There will have to be a re-think (2 Viewers)

better days

Well-Known Member
Go on... just say it
I'll leave it to Mtathew Syed who is better qualified than I am

Don’t speak in code on race. Truth saves lives

Ethnic differences are a big factor in the virus risk. Let’s be open about it
Matthew Syed

Sunday August 02 2020, 12.00pm, The Sunday Times

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six...k-in-code-on-race-truth-saves-lives-rd7tr05ss
https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?te...k-in-code-on-race-truth-saves-lives-rd7tr05ss
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sha...k-in-code-on-race-truth-saves-lives-rd7tr05ss



We may disagree about the government’s Covid strategy and the quality of the communication. We may even disagree about the timing of the decision late on Thursday to restrict much of the north of England, although I found it rather hypocritical that many who were blaming the government for acting too slowly at the start of the crisis are now angered they acted too fast.

But we can surely all agree that the announcement itself was a farce, a pantomime of Orwellian proportions. Here was a government imposing restrictions on a region where transmission is rising faster within some Asian communities, and on the eve of the most important festival in Islam, yet Matt Hancock said nothing of this, talking instead of transmission “between families” and “multigenerational households”. This was ministerial statement by code.


Over the next 48 hours, information came out in dribs and drabs — but not from ministers. The director of public health for Blackburn with Darwen said that 79% of recent cases in the predominantly white city had been among people from a south Asian background. Statistics from Public Health England for the week ending July 26 showed that 1,369 of those testing positive in England (37%) were Asian or Asian-British — a group that made up 7.5% of the population in the last census. Shouldn’t ministers have helped us interpret these statistics, rather than pretend they didn’t exist?
Some will doubtless applaud the government’s approach. After all, ministers are worried about igniting a backlash against Asians. They may also be fearful about being perceived as racist themselves. But shouldn’t we have learnt that racism is inflamed not by information, but by disinformation? Whatever the short-term risks from explaining the facts, they are far outweighed by the insidious decoupling of meaning from reality, creating the space for conspiracy theories to grow and mutate. Racism thrives in the gaps left open by right-minded people who fear inconvenient truths.
Among the litany of recent disasters, one can’t overlook various grooming scandals, including in Rotherham and Rochdale, where the unwillingness to discuss the ethnic dimension led to a virulent backlash against the Pakistani community that would have been inconceivable had a grown-up debate taken place earlier. It also led to more vulnerable youngsters being abused.

Across the Atlantic, one might also place police violence in this category: few pundits have had the courage to share peer-reviewed data — albeit contested — that lethal violence against black people is roughly the same as that against whites if the prevalence of crime in the two populations is taken into account. Why does this matter? Because the fearless analysis of data is the starting point for solutions — a point that should be embraced by the right and left.
Going back to Covid-19, nobody objects to ministers chronicling regional variation in the transmission of the virus. Indeed, this is what offers the best hope for a targeted approach. Yet the fact that they feel unable to talk about ethnic variation in transmission — information of lifesaving significance for the communities most at risk — shows how entangled we have become in the fine mesh of political correctness.





