Free Speech In The Uk

[rmgill]

You have yet to establish that the NHS has a quota and discriminates against competence to fulfill it.

Well, I'd bet a case of beer that the board member quota DOES do so. I'd suspect that there are probably more folks with board qualifications for finance who are men. I've stated SEVERAL TIMES that I'd be surprised that the Diversity and Inclusion program wasn't headed in this direction if it's not already there. But then again, Harvard's descrimination aginst white and asian students was suspected for decades but wasn't until recently revealed.

 

To put things about, you chaps haven't shown that the NHS's Diversity and Inclusion program DOESN'T work against competence. Before you retort, remember, the reason for these programs is to FIX a problem that is supposed to stem from systemic racism/gender discrimination. So an onus would be on the diversity and Inclusion folks to demonstrate the cause and not just show the correlative data.

 

I provided a clear example of another disparity in jobs between women and men. Did I assert that the disparity was because women are kept out of dangerous jobs? Or perhaps it's more due to a combination of things, which include interests?

 

But then, you've been long on claims, short of understanding and deaf to counter-evidence on every similar topic for years, why change now?

'Counter evidence'. Ad hominems, genetic fallacies and blind assertion aren't counter evidence. Look at Stuart's point about Jordan Peterson above. WHAT COUNTER EVIDENCE?

 

I've supplied citations of cases in the US, Examples in Canada, Court cases, the NHS's desired targets. Yes, I'll fully admit, I'm prognosticating that the NHS's policies are going to go (or are going) this direction. Frankly though, it's the same rhetoric that we've seen in the US and that Canada has seen. FFS the Gender Pay gap arguments have been running in the UK at the SAME time as they have in the US. Feminist and liberals too. With the same arguments. Walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's probably a duck. Except in the UK, it's not a duck, it's something else because reasons and insults.

 

Here's a handy video of Jonathan Height explaining how correlation doesn't equal causation.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ8huLUzxQE&frags=pl%2Cwn

 

[DB]

Evidence, Ryan, evidence.

 

You have nothing but your speculation, based on your experience working for an organisation as broken as CNN. Call it reverse Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps

[rmgill]

I'll reiterate...


To put things about, you chaps haven't shown that the NHS's Diversity and Inclusion program DOESN'T work against competence. Before you retort, remember, the reason for these programs is to FIX a problem that is supposed to stem from systemic racism/gender discrimination. So an onus would be on the diversity and Inclusion folks to demonstrate the cause and not just show the correlative data.

https://diversityuk.org/diversity-in-the-uk/

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/home-office/about/equality-and-diversity

Both look an awful lot like what's over here. Same language. Same stated objectives. Same platitudes.

As I said, walks like a duck, talks like a duck. It's a duck.

But you're right DB. It's probably a horse. I'm surely wrong.

Edited July 11, 2018 by rmgill

[Stuart Galbraith]

If it worked against competence, there is not one of us that would make it out of an NHS hospital alive. Most of us do. Which to me suggests strongly comptetence is still the main building block, not diversity.

 

Interestingly pretty much all the serial killers in the NHS have turned out to be Angry White People, which really ought to tell us something.

[Chris Werb]

Ryan, you're an intelligent bloke and I can see where you're coming from. The thing is you're really getting into non sequitur argument.

 

Yes, in the NHS there is a desire that the service reflects the diversity of the country as far as is reasonably practicable. The latter is the important phrase and its true of our other public services and military too. The thing is it runs headlong into realities that limit the degree of practicability.

 

1. As you have noticed, men and women are different. Short of conscription, you are not going to achieve a 50:50 split of men and women in most walks of life. It has been established beyond reasonable doubt that the cause is biological. Arguing against this, and that a 50 50 split is possible in say mechanical engineering or child day care is ridiculous. The board of a public healthcare organisation should be entirely practicable to get to broadly represent the gender mix given sufficient suitable applicants.

 

2. There is no significant ethnic minority in Orkney to represent. The closest would be Poles. There is no way to change this. There are no votes to gain and many to lose in any conceivable effort to change this.

