues with their nuclear power plants.
Interconnectors also mean that we can sell more surplus wind, incidentally.
Actually, they won't. If you read the article, it means that we can import more power, solving Germany's issue of wasted wind power from their North, not ours. Our wind farms, largely in Scotland, aren't well connected to our own grid, and aren't likely to be exporting significant power due to this scheme. So we'll be importing excess from Germany, and subsiding our own farms to switch off still, when if any interconnectors are needed, they are intra-UK, so we can actually use the power generated domestically.
Which is an argument for more Interconnectors, not less.
No it isn't. It's an argument to prioritise the upgrading of our own grid, over costly investment connecting us to the continent. Interconnectors between England (demand) and Scotland (wind supply) are currently poor. There is also virtually no investment in storage. Those are the priorities, but again, policy setters are firing on with the EU projects as if we never left.
Is it perhaps because of the transmission charges, which are as I understand it by distance to the consumer? French leccy might turn out to be cheaper than stuff from north of the border. No idea if that is the case, but it's something I wondered about when reading your comments.
It's German electricity, and I'm pretty sure that's further away than Scottish.
Have a look at a map - the nearest bit of Germany isn't any further away than say Berwick/Edinburgh fron London.
Also, the distance charge is a UK thing. It won't apply to non-UK wiring, anyway.
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Sounds a bit thick, apart from anything. Like shutting down Auschwitz as a museum because it perpetuates outdated stereotypes about the correct treatment of Jews.
And it is a breach of trust. Wellcome left his collections to be seen. If you don't like them, bugger off and stop accepting his cash as salary.
Not only that, they announced they wanted to close it on Saturday, then closed it on… Sunday. An historic and much loved London collection/museum. Gone in 24 hours. Bang
At what point do we ALL realise Woke is very real and very dangerous. Not least because these Woke people KNOW they are completely morally right and there is no room for debate. No time shall be given for discussion. They just burn what they hate
Gosh this is a strikingly sharp and original contribution. Just when you think you have people sussed they come along and surprise you. Lesson for all.
The thing with any of these exhibits that I am sure portray outdated stereotypes and a certain element of "white saviour", if you were really serious about education and telling an accurate story etc (rather than really driven by a political / cultural marxism), you simply add a load of additional info around the exhibit that states the context and that this comes from a different eta, we have thankfully moved on etc.
They claim they “tried to do that”, but in the end a collection gathered by one rich white guy was just too toxic to tolerate, and also the whole idea of medicine - in a medical museum - perpetuates the idea that “health is normal” and is thus ableist
So it had to go
These were their genuine reasons
Doesn’t look good for the Tate when this bitch takes over there
Keen highlighted one painting of a black African kneeling in front of a white missionary. “A Medical Missionary Attending to a Sick African” (1916) by Harold Copping, which she has since had put in storage on the grounds that it risked “perpetuating racial stereotypes and hierarchies”.
She must be furious that Africa has adopted Western medicine.
On topic, yes Brexit is a pile of shite, as many of us wisely predicted.
But, we aren’t going back into the EU so we need to work out how to make the best of it.
Regulatory alignment and a benign visa regime for young workers would be the obvious frame.
Was always thus.
Also: Get rid of Northern Ireland Protocol Bill and Retained EU Law Bill. Don't make things even worse than they need to be. Accept EU proposals for reducing checks to Northern Ireland.
Most important: the UK's primary foreign policy is to work in concert with other European countries for a liberal world order. People can join the dots at their own pace. We're still a long way from having thought through the political implications of Brexit.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
I admire you for doing such cases. I have been involved in a few investigations which have involved such stuff - all referred to the police. But I found them deeply disturbing. I do not think I could do them day in day out.
They are disturbing. I am assured by my new boss (a rather brilliant woman) that you learn to compartmentilise them. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. Do I really want to lose the raw compassion in exchange for some professional objectivity? Right now I feel rage on behalf of the victims. Rage that I have rarely felt in my life.
@Cyclefree rolling back a few steps thanks for pushing the Fire Brigade story - I confess I am one who scrolled past it and probably wouldn’t have taken enough notice without your provocation upthread.
We are in an interesting time with anything to do with discrimination against groups. As someone who finds himself very much at the centre of overlapping aspects of privilege (British white male in a secure job, heterosexual and with a secure life partner, and relatively few past traumas) I’m increasingly aware of the need not to just not be consciously discriminatory, but also to listen to accounts of institutional or structural discrimination and to challenge them.
At the same time, and despite the above being my own political view, I am increasingly aware that this IS a very political area, and many people will react strongly to my paragraph above, believing it to be woke nonsense.
For some people that reaction is simply a fragile response to having their hidden privilege exposed to them. For others, though, I think there is a genuine concern about the implications for society of admitting to the levels of structural and institutional discrimination that exist.
I’m not defending that point of view except to say that I think the latter concern I refer to is genuinely held, and it is probably what motivates a muted response to a report that asks us to face up to institutional sexism and misogyny.
I’m really not sure what the answer is - but agree we should be discussing it much more than we are.
Thank you.
I think there is much in what you say. It is uncomfortable to have to face up to what goes on under the surface or hidden away or not spoken about. See that extract from an article on The Critic posted earlier. The more personal section of this article I wrote is may attempt to set out some of the stuff which I have sought not to dwell on because it could paralyse you. (https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/why-this-7221bc795af0) I think I have reached a more reflective age but also I am angrier about it now because it should not be like this. And as an older woman I don't give a toss anymore about saying what needs to be said (not that I ever did) but I feel freer now.
Countries have had to do the same. A very good example is Ireland - for decades the stories about how women and children were treated by the Church was hushed up at every level. It was their shame. And then the stories came out and people realised that it was the Church's shame and society's shame. And it was the silence and the hushing that allowed it to continue and be dismissed. John McGahern, a very fine Irish writer (do read his books) wrote about this in his novels, was dismissed as a teacher and had to leave the country. "Cancel culture" if you want to put it in contemporary terms.
That is why I react so furiously at attempts to stifle debate, to say "we must not speak about this", "oh it's unimportant", you are being .... insert insult of choice....., to refusals to listen, really listen. Listening is hard - really hard if you do it properly. And it should make you think. Listen to the George Gibney podcast on iPlayer (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p08njhrm). A very successful Irish sports coach. A prolific sex abuser for decades. What makes it compelling listening is hearing the stories of the women he abused (girls when it happened). The relief at finally being heard, being able to speak about what happened, at being believed. The pain at having to live a life burying away the evil done to you, at having to think that this was normal and you had to accept it. There is one episode about a very promising swimmer raped by him at age 17 whose whole life was ruined. She gave up what she loved. She never recovered. She is now in a mental institution from which she will likely never leave. Her sister tells her story. Multiply that by hundreds. One man. The IICSA reports do much the same.
I do not know what the answers are. In the end I think it comes down to this. Always challenge, always be curious and ask and unpick assumptions rather than accepting them with blind faith. Question received opinions. Be like the child in The Emperor's New Clothes, asking the obvious.
And remember what Burke said: "For evil to happen, all it takes is for good men to do nothing." Though I think this is a better guide to action: "Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."
True but we have also seen people alive and dead from Lord Bramall to Leon Brittan, Bill Roache and Sir Cliff Richard and Bishop George Bell have their reputations trashed and police and court cases against them based on evidence which turned out to be lies or which did not hold up. Not everyone accused of abuse is guilty of abuse
The problem there seemed to be the stupidity of those involved in investigating. They seem to believe that only 2 possible methods of proceeding exist
1) Disbelieve all accusations as a waste of time 2) Believe in all allegations as Holy Writ, even after contradictory evidence was produced.
The case of the chap accused of sexual assault at a railway station, where altered video was shown to the court, was interesting.
The sane approach would be something like - “Listen carefully to all allegations. Diligently collect evidence and let it tell the story rather than pre-judging in any one direction”
But that would require discretion and discretion is bad.
An example of the times - after the Grenfell fire, fire doors in many building were re-assessed. In one complex, there was a question about some 600 doors. The suggestion of one consultant was to remove and destructively test a sample of the doors to check if they were good. The inspector nixed this idea, and 600 doors were immediately torn out.
Since there was a bit of a shortage of fire doors (everyone was replacing missing fire doors all over the country) they couldn’t find new fire doors for some months.
So the tenants of the buildings in question were living in a death trap for some months. Because of clipboardism.
I think Starmer's broadly right on Brexit (and by that I mean electorally). My feeling is that, despite large sections on the population seeming to turn against it, there is no real appetite to relitigate the issue. I would, in fact, go further, and say that there is a psychological revulsion to the idea of opening up those wounds. Labour need to show they can be trusted with the shop before they go tinkering with the guts (my personal view is that they can be, at least compared to the Tory party, but since I've never been with the majority/plurality in any election in which I've cast a vote, they shouldn't take my support as a sign of electoral success).
The thing with any of these exhibits that I am sure portray outdated stereotypes and a certain element of "white saviour", if you were really serious about education and telling an accurate story etc (rather than really driven by a political / cultural marxism), you simply add a load of additional info around the exhibit that states the context and that this comes from a different eta, we have thankfully moved on etc.
They claim they “tried to do that”, but in the end a collection gathered by one rich white guy was just too toxic to tolerate, and also the whole idea of medicine - in a medical museum - perpetuates the idea that “health is normal” and is thus ableist
So it had to go
These were their genuine reasons
Doesn’t look good for the Tate when this bitch takes over there
Keen highlighted one painting of a black African kneeling in front of a white missionary. “A Medical Missionary Attending to a Sick African” (1916) by Harold Copping, which she has since had put in storage on the grounds that it risked “perpetuating racial stereotypes and hierarchies”.
She must be furious that Africa has adopted Western medicine.
She seems to dislike medicine itself. As being inescapably bound up with tropes of white supremacism. All those white men inventing amazing drugs and treatments, and thereby glorying in their white privilege
Apparently even before Ye Greatte Bookburnyngge of today she has been replacing problematic items with examples of Woke poetry
If I understand it correctly, the Gordian Knot to all this is if we want to return to the Single Market, we have to accept both Freedom of Movement and EU regulatory standards.
Again, as I understand it, the EEA countries are also in the Single Market - including Norway and Iceland but they have an exemption on agriculture and fishing.