One of the most beautiful things about my father’s side of the family (he hails from Pakistan) is the deep love and respect for older people. It is rare to put parents into nursing homes because of the duty to care for them at home. But this is precisely why nothing would have had a deeper impact on Asian communities than a frank statement about how this cultural strength can, in the context of an epidemic, prove perilous. By tiptoeing around racial sensibilities, Hancock will, I fear, cost lives.
Allow me to restate: plain talking isn’t merely of great utility, it is also the surest antidote to bigotry. Why? Because by plainly stating the facts, we are likely to reach a more objective analysis. Craig Whittaker, one of the more hapless Tory MPs, explained the higher transmission among some ethnic groups as a disregard for rules on social distancing. “[Black and minority ethnic] communities are not taking this seriously enough,” he told LBC radio.
Yet while this may be a factor (some community leaders also made this point), I doubt he would have collapsed so complex a problem onto so simplistic a cause had the government set out a more comprehensive analysis from the outset. Asians — a diverse group — are, on average, more likely to work in frontline professions where social distancing is difficult, and to live in overcrowded housing. Whittaker was scarcely challenged by his interviewer.
The point is that data is not the enemy of rationality; it is the friend. This is particularly true during a pandemic — we need to know about risks of transmission in family settings, at meatpacking facilities and when people (mostly young and white) congregate on beaches or at raves and pubs. By understanding these patterns, we can take wiser precautions.
Of course, advocating for open discussion may seem quaint in a post-truth age. But look at the evidence. If you want to understand the growth of anti-immigrant sentiment in the UK, you are looking in the wrong place if you focus on Nigel Farage or even Tommy Robinson. No, this was seeded by Tony Blair and his mendacious silence about European Union enlargement in 2004, a topic that ministers were in effect barred from speaking about.
This fanned a sense of grievance, partly because nobody was addressing people’s concerns, but also because nobody was sharing hard data on the economic benefits of immigration, the net effect on the public purse and the heroic work performed by immigrants in the NHS and other services. In this context, it is worth recalling that the first four doctors who died from the coronavirus in the UK — Alfa Saadu, Amged el-Hawrani, Adil El Tayar and Habib Zaidi — were all from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Or take the rise of Donald Trump. He has got away with serial bigotry precisely because he could position it as an antidote to a climate of political correctness that has stifled free speech.
This is where the suppression of open dialogue ultimately leads. Polarisation. Post-truth. A clown in the White House clinging on to power. And, yes, a British minister unable to state a key reason for restrictions during a pandemic, leading to the viral dissemination of tropes and conspiracies.
Political correctness started out as a wonderful thing. Most people were delighted that the n-word and other hateful phrases had been removed from public discourse. But by taking it too far, we have exacerbated the problems it was designed to solve. This is the elephant in the room, the truth around which all right-minded people should coalesce.
As Orwell put it: “Political chaos is connected with the decay of language . . . one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.”
@MatthewSyed
 

CCFC54321

Well-Known Member
I'll leave it to Mtathew Syed who is better qualified than I am

Don’t speak in code on race. Truth saves lives

Ethnic differences are a big factor in the virus risk. Let’s be open about it
Matthew Syed

Sunday August 02 2020, 12.00pm, The Sunday Times

Don’t speak in code on race. Truth saves lives
https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?te...k-in-code-on-race-truth-saves-lives-rd7tr05ss
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sha...k-in-code-on-race-truth-saves-lives-rd7tr05ss
We may disagree about the government’s Covid strategy and the quality of the communication. We may even disagree about the timing of the decision late on Thursday to restrict much of the north of England, although I found it rather hypocritical that many who were blaming the government for acting too slowly at the start of the crisis are now angered they acted too fast.

But we can surely all agree that the announcement itself was a farce, a pantomime of Orwellian proportions. Here was a government imposing restrictions on a region where transmission is rising faster within some Asian communities, and on the eve of the most important festival in Islam, yet Matt Hancock said nothing of this, talking instead of transmission “between families” and “multigenerational households”. This was ministerial statement by code.


Over the next 48 hours, information came out in dribs and drabs — but not from ministers. The director of public health for Blackburn with Darwen said that 79% of recent cases in the predominantly white city had been among people from a south Asian background. Statistics from Public Health England for the week ending July 26 showed that 1,369 of those testing positive in England (37%) were Asian or Asian-British — a group that made up 7.5% of the population in the last census. Shouldn’t ministers have helped us interpret these statistics, rather than pretend they didn’t exist?
Some will doubtless applaud the government’s approach. After all, ministers are worried about igniting a backlash against Asians. They may also be fearful about being perceived as racist themselves. But shouldn’t we have learnt that racism is inflamed not by information, but by disinformation? Whatever the short-term risks from explaining the facts, they are far outweighed by the insidious decoupling of meaning from reality, creating the space for conspiracy theories to grow and mutate. Racism thrives in the gaps left open by right-minded people who fear inconvenient truths.
Among the litany of recent disasters, one can’t overlook various grooming scandals, including in Rotherham and Rochdale, where the unwillingness to discuss the ethnic dimension led to a virulent backlash against the Pakistani community that would have been inconceivable had a grown-up debate taken place earlier. It also led to more vulnerable youngsters being abused.

