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Moves against abortion could help the Dems in the midterms – politicalbetting.com

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  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 27,525

    @AAhronheim
    Russian President Putin has apologized to Israel’s PM Bennett for FM Lavrov’s Hitler comments. Bennett has accepted his apology.


    https://twitter.com/AAhronheim/status/1522246787209302017

    Very bad day at the office for Lavrov.
    Did you ever find out how many people died in the attack on the Mariupol theatre? Or work why it might take them so long to count the dead?
    https://t.co/RUKxdGW7fS
    No, and nor does the article you posted make it any clearer.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 41,293

    @AAhronheim
    Russian President Putin has apologized to Israel’s PM Bennett for FM Lavrov’s Hitler comments. Bennett has accepted his apology.


    https://twitter.com/AAhronheim/status/1522246787209302017

    Very bad day at the office for Lavrov.
    Did you ever find out how many people died in the attack on the Mariupol theatre? Or work why it might take them so long to count the dead?
    https://t.co/RUKxdGW7fS
    No, and nor does the article you posted make it any clearer.
    How about MH17? Do you believe the official Dutch report got it right?
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,695

    Well I just did something rather novel. I voted Labour for the first time in my life.

    No love of the party generally, but I cannot bring myself to vote Tory whilst the government is such a cluster****. Labour honestly seem like the better option right now and that’s something I didn’t think I’d hear myself ever say. Funny old world.

    I votd Labour for the first time ever, because there was no libdem standing, probably a good thing as a split vote would probably let the tory in.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 48,143
    dixiedean said:

    kle4 said:

    MattW said:

    Sandpit said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    I've got a radical idea, how about we treat everyone the same and do not discriminate based upon race.
    What’s that got to do with the question?
    If someone presents to you as, say, Pakistani, are you going to demand a genetic test?

    I hope not.
    No. But it won't make a difference to me, so why would I?

    If on the other hand you're saying "this job is reserved only for Pakistanis" and then a white Geordie with a thick Geordie accent who's never left the country applies for it saying he's Pakistani - what's meant to happen there?

    The nature of identity only matters if you're discriminating based on identity. If you're not discriminating you can identify as whatever you choose and it doesn't make a difference. Call yourself Pakistani, Kiwi, Geordie, Jew, Jedi or Klingon - its none of my business whatever you say.
    Indeed. It’s only problematic if you’re treating people differently according to their race. So don’t do that.
    That’s nice, but in NZ the Māori seats have been around since 1867 and are reasonably uncontroversial.

    You can self-identify if you wish to enrol in one of those seats. As I said, it’s hard to think of a way to avoid self-identification that doesn’t lead you into a very strange place.
    I think that's an interesting comment.

    Needing such arrangements in the first place is an admission of failure, and a need to apply a sticky plaster, perhaps, and is it a narrow line between what works and what doesn't?

    Are the cases of Israel and Lebanon pertinent with allocation of representation by community?

    We could maybe add Pakistan, and how does it work in NI? Is NI self-identity as Nationalist of Unionist?

    Majoritarian democracy often tends to be a disaster in ethnically or religiously divided countries.
    Which democracies aren't ethnically or religiously divided?
    You need to think about post-colonial societies in particular, and why it might be deemed important and uncontroversial to maintain special status (or protection) for indigenous peoples.

    The UK is not especially ethnically or religiously divided, nor is most of Western Europe.

    Such division there is in the UK is mostly about national identity and can be addressed via devolution.

    The notable exception is Catholics (and Protestants) in Northern Ireland where a bespoke arrangement has been painstakingly constructed.
    And is it even still fit for purpose?
    We shall find out Friday.
    As someone who was born there - the point of the agreement is that the politicians and population of NI can't be trusted with democracy. So kindergarten rules....

    The fact that if the Alliance comes second, then there is a problem, illustrates the comic nature of the system.

    "To be sure, to be sure. But are you a Protestant Hindu or a Catholic Hindu?"
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,266
    edited May 2022

    Well I just did something rather novel. I voted Labour for the first time in my life.

    No love of the party generally, but I cannot bring myself to vote Tory whilst the government is such a cluster****. Labour honestly seem like the better option right now and that’s something I didn’t think I’d hear myself ever say. Funny old world.

    I votd Labour for the first time ever, because there was no libdem standing, probably a good thing as a split vote would probably let the tory in.
    Well that's two over to the dark side.
    Welcome.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 7,806
    First time I've not had to queue at a polling place.

    I was the only one there. Hmmmm.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,137
    Point of Information

    Re: today's elections what is basic timetable for results? For example, will they start counting in Northern Ireland tonight OR wait until Friday?

    Am guessing that returns from local elections in Britain will start trickling in around midnight? Specifically, what about London?

    ALSO what are some good links for live blogs & results reporting?

    Thanks in advance for your aid & assistance for your fellow PBer(s)!
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 50,526
    edited May 2022

    The way the government is undermining it, you do question it.

    A direct line can be traced from Sinn Féin’s performance today and that vote in 2016 which I keep banging on about.

    Sinn Féin's performance in the most recent Assembly elections:

    2007: 26.2%
    2011: 26.9%
    2016: 24.0%
    2017: 27.9%

    The latest tracker poll has them on 26%. If anything stands out post-that-vote-in-2016, it's not Sinn Féin's performance but the growth of the Alliance.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 53,130

    kle4 said:

    MattW said:

    Sandpit said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    I've got a radical idea, how about we treat everyone the same and do not discriminate based upon race.
    What’s that got to do with the question?
    If someone presents to you as, say, Pakistani, are you going to demand a genetic test?

    I hope not.
    No. But it won't make a difference to me, so why would I?

    If on the other hand you're saying "this job is reserved only for Pakistanis" and then a white Geordie with a thick Geordie accent who's never left the country applies for it saying he's Pakistani - what's meant to happen there?

    The nature of identity only matters if you're discriminating based on identity. If you're not discriminating you can identify as whatever you choose and it doesn't make a difference. Call yourself Pakistani, Kiwi, Geordie, Jew, Jedi or Klingon - its none of my business whatever you say.
    Indeed. It’s only problematic if you’re treating people differently according to their race. So don’t do that.
    That’s nice, but in NZ the Māori seats have been around since 1867 and are reasonably uncontroversial.

    You can self-identify if you wish to enrol in one of those seats. As I said, it’s hard to think of a way to avoid self-identification that doesn’t lead you into a very strange place.
    I think that's an interesting comment.

    Needing such arrangements in the first place is an admission of failure, and a need to apply a sticky plaster, perhaps, and is it a narrow line between what works and what doesn't?

    Are the cases of Israel and Lebanon pertinent with allocation of representation by community?

    We could maybe add Pakistan, and how does it work in NI? Is NI self-identity as Nationalist of Unionist?

    Majoritarian democracy often tends to be a disaster in ethnically or religiously divided countries.
    Which democracies aren't ethnically or religiously divided?
    You need to think about post-colonial societies in particular, and why it might be deemed important and uncontroversial to maintain special status (or protection) for indigenous peoples.

    The UK is not especially ethnically or religiously divided, nor is most of Western Europe.

    Such division there is in the UK is mostly about national identity and can be addressed via devolution.

    The notable exception is Catholics (and Protestants) in Northern Ireland where a bespoke arrangement has been painstakingly constructed.
    And is it even still fit for purpose?
    The way the government is undermining it, you do question it.

    A direct line can be traced from Sinn Féin’s performance today and that vote in 2016 which I keep banging on about.
    The problems of Northern Ireland require everyone to compromise and understand each other. It’s been sad to see it used as a political tool over the past six years, with little regard given to those who live there.

    Today’s update: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/05/05/brussels-refusing-access-data-could-solve-northern-ireland-protocol/
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,149

    The way the government is undermining it, you do question it.

    A direct line can be traced from Sinn Féin’s performance today and that vote in 2016 which I keep banging on about.

    Sinn Féin's performance in the most recent Assembly elections:

    2007: 26.2%
    2011: 26.9%
    2016: 24.0%
    2017: 27.9%

    The latest tracker poll has them on 26%. If anything stands out post-that-vote-in-2016, it's not Sinn Féin's performance but the growth of the Alliance.
    Or rather, the collapse of the DUP
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 61,335
    Trump less likely to run if Biden is not running.

    Interesting piece from Politico:

    https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/05/biden-trump-rematch-00030250
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,266

    Point of Information

    Re: today's elections what is basic timetable for results? For example, will they start counting in Northern Ireland tonight OR wait until Friday?

    Am guessing that returns from local elections in Britain will start trickling in around midnight? Specifically, what about London?

    ALSO what are some good links for live blogs & results reporting?

    Thanks in advance for your aid & assistance for your fellow PBer(s)!

    N. Ireland is Friday. It's STV, a long count with multiple rounds, so needs a full day.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,202

    Could LDs really take Hull?

    Amazing if true, they don’t seem likely elderly liberal crypto-Tory nimbys in the East Riding.

    We’re getting Hull!
    We’re getting Hull!
    We’re getting Hull!
    We’re getting Hull!

    I’ve had a nap this afternoon, so you can have unbroken MoonRabbit all the way through 😁
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 48,143
    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    MattW said:

    Sandpit said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    I've got a radical idea, how about we treat everyone the same and do not discriminate based upon race.
    What’s that got to do with the question?
    If someone presents to you as, say, Pakistani, are you going to demand a genetic test?

