Tuesday, May 15, 2018



No, Jordan Peterson Is Not An Anti-Semite

Peterson's comment on Ari Feldman: "The most contemptible journalist I ever had the carelessness and naivete to talk with produces the most contemptible piece yet written about me"

The hit piece by Ari Feldman was published in the Jewish Forward, the historic home of Jewish Leftism in NY


Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychology professor turned best-selling author and unlikely cult figure in the anti-“political correctness” counterculture on the Internet, has been the subject of much discussion lately—including harsh critiques accusing him of authoritarian tendencies.

But probably none have generated as much controversy and backlash as the Forward piece by Ari Feldman with the incendiary title, “Is Jordan Peterson Fueling Jew Hatred?”

The article, which many have decried as a smear, does not quite answer its own question in the affirmative. It examines Peterson’s commentary on the causes of high Jewish achievement and quotes Peterson himself as saying that he despises anti-Semitism and is seeking to combat it; it also acknowledges his attacks on the “pathology of racial pride” on the far right. But this material is presented in a way that suggests Peterson is, intentionally or not, appealing to anti-Semitic sentiment, with Emory University historian and eminent Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt calling his comments “suspicious.”

One need not be a Peterson enthusiast to think that Lipstadt’s implication is troublingly unfair.

The article links to a seven-and-a-half-minute video clip from one of Peterson’s lectures titled “Why Jews Are So Successful,” in which he argues that the reason Jews are disproportionately represented in many elite fields is that their average intelligence is higher than that of other groups and that the disparity is even greater in the small cluster of the very brainy at the top of the scale. Lipstadt is quoted as saying that she “begin[s] to get leery” when people start asking such questions. She also compares Peterson to Kevin MacDonald, a retired psychology professor at California State University-Long Beach and a major figure on the alt-right, suggesting that both may be using “academic language” to cloak anti-Semitism.

Yet the anti-Semitism of MacDonald, the founder of the white supremacist website The Occidental Observer, is not particularly cloaked. (The site has such topic tags as “Holocaust Industry” and “Jewish aggressiveness.”) MacDonald’s thesis, articulated in such books as “The Culture of Critique,” is that Judaism is a “group evolutionary strategy” aimed at advancing Jewish interests at the expense of others and that part of this strategy for diaspora Jews is to subvert “host” societies—for instance, by questioning traditional social norms, promoting political radicalism, or advocating mass immigration.

Peterson, however, actively rejects such views. Indeed, his discussion of Jewish intelligence is largely a response to MacDonald and his fans. Feldman himself notes that Peterson’s blogpost on the subject links to a critique of MacDonald’s theories.

There are certainly alt-righters besides MacDonald whose interest in Jewish IQ goes hand-in-hand with either overt anti-Semitism or creepy Jew-bashing innuendo (such as blogger Steve Sailer’s comment that America’s “wealthiest, most powerful” minority uses its media influence to “demoralize and divide” others). But Peterson’s detractors have yet to point to anything remotely similar to such rhetoric from him.

Lipstadt is concerned that even to answer questions about “Jewish success” and Jewish intelligence may validate anti-Jewish tropes; elsewhere in the article, Feldman calls this “an old anti-Semitic dog whistle.” Yet such discussions have also appeared in mainstream liberal venues. New York magazine ran a cover story by Jennifer Senior titled “Are Jews Smarter?” in 2005; the following year, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker wrote about the Jewish genetic heritage, including the question of intelligence, in The New Republic. (Both articles acknowledged fears that claims of a Jewish advantage in brainpower can feed insidious notions of Jewish domination and that attributing it to biology can smack of “race science.”)

Moreover, criticizing Peterson for his “willingness to answer questions” is particularly misguided in today’s information environment. For both better and worse, cultural gatekeeping has been drastically weakened by the Internet, and people don’t need to make much of an effort to discover fringe, “beyond-the-pale” opinions including MacDonald-like conspiracy theories about Jewish dominance. To many, ignoring such questions is taken as evidence that there is no good answer. The purpose of Peterson’s discussion of Jewish intelligence is to stress that there is “no conspiracy,” no stealthy Jewish “nepotism” or behind-the-scenes cabal that maintains a hidden grip on power and influence.