Across the Atlantic, one might also place police violence in this category: few pundits have had the courage to share peer-reviewed data — albeit contested — that lethal violence against black people is roughly the same as that against whites if the prevalence of crime in the two populations is taken into account. Why does this matter? Because the fearless analysis of data is the starting point for solutions — a point that should be embraced by the right and left.
Going back to Covid-19, nobody objects to ministers chronicling regional variation in the transmission of the virus. Indeed, this is what offers the best hope for a targeted approach. Yet the fact that they feel unable to talk about ethnic variation in transmission — information of lifesaving significance for the communities most at risk — shows how entangled we have become in the fine mesh of political correctness.

One of the most beautiful things about my father’s side of the family (he hails from Pakistan) is the deep love and respect for older people. It is rare to put parents into nursing homes because of the duty to care for them at home. But this is precisely why nothing would have had a deeper impact on Asian communities than a frank statement about how this cultural strength can, in the context of an epidemic, prove perilous. By tiptoeing around racial sensibilities, Hancock will, I fear, cost lives.
Allow me to restate: plain talking isn’t merely of great utility, it is also the surest antidote to bigotry. Why? Because by plainly stating the facts, we are likely to reach a more objective analysis. Craig Whittaker, one of the more hapless Tory MPs, explained the higher transmission among some ethnic groups as a disregard for rules on social distancing. “[Black and minority ethnic] communities are not taking this seriously enough,” he told LBC radio.
Yet while this may be a factor (some community leaders also made this point), I doubt he would have collapsed so complex a problem onto so simplistic a cause had the government set out a more comprehensive analysis from the outset. Asians — a diverse group — are, on average, more likely to work in frontline professions where social distancing is difficult, and to live in overcrowded housing. Whittaker was scarcely challenged by his interviewer.
The point is that data is not the enemy of rationality; it is the friend. This is particularly true during a pandemic — we need to know about risks of transmission in family settings, at meatpacking facilities and when people (mostly young and white) congregate on beaches or at raves and pubs. By understanding these patterns, we can take wiser precautions.
Of course, advocating for open discussion may seem quaint in a post-truth age. But look at the evidence. If you want to understand the growth of anti-immigrant sentiment in the UK, you are looking in the wrong place if you focus on Nigel Farage or even Tommy Robinson. No, this was seeded by Tony Blair and his mendacious silence about European Union enlargement in 2004, a topic that ministers were in effect barred from speaking about.
This fanned a sense of grievance, partly because nobody was addressing people’s concerns, but also because nobody was sharing hard data on the economic benefits of immigration, the net effect on the public purse and the heroic work performed by immigrants in the NHS and other services. In this context, it is worth recalling that the first four doctors who died from the coronavirus in the UK — Alfa Saadu, Amged el-Hawrani, Adil El Tayar and Habib Zaidi — were all from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Or take the rise of Donald Trump. He has got away with serial bigotry precisely because he could position it as an antidote to a climate of political correctness that has stifled free speech.
This is where the suppression of open dialogue ultimately leads. Polarisation. Post-truth. A clown in the White House clinging on to power. And, yes, a British minister unable to state a key reason for restrictions during a pandemic, leading to the viral dissemination of tropes and conspiracies.
Political correctness started out as a wonderful thing. Most people were delighted that the n-word and other hateful phrases had been removed from public discourse. But by taking it too far, we have exacerbated the problems it was designed to solve. This is the elephant in the room, the truth around which all right-minded people should coalesce.
As Orwell put it: “Political chaos is connected with the decay of language . . . one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.”
@MatthewSyed
Excellent article.
 