    I hope not.
    No. But it won't make a difference to me, so why would I?

    If on the other hand you're saying "this job is reserved only for Pakistanis" and then a white Geordie with a thick Geordie accent who's never left the country applies for it saying he's Pakistani - what's meant to happen there?

    The nature of identity only matters if you're discriminating based on identity. If you're not discriminating you can identify as whatever you choose and it doesn't make a difference. Call yourself Pakistani, Kiwi, Geordie, Jew, Jedi or Klingon - its none of my business whatever you say.
    Indeed. It’s only problematic if you’re treating people differently according to their race. So don’t do that.
    That’s nice, but in NZ the Māori seats have been around since 1867 and are reasonably uncontroversial.

    You can self-identify if you wish to enrol in one of those seats. As I said, it’s hard to think of a way to avoid self-identification that doesn’t lead you into a very strange place.
    I think that's an interesting comment.

    Needing such arrangements in the first place is an admission of failure, and a need to apply a sticky plaster, perhaps, and is it a narrow line between what works and what doesn't?

    Are the cases of Israel and Lebanon pertinent with allocation of representation by community?

    We could maybe add Pakistan, and how does it work in NI? Is NI self-identity as Nationalist of Unionist?

    Majoritarian democracy often tends to be a disaster in ethnically or religiously divided countries.
    Which democracies aren't ethnically or religiously divided?
    You need to think about post-colonial societies in particular, and why it might be deemed important and uncontroversial to maintain special status (or protection) for indigenous peoples.

    The UK is not especially ethnically or religiously divided, nor is most of Western Europe.

    Such division there is in the UK is mostly about national identity and can be addressed via devolution.

    The notable exception is Catholics (and Protestants) in Northern Ireland where a bespoke arrangement has been painstakingly constructed.
    And is it even still fit for purpose?
    The way the government is undermining it, you do question it.

    A direct line can be traced from Sinn Féin’s performance today and that vote in 2016 which I keep banging on about.
    The problems of Northern Ireland require everyone to compromise and understand each other. It’s been sad to see it used as a political tool over the past six years, with little regard given to those who live there.

    Today’s update: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/05/05/brussels-refusing-access-data-could-solve-northern-ireland-protocol/
    The agreement requires

    1) the Men* of Violence to collect their multiple 6 figure salaries in return for forgetting to actually murder their opponents.
    2) Their "businesses" are carefully left untouched.
    3) If they get a bit anti-agreement, then their "businesses" become fair game. See Slab Murphy.

    *Very unrepresentative of women, the MoVs. Generally pretty... "Gammon" I think the PB term is.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,266

    Point of Information

    Re: today's elections what is basic timetable for results? For example, will they start counting in Northern Ireland tonight OR wait until Friday?

    Am guessing that returns from local elections in Britain will start trickling in around midnight? Specifically, what about London?

    ALSO what are some good links for live blogs & results reporting?

    Thanks in advance for your aid & assistance for your fellow PBer(s)!

    Here's the Guardian guide.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/may/05/local-elections-2022-key-councils-to-watch-and-when-the-results-will-come-in

    I notice they don't consider N Ireland to be "key".
    Adds to my theory that the media establishment are going to be shocked at what the most significant story will be.
  • bigglesbiggles Posts: 5,624

    The way the government is undermining it, you do question it.

    A direct line can be traced from Sinn Féin’s performance today and that vote in 2016 which I keep banging on about.

    Sinn Féin's performance in the most recent Assembly elections:

    2007: 26.2%
    2011: 26.9%
    2016: 24.0%
    2017: 27.9%

    The latest tracker poll has them on 26%. If anything stands out post-that-vote-in-2016, it's not Sinn Féin's performance but the growth of the Alliance.
    Heartwarming, really. I’d love to interpret it as a block of voters starting to say “can you lot actually govern for a bit please”?
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 16,834
    dixiedean said:

    Well I just did something rather novel. I voted Labour for the first time in my life.

    No love of the party generally, but I cannot bring myself to vote Tory whilst the government is such a cluster****. Labour honestly seem like the better option right now and that’s something I didn’t think I’d hear myself ever say. Funny old world.

    I votd Labour for the first time ever, because there was no libdem standing, probably a good thing as a split vote would probably let the tory in.
    Well that's two over to the dark side.
    Welcome.
    Surely either from the dark side or to the light side?
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,137
    dixiedean said:

    Point of Information

    Re: today's elections what is basic timetable for results? For example, will they start counting in Northern Ireland tonight OR wait until Friday?

    Am guessing that returns from local elections in Britain will start trickling in around midnight? Specifically, what about London?

    ALSO what are some good links for live blogs & results reporting?

    Thanks in advance for your aid & assistance for your fellow PBer(s)!

    N. Ireland is Friday. It's STV, a long count with multiple rounds, so needs a full day.
    Same as in Republic. Sensible way to do it, election one day, counting the next.

    Yours truly has observed plenty of elections, where election workers & administrators put in a full Election Day, and then some - and then work some more processing ballots & counting votes into the wee hours. NOT optimum from efficiency standpoint.

    Whereas on the Emerald Isle, having the count the following day gives workers AND observers the opportunity to get a decent night's sleep between plunging into the vote counting bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 52,899
    Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients



    That's.... that's exactly what the article is about, you should read it. Reich develops therapies targeted by race. But the specific genetic markers that denote a race have close to hee-haw to do with what a lay person would describe as race (thus the Brazil-vs-USA dichotomy).
    An aborigine from the Tiwi islands is clearly different from the average freckly Cornish housewife in a way that is not really explicable unless you resort to some kind of “racial” definition

    I’ve read quite widely in this area and my punt is that there are three broadly defined races which can be roughly differentiated - African, Indo-European, East Asian. And possibly a fourth: Australasian. There are a zillion overlaps, contradictions, anomalies - where do you put the San of the Kalahari, indigenous Americans, Ashkenazi Jews, Emma Raducanu?

    But all these complexities and awkward questions do not mean the concept of race is entirely constructed by society. It plainly is not. It exists biologically and it is ALSO a social construct
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,202

    dixiedean said:

    Well I just did something rather novel. I voted Labour for the first time in my life.

    No love of the party generally, but I cannot bring myself to vote Tory whilst the government is such a cluster****. Labour honestly seem like the better option right now and that’s something I didn’t think I’d hear myself ever say. Funny old world.

    I votd Labour for the first time ever, because there was no libdem standing, probably a good thing as a split vote would probably let the tory in.
    Well that's two over to the dark side.
    Welcome.
    Surely either from the dark side or to the light side?
    Dark. And very very dirty.
  • BlancheLivermoreBlancheLivermore Posts: 5,609

    @AAhronheim
    Russian President Putin has apologized to Israel’s PM Bennett for FM Lavrov’s Hitler comments. Bennett has accepted his apology.


    https://twitter.com/AAhronheim/status/1522246787209302017

    Very bad day at the office for Lavrov.
    Did you ever find out how many people died in the attack on the Mariupol theatre? Or work why it might take them so long to count the dead?
    https://t.co/RUKxdGW7fS
    No, and nor does the article you posted make it any clearer.

    @AAhronheim
    Russian President Putin has apologized to Israel’s PM Bennett for FM Lavrov’s Hitler comments. Bennett has accepted his apology.


    https://twitter.com/AAhronheim/status/1522246787209302017

    Very bad day at the office for Lavrov.
    Did you ever find out how many people died in the attack on the Mariupol theatre? Or work why it might take them so long to count the dead?
    https://t.co/RUKxdGW7fS
    No, and nor does the article you posted make it any clearer.
    You’ve come up with some corkers

    “What is great to think, is that when as seems imminent, this conflict finishes”

    How imminent does it seems now?
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 16,834
    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients



    That's.... that's exactly what the article is about, you should read it. Reich develops therapies targeted by race. But the specific genetic markers that denote a race have close to hee-haw to do with what a lay person would describe as race (thus the Brazil-vs-USA dichotomy).
    An aborigine from the Tiwi islands is clearly different from the average freckly Cornish housewife in a way that is not really explicable unless you resort to some kind of “racial” definition

    I’ve read quite widely in this area and my punt is that there are three broadly defined races which can be roughly differentiated - African, Indo-European, East Asian. And possibly a fourth: Australasian. There are a zillion overlaps, contradictions, anomalies - where do you put the San of the Kalahari, indigenous Americans, Ashkenazi Jews, Emma Raducanu?

    But all these complexities and awkward questions do not mean the concept of race is entirely constructed by society. It plainly is not. It exists biologically and it is ALSO a social construct
    I don’t know enough to answer this question, but someone might. If you viewed the human species as we do animals, would we have sub species? By which I mean distinct populations that are related but can be differentiated.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 21,749
    edited May 2022
    kle4 said:

    MattW said:

    Sandpit said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    I've got a radical idea, how about we treat everyone the same and do not discriminate based upon race.
    What’s that got to do with the question?
    If someone presents to you as, say, Pakistani, are you going to demand a genetic test?

    I hope not.
    No. But it won't make a difference to me, so why would I?

    If on the other hand you're saying "this job is reserved only for Pakistanis" and then a white Geordie with a thick Geordie accent who's never left the country applies for it saying he's Pakistani - what's meant to happen there?