The one thing that would work for us, therefore, is a kind of hybrid membership where we accept three of the four freedoms (presumably goods, capital and services are much less of an issue) but not that of people or at least not that as defined within the Single Market. The EU won't agree to that.
I presume talk about a Swiss-style series of bilateral agreements was designed to give us a way to cut the knot. The "guillotine clause" contained within the network of agreements between the EU and the Swiss would be different for the UK but there would be one.
The thing with any of these exhibits that I am sure portray outdated stereotypes and a certain element of "white saviour", if you were really serious about education and telling an accurate story etc (rather than really driven by a political / cultural marxism), you simply add a load of additional info around the exhibit that states the context and that this comes from a different eta, we have thankfully moved on etc.
They claim they “tried to do that”, but in the end a collection gathered by one rich white guy was just too toxic to tolerate, and also the whole idea of medicine - in a medical museum - perpetuates the idea that “health is normal” and is thus ableist
So it had to go
These were their genuine reasons
Doesn’t look good for the Tate when this bitch takes over there
Keen highlighted one painting of a black African kneeling in front of a white missionary. “A Medical Missionary Attending to a Sick African” (1916) by Harold Copping, which she has since had put in storage on the grounds that it risked “perpetuating racial stereotypes and hierarchies”.
She must be furious that Africa has adopted Western medicine.
Its as bizarre not to recognise the superiority of Western medicine and celebrate its adoption as it would be not to recognise the superiority of Arabic / Indian numerals over ancient Roman numerals.
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Sounds a bit thick, apart from anything. Like shutting down Auschwitz as a museum because it perpetuates outdated stereotypes about the correct treatment of Jews.
And it is a breach of trust. Wellcome left his collections to be seen. If you don't like them, bugger off and stop accepting his cash as salary.
Not only that, they announced they wanted to close it on Saturday, then closed it on… Sunday. An historic and much loved London collection/museum. Gone in 24 hours. Bang
At what point do we ALL realise Woke is very real and very dangerous. Not least because these Woke people KNOW they are completely morally right and there is no room for debate. No time shall be given for discussion. They just burn what they hate
There has been a big controversy in the computer science community recently. For a major conference, somebody proposed some new work tackling the "Byzantine generals problem" (a well known problem in computer science).
A reviewer flat out refused to review the paper and gave it lowest possible score (and thus would be an instant rejection to the conference) because they used the term Byzantine, demanding they withdrew any mention of that word.....of course they couldn't because they had to write in their paper what exactly the problem is they were addressing and all the historic literature.
The authors even tried bending over backwards by saying they would change the title and minimise the use of the word...no not good enough, all references to it must be removed.
Is there any source or reference for this? It sounds like the kind of thing that *could* happen, but some googling of the relevant terms doesn't find any mention of the specific incident.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
I admire you for doing such cases. I have been involved in a few investigations which have involved such stuff - all referred to the police. But I found them deeply disturbing. I do not think I could do them day in day out.
They are disturbing. I am assured by my new boss (a rather brilliant woman) that you learn to compartmentilise them. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. Do I really want to lose the raw compassion in exchange for some professional objectivity? Right now I feel rage on behalf of the victims. Rage that I have rarely felt in my life.
@Cyclefree rolling back a few steps thanks for pushing the Fire Brigade story - I confess I am one who scrolled past it and probably wouldn’t have taken enough notice without your provocation upthread.
We are in an interesting time with anything to do with discrimination against groups. As someone who finds himself very much at the centre of overlapping aspects of privilege (British white male in a secure job, heterosexual and with a secure life partner, and relatively few past traumas) I’m increasingly aware of the need not to just not be consciously discriminatory, but also to listen to accounts of institutional or structural discrimination and to challenge them.
At the same time, and despite the above being my own political view, I am increasingly aware that this IS a very political area, and many people will react strongly to my paragraph above, believing it to be woke nonsense.
For some people that reaction is simply a fragile response to having their hidden privilege exposed to them. For others, though, I think there is a genuine concern about the implications for society of admitting to the levels of structural and institutional discrimination that exist.
I’m not defending that point of view except to say that I think the latter concern I refer to is genuinely held, and it is probably what motivates a muted response to a report that asks us to face up to institutional sexism and misogyny.
I’m really not sure what the answer is - but agree we should be discussing it much more than we are.
It certainly seems that highly publicised examples of ridiculous institutionalised ‘wokeness’ are used to discredit the idea.
@Cyclefree hit on something, though, with her emphasis on professionalism. You can’t insist on what political views people hold - but it’s entirely reasonable, and practical, to insist that they do their jobs professionally. That’s been clearly absent in the various organisations she’s excoriated.
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Sounds a bit thick, apart from anything. Like shutting down Auschwitz as a museum because it perpetuates outdated stereotypes about the correct treatment of Jews.
And it is a breach of trust. Wellcome left his collections to be seen. If you don't like them, bugger off and stop accepting his cash as salary.
Not only that, they announced they wanted to close it on Saturday, then closed it on… Sunday. An historic and much loved London collection/museum. Gone in 24 hours. Bang
At what point do we ALL realise Woke is very real and very dangerous. Not least because these Woke people KNOW they are completely morally right and there is no room for debate. No time shall be given for discussion. They just burn what they hate
There has been a big controversy in the computer science community recently. For a major conference, somebody proposed some new work tackling the "Byzantine generals problem" (a well known problem in computer science).
A reviewer flat out refused to review the paper and gave it lowest possible score (and thus would be an instant rejection to the conference) because they used the term Byzantine, demanding they withdrew any mention of that word.....of course they couldn't because they had to write in their paper what exactly the problem is they were addressing and all the historic literature.
The authors even tried bending over backwards by saying they would change the title and minimise the use of the word...no not good enough, all references to it must be removed.
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Ironically it's all about power, the power of the people running these museums to tell other people what to do and how to do it, and whether or not they can do something.
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Sounds a bit thick, apart from anything. Like shutting down Auschwitz as a museum because it perpetuates outdated stereotypes about the correct treatment of Jews.
And it is a breach of trust. Wellcome left his collections to be seen. If you don't like them, bugger off and stop accepting his cash as salary.
Not only that, they announced they wanted to close it on Saturday, then closed it on… Sunday. An historic and much loved London collection/museum. Gone in 24 hours. Bang
At what point do we ALL realise Woke is very real and very dangerous. Not least because these Woke people KNOW they are completely morally right and there is no room for debate. No time shall be given for discussion. They just burn what they hate
There has been a big controversy in the computer science community recently. For a major conference, somebody proposed some new work tackling the "Byzantine generals problem" (a well known problem in computer science).
A reviewer flat out refused to review the paper and gave it lowest possible score (and thus would be an instant rejection to the conference) because they used the term Byzantine, demanding they withdrew any mention of that word.....of course they couldn't because they had to write in their paper what exactly the problem is they were addressing and all the historic literature.
The authors even tried bending over backwards by saying they would change the title and minimise the use of the word...no not good enough, all references to it must be removed.
Is there any source or reference for this? It sounds like the kind of thing that *could* happen, but some googling of the relevant terms doesn't find any mention of the specific incident.
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Sounds a bit thick, apart from anything. Like shutting down Auschwitz as a museum because it perpetuates outdated stereotypes about the correct treatment of Jews.
And it is a breach of trust. Wellcome left his collections to be seen. If you don't like them, bugger off and stop accepting his cash as salary.
Not only that, they announced they wanted to close it on Saturday, then closed it on… Sunday. An historic and much loved London collection/museum. Gone in 24 hours. Bang
At what point do we ALL realise Woke is very real and very dangerous. Not least because these Woke people KNOW they are completely morally right and there is no room for debate. No time shall be given for discussion. They just burn what they hate
There has been a big controversy in the computer science community recently. For a major conference, somebody proposed some new work tackling the "Byzantine generals problem" (a well known problem in computer science).
A reviewer flat out refused to review the paper and gave it lowest possible score (and thus would be an instant rejection to the conference) because they used the term Byzantine, demanding they withdrew any mention of that word.....of course they couldn't because they had to write in their paper what exactly the problem is they were addressing and all the historic literature.
The authors even tried bending over backwards by saying they would change the title and minimise the use of the word...no not good enough, all references to it must be removed.
What's wrong with the term Byzantine ???
And whose beef is it? Byzantium is under new management.
If I understand it correctly, the Gordian Knot to all this is if we want to return to the Single Market, we have to accept both Freedom of Movement and EU regulatory standards.
Again, as I understand it, the EEA countries are also in the Single Market - including Norway and Iceland but they have an exemption on agriculture and fishing.
The one thing that would work for us, therefore, is a kind of hybrid membership where we accept three of the four freedoms (presumably goods, capital and services are much less of an issue) but not that of people or at least not that as defined within the Single Market. The EU won't agree to that.
I presume talk about a Swiss-style series of bilateral agreements was designed to give us a way to cut the knot. The "guillotine clause" contained within the network of agreements between the EU and the Swiss would be different for the UK but there would be one.
I think the key challenge is that no-one in the UK and EU wants to reopen negotiations. If and when they do, it probably won't a be Swiss style arrangement as the EU thinks the actual Swiss arrangement is a mistake and wants to change it.
Making TCA (Johnson's "oven-ready deal") semi functional is where it's at.
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Sounds a bit thick, apart from anything. Like shutting down Auschwitz as a museum because it perpetuates outdated stereotypes about the correct treatment of Jews.
And it is a breach of trust. Wellcome left his collections to be seen. If you don't like them, bugger off and stop accepting his cash as salary.
Not only that, they announced they wanted to close it on Saturday, then closed it on… Sunday. An historic and much loved London collection/museum. Gone in 24 hours. Bang
At what point do we ALL realise Woke is very real and very dangerous. Not least because these Woke people KNOW they are completely morally right and there is no room for debate. No time shall be given for discussion. They just burn what they hate
There has been a big controversy in the computer science community recently. For a major conference, somebody proposed some new work tackling the "Byzantine generals problem" (a well known problem in computer science).
A reviewer flat out refused to review the paper and gave it lowest possible score (and thus would be an instant rejection to the conference) because they used the term Byzantine, demanding they withdrew any mention of that word.....of course they couldn't because they had to write in their paper what exactly the problem is they were addressing and all the historic literature.