It is also worth noting that, in the blogpost and the video, Peterson never ascribes Jewish intelligence to biological causes; the scientific consensus today is that IQ levels are the product of a complicated mix of heredity and sociocultural environment.

Another Peterson critic quoted in the article, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Heidi Beirich, finds fault with Peterson’s claim that almost anyone could have become a Nazi if they lived in Germany under Hitler and that culpability for the Holocaust was widely shared. Yet given that Peterson sees the Holocaust as the ultimate evil, it’s difficult to see how this can be, as Beirich suggests, a form of “signaling” to an alt-right base.

Whether Peterson’s fan base actually includes neo-Nazis or white supremacists is, at best, highly questionable. He has been frequently attacked by these groups; while it is true that the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer recently hailed him as “the Savior of Western Civilization,” that post (a snapshot of which can be found here) is a typical troll post, calling Peterson a “sleeper agent extraordinaire” whose critiques of anti-Semitism are actually “5D chess” covertly advancing a white supremacist agenda.

There are legitimate questions about Peterson’s coziness with certain segments of the alt-right. In January, libertarian blogger Stuart Hayashi, who agrees with Peterson’s critiques of leftist identity politics, posted an open letter to Peterson about his guest appearances on the podcast of alt right guru Stefan Molyneux, who is (as Hayashi demonstrates with numerous examples) a bona fide advocate for white supremacy often presenting a falsely moderate front.

Peterson has not replied to these concerns, though on other occasions he has said that his lectures have helped people on the far right move away from extremism.

If Peterson is joining the podcast of a racist crank in the hope of helping some of his listeners see the light, I think that’s a deeply misguided strategy. But after listening to his comments on (in his words) “the so-called ‘Jewish Question,’” I think it’s clear that he is actively trying to counter the alt-right’s anti-Semitic propaganda, whether or not he’s always going about it the right way.

One may disagree with Peterson about a lot of other things. But on this point, I believe the evidence is in his favor.

SOURCE





Is There Room in Diversity For White People?

It’s tempting to snicker at snowflake culture, with its noisy campus gauntlet of trigger warnings, microaggressions, and in-your-face privilege-checking—but transpiring quietly off-stage at academia’s administrative levels is a far more sinister phenomenon undertaken in the name of one of society’s more theoretically desirable goals: diversity.

Here a disclaimer seems in order. Regardless of political affiliation, fair-minded observers will concede that educational facilities for minorities have remained decidedly separate, and in no way equal, in the several generations since 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education. Such inequities naturally show up in college enrollment and performance: minority students who are products of inferior grade-school systems find it harder to negotiate the realm of higher education, in terms of both gaining entry and keeping up once they’re there. Accordingly, colleges have implemented various programs and protocols designed to boost campus diversity and help at-risk students feel more at home.

Now, reasonable people can differ about whether academia, as the ancestral home of white guilt, has been overzealous at micromanaging outcomes. Significant race-based preferences remain widespread, and lawsuits continue to be filed by white and Asian students who feel they bore the brunt of academia’s attempt to realize its vision of a utopian society in which minorities are represented at demographically correct levels. Eyebrows also raise at the way in which black students may be acculturated upon their arrival: ironically, some colleges “ghetto-ize” incoming minorities by creating for them separate advising systems, housing, academic tracks, and even graduation ceremonies. Still, it’s hard to dispute the wholesomeness of the mindset from which such tokens of affirmative action spring.

And yet wholesome is not the word that comes to mind when one assesses the newest wrinkle in academia’s attempt to balance the scales: an all-out, unapologetic assault on ‘whiteness’ itself. Today’s college administrators increasingly frame diversity and inclusion as lessons that must be learned by whites alone—and they’re lessons that too often unfold as interventions that force whites to regard themselves less as full partners in diversity than an obstacle to be overcome so that other constituencies might thrive. (This flows from another favored academic trope, the concept of the zero-sum society, wherein white success necessarily comes at the expense of non-white failure.) Colleges require the injection of units—if not whole introductory courses—on diversity in major subject areas “from physics to forestry,” as the Atlantic put it, and syllabi confirm the prevailing view of whiteness as something of an anachronistic disease that, like cholera, has no place in modern life.

