Monday 24 July 2017

The Long March

The Marxist Antonio Gramsci famously advocated advancing the revolution by undertaking a 'long march through the institutions'.  They've been at it for decades, of course, and over the weekend there was a little snapshot of their progress.
Sixty-six of the world’s leading minds were announced as Fellows of the British Academy ... the very best of humanities and social sciences research.  This year’s new Fellows are experts in subjects ranging from feminist theory to the economic development of Africa ... The British Academy’s newest cohort of Fellows also reflects the growing diversity of research in the UK. The proportion of women elected to the Fellowship has doubled in the last five years. This year, 38% of the new Fellows are women, exceeding the 24% share of female Professors in UK universities.
Sounds exciting.  What have these folks been researching?  Here are some extracts.  For the avoidance of doubt, I haven't made up any of this.   Well, you couldn't make it up - could you? 

Young women and mass media, feminist theory, gender and popular culture, British fashion industry, creative economy, fashion start-ups and micro-enterprises in the urban environment
Theory and politics of multiculturalism, secularism, Islamophobia, racial equality; sociology of ethnic minorities in higher education and employment; with special reference to Muslims in Western Europe
Inequality in education and labour market outcomes, educational efficiency, school and teacher effectiveness, social mobility 
Fundamental rights, interdisciplinary studies of law, gender studies, critical and feminist legal theory 

Colonialism and post-colonialism; civil wars and extreme violence in Africa; political violence and political justice; decolonization of the university and higher education; war on terror 

Comparative welfare state studies; social policies and gender inequality; theorisation and measurement of contemporary poverty; family policies within a comparative perspective; social care in contemporary states and societies; European Union social policy 

Legal recognition of family ties, the consequences of relationship breakdown, and experiences of the family justice system 

Inequality, wage structures, minimum wages; peer effects; the economics of migration 

Feminism in philosophy 

Contemporary social and cultural geography; agri-food studies; moral economies and consumer practice 

Language and migration; new dialects; multicultural youth language; language and social structure; sociolinguistics of West Africa 

Global development and social change; issues of inequality, gender, environmental sustainability, health and infectious disease in Africa and beyond; interfaces between social science, science and policy
ND

49 comments:

dearieme said...

Still, is the British Academy as intellectually corrupt as the Royal Society has become?

Elby the Beserk said...

dearlieme - clearly it is, from the list of nonsense their members are "working on".

FUBAR as our American friends say. And as the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood said of America - we need to do very little, just prompt it to destroy itself from within. Which is what the West is clearly intent on. Witness Merkel's destruction of Germany. It seems to me she WANTS to collapse Germany.

Thank God I'm 65 and should not live to see the worst of it, although the accelerating pace of insanity, as best demonstrated by Transgendering which in essence says, biology is nonsense, make me worry that it's too late.

Me? I'd close ALL the Universities and make them pay their way for starters.

Anonymous said...

This froth is like cuckoo-spit: there is a little green bug in the middle of it, protecting itself.

There is a lot to be said for closing all the universities, as Henry VIII closed the monasteries. Businesses would have to take over the training of engineers and programmers, in some kind of apprenticeship scheme. Paper qualifications could be abolished.

If you want to study, for instance, English Literature, there are plenty of books, web sites and online forums available. Most of the classics are free on Gutenberg.org. Likewise for history or philosophy.

Don Cox

Nick Drew said...

yes, Don: philosophy is my thing and the stuff that's available online is just glorious

however - there's no substitute for face-to-face wrangling!

(they certainly make arses of themselves, though)

E-K said...

Or non face-to-face if you're somewhere on the spectrum.

Anonymous said...

It's odd that as we get ever more PC, ever more 'educated', ever more 'liberated', so the life prospects of Mr and Ms Average get worse and worse, and Mr and Ms Average get more and more indebted.

Given 'the left' have been marching through the institutions for some 50-60 years now, you'd think we'd be in a worker's paradise by now.

You'd almost think there was some kind of hidden agenda at work, affecting everything from Thatcher's loosening of credit to Blair's loosening of borders. Whatever could it be?

Steven_L said...

