This morning has seen the Today programme replete with “stories” which all carry the same theme – social engineering and public opinion manipulation by the political left dressed up as if it was news. First off, we had Lord Browne being given a platform to share with us how awful it was to be young and gay in the 1960’s. Thank goodness we are more enlightened now, right? but society needs to become much more accommodating of gay people. Clear? Next up we had Alan Milburn, the government’s independent reviewer of social mobility, speaking to Evan Davis about his report on access to the professions. Essentially Milburn reckons that the professions must stop recruiting the best qualified people and instead recruit on a basis that fully reflects society. Truly demented stuff from Milburn but giving an airing for us all to ponder just how unfair it all is. Waaugh. Finally, who’s up for school children being given lessons on self-esteem and for criminalising anyone who calls a fatty names? That’s the mad conclusion from the surreally named All Party Parliamentary Group on body image. What a joy it is to listen to this dross.
SOCIAL ENGINEERING MORNING
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and they went back again to the Alan Milburn stuff for the final minutes of the programme.
Funny – I didn’t hear anyone saying that a real engine for social mobility in the past was the grammar schools.
Did they happen to mention that in spite of, (or more accurately directly because of), the social engineering of 13 years of labour misrule, that social mobility went into decline?
I’ll bet not.
On the subject of the BBC’s long march ever leftward, I caught an interesting moment on 5 Live this morning. Campbell was interviewing some Quango-bot from advertising standards. Well I say it was an interview, infact this being Gameshow and his girls talking to a fellow trougher at the limitless pit of taxpayer cash, this was really more a happy pat-a-cake game of softball with limp humour. Allah forbid we ask these people to justify their qualifications to judge on our behalf. Grrrrr nasty free-enterprise! Anyway Mr Advertising Standards came out with words to the effect: I often wonder what we will think in 30 years time about certain attitudes that are now perfectly acceptable. The context and implication being that he assumes that we are all invitably set on a ‘progressive’ course ever leftward in our attitudes. Naturally the statement was treated as unremarkable by the resident Beeboids. Well when you are fully on board with and signed up to this wonderful idea of inevitable ‘progressive’ social engineering why would you question it?
“I often wonder what we will think in 30 years time about certain attitudes that are now perfectly acceptable.”
Yes, such as women leaving the house, gays not being hanged, alcohol being socially acceptable etc. etc. (If bell-ends like this don’t end their love affair with Islame)
And not being allowed to call anyone “Fatty” because it is a “hate crime”, and you can be carted off to the gulags…
Yes, you are correct, the left never acknowledge the paradox in their laissez faire attitude toward radical Islam – is there really another kind?
NO !
In 30 years time people will be astonished that anybody could have considered the BBC to be anything other than a School of Frankfurt 24/7 indoctrination loop.
Milburn prattled on about how unfair it was that so many professional jobs went to those from private schools without pausing to wonder whether it’s because these schools provide a better education. Or rather that the state schools might be doing a piss-poor job.
Too busy criminalising kids for shouting “Fatty”, no doubt, or for asking their classmate if they’re from Africa since they’re black, rather than teaching them maths, spelling or grammar.
The Left, enthusiastically led by the BBC, have utterly screwed the State education system over the last 40 years. Driven by dogma, the likes of Lady Plowden, the Blessed Dame Shirley Williams, Anthony Crossland and other icons of the BBC have doomed the youth of this country to a mediocre banal ineffective education system.
That is why the privately educated end up at the top of the professions, because public education is crap!
That’s grossly offensive to anyone in public education at the moment. You, I should think, have little idea about anything. Pourquoi peux-je parler en français, und auf Deutsch, a trochu cesky. The state education system, like the NHS, is excellent. It’s time that the mail and this bizarre forum saw that. But then there’d be nothing to moan about, I suppose.
Ah “grossly offensive”, an often used leftie accusation they cower behind when found out. The NHS is a shambolic, inefficient monolith that sucks every more resource for ever less performance. State schools are beyond a joke, destroyed years ago by leftie dogma, leaving generation after generation unprepared in the face of the white heat of competition generated in India, the Far East and Eastern Europe.
