Forgive a Saturday morning rant . I got in late from watching Nck Cave and the “i” of my keyboard is sticky and I have to spend most of today on a bus waving at people at the Lord Mayor’s show and my wife is away with her mother so I have to do my own breakfast.
But all the same, I consider my well-being my business and not the business of my employer or of society and certainly not the business of the DE & I brigade, who are increasingly getting me annoyed to a point where I say Trump and Farage have more than a point.
I will be 63 on Monday, I popped out of my Mummy’s tummy at 11.02 on 11.11.61. My father scolded my mother for breaking the two minute silence. In those days GP father’s could deliver their first born without having to sign a conflict of interest register.
I will spend Monday in the garden of England, where my friend Terry lives and where the heartland of Farage’s populism is. I will spend it with my wife, who unlike me, does not have middle class values but working class values which allow her to understand what Farage is about – much better than me. It allows her to understand Trump too.
Though we both espouse Christian faith, we are finding ourselves alienated from the well-being agenda that is being thrust upon us, for reasons that my mother and father understood as they brought me up and my wife’s mother and father did likewise. We both feel unsettled by the gospel according to St Woke.
And I know many of my friends feel this way. I know Al Rush does as do most of his clients in South Wales and in the North East. Indeed , you don’t have to travel very far from the law firms of Central London , till you get to a wall of apathy to wokery. Large parts of Britain could easily become charged with indignation that those on the other side of that wall are being labelled bigots for expressing a view outside of the received ideas of a liberal elite.
This is the message for Keir Starmer. Labour’s support is based on a sense of betrayal by the Conservative party not on an enthusiasm for the Labour party. Many who voted Labour at the recent election will be celebrating Trump’s victory and while most readers of this blog will be horrified that I am typing this, it is time that Labour started representing the view of the average British worker again.
The views of the average British worker are not forged by NextGen conferences on DE&I.
Well-being , modern ant-slavery, DE&I and all the other constructs of the liberal graduates who are forging the corporate and political agenda of Britain today, are simply not recognised by the average British worker who is not exercised by Britain’s historic imperialism (in fact we’re rather proud of it).
We do not have to have an anti-modern slavery badge to reject slavery, but to suppose that 18th and 19th Century is illegitimate because its prosperity was based on servitude is as crazy as to dismiss Rome or Athens as the foundation of Western Civilisation as their achievements were enhanced by slavery.
As I get emotive , I find my sentences getting longer- forgive me. Forgive me too for deserting my liberal Oxbridge-educated heritage of privilege and siding with Jack of Kent and Al Rush and my wife/partner. I am not working class but I understand that working class culture is different and that the aims of wokery are cultural imperialism- an attempt to educate the masses to an elite agenda.
This is being rejected in America and it will be rejected in Britain unless this Government learns the lessons that Biden and Harris refused to.
Health and well-being are not the most important things in life, the most important thing is “love” – we can love without our health and wellbeing but without love we have nothing.
bollocks
The values on which Britain should be built are based on love and not well-being. We must aspire for the common good and not just our own. America is a long way from understanding this, we are not. Britain can be great again when it turns back to what made it great in the first place, love of our country and for all the people in it.
Two rules of stress management
1. Don’t worry about small stuff especially if you are not going to act to change the situation.
2. Looking back over your life isn’t it all small stuff?
Have a great day at the fancy dress parade.
Well said, dear Henry. Much Love for your birthday on Remembrance Day. The men in the trenches; or my uncle who was with 7th Amoured and then liberated Belsen; or my father at the Imjin River in Korea really knew what ‘stressed’ or ‘triggered by unsafe spaces’ meant.
Well said, Henry. I hope you enjoyed your breakfast this morning?
Acronyms, even when you’re blogging off-piste, Henry. That’s my second of the day – had to check out DINKYs earlier on an Investor link about house-building. I’m too late for the SuperHaven party – defeated by those voodoo economics – but I’ll continue to look out for the next wise surprise you deliver here. Happy Birthday Monday!
It may (or may not) be helpful to consider this from a inter-generational
perspective, Henry?
Boomers (post WW2 to mid 1960s) like you and me may recognise the importance of diversity, but we’re far less likely to see a need for equality and inclusion at work.
Boomers entered the workforce when the Silent Generation (now retired) were at the helm, when DE&I were discussed rarely, if at all, and work ethic and (often misplaced) loyalty were prioritised.
Boomers may view diversity as merely at most a morality and compliance issue, and to focus solely on whether or not it’s represented within an organisation.
We value individualism and were conditioned to see DE&I as a personal or political issue that simply has no place at work.
Generation X (mid 1960s to 1980 ish), on the other hand, entered the workforce on the heels of Boomer leadership, and lived alongside us through the market crashes and recessions of the Noughties, and the pandemic of 2020.