The authors even tried bending over backwards by saying they would change the title and minimise the use of the word...no not good enough, all references to it must be removed.
What's wrong with the term Byzantine ???
Was the response of 99.9999999999% of people.
I think it has been removed now, but the reviewer actually said in their initial response its equivalent to using the n word.
If I understand it correctly, the Gordian Knot to all this is if we want to return to the Single Market, we have to accept both Freedom of Movement and EU regulatory standards.
Again, as I understand it, the EEA countries are also in the Single Market - including Norway and Iceland but they have an exemption on agriculture and fishing.
The one thing that would work for us, therefore, is a kind of hybrid membership where we accept three of the four freedoms (presumably goods, capital and services are much less of an issue) but not that of people or at least not that as defined within the Single Market. The EU won't agree to that.
I presume talk about a Swiss-style series of bilateral agreements was designed to give us a way to cut the knot. The "guillotine clause" contained within the network of agreements between the EU and the Swiss would be different for the UK but there would be one.
It is a justifiable criticism of the EU that whilst the single market in services barely exists, the free movement of labour is absolute.
maxh - it is perfectly possible to acknowledge misogyny etc in the fire brigade whilst at the same time believing that getting rid of a museum display is silly. It would help if people didn't decide to get stuck in two tribes and instead looked at things on an issue by issue basis.
For CycleFree (and others), I would like to offer this possible clue: I would guess that most of Jeffrey Epstein's victims did not have fathers in their lives. I don't have any practical way to investigate that myself, and fear that possibility is unlikely to attract the attention of those who could, journalists, prosecutors, academics, and so on.
That may well be true of some victims of sexual abuse. It is not true of all though. The Irish sports coach I mentioned targeted families and their children who wanted to swim and compete. The same with US sports coaches. That is what is made it so much worse for the children. Their parents trusted this man. So to whom could those girls turn to?
Though for many people, especially the public sector, still below the rate of inflation.
Real pay may be falling for many people but that's because of inflation increasing even more.
But people would rather have a 7% pay rise with 10% inflation than a 2% pay rise with 10% inflation.
And those on the living wage are about to get a 10% pay rise.
Additionally what happens if there is a big fall in inflation as the effects of covid and Ukraine dissipate ?
Its possible that prices fall but those pay rises will be there forever.
There is also the “stickiness” factor. A number of jobs that were minimum wage, no ifs or buts, are now above the minimum wage. Once wages can go up, they can go up again….
I’ve actually listened to employers lamenting this and vowing to “trying and hold the line” for other jobs.
EDIT: there will be, predictably and inevitably, attempts to claw back these rises, using inflation.
Based on views of Chinese people who are not natural rebels, the Chinese government appears to be in a lot of trouble with its COVID policy.
If a handful of Chinese demos spells trouble for the CCP, why hasn't a handful of posh zealots glued to the M25 toppled the hated BorisTruss Sunak regime here?
Though for many people, especially the public sector, still below the rate of inflation.
Real pay may be falling for many people but that's because of inflation increasing even more.
But people would rather have a 7% pay rise with 10% inflation than a 2% pay rise with 10% inflation.
And those on the living wage are about to get a 10% pay rise.
Additionally what happens if there is a big fall in inflation as the effects of covid and Ukraine dissipate ?
Its possible that prices fall but those pay rises will be there forever.
The rate of inflation will probably fall significantly next year but overall prices will not fall. (For a few products there will be price reductions).
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Ironically it's all about power, the power of the people running these museums to tell other people what to do and how to do it, and whether or not they can do something.
Yes
The extraordinary way they’ve done it - Announcing it on Saturday then closing it on Sunday - does feel like a blatant power grab. A coup. Daring anyone to stop her. I bet there are plenty of people at Wellcome who loathe this decision. The collection was loved by many - even Woke Guardian writers
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
I admire you for doing such cases. I have been involved in a few investigations which have involved such stuff - all referred to the police. But I found them deeply disturbing. I do not think I could do them day in day out.
They are disturbing. I am assured by my new boss (a rather brilliant woman) that you learn to compartmentilise them. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. Do I really want to lose the raw compassion in exchange for some professional objectivity? Right now I feel rage on behalf of the victims. Rage that I have rarely felt in my life.
@Cyclefree rolling back a few steps thanks for pushing the Fire Brigade story - I confess I am one who scrolled past it and probably wouldn’t have taken enough notice without your provocation upthread.
We are in an interesting time with anything to do with discrimination against groups. As someone who finds himself very much at the centre of overlapping aspects of privilege (British white male in a secure job, heterosexual and with a secure life partner, and relatively few past traumas) I’m increasingly aware of the need not to just not be consciously discriminatory, but also to listen to accounts of institutional or structural discrimination and to challenge them.
At the same time, and despite the above being my own political view, I am increasingly aware that this IS a very political area, and many people will react strongly to my paragraph above, believing it to be woke nonsense.
For some people that reaction is simply a fragile response to having their hidden privilege exposed to them. For others, though, I think there is a genuine concern about the implications for society of admitting to the levels of structural and institutional discrimination that exist.
I’m not defending that point of view except to say that I think the latter concern I refer to is genuinely held, and it is probably what motivates a muted response to a report that asks us to face up to institutional sexism and misogyny.
I’m really not sure what the answer is - but agree we should be discussing it much more than we are.
Thank you.
I think there is much in what you say. It is uncomfortable to have to face up to what goes on under the surface or hidden away or not spoken about. See that extract from an article on The Critic posted earlier. The more personal section of this article I wrote is may attempt to set out some of the stuff which I have sought not to dwell on because it could paralyse you. (https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/why-this-7221bc795af0) I think I have reached a more reflective age but also I am angrier about it now because it should not be like this. And as an older woman I don't give a toss anymore about saying what needs to be said (not that I ever did) but I feel freer now.
Countries have had to do the same. A very good example is Ireland - for decades the stories about how women and children were treated by the Church was hushed up at every level. It was their shame. And then the stories came out and people realised that it was the Church's shame and society's shame. And it was the silence and the hushing that allowed it to continue and be dismissed. John McGahern, a very fine Irish writer (do read his books) wrote about this in his novels, was dismissed as a teacher and had to leave the country. "Cancel culture" if you want to put it in contemporary terms.
That is why I react so furiously at attempts to stifle debate, to say "we must not speak about this", "oh it's unimportant", you are being .... insert insult of choice....., to refusals to listen, really listen. Listening is hard - really hard if you do it properly. And it should make you think. Listen to the George Gibney podcast on iPlayer (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p08njhrm). A very successful Irish sports coach. A prolific sex abuser for decades. What makes it compelling listening is hearing the stories of the women he abused (girls when it happened). The relief at finally being heard, being able to speak about what happened, at being believed. The pain at having to live a life burying away the evil done to you, at having to think that this was normal and you had to accept it. There is one episode about a very promising swimmer raped by him at age 17 whose whole life was ruined. She gave up what she loved. She never recovered. She is now in a mental institution from which she will likely never leave. Her sister tells her story. Multiply that by hundreds. One man. The IICSA reports do much the same.
I do not know what the answers are. In the end I think it comes down to this. Always challenge, always be curious and ask and unpick assumptions rather than accepting them with blind faith. Question received opinions. Be like the child in The Emperor's New Clothes, asking the obvious.
And remember what Burke said: "For evil to happen, all it takes is for good men to do nothing." Though I think this is a better guide to action: "Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."
True but we have also seen people alive and dead from Lord Bramall to Sir Leon Brittan, Nigel Evans, Bill Roache and Sir Cliff Richard and Bishop George Bell and many other people not famous have their reputations trashed and police and court cases against them based on evidence which turned out to be lies or which did not hold up. Not everyone accused of abuse is guilty of abuse
You are right. That is why professionalism is so important.
"For investigators to do their job properly they need two skills above all: emotional intelligence – empathy, an ability to understand human behaviour and motivation and build a relationship with both (alleged) criminal and victim. The second is to have what Graham Greene described as the “splinter of ice in the heart”, the judgment and analysis that makes them look coolly and dispassionately at the facts, to base their opinions on what they have found and not what they would like to believe to be true, that makes them remember that they need to find and test the evidence and ensure that it is good enough to convict someone to the standard required.
As the report put it:
“Any process that imposes an artificial state of mind upon an investigator is, necessarily, a flawed process. An investigator, in any reputable system of justice, must be impartial. The imposed ‘obligation to believe’ removes that impartiality.”
If the police allow sentimental beliefs, preconceived opinions and assumptions, pressure from the media or politicians to override the judgments they need to make, they are doing a profound disservice – to the victims (who need their complaints taken seriously and investigated properly, a crucially important difference to simply being believed), to the defendants (who are entitled not to be accused publicly – or at all – on the basis of opinion unsupported by any evidence), to the public’s faith in policing, to the administration of justice itself."
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Ironically it's all about power, the power of the people running these museums to tell other people what to do and how to do it, and whether or not they can do something.
Oh no! The chance to see some old false legs gone forever.
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Ironically it's all about power, the power of the people running these museums to tell other people what to do and how to do it, and whether or not they can do something.
Most things are about power. Who / whom? A useful question to ask in any analysis.
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
It is rare for us to be on the same page but reading Starmer's comments this morning on rejection of the single market and freedom of movement could just as well come from a conservative PM
The truth is Brexit needs to be addressed, including improvement in trade and relationship with the EU, and Strarmer is well to the right of me on this
I note Owen Jones is furious with him
"Ripping up the Brexit deal would lead to years more wrangling and arguing, when we should be facing the future. I’m worried that there are senior members of Rishi Sunak’s government who don’t seem to understand that".
If that IS a quote by Starmer rather than a flight of fancy from Hodges (not impossible) then Labour have landed themselves another Jeremy Corbyn. A leader who absented himself on the biggest issue of the last half a century.
He's never been in a better position to put a positive case for the EU. I heard this morning that it has cost £120 billion so far being out of the EU. That's 150 brand new hospitals 600 shiny new schools. Starmer needs to look forward not backwards. It's not leaving the EU that'll keep the Red Wall onside but the benefits that all that extra money could buy.
I don’t think the Red Wall is quite there yet, but another 12, 18, 24 months of Brexit reality will do the trick. People aren’t stupid, they can see what the ongoing process of Brexit is delivering. And they’re not impressed.
