Rotherham's in the news for all the wrong reasons again.

A democracy will always work for equality of opportunity. It makes no difference what differences there are. The intent is to allow people the same opportunity. Some will take it, others will not but they ought to have the opportunity. It hasn't as I said ever yet been put completely into practice but was very much the intent until neo liberalism.

I was not talking about Equality but stating that Britain had never worked for equality but for equality of opportunity and without striving for this, talk of democracy is very questionable. In a democracy everyone has equal rights including the right to achieve. Obviously because this is not the situation effort needs to be put in to bring it nearer . As I said before, some will take the opportunity, others will not but all deserve the opportunity.

Since neo liberalism we have seen growing inequality. The rich have got far richer and the poor poorer. I think prior to neo liberalism a manager got about 7 times as much pay as a worker. Now it is about a hundred times - could be much higher.

This is the sort of situation which gave rise to Brexit and to people voting for Trump in the US. It is democracy not working. It is neo liberalism. It is allowing the top three earners in the United States to earn as much as the lowest 50% of the US. It is allowing the top 8 earners in the world to earn as much as the lowest 50% of the world. It is not democracy. It is plutocracy where Governments serves the richest minority not the people.

 

The problem of the western nations is that the middle class is paying everything, aswell the moderate rich people. They're the heart and the blood of those countries, poor people are burden from a tax point of view, even if some have essential jobs to the society, and a lot of rich people don't pay their taxes. For the good health of a country, it's important to favour the middle class, not the poor even if it's necessary to protect them, not the rich even if it's unecessary to overtax them. By the way that our government serve the richest, who control the information controle the vote, and who else can buy the medias ? And even if the medias would be indenpendant from billionaires, there would be the problem of journalists of left and right more willing to make their agenda advance than searching for truth.
Since the end of the 19th century, our societies are characterized by propaganda, by the way there were the nazis or the soviets which directly controled the media through strength, but by the way you can controle it through money. And furthermore politician need a lot of money to get their campaign financed, money that only rich people have.

There is no "right to achieve". First, it's false that democracy = equal right, because there is a lot of democracies where equal right doesn't exist. Like in Pakistan where women and non muslims have less rights than muslim men.
Second, it might be true for our western nations, but there is no "right to achieve". Equality in front of the law maybe. Someone with 80 of IQ is very unlikely to achieve anything compared to a 120 IQ.

Nobody will help you achieve things but yourself, you might have external help, but in the end you rely on yourself.

 

A Democracy gives all people the same opportunities. That is what I was talking about. The idea to be a meritocratic society. The MC though is essential to stop revolution. Despotism can apparently work well with a strong MC.

Your view simply comes from the propaganda of neo liberalism. Remember Thatcher saying 'there is no such thing as society'.

Your belief that people having a vote every few years is democracy is woefully ignorant of democracy. Basically I cannot get into this at the moment, too much to do. My answer was to someone suggesting that there was ever such a concept as Equality in the UK. There was the idea of equality of opportunity and that was based on the idea of us being a meritocratic society.

I accept that that ended with neo liberalism and that you are presenting the ideology of neo liberalism. You need to start understanding that it is that that is causing the current problems. Indeed I saw one of your people who was marching yesterday making the correct point that Democracy is supposed to serve the people.

IQ is based on learned knowledge. That is something the vast majority of people can get and why people here are forever claiming they have an IQ of 150. Do enough IQ tests and your 'IQ' will go up. Schools in richer areas used to be forever practising them before the 11+

However if people are held back as tiny children due to being born into a family which cannot afford to give them a healthy diet and the wealth of experience that those with more money can give as well as not having parents who themselves had a high education then they need a leg up in order to have the same chance as everyone else.

I do not think you believe in democracy. I am pretty sure you have argued with me before that autocracy and brutality are a much better way of running society so I would not expect you to know much about or agree with democracy.

