A radical shift in policy and practice is taking place in U.K. Higher Education. Higher education institutions and UKRI Research Councils are now advertising student opportunities with race in the eligibility criteria. To be eligible for such schemes, students must meet a requirement that is based on the immutable characteristic of race. Not socioeconomic status. Not first-generation university student status. These schemes target students who are black (or mixed with black), as in the case of one UKRI student research placement scheme, which states the below eligibility criteria:
These awards are open solely to Black British students (Black or Black British African, Black or Black British Caribbean, Black or Black British other or Mixed Black or Black British). Applicants will self-identify and sign a disclaimer to the effect that the information they provide is correct.
Many will question whether such blatant racial discrimination can be legal, and that needs to be challenged. But I’ve been thinking about this from another angle. The implications of race requirements on student opportunities are not abstract. No doubt some individuals will benefit from such opportunities. But has due consideration been given to some of the issues and implications of such a change in practice?
Race eligibility requirements necessarily imply that being black (or being mixed-race with black) is a disadvantage, and that those who fall into this racial category require extra support and opportunities – regardless of socioeconomic circumstances. While some people believe this (and are entitled to), others do not and would strongly contest such an assertion. Until recently, this was always just a view held by some people. But the practice of race eligibility requirements on opportunities entails that this view is correct and imposes it on students.
There are some obvious issues with using race in eligibility criteria. Not all students (even those the opportunities are aimed at) will welcome them. Some students might find it stigmatising, and some might prefer to be in fair competition with all their peers – not just ones of the same racial background. And some students will feel instinctively uncomfortable about the use of race in eligibility criteria, as they do not routinely consider race or think of themselves or others in terms of racial categories with social significance. That’s certainly how I feel about it.
Race eligibility requirements also present challenges for families. In the case of some families (such as my own), one sibling (Student A) would be eligible whereas another sibling (Student B) would not – as one is mixed-race and the other is white. And this is despite them having had the same upbringing and the same access to social and material resources. This makes no sense, and will be very uncomfortable for the family involved. Not all families will welcome race requirements on student opportunities, and nor should they.
Now extend the family situation to peer groups, schools, other educational settings and communities. Britain is a diverse country. I know plenty of students from less affluent backgrounds who would be ineligible for such opportunities because of their race. We now have a situation where some students in a year group can apply for a specific research placement or funding, but other students in the same year group cannot – because their skin is lighter. So then, race requirements for student opportunities can be seen as grossly unfair and even racist.
Perhaps differential treatment based on race isn’t such a problem if people of different races live in separate spaces and never interact. But that isn’t Britain. Mixed-race is one of the fastest growing demographics in Britain, which says something very positive about this country. But I am concerned about how race requirements on opportunities might affect attitudes and beliefs about race going forward, and stoke racial tension – moving the country backwards instead of forward.
I do not support race requirements for education and training opportunities in the U.K. under any circumstances, because they are inevitably discriminatory and divisive and frequently miss their target of addressing unfairness. I believe a better approach is to improve opportunities and educational prospects in areas of socioeconomic deprivation (a better proxy of disadvantage than race) – that is, if the goal is to widen participation and benefit society as a whole. This might disproportionately benefit those from some racial backgrounds – if more people from those racial backgrounds live in deprived areas. And when race-based discrimination does occur in higher education institutions, this must be taken seriously and dealt with by the law. We must strive for equality of opportunity.
Higher education institutions and UKRI Research Councils (informed and guided by ‘equality, diversity and inclusion’) are choosing the path of race requirements for some student opportunities. For those of us who are concerned by this, here are some questions we might ask our politicians and policymakers:
- Have students and the wider public been surveyed about how comfortable they are with the use of racial categories as eligibility criteria for certain opportunities, or whether they would prefer an emphasis on socioeconomic background (regardless of race)?
- Have the possible consequences been considered of such policies on community cohesion and on attitudes toward different racial groups, especially in areas with less opportunity?
- Has research been conducted to provide an estimate of how many eligible students may be excluded from such opportunities because they do not wish to disclose their racial background or simply will not apply because the criteria include race?
- Is there high-quality evidence that targeting individuals by race rather than by socioeconomic status is a more successful strategy for recruiting and retaining first-generation university students?
This article first appeared on Amber Muhinyi’s Substack. Subscribe here.
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Our Overlords are there on the basis of MERIT?
It’s pure rent-seeking and nepotism. They look down on those who work!
Ah, EDIT:
I see the point now. Toby’s father was very clear – he actually coined the word meritocracy (which, it seems, Tony Blair completely misused).
He predicted such a society would end up being ruled by those divorced from actual merit, a sort of echo chamber of those with “merit” assigned by other members of the club… that’s how I understand his message!
Quite — and that’s the problem. We can see the thrilled embrace of woke values and opinions as a badge of membership amongst Good People. It’s obviously getting impossible for anyone at the top table to state the bloody obvious like, “there are only two genders” without being cast down below the salt. When our self-selecting “betters” are so detached from pragmatism and the values of others, the murmurs of “let them eat cake” can be heard through the locked gates. It’s going to be a bumpy ride unless this changes soon.
Tumbrils rarely have suspension.
But, the end of the journey does.
And then, the endless fall into a bottomless pit… no suspension is required.
A blindingly obvious question.
I, too, wondered about the aptness of ‘meritocracy’.
Kleptocracy would seem more fitting.