I wish Starmer was full-throated, if not quite full fat rejoin, then at least making noises about single market access, but - I hope - he’s simply boxing clever. He needs to win first.
A coalition with the Lib Dems and SNP would suit me, that would give him the pro-EU push he needs. The right-wing press will go big on that possibility, and continue stoking immigration fears, as we go into the next election. They’ll drag up Starmer’s second referendum stuff. He needs to neutralise it.
Moves back towards the EU, Tories out of power for at least a decade, House of Lords reform, maybe even PR. What bliss that little lot would be.
Move back towards EU plus PR and an elected Lords is also ideal for Farage. PR guarantees him dozens of seats unlike FPTP and PR also gives him the chance to be Kingmaker as the Sweden Democrats now are and as UKIP would have been with PR in 2015 or even PM as Meloni now is in Italy.
Plenty of chances for RefUK to pick up seats in an elected upper house too
If they win seats, well that’s democracy. You should welcome it - it might drain the poison from the Tory Party. Like Labour giving the Left their head is dangerous, the Tories have given their headbangers the reins since Cameron’s surprise majority. It has led us to disaster.
The parties aren’t broad churches anymore, they are too prone to the nutters taking them over. We need a grown up system that is built on fragile consensus. If we’ve taken back control, we’ll let’s use it to really make our politicians earn their money. Make them work, horse-trade, messy coalitions, small parties holding a balance of power, not cosy, safe , complacent, sclerotic majorities.
Elected dictatorships that last five years, a decade, longer aren’t good enough anymore. The world moves too fast.
History will show that the biggest impact of Brexit was to break up a cosy little Russo-Franco-German pact to allow Russia to take over Ukraine in return for energy security.
If you doubt this, look at the respective reactions in Moscow, Paris and Berlin to the events of 2022.
You should know that Macron’s somewhat desperate (at the time) phone calls to Moscow to broker some kind of peace just before the outbreak of the war were at the request of the Ukranian government & Zelensky personally. There’s an article on Bloomberg that goes into the details, I’ll see if I can find it.
France didn’t need Russian gas. The German government on the other hand all deserve to be raked over the coals for a good eternity or two. They genuinely appear to have been co-opted by the Russians at the highest levels.
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
That’s nuts! Sounds like they are suppressing evidence of white oppression, rather than exploring it.
Meanwhile, while we’re on the subject of woke Museums:
We are saddened to announce that Nottingham Castle Trust has begun the process of appointing liquidators and the Castle grounds and exhibitions will remain closed to all visitors until further notice.
I have to say I was quite surprised by the economic growth performance figures of the UK vs France/Germany since 2016 which someone posted the charts of a few days ago. However I still think the economy would have grown more had we stayed in the EU. My hunch is per capita too. And the forecasts aren't good for the next couple of years.
We've imposed trade barriers between ourselves and the EU for the sake of greater freedom. The government has spent time on trade deals of spurious value. However what about migration policy? Regulation? Where do we stand on GM? Does the government even have an opinion? Industrial policy. There are things we can look at that would have been prohibited by EU state aid rules. If we can't realise any benefits from Brexit then re-aligning in some form with the EU is the obvious thing longer term.
Liam Fox said last week that re-opening the deal with the EU would be unwise. Did he include the protocol in that?
Even as the Lib Dems’ new policy on “transphobia” drags them back to sanity, the Greens melt down further – THREE members are suing the party for unlawful discrimination because of their gender-critical views
If I understand it correctly, the Gordian Knot to all this is if we want to return to the Single Market, we have to accept both Freedom of Movement and EU regulatory standards.
Again, as I understand it, the EEA countries are also in the Single Market - including Norway and Iceland but they have an exemption on agriculture and fishing.
The one thing that would work for us, therefore, is a kind of hybrid membership where we accept three of the four freedoms (presumably goods, capital and services are much less of an issue) but not that of people or at least not that as defined within the Single Market. The EU won't agree to that.
I presume talk about a Swiss-style series of bilateral agreements was designed to give us a way to cut the knot. The "guillotine clause" contained within the network of agreements between the EU and the Swiss would be different for the UK but there would be one.
It is a justifiable criticism of the EU that whilst the single market in services barely exists, the free movement of labour is absolute.
maxh - it is perfectly possible to acknowledge misogyny etc in the fire brigade whilst at the same time believing that getting rid of a museum display is silly. It would help if people didn't decide to get stuck in two tribes and instead looked at things on an issue by issue basis.
Deciding based on the actual facts, rather than theological belief?
In February the IOW chalked up the all-time highest UK wind speed (that bust my conservatory roof only just being mended), 2022 as a whole is already near-certain to be the warmest year on average, ever, for the UK, and I believe large parts of the country have already got this November down as the wettest ever, with a few days still to go. Looking out the window at today’s heavy rain, I can well believe it.
No, they’ve closed off the original collection at the core of the museum. Not the whole thing. It was the most amazing part. The mad beating heart
Nothing lasts forever. shrug emoji
I'm sure they will allow some exhibits to be seen again "in a different Wokier context". The sad thing, however, is that they object to the very idea of exhibiting one rich man's personal collection in one place, because supremacism or whatever. So I guess the Wellcome Collection itself - the stuff acquired by Henry Wellcome - will now be diluted and dispersed
Expect more "diverse poetry", and fewer Napoleon's toothbrushes and papier mache acupuncture homonculi
"Henry Wellcome (1853-1936) was a pharmaceutical entrepreneur. He left us three things in his will: his wealth, his collection of historical medical items, and a mission to improve health through research."
Museums used to be a way for the ruling class to teach the public about history & other cultures, now theyre a way for the ruling class to publicise their unearned sense of guilt. Wellcome’s logical next step is to make its staff redundant & sell the artefacts to oligarchs….
Mainly to provide employment and incomes for westerners who resent both the west in general and the founders of museums in particular
The question really is what is the point of the people running them? If you all feel so guilty about what you do, you should all resign, hand over your jobs & salaries to people better qualified & better equipped to do them. Let's start with your chief executive & work downwards
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
It is rare for us to be on the same page but reading Starmer's comments this morning on rejection of the single market and freedom of movement could just as well come from a conservative PM
The truth is Brexit needs to be addressed, including improvement in trade and relationship with the EU, and Strarmer is well to the right of me on this
I note Owen Jones is furious with him
"Ripping up the Brexit deal would lead to years more wrangling and arguing, when we should be facing the future. I’m worried that there are senior members of Rishi Sunak’s government who don’t seem to understand that".
If that IS a quote by Starmer rather than a flight of fancy from Hodges (not impossible) then Labour have landed themselves another Jeremy Corbyn. A leader who absented himself on the biggest issue of the last half a century.
He's never been in a better position to put a positive case for the EU. I heard this morning that it has cost £120 billion so far being out of the EU. That's 150 brand new hospitals 600 shiny new schools. Starmer needs to look forward not backwards. It's not leaving the EU that'll keep the Red Wall onside but the benefits that all that extra money could buy.
I don’t think the Red Wall is quite there yet, but another 12, 18, 24 months of Brexit reality will do the trick. People aren’t stupid, they can see what the ongoing process of Brexit is delivering. And they’re not impressed.
I wish Starmer was full-throated, if not quite full fat rejoin, then at least making noises about single market access, but - I hope - he’s simply boxing clever. He needs to win first.
A coalition with the Lib Dems and SNP would suit me, that would give him the pro-EU push he needs. The right-wing press will go big on that possibility, and continue stoking immigration fears, as we go into the next election. They’ll drag up Starmer’s second referendum stuff. He needs to neutralise it.
Moves back towards the EU, Tories out of power for at least a decade, House of Lords reform, maybe even PR. What bliss that little lot would be.
Move back towards EU plus PR and an elected Lords is also ideal for Farage. PR guarantees him dozens of seats unlike FPTP and PR also gives him the chance to be Kingmaker as the Sweden Democrats now are and as UKIP would have been with PR in 2015 or even PM as Meloni now is in Italy.
Plenty of chances for RefUK to pick up seats in an elected upper house too
If they win seats, well that’s democracy. You should welcome it - it might drain the poison from the Tory Party. Like Labour giving the Left their head is dangerous, the Tories have given their headbangers the reins since Cameron’s surprise majority. It has led us to disaster.
The parties aren’t broad churches anymore, they are too prone to the nutters taking them over. We need a grown up system that is built on fragile consensus. If we’ve taken back control, we’ll let’s use it to really make our politicians earn their money. Make them work, horse-trade, messy coalitions, small parties holding a balance of power, not cosy, safe , complacent, sclerotic majorities.
Elected dictatorships that last five years, a decade, longer aren’t good enough anymore. The world moves too fast.
Your theory is based on the most superficial reading of recent politics imaginable. No eurosceptic 'headbanger' caused our energy crisis - our shitty virtue-signalling energy policy, 100% on message with EU doctrine, has been the cause. No headbanger has stopped us getting to grips with small boats, no headbanger has delayed a solution to NI until now, no headbanger argued for the economy-destroying lockdowns, no headbanger advised the BOE to print money like it was going out of fashion, then throw it into reverse just as we're on the brink of a prolonged recession. Apart from JRM leaving a few notes for disgruntled civil servants, the NON 'headbanging' contingent has been very much in the driving seat for the past 12 years and they own this shit more than anyone. After this much 'dull competence', frankly some headbanging would come as light relief.
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Sounds a bit thick, apart from anything. Like shutting down Auschwitz as a museum because it perpetuates outdated stereotypes about the correct treatment of Jews.
And it is a breach of trust. Wellcome left his collections to be seen. If you don't like them, bugger off and stop accepting his cash as salary.
Not only that, they announced they wanted to close it on Saturday, then closed it on… Sunday. An historic and much loved London collection/museum. Gone in 24 hours. Bang
At what point do we ALL realise Woke is very real and very dangerous. Not least because these Woke people KNOW they are completely morally right and there is no room for debate. No time shall be given for discussion. They just burn what they hate
There has been a big controversy in the computer science community recently. For a major conference, somebody proposed some new work tackling the "Byzantine generals problem" (a well known problem in computer science).
