Stereotypes Debunked.

Apprenticeships courses in areas such as hairdressing are not just for girls, and providers must do more to tackle gender stereotyping, Ofsted has said.

Ofsted are quite right to challenge this insidious stereotype, after all gay men are equally good at it.

Drinking Age.

Insane people have recently been calling for the drinking age in the UK to be raised to 21. Whilst I'm not a big drinker myself (it would interfere with my crack addiction) this is an infantilising proposal to treat adults as children. Furthermore it would bring the law into popular contempt as it would be broken on a massive scale. Rather than me blathering on, here is a Mark Steyn article from 2001 on the subject:

On the stump, the helmet-haired Mrs Dole conceded that she wasn't happy with the legal drinking age of 21 that she'd forced on the nation. No, these days Nurse Ratched thinks it should be 24. Twenty-four! It would make more sense the other way round: instead of starting drinking at 24, you should stop drinking when you're 24, sober up and start going to work.

Education & The Race Industry

I was going to say something about this story, but I got sidetracked by a story from last year which I had missed when it first came out. Essentially the situation is that the Commission for Racial Equality have discovered that for some reason, black pupils are statistically under represented at Britain's leading universities, or as the Guardian puts it 'Black students are failing to get their share of places at Britain's top universities', I had up until now been unaware that there were shares of places belonging to each ethnic group. Phillips then does his jobs and spouts all the race industry cliches:

' Trevor Phillips, chair of the CRE, said it was now "beyond doubt" that segregation was taking place between British universities.'

'"This survey also gives a new meaning to institutional racism'

Before hilariously adding almost as an afterthought:

Mr Phillips suggests much of the trend is down to inequalities in school results

Gee Trev you think it might just have something to do with the school qualifications which been attained? It is almost as if the elite institutions attract the students who have achieved the highest grades for some crazy reason! Anyway what can be done to redress this gross injustice?

But in areas where ethnic minority students are severely under-represented, the CRE could recommend a system of cash incentives for universities to "make minority-friendly courses more worthwhile for our top universities", Mr Phillips said.

What exactly are 'minority friendly courses', I mean if Phillips weren't the head of the CRE I would suggest that there is almost an undercurrent of soft racism in assuming that academically rigourous subjects are not 'minority friendly' and the likes of Oxbridge & Imperial College ought to be replacing courses in physics or modern languages with lightweight 'ethnic studies' courses that exist at many US institutions.

As this week's Joseph Rowntree Foundation report demonstartes white boys from poor backgrounds do as bad or worse than most of ethnic minorites and several groups including the Chinese and Indians do extremely well, the divide in educational outcomes in Britain is quite plainly not a racial problem. Of course it is in the interest of those in the racial aggravation business like the CRE to pretend otherwise, because racial divides are their lifeblood.

Police & Race Quotas.

For right wing bloggers like myself, the BBC's 'Have Your Say' section is always a useful fall back option when feeling lazy or uninspired, because of the inevitable displays of left wing conspiracy mongering and paranoia that gets through the moderating process. So it was with some surprise that I took a look at the debate on 'Positive Discrimination' in the police force (known as 'racist hiring practices' to honest people), and saw the near unanimous rejection of the proposal. The Commission for Racial Equality, normally a banker when it comes to backing silly racially divisive proposals, has also rejected the idea.

This is of course a good thing but what does it say about the police that the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and the Metropolitan now outflank the CRE and the legions of Beeboids when it comes to race politics?

Keith Jarrett of the National Black Police Association, adds:

If we look at Hounslow in London, it's a borough that is predominantly from a minority ethnic background.

"Now whilst my white colleagues are immensely qualified to do the job, I would put forward that Hounslow would be better served as a borough by a person from an Asian background, who has got culture in common with the local inhabitants, and perhaps speaks the same language."

Good to see the police's anti-racism drive is going so well.

Remarkable Fact.

Googling the phrase 'not about social engineering' reveals over 100 results, as far as I can tell they are all very much about social engineering!

'Not About Social Engineering'

Until around thirty years ago British Universities, particularly Oxbridge, operated a system wherby the children of alumni would get preferential treatment when it came to admissions. To most people the abolition of this system was just because applicants should only be judged on their personal academic merit and what your parents did or did not do should not be a factor. Our current government disagree:

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - The government will allow university admissions officers to consider the occupation and education of parents as part of the process to decide whether their children will be accepted to study for a degree.....
..... "I do think this is a sensible change to widen public participation in higher education," Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell, told BBC radio on Friday. "It is not about social engineering -- I want people from all backgrounds to access higher education."

The government appear to view the Universities as instruments in class war rather than as
scholarly institutions. In some esoteric sense it is undoubtably true that it is unfair that someone's ability to develop academically is heavily influenced by their background, but the University system has a limited amount of resources and their job is not to try to equalise all life's inequalities (in 3 years) but to take the students who are best prepared for higher education and teach them. It isn't even very good for the supposed beneficiaries of the scheme seeing as studies repeatedly show that admitting students with lower academic achievements simply causes a higher drop out rate, meaning that there will be a lot of heavily indebted young people without much to show for it.

Of course two practical problems exist with this proposal too, it is very easy to lie on the application and a degree is a very vague indicator of someone's family educational background.

ps. Laban Tall points out that this supposed concern with 'access' to higher education comes mostly from people sho have waged a jihad on the most effective methods of educational mobility.