What do you mean found out? I love my education. And as for the NHS, are satisfaction levels not particularly high? And is it not fantastic that everyone, no matter who they are, can get free care?
I must check how various taxes and fees get apportioned, especially who from and who to, in reassessing my understanding of the use of the word ‘free’ that falls under the BBC’s unique model and those in its thrall.
Free at the point of use? Hope that covers it x
When you use house prices to ration access to the best state schools, as has happened now for 40 years, you can’t really expect too much social mobility.
Social mobility has dropped off, we are told, because the Professions are closed or have restricted entry for the Hoi Polloi….and yet apparently in the 1950’s social mobility was much better….when there was probably an even more distinct hierachy and class system than today.
Don’t think Cherie Blair, QC, has blue blood running through her veins and yet there she is near the top of her profession.
The answer is Grammar schools and streaming in non Grammars.
Sutton Trust figures say Grammars do better than independent schools for entry to the non ‘elite’ universities and are equal to independents in the elite unis.
It also says, rather obviously, that the quality of teaching is the important thing…a good teacher can teach classes of well over 30 pupils successfully.
Personally I think much talk of social mobility is driven by ideology and not the interests of the pupils….someone jumps up and down and says ‘There’s a problem here’
and I’ve got the solution….but it is really just an excuse to attack the ‘rich and privileged’, Capitalism and existing social order….as with the law on fox hunting which was all about class warfare and nothing to do with animal welfare…and inded climate change…all about attacking the West’s industrial dominance (or what’s left of it).
Large pinch of salt needed when any Left winger speaks.
Social engineering and racism seemed to the theme for Today today. I came downstairs grumbling about one track minds at the BBC. Never mind, recanted and decided to listen to the afterrnoon play. Subject? Race riots in Liverpool in 1919!
How many other programmes on these two themes did I miss in between?
At about 12:20 today, they had a drama based in 1919, depicting black people attacked by whites in Liverpool at that time – they really are scraping the bottom of the barrel if they are looking for documented racist attacks!
They have their cosy little socialist chats in the B-BBC studios, carefully selected failed Labourites with a sharply-developed sheen of the ‘moderate’ about them droning on at length whilst their ‘interviewers’ sit there nodding sagely, occasionally stirring themselves to feed another line to their revered guests.
Then you think ‘Social mobility? Only ever been in a downwards direction for the bright and talented state-educated poor under Labour’. And you realise in the studio, way, way out of your sight, they are nodding and grinning at each other, barely able to suppress their glee at the success of their shared socialist agenda – keeping the Proles in their place.
The BBC is just so boring with the same lefty stuff day in day out. They must be driving away many listeners.
The latest figures from Al Beeb show last quarter Radio 4 audience figures are substantially down.
It seemed Labour’s MILBURN (and Clegg) see themselves as the Cuban Castro brothers of the West.
Of course, rich utopian socialists often say thay aim to make rich people poorer, and poor people richer, while excluding themselves from the planned process of enforced ‘equality’.
‘Promote the unqualified!
‘ Demote the qualified!’
‘Open up all the professions to the untalented and lazy!’
‘Fairness trumps talent!’
‘Discrimination in favour of immigrants and non-whites’
(and not even whispered:-
‘Discrimination against indigenous white Brits.’)
–Labour’s ludicrous manifesto promises at the next election?
A hundred years ago Labour was in favour of Grammar Schools and the meritocracy that this represented, but then the Labour party was dominated by intelligent working class people such as my grandparents. The problem for Labour is that a meritocracy converts intelligent working class people into right wing Tories. That is why the Labour party is now dominated by left wing middle class morons with qualifications in art, drama and the humanities, fighting against Social mobility because for them it means doing the working class menial jobs that they are only fit for in a meritocracy. It also means that the genetically thick children of these people would not be able to qualify for Grammar Schools if the meritocracy the existed before progressive education was restored.