A reviewer flat out refused to review the paper and gave it lowest possible score (and thus would be an instant rejection to the conference) because they used the term Byzantine, demanding they withdrew any mention of that word.....of course they couldn't because they had to write in their paper what exactly the problem is they were addressing and all the historic literature.
The authors even tried bending over backwards by saying they would change the title and minimise the use of the word...no not good enough, all references to it must be removed.
Is there any source or reference for this? It sounds like the kind of thing that *could* happen, but some googling of the relevant terms doesn't find any mention of the specific incident.
So we have one reviewer who appears to have gone slightly mad here.
I note the statement from the Conference editors, which can be politely summarised as a brush off:
“The PC committee and Ethics Chair have been following this thread closely. Upon preliminary investigation, the Ethics Chair finds that the use of B-word is a "possibly emerging" issue but not yet a "major ethics issue" that could justify rejecting research. There seems no widespread agreement that the B-word is offensive. This discussion between reviewer and authors is still valuable to our community, which raises awareness of this potentially emerging issue. We appreciate thoughts and comments from both the review and the authors.
On the other hand, Ethics Chair points out the reviewer uses the N-word explicitly in drawing what seems to be a false equivalence between the N-word (where there’s widespread agreement that the word is offensive) and the B-word (which is still an emerging/unsettled issue but possibly with some merit that is beyond the scope of our ethics committee to fully investigate and resolve now). This misuse of the N-word poses a violation of the ICLR Code of Conduct. We strongly encourage the reviewer to edit his response and address this misuse voluntarily.”
(I’m willing to bet that all sorts of crap went on in the reviews of papers in the past, but it was hidden because the review process was internal to the journals - only the authors & the editors saw the reviewers comments.)
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Sounds a bit thick, apart from anything. Like shutting down Auschwitz as a museum because it perpetuates outdated stereotypes about the correct treatment of Jews.
And it is a breach of trust. Wellcome left his collections to be seen. If you don't like them, bugger off and stop accepting his cash as salary.
Not only that, they announced they wanted to close it on Saturday, then closed it on… Sunday. An historic and much loved London collection/museum. Gone in 24 hours. Bang
At what point do we ALL realise Woke is very real and very dangerous. Not least because these Woke people KNOW they are completely morally right and there is no room for debate. No time shall be given for discussion. They just burn what they hate
There has been a big controversy in the computer science community recently. For a major conference, somebody proposed some new work tackling the "Byzantine generals problem" (a well known problem in computer science).
A reviewer flat out refused to review the paper and gave it lowest possible score (and thus would be an instant rejection to the conference) because they used the term Byzantine, demanding they withdrew any mention of that word.....of course they couldn't because they had to write in their paper what exactly the problem is they were addressing and all the historic literature.
The authors even tried bending over backwards by saying they would change the title and minimise the use of the word...no not good enough, all references to it must be removed.
What's wrong with the term Byzantine ???
And whose beef is it? Byzantium is under new management.
Sounds bonkers, has anyone got a link to the actual story - google isn't showing me any mention of it?
Based on views of Chinese people who are not natural rebels, the Chinese government appears to be in a lot of trouble with its COVID policy.
Are the Chinese not natural rebels? They have had two successful revolutions since 1900, a prison guard has supplanted the monarch before now, and while Europe was insisting on the Divine Right of Kings the Chinese created a whole ideology about rebels can be legitimate because the previous emperor lost divine favour through misrule.
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Sounds a bit thick, apart from anything. Like shutting down Auschwitz as a museum because it perpetuates outdated stereotypes about the correct treatment of Jews.
And it is a breach of trust. Wellcome left his collections to be seen. If you don't like them, bugger off and stop accepting his cash as salary.
Not only that, they announced they wanted to close it on Saturday, then closed it on… Sunday. An historic and much loved London collection/museum. Gone in 24 hours. Bang
At what point do we ALL realise Woke is very real and very dangerous. Not least because these Woke people KNOW they are completely morally right and there is no room for debate. No time shall be given for discussion. They just burn what they hate
There has been a big controversy in the computer science community recently. For a major conference, somebody proposed some new work tackling the "Byzantine generals problem" (a well known problem in computer science).
A reviewer flat out refused to review the paper and gave it lowest possible score (and thus would be an instant rejection to the conference) because they used the term Byzantine, demanding they withdrew any mention of that word.....of course they couldn't because they had to write in their paper what exactly the problem is they were addressing and all the historic literature.
The authors even tried bending over backwards by saying they would change the title and minimise the use of the word...no not good enough, all references to it must be removed.
Is there any source or reference for this? It sounds like the kind of thing that *could* happen, but some googling of the relevant terms doesn't find any mention of the specific incident.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
I admire you for doing such cases. I have been involved in a few investigations which have involved such stuff - all referred to the police. But I found them deeply disturbing. I do not think I could do them day in day out.
They are disturbing. I am assured by my new boss (a rather brilliant woman) that you learn to compartmentilise them. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. Do I really want to lose the raw compassion in exchange for some professional objectivity? Right now I feel rage on behalf of the victims. Rage that I have rarely felt in my life.
@Cyclefree rolling back a few steps thanks for pushing the Fire Brigade story - I confess I am one who scrolled past it and probably wouldn’t have taken enough notice without your provocation upthread.
We are in an interesting time with anything to do with discrimination against groups. As someone who finds himself very much at the centre of overlapping aspects of privilege (British white male in a secure job, heterosexual and with a secure life partner, and relatively few past traumas) I’m increasingly aware of the need not to just not be consciously discriminatory, but also to listen to accounts of institutional or structural discrimination and to challenge them.
At the same time, and despite the above being my own political view, I am increasingly aware that this IS a very political area, and many people will react strongly to my paragraph above, believing it to be woke nonsense.
For some people that reaction is simply a fragile response to having their hidden privilege exposed to them. For others, though, I think there is a genuine concern about the implications for society of admitting to the levels of structural and institutional discrimination that exist.
I’m not defending that point of view except to say that I think the latter concern I refer to is genuinely held, and it is probably what motivates a muted response to a report that asks us to face up to institutional sexism and misogyny.
I’m really not sure what the answer is - but agree we should be discussing it much more than we are.
Thank you.
I think there is much in what you say. It is uncomfortable to have to face up to what goes on under the surface or hidden away or not spoken about. See that extract from an article on The Critic posted earlier. The more personal section of this article I wrote is may attempt to set out some of the stuff which I have sought not to dwell on because it could paralyse you. (https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/why-this-7221bc795af0) I think I have reached a more reflective age but also I am angrier about it now because it should not be like this. And as an older woman I don't give a toss anymore about saying what needs to be said (not that I ever did) but I feel freer now.
Countries have had to do the same. A very good example is Ireland - for decades the stories about how women and children were treated by the Church was hushed up at every level. It was their shame. And then the stories came out and people realised that it was the Church's shame and society's shame. And it was the silence and the hushing that allowed it to continue and be dismissed. John McGahern, a very fine Irish writer (do read his books) wrote about this in his novels, was dismissed as a teacher and had to leave the country. "Cancel culture" if you want to put it in contemporary terms.
That is why I react so furiously at attempts to stifle debate, to say "we must not speak about this", "oh it's unimportant", you are being .... insert insult of choice....., to refusals to listen, really listen. Listening is hard - really hard if you do it properly. And it should make you think. Listen to the George Gibney podcast on iPlayer (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p08njhrm). A very successful Irish sports coach. A prolific sex abuser for decades. What makes it compelling listening is hearing the stories of the women he abused (girls when it happened). The relief at finally being heard, being able to speak about what happened, at being believed. The pain at having to live a life burying away the evil done to you, at having to think that this was normal and you had to accept it. There is one episode about a very promising swimmer raped by him at age 17 whose whole life was ruined. She gave up what she loved. She never recovered. She is now in a mental institution from which she will likely never leave. Her sister tells her story. Multiply that by hundreds. One man. The IICSA reports do much the same.
I do not know what the answers are. In the end I think it comes down to this. Always challenge, always be curious and ask and unpick assumptions rather than accepting them with blind faith. Question received opinions. Be like the child in The Emperor's New Clothes, asking the obvious.
And remember what Burke said: "For evil to happen, all it takes is for good men to do nothing." Though I think this is a better guide to action: "Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."
Thanks, I shall definitely seek out McGahern and read the post you have linked to.
"I do not know what the answers are. In the end I think it comes down to this. Always challenge, always be curious and ask and unpick assumptions rather than accepting them with blind faith. Question received opinions. Be like the child in The Emperor's New Clothes, asking the obvious."
Agreed, and with the point about stifling debate, which can be just as much about refusing to engage, or demanding that people's eyeballs and limited attention are directed towards the thing that they care about rather than the thing you care about.
I also know that, speaking personally, there is not the same imperative to keep watching, keep challenging, as there would be if I was on the receiving end of discrimination. I'm not sure of the answer to that either (although I don't doubt part of the answer is more effort on my part!)
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
That’s nuts! Sounds like they are suppressing evidence of white oppression, rather than exploring it.
Meanwhile, while we’re on the subject of woke Museums:
We are saddened to announce that Nottingham Castle Trust has begun the process of appointing liquidators and the Castle grounds and exhibitions will remain closed to all visitors until further notice.
Literally four months later visitor numbers are so bad it has to close. Go Woke, go broke
It seems they went through the same process as The Wellcome. They appointed a massively Woke new curator who went around decolonising all the interesting stuff, while lecturing white visitors about their evil whiteness.... and white people said Sod that, and here we are
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
That’s nuts! Sounds like they are suppressing evidence of white oppression, rather than exploring it.
Meanwhile, while we’re on the subject of woke Museums:
We are saddened to announce that Nottingham Castle Trust has begun the process of appointing liquidators and the Castle grounds and exhibitions will remain closed to all visitors until further notice.
Literally four months later visitor numbers are so bad it has to close. Go Woke, go broke
It seems they went through the same process as The Wellcome. They appointed a massively Woke new curator who went around decolonising all the interesting stuff, while lecturing white visitors about their evil whiteness.... and white people said Sod that, and here we are
While charging them £14 to get in the front door, then another £5 to see anything interesting...
"The castle trust, the liquidators and the city council have been tight-lipped about the total number of visitors." - I bet they were.