Is philosophy even a real subject? It always struck me as a bit of a skive, a talking shop for like-minded people with plenty of time to waste engaging one another in pleasant conversation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't philosophy basically amount to discussing things? And if so then aren't we all philosophers now? Then isn't everything that occurs on this blog also "philosophy"?

If academic "philosophy" is being taken over by women and people you disagree with, then that's tough titties. You'll just have to put up with being excluded from "the debate" like the rest of us and arse about online with us plebs.

dustybloke said...

And this is why even taking 40% of everything we produce is still not enough for them.

Electro-Kevin said...

We can summarise most of the list under one issue:

- Anti Stale Pale Male.

One niggling little thing which has got through recently is gender neutral toilets in public places. Get used to them, they will soon be obligatory.

Our newly built local theatre has them. They have been brought in through consideration for the transgender 'community', that which must number a fraction of one percent of the population. But really. This move is by the feminists. They have been against men's toilets and their " 's not fair !" lack of queues for decades.

This has been the excuse to get urinals out - the one thing men are undoubtedly better at is peeing standing up.

So. Here we all are then. Queueing right back to the bar in the interval instead of buying and consuming drinks - a clear loss of profit to the theatre for starters.

Women now have to queue for the toilets longer than they used to as well. One said "Can't the boys pee in one loo at the same time ?"

I said,

"Well we used to. In what was called a urinal." The last time I played criss-cross was with my brother when I was 8.

It was worse in Italy. There women not only used the loos but did their make-up in them too knowing full well that people were outside standing cross legged.

Though long established in the EU I expect the idea for the gender neutralising of our loos started somewhere like the British Academy.

Don't worry, chaps. It will all be over soon enough when Islam takes over - unwittingly aided by the feminazis because anything is good as long as it's not stale, pale and male.

Nick Drew said...

Actually Kev there are some pant-wettingly funny aspects to all the trans* stuff, maybe even worth the extra queue at the loo

yes, trans* is what we must call it - or in some versions trans+ - because there are so many 'variations': & this is where it starts, inevitably and appropriately, to disappear up its own fundament

there is a very strong strand of feminisim that ends up being systematically hostile to trans*, because the latest wheeze is - get ready for it - originally-male trans who have decided they are lesbians (sic)

so - not only do they want to self-certify as to their status, and to use the ladies loo, they want to, errr ...

at this point I actually feel quite sorry for earnest feminists (well, just a bit)

the trans*male/lesbian phenomenon is of course a truly superlative reductio ad absurdum [that's philosophy, SL] of the whole "self-identification" scam

if you want to read more, google the Hypatia affair: you might start here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia_transracialism_controversy

be prepared to be amazed

Elby the Beserk said...

Nick - I'v ebeen telling people that Gramsci won for some years now. Mostly they look at me as if I am insane. Gramsci? Who he? Well, Gramsci looks like to be the man who took down the West. Him and Mohammed.


In which the American Association of Pediatricians give lie to the bollocks that is transgendering. I should note that my attempts to contact similar organisations in the UK met with a refusal even to acknowledge my request for their position on this matter.

https://www.acpeds.org/the-college-speaks/position-statements/gender-ideology-harms-children

Gender Ideology Harms Children

Updated May 2017

The American College of Pediatricians urges healthcare professionals, educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex. Facts – not ideology – determine reality.

1. Human sexuality is an objective biological binary trait: “XY” and “XX” are genetic markers of male and female, respectively – not genetic markers of a disorder. The norm for human design is to be conceived either male or female. Human sexuality is binary by design with the obvious purpose being the reproduction and flourishing of our species. This principle is self-evident. The exceedingly rare disorders of sex development (DSDs), including but not limited to testicular feminization and congenital adrenal hyperplasia, are all medically identifiable deviations from the sexual binary norm, and are rightly recognized as disorders of human design. Individuals with DSDs (also referred to as “intersex”) do not constitute a third sex.1

2. No one is born with a gender. Everyone is born with a biological sex. Gender (an awareness and sense of oneself as male or female) is a sociological and psychological concept; not an objective biological one. No one is born with an awareness of themselves as male or female; this awareness develops over time and, like all developmental processes, may be derailed by a child’s subjective perceptions, relationships, and adverse experiences from infancy forward. People who identify as “feeling like the opposite sex” or “somewhere in between” do not comprise a third sex. They remain biological men or biological women.2,3,4