It’s a meritocracy only if words have no meaning, it’s like describing the World’s Strongest Man final as a dwarfocracy.
You’re right to object to this absurd description, they’re there on everything but merit.
The meritocratic elite seem to have become puppets for a supranational corporate elite in this crisis. It was effectively a coup in which governments, having been hollowed out, infiltrated, bought and manipulated for decades finally signed away the last vestiges of their sovereignty and decision making to corporate power. The pandemic is deeply corporate in nature with its branding, superficiality and sales targets; its messaging has been as empty as advertising, its basis as shoddy as a crappy product launch. Meritocracy, with all its inherent flaws and class-based elitism, can now be regarded as the good old days, I think.
Plus, I’m not quite prepared to see the civil unrest outlined in this article as a misstep. I think this is a panicky attempt to rewrite the economic rules in a way they know will be painful and unrest has been expected and provoked from the start.
Now they pivot swiftly to war; when this is all over we’ll forget that it started with a virus.
Bingo. After the pseudopandemic, we are starting a pseudowar with Russia, and we will get hit by pseudocyber warfare which will accelerate the actual financial crisis leading to bank liquidity freezes.
Then we will absolutely have to have CBDC to keep our money “safe”.
All we need is a digital ID for everyone and we can save all the poor people who couldn’t access their money, can’t pay for their gas, petrol, food…..
Yes it’s all because the meritocratic elite are incompetent…
we can “save the poor” by squeezing the middle classes out of more of their earnings ,which will somehow end up in the rent-seeking establishment’s hands.
Aren’t many of the middle classes ‘rent-seekers’ themselves?
Quite so. Toby’s argument is completely wrong imo. They haven’t got it ‘so wrong’ it’s been by design. I enjoyed the ding dong with TY and Delingpole in the latest London’s Calling, James has got it so right and Toby just has no logical answer; time will tell.
Meanwhile the ‘Grand-Jury’ hearing continues at a pace and the pending, inevitable financial crash is explained in detail here;very sobering:
https://odysee.com/@GrandJury:f/Grand-Jury-Day-5-online_1:4
just for completeness:
https://grand-jury.net
It’s not a meritocracy, it’s nothing to do with the “axis of I.Q.”.
Unless you seriously believe Boris, or Trudeau, or any of the gaslighting, arrogent, would be totalitarian world leaders and their “yes men” really have higher I.Q. than your average member of the working class.
I.Q. is not a measure of Privilege, which is the real common denominator amongst them, that and their willingness to follow the Old Money funded organs of the would be slave masters of the world.
To add some explination after the edit timeout:
Compare the 11+ which decides most working class childrens future, how many of the working class were prepared for the test at prep schools or with extra tuition? How many working class children of the 1970’s had parents with time or energy to give their kids extra tuition, or reading help?
The test was thrust in front of me at age 10, the only preperation we’d had was a few lessons on verbal reasoning, amongst a class of 45 kids. Ridicuous questions along the lines of “you have 2 bananas and 3 oranges, how many apples did Jane eat”.
Half my “Secondary Modern” school class could hardly read! It wasn’t until I did an I.Q. test as part of an application for an engineering apprenticship my fortunes changed. This was a series of time critical of tests that seemed designed to test how fast one could think logically e.g. a 3D drawing of cubes in a pile, we had to answer how many cubes were in the picture, ~50 in 3 mins.
The examiner spent a lot of time explaning the test was not designed to be finished, I was half way through rechecking my answers when the time ran out, having answered all the questions. This, and only this, was what changed my future, I’d applied for a “craft apprenticship” the examiner stopped me leaving at the end and encouraged me to change tack to apply for a “Technical Apprenticship” which diverted me onto the same path as the graduate scheme.
Good points, especially about Kim Jong Johnson and Trudeau. Biden is another example, even before his dementia, his I.Q. was hardly brilliant.
And you’re right in your last paragraph, they’re aristocrats of pull.
I
I II – The Return
It doesn’t matter how clever the supposed meritocrats are.
The Superorganism, composed of freely interacting individuals and organizations, has an IQ in the thousands.
You simply have to look at the enormous variety of products and social roles etc which our society has developed, and which were not planned by anybody.
The USSR would have failed, even if every single apparatchik had been a genius.
Freedom is not only more pleasant. It is also more effective.
Or, as I like to put it, “Try putting an N95 on a lion.”
Correct, the USSR made economic calculation impossible.
I know this is personal to you Toby, but this is clearly not a meritocracy – it’s at best a nepotistic hell, at worst we have no idea who is actually moving the chess pieces around
I somehow thought the ‘meritocracy’ term was ironic, since the ‘meritocratic’ badge was self-awarded.
Somewhat like my thinking myself ‘logical’, despite losing multiple arguments with Mrs Dee.
”The COVID-19 pandemic is so complex, so vast in scale, that I doubt any single future historian will be able to tell a unified story about the crisis and the global response to it. “
Or maybe just get a copy of Iain Davis’ “Pseudopandemic”
That might clear things up for you.
That was my first thought too, but the pomposity of the main thrust of the piece triggered me to emphasise the privilage angle, so obviously completely unrecognisable by the author.
It was hardly complex, since supposedly democratic nations simply followed the example of the CCP, whether it made sense or not, and repeated the lockdowns whether they were effective or not.
There are some B.S. articles this morning!
”their scientific and technological expertise”. They don’t have any. They are in thrall of the ‘computer driven make believe worlds’ contained in ‘models’.