    The nature of identity only matters if you're discriminating based on identity. If you're not discriminating you can identify as whatever you choose and it doesn't make a difference. Call yourself Pakistani, Kiwi, Geordie, Jew, Jedi or Klingon - its none of my business whatever you say.
    Indeed. It’s only problematic if you’re treating people differently according to their race. So don’t do that.
    That’s nice, but in NZ the Māori seats have been around since 1867 and are reasonably uncontroversial.

    You can self-identify if you wish to enrol in one of those seats. As I said, it’s hard to think of a way to avoid self-identification that doesn’t lead you into a very strange place.
    I think that's an interesting comment.

    Needing such arrangements in the first place is an admission of failure, and a need to apply a sticky plaster, perhaps, and is it a narrow line between what works and what doesn't?

    Are the cases of Israel and Lebanon pertinent with allocation of representation by community?

    We could maybe add Pakistan, and how does it work in NI? Is NI self-identity as Nationalist of Unionist?

    Majoritarian democracy often tends to be a disaster in ethnically or religiously divided countries.
    Which democracies aren't ethnically or religiously divided?
    You need to think about post-colonial societies in particular, and why it might be deemed important and uncontroversial to maintain special status (or protection) for indigenous peoples.

    The UK is not especially ethnically or religiously divided, nor is most of Western Europe.

    Such division there is in the UK is mostly about national identity and can be addressed via devolution.

    The notable exception is Catholics (and Protestants) in Northern Ireland where a bespoke arrangement has been painstakingly constructed.
    And is it even still fit for purpose?
    I think the difficulty with such arrangements is when they become fissiparious rather than unifying amongst the different groups.

    Potentially very fragile. And vulnerable to excessive external changes, or an unwillingness by larger groups to recognise minorities - which of course is as old as the hills. Or sometimes not.

    I think the representation no longer matching the populations were one factor in the Lebanese Civil War, for example.
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,341
    edited May 2022
    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients



    That's.... that's exactly what the article is about, you should read it. Reich develops therapies targeted by race. But the specific genetic markers that denote a race have close to hee-haw to do with what a lay person would describe as race (thus the Brazil-vs-USA dichotomy).
    An aborigine from the Tiwi islands is clearly different from the average freckly Cornish housewife in a way that is not really explicable unless you resort to some kind of “racial” definition

    I’ve read quite widely in this area and my punt is that there are three broadly defined races which can be roughly differentiated - African, Indo-European, East Asian. And possibly a fourth: Australasian. There are a zillion overlaps, contradictions, anomalies - where do you put the San of the Kalahari, indigenous Americans, Ashkenazi Jews, Emma Raducanu?

    But all these complexities and awkward questions do not mean the concept of race is entirely constructed by society. It plainly is not. It exists biologically and it is ALSO a social construct
    Amerindians? Or are they Indo-European or East Asian?
  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,821
    In case you missed it, Macron's party has renamed itself again. Originally 'En Marche' , then 'La République En Marche', now 'Renaissance'.

    And the Socialists aren't going to play ball with Mélenchon's lot.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/french-socialists-fracture-as-party-veterans-reject-deal-with-radical-left-qbssdbcwz (£)
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 47,618

    dixiedean said:

    Point of Information

    Re: today's elections what is basic timetable for results? For example, will they start counting in Northern Ireland tonight OR wait until Friday?

    Am guessing that returns from local elections in Britain will start trickling in around midnight? Specifically, what about London?

    ALSO what are some good links for live blogs & results reporting?

    Thanks in advance for your aid & assistance for your fellow PBer(s)!

    N. Ireland is Friday. It's STV, a long count with multiple rounds, so needs a full day.
    Same as in Republic. Sensible way to do it, election one day, counting the next.

    Yours truly has observed plenty of elections, where election workers & administrators put in a full Election Day, and then some - and then work some more processing ballots & counting votes into the wee hours. NOT optimum from efficiency standpoint.

    Whereas on the Emerald Isle, having the count the following day gives workers AND observers the opportunity to get a decent night's sleep between plunging into the vote counting bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
    In the USA counts go for weeks!

    Though the French managed to count a whole country in a couple of hours a few weeks ago.
  • murali_smurali_s Posts: 3,067
    Just cast my three votes for the Yellow Peril - quite busy here in Merton
  • LeonLeon Posts: 52,899

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients



    That's.... that's exactly what the article is about, you should read it. Reich develops therapies targeted by race. But the specific genetic markers that denote a race have close to hee-haw to do with what a lay person would describe as race (thus the Brazil-vs-USA dichotomy).
    An aborigine from the Tiwi islands is clearly different from the average freckly Cornish housewife in a way that is not really explicable unless you resort to some kind of “racial” definition

    I’ve read quite widely in this area and my punt is that there are three broadly defined races which can be roughly differentiated - African, Indo-European, East Asian. And possibly a fourth: Australasian. There are a zillion overlaps, contradictions, anomalies - where do you put the San of the Kalahari, indigenous Americans, Ashkenazi Jews, Emma Raducanu?

    But all these complexities and awkward questions do not mean the concept of race is entirely constructed by society. It plainly is not. It exists biologically and it is ALSO a social construct
    I don’t know enough to answer this question, but someone might. If you viewed the human species as we do animals, would we have sub species? By which I mean distinct populations that are related but can be differentiated.
    Yes, we probably would. But people find the idea outrageously crude to the point of being racist in itself - the same way we feel if we talk of “different breeds” of humans like “breeds of dogs”, so the term is avoided. Probably rightly, this whole question is vexed enough already
  • MikeSmithsonMikeSmithson Posts: 7,382
    Andy_JS said:

    I hope PBers found the local elections spreadsheet I posted earlier interesting. Hopefully it didn't feature too many mistakes.

    Thanks again Andy. A great resource
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,341
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients



    That's.... that's exactly what the article is about, you should read it. Reich develops therapies targeted by race. But the specific genetic markers that denote a race have close to hee-haw to do with what a lay person would describe as race (thus the Brazil-vs-USA dichotomy).
    An aborigine from the Tiwi islands is clearly different from the average freckly Cornish housewife in a way that is not really explicable unless you resort to some kind of “racial” definition

    I’ve read quite widely in this area and my punt is that there are three broadly defined races which can be roughly differentiated - African, Indo-European, East Asian. And possibly a fourth: Australasian. There are a zillion overlaps, contradictions, anomalies - where do you put the San of the Kalahari, indigenous Americans, Ashkenazi Jews, Emma Raducanu?

    But all these complexities and awkward questions do not mean the concept of race is entirely constructed by society. It plainly is not. It exists biologically and it is ALSO a social construct
    I don’t know enough to answer this question, but someone might. If you viewed the human species as we do animals, would we have sub species? By which I mean distinct populations that are related but can be differentiated.
    Yes, we probably would. But people find the idea outrageously crude to the point of being racist in itself - the same way we feel if we talk of “different breeds” of humans like “breeds of dogs”, so the term is avoided. Probably rightly, this whole question is vexed enough already
    We also showed that the genetic variation between dog breeds is much greater than the variation within breeds. Between-breed variation is estimated at 27.5 percent. By comparison, genetic variation between human populations is only 5.4 percent.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 50,526

    In case you missed it, Macron's party has renamed itself again. Originally 'En Marche' , then 'La République En Marche', now 'Renaissance'.

    And the Socialists aren't going to play ball with Mélenchon's lot.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/french-socialists-fracture-as-party-veterans-reject-deal-with-radical-left-qbssdbcwz (£)

    That sounds a bit Zemmour.
  • MikeSmithsonMikeSmithson Posts: 7,382
    Just to say I have not voted and won't be. This is primarily because like most parts of England there are no elections today.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,452

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients



    That's.... that's exactly what the article is about, you should read it. Reich develops therapies targeted by race. But the specific genetic markers that denote a race have close to hee-haw to do with what a lay person would describe as race (thus the Brazil-vs-USA dichotomy).
    An aborigine from the Tiwi islands is clearly different from the average freckly Cornish housewife in a way that is not really explicable unless you resort to some kind of “racial” definition

    I’ve read quite widely in this area and my punt is that there are three broadly defined races which can be roughly differentiated - African, Indo-European, East Asian. And possibly a fourth: Australasian. There are a zillion overlaps, contradictions, anomalies - where do you put the San of the Kalahari, indigenous Americans, Ashkenazi Jews, Emma Raducanu?

    But all these complexities and awkward questions do not mean the concept of race is entirely constructed by society. It plainly is not. It exists biologically and it is ALSO a social construct
    I don’t know enough to answer this question, but someone might. If you viewed the human species as we do animals, would we have sub species? By which I mean distinct populations that are related but can be differentiated.
    Bit tricky ab initio, as we have various degrees of interblends of other species of Homo - Neandertal, Denisovan ...
  • Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients



    That's.... that's exactly what the article is about, you should read it. Reich develops therapies targeted by race. But the specific genetic markers that denote a race have close to hee-haw to do with what a lay person would describe as race (thus the Brazil-vs-USA dichotomy).
    An aborigine from the Tiwi islands is clearly different from the average freckly Cornish housewife in a way that is not really explicable unless you resort to some kind of “racial” definition

    I’ve read quite widely in this area and my punt is that there are three broadly defined races which can be roughly differentiated - African, Indo-European, East Asian. And possibly a fourth: Australasian. There are a zillion overlaps, contradictions, anomalies - where do you put the San of the Kalahari, indigenous Americans, Ashkenazi Jews, Emma Raducanu?

