In June of this year, more than two million people looked with bemusement at Kings College NHS’s announcement that it had installed a permanent display of the gender ideology flag on one of its buildings.
— King's College NHS (@KingsCollegeNHS) June 2, 2023
Delighted to officially open the new connecting link-bridge at the PRUH today!
The bridge proudly features a large re-production of the Intersex-Inclusive Pride flag, designed and unveiled by @ValentinoInter!#valentinovecchietti #Pride pic.twitter.com/DIm5BFgiJp
Bemusement for three reasons.
- Gender ideology is harmful pseudo-science – it posits that we all have an inner gender identity around which it is reasonable to align our bodies by hormonal and surgical interventions which are irreversible and cause life-long harm. How can an actual NHS Trust complacently endorse this?
- The NHS is cash-strapped – why is it spending money on promoting harmful ideology?
- Flags matter – we should want to take them seriously. There are regulations around their display on public buildings. Kings College NHS effectively flouts these regulations; it’s a painting of a flag but it loudly does what flags do: “this is what we stand for.”
So what internal process led to such a prominent and public commitment to pseudo-science from an NHS Trust? What conversations took place? What money was spent? Does anyone dare object?
I decided to find out using the FOI process.
Firstly, the painting of the flag cost a paltry sum in the scale of NHS spending. What is most depressing about this FOI response from Kings College NHS (apart from the lackadaisical not-doing-the-maths) is the EDI-speak:
Secondly, who was consulted? The answer is just the EDI team. In fact, if you think about it, why would you bother to consult people when their freedom of speech has already been stifled? Who wants to be accused of hate or phobia? Only one response is allowed anyway. But the NHS Trust was possibly a bit embarrassed about this obvious truth so it initially implied to me that there was wider consultation and enthusiasm. It firstly said this:
But when I consulted elected members of the Local Authority they responded with this:
Unfortunately the recent monstrosity at Bromley Hospital sat completely beyond Bromley Council’s remit to control or prevent (we were not party to it in any way) and the Planning process which is set on rigid guidelines as to what people can and cannot do, had no means of denying the NHS the ability to erect it either.
This from the Council’s Chief Planner:
Dear Leader,
I think the response from the Trust isn’t quite correct.
The display of a mural was not part of this application (murals can require advertisement consent and not planning permission if they are considered to constitute an advertisement) – the elevations showed rainbow colouring on the building but there was no application for advertisement consent for the mural and it was not considered in the grant of planning permission. I would not say that the Council had “granted planning approval” for this mural and if it did need consent (I should add that I am not convinced it does) it would require advertisement consent and not planning permission.
Even if an application for advertisement consent had been submitted for the mural, the content of an advertisement is not something that the Council can control.
I hope that this helps.
Regards
…
Did the Kings College NHS EDI team actually ‘make something up’ in its first response? It must have known that no planning permission was needed. This is another problem with gender ideology – it corrodes basic standards in organisations. Once a set of lies has been allowed to flourish inside an organisation how do you maintain a wider commitment to truth and standards?
I went back to them as follows:
I asked for any email exchanges that related to the planning of the flag/mural discussed below. You have not responded with any. But at point 3 you say that: “The viewpoints of our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Trust Network representatives were taken and supported by our Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.
1. Please can you provide me with the emails sent either to or from the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Trust Network representatives which discuss the potential display of this artwork showing the Intersex-Inclusive flag at Princess Royal University Hospital, as part of a new walk-bridge for patients and staff? If not emails, other documents discussing this proposal? There must be something?
And here below, finally, is the result. Here is how you get an NHS Trust to permanently display its commitment to pseudo-science. (Although, note that there were also “several unrecorded MS Teams meetings where the artwork and schemes were discussed, and approval was given”.)
That’s it. To get a large and permanent display of a commitment to pseudo-science from an NHS Trust requires two emails between “Gents”. Thanks, Mates.
How to solve?
There is no mechanism in place to shut the EDI juggernaut down. Indeed there is an entire architecture set up to keep it in place. Because if you complain or dissent you will be accused of transphobia and hate. There are badges, and pledges, and training sessions, and identity-group networks, and paid permanent EDI staff with nothing else to do and a strong incentive to keep it all in place, indeed ramp it up.
The LGBTQIA+ network? Kings College NHS now pays it (and other networks) £10k a year. For what?
There are five staff diversity networks which represent people with specific protected characteristics:
- Inter Faith & Belief Network (religion or belief)
- Women’s Network (sex)
- Race, Ethnicity and Cultural Heritage Network (race)
- LGBTQ+ Network (sexual orientation and gender reassignment)
- Disability Network (disability).