Anyone can sell them anything if its dressed up as ‘computer says so’.
Humanity is on the point of losing any anchor to reality, we are living in a computer generated simulation of our own creation. In this sort of ‘existence’ fear can be generated at the touch of a button.
And our ‘meritocratic’ leaders don’t have a clue how to question it.
I think the elite’s mishandling of the energy crisis will be what does it. People will not go along with freezing in the winter or enduring intermittent electricity supply simply because they have an obsession with wind turbines and solar panels and confronting Russia.
The only ‘energy crisis’ is the one they are manufacturing. Problem- Reaction – Solution.
The reaction will not be pretty because the solution will entail rolling back energy policy of decades. Biden had hoped to supply Europe with alternatives to Russian energy but he can’t because they don’t exist.
Beg to differ. They will sit in the cold and say thank you and then vote for the same people they have always voted for
Anyone below actually READ Toby’s father’s book?
Yes – a long time ago though.
Thank you, JeremyP99. You put me straight. I added an edit to my comment above.
I loath this form of pseudo-academic prose so rarely make the effort to engage but an opening remark did grab my attention, “The COVID-19 pandemic is so complex, so vast in scale…..” This alone shows how far the writer is disengaged from reality.
The only ‘pandemic’ we witnessed was a pandemic of lies, misinformation, statistical fraud and state-sponsored censorship of truth and facts.
In countries, mainly in Africa, that were not under the control of WEF globalists, things just carried on as normal – at least until their leaders were despatched and replaced by WEF puppets.
And would the writer care to explain how Klaus Schwab became UK Director of Economic policy, George Soros became UK Director of Social Policy, Bill Gates became UK Director of Health policy and Greta Thunberg became UK Director of Energy policy…..all on ‘merit’?
Thank you. TY’s obtuseness in this regard now is getting tedious.
Will he state that aggression with Russia was just poor judgment?
He is the perfect perennial conspiracy sceptic to aid normies in avoiding the terrifying truth, even as the conspiracy is the most probable explanation at this point (well along time ago actually).
Unless the DS changes tack, I would say its run its course.
There are plenty of issues out their that need a sceptical approach, but Toby wont go near them.
Not least is the total fraud that passes for ‘our history’.
This needs total re-evaluation.
Ive tried it here and have been met with censorship.
Censorship? Here?
I never this site would do that no matter how it has failed to address thoroughly the Globalist angle or the vax mortality issue. Can you elaborate?
I’ve had 3 posts censored on the forum, also the post asking moderators to investigate where they went, somebody read them and decided to censor them. Others have mentioned it too in private messages. It’s the reason I stopped posting there, that and the fact the forum troll is allowed to disrupt the threads and change name every 5 mins.
I’ve not had any comments on the main articles censored tho.
I see. It is odd seeing as TY is head of the Free Speech Union
Free speech must be as free as Voltaire described it. Otherwise it isn’t free.
Only one country, the USA, has ever gone for near-total free speech. The other 195 have never quite gone there. Funny, isn’t it.
England has such ridiculous libel laws that you can be successfully sued for telling the truth. It happened at least twice, to Private Eye and the Sunday Times.
Which libel cases were these?
Yes it was not that hard for Klaus, as he had been planning his world takeover for at least fifty years. By 2019 his acolytes were installed in powerful places across the “free” world. All that was then needed was a nifty little bio-engineered virus, not too dangerous of course, and a life ending “poison death shot”, both brought to us courtesy of the high IQs in Big Pharma, academia and government.
Sorry, what? Meritocratic overlords? Where? What planet have you been living on? There is nothing meritocratic about any of them. Labour is extremely concerned with the race and gender of their MPs. The Tories are busy propping up ideological cronies. What MERITOCRACY!?
This is exactly like the whole fake argument against capitalism. Socialists are looking at the hellish landscape created by a bloated, corrupt government, far removed from anything resembling a free market, where the working class are being dragged down by taxation, and conclude: “Capitalism is bad!” Nevermind that what they’re seeing is not capitalism in the slightest. And then we spend half a century arguing like idiots what capitalism really is instead of giving people freedom.
And the same is happening here. Someone looked out at the bloated, corrupt government and concluded somehow, despite the incompetence, that it is a meritocracy. If more people start doing this then we can probably expect that the next 50 years will be spent in fervent argument about what a meritocracy actually is instead of choosing the best person for the right job. All until the same bloated, corrupt government figure out a new way to enslave us all.
For crying out loud… Are definitions REALLY that difficult to understand?
The selection filter for the elite is more a high sociability and capacity for office politics than it is technical excellence. The disagreeable expert or man of real virtue has a problem, and it is he that is behind the wheel of the trucks. This situation will persist as long as cheap energy can be got with cheap debt.
The comparisons with Brexit and Trump are very real.
Just read the likes of Monibot in the Guardian, recently dismissing all the working class protestors in Canada as right wing thugs being funded by dark money from Russia (he offers zero proof of this btw).
These fucking idiots are so dim-witted that they claim on one side to be supporting the poor and working class while on the other, are happy to act as cheerleaders while the WEF-funded elite shit all over such groups.
It’s really interesting to see Toby’s ego play out throughout this saga. He thinks that because he went to Oxford, presumably by doing well in his exams and being Head Boy or in the school play, that it puts him in a ‘meritocratic elite’.
