UK Politics - I Protest

[BigFatCoward]

4 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

How is that what I said ?

It was in response to you saying Mormonts expertise doesn't count in relation to the report. I'm fine with him being given extra credit as long as it applies to everyone's occupation and the board bows to my superiority in all political matters to do with policing. 

[Heartofice]

4 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

It was in response to you saying Mormonts expertise doesn't count in relation to the report. I'm fine with him being given extra credit as long as it applies to everyone's occupation and the board bows to my superiority in all political matters to do with policing. 

I didn’t say it didn’t count, but that if he’s going to use it to defend his view then maybe expanding on it and answering the question I asked he would be helpful, rather than just assuming we should take his word as gospel because he claims to know more than people who wrote the report.

[mormont]

It's a little odd to criticise me for 'claiming the high ground' when I've already said that you should really read the expert opinion on this report, rather than mine.

I'm happy to engage in a discussion, for others to take different views, and even to be proven wrong - as anyone reading my posts over the years would know. I'm just making the point that in this particular area of the report, I'm equipped to understand why it's so inadequate, and that you might benefit from reading a little more on the issue yourself, rather than demanding that I justify my opinion or whatever else it is you're trying to do. Because the expert opinion on this report is uniformly that it is a stinker.

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, BigFatCoward said:

No, thats fine, as long as everyone accepts i know best about all policing matters. As such the report was right and the 'vigil' was nothing of the sort and the press, politicians and social media 'experts' kneejerk reactions were fucking idiotic.  

I always find your comments on policing extremely even-handed and well-informed.  And the general point is an entirely fair one.  If I made a comment on the law of contract or property, I'd expect people, if not to agree, at least to accept that I know what I'm talking about.

[Spockydog]

 

[SeanF]

7 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

 

I'm genuinely surprised at how popular the government is.  Labour should be on course for massive gains in the local elections (and they'll certainly do very well in seats last contested in 2017) but they may not get them.

[Maltaran]

15 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I'm genuinely surprised at how popular the government is.  Labour should be on course for massive gains in the local elections (and they'll certainly do very well in seats last contested in 2017) but they may not get them.

They don’t really have any notable policies that I can think of right now, and supporting the government taking over Liverpool council has not gone down at all well with their supporters.

[Rippounet]

6 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I don’t know why they ever bother to do these reports. All that happens is that anyone whose preconceived narrative doesn’t fit the results, basically decides the report is bogus and calls it a stitch up anyway. 

And people who want to believe the "results" will swallow them "hook, line, and sinker" without even trying to understand the criticism.

I'm in an excellent position to testify that access and outcome are two very different things.

[DanteGabriel]

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

How about actually answering the question instead of trying to hold the high ground because supposedly you know better than everyone who wrote the report.

It seems to me that Mormont already answered your question by giving one example of cherry-picking that you apparently didn't accept, and instead would rather accuse him of bad faith argumentation. Almost as if there were a narrative you're trying to push.

[Heartofice]

5 hours ago, mormont said:

See earlier posts re: cherry picking and doing the reading yourself.

I would also add that I have 25 years' experience in front line advice work in higher education. I know a little bit about drop-out rates, degree results and graduate prospects, about why some students don't apply to prestigious universities, about the lack of support networks, why some students with second class degrees get good jobs and some don't, how race, disability and socio-economic background all contribute to dropout rates and underachievement, and why the word 'supposedly' does not belong in that sentence above and why anyone who would use it there needs to read up on the subject before engaging in a discussion because they need to do a whole lot of catching up and I don't have the time or inclination to catch them up. Sorry.

Ok so I had a look at the data but it seems to be pretty unhelpful as it seems to lump people into incredibly broad categories, so all black students are taken as an amorphous blob, same with Asian students.
What the government report does is it breaks those categories up, as there is clearly a big difference between students from Chinese backgrounds and Pakistani backgrounds for instance. So I’m not quite sure of what use that data is?

And again, what do you think the data is showing, as I said, if overall white students are no outperforming other students from ethnic backgrounds, and they really aren’t if you break the data down properly , then what is the problem with the conclusion of the report?