3. A person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking. When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it should be treated as such. These children suffer from gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria (GD), formerly listed as Gender Identity Disorder (GID), is a recognized mental disorder in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-V).5 The psychodynamic and social learning theories of GD/GID have never been disproved.2,4,5

4. Puberty is not a disease and puberty-blocking hormones can be dangerous. Reversible or not, puberty- blocking hormones induce a state of disease – the absence of puberty – and inhibit growth and fertility in a previously biologically healthy child.6

5. According to the DSM-V, as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.5

and so on. Do read, forewarned is forearmed.

I'm also a big fan of Jordan Peterson, a Canadian academic, who is taking a forceful public stand against this nonsense (and again Cultural Marxism in all its glory as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p93NCyV5Hws

Check out his other stuff on YouTube as well. He's a good 'un.

Anonymous said...

Elby - if you REALLY want to dig into the trans stuff, there's Ray Blanchard or J. Michael Bailey at Northwestern Uni, whose theories certainly seem to accord with observation. He classifies two types of transexual

a) always a girly-boy/'sissy'/dolls and teacups not trains and guns, usually homosexual, transitions early (usually 20s).

b) what he calls 'autogynephiles', men who are excited by the idea of themselves as females. Usually transition late (40s/50s), previously heterosexual, father of children and often stereotypically driven, aggressive and successful male. A male decathlon champion comes to mind, or the highest paid 'female' executive in the USA who was previously a highly-paid male executive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Would_Be_Queen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanchard%27s_transsexualism_typology


Dick the Prick said...

@Elby - thank fuck for that.

@ND - I wanno do Phil and Dance; it's where the punani's at!

Electro-Kevin said...

It can only be a matter of time before people claim to be transspecies. There was one couple where the girlfriend tried to get on a bus for free because she was a 'pet'.

This is not to make light of some people's difficulties but there are many who choose to make themselves victims and part of a minority just to be bloody awkward. Self righteousness is gratifying and they must be high on it.

Diet is another way of becoming a victim. No longer is it good enough to be a vegetarian, some go on to be vegans and "Thou shalt not prepare my food with utensils which have touched meat or dairy..." and worse... the vegans in our family go on to tell us they do not like tomatoes, which rules out just about everything.

All the same - we have to tread on eggshells.

It's interesting to note that these vegans are also fashionistas and so have not eschewed leather goods - nor the fortune bequeathed to them from the father's butchery. (not joking.)

Elby the Beserk said...

Anon - thanks, will check those references out.

EK - there's already "transracials" - Rachel Dolezal, for starters, a white woman who says she is black.

So the question is - when you are allowed to make things up; i.e. "identify as", which actually means "pretending to be", all very formative for kids but deeply sociopathic in adults - where does this end? With regard to TG, the law will compel us to submit to anti-science. This is totalitarianism. Legislated for by the Conservatives. Uh? This gives me a severe case of cognitive dissonance.

My plan, were I ever to be hauled up into court for crimes against Transgenderism, would be to tel them that MY pronoun is

"p[opsadf8-09843-05u lsakdefjhoisaufd098374257nbjkasdjyh0847y0940-00-___jkasedkojlakedjlakshdjlkajsdhw0-e8r0-8-345iupwoedjolaiskdjhlkasdjhoiahusd-aASDASDLKJJ---=21342134jklk"

and any failure to address me as such will result in my accusing them of what they are accusing me of.

Or I might just tell them to fuck off.

Nick - speaking of philosophy, are you a reader of Scruton? I find him a deep well of sense in an increasingly deranged world. No wonder they hounded him out of academia way back.

Electro-Kevin said...

Scrote-off more like, Elby.

Elby the Beserk said...

Steven L - Are you not entirely missing the point. If people want to pretend to be whatever, as long as it does not affect me, who cares? If the law forces one to bow to people who pretend to be something they are not, in complete contravention of medical science and biology, that is no less than totalitarianism.

Those of us of a certain age have a serious problem with totalitarianism. We've seen what it does to people. I've met people with barcodes on their wrists. This is where this leads to, demonising people who do not conform.

