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Didn’t number 7 used to write science fiction?Originally Posted by upthemaggies
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This would be hard going for most, it would be for me if I didn't happen to be familiar with the names and some of the words and basic concepts via special interests rather than an education, so it's not a recommendation to anybody else but I'm sure you would be able to follow it (if not agree with it). I think it is a decent lecture as to where we're at with the left in 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoi9omtAiNQ
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An interesting take on the state of play in Britain today by Hindu* journalist, Nirpal Dhaliwal.
*I'm only pointing this out so that people don't assume he's Muslim. This op-ed comes from a relatively neutral angle.
"Britain’s Stockholm Syndrome mimicry of America is at the heart of nearly everything it does, and points to a country that now has no discernible identity of its own.
This week Boris Johnson threatened to appoint right-wing journalist Charles Moore as chairman of the BBC, to fight the Tories’ phantom battle against ‘wokeness’ and in defence of Britain’s traditions and history, under the deluded impression that the corporation – rather than Netflix, YouTube, Amazon or Facebook – is still the decisive broadcaster in the UK.
This denialism protects Britain from a sad truth, which is that all the current noise about ‘cancel culture’ and ‘deplatforming’, as well as the continual arguments about race and gender, have never been about any great struggle to subvert or protect the nation’s identity – which has always been wafer-thin at best – but are merely the latest examples of this country’s dreary Stockholm Syndrome mimicry of America.
Every major cultural shift in Britain is only a delayed and much less interesting repetition of something that happens in the US. For instance, it was very apparent to me that the UK’s version of the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum only after its American forebear was already established as a global news headline, subsiding immediately as it left the front pages. The racial injustices that exist in Britain – and there are many – are of less relevance to activists than emulating what takes place on the other side of the Atlantic. Britain’s inequalities have not disappeared, but protesters take to the streets only once the American signal has been given.
This Stockholm Syndrome response applies at every point along the political spectrum, and the ‘Woke War’ taking place on UK Twitter and in public institutions – passionately contesting such marginal issues as gender pronouns or the removal of statues – is not a battle for the nation’s soul. It’s just a listless attempt by the British to feel still alive and of significance in the world by copying what is essentially a campus sideshow in the US.
America’s culture war is the organic expression of an immigrant society whose young people continually experiment with self-invention. The British version, however, has no role other than to sustain some fantasy of an ‘Anglosphere’ in which the two countries share equivalence: a pantomime that looks ever sadder and more ridiculous as America continues its transformation into a post-Anglo, Asia-focused power.
While cultural conflicts in the US are distant adjuncts to the true issues that preoccupy a great power of technological, military and economic prowess, in Britain, this nonsense is the main event. Would the boring online contretemps between a children’s author and a few vitriolic transgender activists – as has happened with JK Rowling – ever become the leading topic of discussion in the US? Of course not.
With their media, economy and capital city wholly dominated by foreigners, the British are now a colonised people, trudging exhaustedly towards a globalised extinction, boxing with shadows to distract themselves along the way. This is not a great tragedy, but merely the gentle and thankfully bloodless return to historical normality."
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Perhaps he'll come back as a Buddhist in his next life and make more sense.
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For balance*, at least on the subject of the BBC, Douglas Murray...
*If dropping a 16 ton weight on tiny scales can be deemed as such
At last, the Conservatives are showing some fight in the culture war
A beautiful noise rang out last week in the wake of the news that the government is considering Charles Moore to become the new chairman of the BBC and Paul Dacre to be the head of the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom. The noise was the sound of the British left wailing that toys they thought were theirs alone might now (under a Conservative government) finally go to identifiable conservatives.
The former editor of the Guardian Alan Rusbridger shrieked that ‘this is what an oligarchy looks like’. This and similar tweets were presumably sent from the lodgings of the Oxford college that Rusbridger was made principal of five years ago. Others who screamed themselves sick included BBC employees who briefed that Moore’s appointment ‘would shatter morale. People will leave.’ For there can be no greater way to refute accusations of institutional leftism in the BBC than for the corporation’s employees to threaten to resign en masse in response to a conservative appointment. Elsewhere, Have I Got News For You tweeted that this would be the end for the BBC. Which is as funny a joke as that show has mustered in the present century.
Of course, there is no certainty Moore or Dacre will take up either job. And even less certainty that if they do so they will be able to turn around the relevant organisations. But the announcements are a good sign because they suggest that the Conservatives might finally be showing some fight in the culture and institutional wars that conservatives have traditionally lost.
It is a surprise. For after all, a year into office there had been very few indications that the Johnson government would be any more stalwart in appointing conservatives than its two predecessors.