 

I like the idea of a meritocratic society, but people are extremly unequal in a meritocratic society.

That's what are most of the regime called democracies yes, I know about other possible form of democracies, but they don't exist or are very rare (Switzerland).

Not really, I'm strongly against open borders for people or goods. I'm for strong public schools, universities and hospitals. I tend to see economy as a balance between state intervention and personnal freedom, to much state intervention or unwise state intervention will asphyxiated the country, not enough and it's chaos. Even if it was at a huge ecological cost, it's chinese interventionnism which have shown one of the best ability in quick development those last years.

Democracy just replaced brutality by propaganda. Democracy is just a regime where the better liars rule. There is almost nothing about reason. I'm not for a dictatorship however.

No, IQ measure an ability to manipulate quickly logical informations. IQ doesn't measure any form of knowledge. But the brain is like a muscle, you can reinforce it by exercises. If I remember well, IQ is estimated to be at 70 % genetic, the rest is just training. Someone with a base 80 IQ could manage to go up to 90 or even 100 with training, but he will never be able to reach much more.

But they will never get the same chance. You can fix a little the damage, but nothing will fix a defective education. By the way, school can improve things, but for that you need to give a lot of money to school, and schools don't have a lot of money.

[uqote]I do not think you believe in democracy. [/quote]

No, I don't believe in democracy, neither in autocracy. Even, if I would prefer a system of popular referendum like in Switzerland.

Not really. The only thing I believe in is personnal change, if enough people in a society manage to change themselves in a positive way, then I think that the society would start to change in a positive way as a whole. I don't respect any leader which rule by brutality or propaganda. The only leader I respect are the one which rule by getting their wiseness respected. The good old "people will be happy when the philosopher will be king and the king will be philosopher". But that kind of government can't exist, it's just an utopia.
Waiting to have a good government is just servant spirit. Did Martin Luther King waited that the right government would have been elected to make things change ? No. Do someone like Abbot Pierre waited for the right government to come to fight misery ? No.
I prefer those two guys to any politician which existed.

About brutality, people should remember that the flow of history is that the weak and the fools disappear when the strong survive.

 

The United Kingdom isn't a democracy any more, it's a bureaucracy. And that's why we're in meltdown. I was watching the CEO of the Shrewsbury hospital's breath-taking dead babies scandal on tv news a couple of nights ago; he has presided over 3 years of failures, plus an endemic culture of staff bullying and intimidation, but he said he refuses to step down because he's 'determined to put things right.' In other words totally meaningless waffle to try and justify his staying on in order to carrying on collecting his 6-figure salary. Unfortunately the BBC interviewer didn't ask him the killer question - do you and your family have private health membership?

Incidentally, the 'doorstep' interview took place as he was getting into a £74.000 car to go to 'work' in.

 

That was the period when we had the greatest social mobility and decrease in inequality.

Social Democracy is very different from neo liberalism. Neo liberalism only deals with money and has sold off most of Government. It no longer deals with ideals. It believes that everyone always acts rationally. Why it does not work with democracy could be put most simply by the fact that it took away all regulation and allowed capitalism to do what it wanted. Prior to that during the period of social democracy we had regulations. We were well aware of the need to keep Corporations under control, to stop Monopolies and to make sure there was a free press not least because these things gave rise to WW2. Basically a Democracy serves the people. Each person has an equal say through their one vote. However democracy and capitalism have an difficult relationship. Capitalism is not democratic. It is therefore the job of Government to keep a check on Capital and Corporations to make sure they do not become to powerful that they destroy Democracy. Neo Liberalism ended all that and has brought us back to a similar situation as to prior WW2. I can provide you with papers about the difficult relationship between democracy and capitalism if you want, also ones about how neo liberalism and democracy do not work.

Which is a reaction to neoliberalism. However how you see society in general comes from that. I am guessing you were not an adult when France was a social democracy.