Suggest some research, maybe?

barnacle bill said...

I can endorse Elby the Beserk recommendation of Jordan Peterson. I have been following him for a long time now.

The lone voice of sanity seemingly across the Pond in Canada.

Steven_L said...

Firstly I'm not convinced the law does force us to bow down to transgender folk. Secondly I can't see that it's any more absurd to prohibit sacking someone for changing their gender as it to prohibit sacking someone for their religion. And equalities laws are a bit absurd, as the state cannot police people's thoughts.

Why is it more absurd for a man to believe he has a woman's mind than it is to believe in reincarnation, or Noah's Ark, or that the Prophet Mohammed had a direct line to God and his messages were the final phone call we were getting?

In fact I'd suggest transgender is a lot less absurd than religion. If a man liked playing with dolls as a child, developed sexual desires for other men as a teenager and grows up to have more in common with women, then believing his brain is wired like the opposite sex seems fairly rational to me.

On the other hand, the two third of the British public identifying believing in either reincarnation or the God that created Adam and Eve are quite obviously nuts.

E-K said...

Steven

Agreed. But religionists are far greater in number. I point to the toilet issue inflicted on the many for the sake of a minority within a minority.

Employers should be allowed to enforce a dress code.

Nick Drew said...

The point, surely, is that allowing 'self-identification' any force in law is very dodgy, all the way to outright crazy & dangerous

now of course the pass has already been sold because (e.g.) we allow self-identified 'racial attack' to count as a prima facie pretext for the police etc to be required to investigate it as such, i.e. in the first instance, the claimant is to be 'believed': however, there is at least then an investigation, i.e. the possibility is granted that, upon investigation, it may be concluded by the authorities that what was reported as a racial attackwas no such thing - so that whole rigmarole can be viewed as 'just a process'

however, these trans* wallahs demand to be accepted for whatever they say they are / want / need, without further investigation

NOW it ought to be obvious to even a leftie that this demand for self-identification to rule supreme flies in the face of the Laws of Natural Justice, viz, No Man To Be Judge In His Own Case, and Both Sides Of The Case To Be Heard: i.e. we are in very dangerous territory

there are no end of examples where we won't allow self-identification to count for anything other than a reason for calling a psychiatrist

even the lefties are pretty annoyed at the white woman in the USA who self-identifies as black, and demands she be considered a victim of racial prejudice etc

you cannot (for practical purposes) self-identify as a Jew, unless (a) you have the appropriate lineage or (b) have been through the accepted conversion process: ditto Roman Catholic for the purpose of taking communion: and if you self-identify as Napoleon Bonaparte, the men in white gowns will come for you

we can invent examples, too: if I self-identify as an elected representative of the people and turn up to vote in Parliament, I will be shown the door & maybe worse

a bit more blatantly, if I self-identify as the owner of somebody else's property and make off with it, I am breaking the law

i.e. self-identification where 'personal gain' is involved must be open to challenge, for the obvious reason

[the challenge may be a blunt one (as in the case of fraud), or a kindly one (now sir, what made you think you were an MP?), or both in turn (this is the fifth time we've banged this chap up for believing he is the farmer and harvesting the corn - perhaps he's a nutter?)]

and so we get to self-identification for personal gratification: the bloke who says 'I'm a woman, I must use the womens loos', and then says 'BTW I'm a lesbian' - well, it's just all too obvious, no? and the appropriate response may well be 'yup, we've done an MRI and your brain is indeed wired strangely': but it must categorically NOT be - OK, away you go son, and anyone who complains about your lady-bothering in the loos is a criminal

Elby the Beserk said...

Steven L - the law in the UK does not yet compel us to use whoever's "pronouns" but it will. "Hate" crime makes it illegal to say boo to a goose. It is now an offence in Canada, however, and in some US states. So it will happen here, in the same way that all the extreme requirements of the most vocal elements in whatever minorities **always** get what they want. Result, the tyranny of the minorities. Whilst the tyranny of the majority may have its problems, the converse is far worse. And as we see, various minorities now have to contest - VERY LOUDLY - which is the most oppressed. I gather that some feminists now don't see gay men as an oppressed minority, rather - yes, you got it - part of the patriarchy. My simple advice to all of them, and excuse my language again, but I am mightily exercised about this, is get a fucking life.

