Bank of England staff have been told to share their pronouns at the start of meetings and use “gender neutral” language when speaking to customers. The Telegraph has the details.
Threadneedle Street employees were also advised that it is a “microaggression” to state that “everyone is born a man or a woman, it’s science”.
The lessons, delivered to staff as part of a “trans inclusion” training session, also encouraged the Bank of England to promote a “trans day of visibility”, a “trans day of remembrance” and a “trans awareness week”.
Toby Young, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, has written to Andrew Bailey, the Bank of England’s Governor, about the training.
He told Mr. Bailey that “while fostering a sense of inclusion among employees is, of course, a worthwhile objective”, he believed that training courses like the one given to Bank staff are “ideologically driven”.
“As a result, they may have the unintended effect of fostering an intolerant workplace culture in which some employees feel they cannot express certain, perfectly legitimate points of view,” the letter said.
“Our primary concern is that the ‘Trans Inclusion’ course appears to promote gender identity ideology while stigmatising gender critical beliefs, which are protected under the Equality Act 2010.”
The FSU’s letter highlighted a part of the training that stated “using the wrong pronouns” is another example of a “microaggression”.
It also mentioned the section telling staff to use language such as “cisgender” to refer to an individual who identifies as the sex they were assigned at birth, or “Enby” to describe people who do not identify exclusively as a man or woman.
The Bank of England defended the training, with a spokesman saying: “Our objective is to ensure monetary and financial stability for the UK. We encourage a welcoming environment for our colleagues working hard to achieve this – as such, we offer inclusion training on an optional basis.”
Mr. Young said: “The Bank of England, like so many other pillars of the British establishment, has been infected by the woke mind virus.”
“This kind of training creates the impression that believing in the biological reality of sex is discriminatory, when in fact it’s a belief that’s protected by the Equality Act and the reality is that any employer punishing an employee for expressing such a view would themselves be guilty of discrimination.”
Worth reading in full.
You can read the FSU’s letter to Andrew Bailey here.
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Keep fighting the good fight, Tobes.
We shall prevail!
Hevenshualì.
To be fair, nobody’s born a ”man or woman”, that’d be silly. They should’ve put ”male or female” there. Maybe I’m just being anally retentive…
”Threadneedle Street employees were also advised that it is a “microaggression” to state that “everyone is born a man or a woman, it’s science”. Totally outrageous and cobblers!
I must say, this is funny but factually correct. Woketard Bank of England take note.
*Apologies in advance for the ‘If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands’ ear worm.
https://x.com/CartlandDavid/status/1830143017371464106
The BoE statement is a macroaggression to me.
And sorry, I am clapped out.
Only micro aggressions are discouraged, however macro aggressions are acceptable.
Priceless Mogs
I swear I’ve seen at least a couple of articles saying that DIE or DEI or whatever is waning.
“while fostering a sense of inclusion among employees is, of course, a worthwhile objective”
Not sure about this. It seems like basic business good sense to me to want to attract and retain good staff. When people do a good job, tell them this, and also reward them with better pay and more responsibility/autonomy. Equally when they screw up, tell them they have but also help them to do better next time, unless/until you eventually decide that they are beyond help within the constraints of a sustainable business. Treat each member of staff as an individual and judge them on what they contribute to your business. If this is “fostering a sense of inclusion” then great – but to me it just seems the same as “be professional”. But I would be suspicious of a business that sat down and said “hmm, we need to foster a sense of inclusion among our employees, how do we do that?”. Perhaps I am paranoid.
The business leaders have heard about this thing they have to stay in fashion with and outsource the courses. The exact content and nature of the courses often comes as a surprise to them. It makes sense for someone to bring it to their attention, and speak in terms of law – specifically that it is against the law to discriminate negatively against someone who believes what is bleeding obvious to every mentally stable individual.
“… “while fostering a sense of inclusion among employees is, of course, a worthwhile objective”
Except it fosters a sense of exclusion for those who do not buy into this bovine fæces, it is biased against them because they choose sanity and reality, and evidently can result in loss of promotion or disciplinary procedures.
My point was that even a well intentioned “fostering a sense of inclusion” may lead to trouble. In general I prefer people who try to deal with whatever situation life throws at you in a “good” way rather than people who consciously set out on some systematic program to “do good”.
Foisting one group’s beliefs onto another group does not engender tolerance and understanding.
Yes I know that. That’s not the point I am making. I am responding to what TY wrote, that it’s a “worthwhile objective”. I disagree with him. I think it’s a desirable byproduct of common sense, professional behaviour but should not be an explicit “objective”.
Seems that the tide is turning in the US where all this DIE nonsense started so I guess we can hope it sweeps over the Atlantic in due course. A caveat is that in the US it is the private sector that has got to work for its living that is doing it. And the other good news is that the Net Zero nonsense is quietly slipping away as well. I suspect that was always going to be the case when the targets get closer, the costs rise and reality punches you in the face.
