The Trouble With Misfits and Weirdo's

Apart from the fact that sometimes 'misfits and weirdo's' get elected, yesterday's attempt by Dominic Cummings to install another one in No 10 amply demonstrates that even if ever-so bright, they haven't quite grasped the brutal realities of the politics being practiced by our new totalitarian regime, together with the effect of counter-measures by a well pissed-off and excluded media. 

Despite Boris's refusal to denounce the 'old media stuff' of Andrew Sabisky, become the story and you find yourself being very firmly encouraged to walk in front of a bus. In addition to complaining about 'character assasination', apparently he's complaining about out of context 'selective quoting' as well and outlined here in the Guardian:-   

Andrew Sabisky, who resigned as a No 10 adviser on Monday night, had been criticised for a series of controversial opinions he had expressed publicly.

He claimed in 2014 in a blogpost that there was a racial difference in intelligence:

"There are excellent reasons to think the very real racial differences in intelligence are significantly – even mostly – genetic in origin, though the degree is of course a very serious subject of scholarly debate.

That debate busily bustles on, and I’m sure we’ll have more precise answers in another 5 years or so, though whether the politicians will pay any attention is debatable.

It would be nice if they did from the standpoint of immigration control (in the UK, that is)."

He suggested in a 2014 blogpost reply that black Americans are on average less intelligent than white Americans:

"If the mean black American IQ is (best estimate based on a century’s worth of data) around 85, as compared to a mean white American IQ of 100, then if IQ is normally distributed (which it is), you will see a far greater percentage of blacks than whites in the range of IQs 75 or below, at which point we are close to the typical boundary for mild mental retardation. Typically criminals with IQs below 70 cannot be executed in the USA, I believe.

That parsimoniously explains the greater diagnostic rates for blacks when it comes to ‘Intellectual disability’.

Sabisky suggested introducing compulsory contraception under a blogpost by Dominic Cummings in 2014:

"One way to get around the problems of unplanned pregnancies creating a permanent underclass would be to legally enforce universal uptake of long-term contraception at the onset of puberty. Vaccination laws give it a precedent, I would argue."

He proposed allocation of government money based on IQ tests for all 11-year-olds under a blogpost by Dominic Cummings in 2015:

"Why not just give everyone an IQ test at 11 and give secondary schools pupil premium money based on the number of below-average-ability students they get – the correlation between IQ [at] 11 and GCSE score 5 years later is a hefty .8!”

In a review of the book The Welfare Trait by Dr Adam Perkins in 2016 he suggested that benefits claimants could be discouraged from having lots of children:

"A large body of evidence, which Perkins reviews, supports the intuitive idea that habitual welfare claimants tend to be less conscientious and agreeable than the average person.

Such habitual claimants also tend to reproduce at higher rates than the general population, a pattern found across nations and time periods … With praiseworthy boldness, Perkins gets off the fence and recommends concrete policy solutions for the problems that he identifies, arguing that governments should try to adjust the generosity of welfare payments to the point where habitual claimants do not have greater fertility than those customarily employed … The explicit targeting of fertility as a goal of welfare policy, however, goes beyond current government policy.

Perkins perhaps should also have argued for measures to boost the fertility of those with pro-social personalities, such as deregulation of the childcare and housing markets to cut the costs of sustainable family formation.”

On the Good Judgment Project website in 2016 he argued that Turkey joining the EU should be a non-starter over its “troublesome” migrants:

"The EU already has enough of a problem with migration – the entire population of Turkey being granted freedom to move to any European nation is absolutely unthinkable. Giving Turkey EU membership would be a bit like drinking a bottle of bleach in an effort to cure your appendicitis."

In Schools Week 2016 he argued that drugs for narcolepsy could be used to improve brain function, even though there are health risks:

"From a societal perspective the benefits of giving everyone modafinil once a week are probably worth a dead kid once a year.”

Sabisky questioned in a book review in 2014 of Tatu Vanhanen’s Ethnic Conflicts whether a growing Muslim population could be met with violent resistance, using a discredited statistic:

"Will institutionalized power-sharing (as in Northern Ireland) become the norm in the West – not between Catholic and Protestant, but between Muslim and non-Muslim (by around 2050 Britain is forecast to be a majority Islamic nation on current birthrate trends)? How much internal resistance will there be to the adaptation of current institutions? How much of the resistance, and counter-resistance, will be violent?”

--oo00oo-- 

Of course the attempt to install advisers like Andrew Sabisky serves to confirm much of what many of us know only too well about the very nasty party that has just won a great election victory. The attacks on the BBC, the brutal sacking of any dissenting voices within the government, the exclusion of unsympathetic media and dark hints about constitutional and judicial 'reform' all point alarmingly to Fascist leanings and all decent-minded people should be alarmed. Actually it raises something that's been bothering me a great deal for some time and I don't think I'm alone.

We're all aware of the monumental changes that have afflicted this profession over the last 10 years or more and particularly the growing cultural and practicing gulf between the new and old attitudes and beliefs. Many of us 'old-timers' feel the essential core beliefs that underpin the probation ethos have been eroded almost to the point of extinction and the lead-up to the recent General Election crystalised that view for many in some very angry exchanges on Facebook when some practitioners began voicing intentions to vote Conservative. 

Many, including myself, found it very hard indeed to reconcile that stated intention with the policies and actions of a political party that had so demonstrably harmed the vast majority of the people we work with. The situation for me was very eloquently put by the following statement and I very much hope the author does not mind my reproducing it anonymously here:- 

"Yes, I fully expect this to be seen as a monumental flounce and I'm aware that I don't need to announce my exit from this super group, but I'm going to do it anyway as what I have to say is more important than ever.

Whilst I respect people have the right to support which ever political party, it is simply unconscionable to support the Tory party at this election, even more so to be vocal about it whilst spewing out right wing media nonsense.

It's highly likely that most of us belong to a union and have, at one time or another, relied upon their help and support or benefited from their efforts in terms of pay/working rights and so to then support a political party that hates unions and the power they give workers, is hypocrisy of the highest order.

This is then exacerbated by the fact that, as front line workers working with some of the most disadvantaged, disenfranchised and marginalised vulnerable adults in the country, we will have seen first hand the devastation brought upon these individuals and communities under the ideological pursuit of a politically driven austerity agenda. All whilst the very richest benefited from the tax cuts and breaks that helped them see their income grow by over 185%.

And that is all without touching on the absolute ruin the Tory party has inflicted on the criminal justice system as a whole.

Over the past decade the Tory party has brought this country to it's knees, public services have been cut to the bone, an extra 130,000 people have died thanks to austerity, the NHS is close to collapse, our police force has been decimated, libraries closed, A&E departments closed, ambulances stations closed, 7000 hospital beds lost, billions cut from the social care budget, our children's education budgets slashed or moved into private and barely accountable 'academies', unprecedented number of food banks and food bank usage, a 400% rise in homelessness in some areas, council budgets destroyed, the list goes on and on. Not to mention the fact that your pay has been held back by them!

If you can sit and honestly read all the havoc and total misery that has been inflicted on this country since 2010 and think 'yeah, I'm voting Tory' then we have very little in common and I'd rather not spend my time listening or reading the right wing media rubbish you regurgitate, without an iota of critical thinking, to justify your position."