Samo

Well-Known Member
I'll leave it to Mtathew Syed who is better qualified than I am

Don’t speak in code on race. Truth saves lives

Ethnic differences are a big factor in the virus risk. Let’s be open about it
Matthew Syed

Sunday August 02 2020, 12.00pm, The Sunday Times

Don’t speak in code on race. Truth saves lives
https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?te...k-in-code-on-race-truth-saves-lives-rd7tr05ss
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sha...k-in-code-on-race-truth-saves-lives-rd7tr05ss
We may disagree about the government’s Covid strategy and the quality of the communication. We may even disagree about the timing of the decision late on Thursday to restrict much of the north of England, although I found it rather hypocritical that many who were blaming the government for acting too slowly at the start of the crisis are now angered they acted too fast.

But we can surely all agree that the announcement itself was a farce, a pantomime of Orwellian proportions. Here was a government imposing restrictions on a region where transmission is rising faster within some Asian communities, and on the eve of the most important festival in Islam, yet Matt Hancock said nothing of this, talking instead of transmission “between families” and “multigenerational households”. This was ministerial statement by code.


Over the next 48 hours, information came out in dribs and drabs — but not from ministers. The director of public health for Blackburn with Darwen said that 79% of recent cases in the predominantly white city had been among people from a south Asian background. Statistics from Public Health England for the week ending July 26 showed that 1,369 of those testing positive in England (37%) were Asian or Asian-British — a group that made up 7.5% of the population in the last census. Shouldn’t ministers have helped us interpret these statistics, rather than pretend they didn’t exist?
Some will doubtless applaud the government’s approach. After all, ministers are worried about igniting a backlash against Asians. They may also be fearful about being perceived as racist themselves. But shouldn’t we have learnt that racism is inflamed not by information, but by disinformation? Whatever the short-term risks from explaining the facts, they are far outweighed by the insidious decoupling of meaning from reality, creating the space for conspiracy theories to grow and mutate. Racism thrives in the gaps left open by right-minded people who fear inconvenient truths.
Among the litany of recent disasters, one can’t overlook various grooming scandals, including in Rotherham and Rochdale, where the unwillingness to discuss the ethnic dimension led to a virulent backlash against the Pakistani community that would have been inconceivable had a grown-up debate taken place earlier. It also led to more vulnerable youngsters being abused.

Across the Atlantic, one might also place police violence in this category: few pundits have had the courage to share peer-reviewed data — albeit contested — that lethal violence against black people is roughly the same as that against whites if the prevalence of crime in the two populations is taken into account. Why does this matter? Because the fearless analysis of data is the starting point for solutions — a point that should be embraced by the right and left.
Going back to Covid-19, nobody objects to ministers chronicling regional variation in the transmission of the virus. Indeed, this is what offers the best hope for a targeted approach. Yet the fact that they feel unable to talk about ethnic variation in transmission — information of lifesaving significance for the communities most at risk — shows how entangled we have become in the fine mesh of political correctness.

