Slowly, But Surely, Common Sense Returns

A Christian school worker who was sacked after she shared Facebook posts raising concerns about lessons in LGBTQ+ relationships for primary schoolchildren has won her battle in the court of appeal. Kristie Higgs was dismissed from her role as a pastoral administrator and work experience manager at Farmor’s, a secondary school in Fairford, Gloucestershire, in 2019 after an anonymous complaint from a parent at the school. On Wednesday, three court of appeal judges ruled in her favour, describing the decision to sack her for gross misconduct as “unlawfully discriminatory” and “disproportionate”. Higgs welcomed the ruling as “a landmark day for Christian freedoms and free speech”.

And it doesn't stop at schools - the world of business is shaking off its DEI chains too! 

Say what you will about Goldman Sachs, the company goes with the current. So when it starts to renege on DEI (Diversity, Equality and Inclusion) initiatives, we should, I think, take note. Previously the firm’s policy had been only to take to market companies which had two ethnic minority board members, one of them a woman; now it’s dropping that requirement. One reason, says the company, is that it’s job done; boards are already sufficiently diverse so their diktat isn’t needed to bring about change.

And we can see the results all around us.... 

The reason Goldman Sachs is not giving for the move is the influence of Donald Trump. The President has made clear that the carnival is over for the DEI enforcers; it’s not going to be a reason to recruit or retain staff at government level, and corporate America is joyfully following his lead. Deloitte’s, the London based global accountants, is dropping the insanely annoying policy of requiring staff to provide their preferred pronouns. All small stuff, but all blowing in the same direction.

Hurrah!  

But the question is, will the UK follow suit?

The old saying goes 'America sneezes, and Britain catches a cold' so...yes! And it can't come soon enough. 

Goldman Sachs has a collective policy on governance for the US and Europe, so the UK is on this front, simply being drawn into the US current. Jason Tarry, the chairman of John Lewis, told my colleague, this paper’s business editor, Jonathan Prynn, that he has no intention of backing down on the diversity and inclusion stuff, because it’s part of what he sees as the company’s identity.

Which is why even a mighty company like John Lewis is no longer what it once was. 

Me, I can’t wait to see public bodies, including the BBC and publicly funded arts bodies, follow suit and abandon their stupid email signoffs, which does nothing except to annoy recipients (well, me). I would be very glad if every institution appointed people to jobs on that old metric, merit, rather than on the basis of DEI. In short, I think Donald Trump is onto something. But it’ll take far longer for the cultural rollback to happen here.

But every movement has to start somewhere.... 

And Why Would They Do That, When DOGE Has Shown How They’ve Been Wasted?

 

These are all good reasons to withhold your taxes. Can the tactic work? Is it right? Morally and politically motivated tax nonpayment has an honorable, if not always successful, history. After the Roman empire’s destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 AD Jewish people refused to pay Rome’s “temple tax”. Rome responded by destroying more temples. Gandhi’s salt tax protest, on the other hand, was the first step toward India’s independence from the British empire. The American Revolution was a tax revolt, and that worked – although some colonists resisted taxes levied by the revolutionaries and, after independence, the states as well.

Well, indeed! It's almost as if, when you show people how to keep their own money, they want to continue to do so, isn't it? 

One of the diabolical features of what geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls an “anti-state state” like our current regime is its ability to turn acts of resistance against the state against themselves. Principled prosecutors and agency heads resign rather than carry out the president’s illegal orders – leaving only Maga flunkies in their places. Civil servants quit rather than pervert the services or science they’ve devoted their careers to – leaving the work unguarded and the workforce decimated, precisely as the wrecking crew intends.

This is the modern interpretation of 'decimated', despite the actual effects being closer to the original 10% reduction. 

Thanks to intentional staff shortages at the IRS, your missing tax payment might go unnoticed, just as the Trump family’s multibillion-dollar fraud escaped the agency’s auditors for decades. But if tax evasion is a secretive act, tax resistance is civil disobedience, a public, political act. The reason to withhold your taxes is not to cheat the government of much-needed funds. It is not even to cheat the crooks now running the country, satisfying as that may be. It is to expose the criminality of what is being done – and not done – with the money the state has a legal and moral obligation to collect and then to distribute, to serve all the people.

Can anyone imagine what this idiot would have said had Republican voters decided to withold their taxes rather than see them spent on Biden's pet prtojects? Sher'd have demanded they be sent to Guanatanamo!  

"Oh No, They're Onto Us!"

 It seems some progressives are sensing which way the wind's blowing...

The exchange set in motion a predictable chain of events: Fox began a tour of Britain’s TV and podcast studios, making a series of increasingly reactionary and attention-seeking statements. Across left-leaning social media, meanwhile, Fox was mocked with a mix of amusement, disdain and pity.

And that was noted. What was also noted was that the man on the Clapham Omnibus...wasn't mocking. He was agreeing.

But the Left think that's something they can brush off, to stay cocooned in their little bubble. Ellie, however, is aware of the pitfalls of this approach:

But focusing on the shallowness of Fox’s opinions elides the most important element of the Question Time spectacle: the fact that a significant chunk of the audience groaned as soon as the phrase “white privilege” was uttered. Fox was not the only person in that studio who was weary of contemporary antiracist discourse, and he wasn’t the only person willing to show it.

The fact that she describes this as 'more people willing to show it' is the key: the Left is losing its power to scold and silence.

They can't say they weren't warned - call everything you don't like 'racist' and pretty soon, people stop reflexively cringing at that word.

...the idea that ordinary people are being driven into the arms of authoritarianism because of an excitable article they read on the internet is facile – and any progressives adopting it should ask themselves why they are parroting arguments that are largely advanced by the far right.

Ah, yes, the progressives see the hand of the 'far right' behind everything. But it's not 'far right' to think that the constant denigration of the majority population is not helping discourse, is it?

Progressives need to wise up to the fact that they are losing this argument and decide what they are going to do in response.

I think they have decided, Ellie; it's 'double down and keep on sneering'.