David Cameron’s government managed to see William Shawcross appointed as the chair of the Charity Commission and Andrew Roberts as a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery. Theresa May fared less well. The attempt to put Toby Young on to a higher-education quango ground British politics to a near standstill until Young withdrew his candidacy. The same government’s efforts to put Roger Scruton into an unpaid role heading an advisory commission on buildings led to even greater pain. In recent years some of us had given up on the idea that the Conservatives could appoint any conservatives into positions in public life.
As such, the Moore and Dacre appointments would be a much-needed volley — one that would demonstrate that the culture wars can no longer be fought and won solely by the radical left. In the wider country there are signs of exasperation over how one-sided the cultural battle has been. Last weekend the actor Laurence Fox announced the setting-up of a new political party — Reclaim — to push back against the left’s stranglehold over every cultural and other institution in this country. Though it is unlikely to pose much electoral threat to the Conservatives, it could help remind them that assaults on our history and culture are not viewed with defeatism or equanimity by all of the British public.
Still, the question is not whether Dacre and Moore can be appointed, but what support they might get and what other phalanxes might be brought in behind them. How, in short, to ensure that they are not one-offs but part of a concerted march back through the institutions. There is plenty to do.
For noble though it is to focus on the BBC, huge amounts of the cultural and political weather in this country are set not by the BBC but by the people whom they report on and go to. In quango after quango it is the same old story. The Victims’ Commissioner, Vera Baird, for instance, is a former Labour MP whose every statement and action fits the old Blairite agenda. Yet it was the Conservative government that appointed her to her current position in June 2019.
But it isn’t just about individuals. It is about the cultural attitude currently embedded at the roots of the civil service and every government appointment. When the Blair government instituted the ‘diversity’ agenda the Conservatives went along with it. Cameron Conservatives saw it not as a right or left issue but simply a forwards or backwards issue: a progressive versus regressive one. That thought-rot now runs deeper than almost any other aspiration in the civil service. Indeed when permanent secretaries write their objectives for their roles, the one thing they all have in common — far above the wellbeing of the country — is the promotion of the ‘diversity agenda’.
There are some signs that the chessboard is being rearranged. The dismissal of Jonathan Slater from his position as permanent secretary at the Department of Education was one good sign. Slater was, and still is, one of the great twitterers about diversity. But it is not enough just to change the figures on the board. It is necessary to change the game. Slater may have gone, but his former colleagues still find themselves in the midst of a pandemic and looming depression being sent on ‘diversity training’ and racial bias awareness training, as though these gods sit above all others as the goal and indeed purpose of the British state.
And then there is the issue of the ‘pilgrims’ — publicly funded workers who, though paid for by the taxpayer, double up as union officers and organisers. Like so much else, the Cameron government ducked dealing with this scandalous arrangement. But if the Johnson administration wants not just to save money but to demonstrate a real change in the wind, it would sweep all these people off the public pay roll.
The last Labour government rigged almost every institution in this country with enormous craft and cunning. Even now, from the National Lottery Fund to the National Trust, we have institution after institution in this country run by people whose interests are opposed to those of the general public, and aspiring more than anything else to the hideous, divisive and now clearly failing ‘woke’ agenda. Dacre and Moore are good early warning shots. But if the Johnson government wants to do something meaningful, it should not just follow through on their appointments; it should follow them up with a fusillade every bit as relentless and long-lasting as the Labour one, the repercussions of which this country still suffers from.
Some of us had given up on the idea that the Conservatives could appoint any conservatives into public life
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54379026
She should have driven !
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Could have stopped off in Barnard Castle for lunch if she had.
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She preferred the buffet on the train
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Another Eton educated privileged Tory pretending Labour rigged the whole system in its favour when it dedicated itself to balancing the injustices brought in by Thatcher and her ilk. The truth is that this country has shifted so far to the right since 2010 that even moderation looks like a left-wing takeover in the eyes of the Tory faithful. The neutrality of the Civil Service is precious but PM Cummings clearly intends to appoint dyed in the wool Tories to its upper ranks.
The BBC does some of the most incisive journalism on offer, but put these right wing fiends in charge and we'll be served a mushy diet that keeps the people happy. Look at the Mail and Express. Any Panorama investigations into scandalous Government spending or Boris's ineptitude will be off the agenda.
Yes, we on the left knew that the s h i t had hit the fan last December and that's why Corbyn let us down so badly but at least our leader now is a fully-functioning adult compared with the paucity of charisma and good sense on the right.
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Sadly, he is a puddycat!
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