Allowing this prattling nonsense to enter our legal system is madness, and no good will come of it. It needs to be strenuously opposed. I've already sent my excellent MP the statement linked to above by the American Association of Pediatricians. Melanie Phillips has has an excellent article in the Speccie on it.

formertory said...

The gender neutral loos will either be a self-cancelling issue, or a source of great amusement. On the one hand, women (whether natural, self-identified or surgically altered) won't enjoy the half-flooded floor and urine-soaked seat of a traditional public toilet used by males - especially in venues where alcoholic drink is involved. In theory, then, they'll vote with their feet and carry on using female-only loos. Men will carry on using urinals because of the relative convenience (boom-tish! I thank yow!) of the contraption.

Given the ravings of some of the people involved in this endless drivel about cis-this and trans-that, I suspect the next move to be their insistence that we must have legislation appointing toilet monitors (after all, there must be employment opportunities created for all the sociology and arty grads who are otherwise pretty much unemployable). In the course of their many duties, the toilet monitors will ensure that men use gender neutral loos and furthermore that they sit down to do so, and put the seat down afterwards. They may exercise the powers of citizens' arrest and likely be equipped with radios to summon backup from the local plodshop. To fund the jobs, using the loo will cost £1 per visit (£3 in London) plus VAT, so everyone'll troop off outside and piss against the wall anyway.

Another problem solved!

Nick Drew said...

Elby - yes, I read Scruton: he' an important voice.

ad hominem, it's a pity he is also, ahem, a bit odd (but hardly the first, in the ranks of the philosophers)

one can only guess at what one of his 'Scrutopia' sessions would be like ..!
http://www.rogerscruton.com/articles/413-scrutopia-summer-school-30-july-8-august

formertory said...

By the way, am I the only person so wonder if Rachel Dolezal is in fact Sideshow Bob, self-
identifying as a woman?

E-K said...

I think this has becòme our new favourite subject.

Raedwald said...

I don't understand this thread.

Maybe it's because I'm black.

E-K said...

Yes
I think men sitting down will be next on the vagenda.

Steven_L said...

But religionists are far greater in number.

And this is basically the crux of it. But turn the tables and Brighton is actually a much nicer place to hang out than Bradford.

if you self-identify as Napoleon Bonaparte, the men in white gowns will come for you (ND)

No they won't, David Icke self identified as Jesus for years. You can only be sectioned if you are a danger to yourself or others. And it has to be a pretty immediate danger. Note that hopeless crack and heroin addicts or alcoholics are not rarely sectioned and forced to undergo treatment. So at least part of your philosophy is based on a false premise.

Steven L - the law in the UK does not yet compel us to use whoever's "pronouns" but it will. (EtB)

I think you'll find employment legislation could be used to ensure than the adopted pronoun was used int he workplace. But we can't ridicule peoples' religious beliefs int he workplace either so what's the difference?

the next move to be their insistence that we must have legislation appointing toilet monitors (ft)

Perhaps they could use existing local authority licensing legislation for some premises? Of course most busy, city centre, licensed premises already have toilet monitors, but for some reason, they are all (and I mean every single one I've ever seen in 20 years of visiting licensed premises) black Africans. Work that one out!

formertory said...

@E-K

"Vagenda"

Excellent!

Nick Drew said...

the men in white gowns will come for you (ND)- No they won't, David Icke self identified as Jesus for years. You can only be sectioned if you are a danger to yourself or others. And it has to be a pretty immediate danger

OK but you know what I mean - obviously the arrival of the white gowns is quite far down the spectrum of What Happens Next: I'm just pointing out that there is a range of societal responses to "I'm an X" when prima facie I'm not. And yes, ignoring me & hoping I'll go away is on that spectrum, too

BUT - importantly, the anti-trans* feminists hold that trans*male/lesbians can indeed be a danger to them: just another variant on many oppressive male ploys (and, I think we may agree, a fairly innovative one)

of course their position is somewhat diluted by their view that pretty much all men can be a danger to them

which is why my first comment was - this is all quite funny (as well as having a serious side)

BTW - being ignored and hoping they'll go away is anathema to trans*: they want that to be considered immoral, too

Elby the Beserk said...