 

Edit, ok so I also looked at differences between sustained employment after graduating, very little differences across ethnicities.

The only thing I can  point to is that when it comes to black students getting three A’s at A Level then that entire group does worse than most others, but then Chinese and Indian kids do really well so again it’s really questioning where the conclusion of the report is wrong? Has it really cherry picked the data because I haven’t seen much which disproves the conclusion?

[Raja]

The British Medical Journal pulls no punches here regarding the report

Quote

The much-delayed UK government report on race disparities has devoted 30 pages to disparities in health. The report claims that “for many key health outcomes including life expectancy and overall mortality… ethnic minority groups have better outcomes than the White population.” It further claims that “genetic risk factors” along with “cultural” and “behavioural” factors have led to the disparities seen in covid-19. 

The 30-page section on health in the report claims to undo several decades of irrefutable peer-reviewed research evidence on ethnic disparities, previous governments’ reports, and independent reviews all reaching similar conclusions: ethnic minorities have the worst health outcomes on almost all health parameters. [1] The report’s conclusions, recommendations, and cherry-picked data to support a particular narrative shows why it should have been externally peer-reviewed by independent health experts and scientists.

The report says that health data are inconsistent and incomplete, but still concludes that life expectancy is improving for ethnic minorities. This is not true. It cites two reports on life expectancy in Scotland where only 3% of UK ethnic minorities live. The Marmot Review in England shows that health inequalities have widened overall, life expectancy has stalled, and the amount of time people spend in poor health has increased over the past decade. The situation is much worse for ethnic minority groups, who have higher rates of deprivation and poorer health outcomes. [7-12] The report’s data, which shows lower life expectancy in Black and South Asian people compared to people with White ethnicities, does not support its own conclusions. 

This report is a missed opportunity. It lacks the scientific credibility and authority to be used for major policy decisions.

Also, the NHS Race and Health observatory also comes out against the conclusions of the report

Quote

The Observatory believes that tackling persistent ethnic and racial disparities in health, and across society, is absolutely the right thing to do. However, as an evidence-led organisation, the Observatory was disappointed by several of the headline conclusions of the report, including those on the causes of ethnic inequalities. 

The Observatory is an independent expert body, established by the NHS to examine the health inequalities experienced by ethnic minority communities in England. The evidence it cites is clear: institutional racism exists in this country, it exists in the organisations that make up our health and care system, and it exists across wider public establishments.

The report is a wasted opportunity and completely divorced from reality.

[mormont]

7 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Ok so I had a look at the data

Which data did you look at?

 

[DanteGabriel]

3 hours ago, Raja said:

The British Medical Journal pulls no punches here regarding the report

Also, the NHS Race and Health observatory also comes out against the conclusions of the report

The report is a wasted opportunity and completely divorced from reality.

Look at all those culture warriors trying to sell a narrative!

[DanteGabriel]

I recognize HoI has a point that often people will decry a report because it doesn't fit their narrative. But maybe it's a bullshit report that coincidentally doesn't fit the narrative of, well, their own cited experts.

Maybe, just maybe, this incompetent and dishonest government who regularly gaslights and insults the intelligence of its citizens is trying to sell a false narrative? Just a thought.

[Zorral]

The View From Scotland clued us this:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/15/waves-britain-lockdown-sceptics-crisis-government#comment-146733310

 

 

[Heartofice]

8 hours ago, mormont said:

Which data did you look at?

 

Looked at the ONS and then national office for students 

[mormont]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Looked at the ONS and then national office for students 

Then you should also read the Universities UK/NUS 2019 analysis (which does subdivide the categories), the UPP/SMF report from 2017, and honestly I think you should probably look again at the ONS figures because they use 17 different ethnicity categories to analyse the data, rather than lumping people together as you suggest, and conclude that although the graduate earnings gap has decreased, it still exists for almost all of those categories incluing all black and mixed race categories. You might also want to read some academic papers on this - there are many. 