 

3. The medical profession in the UK has a very large proportion of recent immigrants and foreign nationals from all over the globe. If anything Orkney is particularly diverse in that respect. We hire the best people we can get without prejudice. An effort to make their ethnicity representative of Scotland, let alone Orkney, would involve sacking people based on their skin colour, leaving us with a massive shortfall of medics. Surgeons are overwhelmingly men, so half of those would need replacing too. I don't know on what planet that could happen, but it isn't this one.

 

I'm not going to read the entirety of the documents you linked, firstly because I get to do that for a living and secondly because I know that if there was anything out there imposing quotas or stating that incompetent staff should be preferentially hired, I would already have heard of it, and lastly because if you had anything of substance you would have quoted it directly.

 

Clinging to a non sequitur argument is something I have done myself. Back in the late 80s I was a gun rights activist in the UK. We argued, for example, that an armed society was inherently better able to resist totalitarian domination, citing the difference between those plucky freedom loving Afghans and the cowed populations of Warsaw pact countries. A few years later, the latter were free mostly without a shot fired whilst Afghanistan was a lot less free than when the Soviets occupied it. You will remember that we subsequently bombed and invaded it and the NRA no longer pitch it as some kind of gun owning libertarian utopia.

 

As an aside, as a diver, you will know that there are quite a few, in some cases very prominent woman cave divers out there. I have no idea if any were involved in the Thai rescue.

[Briganza]

In Lincolnshire they don't care what you are as long as you are qualified. They are having to close A&E and hospitals because they have no staff. They may have a problem with diversity and gender in big cities but out in the sticks we would just like them to be qualified and breathing.

Edited July 14, 2018 by Briganza

[Mr King]

[bojan]

Some animals are more equal than other.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Well Khan has proven wholly unable to get to grips with knife crime and Grenfell tower. This is pretty small beer for him in fairness.

[NickM]

 

But seriously nobody seems to want to answer the question: How much of the 'alarmist stuff' in The UK "Press" or shit about the UK in the US press RE: whatever (Muslims running rampant; uncontrolled immigration; 1984 style Big Brother police serveilance; censorship of viewpoints, 'thought crimes','hate crimes'; PC run amok) is real and how much is 'yellow journalism' to whip up circulation?

Probably about the same amount as in your domestic Press and media I expect. A lot of the time it isn't "fake news" as such, it's different outlets judiciously editing things to suit their editorial line and consumer preferences. I've seen coverage of the same event in the Daily Heil and The Grauniad (prolly the worst offenders) that you could be forgiven for assuming were discussing totally different events for example. Both were factually correct, but were selective in what bits of factually correct they chose to put out. OTOH on TV BBC News and Sky News follow exactly the same line for half and mebbe more of the time, which blows a bit of a hole in the theory that the BBC is a bought and paid for Government mouthpiece.

 

BillB

 

 

At least the 'Heil' features supposedly hot wymmyns flaunting their wares....AND I'm still not sure what the situation is 'over there'.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Nothing sells like bad news. Thats true whatever media outlet you are talking about. One suspect the Thai cave rescue was 'improved' from the perspective of the media when one of the divers had the misfortune to die in the process.

 

I ought to mention, once, a lifetime ago, I trained to be a journalist. The running joke was 'Why let the truth get in the way of a good story?'. Some parts of fleet street still live by that approach.

[Paul G.]

Nothing sells like bad news. Thats true whatever media outlet you are talking about. One suspect the Thai cave rescue was 'improved' from the perspective of the media when one of the divers had the misfortune to die in the process.

 

I ought to mention, once, a lifetime ago, I trained to be a journalist. The running joke was 'Why let the truth get in the way of a good story?'. Some parts of fleet street still live by that approach.

More so than bad news, any news that elicits an emotional response, positive or negative. Its why the US is so unexplainabley paranoid. Our "news" plays to our fears, and fosters division.

[Stuart Galbraith]

I dont thnk British media is quite like that. True, media campaigs like Brexit were designed to elicit an emotional response (crowded NHS waiting room if you are in Europe, Empty, 21st Century waiting room if you are out), but most of the media is not like. OK, so you have some of the media focus on character assassination, or various scandals. But the idea of eliciting an emotional response among Britons is quite strange. The closest the print media got to emotion was advertising tits on page 3.