    But all these complexities and awkward questions do not mean the concept of race is entirely constructed by society. It plainly is not. It exists biologically and it is ALSO a social construct
    They're clearly different in the same way as a blonde is clearly different from a brunette, or a tall person is clearly different to a short one, or a fat person is clearly different to a skinny one.

    Doesn't mean there's a serious difference if you haven't been brought up to see a difference.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,019
    edited May 2022
    Just came back from voting. Hardly anyone around at 5.30pm here in Ilford North, apart from three Tories with rosettes outside.

    Three guesses as to how I voted :lol:
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379

    Sandpit said:

    biggles said:

    biggles said:

    nico679 said:

    Point taken re the local elections but because of where they’re taking place it’s impossible for the Tories to lose anything close to the Tories expectation management .

    To lose even 500 would be something .

    Yup. We have come a long way from a competent media doing its job. Call me old fashioned but I do like to at least start with indisputable facts.
    The media took six months to discover reporting day vs day-of statistics, during COVID.

    Gell-Mann Amnesia.....
    And don’t get me started on asking any journalist to manage basic maths when discussing percentages - e.g. percentage point rises versus percentage rises, or basic compound interest.
    You expect all those liberal arts majors that dominate the MSM, to be numerate?

    The really, really annoying thing, is that there are some good scientific journalists out there, it’s just that they barely get used by the major TV news channels.
    The important news is too important to be left to subject matter specialists.

    The Cult of The Generalist.
    The political journalists were much more pro lockdown than the science journalists. No wonder the latter were marginalised.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 94,914

    Just came back from voting. Hardly anyone around at 5.30pm here in Ilford North, apart from three Tories with rosettes outside.

    Three guesses as to how I voted :lol:

    Well, Sunil means Blue, so notwithstanding the avatar...
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 31,266

    Just came back from voting. Hardly anyone around at 5.30pm here in Ilford North, apart from three Tories with rosettes outside.

    Three guesses as to how I voted :lol:

    I was hoping that where you live in Ilford didn't coincide with the postponed election.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 61,335

    Just to say I have not voted and won't be. This is primarily because like most parts of England there are no elections today.

    Which is one of the excuses being lined up as to why a poor performance should not mean ditching Johnson.
  • PensfoldPensfold Posts: 191

    Just to say I have not voted and won't be. This is primarily because like most parts of England there are no elections today.

    Which is one of the excuses being lined up as to why a poor performance should not mean ditching Johnson.
    Buckinghamshire election free.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,019
    kle4 said:

    Just came back from voting. Hardly anyone around at 5.30pm here in Ilford North, apart from three Tories with rosettes outside.

    Three guesses as to how I voted :lol:

    Well, Sunil means Blue, so notwithstanding the avatar...
    My avatar swayed me, unfortunately :lol:
  • bigglesbiggles Posts: 5,624

    Just to say I have not voted and won't be. This is primarily because like most parts of England there are no elections today.

    Only “primarily”….? I’m in the same boat - was there a way to vote I was unaware of?….
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 41,293
    A story about an Russian anti-EU scheme. It claims the Russians printed 40 billion Euros worth of counterfeit notes.

    https://twitter.com/KonotopW/status/1512833308492804099
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,019
    Andy_JS said:

    Just came back from voting. Hardly anyone around at 5.30pm here in Ilford North, apart from three Tories with rosettes outside.

    Three guesses as to how I voted :lol:

    I was hoping that where you live in Ilford didn't coincide with the postponed election.
    Andy, Mayfield Ward is in Ilford South.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,738
    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    MattW said:

    Sandpit said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    I've got a radical idea, how about we treat everyone the same and do not discriminate based upon race.
    What’s that got to do with the question?
    If someone presents to you as, say, Pakistani, are you going to demand a genetic test?

    I hope not.
    No. But it won't make a difference to me, so why would I?

    If on the other hand you're saying "this job is reserved only for Pakistanis" and then a white Geordie with a thick Geordie accent who's never left the country applies for it saying he's Pakistani - what's meant to happen there?

    The nature of identity only matters if you're discriminating based on identity. If you're not discriminating you can identify as whatever you choose and it doesn't make a difference. Call yourself Pakistani, Kiwi, Geordie, Jew, Jedi or Klingon - its none of my business whatever you say.
    Indeed. It’s only problematic if you’re treating people differently according to their race. So don’t do that.
    That’s nice, but in NZ the Māori seats have been around since 1867 and are reasonably uncontroversial.

    You can self-identify if you wish to enrol in one of those seats. As I said, it’s hard to think of a way to avoid self-identification that doesn’t lead you into a very strange place.
    I think that's an interesting comment.

    Needing such arrangements in the first place is an admission of failure, and a need to apply a sticky plaster, perhaps, and is it a narrow line between what works and what doesn't?

    Are the cases of Israel and Lebanon pertinent with allocation of representation by community?

    We could maybe add Pakistan, and how does it work in NI? Is NI self-identity as Nationalist of Unionist?

    Majoritarian democracy often tends to be a disaster in ethnically or religiously divided countries.
    Which democracies aren't ethnically or religiously divided?
    You need to think about post-colonial societies in particular, and why it might be deemed important and uncontroversial to maintain special status (or protection) for indigenous peoples.

    The UK is not especially ethnically or religiously divided, nor is most of Western Europe.

    Such division there is in the UK is mostly about national identity and can be addressed via devolution.

    The notable exception is Catholics (and Protestants) in Northern Ireland where a bespoke arrangement has been painstakingly constructed.
    And is it even still fit for purpose?
    The way the government is undermining it, you do question it.

    A direct line can be traced from Sinn Féin’s performance today and that vote in 2016 which I keep banging on about.
    The problems of Northern Ireland require everyone to compromise and understand each other. It’s been sad to see it used as a political tool over the past six years, with little regard given to those who live there.

    Today’s update: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/05/05/brussels-refusing-access-data-could-solve-northern-ireland-protocol/
    Whenever I feel bad about our own political parties, I just look across the Irish Sea and think about how much, much worse it could be...
  • LeonLeon Posts: 52,899
    rcs1000 said:

    Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients



    That's.... that's exactly what the article is about, you should read it. Reich develops therapies targeted by race. But the specific genetic markers that denote a race have close to hee-haw to do with what a lay person would describe as race (thus the Brazil-vs-USA dichotomy).
    In Israel, there has been a massive amount of research into finding 'the Jewish gene'. That is, is there some gene (or set of genes) that can be used to discover if someone is (or isn't) Jewish.

    To date, this has been a failure.

    Actually, it's worse than that. They can easily separate (on average) Israeli Jew from Australians, Chinese, Brazilians, etc.

    But what they haven't been able to do is to reliably differentiate between a Palestinian Arab and a Middle Eastern Jew.
    That’s hilarious and also predictable: they are so obviously the same people. Semitic
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 10,051
    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients

    Leon remains racist, so no surprise there.

    See:

    Agyemang C, Bhopal R, Bruijnzeels M. Negro, Black, Black African, African Caribbean, African
    American or what? Labelling African origin populations in the health arena in the 21st century.
    Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. 2005 Dec 1;59(12):1014-8.

    And:

    Chowkwanyun M, Reed Jr AL. Racial health disparities and Covid-19—caution and context. New
    England Journal of Medicine. 2020 May 6

    ... for rebuttals.
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,341
    @ Leon. As a fellow Cornishman, you'll appreciate this map of genetic markers vs geography of the UK.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.17136

    Strangely enough, West Yorkshire looks remarkably like Lancashire ... (Ducks and takes cover)
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 10,051

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients



    That's.... that's exactly what the article is about, you should read it. Reich develops therapies targeted by race. But the specific genetic markers that denote a race have close to hee-haw to do with what a lay person would describe as race (thus the Brazil-vs-USA dichotomy).
    An aborigine from the Tiwi islands is clearly different from the average freckly Cornish housewife in a way that is not really explicable unless you resort to some kind of “racial” definition

    I’ve read quite widely in this area and my punt is that there are three broadly defined races which can be roughly differentiated - African, Indo-European, East Asian. And possibly a fourth: Australasian. There are a zillion overlaps, contradictions, anomalies - where do you put the San of the Kalahari, indigenous Americans, Ashkenazi Jews, Emma Raducanu?

    But all these complexities and awkward questions do not mean the concept of race is entirely constructed by society. It plainly is not. It exists biologically and it is ALSO a social construct
    I don’t know enough to answer this question, but someone might. If you viewed the human species as we do animals, would we have sub species? By which I mean distinct populations that are related but can be differentiated.
    No. We are a very genetically homogenous species. Species with sub-species show way more variation.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,738
    MISTY said:

    More on the BoE's forecast

    2023: No growth, possible recession
    2024: No growth.

    Unemployment: to rise from 3.8% to 5.5%.

    These are nightmare numbers for the tories

    Inflation?

    The tories better hope sterling doesn't tank too badly and that stops inflation coming down like the BoE predicts.

    Otherwise, well...

    They might indeed be nightmare numbers for the Tories if the other lot had the slightest idea what to do about them.