The data in the current report, I haven't had time to look at in detail myself: but the opinion of the commentators I have read is that it is highly selective and tailored to fit the narrative.

ETA - I'll sum up by saying this: in the area of higher education, as in a number of other areas, this report appears to magically have found no problem despite the consensus of all other research concluding that there is a problem. Now, maybe, maybe, that's because the authors of this report, despite not being experts, have managed to analyse the data in a new and clever way that shows that the real truth has been hidden all this time. Or, y'know, maybe not.

[Heartofice]

6 minutes ago, mormont said:

Then you should also read the Universities UK/NUS 2019 analysis (which does subdivide the categories),

Does it? I looked at it, it uses the term BAME (unhelpful) on almost every page. It also doesn't seem to sub divide into more useful categories.
 

Quote

ONS figures because they use 17 different ethnicity categories to analyse the data

Sorry my post was unclear now I look at it. The ONS does divide into smaller categories, I was referring to the Office for Students data. 
What the ONS does say about pay gaps is:

"The ethnicity pay gap between White and ethnic minority employees has narrowed to its smallest level since 2012 in England and Wales.
Most of the minority ethnic groups analysed continue to earn less than White British employees but, in 2019, those in the Chinese, White Irish, White and Asian, and Indian ethnic groups all earned higher hourly pay than White British employees."
 

Quote

The data in the current report, I haven't had time to look at in detail myself: but the opinion of the commentators I have read is that it is highly selective and tailored to fit the narrative.

That however I'm sure you will concede is at least partly down to your own selection bias. 

Either way, I haven't seen anything I've read that goes against the conclusion of the report: that although there is obviously racism within the country, suggesting any disparity between ethnicities along most of these metrics is due to 'systemic racism' is just overly simplistic and quite unhelpful.

I tend to agree. For instance a post from the BMJ said that disaprities between ethnic outcomes when it came to deaths from Covid were in part (and clearly a large part because they placed this first on their list) due to 'systemic racism' or racist attitudes. I've even seen it suggested that stress from racism is why people are dying from Covid. The problem with this is that it really doesn't help the situation, at all. If you want to try and understand where these disparities lay then it's not useful to blame some vague bogeyman rather than actually trying to understand what the real causes are.

[Heartofice]

13 hours ago, mormont said:

 

ETA - I'll sum up by saying this: in the area of higher education, as in a number of other areas, this report appears to magically have found no problem despite the consensus of all other research concluding that there is a problem. Now, maybe, maybe, that's because the authors of this report, despite not being experts, have managed to analyse the data in a new and clever way that shows that the real truth has been hidden all this time. Or, y'know, maybe not.

I wanted to address this because it’s not true. You haven’t read the report, you’ve admitted as such, and most of your comments seem to derive from stuff you’ve seen second hand, which is why I don’t think you have a real grasp of what is in the report.

In fact the report does talk about differences in graduate rates in ethnicities, it’s talks about black students going to lower tariff universities as well. 
 

Your assumption that the report is in some way trying to say that there are no problems with disparities in the UK is false, and baseless. That isn’t the conclusion of the report at all. 

[mormont]

*sighs*

The report concludes that any problems with minority students failing to progress, ending up in lower tariff universities, earning less as graduates, etc. are the result of factors other than racism. Or, to put it another way, that when it comes to racism, the subject of the report, there is no problem.

Please do try to read for context.

I said that I had not had time to properly look at the data in the report in detail. Not that I had not read it at all. I've read the recommendations and various other bits that have been quoted: enough to be confident in the comments I've made. Wouldn't have made them otherwise.

The report does not even mention higher education in its recommendations section. The impression given is that the commission believe universities don't need to do anything about the racial disparities that exist, apart from maybe send some more recruiters into schools and encourage minorities to use the careers service a bit more. Bizarrely, this report gives universities a cleaner bill of health on race than they give themselves.

But honestly, from what I have read, and I have read quite a bit more about this report than it really merits, that's not so strange after all. This report is all about downplaying racism, which was always the intent.