Parents of teenagers. If you haven’t listened to all episodes of this yet then you are out of touch…

[Blessex]

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09yjmph

The cause for which a lobby group lobbies is almost irrelevant here as it a vehicle for a remarkably disturbing challenge to transparency and democracy.

If a lobby group can persuade Ofcom to deplatform a potential critic on specious grounds then it is controlling broadcast media. If Ofcom is so in thrall to a boondoggle from that lobby group that it then uses the deplatforming as a way to accrue points for that boondoggle, then we are in a very bad place if we're a society that relies upon reporting from those media.

Hadro that’s a really interesting read.

I always though part of why people didn’t self report being conned was because they were aiming to avoid paying taxes/doing something immoral or illegal that seeking to invest in whatever tax write off scammed them. Obviously that’s a very select area of cons, because I watch too much true crime, but I never really considered other reasons behind it. It sounds a lot like a woman fleeing dv because not only has she been a victim and been systemically isolated, but the likelihood is many of her prior supporters are probably frustrated but she’ll be stuck feeling like they think I told you so about the man she has to flee.

I tend think of all this in terms of Orwell or Camus or Shirley Jackson’s the lottary or the short story about the space ship * my memory is fucked or the one where the sicker a person is the higher up the hospital floors they go, and it’s never clear if they are truly sick or if they just believe they are because they are on higher floors. Until they die. Or the emperor’s new clothes. I see social contagion and it’s psychological or sociological factors as literature, stories, folklore. And then wonder why I’m frustrated at adults who don’t get it. When I guess I don’t really get why they don’t see what I see. I just end up feeling like having a temper tantrum at stupidity, which in itself is pretty stupid.

James kirkup's article in the spectator today makes the same point hadro.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-bbc-s-relationship-with-stonewall-is-finally-being-scrutinised

Whatever 'side' you're on, we should all be concerned that a lobby group is controlling our media output.

And organisations that receive public funding should absolutely welcome scrutiny. I find it quite terrifying that the BBC has refused to answer questions.

So many people - not just in the U.K., but internationally, view the bbc as absolutely unimpeachably objective. It's a huge part of why the bbc sells its programming. That is a position of trust which they should guard jealously, not be willing to toss away so easily for an ideology. Because once lost, it cannot be easily regained.

@BoreOfWhabylon

MNHQ quite rightly delete any transphobicposts, *@HowardNoir*. Have you listened to the podcast?

They don't though.

short story about the space ship

Do you mean Kornbluth's scifi story, Marching Morons ? The over-arching premise is that a man wakes from suspended animation. The contemporary world seems mad to Barlow until he discovers the 'Problem of Population'. The appalling solution to this is a eugenics and depopulation programme.

Kornbluth describes that some of this was possible because the propaganda succeeds by undermining people's memories and certainties and persuading them to self-select and compete for this.

www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51233

One of the characters, Mrs Garvy, remembers that rockets crash so she is sceptical when she sees references to trips to Venus as a desirable vacation destination. Nonetheless, well-planted media propaganda undermines her certainty. As does her husband's certainty that she's wrong because women are unlikely to pay appropriate attention to current events.

Start quotation

Well, I thought ya couldn't get to Venus. I thought they just had that one rocket thing that crashed on the Moon."
"Aah, women don't keep up with the news," said Garvy righteously, subsiding again.
"Oh," said his wife uncertainly.
And the next day, on Henry's Other Mistress , there was a new character who had just breezed in: Buzz Rentshaw, Master Rocket Pilot of the Venus run.
On Henry's Other Mistress , "the broadcast drama about you and your neighbors, folksy people, ordinary people, real people." Mrs. Garvy listened with amazement over a cooling cup of coffee as Buzz made hay of her hazy convictions.
...
She was a stubborn woman, but it occurred to her that she was very sick indeed. She didn't want to worry her husband. The next day she quietly made an appointment with the family freud.
In the waiting-room she picked up a fresh new copy of Readers Pablum and put it down with a faint palpitation. The lead article, according to the table of contents on the cover, was titled The Most Memorable Venusian I Ever Met.
...
Like many cures of mental disorders, Mrs. Garvy's was achieved largely by self-treatment. She disciplined herself sternly out of the crazy notion that there had been only one rocket ship and that one a failure. She could join without wincing, eventually, in any conversation on the desirability of Venus as a place to retire, on its fabulous floral profusion. Finally she went to Venus.
End quotation

She was, of course, by participating in the trip, also promoting the propaganda programme (the travellers didn't know the trip hadn't left Earth). And, coverage of the trip is used to persuade people to compete for space on Venus colonisation transports that are the cover for the extreme eugenics and depopulation programme.

