Did I Mention They Hate You?

Why, yes, yes I did. 

And just to ram the point home, here's Julie Burchill confirming that our watchdog media are even more incestuous, corrupt and insular than the political class. 

Apparently, it's super important to name and shame blue collar suspects even when they haven't, strictly speaking, done anything but naming the, actually convicted, pervert friends of La Cosa Media? Not so much. 

Reminder: even on LBC - which markets itself as the voice of the man on the Clapham Ominibus - you can still switch on when you wake up and make it through to lunchtime without hearing a single presenter who's not a public school educated second generation media luvvie. As for the likes of Times Radio and Radio 4....

We should totally give the media a bail out!

Of course, Julie B still can't identify the final piece in the puzzle.  I guess writing for a libertarian site means this whole topic is what artillerymen would call 'Danger Close'. When it comes to nonces, liberals and libertarians all agree that the real issue is the dreadfully unnuanced takes of the lower orders (and, also, they're super sophisticated for refusing to call absolute depravity what it is). 

Using air quotes round perfectly accurate words like evil or pedophile is treated as an actual argument by these hipster douchebags. Meanwhile, wanting predators caged is tacky and crude.... I guess it's  sort of like the super important difference between drinking pints and drinking drams of Old McMolester.

They're smart and you're stupid and that's all you need to know, peasant.

(via Julia)

Hey, Did Someone Say 'Culture War'?

Crikey! Even the squishes are Guido Fawkes are talking about C****** W**. Yep, they've finally noticed that the average university campus is like that line from The Blues Brothers - they have both types of ideology: Blairite and Corbynista.

I'd give them a John McClane style 'welcome to the party, pal' but if you want to know the real reason why  Respectable Conservatives have suddenly decided to start referencing the huge gray thing in the room, take a look at what they posted later in the day.

Yes, indeed. Confidence in scientific advice is collapsing for some reason. We're just lucky that there are no big issues requiring scientific input in this country right now.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, normal people are starting to wonder if there's some kind of connection between the bias in Academia and the terrible quality of its output.

Consider our nation's (apparent) modeler in chief, Neil Ferguson. Looking at his track record, I'm not sure he could predict an uptick in the death rate for members of the avian community in December. More to the point though, his track record is not just bad, it's consistently bad. Basically, he's doing science, but not the sort you can use to predict things or where you need to update your theories if reality keeps letting you down.

You know, that type of science.

Needless to say, I think most of us had worked out the secret of his success even before we got introduced to his bit on the side, Helga von Wokenheit, Head of Globalism at the Global Institute for Globalism.

The point is not just that bias on campus leads to jobs for life for the suitably woke (though it does), or even that bright up and coming conservative academics need to either take a vow of silence or change careers (that's true too), it's that you can't have a healthy intellectual environment where everyone has to carefully walk the tightrope of approved ideology. It's hard to be innovative when out of the box can mean out of a job.

All this just leads to a bigger issue. The genius set at Tory HQ have refused to tackle issues like this on the grounds that they're too dangerous politically. Better just to kick the can down the road.

Hey, how's that working out for you guys?

As Trotsky would say - and he would know - you may not be interested in culture war, but culture war is interested in you. There are real world consequences to letting lunatics take over vital sectors of the country. Never mind whether or not taking on Professor Snootlington is really that high risk politically anyway, the choice is either to face the political risks of meaningful reform or face the political risks of dealing with the inevitable results of a dysfunctional and corrupted system.