Each network is allocated a budget of £10,000 per year from the EDI budget and is available on the basis that the network’s annual objectives and activities are agreed by the Network Steering Group and approved by the EDI Delivery Group on behalf of the Trust’s Executive team.
EDI staff? Kings College NHS has a Director and two Heads to oversee seven other staff. Surely this costs at least about half a million pounds a year for their salaries, pensions and office space. Extrapolate that across the NHS.
EDI gobbles up taxpayers’ cash when our tax burden is at an all time high.
When we have recruitment crises across sectors, EDI hoovers up staff diverting them from alternative jobs that could actually improve lives. Worse – it has them not just digging holes and filling them up – that would be bad enough; but no, they do real damage.
EDI divides us, trampling on free speech and diversity of thought, openness and dialogue in the workplace.
Most pernicious of all, EDI promotes and endorses pseudo-science which causes serious medical harm to vulnerable people.
How do we shut down the EDI industry? What needs to be done?
Stop Press: An X user tweeted images of what can be found adorning the inside walls of the same hospital.
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They’re not skiving! They’re just staying at home to protect granny! We should be grateful!
I wonder how many of these glaikit nutters that glue themselves to roads, destroy public property or deface Starbucks/KFC/McDonald’s ( because that’ll ”free Palestine” ), and disrupt society generally with their antisocial behaviour, have jobs. Because I think not only do they have zero respect for others but they’re completely devoid of any self-respect also. Seriously, what right-minded person goes on like this? Pure vandalism. I’m sure her parents are proud!;
https://twitter.com/ScooterCasterNY/status/1766113531433230615
As German, I have much more reason to be pissed of by English politics of that time than these nutjobs. Yet, I’d never destroy a painting of Llyod George or Winston Churchill (or even Arthur Harris, for that matter). I guess this must be because we’re all completely barbarian quasi-animals who only derive pleasure from destroying irreplacable works of art and culture and hacking of the feet and hands of children (all of these being actual tropes of British WWI wartime propaganda) …
Yes but do you know what Mogwai means by “glaikit” ?
Is this a question? Not until I looked it up but it’s not really necessary for the meaning of the sentence as it just adds emphasis to object of it. Glaikit nutter could also be rendered as nutty nutter.
Yes it is a question. —-It is not confrontational though. I am only asking if you have heard of this since you are German and that is an old Scottish word that most English people will not be that familiar with.
Only one solution for that oxygen thieving halfwit …
Short Drop.
Mogwai
If this was at Cambridge university, then perhaps she’s a student. Very worrying indeed, that supposedly the brightest young minds in the country can behave like this: spoilt little brats, who are desecrating priceless British artefacts. I mean, does she really have any idea who Balfour is? Clearly many British professors are under pressure to fall in line with the latest leftist mind fart; under pressure from the students, in fact. In the past, this little girl would have been expelled, fined, possibly even arrested. Now the professors sit back and nod their heads “yes Balfour was a racist misogynistic islamophobe Covid-denying far right extremist, and he should be erased”
Interestingly, it was at Beijing University (the Cambridge of China) where Mao’s ‘thought’ was followed most feverishly by the students, who then turned against their professors for ‘old ideas, old habits, old customs, old culture’, vandalising artefacts, burning books and trashing people’s homes. Sound familiar?
That is what also happened at Evergreen State College in Washington.
Too much employment legislation:
‘“It is a common misconception that more laws mean greater protection. Legislation has become increasingly complicated and ambiguous for employers. There comes a point when the added benefit is questionable and must be outweighed by the burden which it places on business. This is especially the case for small and medium sized employers who may not have a specialist, in-house HR function.”
“In the past five years (2005-10) there has been a continuous flow of new employment laws passed ranging from the new Agency Workers Regulations, the Age Discrimination Regulations to European case law on rights to accrue holidays even while on long term sick leave. New employment legislation is estimated to have added £70 billion to costs for businesses over the last decade.’
So, Blair’s Britain. A massive public sector: ‘At its most recent high-point in 2010, the public sector employed about 6.1 million workers, or 21% of all UK workers. This followed an increase of about 700,000 in the absolute size of the public workforce since 1998–99.’
But:
‘The government has confirmed at least 10 new (HR) laws for 2024’
So Cameron, May, Bunter, Sunak’s Britain as well; still a massive public sector after fourteen entirely pointless and incompetent years:
‘There were an estimated 5.90 million employees in the public sector in September 2023, which is 35,000 (0.6%) more than in June 2023 and 135,000 (2.3%) more than in September 2022.’
