Britain is Doomed

[Bangkoktraveler]

50,000 Philipinos is a lot of people to allow in. According to the article, "Mr Foley said the SA agreement was modelled on a similar one signed in February between the Philippines and the Canadian province of Manitoba."

 

 

[soongmak]

Your head is stuck so far up your arse that you can smell the poo but you can't see where it is coming from.

 

If England is going down, it's not because of some liberal PC idiots. How about the financial system that is about to collapse? People rioting over rising food and oil prices because those who have money now use it to speculate on raw materials. Now that's what I call a problem.

 

Those articles you cite about those PC idiots are nothing more than comic relief to keep the masses entertained and divert them from the REAL problems. Looking at how you buy into it, it seems to be working all right. And that's my theory. :smirk:

 

 

[Bangkoktraveler]

If Britain is doomed, then the USA is surely doomed. 8 years of Republican tyranny has plummeted the dollar down in respect to the British money.

Where is chicken little when you need him?

[USVirgin]

Here's some more evidence for ya!

 

Governments' way with words impacts all

By Charles Moore

 

The other day, I was sitting in a very long meeting of the board of a charity. We were trying to wrestle with government requirements to show what our "policy" was on various matters.

 

A "policy", you must understand, is not a simple thing any more. It is not just a statement like: "We aim to provide residential care for the elderly" or "We try to cure children with spinal injuries" (or whatever). Nor is it just a statement of specific rules such as "No alcohol may be consumed on the premises" or "Pupils need not wear school uniform in the sixth form".

 

No, a policy has to be a lengthy document on anything that the Government thinks important. It must set out aims, procedures, targets, monitoring, assessment, evaluation and so on. Depending slightly on what sort of organisation you are, you must have policies on health and safety, access, disability, recruitment, transparency, energy efficiency, environmental health, etc, etc.

 

To get money, pass inspections, avoid litigation, be accepted as a charity - virtually to exist at all - you must keep your "policies" in constant repair, all shipshape and Whitehall fashion. To survive, you really need to have a policy about your policies.

 

Anyway, as Alexander Pope puts it in The Dunciad, his wonderful poem about the rule of boredom, Dullness yawned and "The vapour mild o'er each committee crept".

 

I must have dozed off, for in my mind, all the official words and phrases that now come to us from government and public bodies seemed to take physical form before me.

 

Thick and fast they crowded in. "Best practice", "diversity", "gender", "sustainability", "community", "ethnicity", "governance", "delivery", "targeting", "orientation", "timelines", "resources", "empowerment", "renewables", "compliance", "strategies" and "wheelchair access" all hurried into my mental room.

 

"Rolling programmes", unable to maintain their "work/life balance" in the absence of a "level playing field", sprawled in the corner.

 

All were escorted by "key workers", "work colleagues", "care workers", "user groups", "mentors" (their "mentees" trotting eagerly along behind them), "service providers", "diversity champions", "stakeholders", "key drivers" (though these seemed not to be people) and many varieties of "partners", including those with experience of the "sharp end" or the "front line". Some of them said they couldn't stay long because they were busy "managing outcomes".

 

Once they were all present and politically correct, they became somewhat insistent in their demands. They had been "tasked", they explained, to "identify needs" by "addressing the issues around" my failure to understand the concepts adequately. They were concerned about my "skills gap", which might "adversely impact" my "life-chances". For their part, they were "committed to excellence", which must be "world-class". To "meet the challenge" I represented, they felt, required "risk assessments", "constant monitoring" and possibly a "raft of measures", "going forward".

 

Theirs, they said, was "a stretching offer" in the "time period", as well as an "iterative process", and would require a "coherent evidence trail" in order to effect the necessary "knowledge transfer" from the "Knowledge Bank". But they thought it could all be provided at a "one-stop shop".

 

My response "might be monitored for training purposes", and, obviously, "benchmarked" to see if I had absorbed the "learnings". If there was anything I did not understand, they were "happy to have that conversation", "non-judgmentally".

 

I said nothing. But there must have been something in my demeanour that displeased them, because the conversation began to take a menacing turn. Some of the more nervous stakeholders looked to the tougher key drivers and started muttering about "measures to combat perceived threats". They even called for "concrete implementation".

 

One mild care worker protested that I would be fine as long as my "performance appraisal procedures" were sufficiently "robust". Couldn't I be dealt with in a way which was both "modern and compassionate"?

 

An idealistic young key worker argued that I should be the guinea-pig for new forms of treatment. She brandished a document from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, which said: "I recommend that innovation and risk-taking be at the centre of the assessment framework of every organisation." But both were more or less shouted down by the hard-bitten sharp-enders and front-liners.

 

My practices had been "discriminatory", they insisted, and so I needed to be subjected to a "multi-disciplinary approach", and rigorous "equality screening". The charges against me were "evidence-based". Rather than merely "addressing the issues", they would have to "drill down" to them. I would have to be "fast-tracked", "ring-fenced" and eventually "rolled out".

 

My punishment, said a burly diversity champion with an evil grin, would be "gender-specific". I would be "top-sliced". "See if your faith group can help you now," he sneered, and everyone laughed.