Yes absolutely that one. I recall meaning but I’m not great with details like names/author.

Im so tired I can’t think clearly but it’s very similar feel to the story about hospital floors, that all I recall in terms of details is the lecturer comparing the writer to Kafka. When a person enters hospital on the ground floor, where the least sick patients are, and they keep being bumped up floors, but the reader is left never knowing if they are moved up because they are ill or they are ill because they are moved up (and so view themselves as ill). It’s very much a suggestion that seeing themselves as ill is the cause of death. And any doubts they bring up silenced by the doctors who use very circular arguments. We’re moving you upstairs because you are so ill, you must be so ill because we moved you upstairs.

@BulletandtheBullseye

Im so tired I can’t think clearly but it’s very similar feel to the story about hospital floors, that all I recall in terms of details is the lecturer comparing the writer to Kafka. When a person enters hospital on the ground floor, where the least sick patients are, and they keep being bumped up floors, but the reader is left never knowing if they are moved up because they are ill or they are ill because they are moved up (and so view themselves as ill). It’s very much a suggestion that seeing themselves as ill is the cause of death. And any doubts they bring up silenced by the doctors who use very circular arguments. We’re moving you upstairs because you are so ill, you must be so ill because we moved you upstairs.

Dino Buzzati's Seven Floors ?

thepvacreativewritingreview.wordpress.com/2017/03/09/seven-floors-write-up-by-evan-sherer/

I need to make time to have a listen

@HowardNoir

What do you class as transphobic posts?

Do you think it is transphobic to say, “Transwomen are not women, they are transwomen’?

Do you think the single sex exemption in the Equality Act 2010 is transphobic?

This thread has moved twice. It would be helpful to keep it within Chat as per the OP's intention and subsequent elaboration.

We are heading into what looks like a very difficult Winter and Spring in the UK. I am alarmed at how easily Ofcom and major public organisations can be suborned to suit the agenda of a lobby group that operates in a clandestine and non-accountable manner.

Commenting so I can make a note of this

Yes that one! I haven’t seen that in forever (I have it printed out from uni in several (like 30..) boxes with everything scrap of paper from uni. I’ll reread it once get through the next several hours of baths/melt down/beds/melt downs and so on.

I think I went to uni by the point critical thinking was being shhhddd out. But school I recall English, modern studies, history all pushing us (with very harsh words and severe marking downs when we didn’t) to continually re-examine and evaluate our thoughts and beliefs. There were no right answers and it was the process we got to our conclusions that mattered (4 different secondary schools, poor to middling areas, none with great reputations).

I worked for two years then went to uni (very middle of league table uni) and suddenly it was very obvious they wanted 60 essays all reiterating the same argument. The tutorials were full of people who repeated exactly what the lecturer had said earlier in the week with no elaboration or examination or challenge to the core argument. Visit office hours and the tutors would again say nothing more than I’d heard all week. It felt like we were encouraged not to think for ourselves. People seemed proud to all agree smugly and dissenting voices were frowned upon.

Two years that made a huge difference.

I had previously assumed this was more my experience, and friends who report similar did so because we tend to end up with similar friends.

But now I’m wondering how common this is (started uni 98) and how much that plays a roll in the public lack of critical thinking applied to stonewall and other lobby groups dismantling freedoms in front of our blindness.

@BulletandtheBullseye

I’m really flattered Bore. You’ve made my teary day.

Don’t mean to me-rail the thread, but I don’t post normally, just lurk and tweet at times and mouth off to everyone in rl. But signed up because I have to address this with my kids school, again, after they assured me their pshe was 100% in line with d of e when the plan I have in front of me isn’t. (Cis gender, genderfluid, pansexual for 10 year olds with autism)

I know I’m going to get plenty of them rolling their eyes behind my back and bristles of irritation at my gaul at expecting them to spend their time correcting their own errors. Some will most definitely be aghast a parent cares about safeguarding or knows the d of e guidelines aren’t just for the schools who agree with them. And some will simply condescend to me because this is such a niche topic that really doesn’t matter to most of the population and I’m being so EMOtional about my children

So I’m really flattered you said that. You’ve bumped up my wobbling confidence and I’ll remember that when pointing out the problems with them.

