DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

not even getting started on these. reaction in brief: time to start arming and organizing.

He claims research shows that as much as 70% of a child's performance is genetically derived.

damn, need to find those posts i read a while ago explaining in great detail why this is almost certainly bullshit or at least highly misleading

http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/520.html

lots of technical stuff about heritability but this is killer:

Does a trait's heritability tells us anything about its malleability, about how easy it is to change the trait with environmental manipulations? The answer is "no, of course not", even assuming (1) the basic biometric model holds, and (2) we are talking about true heritability and not biased-to-nonsensical estimated heritabilities.

It's banging on an often-sounded drum, but it's worth doing because it makes the point clearly: height is heritable, and estimates for the population of developed countries put the heritability around 0.8. Moreover, tall people tend to be at something of a reproductive advantage. Applying the standard formulas for response to selection, we straightforwardly predict that average height should increase. If we select a population without a lot of immigration or emigration to mess this up, say 20th century Norway, we find that that's true: the average height of Norwegian men increased by about 10 centimeters over the century. But that's much more than selection can account for. Doing things by discrete generations, rather than in continuous time, height grew by 2.5 centimeters per generation. (The conclusion is not substantially altered by going to continuous time.) If the heritability of height is 0.8, for this change to be due entirely to selection, the average Norwegian parent must have been 3 centimeters taller than the average Norwegian. This, needless to say, was not how it happened; the change was almost entirely environmental. The moral is that highly heritable traits with an indubitable genetic basis can be highly responsive to changes in environment (such as nutrition, disease, environmental influences on hormone levels, etc.).

Conversely, the very low heritability of eye number does not tell us that it is easy to increase how many eyes someone has by exercise, education and training, manipulating diet, manipulating ambient light, trepanation, etc.

That's fucking terrifying.

Beyond that, isn't it fucking terrifying how the same people who complain about the big government or the nanny state interfering with individual liberties will quite happily buy into this idea (as seems to be implied here) that you have to do this job, and I have to do this job, because of the determining law of our 'genetics'.

not even getting started on these. reaction in brief: time to start arming and organizing.

― I like to tackle hard and am crazy (Noodle Vague), Saturday, October 12, 2013 9:56 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this

or maybe just this

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/10/11/1381519721664/Education-secretary-Micha-009.jpg

or maybe just CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT

And I mean, how are all the kids supposed to go off and become entrepreneurs if there's a genetically determined system of differentiated learning opportunities

If they're saying some people are just born to haul objects around, how can they then say that people need to be quick on their feet and adapt to a multiplicity of different working roles

Also CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT

Preaching evolution, practising social Darwinism. Again.

CHODE CHODE CHODE CHODE CHODE.

SORRY, BLIND RAGE - meant preaching creationism, obvs.

And I mean, how are all the kids supposed to go off and become entrepreneurs if there's a genetically determined system of differentiated learning opportunities

If they're saying some people are just born to haul objects around, how can they then say that people need to be quick on their feet and adapt to a multiplicity of different working roles

― cardamon, Saturday, October 12, 2013 1:06 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Don't engage. Ridicule.

No. Engage, and then ridicule. More effective than just posting CUNT.

I'd engage but tbh their game is sucking you into pointless engagements. Their game is delaying you, frustrating you. Don't engage. Fuck them up.

Engage when there's a debate to be had.

Yeah, I mean I know they're full of shit as do they, probably

As for organising: Tory party membership is said to be about to fall below 100k. Seems like with 30-40k people across the country you could take it over from the inside out and destroy it.

It will continue to shrink as members die off. Their average age is 68, iirc. I'm not sure how much real power the grass roots of the party has these days, though.

This might do the Tories some damage:

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/12/middle-class-young-people-future-worse-parents

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10372896/Boomtime-Britain-bounces-back.html

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/12/homes-repossession-shelter-universal-credit

well that's a pretty stark contrast, isn't it.

Bravo the EU, let's have some proof, you lying sacks of shit

Even if this wasn't a stupid made-up problem, why would any self-respecting benefits tourist come to Britain when they could go to Sweden or Denmark or even France or Germany?

Has IDS ever said anything that wasn't a lie?

Apparently Matthew D'Ancona's book about the coalition very strongly implies that IDS is a simpleton and the rest of the cabinet know it. I'm not going to read it to find out because it is a book by Matthew D'Ancona.