Nicely argued header, but based on a basic misapprehension - that the only way to make Brexit work is to make it less. This is demonstrably false. The best way to make it work is to diverge in areas where it's in out interests to do so, to lay aside European restrictions where they were cumbersome, and to solve the NI issue, preferably by negotiating with the EU, but if not, reserving the right to act unilaterally. Brexit can only be allowed to work if those wielding power can bring themselves to say goodbye to EU law and projects - we saw how unwilling they are to do this with the unprecedented civil service call for EU law to remain in force. These people do not want to run a post-EU country.
It’s rare to see such a vacuous point being made so forcefully. What EU restrictions and laws are hampering the country still? If you want to unilaterally ignore the NI Protocol all you will end up doing is putting the border in land and what benefit will that provide?
The EU waterways directive is afaik still enforced in full by the Environment agency, making it almost impossible to dredge, and thus opening the possibility of winter flooding.
This legislation also opposes the building of new water infrastructure including reservoirs, that are badly needed with a rising population. Instead of the necessary infrastructure, we're now given adverts advising us to shower for less time (at least in Scotland), which is, again, from the waterways directive, and is the sort of grotesque anti-human garbage that should have been tossed the minute we signed the divorce papers.
HS2 is an EU rail project. It is even rumoured to be part-funded by the EU, though I cannot find any verification of that. It is a crushing dead weight on the Exchequer and should be binned. It's quite clear that with the current shower, of people were starving on the streets it still wouldn't be.
On the CAP, Boris's Government made a lot of 'breaking out' of the CAP, but actually, there's no difference in policy:
It's the same deeply misguided set of incentives that put rewilding ahead of food security. Liz had big changes planned here - as we know, the blob has now reasserted itself, so that won't happen for now.
On energy - it's clear to all that we need a strategy to be self sufficient in energy - we cannot be dependent on the continent, which is itself short of energy and dependent on Russian gas. It is also clear that our grid needs to be upgraded, to make more use of remote wind installations that are currently getting paid to switch off. So why is the National Grid building expensive interconnectors to Germany? https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/new-cable-between-germany-and-uk-advances-europes-integrated-power-system
Simply because it is a move toward a single energy market. A move that was never in Britain's interests and can now thankfully be scrapped and the resources redeployed - but it isn't.
Interconnectors means the ability to import and export energy as required. Because of their cost compared to capacity, you can easily have over capacity on them. Which means they become an insurance plan for things going wrong - see the sale of electricity to France at the moment to cover issues with their nuclear power plants.
Interconnectors also mean that we can sell more surplus wind, incidentally.
Actually, they won't. If you read the article, it means that we can import more power, solving Germany's issue of wasted wind power from their North, not ours. Our wind farms, largely in Scotland, aren't well connected to our own grid, and aren't likely to be exporting significant power due to this scheme. So we'll be importing excess from Germany, and subsiding our own farms to switch off still, when if any interconnectors are needed, they are intra-UK, so we can actually use the power generated domestically.
Which is an argument for more Interconnectors, not less.
No it isn't. It's an argument to prioritise the upgrading of our own grid, over costly investment connecting us to the continent. Interconnectors between England (demand) and Scotland (wind supply) are currently poor. There is also virtually no investment in storage. Those are the priorities, but again, policy setters are firing on with the EU projects as if we never left.
Is it perhaps because of the transmission charges, which are as I understand it by distance to the consumer? French leccy might turn out to be cheaper than stuff from north of the border. No idea if that is the case, but it's something I wondered about when reading your comments.
It's German electricity, and I'm pretty sure that's further away than Scottish.
Have a look at a map - the nearest bit of Germany isn't any further away than say Berwick/Edinburgh fron London.
Also, the distance charge is a UK thing. It won't apply to non-UK wiring, anyway.
I sincerely doubt that there are any cost savings to be gained from a marginal 'as the crow flies' proximity advantage that Northern Germany has over Northern Scotland to the South East of England. By all means contradict me if you have different info. Besides which, UK generators pay tax in this country. If we import power, we hand this money to the German exchequer. That's fine and great where we need to do so, not so fine that we deliberately build infrastructure at our own expense to make importing easier than producing.
That's quite apart from the security implications. If London depends on German energy, then suddenly Europe has another energy crisis, those pipes would get switched off quicker than you can say 'vaccine confiscation'.
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
That’s nuts! Sounds like they are suppressing evidence of white oppression, rather than exploring it.
Meanwhile, while we’re on the subject of woke Museums:
We are saddened to announce that Nottingham Castle Trust has begun the process of appointing liquidators and the Castle grounds and exhibitions will remain closed to all visitors until further notice.
Literally four months later visitor numbers are so bad it has to close. Go Woke, go broke
It seems they went through the same process as The Wellcome. They appointed a massively Woke new curator who went around decolonising all the interesting stuff, while lecturing white visitors about their evil whiteness.... and white people said Sod that, and here we are
While charging them £14 to get in the front door, then another £5 to see anything interesting...
"The castle trust, the liquidators and the city council have been tight-lipped about the total number of visitors." - I bet they were.
It would be interesting to know if there's a money trail with these people. I mean, I am sure most would do it through puritanical zeal alone, but I would still be curious to see who might be paying for various things.
The Wellcome Trust news is batshit. Every angle of it, including the pathetic mewling on Twitter.
”The very fact that these items have ended up in one place, the story we told was that of a man with enormous wealth, power and privilege,” the museum said on Twitter.
That train of thought leads to the closure of most the great museums on Earth.
Melanie Keen should lose her job. Possibly sectioned.
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
That’s nuts! Sounds like they are suppressing evidence of white oppression, rather than exploring it.
Meanwhile, while we’re on the subject of woke Museums:
We are saddened to announce that Nottingham Castle Trust has begun the process of appointing liquidators and the Castle grounds and exhibitions will remain closed to all visitors until further notice.
Literally four months later visitor numbers are so bad it has to close. Go Woke, go broke
It seems they went through the same process as The Wellcome. They appointed a massively Woke new curator who went around decolonising all the interesting stuff, while lecturing white visitors about their evil whiteness.... and white people said Sod that, and here we are
While charging them £14 to get in the front door, then another £5 to see anything interesting...
"The castle trust, the liquidators and the city council have been tight-lipped about the total number of visitors." - I bet they were.
Tea and sugar *were* the spoils of empire, though. And a good thing, too.
The Wellcome Trust news is batshit. Every angle of it, including the pathetic mewling on Twitter.
”The very fact that these items have ended up in one place, the story we told was that of a man with enormous wealth, power and privilege,” the museum said on Twitter.
That train of thought leads to the closure of most the great museums on Earth.
Melanie Keen should lose her job. Possibly sectioned.
Yes, as I say it's bad for the Tate (= the Tate family, probably some slavery in there as well), the British Museum has Sir John Soane and the Harley collections at its heart - oo-er, and so on and so forth
The Wellcome Collection appointed a Woke woman who thinks western Collections, in themselves, are evil and racist. Genius
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
That’s nuts! Sounds like they are suppressing evidence of white oppression, rather than exploring it.
Meanwhile, while we’re on the subject of woke Museums:
We are saddened to announce that Nottingham Castle Trust has begun the process of appointing liquidators and the Castle grounds and exhibitions will remain closed to all visitors until further notice.
Literally four months later visitor numbers are so bad it has to close. Go Woke, go broke
It seems they went through the same process as The Wellcome. They appointed a massively Woke new curator who went around decolonising all the interesting stuff, while lecturing white visitors about their evil whiteness.... and white people said Sod that, and here we are
While charging them £14 to get in the front door, then another £5 to see anything interesting...
"The castle trust, the liquidators and the city council have been tight-lipped about the total number of visitors." - I bet they were.
The moment when someone told me that an interest in Trebuchets was wrong (some garbage about militarism and oppression) was a breaking point for me.
All such people should be fired into the Channel by a gigantic trebuchet.
The Wellcome Trust news is batshit. Every angle of it, including the pathetic mewling on Twitter.
”The very fact that these items have ended up in one place, the story we told was that of a man with enormous wealth, power and privilege,” the museum said on Twitter.
That train of thought leads to the closure of most the great museums on Earth.
Melanie Keen should lose her job. Possibly sectioned.
When sectioning people, you need to consider the people who have to try and treat the sectioned.
Imagine, you are having your first cup of tea, waiting for your usual patient (cannibal serial killer) to walk in and….
The Wellcome Trust news is batshit. Every angle of it, including the pathetic mewling on Twitter.
”The very fact that these items have ended up in one place, the story we told was that of a man with enormous wealth, power and privilege,” the museum said on Twitter.
That train of thought leads to the closure of most the great museums on Earth.
Melanie Keen should lose her job. Possibly sectioned.
When sectioning people, you need to consider the people who have to try and treat the sectioned.
Imagine, you are having your first cup of tea, waiting for your usual patient (cannibal serial killer) to walk in and….
Having your cup of tea dashed from your hand and told that it’s a grotesque symbol of colonial exploitation.
These people are the new Lady Whiteadders, and deserve total contumely.
They are stained, crushed and yellowing but Balenciaga’s range of “worn-out” sneakers, launched in collaboration with Adidas this month, have sold out. This is despite an eye-watering price tag of almost £700.
The brand-new shoes, described by one reviewer as “looking like they’ve been flattened by a 20-ton steamroller”, are no longer available on the Balenciaga website, and are being priced on one specialist sneaker auction site at £2,500.
Notably, the age of luxury consumers is getting younger. A Bain & Company report released this month found that the Gen Z and millennial demographics were driving luxury in 2022, a sector that is forecast to grow by 21% in 2022. This demographic will probably appreciate Balenciaga’s meme-worthy irony.
There's probably some explanation involving unaffordable housing and student debt.
Yet on here we get constant whining about the poor young having nothing due to the nasty pensioners getting a £9K pension, unbelievable.
Nicely argued header, but based on a basic misapprehension - that the only way to make Brexit work is to make it less. This is demonstrably false. The best way to make it work is to diverge in areas where it's in out interests to do so, to lay aside European restrictions where they were cumbersome, and to solve the NI issue, preferably by negotiating with the EU, but if not, reserving the right to act unilaterally. Brexit can only be allowed to work if those wielding power can bring themselves to say goodbye to EU law and projects - we saw how unwilling they are to do this with the unprecedented civil service call for EU law to remain in force. These people do not want to run a post-EU country.