Ty xx

Good luck, Bullet! Well done for caring and taking the time to address this with the school.

It's interesting to see Stonewall and others publicly denouncing this podcast as transphobic (presumably without having listened to it, otherwise surely they'd realise how foolish that sounds?).

I wonder if their objections might lead people to question whether any of the other things that Stonewall label as transphobic and #NoDebate might actually be the kind of balanced scrutiny that any other charity would expect to be subjected to.

This feels rather like the Kids Company scandal all over again.

Thanks MNHQ. You are right it does fit into Chat. We are chatting about a national scandal.

the kind of balanced scrutiny that any other charity would expect to be subjected to.

Sacred castes that can not be scrutinised serve none of us. I emphatically don't want children growing up in a society where lack of transparency is normalised and both unspeaking tribalism and the absence of critical thinking are thought to be a civic virtue.

I agree hadro

It’s also where does that end. If any organisation can hide from scrutiny then they can have the best of intentions but they will also always attract those who are attracted to lack of scrutiny.

It could be a feminist charity that fights to end male violence against women and girl. But if it isn’t open to scrutiny, if it isn’t transparent, then it will attract men who prey on women and girls.

Dangerous people hide wherever there are hiding places.

If it’s ok for stonewall to use NDA’s, to be above reproach, to have to answer to no one, then any organisation can. People will find that they work to honour their granny by using part of their inheritance to set up a local dog charity in the name of her beloved pet to campaign for free vet care. And if it provides hiding places then the predators will use it to hide what they get up to. Any organisation or charity about any cause we care about could potentially get hijacked by the worst denominator.

I don’t know much about how the public can stop lobby groups or organisations getting away with placing themselves above reproach.

But remaining silent about stonewalls planned deceit and manipulation definitely enables any organisation to be free to do this.

Even if people don’t care about gender ideology, even if they don’t engage with democratic process in any other form (no judgement, new borns and caring for sick relatives or being sick yourself or a thousand of other reasons are no doubt valid) but even if people don’t think this relates to them we all have causes or charities or organisations that we care about, contribute to or speak up for. And sitting back silently because it’s those bloody wimmin whinging about stonewall again, will just mean that people can’t speak up for the ones that matter to them, or that their charitable causes are equally able to follow in stonewalls footsteps and roll out NDA’s and be above reproach because ‘be kind’ and ‘the most vulnerable group’ and so on. Which provides a front for anyone looking to hide. And letting it go unchecked now means it could well be a kids cancer charity that’s above reproach next, and that has scope for so many abuses of power. Or refugee charities. Or mh.

This isn’t about gender ideology. And our kids will want their democratic freedoms that aren’t ours to throw away for them.

Bumping and place marking.

This is one of the most important pieces of investigative journalism in a long time.

The issues are very far reaching.

That should read intentional deceit. Planned sounds like they haven’t done it yet, when it’s been going on for a very long time

@Leafstamp agree. I mean everyone should give it a listen.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09yjmph

[quote Blessex]@BulletandtheBullseye well quite. We are witnessing a national scandal and are being marginalised when trying to discuss it. Maybe start a national scandal thread?[/quote]
Agreed.
Thank you for posting this.
I will listen, & if it's as balanced as it is being reported here, share too.

I sort of knew all of this stuff from reading the boards here but hearing the wider implications as detailed on the podcasts has left me shocked, even with my prior awareness.

Everyone needs to listen to it. The main critics first and foremost

So pleased to see this has been moved - thank you MNHQ.
This thread is about regulatory capture of our institutions by a political lobby group that has chosen to avoid the democratic process to exercise its influence. For parents and other concerned adults, the fact that this has included the education of children with teacher's unions, schools, the DfE and Ofsted signing up to Stonewall's ideology is frightening.
These podcasts just demonstrate the tip of this iceberg and I'm so grateful that they're evidencing so clearly the mess that society has sleepwalked into.

I’m a little confused that this is discussed as being in chat, but I am looking at it in Sex and Gender

Has it been moved again?