GC views at the heart of No. 10?

[TimeLady]

I spotted this in Dominic Cumming's blog, reproduced in The Spectator

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/01/dominic-cummings-number-10-is-hiring/

People in SW1 talk a lot about ‘diversity’ but they rarely mean ‘true cognitive diversity’. They are usually babbling about ‘gender identity diversity blah blah’. What SW1 needs is not more drivel about ‘identity’ and ‘diversity’ from Oxbridge humanities graduates but more genuine cognitive diversity.

Drivel? YESSSSSS!

The hollowing out of Whitehall in the name of austerity has left Ministers and MP's woefully unsupported.

Yes. He seems to trying to fix this on the cheap by appealing to the vanity of a load of young geeks that he plans to work to death.

That said, big data is going to be incorporated into policy creation one way or another. Better it's not left to lobby groups.

@Somerville - I agree partly that simple slogans are part of populism - but I thing the Slogan needs to either be True or people want it to be True - Get Brexit done - may not be True - but people supporting Boris/Whoever want it to be true - the key thing is it needs to be broadly Popular whether it’s True or merely wished for. TWAW is not true from my view - Some people desperately want it to be true (about 8% of the population - and I think this figure would go down if you could have a proper open debate ) Populism needs to speak to something that a big part of the population already feel or tap into hidden beliefs or fears - I can never see TWAW being a populist rallying call - outside student humanity departments - exactly the places Cummings wants to turn away from

I agree that to count as populist a slogan needs to be something people want to be true, to an extent. But more than that I think that the complex “problem” the slogan simplistically “solves” is often a set up, to get people who won’t benefit from something to support it anyway, to the benefit of those who stand to gain a lot from it. In surveys 10 years ago people who went on to vote to leave the EU did not list leaving the EU as a priority. But Cummings and his ilk played on fears and prejudices to successfully set the EU up as a problem, in defiance of those pesky facts, and then swept in to “solve” it with GBD. Likewise, there are many people who didn’t list helping people who have gender dysphoria fit in as a priority, who’ve been fed the lie that it is a massive problem, in defiance of facts like two (2) sex classes, alongside a stoking of their fears (“if we don’t stand up for trans rights, gay rights will be next”) or prejudices (c.f. all the misogynists jumping on board). TWAW is thus presented as a simple, inspirational solution to the manufactured “problem”. So I see both issues as coming from the same populist playbook. But ultimately both to the benefit of already wealthy white men. Not the vulnerable.

@Somerville thanks for your reply - but my fundamental hope/belief is beyond being nice and polite - changing sex is one if the most ridiculous impossibilities physical or meta physical in the whole world

Well I agree with you entirely there. No human can change sex, and gender is such a bollocks concept I scrawl genderfree on every form that uses it.