Duncan Smith was educated at what is now St. Peter's RC Secondary School, Solihull until the age of 14,[5] then at HMS Conway, a Royal Navy training school on the Isle of Anglesey (where he allegedly played rugby union in the position of fly-half alongside Clive Woodward at centre) until he was 18.

His claim that he studied at the University of Perugia (founded 1308) was later found to be false after an investigation by the BBC.[6] His office subsequently admitted that he attended the Italian Università per Stranieri (founded 1921) in Perugia for a year but he did not obtain any qualifications or finish his exams.[6] In 1975 he attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and was subsequently commissioned into the Scots Guards.[7] Duncan-Smith's biography, on the Conservative Party website, claimed he was "educated at Dunchurch College of Management" but following questioning by the BBC his office confirmed that he did not get any qualifications there either, stating that he completed six separate courses lasting a few days each, adding up to about a month in total.[6] Dunchurch was the former staff college for GEC Marconi, for whom Duncan-Smith worked in the 1980s.[6]

BEAUTIFUL

now i hate education snobs and people who judge personality or even intelligence by the number of quals a person passes, but i think Henry Fielding once made the point that it's okay to take the piss out of people who are hypocrites about their own shortcomings

i dunno, maybe IDS wd argue that falsifying your CV is entrepreneurial

it certainly hasn't held him back

he does work in one of the highest paid careers that requires zero qualifications tbf

i mean, i was gonna make the point that anybody who proudly self-identified as being "the quiet man" whilst leader of the opposition probably wasn't the sharpest knife in the block, but this Jeffrey Archeresque reinvention is gold

he probably gets bullied a lot by his public school compatriots and has to unleash his resentment on the lowliest victims in the pecking order he can find

his career in the army would have given him plenty of experience in doing exactly that I would think

There have been rumours flying around for ages that Cameron bottled sacking/demoting him because everyone could see Universal Credit was an enormous fuck-up in the making. It would be amusing were it not for the millions of people pushed into poverty.

never assume any Tory policy that pushes people into poverty is a mistake

There have been rumours flying around for ages that Cameron bottled sacking/demoting him because everyone could see Universal Credit was an enormous fuck-up in the making.

He bottled sacking him because that would draw attention to the fact Universal Credit was a complete fuck up? Or he bottled sacking him because he wanted to wait until Universal Credit had inevitably fucked up so that he would have a scapegoat to sack?

c

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24546370

^^^ How fucking out of touch do you need to be, post-Hillsborough, post-Tomlinson, post-Duggan, post-stop and search, to think that the fucking Andrew Mitchell thing might "damage confidence in the police".

lol i wanted to address that yesterday but i think you found les mots juste

^^^ How fucking out of touch do you need to be, post-Hillsborough, post-Tomlinson, post-Duggan, post-stop and search, to think that the fucking Andrew Mitchell thing might "damage confidence in the police".

It's just maddening isn't it. Was the main thrust of Today this morning but perhaps I was in the shower when one of the presenters addressed this issue.

i dunno, i find the blatant butthurt hypocrisy of it quite amusing. nice to see the veneer of the party of law and order get a few chips in it.

The party of Law and Order, excluding tax avoidance, death by dangerous driving, Parking fines and speed cameras.

i.e. anything they might conceivably be wanting to get away with.,

The thing is Mitchell might not have actually called the plods plebs and effed and blinded and what have you, but everybody believed that he did (ncl. Cameron et al) because it's exactly the sort of thing he might have done

It all seems to revolve around the technicality that he didn't use the precise word "pleb". There's no doubt in my mind that he considers himself a higher class citizen than the policeman he yelled at - because the policeman was doing his job, while Mitchell considered himself exempt from the rules, due to being such a Super Fucking Important Dude.

... with a famously short fuse

everybody believed that he did (ncl. Cameron et al) because it's exactly the sort of thing he might have done

― Tommy McTommy (Tom D.), Wednesday, 16 October 2013 13:36 (16 minutes ago)

this is just a confirmation bias because 'everybody' ie you and whoever else like you would happily believe he does any nefarious thing you can imagine

Alleged use of the word 'pleb' is exactly what made the story such a big deal though, right? (and so toxic for the Conservatives).

this is just a confirmation bias because 'everybody' ie you and whoever else like you would happily believe he does any nefarious thing you can imagine

And you didn't believe it, of course

I think someone points out upthread that he probably would have been better off calling the police 'cunts'.

the reason most sentient people suspected it was true is because of the two unfeasible scenarios of a minister going postal or a police-orcestrated conspiracy that would leave them open to prosecution, the former is less unfeasible