Nick,

Yes - maybe I like Sir Rog because I'm a bit odd too. So people tell me. If you have not read last year's collection of essays, "Confessions of a Heretic", do. The last one, "Defending the West" is as succinct an explanation of how the West and Islam are utterly incompatible is, for me, spot on.

Try telling the politicos, however - tho' I have persuaded our local MP, David Warburton (have a lot of time for him, tip-tip constituency MP), who is involved in some British Council forum on extremism, to read Douglas Murray's equally sobering "The Strange Death of Europe". Both the above essential, if truly alarming reading, given the clear mission of our leaders to ram Islam down our throats whether we like it or not.

I like to ask its defenders what Islam has contributed to the world since Andalusia (which has also been hugely massaged), where are their Bach, Vermeer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Einstein, Feynman? What are their contributions to modern medicine? A stunned silence is what I get. As the count is zero. I'm sick of politicos saying "Islam is the religion of peace", when history and the Koran shows it is exactly the opposite. Islam spreads by war. And we are at war, it's just that we in the West haven't clocked it yet. so utterly dumb are we now in the defence of all that defines Western culture and civilisation, which, whatever its warts, has made the world a hugely better place to live in.

Penicillin alone would mark that out. Name me an analagous contribution from Islam to making the world better for one and all. Take your time. You'll need it!

Steven_L said...

BTW - being ignored and hoping they'll go away is anathema to trans*: they want that to be considered immoral, too (ND)

I think you're stereotyping people and over-simplifying things. Like anyone else, people who identify as trans are individuals. They transition for their own reasons and they have their own opinions. Suggesting that highly vocal trans activists are representing the views of all trans people is a nonsense.

In Thailand, where they have the most trans women per head, hormones and other treatments are pretty much unregulated, it's quite normal for gay men transition as teenagers, and it doesn't seem to be a problem.



andrew said...

In Thailand, where they have the most trans women per head, hormones and other treatments are pretty much unregulated, it's quite normal for gay men transition as teenagers, and it doesn't seem to be a problem.

... and how many of these people are over 70?
There are nasty consequences to using hormones unwisely - one reason weightlifters as a group tend to die young.

Steven_L said...

... and how many of these people are over 70?

Who cares? We can buy cigarettes and vodka, so why not hormones?

Elby the Beserk said...

Steven_L Again, you seem to be missing the point. I don't think anyone commenting here gives a flying duck about what people want to pretend to be. It's being forced to bow down to them by the law which is the problem. And the bloody racket the noisy ones make. As far as I can see, LGBTQRTY people have exactly the same rights as everybody else (except us straights can't have Civil Partnerships). So why do they have to endless bang on about their rights? Why can't they just get on with their lives like the rest of us, and indeed, as the more than a handful of gay blokes we know do.

Elby the Beserk said...

Interesting article on this very matter by a gay bloke, on Conservative Home

http://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2017/07/graeme-archer-im-a-gay-man-not-lgbtq-heres-why-tories-mustnt-play-the-transgender-identity-politics-game.html

formertory said...

@Elby

Your 2:43pm post sums up precisely my feelings on all of this. I couldn't give a hoot about which anatomical parts go where or in whom (or what), I'm entirely uninterested in hearing about their lifestyles, but what really, really gets my goat is when hysterical bastards get in my face and start yelling. And don't even mention Eddie Izzard.

Steven_L said...

It's being forced to bow down to them by the law which is the problem.

Which laws are requiring you to 'bow down' to trans people? I know of no such laws.

If anything it's religious people that the law bows down to. Religious organisations are allowed to specify no trans people need apply, whereas a trans rights organisation cannot lawfully advertise for non-religious candidates.

It's perfectly acceptable to thrust religion down the throats of children and adults alike. At school, on TV, during the Queens' speech we get fed this medieval mumbo jumbo. Religions are allowed to bankroll schools and present nonsenses that make Lewis Carroll look tame as fact, in the very same rooms as science is taught.

And going back to the original post, how many times have you seen Oxford, Cambridge or any other red brick universities ridiculed here for offering 'theology' degrees?

Elby the Beserk said...