For a meritocratic society the best without question and I think this applies most to the UK is to get rid of fee paying schools. Those with money will always be able to give their children a better start but that would made a considerable difference. One of the strong arguments I heard for this was that if you had only State schools, the rich would kick up like hell if standards were not good so the education for all would be improved.

Here I think you are showing your neo liberalism. I have already explained that neo liberalism which throw all the regulations out the window and democracy do not work. It also has been shown to be ineffective. The problem is our mainstream politicians refuse to acknowledge it. That is why populous politicians including far right are gaining the upper hand. I think it is ridiculous to think freedom to create ecological damage is acceptable. The Freedom you are speaking of is not a freedom I accept. I strongly believe in people having the maximum freedom they can provided their freedom does not interfere with the freedom of another person. Wrecking the environment so that there will be no world for future people most certainly does that. Neo liberalism used the word 'freedom' a lot but it was a psychological ploy. The only people it gave freedom to were those who wanted to make money without responsibility.

That is not true. What was different during social democracy was that people had a sense of belonging to a community and a social conscience and shared values. These things are necessary for any society to survive. Neo liberalism worked on removing that. They got rid of Unions and told people it was each person for themselves. This has not worked. It has resulted in mass inequality, Corporations running Government, massive long term recession and us finding ourselves again in the same political situation as we were prior to WW2 when we were in a similar economic situation.

No, when we had social democracy we valued integrity. What you are talking about is neo liberalism.

Not sure what you are talking about reason there. Ah yes, I seem to remember my argument with you want that that was where your thinking would lead.

It does measure learned activity. Of course those who want to believe in racial supremacy are forever trying to provide evidence that this is not so but that is always repudiated.

Of course we would need to start questioning what intelligence is. Last time I looked the idea appeared to be that there was more difference in intelligence between people of the same 'race' than between different races. The reason why Asian people currently are thought to be the brightest is because their culture puts a very high value on achievement whereas in for instance the US MC parents also put value on play.

IQ tests themselves are tests of learned activity. I know when many years ago I was doing my PGCE I was told that all but about 20% of the people of Britain had what they needed to get into University and to get a degree. The main thing that stopped them was they did not know that. The main thing which is needed to succeed is practice. If you want to achieve at something just keep on practising. That applies to all people and is a very genuine reason why those at the bottom need to be given some help in a meritocratic society. The vast majority of people have much the same potential. What they achieve will depend on what they put in. There are some, the estimate was 20% then, who would not make it and there are a few with natural talent who will outshine all but most of us have the ability. Of course people with autism or Aspergers can have unusual abilities though it costs them in other ways.

Then you need to question again what we are calling intelligence. Here I think is a good way of putting that. When Jung was in the US he met a group of Indians. They told him they thought the white man was mad. Jung asked why. They said because they say they think with their heads. Jung asked what they thought with and they put their hands on their hearts. Jung said he never thought of Western civilisation in the same way again. In Jungian psychology, feeling is a way of thinking and make no mistake, there are these two ways of intelligence. The West unfortunately has tended to be 'in their heads' ignoring feelings. I personally do not think this is very intelligent. (Feeling should not be confused with emotion)

I am not sure the extent to which Switzerlnd actually has Active Democracy. Rousseau thought it was the best form of democracy and those who did not agree should leave for somewhere else. It is in any case impossible in countries as large as ours simply because people do not know enough about what they would vote on to be able to give an educated vote - think Brexit....and to be honest that is one of the reasons why we have temporarily lost genuine democracy. Tocqueville believed that democracy would only work if people were educated on it. He believed central govenment should deal with the smallest amount of necessary things - Finance and Foreign affairs and the rest should be done at the local level as people there knew what they needed. This would work if they argued about it in for instance pubs - in other words Democracy works if the people who have the vote know what they are voting for. This we have not done. It was the intent of politicians that we would do this from the 70's early 80's but we obliged.

