Regarding the chaotic schools post, I don't know if you have read up on stereotypes of Generation Alpha being notoriously wild, feral, unruly, and airheaded. Very much the opposite of Millennials and kind of similar to young Boomers.
The elite in ancien regime France were completely out of touch by the 1780s. This was because they lived in the 'Versailles bubble', divorced from the reality of life in France; and even in Paris. Thye literally hadn't a clue. Arguably, if the royal family had remained in the Tuileries Palace in Paris, the 1789 Revolution might have been averted. As it was, they danced and laughed their way toward the precipice. Our present UK 'elite' have far less excuse but they are similar to the old French nobility: completely out of touch, but far less elegant or witty. Nor do they have the excuse of living in Versailles, although the Westminster-Whitehall bubble seems just as effective an insulator. This country can only be regenerated by some great internal upheaval. But woe to those who find themselevs involved.
I am at risk of going on about this, but it is maddening that the decision to fully decriminalise abortions from the mother's perspective was inaccurately framed in the context of abortion being under threat. In fact Britain had a firmly established and exceedingly liberal regime, and abortion pills by post had only made it easier to access abortion. The other day a Marie Claire article continued to talk up the threat from American evangelicals funding anti-abortion campaigns, but Christianity is held in contempt in Britain and there is scant chance of such efforts leading to legislative change. Even Reform has indicated it's not interested.
I read this after Dominic Cummings' latest substack offering, and I sort of expected yours would be less depressing, but I don't think it was.
fyi I run a U3A Current Affairs Group and the only thing one lady who voted Labour in 2024 has ever praised about Labour in government is that they stopped the riots. Lucy Connolly's terribe two-tier treatment was clearly a factor in that.
As for student loans, if we can't close down 50% of our "universities" straight away, we should charge them for the unpaid student loans of their students, on the basis that they must have provided a degree in a subject which was unfit for purpose. That would just ensure a lingering death for the superannuated polytechnics and disguised immigration scammers in the tertiary sector..
"As Alexandra Wilson explains, some of this is downstream of the incentive systems within academia."
In many ways, universities have always been the smokescreen. It's been a feature of conservative discourse since roughly the late 1980s that "tenured radicals" in universities constitute a primary and growing threat to free societies, Western Civilization, etc...and if only these armchair radicals could be brought to trial in the style of the Gang of Four after Mao Zedong's death, we could once again live in the land of Liberty(TM).
But in terms of the agenda/sensibilities/taboos of the cultural left, the main victory was not primarily in universities but rather in corporations (especially those associated with the knowledge economy), via the growth of the diversity industry.
And the cultural left succeeded there because, after all, corporations are not "Enlightenment" or "classical liberal" organizations where free citizens are entitled to fundamental rights like freedoms of expression, conscience, association,etc. Rather they are closer to pre-modern, feudal orders.
As Musa Al-Gharbi put it relatively recently, canonical "radical" thinkers like Foucault, Marcuse, Crenshaw, etc, are actually not ubiquitously read in academia and many of their beliefs actually refute many cultural left dogmas.
That Musa Al-Gharbi essay is one of the most refreshing takes on the issue I've read in a while - thanks for the link. As someone working in academia, I do often feel like Stepan Trofimovich in The Devils, looking with horror at my radicalised offspring!
My impression is that a lot of asylum seekers who come to these islands from the US (and other First World countries) have mental health issues. In some cases, I suspect they've basically been sent over by families unable or unwilling to look after them back home.
Re: Black female Shakey: "Overall, though, I find these arguments fun; they enhance the gaiety of the nation. Shakespeare’s genius was such that people will always want to read new theories about him."
I agree - and I find it annoying there are so many people so vociferously opposed to allowing Shakespeare-truthers from even having a platform (Oliver Kamm, for example, is demented on this). This is similar to what happened to the Snopes website - used to be a good place to check on urban legends being passed off as true but has now become part of a self-appointed vanguard against the Great Orange One.
@Ed - you've previously said how much you appreciate Horrible Histories and I think reading about the alternative author theories is a good way to get teenagers interested in the Bard and Elizabethan Britain in general.
t raises really interesting questions about how we know if historical figures actually existed, the police-state nature of 16th century England, why did all those clever playwrights write in code, were they really involved in espionage, etc. And from there you even if you don't inspire interest in the writing then there may be interest in the history.
In fact a whole semester of conspiracy-related history should be introduced at GCSE level at the reverse grammar schools for recalcitrant adolescents!
"The plans follow Defra-commissioned reports that claimed the countryside would become “irrelevant” in a multicultural society,"
Irrelevant to what? Irrelevant to whom?
They are ‘former places’, to adapt the Bolshevik term
"Former places" like Gizhinsk, in The Midwich Cuckoos?
Regarding the chaotic schools post, I don't know if you have read up on stereotypes of Generation Alpha being notoriously wild, feral, unruly, and airheaded. Very much the opposite of Millennials and kind of similar to young Boomers.
