Michael Biggs, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Oxford, has written an illuminating piece in the Spectator criticising the effort in the recent census to determine how many transgender people there are in England and Wales. As he points out, the way some questions were posed renders the findings unreliable – such as the bizarre stat that there are more trans people in the London boroughs of Brent and Newham than there are in Brighton.
Here is an extract:
The problem began with the question itself. The ONS did not ask a plain question like: “Are you transgender?” Instead, it chose a convoluted formulation: “Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?”
Those who answered “no” could then write in their gender identity. This question assumes that everyone has a gender identity. It also assumes that everyone was registered at birth. As the human rights campaigner Maya Forstater has emphasised, some immigrants were not registered at birth. The question could have puzzled many respondents outside the professional and managerial classes. How many of them mistakenly answered in the negative?
Anomalies appear when we look at the distribution of the transgender population by local authority. Newham and Brent top the list, with 1.5% and 1.3% respectively. Brighton and Hove, with 1%, ranks only 20th. Yet Brighton is the LGBTQ capital of Britain, home to the country’s longest-running Trans Pride celebration. It is also the site of two universities, including the University of Sussex where some transgender activists and their allies effectively ousted philosopher Kathleen Stock for writing about sex. Could Brighton really have a less salubrious climate for trans people than Newham? It seems unlikely.
This data is also hard to tally with that gathered from a petition to reform the Gender Recognition Act, launched by trans activists in 2021, which attracted 118,000 signatories from England and Wales. By comparing the distribution of signatures to the distribution of the transgender population according to the census, we see that the correlation between the two distributions across all 331 local authorities is close to zero. Brighton and Hove, for example, had more signatories, relative to adult population, than anywhere else except the City of London. Newham and Brent, by contrast, had relatively few signatories, ranking 303rd and 304th respectively.
If places like Newham and Brent had so few inhabitants willing to sign a pro-transgender petition, what accounts for their prominence in the census transgender figures? What these boroughs have are many immigrants for whom English is a second language, and who are therefore liable to be confused by a convoluted question on gender identity. The strongest predictor of the transgender population across 331 local authorities, as measured by the census, is the proportion of people whose main language is not English.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Noah Carl has done his own analysis of the recent census Much of what he unearths corroborates Biggs’s findings. Carl focusses on the unusually high proportion of non-responses to the gender questions and explains how that tarnishes the results.
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Whether it be boiler taxes, evs, or vaccines an incredible minority of all politicians from any side actually care about the people they rule (sorry, represent)!
Just look at Bridgens covid debate, all the rats were absent!
“Considering?????? ——-You better consider quick.— Infact the whole of Net Zero is an impossibility and is going to cost so much money that it will be abandoned faster than Liz Truss. ——There are 21 million gas boilers in the UK. This gives us the best central heating system we ever had. We want to KEEP IT. ——-You better start getting that bloody gas out of the ground and cut out this pretend to save the plant crap immediately. We have taken a decade or more to try and fit a little smart meter in properties and still are nowhere near to getting that done. So how long is going to take to rip out boilers , radiators, rip up floorboards and force everyone to pay good money to be colder at huge expense. ————-You people have got to be kidding. Wake up from this pretend to save the planet garbage, and that applies not just to the Tories but to you all. ——–You have forced us in law to do the impossible and you don’t even care that it is going to cost trillions. —–You better change that law RIGHT NOW or the people will change it for you.
PS ——-Dear Huxleypigs, I tried some of that power breakfast that you ate this morning and it has certainly fired me up as you can see from the above.
Well done varmint. The power breakfast worked a treat. Stick with it.
Yum yum, where can I get some?
That was bloody spot on varmint
This whole Tory policy of freezing national assets and exporting manufacturing, energy production and mining to India, China and Africa may well go down well in UK academic institutions but is electoral suicide. Not only will shivering impoverished lockdown-damaged voters blame the party but the Tories will give the impression of being bought and owned by the UN and, consequently, controlled by whoever owns the UN. As Jim Hacker nearly pointed out, The Guardian is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country. Unfortunately, Sir Keir Starmer seems to agree!
The Tories are already bought and owned by the UN and those who own the UN. That is an unequivocal fact.
Smart meters largely failed because a lot of people chose not to have one, I ignored at least 8 letters telling me how wonderful they were and that engineers were in my area waiting to install one for me. The problem with gas boilers and EVs is that sooner or later everyone with a gas boiler or car will have to replace it, whereas smart meters were replacing something that still worked. This means the government will have far more leverage over people.
Nearly every month I am offered a smart meter! I have asked them to stop offering them to no avail so I now simply ignore.
Another case of govt floating ideas to see how they are reacted to. If they haven’t worked out what is going to be popular with their natural supporters by now, there’s no hope for them. But we knew that.
The other possibility is that they are hoping their natural supporters are so dozy that they will remember that the govt is definitely going to scrap this tax, just like it is definitely going to cut immigration. They may well be right!
Yes indeed. I remembering them ‘considering’ scrapping the 1000’s of pieces of EU red tape. Actual number scrapped: 0.
Yes and the BBC licence, but we all know they would NEVER give up the state propaganda arm.
Apparently Sunak is going to do an “I want to listen to your opinions” farce on GB News.
Sinking to 20% in the polls BEFORE the ONS predicted immigration figures were announced and the Asylum-chemical attack obviously hasn’t taught him anything.
He is either remarkably dense (I don’t believe that) or he doesn’t much care whether he wins or loses because he knows he can walk into well paid work and continue to influence things for decades to come – job with the UN or WHO or NATO, speaking engagements, the “Sunak Foundation” etc.
Ah yes, that world leading, tax dodging, charidee foundation, based on the successful Bliar model…
Fishy Farcicals.
