Take a look at this leaflet, distributed by the University and College Union (UCU) recently as part of its ongoing phoney war with universities over, well, having the moon on a stick.
I’ve circled the relevant part in red. Yes, you’ve read it correctly – it’s not an optical illusion or trick of the light. The sign really does say what it appears to say.
Think about this for a moment. It’s bad enough, of course, that somebody purporting to be a lecturer at a university or college wouldn’t know how to spell ‘tragedy’ or would make an innocent slip of the pen when writing the word and not think to correct it. But that in itself wouldn’t be worth commenting on. What’s notable about the leaflet, rather, is the two quite startling things that had to happen in order for its cover photo to have made its way into the public domain. The first is that nobody involved in the demo said to the person holding up the banner, “You appear to have made a mistake: that’s not how you spell ‘tragedy’. So maybe you therefore shouldn’t hold that thing up in public, as it will make us look like clowns given that we are purporting to be academics who should be given a pay rise at a rate of 3% above the CPI for educating the best and brightest of the country.” And the second is that nobody at the UCU had any qualms about putting the photo on presumably hundreds of thousands of printed leaflets for public distribution. The first thing looks like shoddiness. But the second looks more like contempt: why should scholars display any basic adherence to the values of excellence or intellectual rigour? And why indeed should they care what other people think of them?
Sadly, though, this is entirely in keeping with modern academia’s attitude in the round. Readers will be probably be familiar with the University of Hull’s policy of not marking students down for bad spelling or grammar on the grounds that insisting on good English is “elitist” and (yawn) “homogenous, North European, white [and] male”. This is just one of the more egregious examples in a wider pattern, however, of practices that are designed deliberately to dumb-down university education and lower standards in the name of ‘inclusivity’, and which now permeate U.K. academia at every level – even Oxford is at it. The mood music in the profession is essentially that students go to university in order that they be treated fairly, which in itself means tailoring everything in such a way that the educational experience is moulded to every nuance of every single student’s character, abilities and background. And since aptitude, ability and education are themselves simply facets of a student’s character, then they should be treated in exactly the same way – as reasons why the individual tailoring process needs to take place. Johnny can’t help being lazy, and therefore we need to make sure that we treat him inclusively in spite of his laziness. Sarah can’t help being a bit thick and not able to spell, and therefore… and so on and so on.
The dismal truth underlying all of this – and it is a truth which is illustrated quite nicely by the UCU leaflet depicted above – is that while academics trump all of this as being “good educational practice [which] benefits all students“, the main group of people it benefits are academics themselves. When standards get lowered, you don’t have to really work very hard, teaching becomes a lot less challenging, one can present oneself as being lovely and nice and matey all the time, and one can breezily give all students wonderful marks and see them off at graduation with a warm glow and first class degrees that aren’t worth the paper they are written on. Putting into effect exacting standards is hard work – and academics, being very intelligent people, are really good at thinking up justifications, dressed in the floweriest prose, as to why hard work is a bust and comfort all round is the way to go. Why should we expect students to achieve high standards when it’s ‘good educational practice’ for them not to have to? And why should we spell words on banners correctly given that the rules of spelling are themselves simply a manifestation of the patriarchy?
The wider question, of course, is what to do about this problem, which is becoming acute. Modern academia is almost monolithically globalist and dominated by the interests of a particular Brahmin caste of upper middle class remoaners. They don’t see the education of the next generation of our country’s leaders as a priority – indeed, they would think this idea to be laughable (and, in fairness, vast swathes of them are from overseas anyway). What they are chiefly interested in is feathering their own nests, pursuing their niche research interests and convincing themselves that they are contributing to a broader mission of making the world more just, fair and so on. In this sense, it’s entirely natural for them to pooh-pooh the pursuit of excellence and scholarly rigour, and to celebrate ‘inclusivity’. How do we turn the tanker around? Christ knows; the Tories have been in power for 13 years and haven’t yet indicated they even think it’s an issue, but maybe a long period out in the cold will focus their minds a little. Fingers crossed.
Busqueros is a pseudonym.
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The EU came to believe that it could operate as a counter to the U.S. in international affairs.
That is one of the reasons that Britain left the EU.
Europe has now emerged blinking into the real world of power politics where zero armoured divisions means as much international influence as the Pope has.
‘In foreign affairs, the only principle is to have none’
To have entered that world having unilaterally disarmed over the last thirty five years looks a great deal worse than just simply careless.
For the last few decades politics has been mostly word games. Politicians ‘count coup’ by landing a verbal slap on an opponent.