It was only a matter of time before that elite got all the goodies because they were just so good. Then the great unwashed would get angry and try to take it back off of them.
Sorry Tobes, our system has precious little to do with merit, nor does it reward those that display virtue or brilliance, outside a few exceptions. Our corporate system rewards compliance. Those that play the game and don’t ruffle any feathers. Our monetary system is based on debt, so whatever we’re flashing around now will eventually be rolled up and we’ll all own nothing and be happy. We’ve been kidding ourselves and it sounds like your lot have been kidded most of all.
meritocracy! lol
lockdown was forced by trouser moistening Art History graduate Dominic Cummings
there is barely a scientist in the house of commons.
these arent there by merit. they are greasy pole climbers.
Does merit include wisdom? No!
Dear Mr. Young,
Have you read the work of Mr. Henry George of late 19th century fame? Not just the political dynamite in his economic work. But also his work on how if the people have become corrupt the worst always rise to the top, the easily understood yet universally denied cause of the unjust distribution of wealth, and how civilisations may rise and fall.
That is…
Out of the open West came a young man of less than thirty to this great city of New York. He was small of stature and slight of build. His alma mater had been the forecastle and the printing-office. He was poor, unheralded, unknown. He came from a small city rising at the eastern golden portals of the country to set up here, for a struggling little newspaper there, a telegraphic news bureau, despite the opposition of the combined powerful press and telegraph monopolies. The struggle was too unequal. The young man was overborne by the monopolies and his little paper crushed.
This man was Henry George and the time was 1869.
But though defeated, Henry George was not vanquished. Out of this struggle had come a thing that was to grow and grow until it should fill the minds and hearts of multitudes and be as “an army with banners.
For in the intervals of rest from his newspaper struggle in this city the young correspondent had musingly walked the streets. As he walked he was filled with wonder at the manifestations of vast wealth. Here, as nowhere that he had dreamed of, were private fortunes that rivaled the riches of the fabled Monte Cristo. But here, also, side by side with the palaces of the princely rich, was to be seen a poverty and degradation, a want and shame, such as made the young man from the open West sick at heart.
If you’ve got this far, I’d recommend for serious journalistic fun ‘Protection or Free Trade‘. For his famous objective analysis of political economy ‘Progress and Poverty‘ and for the really serious scholar, ‘The Science of Political Economy‘. All works way ahead of its time.
Your father would certainly have known about him because it was latent Labour party policy, though never adopted, yet it was tried. Even the Liberal Winston Churchill got a bill through the House in the 1909 ‘People’s Budget’ only to see it sent back by the Lords. Its this historic moment which caused the Lords to loose its rights to pass finance bills to this day.
Why is his work not taught in our academies of learning today if so good? Long ago, around the turn of the last century, it was made ‘forbidden knowledge’. By the same Lords and those building our hallowed universities of the time. So what we’re seeing today as widespread, has been growing slowly, yet strongly since then. The intellect of the time was devoted largely to ‘helping’ the people *not* see observed fact. The intellect, lacking wisdom! The intellect of advisors of governments of all party’s no less.
Why else is it a hard analysis to bear? Because root cause is in all of us, elite or nay.
Long post, apologies.
It’s not new or radical, it’s just suppressed as when you realise how, it makes a lot of sense and “merit” has nothing to do with it (apart from being good at making people ignorant).
Henry George was a David Ricardoist (law of Rent), who was an Adam Smithist.
Ground-rents are a still more proper subject of taxation than the rent of houses. A tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rents of houses. It would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent, who acts always as a monopolist, and exacts the greatest rent which can be got for the use of his ground. More or less can be got for it according as the competitors happen to be richer or poorer, or can afford to gratify their fancy for a particular spot of ground at a greater or smaller expense. In every country the greatest number of rich competitors is in the capital, and it is there accordingly that the highest ground-rents are always to be found. As the wealth of those competitors would in no respect be increased by a tax upon ground-rents, they would not probably be disposed to pay more for the use of the ground. Whether the tax was to be advanced by the inhabitant, or by the owner of the ground, would be of little importance. The more the inhabitant was obliged to pay for the tax, the less he would incline to pay for the ground; so that the final payment of the tax would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent.
—
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 2, Article I: Taxes upon the Rent of Houses
“with all their scientific-technological prowess”
Prowess or lack thereof isn’t the fundamental issue. It’s honesty, integrity, checks and balances on power, protections for freedoms, incentive structures.
The circle-jerk backslapping of our supposedly meritocratic elites has proven that the higher people rise, the thinner the oxygen of common sense seems to be. Well-educated cretins like Chris Whitty prove, almost every time they open their mouths, that outside their own narrow fields of expertise they have no idea at all of how the world works and the people within it.
Example? The damage wrought via economic policies directed by models based upon the notion of Homo economicus, the ever-rational human who makes all financial decisions rationally and predictably. Comfortably well-off economists presume as they sit in their large, warm homes, that somebody with a depressing, minimum wage job will do their household accounts and pay the gas bill before even thinking of chocolate. Real people get their pay packet at the end of a hard, joyless week and blow half of it in the pub with their friends. And have a laugh while they’re doing it.
Our societies are in thrall to those who live and breathe spreadsheets but couldn’t change a car tyre.
I’m sure Whitty and Vallance and Van Tam know very well the damage they have caused. They just don’t care and are not incentivised to care.
How do I get the image of “circle-jerk backslapping” out of my head?
