Robert Jessel has a useful Critic piece on a familiar problem, the outsourcing of values to third-party organisations. A useful piece because it is a reminder of how intractably useless our government is and will continue to be after the next election.
The slick glide through the institutions
When values are outsourced to third-party organisations, everybody suffers
I am not a philosopher. I don’t have the intelligence or patience to understand the complex origins of social phenomena, including the modern mania for all things “woke”. But seven years as a footsoldier in the culture wars has taught me why the childish inanities of social justice ideology have been allowed to persist in public life for so long.
My first foray into campaigning was Fair Cop, the organisation founded in 2019 to expose the police’s harassment of gender critical women for expressing perfectly legitimate views. Part of my work involved submitting Freedom of Information requests to all 43 constabularies to obtain their spending on Pride-related activities. We discovered almost every police force was signed up to Stonewall, paying upwards of £2,500 a year of taxpayers’ money to display the charity’s logo on their websites.
The whole piece is well worth reading because the childish inanities of social justice ideology have been allowed to persist in public life from the top down. This includes Parliament, all major political parties and the entire permanent administration. Fail to resolve that and nothing is resolved.
This shirking of responsibility infantilises all of us. It sends the message that we are not thinking, moral individuals; that far from being informed citizens with developed consciences, we’re cattle to be driven in the direction of righteousness by self-appointed herdsmen.
Almost exactly a year ago, Sue Gray resigned as the Cabinet Office Director of Propriety and Ethics to join Keir Starmer’s team. As Charles Moore commented at the time: “Ethics are a matter for every single human being and cannot be delegated to a priestly caste, often taxpayer-funded.”
Quite so. You don’t need a Master’s in Philosophy to know what’s right. Nor do you need one to see what’s going so terribly, terribly wrong.
When values are outsourced to third-party organisations, everybody suffers
I am not a philosopher. I don’t have the intelligence or patience to understand the complex origins of social phenomena, including the modern mania for all things “woke”. But seven years as a footsoldier in the culture wars has taught me why the childish inanities of social justice ideology have been allowed to persist in public life for so long.
My first foray into campaigning was Fair Cop, the organisation founded in 2019 to expose the police’s harassment of gender critical women for expressing perfectly legitimate views. Part of my work involved submitting Freedom of Information requests to all 43 constabularies to obtain their spending on Pride-related activities. We discovered almost every police force was signed up to Stonewall, paying upwards of £2,500 a year of taxpayers’ money to display the charity’s logo on their websites.
The whole piece is well worth reading because the childish inanities of social justice ideology have been allowed to persist in public life from the top down. This includes Parliament, all major political parties and the entire permanent administration. Fail to resolve that and nothing is resolved.
This shirking of responsibility infantilises all of us. It sends the message that we are not thinking, moral individuals; that far from being informed citizens with developed consciences, we’re cattle to be driven in the direction of righteousness by self-appointed herdsmen.
Almost exactly a year ago, Sue Gray resigned as the Cabinet Office Director of Propriety and Ethics to join Keir Starmer’s team. As Charles Moore commented at the time: “Ethics are a matter for every single human being and cannot be delegated to a priestly caste, often taxpayer-funded.”
Quite so. You don’t need a Master’s in Philosophy to know what’s right. Nor do you need one to see what’s going so terribly, terribly wrong.
4 comments:
But to a certain type of person the lure of 'the Collective' is very strong and cannot be easily 'adjusted' once you have been assimilated.
With the march through the institutions coming to an end there is no more room to influence the outcomes. The 'means' have justified the 'ends', even if the justification if palpably ridiculous.
I wonder if there are any copyright issues to making up 'BORG' stamps to decorate official communications with?
Part of my work involved submitting Freedom of Information requests to all 43 constabularies to obtain their spending on Pride-related activities. We discovered almost every police force was signed up to Stonewall, paying upwards of £2,500 a year of taxpayers’ money to display the charity’s logo on their websites.
"Nice little constabulary you've got here, Officer. Be a shame if anything happened to it. Like rumours spreading that you weren't gay-friendly, demonstrations, legal cases, all that sort of thing...I think we can come to an arrangement, though.
Let me hold your helmet while you think about it..."
'It's only taxpayer's money', whinged the civil servant as he wedged up his pension prospects to yet another eye-watering milestone...
DJ - if the march through the institutions has come to an end, any further tweaks to the ideology could be difficult to implement without looking like a Monty Python sketch. Although it isn't far from that now.
Sam - that seems to be how it went and I bet they have been cursing themselves that the demand was so low.
Scrobs - one reason to cut their numbers is just to enjoy the cutting.
Post a Comment