We know what to do:
‘It will be necessary to curtail the major areas of government spending: welfare, health and education. Indeed, emergency cuts, or at least freezes, in welfare benefits and public sector pay may be in order – the kind of measures seen recently in struggling central European countries. Indeed, we should start this year – welfare benefits, pensions and public sector pay should not rise by more than private sector pay rises. If public sector pay cannot be reined in this year it will never be reined in. If welfare benefits are not pegged to wage increases then employment incentives will be diminished.
However, the crisis also presents opportunities for Cameron to launch positive longer-term reforms that reduce the scope of government. He could start by tackling public sector pensions (a liability of over £1 trillion), move on to welfare reform and then health and education, promoting competition and efficiency through individual savings accounts and voucher-type schemes while getting rid of the costly bureaucrats.
How could this be done in practice? A voucher scheme could involve a voucher of a fixed money value being given for the first five years of the scheme. Its value in real terms – and certainly relative to national income – would then fall. This could be politically acceptable as it would happen at the same time as huge efficiency savings were achieved.
And let’s not forget regulation. Removing red tape – for example, the new gender pay audits – would reduce the government payroll while lowering costs for businesses.’
IEA 2010
But no-one has the backbone to do it…..so they will be removed…..and so will the next ones and so on until someone gets the message…….
‘
All Bureaucracies are the same. They expand out of control and grab more and more power and control. The virus of Politically Correct, wokery and human rights nonsense has spread all across the western world faster than a speeding bullet.
I worked as a senior exec at a ftse 100 company, the ceo appointed a new female HR Director. who still works at a senior level in Industry, she never remained in any post for more than 2 years. On arrival what was a small efficient department bloated to a large over reaching one, a more manipulative and machiavellian individual I have never before or since come across. She caused division between the execs through a whisper campaign, she would monitor and spy on staff members through their social media accounts. she introduced the concept of pay increases linked to ” the correct behaviors and values”, she denied job opportunities to be offered to non university educated staff.
She was a true horror of a woke virtue signaller, who justified her spying and displacement of members of the workforce for the good of the company.
The ceo was weak, she used knowledge of his extra marital affairs to keep her position. True to form when a new ceo joined she left. I regularly see her writing s in HR journals on the importance of equity and kindness. A more unkind person I have yet to meet, she is also a mentor for her discipline which helps explain the malignant growth and influence of a role that actually is of no financial or creative value to a business.
I know this isn’t necessarily gender-specific, although I’ve always got on better with male colleagues than female ( probably because they, like me, weren’t bitchy and didn’t flirt with the male consultants on ward rounds ), but your post reminded me for some reason of this. So in the spirit of ‘International Womens’ Day’ I must share this skit that’s floating around, plus I always was a Harry Enfield fan back in the day, so any excuse;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS37SNYjg8w&ab_channel=BBCStudios
Thankfully, this has meanwhile been fixed: I know a fair lot of men who are extremely fond of kittens and entirely unaware of what gold standard means.
genius. Thanks for posting
Why do you think your CEO chose her?
Christ only knows
I mean do you think the CEO just wandered into it without really paying attention to the possible consequences, or was he on board with her agenda, largely? I work in a small firm which doesn’t really do box ticking crap, but a lot of our clients, especially the US-based ones, seem to really push it and they are in the B2B space so no need to appeal to the general public.
Rights come from our humanity. Not from governments. Because if you get your rights from bureaucrats, politicians and governments then those same people can take those rights away again.
Indeed- Clarence Thomas said something similar in his gay marriage dissent.
Speaking of International Women’s Day, I had an e-mail from my old school today (an all boy’s grammar school since the sixteenth century) inviting me to help them celebrate International Women’s Day and champion the importance of gender equality.
It’s good to know the lads are being fired up to begin the much needed fight for equal rights and equal pay for women.Who knows, today’s might even win women the vote one day.
Evil globalists are destroying western civilisation. HR are just useful idiots.
There is arather angry and curt tone to this writing. Of course there is plenty to be said about these miserable tendencies but this seems to be a list of bitter complaints masquerading as a cogent proposition. Stoicism is an interesting philosophy to reflect upon. In Greece it was one of the three responses to the decline of empire, along with Epicureanism and Pyrrhonic sceptism. There were schools devoted to the science of the will in the early twentieth century but they were killed of by the world wars. Christian teaching provided a profound exposition of how stoicism and tenderness represent the fullness of being. Surely an attempt to understand such tendencies begins with an attempt to unravel their antecedents first. For some people it takes a lot for them to keep their physical and mental health in good condition in the times that we are living in.
Nuanced erudition, how passe
The author does have a point, but is also clearly conflating matters to attract traffic.
Now now, what could have caused that ca. 40% uptick starting in 2020 in the trend of the (sadly) long-term sick?