One of the most beautiful things about my father’s side of the family (he hails from Pakistan) is the deep love and respect for older people. It is rare to put parents into nursing homes because of the duty to care for them at home. But this is precisely why nothing would have had a deeper impact on Asian communities than a frank statement about how this cultural strength can, in the context of an epidemic, prove perilous. By tiptoeing around racial sensibilities, Hancock will, I fear, cost lives.
Allow me to restate: plain talking isn’t merely of great utility, it is also the surest antidote to bigotry. Why? Because by plainly stating the facts, we are likely to reach a more objective analysis. Craig Whittaker, one of the more hapless Tory MPs, explained the higher transmission among some ethnic groups as a disregard for rules on social distancing. “[Black and minority ethnic] communities are not taking this seriously enough,” he told LBC radio.
Yet while this may be a factor (some community leaders also made this point), I doubt he would have collapsed so complex a problem onto so simplistic a cause had the government set out a more comprehensive analysis from the outset. Asians — a diverse group — are, on average, more likely to work in frontline professions where social distancing is difficult, and to live in overcrowded housing. Whittaker was scarcely challenged by his interviewer.
The point is that data is not the enemy of rationality; it is the friend. This is particularly true during a pandemic — we need to know about risks of transmission in family settings, at meatpacking facilities and when people (mostly young and white) congregate on beaches or at raves and pubs. By understanding these patterns, we can take wiser precautions.
Of course, advocating for open discussion may seem quaint in a post-truth age. But look at the evidence. If you want to understand the growth of anti-immigrant sentiment in the UK, you are looking in the wrong place if you focus on Nigel Farage or even Tommy Robinson. No, this was seeded by Tony Blair and his mendacious silence about European Union enlargement in 2004, a topic that ministers were in effect barred from speaking about.
This fanned a sense of grievance, partly because nobody was addressing people’s concerns, but also because nobody was sharing hard data on the economic benefits of immigration, the net effect on the public purse and the heroic work performed by immigrants in the NHS and other services. In this context, it is worth recalling that the first four doctors who died from the coronavirus in the UK — Alfa Saadu, Amged el-Hawrani, Adil El Tayar and Habib Zaidi — were all from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Or take the rise of Donald Trump. He has got away with serial bigotry precisely because he could position it as an antidote to a climate of political correctness that has stifled free speech.
This is where the suppression of open dialogue ultimately leads. Polarisation. Post-truth. A clown in the White House clinging on to power. And, yes, a British minister unable to state a key reason for restrictions during a pandemic, leading to the viral dissemination of tropes and conspiracies.
Political correctness started out as a wonderful thing. Most people were delighted that the n-word and other hateful phrases had been removed from public discourse. But by taking it too far, we have exacerbated the problems it was designed to solve. This is the elephant in the room, the truth around which all right-minded people should coalesce.
As Orwell put it: “Political chaos is connected with the decay of language . . . one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.”
@MatthewSyed

And yet speaking in code was exactly what you were doing, and even now you still wont say it yourself, choosing the safe option of quoting someone else.
 

CCFC54321

Well-Known Member
I think your being hard on better days. It’s a sensitive subject and it shouldn’t be. No wonder people avoid the subject.
 

better days

Well-Known Member
My initial thought too lol

Look I have my thoughts on this one but let's save it for off topic forum and get this one back on topic
You know nothing about me
I'd read Matthew Syed's article yesterday which is thoughtful and given his heritage worth consideration
I've read several of Syed's books and have huge respect for the guy on every level
These are his thoughts which I posted without comment
 

Samo

Well-Known Member
You know nothing about me
I'd read Matthew Syed's article yesterday which is thoughtful and given his heritage worth consideration
I've read several of Syed's books and have huge respect for the guy on every level
These are his thoughts which I posted without comment

But why dance around the topic and then post an article advocating straight talking?
 

Samo

Well-Known Member
Our shit situation could work to our advantage big time. No stadium to upkeep and we're building a championship squad with the knowledge of the ongoing situation and can budget accordingly.

Anyhoo... finally things could be in our favour; strange how things turn out.

There you go... back on topic!
 

better days

Well-Known Member
But why dance around the topic and then post an article advocating straight talking?
I'm not political
I've read several of Syed's books including 'Black Box Thinking' which was a revelation
Anyway this is the last I'll say on the subject
I just want the authorities to take whatever action is necessary to deal with this pandemic
 

Sky_Blue_Dreamer

Well-Known Member
I'm not political
I've read several of Syed's books including 'Black Box Thinking' which was a revelation
Anyway this is the last I'll say on the subject
I just want the authorities to take whatever action is necessary to deal with this pandemic

Main thing I took from that book was to take everyday as it comes.

or to 'Ride on Time'
 

covcity4life

Well-Known Member
Calderdale is one of the area's locked down, which is over 91% white. Biggest town in Calderdale is Halifax which is 87% white.

Coventry - 73% white and doesn't have a problem.