 

Then a cold, final voice declared that my behaviour was "inappropriate", and an appalling silence fell.

 

"Coffee, I think," said the chairman in the real world, and the phantoms fled. I woke, and gradually recovered my composure as the agenda drifted towards Date of Next Meeting and Any Other Business.

 

And then my friendly, conscientious fellow-trustees, having given another four hours of their lives to trying to help the charity they love get through the regulatory thicket and do the job it is supposed to do, went their separate ways.

 

But when I got home, I still could not shake the dream out of my mind. I started to browse through the websites of government departments - DEFRA, DCMS, DCSF, all with longer and longer names expressing more and more extravagant ambitions. Waking reality was little different from nightmare.

 

I inspected the website of the Department for Children, Schools and Families, which explains, modestly: "The purpose of the Department for Children, Schools and Families is to make England the best place in the world for children and young people to grow up" (thereby pitting it against its Celtic equivalents, who presumably have the same desire for Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland).

 

Document after document, all with their enormous numbers of kilobytes listed, sit there, each hatching out of the other. There is a Single Equality Scheme Delivery Plan. Every area of equality, since legislation in 1997, requires an Equality Impact Assessment (EQUIA). There is an EQUIA for Children's Play and an EQUIA for Early Years and an EQUIA for Special Educational Needs, as well "Narratives" and "Action Plans" so that equality may be delivered safely.

 

The department offers a "Proforma for an Early Years EQUIA". This is how it ends: "We will be working with partners to develop the 0-7 partnership into implementation phase, and to develop criteria to select pilot authorities, including criteria relating to equalities and gap-narrowing. The pilots will be monitored and evaluated, including for their impact on equalities and gap-narrowing." All helping make England the best place in the world for children to grow up.

 

Some might agree that all this is rather depressing, but say that bureaucracies always have their wordy ways of doing things: the rest of us should leave them to their pointless, nonsensical documents and get on with life.

 

But it is not so. The documents, unfortunately, are not pointless or nonsensical, though they are atrociously written. In the Style Guide that it attaches to its equality policies, the DCSF explains the power of words. It says that the meaning of words changes "because various groups and communities ('speech communities') gain greater power and influence than hitherto".

 

Yes. The "speech community" of the post-1960s Left has gained almost complete power and influence over the administration of government. Its concepts, its way of putting things, now have the force of law. It is producing the slow death of free institutions in this country.

 

Link

[chuckwoww]

Very funny USVirgin. Thinking outside the box cuts through to the bottom line and produces radical new solutions which are vital in this time of rapid change.

[rogueyam]

Nice one.

[USVirgin]

Saw the link on another board.

 

My favorite phrase has to be "diversity champion."

 

For those involved in the corporate world, try this: buzzword bingo

[kamui]

Your head is stuck so far up your arse that you can smell the poo but you can't see where it is coming from.

 

If England is going down, it's not because of some liberal PC idiots. How about the financial system that is about to collapse? People rioting over rising food and oil prices because those who have money now use it to speculate on raw materials. Now that's what I call a problem.

 

Those articles you cite about those PC idiots are nothing more than comic relief to keep the masses entertained and divert them from the REAL problems. Looking at how you buy into it, it seems to be working all right. And that's my theory. :smirk:

 

 

I am with soongmak in this. Rules concerning immigrants can be changed any day. All European countries are struggling with the immigration problem and in general rules and requirements are becoming much more severe for immigrants. Maybe GB is different, but generally the EU has installed a huge wall which reduced the numbers of immigrants very much.

 

The current time bomb for GB is the housing market which is completely overheated. I wonder when this bubble will burst. And when it bursts it will affect a huge number of Britons.

 

Also, other *real* problems - I don't see shoes for dogs as essential for a country - like the bad shape of the infrastructure (especially public transport) are not a result of liberals**, but of the privatization during the Maggie Thatcher era.

 

**Rogy, should have a look into a political dictionary. The term "liberal" has complete different meaning in European politics:

 

Liberal in the United Kingdom may refer to opposing both conservative and socialist positions, particularly those of economic protectionists and authoritarians.

Note: the same applies to Germany

 

Rogy I would recommend that you stick to US politics, since you don't seem to have an idea of the political landscape in Europe.

[rogueyam]

Also, other *real* problems - I don't see shoes for dogs as essential for a country - like the bad shape of the infrastructure (especially public transport) are not a result of liberals**, but of the privatization during the Maggie Thatcher era.

 

**Rogy, should have a look into a political dictionary. The term "liberal" has complete different meaning in European politics:

 

Liberal in the United Kingdom may refer to opposing both conservative and socialist positions, particularly those of economic protectionists and authoritarians.

Note: the same applies to Germany

 

Rogy I would recommend that you stick to US politics, since you don't seem to have an idea of the political landscape in Europe.

 

What are you talking about? Where on this thread have I misused or misunderstood the word "liberal"?

[Bangkoktraveler]

[color:red]"What are you talking about? Where on this thread have I misused or misunderstood the word "liberal"?"/b][/color]

 

rogie, reread your post. I understood fully what he said and I think everybody else does also.