Gen X are often overlooked as a generational group.
They have assumed more senior leadership roles as millions of us Boomers retire, and the later (and younger) generational groups (Millennials and Generation Z) are looking to Gen X to see what is their take on DE&I initiatives.
Millennials (1980s through to late 1990s) meanwhile may now or shortly comprise a majority of the workforce.
Growing up they were encouraged to take risks and collaborate with each other in a tech-driven world.
Raised by either “helicopter” or absent parents, Millennials seem to have clear expectations for DE&I and entered the workforce hopeful about inclusion, yet still hesitant to hold organisations accountable.
They seem to believe diversity should go beyond mere representation and that different and unique backgrounds, experiences, views and styles can create groundbreaking and successful business and/or lifestyle outcomes.
The impact of the post 2000 tech bubble burst and then the global financial crisis of 2008, both of which were happening around the years the earlier Millennials were entering the workforce, shaped their perspectives on different work/life balance, loyalty and other workplace priorities which seemed to rank differently with their older generations.
Generation Z, born or raised this century alongside more recent immigration and other societal changes, may be the most racially and ethnically diverse generation of all.
Given increased acceptance of LGBTQ+, neurodiversity, and exposure to different racial and ethnic groups, Gen Z may have much higher expectations for workplace equality and inclusion. In fact, they may demand it.
They are looking for employers and work colleagues to reflect and respect their diversity, and for fair treatment of all employees (across gender, race and other diversity dimensions).
These are very sweeping generalisations, not very original, and may only apply to those who’ve been fortunate to experience higher education and/or regular forms of employment over the years.
Too much probably for a weekend blog, and whether this creates interest, apathy or hostility, I’ll just shut down and add my own best wishes for happy returns on Monday, Henry.
Hello Henry,
I write this on your birthday, so, Many Happy Returns of the Day to you and may you have a great many more of them!
I trust that, by now, you have had an enjoyable LMS, plus a jar or several of your favourite in the ‘Cockpit’.
Wellness: am I right that the ‘Wellness’ industry that has grown in size in the UK since the successful UK Olympics (2012) and those in Brazil, is flooding your email box with brochures etc. Or similar being stuffed into any magazine envelopes that you subscribe to? If so, yes, I suffer it too but then, in the (non-fashionable ) South-East London, I would suggest that there are now as many gymnasiums as former cinemas. It is no doubt quite a sizeable industry nowadays and is, perhaps, where people in my youth who used to join local (now gone) industry, now join the ‘wellness’ industry. Of course such ‘fads’ arrive from the the USA where atheletics and general sports are an important way of life and are strongly encouraged by their schools. Two weeks ago I was in New York Central Park early on a Wednesday morning. The number of joggers going round the West Drive made me wonder if there was a competition on. Is it the same in Hyde Park, I am not sure. At one time (possibly your school too) such things were actively encouraged until the local Councils sold off their sports fields for housing etc and schools were reportedly proscribed from having winners and losers type competitions. Also, since it’s Remembrance Sunday, schools Cadets were also ceased as were the Boys Scouts for urban areas (too elitist).
May I also suggest that it’s not your Family Social stratas that cause your attitude. Nor is the fact that you profess a religion where (and I have to go back to my schooldays for this) the one tenet was ‘Love thy neighbour’. Perhaps, since then, it has mutated into ‘political correctness and, subsequently, ‘wokery’. Lets us look again at the USA where, to our National Medias’ abject horror, the embodiment of a ‘Male Chauvenist Pig’ has been elected by 74M of the electorate and, is still winning the subsequant necessary Government legislator votes. How did he do all that when, in our National Medias’ consolidated view, it was a foregone conclusion for his opponent to win with a landslide victory! Really? Never have they been so wrong since Hilary Clinton lost to Barack Obama. Perhaps they should all have looked at the UK betting industry’s odds that it was always betting on Trump e.g. on 5th November they were offering 60-40 on, for Trump. How did he do it? You won’t hear it on the BBC (possibly too distasteful for sensitive ears) but you will hear it on other News Podcasts, that he has spent the last four years going down into non-wealthy communities and saying things like ‘boys go to school in the morning and come home girls in the afternoons’.
My being aged 79, I went through all this when I returned (after fifteen years in catering) to working in an office, then with a large public service (2002). The office procedures were much the same as before, plus the addition of computers. However, to me, the growing political correctness was misleading i.e. there was little or no casual humour and it went worse for, in my view, the wrong reasons. Staff easily became too precious. Yes, I was getting old…!
My suggeston to you is, that as soon as you get a similar feeling coming on as that you have mentioned above, that you hastily go round to the ‘Cockpit’ and treat yourself and then Toast your former times and have a ****** good laugh at it all nowadays.
Kind regards,
Tim Simpson