Not sure it's necessarily an ethnicity thing.
It isn't. Dangerous to give people a scapegoat imo
You know nothing about me
I'd read Matthew Syed's article yesterday which is thoughtful and given his heritage worth consideration
I've read several of Syed's books and have huge respect for the guy on every level
These are his thoughts which I posted without comment
I havnt said i know anything about you mate.

A discussion for another place. No hard feelings on my part
 

CCFC88

Well-Known Member
Pricing for ifollow will be interesting, I cant see it being the £10 per game it has been previously, considering most will watch with family of friends, each "buy" will likely be watched by say £40-50 worth of "lost/missed" ticket revenue.

Expect the membership Boddy has talked about will get you a discounted rate for ifollow, for instance annual membership £50 and get each game on ifollow for £15. Non memberships charged at £20 maybe.

Memberships also promised a discount on remaining games if/when we are allowed back in.

Needs some creative thinking to maximise the opportunity but there is a potential for the club to make revenue off 100% of games as opposed to just the home games.

It will not fill the hole of missing 8000 home fans and increased away attendances at StAns but it will help.

Oh, the technology has to be greatly improved on last season, it wasn't the clubs fault but cannot have fans sat watching an "apologies for this technical problem" still screen when they're forking out decent money, they just wont do it again
 

Legia Sky Blue

Well-Known Member
Don't see they can justify any more than £10 per match for ifollow. Huge pay per view boxing events don't charge more than that for a much more reliable service. They will just have to suck up joint households watching it, but clamp down heavy on any pubs/ clubs or illegal streams that aren't paying their way. You can't charge people more money on the presumption that large groups will gather round single laptops to save a few bucks. If they market it well I can see them doing ok out of it anyway, until fans can return to games anyway.
 

Grendel

Well-Known Member
Calderdale is one of the area's locked down, which is over 91% white. Biggest town in Calderdale is Halifax which is 87% white.

Coventry - 73% white and doesn't have a problem.

Not sure it's necessarily an ethnicity thing.

Doesn’t the kast census indicate the Muslim population in Calderdale is twice the national average?
 

David O'Day

Well-Known Member
True
But the Victorian properties have mostly become gentrified

And loads of them are multi occupancy dwellings. MODs are the only way normal people can live in London. When I was living in Clapham there were loads of MODs about
 

robbiekeane

Well-Known Member
But why dance around the topic and then post an article advocating straight talking?
Because he's not a politician paid to do that and he doesn't answer to yourself? He's also admitted he is not qualified to start defending a topic but thought he would post some information from someone who is....
 

Grendel

Well-Known Member
Don't know what the national average is but according to Calderdale council website Muslims account for 7.8% of population.

indeed
 

Samo

Well-Known Member
Because he's not a politician paid to do that and he doesn't answer to yourself? He's also admitted he is not qualified to start defending a topic but thought he would post some information from someone who is....

Well he's on here expressing 'political' opinions is he not?
If he's not prepared to defend his position he should not have raised it.
All I'm doing is calling out some hypocrisy
 

robbiekeane

Well-Known Member
Well he's on here expressing 'political' opinions is he not?
If he's not prepared to defend his position he should not have raised it.
All I'm doing is calling out some hypocrisy
No, he wasn't. That was CCF54321:
I spoke to a doctor last week and if there is a spike then it’ll be a regional thing and not the country like we’re seeing. It’s also increasing in certain areas as we all know why.

covcity4life then questioned what s/he meant, and better days replied saying it seems to be mostly prevalent where extended families congregate more. covcity4life then kept asking the question about certain areas even though it wasn't betterdays who said it, and then you jumped in too weirdly and demanded betterdays explain this point.

probably finally just gave you what you were so desperately looking to bitch about
 

Grendel

Well-Known Member
5.02% for England according to wiki so it must be true :)

So even if you decide to go on England rather than the uk - which is a little odd - that’s how many more in this place as a percentage?
 