    Instead, they are desperate to talk about anything else, to disguise their total lack of ideas.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 10,051
    Leon said:

    I’ve read quite widely in this area and my punt is that there are three broadly defined races which can be roughly differentiated - African, Indo-European, East Asian. And possibly a fourth: Australasian.

    Just to be crystal clear, that right there is racist nonsense.

  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,137
    Andy_JS said:

    I hope PBers found the local elections spreadsheet I posted earlier interesting. Hopefully it didn't feature too many mistakes.

    Can you repost, please?
  • BurgessianBurgessian Posts: 2,651

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients

    Leon remains racist, so no surprise there.

    Se
    He isn't and you shouldn't post comments like that.
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,341

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients



    That's.... that's exactly what the article is about, you should read it. Reich develops therapies targeted by race. But the specific genetic markers that denote a race have close to hee-haw to do with what a lay person would describe as race (thus the Brazil-vs-USA dichotomy).
    An aborigine from the Tiwi islands is clearly different from the average freckly Cornish housewife in a way that is not really explicable unless you resort to some kind of “racial” definition

    I’ve read quite widely in this area and my punt is that there are three broadly defined races which can be roughly differentiated - African, Indo-European, East Asian. And possibly a fourth: Australasian. There are a zillion overlaps, contradictions, anomalies - where do you put the San of the Kalahari, indigenous Americans, Ashkenazi Jews, Emma Raducanu?

    But all these complexities and awkward questions do not mean the concept of race is entirely constructed by society. It plainly is not. It exists biologically and it is ALSO a social construct
    I don’t know enough to answer this question, but someone might. If you viewed the human species as we do animals, would we have sub species? By which I mean distinct populations that are related but can be differentiated.
    No. We are a very genetically homogenous species. Species with sub-species show way more variation.
    See my post at 1:51 above (US time)
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients



    That's.... that's exactly what the article is about, you should read it. Reich develops therapies targeted by race. But the specific genetic markers that denote a race have close to hee-haw to do with what a lay person would describe as race (thus the Brazil-vs-USA dichotomy).
    An aborigine from the Tiwi islands is clearly different from the average freckly Cornish housewife in a way that is not really explicable unless you resort to some kind of “racial” definition

    I’ve read quite widely in this area and my punt is that there are three broadly defined races which can be roughly differentiated - African, Indo-European, East Asian. And possibly a fourth: Australasian. There are a zillion overlaps, contradictions, anomalies - where do you put the San of the Kalahari, indigenous Americans, Ashkenazi Jews, Emma Raducanu?

    But all these complexities and awkward questions do not mean the concept of race is entirely constructed by society. It plainly is not. It exists biologically and it is ALSO a social construct
    They're clearly different in the same way as a blonde is clearly different from a brunette, or a tall person is clearly different to a short one, or a fat person is clearly different to a skinny one.

    Doesn't mean there's a serious difference if you haven't been brought up to see a difference.
    Which is precisely why "race is a social construct" logically leads to the best way to eliminate racism being to eliminate the perception of race - not to judge everyone primarily by their immutable characteristics.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 52,899

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients

    Leon remains racist, so no surprise there.

    See:

    Agyemang C, Bhopal R, Bruijnzeels M. Negro, Black, Black African, African Caribbean, African
    American or what? Labelling African origin populations in the health arena in the 21st century.
    Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. 2005 Dec 1;59(12):1014-8.

    And:

    Chowkwanyun M, Reed Jr AL. Racial health disparities and Covid-19—caution and context. New
    England Journal of Medicine. 2020 May 6

    ... for rebuttals.
    Lol

    I’m intrigued (to an extent) by people like you. Do you honestly think it advances your argument or makes you look superior to just shout “racist” all time? Don’t you ever consider it might have diminishing effect, simply because you hand it out so much?

  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,137
    Foxy said:

    dixiedean said:

    Point of Information

    Re: today's elections what is basic timetable for results? For example, will they start counting in Northern Ireland tonight OR wait until Friday?

    Am guessing that returns from local elections in Britain will start trickling in around midnight? Specifically, what about London?

    ALSO what are some good links for live blogs & results reporting?

    Thanks in advance for your aid & assistance for your fellow PBer(s)!

    N. Ireland is Friday. It's STV, a long count with multiple rounds, so needs a full day.
    Same as in Republic. Sensible way to do it, election one day, counting the next.

    Yours truly has observed plenty of elections, where election workers & administrators put in a full Election Day, and then some - and then work some more processing ballots & counting votes into the wee hours. NOT optimum from efficiency standpoint.

    Whereas on the Emerald Isle, having the count the following day gives workers AND observers the opportunity to get a decent night's sleep between plunging into the vote counting bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
    In the USA counts go for weeks!

    Though the French managed to count a whole country in a couple of hours a few weeks ago.
    With one race on the ballot paper, correct?

    We do have quaint tradition in USA of waiting until all the valid votes are counted and counts checked BEFORE announcing result.

    Biggest problem in counts NOT concluded on the night, is hectoring journos and hysterical punters. Or visa versa.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 31,266

    Andy_JS said:

    I hope PBers found the local elections spreadsheet I posted earlier interesting. Hopefully it didn't feature too many mistakes.

    Can you repost, please?
    Tabs along the bottom for each region of England, Scotland, Wales.

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15p_DZ1ltk9XStlEQHy-V3SaLCOWU_6j17jZ8sMvgRl4/edit#gid=0
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,149
    edited May 2022
    TimT said:

    @ Leon. As a fellow Cornishman, you'll appreciate this map of genetic markers vs geography of the UK.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.17136

    Strangely enough, West Yorkshire looks remarkably like Lancashire ... (Ducks and takes cover)

    Fascinating map, but whatever happened to the Viking inheritance in Yorkshire and the East Midlands?

    Unless they are the aforementioned West Yorkshire / Lancastrian bantustan, hemmed into the “wrong” side of the Pennines.

    Also, turns out the Orkney is the British “Papua New Guinea”
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 61,335
    Sad times in America:



    Eric Lee
    @erjlee
    ·
    4h
    Fencing, same as the ones from after Jan. 6, were put up around SCOTUS overnight

    https://twitter.com/erjlee/status/1522209584722726912
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,452

    TimT said:

    @ Leon. As a fellow Cornishman, you'll appreciate this map of genetic markers vs geography of the UK.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.17136

    Strangely enough, West Yorkshire looks remarkably like Lancashire ... (Ducks and takes cover)

    Fascinating map, but whatever happened to the Viking inheritance in Yorkshire and the East Midlands?

    Unless they are the aforementioned West Yorkshire / Lancastrian bantustan, hemmed into the “wrong” side of the Pennines.

    Also, turns out the Orkney is the British “Papua New Guinea”
    Very interesting if uneven map - needs much more sampling.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 10,051
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients

    Leon remains racist, so no surprise there.

    See:

    Agyemang C, Bhopal R, Bruijnzeels M. Negro, Black, Black African, African Caribbean, African
    American or what? Labelling African origin populations in the health arena in the 21st century.
    Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. 2005 Dec 1;59(12):1014-8.

    And:

    Chowkwanyun M, Reed Jr AL. Racial health disparities and Covid-19—caution and context. New
    England Journal of Medicine. 2020 May 6

    ... for rebuttals.
    Lol

    I’m intrigued (to an extent) by people like you. Do you honestly think it advances your argument or makes you look superior to just shout “racist” all time? Don’t you ever consider it might have diminishing effect, simply because you hand it out so much?

    Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?

    Today, you have claimed humans have different sub-species, in contradiction to all known genetic studies.

    You are being racist. I doubt you're going to stop. I'm not trying to persuade you or argue with you: that seems like a waste of time. I just hope that other people reading your nonsense are not taken in by your faux confidence and somehow imagine that you know what you are talking about.
  • BurgessianBurgessian Posts: 2,651

    Could LDs really take Hull?

    Amazing if true, they don’t seem likely elderly liberal crypto-Tory nimbys in the East Riding.

    Ironic, too. Hull voted 67% for Brexit. Just shows that voters don't put two-and-two together in the way politicos do.
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,695
    dixiedean said:

    Well I just did something rather novel. I voted Labour for the first time in my life.

    No love of the party generally, but I cannot bring myself to vote Tory whilst the government is such a cluster****. Labour honestly seem like the better option right now and that’s something I didn’t think I’d hear myself ever say. Funny old world.

    I votd Labour for the first time ever, because there was no libdem standing, probably a good thing as a split vote would probably let the tory in.
    Well that's two over to the dark side.
    Welcome.
    Temporarily I can assure you.

    :wink:
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,137
    I recall asking on here a while back, how many PBers have actually observed their local election process.

    Number told of their experiences canvassing and otherwise campaigning for candidates.

    Very few had actually observed ballot processing and vote counting in person. Which is too bad, as for one thing, increases ones respect for election workers.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,149

    Could LDs really take Hull?

    Amazing if true, they don’t seem likely elderly liberal crypto-Tory nimbys in the East Riding.

    Ironic, too. Hull voted 67% for Brexit. Just shows that voters don't put two-and-two together in the way politicos do.
    Either that or that have a fucking massive pothole problem.

    I’d be delighted to see Hull go yellow.

    Even more so if the LDs take Westminster, and their sister-party the Alliance come second in NI. Both are admittedly, stretch targets.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 52,899
    edited May 2022

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients

    Leon remains racist, so no surprise there.