But you could reasonably argue that all the benefit of mere word games has been extracted and it is now back to politics through actions. Although the realisation is taking some time to sink in.
Trump is making the right noises.
Hopefully, he will carry them through.
Although there is a “new sheriff in town” it remains to be seen if his actions differ from the old liberal regime in their end result.
My fear is that he will carry on with US hegemony and the US centric Unipolar World but just use different tactics to his Democrat predecessors.
US isolationism would bring a more peaceful world.
A conspicuous part of the information war is the ridiculous panty wetting by Europe over what Vance was supposed to have said yesterday. Any reasonable analysis of his words shows that he was not indicting Britain but was referring to random countries who have had no recent exposure to combat, which has to include all the former neutrals.
It was perfectly obvious that Vance was speaking in general terms and the gist of his remarks were TRUE.
These people show no shame with the dishonest faux outrage they spew across the ether so promiscuously.
These wombles can FRO.
It’s a normal and regular tactic by American Democrats and media who are opposed to Trump and his voters to twist what is actually said and turn it into a myth to be repeated over and over until believed by many.
“If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it,
And what is more YOU WILL COME TO BELIEVE IT YOURSELF”.
…….Joseph Goebbels
This is how the liberal-left live over:
Covid-Vaccines (“safe & effective”)
Russia – Ukraine (“unprovoked attack”)
Global Warming oops..”Climate Change”…oops….????
The European weenies cry and shake over “the new Sheriff”, because they have pumped out Ukraine propaganda for three years, censoring any speeches/interviews/press conferences by any RussiaN voice (notably Foreign Minister Lavrov) and so now are BRAINWASHED BY THEIR OWN LIES.
Reminds me of a Leftist caller on FIVE LIVE yesterday, he accused the Right of being totalitarian and into ‘eugenics’. That is typical of the Left accusing the Right of what they do.
I’m curious why my post (and what changed) when last edited by @Hardliner? Who is that?
In Washington, a spade is a spade. In Europe’s capitals, a spade is a mobile manual excavating paradigm. Word salad meets American plain speaking.
If you’re in a hole in Russia’s former front garden, stop digging.
… or in hole in a European garden.
End the War on Freedom now
I was disappointed that Starmer didn’t get the Zelensky treatment before VZ did. After Munich, when the new landscape was made perfectly clear, Starmer should have been given a public ultimatum by Trump, starting with Starmer’s position on freedom of speech: ‘Are you with us, or without us? We prefer with, but we’ll cope with either answer…’
Meantime,US-based YouTube is still censoring Katie Hopkins, who as a result is taunting them and enjoying it. Most recently they shut down her discussion about Tommy Robinson, which just set her off on a rant – which they then broadcast. Go figure…
She is so brave, and honest!
The entire reason that Britain and Europe have been able to control their agendas and ignore huge sections of their own populations is entirely die to the absence of free speech and the establishment’s efforts to police speech that dies not align with their own views. It is intentional and insidious. The establishment knows full well that were free speech possible here then it would surely be game over for their deluded policies and narratives.
Both sides of the Atlantic need to clear out the stables by removing the offenders from positions of power and influence.
The perpetrators are from the same political wing, being very unpatriotic, and attempting to destroy the very fabric of their own country, with help from anyone, often a foreign country or financial concern, and especially from each other!
Trump: USA was Secretly Funding UK Trans Movement
https://youtu.be/Rv26KfeEhy0
And the same process would benefit the countries in the Europe: yes, between each EU country, Brussels, and the UK. And it might even improve the their relationships with Russia.
This is quite an eye opener to me, I had little idea that the EU had overstepped the mark quite so far. High time there was a reset.
We saw the Authoritarian British Establishment’s attempt to fight back against JD Vance this week.
Vance, commenting on Two-Tier’s hilarious “coalition of the willing” commented about the likely performance of “a random country which hasn’t fought a war for 30 or 40 years.”
He didn’t mention Britain or France, and he obviously excluded them from his comment since they have both fought in wars within that timescale.
But in a performative outrage, the assembled ranks of British politicians and their tame poodles in the MSM, expressed their outrage that he could make such a remark about the UK …. when he quite obviously hadn’t. Even Farage got in on it … presumably thinking he needed to demonstrate his patriotism.
The anti-Trump Establishment thought they would be getting 2 years of an active Trump Presidency, followed by 2 years of a lame duck. They’ve just woken up to the fact it will be 4 years of a very active Trump Presidency, almost certainly followed by 8 years of President Vance. So they’ve started the process of discrediting him in the eyes of the Sheeple now.