Evo1883

Well-Known Member
I'll leave it to Mtathew Syed who is better qualified than I am

Don’t speak in code on race. Truth saves lives

Ethnic differences are a big factor in the virus risk. Let’s be open about it
Matthew Syed

Sunday August 02 2020, 12.00pm, The Sunday Times

Don’t speak in code on race. Truth saves lives
https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?te...k-in-code-on-race-truth-saves-lives-rd7tr05ss
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sha...k-in-code-on-race-truth-saves-lives-rd7tr05ss
We may disagree about the government’s Covid strategy and the quality of the communication. We may even disagree about the timing of the decision late on Thursday to restrict much of the north of England, although I found it rather hypocritical that many who were blaming the government for acting too slowly at the start of the crisis are now angered they acted too fast.

But we can surely all agree that the announcement itself was a farce, a pantomime of Orwellian proportions. Here was a government imposing restrictions on a region where transmission is rising faster within some Asian communities, and on the eve of the most important festival in Islam, yet Matt Hancock said nothing of this, talking instead of transmission “between families” and “multigenerational households”. This was ministerial statement by code.


Over the next 48 hours, information came out in dribs and drabs — but not from ministers. The director of public health for Blackburn with Darwen said that 79% of recent cases in the predominantly white city had been among people from a south Asian background. Statistics from Public Health England for the week ending July 26 showed that 1,369 of those testing positive in England (37%) were Asian or Asian-British — a group that made up 7.5% of the population in the last census. Shouldn’t ministers have helped us interpret these statistics, rather than pretend they didn’t exist?
Some will doubtless applaud the government’s approach. After all, ministers are worried about igniting a backlash against Asians. They may also be fearful about being perceived as racist themselves. But shouldn’t we have learnt that racism is inflamed not by information, but by disinformation? Whatever the short-term risks from explaining the facts, they are far outweighed by the insidious decoupling of meaning from reality, creating the space for conspiracy theories to grow and mutate. Racism thrives in the gaps left open by right-minded people who fear inconvenient truths.
Among the litany of recent disasters, one can’t overlook various grooming scandals, including in Rotherham and Rochdale, where the unwillingness to discuss the ethnic dimension led to a virulent backlash against the Pakistani community that would have been inconceivable had a grown-up debate taken place earlier. It also led to more vulnerable youngsters being abused.

Across the Atlantic, one might also place police violence in this category: few pundits have had the courage to share peer-reviewed data — albeit contested — that lethal violence against black people is roughly the same as that against whites if the prevalence of crime in the two populations is taken into account. Why does this matter? Because the fearless analysis of data is the starting point for solutions — a point that should be embraced by the right and left.
Going back to Covid-19, nobody objects to ministers chronicling regional variation in the transmission of the virus. Indeed, this is what offers the best hope for a targeted approach. Yet the fact that they feel unable to talk about ethnic variation in transmission — information of lifesaving significance for the communities most at risk — shows how entangled we have become in the fine mesh of political correctness.