    See:

    Agyemang C, Bhopal R, Bruijnzeels M. Negro, Black, Black African, African Caribbean, African
    American or what? Labelling African origin populations in the health arena in the 21st century.
    Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. 2005 Dec 1;59(12):1014-8.

    And:

    Chowkwanyun M, Reed Jr AL. Racial health disparities and Covid-19—caution and context. New
    England Journal of Medicine. 2020 May 6

    ... for rebuttals.
    Lol

    I’m intrigued (to an extent) by people like you. Do you honestly think it advances your argument or makes you look superior to just shout “racist” all time? Don’t you ever consider it might have diminishing effect, simply because you hand it out so much?

    Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?

    Today, you have claimed humans have different sub-species, in contradiction to all known genetic studies.

    You are being racist. I doubt you're going to stop. I'm not trying to persuade you or argue with you: that seems like a waste of time. I just hope that other people reading your nonsense are not taken in by your faux confidence and somehow imagine that you know what you are talking about.
    “Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?“

    But I didn’t say that, did I? I asked why Traveller communities seemed to have a predisposition to fuck with/neglect their environment, and I asked whether it was cultural or genetic?

    Anyone who has encountered Traveller communities will know that what I say is simply the case. Denying it is futile. It’s like denying Deep South Americans are more obese than most (which I also did recently). In neither situation am I claiming either community is “inferior”. Just pointing out an undeniable trait

    Someone suggested that the reason for Traveller attitudes to waste/litter might be a cultural aversion to The Man, doing anything that looks like co-operation with society. That seems reasonable. So maybe not genetic, at most epigenetic and most likely cultural. Nurture not nature, not something that springs from a deeply rooted “nomadic” lifestyle

    Don’t you claim to be some senior Woke academic at a shit university? Gawd elp the kids
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 7,806

    I recall asking on here a while back, how many PBers have actually observed their local election process.

    Number told of their experiences canvassing and otherwise campaigning for candidates.

    Very few had actually observed ballot processing and vote counting in person. Which is too bad, as for one thing, increases ones respect for election workers.

    I actually reflected on that as I voted as someone on PB pointed out how tricky it is earlier today.

    Nevertheless I voted for every single candidate, spitefully swapping the order of candidates if the party had advised me to vote in a particular way.
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,341
    Fascinating article worth reading in full for a glimpse at privileged class Russian thinking:

    https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/05/05/a-heart-to-heart-with-russias-elites-a77587
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,137
    TimT said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients



    That's.... that's exactly what the article is about, you should read it. Reich develops therapies targeted by race. But the specific genetic markers that denote a race have close to hee-haw to do with what a lay person would describe as race (thus the Brazil-vs-USA dichotomy).
    An aborigine from the Tiwi islands is clearly different from the average freckly Cornish housewife in a way that is not really explicable unless you resort to some kind of “racial” definition

    I’ve read quite widely in this area and my punt is that there are three broadly defined races which can be roughly differentiated - African, Indo-European, East Asian. And possibly a fourth: Australasian. There are a zillion overlaps, contradictions, anomalies - where do you put the San of the Kalahari, indigenous Americans, Ashkenazi Jews, Emma Raducanu?

    But all these complexities and awkward questions do not mean the concept of race is entirely constructed by society. It plainly is not. It exists biologically and it is ALSO a social construct
    I don’t know enough to answer this question, but someone might. If you viewed the human species as we do animals, would we have sub species? By which I mean distinct populations that are related but can be differentiated.
    No. We are a very genetically homogenous species. Species with sub-species show way more variation.
    See my post at 1:51 above (US time)
    "US time"? You, sir, are a typical self-centered, Eastern Seaboard establishmentarian time bandit!
  • BurgessianBurgessian Posts: 2,651

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients

    Leon remains racist, so no surprise there.

    See:

    Agyemang C, Bhopal R, Bruijnzeels M. Negro, Black, Black African, African Caribbean, African
    American or what? Labelling African origin populations in the health arena in the 21st century.
    Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. 2005 Dec 1;59(12):1014-8.

    And:

    Chowkwanyun M, Reed Jr AL. Racial health disparities and Covid-19—caution and context. New
    England Journal of Medicine. 2020 May 6

    ... for rebuttals.
    Lol

    I’m intrigued (to an extent) by people like you. Do you honestly think it advances your argument or makes you look superior to just shout “racist” all time? Don’t you ever consider it might have diminishing effect, simply because you hand it out so much?

    Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?

    Today, you have claimed humans have different sub-species, in contradiction to all known genetic studies.

    You are being racist. I doubt you're going to stop. I'm not trying to persuade you or argue with you: that seems like a waste of time. I just hope that other people reading your nonsense are not taken in by your faux confidence and somehow imagine that you know what you are talking about.
    If we're going down the race/genetics rabbit-hole, allow me to introduce the ultimate inheritor species: the naked mole-rat.

    A mammal which is cold-blooded, cannot feel pain, long-lived, and immune to cancer. Just don't look at one after a full meal....

    https://twitter.com/mckinleaf/status/1521625152743694351
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 7,806
    edited May 2022
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients

    Leon remains racist, so no surprise there.

    See:

    Agyemang C, Bhopal R, Bruijnzeels M. Negro, Black, Black African, African Caribbean, African
    American or what? Labelling African origin populations in the health arena in the 21st century.
    Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. 2005 Dec 1;59(12):1014-8.

    And:

    Chowkwanyun M, Reed Jr AL. Racial health disparities and Covid-19—caution and context. New
    England Journal of Medicine. 2020 May 6

    ... for rebuttals.
    Lol

    I’m intrigued (to an extent) by people like you. Do you honestly think it advances your argument or makes you look superior to just shout “racist” all time? Don’t you ever consider it might have diminishing effect, simply because you hand it out so much?

    Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?

    Today, you have claimed humans have different sub-species, in contradiction to all known genetic studies.

    You are being racist. I doubt you're going to stop. I'm not trying to persuade you or argue with you: that seems like a waste of time. I just hope that other people reading your nonsense are not taken in by your faux confidence and somehow imagine that you know what you are talking about.
    “Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?“

    But I didn’t say that, did I? I asked why Traveller communities seemed to have a predisposition to fuck with/neglect their environment, and I asked whether it was cultural or genetic?

    Anyone who has encountered Traveller communities will know that what I say is simply the case. Denying it is futile. It’s like denying Deep South Americans are more obese than most (which I also did recently). In neither situation am I claiming either community is “inferior”. Just pointing out an undeniable trait

    Someone suggested that the reason for Traveller attitudes to waste/litter might be a cultural aversion to The Man, doing anything that looks like co-operation with society. That seems reasonable. So maybe not genetic, at most epigenetic and most likely cultural. Nurture not nature, not something that springs from a deeply rooted “nomadic” lifestyle

    Don’t you claim to be some senior Woke academic at a shit university? Gawd elp the kids
    Cultural, obviously*, but I think some city-dwellers don't understand just how emotive an issue it is for people in rural areas. It should be discussed openly and fairly.

    On your main point, race must be recognised, not least for the stark differences in the way people react to various medicines.

    *Good episode of Mad Men where they dump all their litter after a picnic. Americans only stopped littering after a huge campaign against it relatively recently.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 61,335

    UkraineWorld
    @ukraine_world
    ⚡Sanctions from Russia will NOT be lifted without Ukraine's consent: Germany's chancellor Scholz told Stern magazine in an interview.

    https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1522270992353177600
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,137
    Boeing is moving its corporate headquarters from Chicago to Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC.

    Considerable schadenfreude in Seattle, the FIRST city betrayed by Boeing's bean-counting, no-brains leadership.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,512

    I recall asking on here a while back, how many PBers have actually observed their local election process.

    Number told of their experiences canvassing and otherwise campaigning for candidates.

    Very few had actually observed ballot processing and vote counting in person. Which is too bad, as for one thing, increases ones respect for election workers.

    Lots of us will have done. What do you want to know?
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 31,266

    I recall asking on here a while back, how many PBers have actually observed their local election process.

    Number told of their experiences canvassing and otherwise campaigning for candidates.

    Very few had actually observed ballot processing and vote counting in person. Which is too bad, as for one thing, increases ones respect for election workers.

    I'd love to be a vote counter. I'd do it for free.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 21,845
    dixiedean said:

    Point of Information

    Re: today's elections what is basic timetable for results? For example, will they start counting in Northern Ireland tonight OR wait until Friday?

    Am guessing that returns from local elections in Britain will start trickling in around midnight? Specifically, what about London?

    ALSO what are some good links for live blogs & results reporting?

    Thanks in advance for your aid & assistance for your fellow PBer(s)!

    N. Ireland is Friday. It's STV, a long count with multiple rounds, so needs a full day.
    Full week more like.

    Ridiculous system.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,452
    edited May 2022
    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients

    Leon remains racist, so no surprise there.

    See:

    Agyemang C, Bhopal R, Bruijnzeels M. Negro, Black, Black African, African Caribbean, African
    American or what? Labelling African origin populations in the health arena in the 21st century.
    Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. 2005 Dec 1;59(12):1014-8.

    And:

    Chowkwanyun M, Reed Jr AL. Racial health disparities and Covid-19—caution and context. New
    England Journal of Medicine. 2020 May 6

    ... for rebuttals.
    Lol

    I’m intrigued (to an extent) by people like you. Do you honestly think it advances your argument or makes you look superior to just shout “racist” all time? Don’t you ever consider it might have diminishing effect, simply because you hand it out so much?

    Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?

    Today, you have claimed humans have different sub-species, in contradiction to all known genetic studies.

    You are being racist. I doubt you're going to stop. I'm not trying to persuade you or argue with you: that seems like a waste of time. I just hope that other people reading your nonsense are not taken in by your faux confidence and somehow imagine that you know what you are talking about.
    “Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?“

    But I didn’t say that, did I? I asked why Traveller communities seemed to have a predisposition to fuck with/neglect their environment, and I asked whether it was cultural or genetic?

    Anyone who has encountered Traveller communities will know that what I say is simply the case. Denying it is futile. It’s like denying Deep South Americans are more obese than most (which I also did recently). In neither situation am I claiming either community is “inferior”. Just pointing out an undeniable trait

    Someone suggested that the reason for Traveller attitudes to waste/litter might be a cultural aversion to The Man, doing anything that looks like co-operation with society. That seems reasonable. So maybe not genetic, at most epigenetic and most likely cultural. Nurture not nature, not something that springs from a deeply rooted “nomadic” lifestyle

    Don’t you claim to be some senior Woke academic at a shit university? Gawd elp the kids
    Cultural, obviously*, but I think some city-dwellers don't understand just how emotive an issue it is for people in rural areas. It should be discussed openly and fairly.

    On your main point, race must be recognised, not least in the stark differences in the way people react to various medicines.

    *Good episode of Mad Men where they dump all their litter after a picnic. Americans only stopped littering after a huge campaign against it relatively recently.
    Differential occurrence to illnesses/responses to treatment doesn't require the existence of races - simply an uneven distribution of the relevant genetic element within Homo sapiens. For instance, I'm partly from NE Scotland by ancestry - so somewhat more susceptible to MS, and vastly more susceptible to sunbrun, skin cancer, etc.

    Edit: I should have said geographically uneven.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,137
    kjh said:

    I recall asking on here a while back, how many PBers have actually observed their local election process.

    Number told of their experiences canvassing and otherwise campaigning for candidates.

    Very few had actually observed ballot processing and vote counting in person. Which is too bad, as for one thing, increases ones respect for election workers.

    Lots of us will have done. What do you want to know?
    Beyond who - where, when, what & why?
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,993
    Andy_JS said:

    I recall asking on here a while back, how many PBers have actually observed their local election process.

    Number told of their experiences canvassing and otherwise campaigning for candidates.

    Very few had actually observed ballot processing and vote counting in person. Which is too bad, as for one thing, increases ones respect for election workers.

    I'd love to be a vote counter. I'd do it for free.
    It would interfere with your in-running betting opportunities though.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 118,367
    Fantastic news, I've often said we should limit the number of grammar school educated people at the elite universities.

    Talented grammar school pupils should not be sidelined for the sake of improving diversity, elite universities have been told.

    Professor Stephen Toope, the vice-chancellor of Cambridge, has said the university might introduce figures on grammar school recruitment because focusing on intake from state schools as a whole was not an effective indicator of wealth or social class.

    Toope, a Canadian who leaves Cambridge this September, told The Times Education Commission on Tuesday that “substituting more grammar school students for students from independent schools” would not “accomplish widening participation goals”.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dont-sideline-grammar-school-pupils-top-universities-told-pzrc333x6
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,452

    Boeing is moving its corporate headquarters from Chicago to Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC.

    Considerable schadenfreude in Seattle, the FIRST city betrayed by Boeing's bean-counting, no-brains leadership.

    I hadn't known that they had moved!!

    I wonder if it has affected the Museum of Flight down East Marginal Way? (Had a great visit years back, esp. as the 247 dropped in on a visit and I was allowed to peek inside.)
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,137
    Andy_JS said:

    I recall asking on here a while back, how many PBers have actually observed their local election process.

    Number told of their experiences canvassing and otherwise campaigning for candidates.

    Very few had actually observed ballot processing and vote counting in person. Which is too bad, as for one thing, increases ones respect for election workers.

    I'd love to be a vote counter. I'd do it for free.
    You might want to check with your local council or authority then (not today obviously). In US there it's pretty easy most places to serve as a temporary election worker, tends to be dominated by older, retired people with the time to do it.

    Generally best practice to pay something, as then people tend to take the job - and instructions - more seriously.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 52,899
    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients

    Leon remains racist, so no surprise there.

    See:

    Agyemang C, Bhopal R, Bruijnzeels M. Negro, Black, Black African, African Caribbean, African
    American or what? Labelling African origin populations in the health arena in the 21st century.
    Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. 2005 Dec 1;59(12):1014-8.

    And:

    Chowkwanyun M, Reed Jr AL. Racial health disparities and Covid-19—caution and context. New
    England Journal of Medicine. 2020 May 6

    ... for rebuttals.
    Lol

    I’m intrigued (to an extent) by people like you. Do you honestly think it advances your argument or makes you look superior to just shout “racist” all time? Don’t you ever consider it might have diminishing effect, simply because you hand it out so much?

    Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?

    Today, you have claimed humans have different sub-species, in contradiction to all known genetic studies.

    You are being racist. I doubt you're going to stop. I'm not trying to persuade you or argue with you: that seems like a waste of time. I just hope that other people reading your nonsense are not taken in by your faux confidence and somehow imagine that you know what you are talking about.
    “Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?“

    But I didn’t say that, did I? I asked why Traveller communities seemed to have a predisposition to fuck with/neglect their environment, and I asked whether it was cultural or genetic?

    Anyone who has encountered Traveller communities will know that what I say is simply the case. Denying it is futile. It’s like denying Deep South Americans are more obese than most (which I also did recently). In neither situation am I claiming either community is “inferior”. Just pointing out an undeniable trait

    Someone suggested that the reason for Traveller attitudes to waste/litter might be a cultural aversion to The Man, doing anything that looks like co-operation with society. That seems reasonable. So maybe not genetic, at most epigenetic and most likely cultural. Nurture not nature, not something that springs from a deeply rooted “nomadic” lifestyle

    Don’t you claim to be some senior Woke academic at a shit university? Gawd elp the kids
    Cultural, obviously*, but I think some city-dwellers don't understand just how emotive an issue it is for people in rural areas. It should be discussed openly and fairly.

    On your main point, race must be recognised, not least for the stark differences in the way people react to various medicines.

    *Good episode of Mad Men where they dump all their litter after a picnic. Americans only stopped littering after a huge campaign against it relatively recently.
    The American attitude to despoliation is fascinating. As long ago as Jefferson, Americans were lamenting that the problem they had was “too much land, not enough people” - the opposite of Europe. “So we waste it, and don’t farm it properly” - hence the importation of slave labour to pick cotton and tobacco and whatever.

    The attitude persists - we have so much land, who cares. You can see it in the development of the “strip mall”. Obviously horrible yet they stretch for miles around so many towns. Because there is always good land beyond

    And yet at the same time Americans pioneered the National Park. Perfect preservation of glorious landscapes (and hooray for that)
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 48,143
    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients

    Leon remains racist, so no surprise there.

    See:

    Agyemang C, Bhopal R, Bruijnzeels M. Negro, Black, Black African, African Caribbean, African
    American or what? Labelling African origin populations in the health arena in the 21st century.
    Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. 2005 Dec 1;59(12):1014-8.

    And:

    Chowkwanyun M, Reed Jr AL. Racial health disparities and Covid-19—caution and context. New
    England Journal of Medicine. 2020 May 6

    ... for rebuttals.
    Lol

    I’m intrigued (to an extent) by people like you. Do you honestly think it advances your argument or makes you look superior to just shout “racist” all time? Don’t you ever consider it might have diminishing effect, simply because you hand it out so much?

    Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?

    Today, you have claimed humans have different sub-species, in contradiction to all known genetic studies.

    You are being racist. I doubt you're going to stop. I'm not trying to persuade you or argue with you: that seems like a waste of time. I just hope that other people reading your nonsense are not taken in by your faux confidence and somehow imagine that you know what you are talking about.
    “Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?“

    But I didn’t say that, did I? I asked why Traveller communities seemed to have a predisposition to fuck with/neglect their environment, and I asked whether it was cultural or genetic?

    Anyone who has encountered Traveller communities will know that what I say is simply the case. Denying it is futile. It’s like denying Deep South Americans are more obese than most (which I also did recently). In neither situation am I claiming either community is “inferior”. Just pointing out an undeniable trait

    Someone suggested that the reason for Traveller attitudes to waste/litter might be a cultural aversion to The Man, doing anything that looks like co-operation with society. That seems reasonable. So maybe not genetic, at most epigenetic and most likely cultural. Nurture not nature, not something that springs from a deeply rooted “nomadic” lifestyle

    Don’t you claim to be some senior Woke academic at a shit university? Gawd elp the kids
    Cultural, obviously*, but I think some city-dwellers don't understand just how emotive an issue it is for people in rural areas. It should be discussed openly and fairly.

    On your main point, race must be recognised, not least for the stark differences in the way people react to various medicines.

    *Good episode of Mad Men where they dump all their litter after a picnic. Americans only stopped littering after a huge campaign against it relatively recently.
    What startled me, just pre COVID, at Reading festival was the completely inability of the young to use a bin.