But yes. We can call it many things, but homo economicus or science or spreadsheetocracy or patriarchy – it’s deeply deeply anti-human and how strange it is that Francis Bacon of “make nature our slave” fame worked at exactly the same all-male institution as William Whewell who coined the word “scientist” and not so far along the road from where the insane Alan Turing would later work either.
You may have computational intelligence. You may have knowledge. But that does not mean you have the wisdom to use that knowledge wisely or with humanity. This to me has been one of the most alarming revelations; the sheer lack of humanity and misappropriation of knowledge. And for this alone those responsible must be held to account.
I dispute that the revelations since the end of 2019 indicate knowledge; to me “knowledge” includes the application of the ability to think, to have the “knowledge” of experience so when confronted with highly technical issues beyond your immediate personal experience, you can still apply critical and analytical processes to determine the worth or otherwise of what yo are being told/advised.
Even if you get it “wrong at first”, that should not deter an ongoing reappraisal of the “data”, eg; SARS COV 2 etc. – to me this has never been apparent; Johnson acquiesced to SAGE et al at a critical moment and then realised over time he had been duped, badly so; he has just not been strong enough to admit this, and whilst his recent actions might show a resiling from this stance in March/April 2020, it is in no way a “mea culpa” in the manner of being “sincere according to truth” – and the PBI continue to pay the cost.
Being held to account is essential: how it is to be done, especially with the war in Europe erupting, I am not optimistic in any way that is ever going to happen except in blogs such as DS – and not even the ballot box looks like the way forward either…
This reminds me of Emily Thornberry and her comment at some stage during the Brexit negotiations telling us it was time “to let the adults into the room”. I remember thinking at the time that this single smug statement told us everything we needed to know about her and her utterly mis-placed presumption of superiority.
My message to her, and the others who think of themselves as having that superior position in life’s intellectual hierarchy is this: If you think you’re the smartest person in the room – you probably aren’t.
Lady Nugee showed she was one of the UKLs biggest oikophobes with her comments about workers in white vans with football flags.
Actually – Brexit is a another classic example that merit doesn’t rule the roost!
Three letters;
WEF
Indeed. But Toby seems to think a plethora of world leaders enacting the exact same strategy and uttering the words “Build Back Better” in unison, is pure a coincidence born from “Higer I.Q”.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-davos-dictators-how-wef-clones-control-us-under-cover-of-covid/
Good question.
For my money it’s certainly taken the first step by exposing the MSM/Government/ Corporate Reset agenda to a much wider group of the public. Awareness is first base, and I watch (and pray for) Canada as the canary in the coal mine.
The General Strike there, together with resistance movements in Europe and the antipodes are building a head of steam too.
A lot of stuff is coded into that book, that Michael got from his mother who got it from her father. Twists were added to it over the generations, of course.
Asa Briggs knew about this but in his biography he merely hints at it.
What’s all this about then? Sauce?
The problem is that bureaucrats are dismal at picking winners of all kinds economic (marxism), IQ (meritocracy), genetic (eugenics).
When bureaucrats, not the people decide what is needed the result is always a dystopia.
When it’s rolled up with jobs for mates and becomes nepotistic the end is certainly close.
The UK government did pretty well from ~1950-80. One election slogan was ‘You’ve never had it so good’.
Thatcher made much of taming the unions but her main achievement was a corporate takover and the globalisation we have today … this accelerated after Communism collapsed, which was admittedly after her time. I think she commented though that her biggest achievement was New Labour.
Bosses now routinely earn 1,000x as much as their most junior employees.
Yes. Thatcher didn’t so much ‘tame the unions’ (always a diversion for the incompetent elite she served). Instead she (and her ilk) further empowered the global financial elite. Thus where we are now ….
The answer is no because the official mainstream view will be it wasn’t mishandled. Anyone thinking otherwise will be labeled as a racist right wing conspiracy theorist.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is so complex …”
No pandemic. Not that complex – just comprehensive.
… and certainly not driven by ‘meritocracy’, which is not the same as elite hierarchy. Countries vary in the precise nature their elites, but they have never been primarily meritocratic in Michael Young’s sense. Follow the money.
Look, it has been the most gigantic racket. People who identify too much by social class are not very good at seeing it – truckers are for instance.
The reality is that the majority of those who work their way to the top have not actually done anything, they have never lived or existed in the real world
What do I mean ‘do anything’. I mean for example they never had to graft to earn a living, never been up at 4am in the freezing rain waiting for a bus to work, never had blisters on their hands
A good example of this is the Dictator. Eton, University, writing for The Spectator. A sheltered and cossetted life. A man who fathered children with no thought of actually looking after them. or setting an example or guiding them. A man who ditched his wife when she had cancer
The exact opposite of these elites are the supermarket checkout workers (and others) who carried on regardless and quickly realised it was all bull. better one them runs the country
The technocratic overlords have not made mistakes.
They lied about a deadly disease and then rolled out a plan that has concentrated their power and secured them massive amounts of additional wealth.
They have been able to take a great leap forward in terms of the vaccine passport roll out, digital ID and soon digital only money.
In addition they have ascertained that 90%+ of the population will obey whatever order they are given no matter how dangerous or stupid it is.
I basically agree but hope and believe that your figure of 90% is too low.
Only they know how many they’ve jabbed. I believe they may be unpleasantly surprised at the level of resistance they have now met, together with the mrna jabs failing even with or because of the relatively benign omicron.