One of the most beautiful things about my father’s side of the family (he hails from Pakistan) is the deep love and respect for older people. It is rare to put parents into nursing homes because of the duty to care for them at home. But this is precisely why nothing would have had a deeper impact on Asian communities than a frank statement about how this cultural strength can, in the context of an epidemic, prove perilous. By tiptoeing around racial sensibilities, Hancock will, I fear, cost lives.
Allow me to restate: plain talking isn’t merely of great utility, it is also the surest antidote to bigotry. Why? Because by plainly stating the facts, we are likely to reach a more objective analysis. Craig Whittaker, one of the more hapless Tory MPs, explained the higher transmission among some ethnic groups as a disregard for rules on social distancing. “[Black and minority ethnic] communities are not taking this seriously enough,” he told LBC radio.
Yet while this may be a factor (some community leaders also made this point), I doubt he would have collapsed so complex a problem onto so simplistic a cause had the government set out a more comprehensive analysis from the outset. Asians — a diverse group — are, on average, more likely to work in frontline professions where social distancing is difficult, and to live in overcrowded housing. Whittaker was scarcely challenged by his interviewer.
The point is that data is not the enemy of rationality; it is the friend. This is particularly true during a pandemic — we need to know about risks of transmission in family settings, at meatpacking facilities and when people (mostly young and white) congregate on beaches or at raves and pubs. By understanding these patterns, we can take wiser precautions.
Of course, advocating for open discussion may seem quaint in a post-truth age. But look at the evidence. If you want to understand the growth of anti-immigrant sentiment in the UK, you are looking in the wrong place if you focus on Nigel Farage or even Tommy Robinson. No, this was seeded by Tony Blair and his mendacious silence about European Union enlargement in 2004, a topic that ministers were in effect barred from speaking about.
This fanned a sense of grievance, partly because nobody was addressing people’s concerns, but also because nobody was sharing hard data on the economic benefits of immigration, the net effect on the public purse and the heroic work performed by immigrants in the NHS and other services. In this context, it is worth recalling that the first four doctors who died from the coronavirus in the UK — Alfa Saadu, Amged el-Hawrani, Adil El Tayar and Habib Zaidi — were all from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Or take the rise of Donald Trump. He has got away with serial bigotry precisely because he could position it as an antidote to a climate of political correctness that has stifled free speech.
This is where the suppression of open dialogue ultimately leads. Polarisation. Post-truth. A clown in the White House clinging on to power. And, yes, a British minister unable to state a key reason for restrictions during a pandemic, leading to the viral dissemination of tropes and conspiracies.
Political correctness started out as a wonderful thing. Most people were delighted that the n-word and other hateful phrases had been removed from public discourse. But by taking it too far, we have exacerbated the problems it was designed to solve. This is the elephant in the room, the truth around which all right-minded people should coalesce.
As Orwell put it: “Political chaos is connected with the decay of language . . . one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.”
@MatthewSyed


This is one of those things that people should talk about but are scared to talk about through fear of being labelled..
I talked about this in the George Floyd thread... Fair play to this journalist
 

Grendel

Well-Known Member
This is one of those things that people should talk about but are scared to talk about through fear of being labelled..
I talked about this in the George Floyd thread... Fair play to this journalist

Im sure Dave will have an answer
 

CCFC54321

Well-Known Member
No, he wasn't. That was CCF54321:


covcity4life then questioned what s/he meant, and better days replied saying it seems to be mostly prevalent where extended families congregate more. covcity4life then kept asking the question about certain areas even though it wasn't betterdays who said it, and then you jumped in too weirdly and demanded betterdays explain this point.

probably finally just gave you what you were so desperately looking to bitch about
And I wasn’t going to get dragged into an argument that he was seeking.
 
If we all listen to the sensationalism by Sky news we may as well just roll up in a ball somewhere.

I spoke to a doctor last week and if there is a spike then it’ll be a regional thing and not the country like we’re seeing. It’s also increasing in certain areas as we all know why. The country won’t go into lockdown again. It’ll be a regional/city/town containment for the rest of this year simply containing it until the vaccine is ready early next year.

I imagine we will see football live with gradual increases to the end of this year until the vaccines ready.

So yes I think your right the vaccine is the game changer.
A vaccine takes 20 years to go through all the testing and still not guaranteed to work!! Fucked if I’m getting injected with a rushed though bullshit vaccine for a virus with a 99% survival rate!!!
 

Samo

Well-Known Member
No, he wasn't. That was CCF54321:


covcity4life then questioned what s/he meant, and better days replied saying it seems to be mostly prevalent where extended families congregate more. covcity4life then kept asking the question about certain areas even though it wasn't betterdays who said it, and then you jumped in too weirdly and demanded betterdays explain this point.

probably finally just gave you what you were so desperately looking to bitch about

Ok Sherlock, keep your knickers on.
Fact remains... folk were skirting around the subject but chickening out on mentioning it directly.
And then posting quotes from others advocating open talk on the topic.
This is not the right place but I'd be happy to discuss this sensibly in a specific thread.
 

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