Westministers: Happy New Year?

[RedToothBrush]

And so we enter a New Year full of hope that things might just be about to recover from our national nervous breakdown... or perhaps not.

As we have Damien Green ejected from his role as Deputy PM over allegations of inappropriate conduct towards woman and use of porn at the end of last year, 2018 sees a bright new progressive dawn with the appointment to the role of universities regulator of Toby Young. A man who has deleted 20,000 tweets including many which are inappropriate and offensive to women, is a fan of eugenics and hates the working class and disabled.

Meanwhile the NHS is facing a crisis which is totally unexpected to the government and couldn't possibly have been planned for by a man who has over seen it for over five years. Which naturally bodes really well for Brexit planning.

We are apparently planning to join the TPP. Never mind geopolitics we can move the UK to the Pacific region.

We still are not ready for trade talks because the Cabinet can not agree on anything. Not that it sounds like they have actually discussed anything along these lines yet.

Rumours are that the Cabinet - including arch leavers such as Gove - are leaning towards supporting May and a softer option, despite the disgust of Johnson, who once again is the subject of malicious chatter about his sacking in a forthcoming Cabinet Reshuffle.

There is talk of further Tory Party war with the revelation that membership of the party has dropped to a core of just 70,000 hardline authoritarian men, most of whom are over 60. Tory HQ now wants to (perhaps with some good reason to prevent the loons) rewrite the constitution and limit the power of local associations to select candidates. The Tory party is now lining up to be a power struggle between internal authoritarians, who don't like democracy voices or structure.

Meanwhile the Labour Party membership now apparently overwhelmingly looks upon staying in the customs union and single market favourably and is in favour of a second referendum. In opposition to the leadership who are utterly committed to Hard Brexit. Much to the annoyance of Lord Adonis who is pitching a fit about government corruption and incompetence and being accused of being elite because he going skiing. Unlike of prominent Leavers who are in touch with the working class.

And finally Nigel Farage has got a meeting with Barnier. Farage, unlike Clegg, Clarke and Adonis, will not be accused by the Right Wing Press of undermining the government's negotiating position because...

It appears that we are in for another year of Brexit nonsense then.

We've not even heard mention of Gibraltar yet.

I was just coming on to mention that Private Eye article about Toby Young's attendance at a eugenics conference which I read this morning. For those who can't read Red's picture, it is absolutely shocking stuff and worth buying this issue of PE for that alone. Although PE couldn't get a copy of this year's agenda, the 2015 event included lectures on how "low IQ, high fertility Southern non-Western immigration threatens sustainability of European democracy, welfare and civilisation". Another paper argued that penis length predicts differences in parental care and that "skin brightness" is a factor in global development. Another lecturer, Emil Kirkegaard, whom TY follows on Twitter, has written that it is permissible to have sex with a sleeping/drugged child (no harm done if they don't know about it).

And includes speakers on the 'Jewish Question'. lala

I don't think the PE article mentioned the conference's inclusion of speakers on the "Jewish Question" but, yes, sounds a good fit with the rest of it .

I can barely believe that Hammond is telling the Germans that it 'takes two to tango'. Which country was it that said that it didn't want to dance at all?

Time for some no-platforming there ?

Let's all remember that all the Tories suddenly so keen to ensure universities uphold free speech are doing so for this, not to allow Germaine Greer to chat about gender. This is why putting in legal provision to promote 'free speech' in Universities is not something for the progressives to be cheering on.

In the London Student article lala

The UISR is bankrolled by Lynn and Meisenberg’s Pioneer Fund, a Southern Poverty Law Centre-listed hate group founded by Nazi sympathisers with the purpose of promoting “racial betterment.

Beneficiaries of the fund include a magazine devoted to a “penetrating inquiry into every aspect of the Jewish Question,” and Jared Taylor’s American Renaissance, whose conferences have hosted prominent far-right figures Richard Spencer (an white supremancist who gained prominence after Trump’s election), Nick Griffin (ex-leader of the British National Party), and David Duke (another white supremacist, and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan

More in that article about Toby Young's conference colleagues.

And how no platforming is also targeted at eminent feminists Bigly.

: you mentioned Greer. bigly
Feminist networks are organising sold out conferences, in secret locations, just because we are being shut down out of mainstream universities, and media. ( viz. what BBC has just done to its women journalists who speak out)

Oh yes, Lynn who, according to PE, 'has called for "incompetent cultures" to be phased out and argues that black people have "naturally psychopathic" personalities'.

Ulster Institute for Social Research - nexus (eugenics)

rationalwiki.org/wiki/Mankind_Quarterly
www.ulsterinstitute.org/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lynn

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_M._Miller
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmuth_Nyborg
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Templer
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Meisenberg

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ulster-university-took-grant-from-fund-backing-whites-1405688.html 1994 article

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Fund has a long and appalling history. Still going strong. Listed as hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Renaissance_(magazine)

Many views too unpleasant to post here lala
Mumsnet would quite rightly take them down.
However good enough for the 2010 administration to give him a chain of schools.
Who in that government and this one knew?
Who shares those views?
What hold have they got on May?

That may be true woman, but allowing the right wing to co-opt those objections against 'no platforming' in order to put in a provision that would make it so that right wing extremists could argue they have to be allowed to talk at uni is shooting ourselves in the face because we have a cold.