It would be interesting to know how many jabbed will never have another.
And all this is with them using the MSM et. as a propaganda machine.
I think they have underestimated the resistance – I certainly hope so.
And when the “vax side effects” continue and increase, even the dimmest sheep might wake up.
Maybe not…
What meritocracy? Most of the ‘elites’ get there because of WHO they know (i.e. sychophancy, chumocracy or nepotism, take your pick) not how good they are technically or, just as important, how ethically and sensibly they apply that knowledge.
‘Failing upwards’ is a commen theme amongst the ‘elites’ in both the public sector and multinational businesses (and is creeping into smaller sized outfits too), not just politics and the media.
The problem is that they effectively ‘poison’ their own sector by such agendas, driving good people out or away from trying to join, because its too much trouble.
At some point (hopefully sooner rather than later) we all need to push back, and hard. And that will including stepping up to take the place of these people when needed. Too many people think that ‘someone else’ will always shoulder the burden.
Well, that time is well past now. I’ve seen this myself at local level where I live where residents don’t bother taking an active part in keeping their locale and community in good order – quite the opposite in fact.
The pandemic has brough both the best and worst out in people – at least it means, slowly, at first, more people’s eyes are being open to what is REALLY going on in society.
What on earth are ‘Meritocratic Elites’?
The elites have reached their position on the basis of everything except merit.
That puzzled me too. Maybe it’s merit in who can oink the loudest?
I think, to be honest, that Sohrab Ahmari, has reached his conclusion because he’s an illiterate moron who rejects man’s mind to such an extent that words have no meaning to him.
As for the response to Covid, it can be explained in two words: green ideology.
Observe that the most illiberal responses to Covid have been from those who are also enthusiastic greens, observe that doomsday cultism is common to both, apocalyptic fantasies presented as science are common to both.
Green ideology has been taught as fact for decades and been put into practice, it’s as simple as that.
Also, before the ‘modern’ greens, the Nazis and the Nationalists of Weimar Germany were anti-industrial, the Nazis being both green and brown, as it were.
“What on earth are ‘Meritocratic Elites’?”
How people get appointed and promoted to senior positions in the NHS by “People like Me”
During the pandemic farce the politcos and media kept talking about ‘our NHS’ so as to make people believe it was something that they were a part of, something we had in common.
Similarly we regularly hear Boris et al talking about ‘our democracy’ and how precious it is.
From my perspective it is not ‘our democracy’, it is their democracy and it is a curse that is seeing this nation and our people destroyed.
I thought Meritocracy was a bad thing, having people who were competent doing the thing they are good at. Shouldn’t people be put into a job/situation based on gender, ethnicity, religion, disability etc (white males being the lowest of the low)?
I seem to recall it was Genghis Khan who stormed a large part of the world and got to Vienna (before he died and the advance stopped) based on Meritocracy. He had Generals who had formally been Shepard’s but were good at their jobs. Just think how much future he’d of got if had used diversity and equality (I doubt he’d of got out of the tent).
Labour Party Peer who coined the term ‘meritocracy’ – well there’s irony.
Socialist don’t believe in merit, they believe in equality. The truth is it isn’t a meritocracy that has risen, it is mediocrity that has risen, a standard which few of those risen have achieved.
The Rise of Meritocracy, was written as a satire and a dystopian one.
I have my bitch’s copy on the desk and yes, a dystopian satire. Hardly a novel. What does catch the eye is the rise of the Populists against the New World Order of social fascists (or meritocracy). There lies our only hope, honk, honk.
Handy link here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ox8fqPCbMM
Carl Sagan Predicted The Current Junk Science Disaster
The COVID-19 pandemic is so complex, so vast in scale, that I doubt any single future historian will be able to tell a unified story about the crisis and the global response to it.
And thereafter this article gets buried under its own cleverness.
There is nothing complex about a simple Scam, nothing “vast in scale.”
Let’s summarise:
Start with a propoganda war, thousands infected, people dying in the streets, hospitals overwhelmed or soon to be, ratchet up the propoganda, only a vaccine can save us, more propoganda, the vaccine is on its way.
Crank up the propoganda, killer virus, vaccines coming, lockdown, in it together, do your bit. Vaccines are coming. Be afraid. Vaccines are coming.
Have a break.
Whoops, here comes another wave, run and hide. Vaccines are coming. Have you looked her in the eyes (beyond a mask)?
Vaccines are coming.
Right you lot, we knocked this brew up in record quick time so roll your sleeves up.
Hundreds of thousands of adverse reactions, thousands of deaths. Thousands more to come.
Phase One more or less gone to plan.
This is a poor piece of work which seeks to intellectualise a very simple operation:
To get the mass of the world’s population to readily accept an injection which has been designed to maim and kill.
Let us not forget that a so-called “Pandemic” was declared by the WHO when only 450 cases of the wuflu had been identified worldwide and that by a PCR test that was never intended to be used as a diagnostic tool. All the NPI’s that were implemented were intended solely to undermine nation’s health. Alternative pharmaceutical treatments were banned solely to allow for killer injections.
I suppose when we boil this down it amounts to this:
A small group of people who have inveigled their way into positions of influence constructed and implemented a plan to depopulate the world.
That’s it.
Any inquiries will decide that it was generally well handled except for a few areas where “lessons will be learned”. Those lessons will be that we should have locked down sooner and harder.
So no, it will not be their undoing.