It’s rare to see such a vacuous point being made so forcefully. What EU restrictions and laws are hampering the country still? If you want to unilaterally ignore the NI Protocol all you will end up doing is putting the border in land and what benefit will that provide?
The EU waterways directive is afaik still enforced in full by the Environment agency, making it almost impossible to dredge, and thus opening the possibility of winter flooding.
This legislation also opposes the building of new water infrastructure including reservoirs, that are badly needed with a rising population. Instead of the necessary infrastructure, we're now given adverts advising us to shower for less time (at least in Scotland), which is, again, from the waterways directive, and is the sort of grotesque anti-human garbage that should have been tossed the minute we signed the divorce papers.
HS2 is an EU rail project. It is even rumoured to be part-funded by the EU, though I cannot find any verification of that. It is a crushing dead weight on the Exchequer and should be binned. It's quite clear that with the current shower, of people were starving on the streets it still wouldn't be.
On the CAP, Boris's Government made a lot of 'breaking out' of the CAP, but actually, there's no difference in policy:
It's the same deeply misguided set of incentives that put rewilding ahead of food security. Liz had big changes planned here - as we know, the blob has now reasserted itself, so that won't happen for now.
On energy - it's clear to all that we need a strategy to be self sufficient in energy - we cannot be dependent on the continent, which is itself short of energy and dependent on Russian gas. It is also clear that our grid needs to be upgraded, to make more use of remote wind installations that are currently getting paid to switch off. So why is the National Grid building expensive interconnectors to Germany? https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/new-cable-between-germany-and-uk-advances-europes-integrated-power-system
Simply because it is a move toward a single energy market. A move that was never in Britain's interests and can now thankfully be scrapped and the resources redeployed - but it isn't.
Interconnectors means the ability to import and export energy as required. Because of their cost compared to capacity, you can easily have over capacity on them. Which means they become an insurance plan for things going wrong - see the sale of electricity to France at the moment to cover issues with their nuclear power plants.
Interconnectors also mean that we can sell more surplus wind, incidentally.
Actually, they won't. If you read the article, it means that we can import more power, solving Germany's issue of wasted wind power from their North, not ours. Our wind farms, largely in Scotland, aren't well connected to our own grid, and aren't likely to be exporting significant power due to this scheme. So we'll be importing excess from Germany, and subsiding our own farms to switch off still, when if any interconnectors are needed, they are intra-UK, so we can actually use the power generated domestically.
Which is an argument for more Interconnectors, not less.
No it isn't. It's an argument to prioritise the upgrading of our own grid, over costly investment connecting us to the continent. Interconnectors between England (demand) and Scotland (wind supply) are currently poor. There is also virtually no investment in storage. Those are the priorities, but again, policy setters are firing on with the EU projects as if we never left.
Is it perhaps because of the transmission charges, which are as I understand it by distance to the consumer? French leccy might turn out to be cheaper than stuff from north of the border. No idea if that is the case, but it's something I wondered about when reading your comments.
It's German electricity, and I'm pretty sure that's further away than Scottish.
Have a look at a map - the nearest bit of Germany isn't any further away than say Berwick/Edinburgh fron London.
Also, the distance charge is a UK thing. It won't apply to non-UK wiring, anyway.
Usual bollox we get on here re Scotland. Reality is they charge us the highest fees to put it on the grid , then sell it back to us at the highest charge in the UK. Daylight robbery.
For CycleFree (and others), I would like to offer this possible clue: I would guess that most of Jeffrey Epstein's victims did not have fathers in their lives. I don't have any practical way to investigate that myself, and fear that possibility is unlikely to attract the attention of those who could, journalists, prosecutors, academics, and so on.
That may well be true of some victims of sexual abuse. It is not true of all though. The Irish sports coach I mentioned targeted families and their children who wanted to swim and compete. The same with US sports coaches. That is what is made it so much worse for the children. Their parents trusted this man. So to whom could those girls turn to?
Well for me if my daughter had turned to me they would not have needed to bother with a court case.
In February the IOW chalked up the all-time highest UK wind speed (that bust my conservatory roof only just being mended), 2022 as a whole is already near-certain to be the warmest year on average, ever, for the UK, and I believe large parts of the country have already got this November down as the wettest ever, with a few days still to go. Looking out the window at today’s heavy rain, I can well believe it.
In February the IOW chalked up the all-time highest UK wind speed (that bust my conservatory roof only just being mended), 2022 as a whole is already near-certain to be the warmest year on average, ever, for the UK, and I believe large parts of the country have already got this November down as the wettest ever, with a few days still to go. Looking out the window at today’s heavy rain, I can well believe it.
Nicely argued header, but based on a basic misapprehension - that the only way to make Brexit work is to make it less. This is demonstrably false. The best way to make it work is to diverge in areas where it's in out interests to do so, to lay aside European restrictions where they were cumbersome, and to solve the NI issue, preferably by negotiating with the EU, but if not, reserving the right to act unilaterally. Brexit can only be allowed to work if those wielding power can bring themselves to say goodbye to EU law and projects - we saw how unwilling they are to do this with the unprecedented civil service call for EU law to remain in force. These people do not want to run a post-EU country.
It’s rare to see such a vacuous point being made so forcefully. What EU restrictions and laws are hampering the country still? If you want to unilaterally ignore the NI Protocol all you will end up doing is putting the border in land and what benefit will that provide?
The EU waterways directive is afaik still enforced in full by the Environment agency, making it almost impossible to dredge, and thus opening the possibility of winter flooding.
This legislation also opposes the building of new water infrastructure including reservoirs, that are badly needed with a rising population. Instead of the necessary infrastructure, we're now given adverts advising us to shower for less time (at least in Scotland), which is, again, from the waterways directive, and is the sort of grotesque anti-human garbage that should have been tossed the minute we signed the divorce papers.
HS2 is an EU rail project. It is even rumoured to be part-funded by the EU, though I cannot find any verification of that. It is a crushing dead weight on the Exchequer and should be binned. It's quite clear that with the current shower, of people were starving on the streets it still wouldn't be.
On the CAP, Boris's Government made a lot of 'breaking out' of the CAP, but actually, there's no difference in policy:
It's the same deeply misguided set of incentives that put rewilding ahead of food security. Liz had big changes planned here - as we know, the blob has now reasserted itself, so that won't happen for now.
On energy - it's clear to all that we need a strategy to be self sufficient in energy - we cannot be dependent on the continent, which is itself short of energy and dependent on Russian gas. It is also clear that our grid needs to be upgraded, to make more use of remote wind installations that are currently getting paid to switch off. So why is the National Grid building expensive interconnectors to Germany? https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/new-cable-between-germany-and-uk-advances-europes-integrated-power-system
Simply because it is a move toward a single energy market. A move that was never in Britain's interests and can now thankfully be scrapped and the resources redeployed - but it isn't.
Interconnectors means the ability to import and export energy as required. Because of their cost compared to capacity, you can easily have over capacity on them. Which means they become an insurance plan for things going wrong - see the sale of electricity to France at the moment to cover issues with their nuclear power plants.
Interconnectors also mean that we can sell more surplus wind, incidentally.
Actually, they won't. If you read the article, it means that we can import more power, solving Germany's issue of wasted wind power from their North, not ours. Our wind farms, largely in Scotland, aren't well connected to our own grid, and aren't likely to be exporting significant power due to this scheme. So we'll be importing excess from Germany, and subsiding our own farms to switch off still, when if any interconnectors are needed, they are intra-UK, so we can actually use the power generated domestically.
Which is an argument for more Interconnectors, not less.
No it isn't. It's an argument to prioritise the upgrading of our own grid, over costly investment connecting us to the continent. Interconnectors between England (demand) and Scotland (wind supply) are currently poor. There is also virtually no investment in storage. Those are the priorities, but again, policy setters are firing on with the EU projects as if we never left.
Is it perhaps because of the transmission charges, which are as I understand it by distance to the consumer? French leccy might turn out to be cheaper than stuff from north of the border. No idea if that is the case, but it's something I wondered about when reading your comments.
It's German electricity, and I'm pretty sure that's further away than Scottish.
Have a look at a map - the nearest bit of Germany isn't any further away than say Berwick/Edinburgh fron London.
Also, the distance charge is a UK thing. It won't apply to non-UK wiring, anyway.
Usual bollox we get on here re Scotland. Reality is they charge us the highest fees to put it on the grid , then sell it back to us at the highest charge in the UK. Daylight robbery.
This is bollocks. Scottish wind farms are raking in constraint payments at three times the value of their power making the grid. They know what they're doing chucking up wind farms at the arse end of nowhere. If daylight robbery is happening, it ain't happening to Scotland.
Comments
So it had to go
These were their genuine reasons
Doesn’t look good for the Tate when this bitch takes over there
Also, the distance charge is a UK thing. It won't apply to non-UK wiring, anyway.
Mind, I have wondered sometimes whether some modern architects got their inspiration from the Flaktuerme in Berlin and Hamburg.
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g187331-d15202287-Reviews-Flakturm_IV-Hamburg.html
She must be furious that Africa has adopted Western medicine.
Also: Get rid of Northern Ireland Protocol Bill and Retained EU Law Bill. Don't make things even worse than they need to be. Accept EU proposals for reducing checks to Northern Ireland.
Most important: the UK's primary foreign policy is to work in concert with other European countries for a liberal world order. People can join the dots at their own pace. We're still a long way from having thought through the political implications of Brexit.
1) Disbelieve all accusations as a waste of time
2) Believe in all allegations as Holy Writ, even after contradictory evidence was produced.
The case of the chap accused of sexual assault at a railway station, where altered video was shown to the court, was interesting.
The sane approach would be something like - “Listen carefully to all allegations. Diligently collect evidence and let it tell the story rather than pre-judging in any one direction”
But that would require discretion and discretion is bad.
An example of the times - after the Grenfell fire, fire doors in many building were re-assessed. In one complex, there was a question about some 600 doors. The suggestion of one consultant was to remove and destructively test a sample of the doors to check if they were good. The inspector nixed this idea, and 600 doors were immediately torn out.
Since there was a bit of a shortage of fire doors (everyone was replacing missing fire doors all over the country) they couldn’t find new fire doors for some months.