Feminists have always had to deal with backlash of one kind or another, I have faith that we are capable and resilient enough to work around it and find ways to get the message out. We should be very careful of putting in place something that will allow those seeking to undermine the whole principles of equality to claim they must also be given access to universities.

Universities, like any other institutions get to decide who speaks at them. I believe that though this may mean that some people I think should be allowed might be turned away it is worth that in order to ensure they have the tools to shut out much more dangerous people.

...and the issue of the media and in particular the BBC treatment of women speaking out about pay is a completely different issue in my view.

I would be surprised if TY manages to keep a place on the WLFS board with those kind of associations. It's hard to imagine any other school tolerating one of its trustees speaking at such an event alongside people with those sorts of views.

Nice to hear Michael Gove being given an easy ride on R4 this morning. Basically just a platform for him to spout complete bollocks without any fear of scrutiny.

He even admitted that going on the Today programme was (and this is his quote) predictable

With the admission that I know Brexiteers believe the BBC is biased against them, I can't help but see the BBC as some sort of bubble that has to be wrapped around Brexit to prevent it disappearing in a puff of logic when it comes into contact with the real world.

Feminists have always had to deal with backlash of one kind or another
Not like this. It's an organised take down.

Woman, what made me really angry was on Tuesday listening to radio five and the spectator's Fraser Nelson. In was the fall out from the resignation and the defence Nelson gave.

He said he didn't recognise the Toby described. And that the comments were made in 2004 - 2009 and people can change. He thought it perfectly find to be an agent provocateur.

But its now standard practice for your social media to be checked by future employers. There the case where the police force was criticised, including by politicians for not vetting social media before an appointment. Why are government not holding to similar standards and using similar procedures? And yet we have a controversial high profile position and no one thought to check his social media 'cos we know him. He's a good 'un'. Or worst still and more likely they know all about it and view it as 'caustic wit' as if its some silly in joke in the boys club.

More to the point, Young's piece on eugenics wasn't old. It was written in 2015. Nelson was doing what he could to try and cover that little gem up. Dawn Foster was on with him and getting right pissed off and saying 'how can you justify this given what he has written in the Spectator itself'.

Fraser Nelson isn't dumb. He knows how recent some of the worst stuff was.

There were articles all over Spectator about how awful Jared O'Mara was and how he should resign immediately. Of course he's an awful person from the underclass.

I'm of the opinion that its not just double standards. They not only condone Young but share some of his opinions over supremacy of the upper classes and how to get rid of the 'working class problem'. Its more than political points scoring. Its a deeply held belief.

Its a kind of snobbery that has crept into unhealthy territory because they are unwilling to confront some home truths about their own privilege.

I was annoyed that no one on the radio pulled Nelson up on the eugenics article being written in 2015.

I find it dreadful that critical thinking over gender and how this affects womens rights is banned at universities but if you know the university deans well enough you can slip a conference which is remarkably lacking in critical thinking and ethics in there. Cos no one will know if its invite only.

This isn't about no platforming talk about eugenics and race at a university. This was an invite only conference. It wasn't for student or public consumption. There is no transparency or accountability here.

Thats a huge difference and one that is important. This isn't about the pros and cons of no platforming in the same way.

This is about how people with power were able to bypass that scrutiny and are seeking to use academica to legitimise themselves when what they are doing isn't up to the proper standards of academica. Its about an underlying intent to mislead and frame ideology as science.

My worry is this perhaps will strengthen calls to no platform things in university. There is a value in discussing things despite being controversial because they reveal certain hidden issues and promote critical thinking and ethics. The key part is about the transparency and who is gatekeeping what can and cannot be said and for what reasons.

Wrt the question upthread 'War - what is it good for?'

See recent 'spontaneous' protests in Iran.

You say it well, Red, as ever. Needless to say, on the other thread that has been started, someone has jumped in to try to tar Corbyn with the same brush, and excuse Young because he's stepped down, or been booted out (?)(Fulbright). There is nothing to say that Young doesn't still hold his abhorrent views.

There is no transparency or accountability here
I did my MA thesis on the impact of the creation of the unaccountable HEFC and FEFC on further and higher education in 1993! This was the inevitable, but inconceivable result.
Employing a Nazi headmaster, or banning senior women's rights speakers from universities would have been a bit more difficult to get past an elected LEA committee.

I did my MA thesis on the impact of the creation of the unaccountable HEFC and FEFC on further and higher education in 1993! This was the inevitable, but inconceivable result.

I expect a Tory apologist to jump in and try to blame Labour for that. I am not a Labour supporter, I have just got completely fed up with the constant attempts to denigrate them. Still, that didn't work at the last election......

Sorry everyone the creation of FEFC and HEFC happened under Clarke's tenure.

The GLC's ILEA terrified them, with its elected councillors and anti racist, feminist, pro working class left wing agenda.

So they went in to destroy elected LEAs everywhere.

And hence.........

Really good analysis of the Toby Young fiasco, people.

I read a very succinct summing up on twitter: well funded far-right and racist groups and individuals, being laundered by respected intellectuals (or quasi-intellectuals).

I think it's a really pithy summing up of the real direction of travel of these views (it's not, for example, a question of the easily-offended trying to silence people and thus creating extremists, and it's not a grass-roots change of opinion) and that there is an agenda, and a push, and that it is well-funded.

The Tory press, including Sarah Vine, have been playing down the Toby Young tweets as a mistake he made years ago, deserves a second chance etc. etc..