Start-point: those in government are unemployable at any significant level in the wealth producing sector of the economy otherwise that is where they would be.
The characteristics required for the midden that is ‘politics’ require a high score on the psychopath/sociopath scale of characteristics – the very sort of people who lust for power and control.
Don’t confuse high intelligence with ability, or being smart – some of the dumbest people are very intelligent. And there is the mistaken view that a very clever person, expert in one thing must be expert in all.
i don’t think those at the top have changed, it’s the rest below.
’We The People’ have allowed themselves to become almost completely dependent on the State, so the idiots in charge are able to have a greater affect on our lives than ever before.
Plus: specialisation and division of labour made us interdependent, we swapped with each other what we produced so we benefitted from the endeavours if others (who benefitted from us) so we had more than otherwise if we produced only fir our selves.
This makes a very stable, peaceful, prosperous society. But since WWII, more and more people got jobs that produced nothing… government bureaucracies, so-called charities and NGOs, the environment and activist industry, welfare collectors – now about 50% of the population have nothing to trade so the State plunders the productive 50% and redistributes it to a parasite class. That societal interdependence has gone, replaced by State dependency, cronyism/corporate capture, resentment, a belief that others have an obligation to provide another with what they don’t provide for themselves.
Here we are.
Ayn Rand was right.
Indeed. Of the barmy extreme right.
Having thought long and hard about how we’ve got to where we are I have come to the conclusion that the key turning point was 9/11. Specifically the US’s reaction to 9/11.
Up to the point we were reaping the benefits of the Thatcher-Reagan revolution that slimmed down the state and deregulated the economy. We could move around with more freedom than ever and most importantly economic freedom was greater than ever. The interference of the state in our lives was minimal.
Things changed after 9/11 as the US government started to reverse course. Rather than treat the event like a criminal act and pursue the wrongdoers, it started to control and regulate the behaviour of everyone. All of a sudden we all began to be treated like potential terrorists. The Patriot Act expanded the powers of the state. Departments like Homeland Security were set up to control and surveil everyone. The new dynamic was that the state had the power and obligation to control the population to protect itself. It was the beginning of a more totalitarian approach to governance.
The next big change came with the financial crisis. This invited once the again governments, led by the US to start imposing much stricter controls over the movement of capital and money. This was all done under the pretext of clamping down on corruption – which is a classic ruse for totalitarians and dictators. Post financial crisis, opening a bank account and sending money from place to another has become more and more difficult and controlled while at the same time the ability to operate outside of the banking sector in cash has been reduced dramatically. Again, this has been a massive expansion of totalitarian control by states over their populations. The reason, of course, is that the financial crisis led to massive state intervention leaving most western states bankrupt and now they need everyone’s cash.
The corona crisis is just the latest episode on the advance of the state into the lives of citizens. And we all know how far it has now gone.
Looking back, one can’t help reaching the conclusion that the 20 years from 1981 to 2001 were a strange anomaly. A moment when, for whatever reason, the state was momentarily pushed back and we had unprecedented freedoms. And since 2001 the state has been creeping more and more into our lives.
It’s tempting to think we’ve reached a limit but a look at China or worse still North Korea suggests things could still get worse.
Stewart, if you accept that 9/11 was instigated by US government agents, perhaps CIA, and that it was intended to ramp up the so-called war on terror, which had been promoted worldwide in order to usher in more restrictive laws, then what follows makes perfect sense.
9/11, the London bombings, France etc all paved the way for grosser state interventions, more surveillance, greater digitalisation. The intention clearly to normalise state interruptions to our lives, to make acceptable what ten or fifteen years ago would have seemed excessively intrusive.
Like virtually everything that has gone wrong in this country in the last twenty odd years, the worst of it can be found to have its origins with Bliar.
I would say that’s all true but actually independent of whether 9/11 was an inside job or not.
Same with the virus (which turned out to be not all that terrible really). Whether it was released on purpose or by accident, the effect ends up being the same.
Those who are driving for greater state control in our lives could be instigating the crises or just waiting for them to happen.
“we were reaping the benefits of the Thatcher-Reagan revolution”
Hilarious – what we have now is the logical outcome of their idiocracy.
Let us not forget that Reagan gave us the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. According to the US Supreme Court decision of 2011, that Act “preempts all design-defect claims against vaccine manufacturers brought by plaintiffs who seek compensation for injury or death caused by vaccine side effects”.
The response to 9/11 demonstrated that frightened people would accept harsh restrictions and believe all manner of absurdities – to name but one, turning a plane around in flight because someone had written BOB on a toilet mirror in lipstick. This apparently meant “Bomb on Board”. When I rolled my eyes at this, I was told – “You can’t be too careful!”
The Global Financial Crisis demonstrated that criminal behaviour by extremely wealthy individuals and organisations would not result in their punishment. Some of them, at least, discovered that they really could get away with blue murder.
Criminal behaviour has always existed. And the powerful have always got away with things.
Prior to 9/11, when something bad happened, like a terrorist attack or a recession, it just happened, we coped and moved on. It didn’t lead to a societal transformation driven by an encroaching state apparatus.
I remember growing up with the threat of terrorism. It was put into perspective. It was nasty and horrible for the victims, but very unlikely to hit you personally. It was dealt with mostly as a criminal matter.
We also used to have recessions and unemployment. They were bad times which we lived through but knew would pass. They were recognised as economic cycles.