    I generally despise Festival Republic (formerly Mean Fiddler) - but they had provided bins every few yards. And people going round picking up trash.

    Yet the ground was covered in discarded plastic and paper. Everywhere. Ground into the ground. You'd have to scrape the top soil off and sieve it, to get rid of it.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 68,415
    edited May 2022
    For the Christians on here, I hadn't realised that the Bible, when it mentions abortion at all (which is almost never) is actually in favour of it.
    Though I don't think 'pro-choice' quite describes it.
    https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+5
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 118,367
    On topic, I fear it won't do much for the Dems.

    I think when the country realises what the removal of the right to privacy means it'll be too late.

    The GOP appear to see The Handmaid's Tale as an achievable policy goal.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 68,415

    Boeing is moving its corporate headquarters from Chicago to Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC.

    Considerable schadenfreude in Seattle, the FIRST city betrayed by Boeing's bean-counting, no-brains leadership.

    All the better to lobby from ?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 48,143
    Nigelb said:

    For the Christians on here, I hadn't realised that the Bible, when it mentions abortion at all (which is almost never) is actually in favour of it.
    Though I don't think 'pro-choice' quite describes it.
    https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+5

    Old Testament God was bit OTT. But after he had the mid-life crisis - found a younger lady, had a kid - he mellowed a lot.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 13,607
    No Liberal Democrat candidate in my Ward but as far too many have suffered in history for the simple right to have a vote or choice, I always vote.

    14 candidates for three votes and I voted Reform (local man, reasonable programme, more coherent than anything offered by many of the other candidates) and Independent (well, he's Socialist Labour but he's most likely to give Labour a hard time). I thought about Green for the third vote but they've made no effort in my Ward - I should add the two above both leafletted.

    The polling station nicely busy with a queue as we left. The well turned out Conservative spoke to me (ignoring Mrs Stodge) and said "good evening, I'm (he gave his name) and I represent the Conservative Party. I'm from the young generation and I'm Conservative" to which my implacable response was "I'm from the older generation and I'm not".

    I love political discourse on the streets - it's like improv, a form of "Whose Vote is it Anyway?".
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,512

    kjh said:

    I recall asking on here a while back, how many PBers have actually observed their local election process.

    Number told of their experiences canvassing and otherwise campaigning for candidates.

    Very few had actually observed ballot processing and vote counting in person. Which is too bad, as for one thing, increases ones respect for election workers.

    Lots of us will have done. What do you want to know?
    Beyond who - where, when, what & why?
    You'll have to be more specific!
  • El_CapitanoEl_Capitano Posts: 4,238
    Turnout has, by and large, not been brisk(tm) in this Conservative-controlled district. Too early to say but I wonder if the "pissed off Tory voters are just going to stay home" narrative may be coming true.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 7,806
    Leon said:

    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Alistair said:

    Taz said:

    The Green Party of New Zealand has just voted to change their constitution, which affects who can be leader.

    The Greens have two co-leaders.
    Previously one had to be male, and one female.

    Now,
    - at least one must be female
    - at least one must be Māori

    There is some weird stuff happening these days in NZ about so-called co-governance, a modern interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which provokes new governance models to ensure special status for Māori.

    The government just ended an attempt to impose a several councillors on Rotorua which could only be voted for by a special small Māori electorate, in the face of massive backlash by voters who realised it was an attack on “one person one vote”.

    It is one of the reasons Jacinda will lose the next election.

    How are they defining Maori. Is it someone who is 100% Maori or who is part Maori, maybe one Maori parent or grandparent ?
    In Australia, at least, some of the more interesting types are going for self identification.

    That is, anyone who says they are First Australian is First Australian and it's bad to question that. And asking for an actual test would be racist...

    What could possibly go wrong?
    How do you propose to test?
    Cranial measurement?
    Dunno.

    But I do know that "activists" who are nothing to do with the First Australians will so self identify and take up space in the political and economic landscape that First Australians sorely need.
    You don’t know because if you think about it for more than five seconds you realise that self-identification is the only way to do it.

    There are always weird activists getting in on one cause or another. Good luck proscribing that.
    There's always genetics...
    Are you proposing genetic tests before people can identify as a particular race?
    Are you saying that "races" are not identifiable genetically?
    They are but what the man on the street calls "race" is not what a geneticist would call race. David Reich has a very nuanced article on this:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html

    "Race is a social construct" is a realisation scientists came to in the 1940s, it is not some modern woke idea. The crux, as identified in the article, is that you can take a person and put them in Brazil and they would be considered "white". You take the same person and put them in America and they would be considered "black"
    It’s a realisation they came to after the Holocaust and Nazi race laws, when anything to do with “race” or “defining people by race” was considered highly offensive (very understandably) so they went way too far the other way and decided “all races are social constructs” - see the official 1945-46 UNESCO statements on race. They are politically motivated, not scientifically grounded. An early version of Woke, indeed - but after Hitler, no one was quibbling


    But it is palpable nonsense. Races - ancestries - exist. They are extremely fuzzy at the edges, where one race blurs into the next, but then that is true of animal species

    If races didn’t exist there wouldn’t be medical therapies aimed specifically at certain races, but there are

    https://www.pharmacy.umn.edu/degrees-and-programs/postgraduate-pharmacy-residency-program/news-events-and-publications/curbside-consult-volume-17-issue-1-first-quarter-2019/best-two-drug-antihypertensive-combinations-black-african-patients

    Leon remains racist, so no surprise there.

    See:

    Agyemang C, Bhopal R, Bruijnzeels M. Negro, Black, Black African, African Caribbean, African
    American or what? Labelling African origin populations in the health arena in the 21st century.
    Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. 2005 Dec 1;59(12):1014-8.

    And:

    Chowkwanyun M, Reed Jr AL. Racial health disparities and Covid-19—caution and context. New
    England Journal of Medicine. 2020 May 6

    ... for rebuttals.
    Lol

    I’m intrigued (to an extent) by people like you. Do you honestly think it advances your argument or makes you look superior to just shout “racist” all time? Don’t you ever consider it might have diminishing effect, simply because you hand it out so much?

    Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?

    Today, you have claimed humans have different sub-species, in contradiction to all known genetic studies.

    You are being racist. I doubt you're going to stop. I'm not trying to persuade you or argue with you: that seems like a waste of time. I just hope that other people reading your nonsense are not taken in by your faux confidence and somehow imagine that you know what you are talking about.
    “Was it yesterday that you accused Travellers of being genetically inferior? Or was that the day before?“

    But I didn’t say that, did I? I asked why Traveller communities seemed to have a predisposition to fuck with/neglect their environment, and I asked whether it was cultural or genetic?

    Anyone who has encountered Traveller communities will know that what I say is simply the case. Denying it is futile. It’s like denying Deep South Americans are more obese than most (which I also did recently). In neither situation am I claiming either community is “inferior”. Just pointing out an undeniable trait

    Someone suggested that the reason for Traveller attitudes to waste/litter might be a cultural aversion to The Man, doing anything that looks like co-operation with society. That seems reasonable. So maybe not genetic, at most epigenetic and most likely cultural. Nurture not nature, not something that springs from a deeply rooted “nomadic” lifestyle

    Don’t you claim to be some senior Woke academic at a shit university? Gawd elp the kids
    Cultural, obviously*, but I think some city-dwellers don't understand just how emotive an issue it is for people in rural areas. It should be discussed openly and fairly.

    On your main point, race must be recognised, not least for the stark differences in the way people react to various medicines.

    *Good episode of Mad Men where they dump all their litter after a picnic. Americans only stopped littering after a huge campaign against it relatively recently.
    The American attitude to despoliation is fascinating. As long ago as Jefferson, Americans were lamenting that the problem they had was “too much land, not enough people” - the opposite of Europe. “So we waste it, and don’t farm it properly” - hence the importation of slave labour to pick cotton and tobacco and whatever.

    The attitude persists - we have so much land, who cares. You can see it in the development of the “strip mall”. Obviously horrible yet they stretch for miles around so many towns. Because there is always good land beyond

    And yet at the same time Americans pioneered the National Park. Perfect preservation of glorious landscapes (and hooray for that)
    The John Muir Way (Scotland) is something of an anti-climax after the John Muir Trail (California)...
  • BlancheLivermoreBlancheLivermore Posts: 5,609
    @Telegraph
    🔴 Sadiq Khan has admitted that comparing Sir Keir Starmer's "beergate" with "partygate" is fair, as the Labour leader faced growing questions from his party over the handling of the scandal
    https://twitter.com/telegraph/status/1522285539352850434
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 10,051
    Eabhal said:

    On your main point, race must be recognised, not least for the stark differences in the way people react to various medicines.

    People can react very differently to various medicines. Most of that variation has nothing to do with where you or your ancestors come from. A little bit of that variation does line up with you or your ancestors coming from certain places, but none of that variation lines up with Leon's proposed 3-4 "races" (which are remarkably similar to traditional 19th century ideas of "race").

    There has been a surge of interest in the idea of drugs targeted at particular ethnic groups. There have been critiques of that surge of interest! I suggest this short editorial on the topic if you're interested: https://www.bmj.com/content/330/7499/1036
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,137
    Upcoming US Primaries - May 2022

    May 10 - Nebraska, West Virginia

    May 17 - Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania

    May 24 - Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Texas Runoff.
This discussion has been closed.