So the tenants of the buildings in question were living in a death trap for some months. Because of clipboardism.
Apparently even before Ye Greatte Bookburnyngge of today she has been replacing problematic items with examples of Woke poetry
If I understand it correctly, the Gordian Knot to all this is if we want to return to the Single Market, we have to accept both Freedom of Movement and EU regulatory standards.
Again, as I understand it, the EEA countries are also in the Single Market - including Norway and Iceland but they have an exemption on agriculture and fishing.
The one thing that would work for us, therefore, is a kind of hybrid membership where we accept three of the four freedoms (presumably goods, capital and services are much less of an issue) but not that of people or at least not that as defined within the Single Market. The EU won't agree to that.
I presume talk about a Swiss-style series of bilateral agreements was designed to give us a way to cut the knot. The "guillotine clause" contained within the network of agreements between the EU and the Swiss would be different for the UK but there would be one.
Castles are the ultimate in MeInChargeYouPeasant symbology. Not very… woke?
‘wokeness’ are used to discredit the idea.
@Cyclefree hit on something, though, with her emphasis on professionalism.
You can’t insist on what political views people hold - but it’s entirely reasonable, and practical, to insist that they do their jobs professionally.
That’s been clearly absent in the various organisations she’s excoriated.
https://twitter.com/CSProfKGD/status/1591456435359064064?s=20&t=jDovqBEK_CJBAYrQ1exD3A
There has since been some resolution, but the first response was no, not reviewing it breaks the standards / ethics code.
https://openreview.net/forum?id=pfuqQQCB34¬eId=5KAMwoI2cC
Making TCA (Johnson's "oven-ready deal") semi functional is where it's at.
I think it has been removed now, but the reviewer actually said in their initial response its equivalent to using the n word.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63624996
Though for many people, especially the public sector, still below the rate of inflation.
Real pay may be falling for many people but that's because of inflation increasing even more.
But people would rather have a 7% pay rise with 10% inflation than a 2% pay rise with 10% inflation.
And those on the living wage are about to get a 10% pay rise.
Additionally what happens if there is a big fall in inflation as the effects of covid and Ukraine dissipate ?
Its possible that prices fall but those pay rises will be there forever.
maxh - it is perfectly possible to acknowledge misogyny etc in the fire brigade whilst at the same time believing that getting rid of a museum display is silly. It would help if people didn't decide to get stuck in two tribes and instead looked at things on an issue by issue basis.
I’ve actually listened to employers lamenting this and vowing to “trying and hold the line” for other jobs.
EDIT: there will be, predictably and inevitably, attempts to claw back these rises, using inflation.
BorisTrussSunak regime here?The extraordinary way they’ve done it - Announcing it on Saturday then closing it on Sunday - does feel like a blatant power grab. A coup. Daring anyone to stop her. I bet there are plenty of people at Wellcome who loathe this decision. The collection was loved by many - even Woke Guardian writers
It is also a brutal act of iconoclasm
I addressed this point some time ago. Here - https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/10/13/the-tyranny-of-low-expectations/
"For investigators to do their job properly they need two skills above all: emotional intelligence – empathy, an ability to understand human behaviour and motivation and build a relationship with both (alleged) criminal and victim. The second is to have what Graham Greene described as the “splinter of ice in the heart”, the judgment and analysis that makes them look coolly and dispassionately at the facts, to base their opinions on what they have found and not what they would like to believe to be true, that makes them remember that they need to find and test the evidence and ensure that it is good enough to convict someone to the standard required.
As the report put it:
“Any process that imposes an artificial state of mind upon an investigator is, necessarily, a flawed process. An investigator, in any reputable system of justice, must be impartial. The imposed ‘obligation to believe’ removes that impartiality.”
If the police allow sentimental beliefs, preconceived opinions and assumptions, pressure from the media or politicians to override the judgments they need to make, they are doing a profound disservice – to the victims (who need their complaints taken seriously and investigated properly, a crucially important difference to simply being believed), to the defendants (who are entitled not to be accused publicly – or at all – on the basis of opinion unsupported by any evidence), to the public’s faith in policing, to the administration of justice itself."
Wellcome Collection is open as usual today. https://wellcomecollection.org/visit-us
The parties aren’t broad churches anymore, they are too prone to the nutters taking them over. We need a grown up system that is built on fragile consensus. If we’ve taken back control, we’ll let’s use it to really make our politicians earn their money. Make them work, horse-trade, messy coalitions, small parties holding a balance of power, not cosy, safe , complacent, sclerotic majorities.
Elected dictatorships that last five years, a decade, longer aren’t good enough anymore. The world moves too fast.
France didn’t need Russian gas. The German government on the other hand all deserve to be raked over the coals for a good eternity or two. They genuinely appear to have been co-opted by the Russians at the highest levels.
Meanwhile, while we’re on the subject of woke Museums:
We are saddened to announce that Nottingham Castle Trust has begun the process of appointing liquidators and the Castle grounds and exhibitions will remain closed to all visitors until further notice.
https://www.nottinghamcastle.org.uk/
We've imposed trade barriers between ourselves and the EU for the sake of greater freedom. The government has spent time on trade deals of spurious value. However what about migration policy? Regulation? Where do we stand on GM? Does the government even have an opinion? Industrial policy. There are things we can look at that would have been prohibited by EU state aid rules. If we can't realise any benefits from Brexit then re-aligning in some form with the EU is the obvious thing longer term.
Liam Fox said last week that re-opening the deal with the EU would be unwise. Did he include the protocol in that?
Even as the Lib Dems’ new policy on “transphobia” drags them back to sanity, the Greens melt down further – THREE members are suing the party for unlawful discrimination because of their gender-critical views
https://twitter.com/HJoyceGender/status/1596828143880654848
Heretic.
Expect more "diverse poetry", and fewer Napoleon's toothbrushes and papier mache acupuncture homonculi
"Henry Wellcome (1853-1936) was a pharmaceutical entrepreneur. He left us three things in his will: his wealth, his collection of historical medical items, and a mission to improve health through research."
https://wellcome.org/who-we-are/history-wellcome
We want to change that. We want to do better. And we invite you to help us get there.
Tell us: what's the point of museums?
https://twitter.com/ExploreWellcome/status/1596091289082400768
Museums used to be a way for the ruling class to teach the public about history & other cultures, now theyre a way for the ruling class to publicise their unearned sense of guilt. Wellcome’s logical next step is to make its staff redundant & sell the artefacts to oligarchs….
Mainly to provide employment and incomes for westerners who resent both the west in general and the founders of museums in particular
The question really is what is the point of the people running them? If you all feel so guilty about what you do, you should all resign, hand over your jobs & salaries to people better qualified & better equipped to do them. Let's start with your chief executive & work downwards
So we have one reviewer who appears to have gone slightly mad here.
I note the statement from the Conference editors, which can be politely summarised as a brush off:
“The PC committee and Ethics Chair have been following this thread closely. Upon preliminary investigation, the Ethics Chair finds that the use of B-word is a "possibly emerging" issue but not yet a "major ethics issue" that could justify rejecting research. There seems no widespread agreement that the B-word is offensive. This discussion between reviewer and authors is still valuable to our community, which raises awareness of this potentially emerging issue. We appreciate thoughts and comments from both the review and the authors.
On the other hand, Ethics Chair points out the reviewer uses the N-word explicitly in drawing what seems to be a false equivalence between the N-word (where there’s widespread agreement that the word is offensive) and the B-word (which is still an emerging/unsettled issue but possibly with some merit that is beyond the scope of our ethics committee to fully investigate and resolve now). This misuse of the N-word poses a violation of the ICLR Code of Conduct. We strongly encourage the reviewer to edit his response and address this misuse voluntarily.”
(I’m willing to bet that all sorts of crap went on in the reviews of papers in the past, but it was hidden because the review process was internal to the journals - only the authors & the editors saw the reviewers comments.)
This place has erupted! Somehow Hakim Ziyech found a way.
Wait a minute!
It's being checked for a possible offside. Is someone blocking Thibaut Courtois? The referee is going to go over to the monitor to check it.
I think it is Saiss getting in the line of Courtois. Even though he didn't touch it, he was in the goalkeeper's eyeline.
No goal!
"I do not know what the answers are. In the end I think it comes down to this. Always challenge, always be curious and ask and unpick assumptions rather than accepting them with blind faith. Question received opinions. Be like the child in The Emperor's New Clothes, asking the obvious."
Agreed, and with the point about stifling debate, which can be just as much about refusing to engage, or demanding that people's eyeballs and limited attention are directed towards the thing that they care about rather than the thing you care about.
I also know that, speaking personally, there is not the same imperative to keep watching, keep challenging, as there would be if I was on the receiving end of discrimination. I'm not sure of the answer to that either (although I don't doubt part of the answer is more effort on my part!)
"Tea and sugar are the 'spoils of empire', Nottingham Castle curators say as part of 'decolonisation' drive"
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11097353/Nottingham-Castle-claims-tea-sugar-spoils-empire.html
Literally four months later visitor numbers are so bad it has to close. Go Woke, go broke
It seems they went through the same process as The Wellcome. They appointed a massively Woke new curator who went around decolonising all the interesting stuff, while lecturing white visitors about their evil whiteness.... and white people said Sod that, and here we are
"The castle trust, the liquidators and the city council have been tight-lipped about the total number of visitors." - I bet they were.
That's quite apart from the security implications. If London depends on German energy, then suddenly Europe has another energy crisis, those pipes would get switched off quicker than you can say 'vaccine confiscation'.
Every angle of it, including the pathetic mewling on Twitter.
”The very fact that these items have ended up in one place, the story we told was that of a man with enormous wealth, power and privilege,” the museum said on Twitter.
That train of thought leads to the closure of most the great museums on Earth.
Melanie Keen should lose her job. Possibly sectioned.
The Wellcome Collection appointed a Woke woman who thinks western Collections, in themselves, are evil and racist. Genius
All such people should be fired into the Channel by a gigantic trebuchet.
Trebuchets are awesome.
Imagine, you are having your first cup of tea, waiting for your usual patient (cannibal serial killer) to walk in and….
These people are the new Lady Whiteadders, and deserve total contumely.
(Trebuchets are indeed pretty awesome.)