Jacob Rees Mogg revamping Civil Service training

[achillestoes]

It’s a sad day when you see Jacob Rees Mogg doing anything and you’re happy about it, but here we are. He is calling time on Civil Service training budgets being used for ‘ridiculous’ diversity courses that open the CS up to ‘mockery’ and don’t represent value for money. He’s writing to all government departments to make it clear that staff development should be about providing workers with the training needed to do their jobs.

I don’t like JRM but if anyone thinks the general public aren’t behind him on this, they’re deluded. Most people don’t believe training in your role should amount to moral indoctrination about your privilege, or requiring you to describe yourself within the frameworks of ideologies you don’t accept.

@EmbarrassingHadrosaurus

Of course it has been. I’d never have read White Fragility or Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race if those ideas weren’t influential.

Oh no. My Tory neighbour said it was a nice day today. That means it can’t have been. I was wrong to think it was warm and sunny.

Grow up, FFS.

@ThinkingaboutLangClegosaurus

Correct. I reckon I’d probably have very different plans from JRM if I were suddenly in charge of what we did with people’s taxes, but I’d agree with him that forcing people to sit through training about their placement in the hierarchy of social privilege was pissing them up the wall.

what a surprise to discover that @achillestoes - who appears to have a fulltime job posting links from The Telegraph and unherd which they think are "interesting" disapproves of critical race theory too,

Not only that, I actually think this social hierarchy (where the ostensibly ‘privileged’ are forced to embrace their ‘new’ place at the bottom of the list of those deserving of empathy) is partly what is driving young women to reject their female bodies and adopt new ‘oppressed’ identities. It’s a seductive idea: be delivered of your privilege, be in receipt of the label of ‘most marginalised’, and suddenly you get to insist that everybody hates you, in defiance of the reality, in which you are a member of a powerful elite.

@antifascist

The ideas are connected. Please don’t blame me for noticing. Anyway I never post links. I just describe things.

And I don’t disapprove of CRT. I’m sure it has provided some people with a great deal of value and interest. I just don’t think it should be a force within the Civil Service, or my kids’ primary school.

I work in the public sector and was sent on whole day diversity 'training'. I made a promise to myself that if I was ever told I have to go on anything like that again I'd refuse and they could sack me. We're overworked and short staffed as it is and taking us away from our jobs to do anything that isn't useful or relevant to our jobs is really annoying.

I was responding to Boxowine and the assertion that CRT was not relevant within the context of the UK and the CS.

I'd taken it for granted that you were familiar with contemporary discussions of CRT and plausibly influenced by those specific texts.

@EmbarrassingHadrosaurus

Sorry, I was agreeing with you!

@orangeisthenewpuce

Good. It’s really shocking when people are struggling so much to access basic guaranteed services.

Why did he address the extreme right wing Traditional Britain Group?

Personally I'd never even heard of this group so . I wouldn't know what they stood for. They were pro Brexit which is why I should think RM addressed them back in 2013. MPs are often asked to address different groups. Anyway Rees Mogg apologised and said...

"I am shocked by the comments made by members of the Traditional Britain Group which I note from the Liberal Conspiracy website seem to have been made after I had addressed the dinner," Mr Rees-Mogg said.

"I can entirely disassociate myself with the Traditional Britain Group as I have never been a member or supporter."

He later told BBC's Newsnight: "I clearly made a mistake. I think the postings that we've recently seen are so deeply disgraceful and shocking that they have no place in decent political debate.

Could he gave condemned it more? I don't think so.

So this is your best proof so far of his extreme right wing beliefs?
He addressed a group 9 years ago which he apologised for afterwards and condemned their words and beliefs.
He was accused of anti-semetism only for the accuser to retract the accusation and apologise for his mistake.
He disagrees with abortion
He retweeted a video by AfD criticising the EU. A group whose political ideas he condemns.
That it?
Should you also not add on that he's speaks with a posh accent? Surely that makes him a right wing extremist as well in your narrow world?

So you're just using CRT as a euphemism for diversity stuff you don't like. Even if someone gave a talk at AERA (very pro trans group btw) claiming there are similarities between what is taught in the US and the UK doesn't establish that CRT as an academic discipline exists in the UK. It can't. Your legal system and form of government existed before Europeans engaged in African slavery. They didn't develop in tandem with the institution.

I get that you don't support intersectionality and I can see why you would have issues with that particular training module but to be against training altogether is not helpful to women. The trans issue could disappear tomorrow but we'd still have sexism, racism, classism, ageism, and ablism.

Who are the elites? You hear that in the US a lot but it's usually used in reference to the so called intelligentsia, academics and journalists pushing agendas on the regular guy. I think it would be fair to say that Rees Mogg and the whole Bojo crowd are the elites.

@Boxowine

’So you're just using CRT as a euphemism for diversity stuff you don't like.’

No, I don’t think I did that. I think the two things (CRT and diversity movements in general) overlap in significant ways.

Yes, BJ and JRM belong to an economic elite. I don’t. But I am being asked to believe I am more privileged as a woman (and specifically a white woman) than the males who are removing my rights to a small number of safe spaces for my sex. I will push back on any ideology that makes such a ridiculous claim.

CRT is not limited to the US, it's all over the English speaking world.

This is good news. If only it came into force before I was forced to attend a trans awareness course last year where I was told I should question my morals if I didn’t want to use gender neutral toilets, and where I was told women should have to put up with competing with men in sports.

‘Who are the elites?’

Anyone who can’t be questioned or criticised, or challenged for proof of their claims, becomes an elite.

I received a PM on this thread (I don’t reply to them because of security concerns) but just want the sender to know I have read it!

The total number of " males who are removing my rights to a small number of safe spaces for my sex." as you put it is probably smaller than one years Eton intake. and yet you seem to be fixated on them to the extent of wishing to tear down all diversity initiatives, and post in support of the extremely privileged men who went to Eton and Oxford of which Rees Mogg is just one.

Cutting off your nose to spite your face you might say

@antifascist

I think maybe some people have gotten too used to telling other people what they should care about.

CRT is specifically about the US legal system and how our laws were developed in order to support the institution of slavery.
The US legal system has always pertained to slavery, from our very first property laws to the Constitution to the Civil War to Jim Crow to multiple Supreme Court rulings. That's what CRT is.

There are other anti-racist theories taught all over the world but it's imprecise to refer to them as CRT. CRT is factual, it's an analysis of actual laws that were passed with a clear intent. These are things which actually happened. That's not the same as other woke ideologies that are about what people think or how they behave. If you're against woke ideologies or anti racism, fine, but CRT is not a bucket for all that stuff.

Bojo and JRM aren't simply rich, they are running the UK. With enormous power and influence not only in your country but also the world.

Isn't that what we all do, though? I tell people they should care about women's rights. I do that because I don't trust the men to care about them for me.

@Boxowine

Up to a point, we try to persuade others to care about what we care about. I accept people have a right to decide (in the end) for themselves, though.

@Boxowine

There seems to be a new fashion for pretending people who have been elected in a free and legal democratic process have somehow seized power, doesn’t there? BJ and JRM are privileged by birth, but they are elected officials.