Steven_L Are you really aware of "hate" crimes? Anything which anybody deems to be offensive is now an offence. Similarly, anything that somebody deems to be racist **is** racist. The law now caters for subjective feelings. Some months ago, the BBC were - can you believe this - talking about "transphobia" on the football terraces. As if. As yet, failure to use tranny pronouns is not a specific crime, but there's nothing to stop a tranny who you upset by not calling them "whatever", they can have you prosecuted.

Have you been living abroad? All this was brought upon us by Harman and her vile "equality" legislation. As any student of the enlightenment knows, you can have liberty, or you can have equality. But not both. The only way - as we see- to impose "equality" is to enforce it by law. As has been done. AT the cost of our liberty.

Do keep up :-)

Steven_L said...

Have you been living abroad?

Kind of, PC hasn't really taken hold in Aberdeenshire to the same extent as the south of England.

But I think you've the wrong end of the stick on 'hate crime'. Whilst there are specific offences for inciting racial or religious hatred, I'm not sure there is for 'trans' hate.

The prosecutions you see for 'transphobia hate crimes' are all under 1980's and 1990's public order and protection from harassment legislation. You can in theory be prosecuted for hurling abuse at / theatening behaviour towards / harassing anyone. There are no specific or even post 1997 'trans hate crime' offences.

Any evolution in the law in this area is the work of public opinion and the legal profession, not of Parliament. NuLabs equality legislation is all civil, sue your employer or complaint to the CEHR who can take injunctive action stuff.

Electro-Kevin said...

O/T

Does anyone have any views on Bitcoin/blockchain and the impact it might have on the City and its professionals ? Are financial intermediaries about to become obsolete ?

Steven_L said...

I think bitcoin is a pyramid scheme / bubble, so I've avoided it. Problem is it may not have really got going yet. I can live with the early adopters and eccentrics I know making a few quid off it, but if goes 'mainstream' and some twat at work is making tens of thousands I'll be pissed off I never got involved.

First time I read the words 'bitcoin bitchez' on zero hedge they were about $2 each. Whoops.

Electro-Kevin said...

Most will get burned. But is the blockchain system supporting it a serious threat to City jobs or is it a scam ?

Nick Drew said...

the other (related) thing that needs to be factored in is quantum computing

if I understand correctly (and there is a very good chance I don't), blockchain is great - for security and transparency - right up until quantum computing can crack the calculations it depends upon and/or provides an alternative for the security aspect

you'd hate to have bet the farm on something essentially transient, UNLESS you knew when to get out, of course - like everything else!

in the meantime ... I can see some great commercial applications for blockchain (again, if I've understood) whch would (a) disintermediate some current City *practices*, but at the same time (b) open up new possibilities

& the City is pretty nimble at picking up on new stuff - better than most other places (& particularly better than Frankfurt & Paris etc)

Elby the Beserk said...

Steven_L

https://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/newsroom/features/what-is-transgender-hate-crime/

Elby the Beserk said...

Brendan O'Neill of Spiked on Transgender politics. O'Neill's commentary on Brexit was way ahead of the rest of the pack. Always a good read.

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-orwellian-nightmare-of-transgender-politics/20116#.WXhnwIhuJhE

Steven_L said...

From the link with my emphasis added:

A hate crime is any criminal offence that is motivated by a prejudice or hate ... Any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on a person’s actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender is a hate crime.

So there has to be an actual criminal offence - i.e. a public order offence (i.e. threatening behaviour) or harassment. The 'hate' element just increases the severity and the sentence. You still have to commit the offence. And hurling threatening abuse at or harassing anyone is an offence and has been for a long time.

Elby the Beserk said...

Steven_L
"You still have to commit the offence. And hurling threatening abuse at or harassing anyone is an offence and has been for a long time."

No you don't. You don't have to hurl "threatening abuse"? And who hets to deem what "harassment" is?

Once more, these crimes are now totally subjective. It's not what you say, it's how the person you say it to deems it to be. Once more with feeling, it is an offence to offend someone. So it's not cast in law what this is - it's what another person feels. If you don't get it, I'm wasting my time. Have a good one. Just make sure you don't say the wrong thing in the wrong place to the wrong person eh?