Either Fishy has sold his soul to the Davos Deviants or they have some seriously incriminating evidence against him because when he is turfed out of Downing St he will carry the stigma of taking the Conservative Party in to oblivion. I don’t suppose he cares. None of them do. If Klaus or Billy says jump Fishy just wants to know how high.
“Fishy” ? —-Oh you mean Norman Wisdom? Every time I see this phony conservative I think of him falling about with that silly Norman Wisdom hat sideways on his head
The sheer brazen audacity of it. Attacking the manufacturers for policy they themselves imposed! Anything to fool the plebs though, I guess.
Dont forget they are doing the same with cars, in that they have set a target on the manufacturers of cars similar to the Boiler tax, in that if they dont sell enough then they have to pay substantial fines, and where do we all think those fines will end up being paid? Why on the cost of petrol and diesel vehicles of course. In short this is how things work in this country now.
Salary – taxed by the Government of anything between 25 and 80 percent including N.I.
Food, items, cleaning items, petrol, clothes, drinks, eating out another 20 percent or more if its fuel taken by the Government.
Electricity and Gas biils to heat and eat by, Government loads levys on to the providers which are passed on to the consumer in high bills, thus taking another wedge of already highly taxed post PAYE and N.I income.
If you save your taxed income, then they tax you on the interest you earn.
In short the amount of disposable income you are allowed to spend is minimal compared with the Lions share the Government takes.
What do they spend all this money on I wonder? we are in a serious financial mess, due to mismanagement of the economy, The health service is 3rd world standard, our Education system turns out indoctrinated zombies who cannot think for themselves and consequently cannot push the country forwards, our roads are a mess, our Police are only interested in virtue signalling, we are awash with ilegal immigrants who contribute nothing but use our medical care, our homes, our schools and of course our legal system. We have the largest number of State employees in History, the highest taxes, and the worst standards in care, Eduation, infrastructure, military, law enforcement since whenever.
So my question is what exactly are they doing with all of our money?
A fine summary of the state of the nation.
Sadly, what is occurring ie national destruction is actually being planned. The destruction is deliberate. In order to ‘Build back Better’ what currently exists has to be destroyed – all of it. Our roads, our hospitals, our justice system, parliament, our ability to defend ourselves, our industries, everything. To speed the process along the government wastes money on a collosal scale and then uses this pointless spending as an excuse to raise taxes thus rapidly impoverishing the population.
Nothing occurring today is genuine. Nothing. Or as Neil Oliver more eloquently puts it:
It’s not always about what they say it’s about.
Also we need to recognise who the real enemy is.
Giving shedloads of it away: Ukraine; Gaza; India; China; various Commonwealth countries; the UN; the EU; the WHO …… “charity-quangos” which oppose stated Government policy.
You name it ….. they get it.
Absolutely.
Yes because we are now not a Nation anymore, we are a region of the global community where the wealth gets redistributed. ——-That is what climate policies are eg. ———“One has to free oneself from the illusion the climate policies are environmental ones anymore. We redistribute the worlds wealth via climate policy” ——Edenhofffer IPCC.
At some point tax become extortion. We reached that point a very long time ago. I remember the Beatles song “The Taxman”, where they sang jokingly about taxing the air.———Lo and behold that is exactly what they are now doing —The Carbon Tax.
Well Hester, the car manufactures are moving away from electric vehicles in droves, they can’t sell them! GM yesterday, VW the other week etc. An electric car is not Green at all (except the possible paint colour) at least 90% of the lifetime emissions of a nice Euro6 Diesel. The fuel (electricity) costs a lot more than diesel if bought away from home, and the depreciation is horific at 30% a year! Then the batteries are clearly a severe fire hazard, three electic buses in London burnt completely last week. All this could be a devious idea of course, you cannot buy an IC car and you can’t buy an electric car! Ah well I will just make one then, or perhaps get a nice vintage car with huge emissions and no MOT!
And they have the audacity to try and con us into a smart meter by telling us it will save money because we won’t have an estimate bill anymore. ——–When all the while they know they want that meter in there to ration energy use, and charge more at peak times because they know that as they rely more and more in wind there won’t be enough electricity to provide base load.
Could, might, considering.
And not a Conservative principle in sight.
In order to run down the gas boiler and petrol/diesel vehicles by 2030 they would need to close production at least a year earlier. The time is running out and only Reform UK are standing on a policy of increasing domestic supply by fracking, mining & digging up our own resources.
“Reform UK” = “Common Sense Party”.
They should change their leader.
I may be wrong but ReformUK is owned by Tice and Farage. The members have no say whatsoever in how it is run. He is unlikely to sack himself. The Brexit Party was the same structure I believe.
How I hate the trite expression “hard working families”, its a blight on everyone, Pensioners, the sick, those who dont have families but are working, its just another transfer of cash from the citizen to the Government to spaff on their career enhancing projects.
According to Julian Assaunge, that is the job of the state, to take public money and place it into private hands.
I wonder why the Conservatives are considered to be in complete disarray and on the verge of an electoral wipe out. Hmm, I wonder why…..
In any case, on the issue of policies not quite working out as intended, Scott Adams expressed it quite well recently. He observes that liberals understand objectives but don’t understand systems. Which is why everything they try to affect with their high minded, lofty intentions turns to complete and utter shit.
There is a Liberal Progressive Virus spreading all over the western world. ——A Political Pandemic.
Could there be an election on the horizon?
Having established the principle that it is wrong to ban something that will have a detrimental effect on consumers by pushing up prices, the same logic needs to be applied to ICE cars and vans. Banning ICE vehicles is increasing the cost and scarcity of new and used car and vans, placing additional costs on drivers. Scrap the ICE ban now.