Yes I remember that was what you were arguing. Now I must go have people coming and masses to do. I do not know when I will get back

 

But everyone does have the opportunity to apply for jobs. Whether they have a hope in hell of getting them, doesn't stop them applying for them...and many of them have the opportunity to claim some kind of discrimination if they don't get the job they applied for. That isn't meritocracy...that is using the law to defeat meritocracy.

How can you have a meritocracy with employment quotas for minorities and those who feel hard done by? That isn't meriticracy, that is political correctness.

Where is the meritocracy in children not being allowed to fail? Failing is as much a part of the learning process as succeeding, whether that be in education or leisure pursuits. You don't teach a child to be resourceful, persistent, innovative and resilient by tying their shoelaces for them once they are in big school, or buying them shoes with velcro fastenings so they don't have to learn to tie laces. You don't teach a child to cope with adverse outcomes by always letting him/her beat you at Snap . Merited praise promotes self-esteem...unmerited praise promotes a sense of entitlement...and being allowed to accept you will make mistakes and can learn from them builds character. .

I don't agree wholly with that, Alexa, and to an extent agree more with the previous poster's IQ is estimated to be at 70 % genetic, the rest is just training.....and it is the training that counts.

What holds children back when they are tiny is less the lack of healthy diet or the lack of money to give them "a wealth of experience" but more parents who don't offer encouragement and interaction. If the building blocks aren't laid by the time a child starts nursery, and don't continue to be built upon at home until the child starts school, then a child who starts school unable to communicate properly, because nobody but the TV talked to it at home, or in nappies, because parents haven't bothered to toilet train starts with a disadvantage...and then the educators get the blame for their failure to keep up with the rest of the class....not the parents for not doing their job.

Back in the 1950s, few children, where I lived, at least, started school in nappies,without reasonable communication skills and at least a rudimentary take on the 3 Rs but that was maybe because working class parents didn't have much else to do of an evening bar interact with their children, when they came in from playing, given few had TVs and none had mobile phones or games consoles to take their attention away from their offspring. You don't need a high education to encourage your children to be the best they can be...you just need to care more about your children than about having time for yourself while they aren't in bed.

 

No, if they are claiming discrimination that is claiming discrimination.

This is bullshit. Positive Discrimination is against the law in the UK. When people collect details of their ethnicity it is because they are watching discrimination - that is prejudice. If for instance they notice that they have a certain number of people of a particular ethnicity with the same or higher qualifications than the average and very few or none of these people are being invited for interview, they can be pretty sure the reason they are not being invited is due to prejudice. It is perfectly easy to have a guess at people's ethnicity by their name. Details just confirm that. In this article the law society is questioning whether it ought to be mandatory to invite a percentage of people with a specific ethnicity and the same qualifications for an interview, something which the US apparently did in the National Football league. Simply being prepared to interview people - that is giving up one's prejudice for sufficient time to actually see the people was sufficient for appropriate people with the right qualifications to get the job despite their ethnicity. As the article says, the same applies to women.

https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/diversity-quotas-in-the-law--the-issues/5044880.article

Let me say again Positive Discrimination is against the law in the UK

That isn't what was being said. I simply was answering a post which suggested the UK had a belief that people should be equal. I said that the UK had never believed in being an equal society. The most the UK had believed in was working for equality of opportunity and that was as part of us being a meritocratic society. I do not believe this is what we still work for now. One easy way in which this can be seen is that we have virtually no social mobility. In order to be a meriocratic society we need to offer equality of opportunity. This we are not even trying to do.

Odquine whatever your beliefs are, it is research which shows that by the time of 5 a child coming from the poorest family is a year behind one coming from the richest families. I checked and noticed that the same was noted in the US. Given that the first years of life are the most important any society which believed in equality of opportunity would need to do something to sort out this massive inequality which does come from the luck of birth.