SInce 9/11, for whatever reason, the state has taken on this responsibility for nothing bad ever happening and when it does it is structural flaw in society that has to be corrected, more likely than not with constraints and restrictions on the population and more power to the state.
I don’t pretend to know why it’s like that. I am just observing what has happened.
I don’t really see how.
What we are seeing now that I particularly object to is the encroachment of the state in our daily lives, which is the opposite of what Reagan and Thatcher pushed for.
‘now about 50% of the population have nothing to trade so the State plunders the productive 50% and redistributes it to a parasite class.’
This ‘parasite class’ were once industrial workers but when our glorious leaders opened competion with China our business and the workers found competing with slave labour a bit much.
Boris Johnson has announced the latest sanctions against Russia.
Instead of paying £250 000 to play a game of tennis with Boris Russian oligarchs will now have to pay £350 000.
Naturally they will still get the policy change they desire for this.
I came to the comments to write a take down of this confused intellectual garbage only to find pretty much everyone else already has.
The DS BTL section really is a great place.
Absolutely ditto, about 30 seconds later.
Canadian trucker beaten by police during Freedom Convoy says cops ‘broke my body a little bit, but not my spirit’
https://www.theblaze.com/news/canadian-trucker-beaten-by-police-during-freedom-convoy-says-cops-broke-my-body-a-little-bit-but-not-my-spirit
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Here we go. Cyber Polygon live exercise is go. See you all after the internet blackout! (Maybe)
What the ‘Elite’ get so wrong is their believe they are better than the common man – their arrogance will always bring them down!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10542205/MPs-slam-ministers-waste-loss-fraud-Covid-response.html
I think the author needs to ask the question that those inside the system asked the best part of 20 years ago:
‘Does publishing a slew of papers prove anything more than you are a highly accomplished technician, or does it also indicate evidence of the ability of sifting the wheat from the chaff in novel situations of high uncertainty and high complexity?’
This comes to the heart of ‘meritocratic elitism’: how accurately does the number of papers you have published reflect your true brilliance/expertise and is your expertise in one narrow field more widely transferable to new ones?
My experience of the scientific community was that most that rose to the top found top level strategy ‘the most difficult’, whereas those like me who found it the proverbial ‘piece of p**s’ but struggled terrible with the supposedly ‘simple’ technical drudgeries moved out long before reaching the top would ever have been possible.
So what you have is an ‘elite’ marked by intellectual mediocrity (within the rarified atmosphere of higher degree elitism) and technocratic excellence.
Of course, it’s never that black and white, but the point is simple: how you select out your ‘elite’ determines what unique elite skills they actually possess.
It’s pretty darn clear that cross-disciplinary engagement, ability to handle epidemiology, virology, quick and dirty drug trials, immunology, vaccine development and testing, idiosyncratic drug/vaccine reactions, managing the media etc etc was fairly glaring by its absence in all those granted ‘expert status’ the past two years.
Those that have been proven right were sidelined, even ‘cancelled’.
Those that were wrong but loyal servants of Gates and Fauci, Schwab and the money men are still thriving.
So what needs to be considered is how you decide who is best equipped to provide leadership in situations such as those we experienced the past two years and who is not.
I hasten to add that if those decisions are taken by faceless officials, then it is about time that those faceless officials faced the public…..
To understand “meritocracy” is equivalent to understanding “aristocracy”. Neither are there on merit. They exist because of their own entitlement.
If judged on performance, achievement, kindness, real service to people (not Civil Service), how many of the meritocracy or aristocracy come out with any actual Merit? Two? None? What does any of them achieve, or give of themselves? They have lackeys to do all the work, they just deliver the speeches and take the credit.
Blair’s misuse of Meritocracy reminds me very starkly of his fellow murderer, George W Bush, who used Born In The USA as his anthem for his campaign. He had no idea, and nor did his lackeys, the combined Meritocracy, that the words condemn the USA.
What ‘meritocratic elite’?
Everyone knows mainly psychos get to the top.
In the mid-1990s I was studying computer science (or rather, the German bastardization of that) at Fachhochschule Mannheim. As usual for undergrads, we were tormented with lots of uninteresting, arcane and completely irrelvant mathematics instead of being taught anything related to the supposed subject of our studies. I still fondly remember a phrase of the guy who held the calculus lectures: You have to be creative when solving integration problems!
By that time, I only understood that this meant the methods he was teaching us were unsuitable for solving the exercises we had to solve (which made the whole lecture seem rather pointless). Now, more than 25 years older and a lot wiser, I also understand the creative. It meant You have to locate the guy in the library who’s selling the solutions from last year. And that’s the general method our meritocratic elite uses to recruit up-and-coming talent.
So that’s where Toby got his urbane good looks from.
The Civil Service is neither civil nor a service. It needs to be reformed out of existence in it’s current form. The first reform should be that non-performance gets you sacked. Not knighted.
Ah, Franciscan university. Sound people, and I think they’ve been on the case of the New World Order for a long time.
By their own lights they are not ”mishandling” it at all.
(I do wish people will stop referring to them as ”elite”. They’re not – and it’s what they call themselves. Why reinforce their own self-estimation? Let’s find another word for them.)
So, is it simply that the meritocratic overlords had such a level of self-belief that they were right, that they failed to check whether they actually were?
Q: How did the West’s meritocratic elites, with all their scientific-technological prowess, end up driving their societies into a ditch of distrust, rancor, and division?
A: Because that was their intention.