"I don’t think the press habit of referring to foreign offenders as ‘Newcastle man’ or ‘Burnley man’ really helps the situation."
The one that most winds me up is the euphemism "born in this country".
I think most people read that as 'but his parents weren't'
'the man, whose ancestors arrived on these shores with Horsa and Hengest, was remanded in custody....'
Yes, of course they do. Impossible to read it any other way, which is why it's so annoying that they feel the need to use it.
The elite in ancien regime France were completely out of touch by the 1780s. This was because they lived in the 'Versailles bubble', divorced from the reality of life in France; and even in Paris. Thye literally hadn't a clue. Arguably, if the royal family had remained in the Tuileries Palace in Paris, the 1789 Revolution might have been averted. As it was, they danced and laughed their way toward the precipice. Our present UK 'elite' have far less excuse but they are similar to the old French nobility: completely out of touch, but far less elegant or witty. Nor do they have the excuse of living in Versailles, although the Westminster-Whitehall bubble seems just as effective an insulator. This country can only be regenerated by some great internal upheaval. But woe to those who find themselevs involved.
I am at risk of going on about this, but it is maddening that the decision to fully decriminalise abortions from the mother's perspective was inaccurately framed in the context of abortion being under threat. In fact Britain had a firmly established and exceedingly liberal regime, and abortion pills by post had only made it easier to access abortion. The other day a Marie Claire article continued to talk up the threat from American evangelicals funding anti-abortion campaigns, but Christianity is held in contempt in Britain and there is scant chance of such efforts leading to legislative change. Even Reform has indicated it's not interested.
I read this after Dominic Cummings' latest substack offering, and I sort of expected yours would be less depressing, but I don't think it was.
fyi I run a U3A Current Affairs Group and the only thing one lady who voted Labour in 2024 has ever praised about Labour in government is that they stopped the riots. Lucy Connolly's terribe two-tier treatment was clearly a factor in that.
As for student loans, if we can't close down 50% of our "universities" straight away, we should charge them for the unpaid student loans of their students, on the basis that they must have provided a degree in a subject which was unfit for purpose. That would just ensure a lingering death for the superannuated polytechnics and disguised immigration scammers in the tertiary sector..
"As Alexandra Wilson explains, some of this is downstream of the incentive systems within academia."
In many ways, universities have always been the smokescreen. It's been a feature of conservative discourse since roughly the late 1980s that "tenured radicals" in universities constitute a primary and growing threat to free societies, Western Civilization, etc...and if only these armchair radicals could be brought to trial in the style of the Gang of Four after Mao Zedong's death, we could once again live in the land of Liberty(TM).
But in terms of the agenda/sensibilities/taboos of the cultural left, the main victory was not primarily in universities but rather in corporations (especially those associated with the knowledge economy), via the growth of the diversity industry.
https://www.amazon.ca/Race-Experts-Etiquette-Sensitivity-Revolution/dp/074252759X
And the cultural left succeeded there because, after all, corporations are not "Enlightenment" or "classical liberal" organizations where free citizens are entitled to fundamental rights like freedoms of expression, conscience, association,etc. Rather they are closer to pre-modern, feudal orders.
https://books.google.ca/books/about/Private_Government.html?id=hXSYDwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y
As Musa Al-Gharbi put it relatively recently, canonical "radical" thinkers like Foucault, Marcuse, Crenshaw, etc, are actually not ubiquitously read in academia and many of their beliefs actually refute many cultural left dogmas.
https://musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/censorship-is-primarily-a-problem#_
That Musa Al-Gharbi essay is one of the most refreshing takes on the issue I've read in a while - thanks for the link. As someone working in academia, I do often feel like Stepan Trofimovich in The Devils, looking with horror at my radicalised offspring!
My impression is that a lot of asylum seekers who come to these islands from the US (and other First World countries) have mental health issues. In some cases, I suspect they've basically been sent over by families unable or unwilling to look after them back home.
Re: Black female Shakey: "Overall, though, I find these arguments fun; they enhance the gaiety of the nation. Shakespeare’s genius was such that people will always want to read new theories about him."
I agree - and I find it annoying there are so many people so vociferously opposed to allowing Shakespeare-truthers from even having a platform (Oliver Kamm, for example, is demented on this). This is similar to what happened to the Snopes website - used to be a good place to check on urban legends being passed off as true but has now become part of a self-appointed vanguard against the Great Orange One.
@Ed - you've previously said how much you appreciate Horrible Histories and I think reading about the alternative author theories is a good way to get teenagers interested in the Bard and Elizabethan Britain in general.
t raises really interesting questions about how we know if historical figures actually existed, the police-state nature of 16th century England, why did all those clever playwrights write in code, were they really involved in espionage, etc. And from there you even if you don't inspire interest in the writing then there may be interest in the history.
In fact a whole semester of conspiracy-related history should be introduced at GCSE level at the reverse grammar schools for recalcitrant adolescents!