I don’t share your optimism
As someone pointed out yesterday, the number of trans people in UK is about the same as the membership of the WI. Sadly though, the WI is fully committed to DEI, so they may not all have been women before they joined.
Pronoun usage only an issue when referring to one individual who is not present i.e the third person singular. In every other situation the pronouns are gender neutral.
So just use a gender neutral pronoun for the third person singular, such as “it” or “one”? Problem solved.
Pronoun usage is totally contrived nonsense. I attend meetings regularly and I cannot remember a single occasion when I referred to any of my colleagues present as “he” or “she”. You would always use their names and say things like “Paul suggested that…”
The only time when come across some gender ambiguity is when I talk about customers whose gender I don’t know. But now, just out of defiance I always use “he”.
The whole thing is just designed to impose on people compelled speech, and, it is effectively nothing more than compliance training.
I don’t think there is a “problem” that requires solving, except that some people are under the mistaken impression that offence is given, not taken.
If people find it easier to use a pronoun that is not sex-specific, that’s great for them. If it comes naturally to me to use one that IS specific, because I know the person being referred to is a man or a woman, I will do that. Sometimes I am not sure because I have not met the person and/or their name is foreign and ambiguous (to me) and I may use he/she or it. But telling me what pronoun to use or else I get sacked or (in Canada) imprisoned is compelled speech and once we have compelled speech we are lost.
How about “git”?
If it wasn’t for Toby Young, the FSU and a few brave individuals, we’d all be slaves.
I remember the surgeon who refused to be vaccinated during the Covid crisis even though he was threatened with dismissal. It’s people like him that save all of us from totalitarianism. A brave man.
I seem to remember watching a psychologist on YouTube who said that it only takes 3 to 5% of the population to dissent and totalitarian measures become unenforceable.
The tragedy of countries like Stalinist Russia, 1930’s Germany, North Korea must then be that there is not even the 3 to 5% to resist.
I hope Britain will never follow that path.
There’s always the 5% and more that will resist, but it’s the historic failure to resist in unison.
Resisting alone in those countries aforementioned simply meant one disappeared.
If Ketts would have made the decision to march on London, gaining numbers enroute in 1549, we may not be in the predicament we are in today…….
Britain’s been on that path for a long time, MM, and it works for the obsessives just as well for the opposition. The Russians were well aware of the importance of the ‘useful idiots’ in getting unpopular policies accepted by the general sheeple. Here’s just one example, one of the lesser publicised current ambitions of our totalitarian leaders, and a perfect precursor of how Covid policies were made so widely acceptable:-
“Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin referred to the compliant professional authority figure as the polezniy idiot (the useful idiot), a prime asset whose value lies in his or her perceived social respectability and not his scientific or medical credentials. Such people generally form the upper echelons of the professional “in-group, by whom both government and the public is most easily persuaded.
[I]n cohesive social groupings the majority opinion can be switched quickly by a comparatively small but consistently inflexible minority of randomly distributed committed agents. Like religious fundamentalists, they are immune to influence, tirelessly recruiting converts from opposing opinion groups. The tipping point seems to be when these comprise around 10% of the group. Once the group’s consensual opinion flips, its members adopt the self-protective “groupthink” mentality, . . . if necessary engaging in extreme measures in order to protect their new belief.”
The “ten percent” factor: How many “useful idiots” does it take to fluoridate a water supply?
Dr Steve James. A real hero of our times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOlEYcd1nyI
All designed to create further clear space between the elite metros and those ghastly plebs who smoke, swear and behave awfully.
don’t forget the and pay their wages
“Our objective is to ensure monetary and financial stability for the UK.” Seem to be failing on all counts then.
This may count as micro aggression towards BoE
My pronouns are He / Haw
Hehe!
Bank of England Morally Bankrupt
Not to mention incompetent at doing its job, especially Bailey. His job was only saved because of the ruckus in the markets had he been fired for taking too long to raise interest rates, raising them too high and then being slow to reduce them.
“while fostering a sense of inclusion among employees is, of course, a worthwhile objective”,
No, Doing a good job managing UK currency and it’s stability and only in the interests of the UK – That is the only objective. An employees personal interests including what their sexual preferences and leanings are nothing to do with the employer but private matters of the employee. People that are good at their job will find inclusion, which used to be called employment.
By what pronoun do the directors of the Bank of England want the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street to be referred to?
But surely the Bank of England is starting at the wrong point here. From the point of conception every person starts along the female line of development. Then a change occurs in some to turn them male. Hence men have residual nipples.
Confused. If we want to adopt gender neutral language then surely we should stop focusing gender specific pronouns as well.
So what happens if an employee refuses to play this game?
And if one employee refuses, will more employees follow?
It will stop when enough employees say it has to stop.
Furthermore, you could argue that your ‘gender identity’ is very much your private business and not something you need to divulge in a workplace environment.