 

I think politically nuanced but dispassionate sum up the majority of UK media. Which is probably why Fox and RT do so badly here, they do nothing but emotion.

[DB]

I'll reiterate...

 

 

To put things about, you chaps haven't shown that the NHS's Diversity and Inclusion program DOESN'T work against competence.

 

[...]

As I said, walks like a duck, talks like a duck. It's a duck.

 

But you're right DB. It's probably a horse. I'm surely wrong.

For someone who whines about the absence of coherent argument from those countering your nonsense, this takes a soggy biscuit.

 

There's only one thing that exposes an argument that is bloated with swamp gas more than the above demand that someone prove a negative, and that would be to accuse us of literally being Hitler.

 

Thing is you're not even saying it's a duck. You're saying that the obvious duck is a platypus.

[rmgill]

Nothing sells like bad news. Thats true whatever media outlet you are talking about. One suspect the Thai cave rescue was 'improved' from the perspective of the media when one of the divers had the misfortune to die in the process.

 

Bad news that fits the narrative.

 

How much have you heard of the looting by students walking out of their schools in protest of guns? Anything at all?

[rmgill]

1. As you have noticed, men and women are different. Short of conscription, you are not going to achieve a 50:50 split of men and women in most walks of life. It has been established beyond reasonable doubt that the cause is biological. Arguing against this, and that a 50 50 split is possible in say mechanical engineering or child day care is ridiculous. The board of a public healthcare organisation should be entirely practicable to get to broadly represent the gender mix given sufficient suitable applicants.

What are the diversity targets? Look at what they say.

 

2. There is no significant ethnic minority in Orkney to represent. The closest would be Poles. There is no way to change this. There are no votes to gain and many to lose in any conceivable effort to change this.

The Orkneys are probably an edge case when it comes to NHS diversity and inclusion targets.

 

Clinging to a non sequitur argument is something I have done myself. Back in the late 80s I was a gun rights activist in the UK. We argued, for example, that an armed society was inherently better able to resist totalitarian domination, citing the difference between those plucky freedom loving Afghans and the cowed populations of Warsaw pact countries. A few years later, the latter were free mostly without a shot fired whilst Afghanistan was a lot less free than when the Soviets occupied it. You will remember that we subsequently bombed and invaded it and the NRA no longer pitch it as some kind of gun owning libertarian utopia.

I've been clear. I suspect that the eventual outcome of the Diversity and Inclusion targets in the NHS will arrive at this end result. They very well may not be there now. I fully admit that. But when you see examples like the Obama admin specifically selecting Air Traffic controllers for their diversity quotient and not their other skills (like being licensed pilots), one can see how D&I can miss the target.

 

As an aside, as a diver, you will know that there are quite a few, in some cases very prominent woman cave divers out there. I have no idea if any were involved in the Thai rescue.

The same goes for pilots. But the issue is, in any distinction between groups, what's the difference between the mean? Is it a 2 standard deviations, half a standard deviation or the same? What traits go into the staff positions you're filling? Where on the curves are you getting those people?

 

Have you seen Dr Peterson's thing about high end women attorneys? You realize that also goes for doctors too right?

 

***

I'll couch this point about Diversity and Inclusion a different way....

 

The UK had a very good writer, his works are, while hilarious, very good at underscoring the law of unintended consequences, I speak of Douglas Adams. Many government actions are notable examples of unintended consequences. D&I sounds great, but it has some unintended consequences. Saying that it's not the intent ignores how things actually work. It may not be the objective now, but give it time. 10 years from now, ever we get in the same place, I'll buy you a beer if I'm wrong.

 

Edited July 16, 2018 by rmgill

[rmgill]

Talk about tone deaf.

[rmgill]

I guess this fits here:

[Paul G.]

I guess this fits here:

 

You got English, Northern Irish and Scottish, only lacking Welshman...but seems like a pretty elevated discussion, wish it would happen like this more in the States.