I have no idea what you are talking about here. Generally the rest is considered environment - just like we notice that the children born into the poorest families are a year behind those from the richest by the age of 5. My argument was that I do not believe that IQ tests give an indication of innate intelligence. They give an indication of learned activity. That does not seem to differ from what you are saying except you are calling it training rather than environment.

I was going by research, You are going by your personal opinion. You are perfectly allowed that. I am not going to argue it as what I spoke of was research which I believe speaks more than personal opinion. I will say though it is irrelevant whether you want to blame the parents for the children's failure. It is the children who are harmed by it and whether it is according to you bad parenting or finance creating the difficulties or a mixture of the two, you cannot allow children to fall back at this stage and pretend to be a society offering equality of opportunity. I believe sure start courses also offer parenting classes. Most people do want to give their children the best they can. The documentary I watched of parents giving their children tv and even more tablets to watch, concentrated on situations where both parents were working trying to put food on the table and simply were so exhausted they took advantage of them. Kids love tablets and would use them every second of the day if limits were not put on them.

I suspect you are being romantic. However in the 80's when I was living in London there were many activities which children of poor parents could do for free which I think are less available now. For instance my daughter went to gymnastic classes taught by the people who were teaching the olympic team for 50p a class - something which everyone could afford. My grand daughters gymnastic classes cost around £50 a month. Admittedly she is in the Squad so goes to more classes but the reality is there is no concessionary rate for parents who cannot afford this which will be many. Hence if you have a desire to be a gymnast in Scotland you had better hope your parents have a bob or two. That is a simply illustration of where we can or chose not to offer equality of opportunity.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-46684638

britain's pakistani descended home secretary admits that most men in child grooming gangs are of pakistani heritage .

 

The thing with the liberal mindset is the belief that we are all the same 'under the skin', when it couldn't be further from the actuality.

 

Sorry mate, I thought this thread was about the infestation of islam in the UK...but all I read was a heap of garbage...Id be interested to hear from you maybe by PM on the islamic infestation of the UK and if the UK has any chance of survival.....

 

Or in the case of Rochdale, we're all the same 'under the covers'.

Remember, the authorities were treating these 13 year old girls as if they were just common prostitutes so they could turn the other way and not have to look at what was happening beneath their very noses.

If it doesn't look good, liberals don't want to see it.

( just in case there's any confusion, referring to social liberals, more in the American sense of the word)

 

The thread is about paedophilia in Rotherham, although there is a loose connotation with Islam seeing that the offenders are Muslims.

 

With a a dwindling population of westernised people , the UK has little chance of survival . Whoever gets westernised nowadays is only into enjoyment and not ready to bear the responsibility of kids . So the middle eastern people who are ready to produce kids in plenty are going to take over by filling the vaccum left by westernised people whose population is dwindling . Western Europe is doomed to be drowned in the Islamic deluge .

 

.....I just bet you have people looking over your shoulder....watching you....monitoring your every move.....bwahahaha.........and they're coming to take me away to the happy home with trees and flowers and chirping birds and basket weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes and they're coming to take me away ha haaa!! And they're coming to take me away ha haaa...They're coming to take me away ha haaa ho ho hee hee to the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time and I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats.....

with a little help from Napoleon XIV.....

 

We're only one step behind Sweden; Sweden attracted rapists (think stunning young blondes?), and we've attracted child molesters and the world's criminal fraternities (think a useless police force and a lenient penal system?). And who TF would know what else is hitting our shores??!!

 

Well, I suppose they test for ebola, but do you trust the testing...or am I being too facetious...

 

An application for late night Pakistani cafe in Rotheram was denied as the council pretty much now admit Muslim rape gangs are still operating in the town...

Plans for late night cafe in Eastwood rejected over public nuisance and child sexual exploitation fears

“There’s also been significant work in intelligence to suggest that there is the offering of young women to men in vehicles to engage in sexual activity"

https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/local-news/plans-late-night-cafe-eastwood-18672225