 

Surprised Benjamin didn't bring up Anita Sarkeesian.

Edited July 16, 2018 by Paul G.

[Panzermann]

Did he pull a Loretta on that BBC guy?

 

 

 

Surprised Benjamin didn't bring up Anita Sarkeesian.

 

 

Why should he, the others gave him enough to work with. Sarkeesian has had her fifteen minutes.

[Paul G.]

Did he pull a Loretta on that BBC guy?

 

 

 

Surprised Benjamin didn't bring up Anita Sarkeesian.

 

Why should he, the others gave him enough to work with. Sarkeesian has had her fifteen minutes.

Obsession is not a temporary thing.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Not sure this is the right thread, but this is the default Tommy Robinson thread, so what the hell.

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/tommy-robinson-trump-breitbart-jailed-lobbying-alt-right-uk-government-theresa-may-a8450841.html

Trump ambassador raised Tommy Robinson case with UK government after Breitbart lobbying, sources reveal

Revelation emerges after Steve Bannon voices support for jailed far-right leader, amid protests funded by US think-tank.

 

Donald Trump’s ambassador for international religious freedom was lobbied by Breitbart to raise the case of Tommy Robinson with the British government, sources say.

Former US Senator Sam Brownback reportedly told British ambassador Sir Kim Darroch that Breitbart “people” had contacted him about Robinson's imprisonment, a government source told Reuters.

Mr Brownback reportedly told Sir Kim that British authorities should be aware that the far-right "news" website was making noise about the case at a meeting in June.

 

Reports say he suggested the UK should be more “sympathetic” to the former leader of the English Defence League, and warned Sir Kim that the Trump administration might publicly criticise its handling of the case.

Pro-Robinson campaigners claimed there were multiple direct contacts between Mr Brownback, his aides, people connected to Breitbart and other groups protesting Robinson's imprisonment.

But a spokesperson for the US State Department said: “We refute as completely false the reports which wrongly assert that Ambassador Brownback urged the UK government to act on this issue or threatened repercussions by the US government in any way.”

Robinson was jailed for 13 months for contempt of court in May, after pleading guilty to violating reporting restrictions imposed to safeguard an ongoing set of trials at Leeds Crown Court.

Edited July 17, 2018 by Stuart Galbraith

[Stuart Galbraith]

Slightly more detail on the Reuters page.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-britain-robinson/breitbart-lobbying-prompted-u-s-envoy-to-raise-tommy-robinson-case-with-british-idUSKBN1K6252

Former U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, Trump’s Ambassador for International Religious Freedom, told British envoy Sir Kim Darroch at a meeting in June that Breitbart “people” had contacted him about Robinson’s imprisonment, the British government source said.

Brownback told Darroch that British authorities should be aware that the website was making noise about the case, the source said.

The British Embassy in Washington has made no public comment on the discussion.

Three pro-Robinson campaigners said there were multiple direct contacts between Brownback, his aides, people connected to Breitbart.com and other groups protesting Robinson’s imprisonment.

One of the pro-Robinson activists with direct knowledge of the issue said Brownback personally expressed dismay at British laws restricting news coverage of pending and open criminal trials.

A U.S. State Department spokesman said the agency did not give readouts of private diplomatic discussions.

However, the spokesman said, “We refute as completely false the reports which wrongly assert that Ambassador Brownback urged the UK government to act on this issue or threatened repercussions by the U.S. government in any way.”

[DB]

So I see an attempt to create a headline of substance from a story with minimal content.

 

Someone in the State Department mentions that one of Ryan's goto sources of half truths, ignorance and outright disinformation is making a fuss about Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon. I'm sure that the FO were more polite than their initialism suggests, but I note that the US has made no formal statement about Paul Harris.

 

In fact, it seems that Trump didn't mention Andrew McMaster during discussions with the PM, so clearly it's not that important to him, either.

 

Curious about the religious angle, though.

[Stuart Galbraith]

I only give the story credence because its original source is Reuters. Presumably they would not have posted it unless they were reasonably confident of the source of the story.