A tale of two coasts: New York’s Hunter College promotes coursework for poli-sci majors in “the abolition of whiteness.” Stanford examines “abolishing whiteness as a cultural identity.” Elsewhere, to cite just a few examples, classes at Grinnell and UW-Madison confront “the problem of whiteness.” New Mexico’s St. John’s College takes on the “depravity” of whiteness. Moreover, academic theorists crusade to purge whiteness from STEM courses, because critical thinking and research are regarded as tools of “white hegemony.” Engineering students at Purdue must contend with the school’s indictment of “racist and colonialist projects in science,” while a UC-Irvine professor condemns even “technical prowess” as a white male construct. A Linfield college Gender Studies professor even condemns her peers for putting “stellar” colleagues in leadership roles, because stellar individuals, she notes, tend to be white and thus have benefited unfairly from “a logic of meritocracy that is built on this racist assumption that everyone has had the same access and opportunities.” UCLA pays students a stipend to act as professional social justice activists who will diagnose, expose, and combat “whiteness” and “the patriarchy” in all campus manifestations.

Most of these initiatives surfaced within the past few semesters, so a Geiger reading on fallout is premature, but the message and predictable effects are worrisome. Aside from simple issues of fairness, academe’s crusade is almost guaranteed to backfire. Today’s white college students have little to do with the active bigotry of the past; treating them as if they arrive on campus with some endemic moral deficit is almost certain to foment a stronger sense of racial identity among students who deem the attacks unwarranted. (77 percent of today’s freshmen describe themselves as somewhere between liberal and middle-of-the-road.) No matter how erudite the packaging, labeling a race “depraved” is the textbook definition of bigotry (if not, some might argue, an institutionally sanctioned hate crime).

Consider, too, the implications for black self-reliance. It seems unhelpful to suggest to blacks that resolving the gap in minority performance remains a problem that somehow falls to whites; this undercutting of black agency subliminally echoes the very paternalism that colleges decry. For that matter, what is the message to non-whites of identifying such concepts as excellence, prowess, and stellar performance with whiteness?

On the meta level, these campaigns reinforce the legitimacy of racist thinking itself: if it is permissible to link whiteness and depravity, why is it not permissible to link blackness and criminality? This is the antithesis of the mindset that true diversity should foster. All students should be encouraged to conceive themselves as individuals united by some overarching lingua franca.

Most egregiously, in writing such positions into its canon, academia abdicates its commitment to both critical thinking and political neutrality. The philosophical question of whether orchestrated diversity is preferable to pure meritocracy remains a topic of heated disagreement between liberals and conservatives; for colleges to summarily “settle the matter” internally forecloses debate on numerous corollary issues and abrogates the rights of those who may differ for reasons that have nothing to do with racism. (Foolhardy indeed is the professor who takes a position against the academic concept of diversity. I may be foolhardy in merely making that point.)

Similarly, to teach that black failure is a function of white malfeasance—the key underpinning of the “white toxicity” narrative—is to endorse a foundational talking point in radical leftist demagogy. Likewise, the contention that “mass incarceration” is a stealthy way for white America to disenfranchise blacks and maintain its loathsome “hegemony.” Such beliefs have no place as stipulated truths in higher education. They are political platforms.

SOURCE






Left and right wing Anti-Semitism/Zionism

The ancient hatred of Jews is back. Anti-Semitism continues to rise in America, as it has throughout the Western world, throughout Europe, and elsewhere around the world. It has been growing for several decades.

This infectious disease with no known cure, (according to Ruth Wisse, Professor Emeritus of Yiddish literature and comparative literature at Harvard University and a Senior Fellow of the Tikvah Fund, and author of “Jews and Power”) has once more morphed, this time into two divergent forms: the old religious/racial form used by the Christian West for centuries, which has never entirely receded, and is a powerful hatred; and the latest form contains religious hostility but is actually politically based with emphasis on the State of Israel, its closest allies, and Jewish groups that advocate on behalf of the State of Israel.

The feminist movement in America, and the postmodern Marxists or progressive leftists in particular, have co-opted this ancient hatred and joined it with Arab and Muslim world ideology, using Zionism (the national liberation movement of the Jewish people) as the contemporary form of Jew-hatred, demonizing, boycotting, and propagandizing about the State of Israel. These forms of Jew-hatred, whether far-right Nazi-based Jew hatred, religious hatred, or leftist/Islamist Israel bashing are dangerous.

The hostility currently plaguing the American polity and the Jewish community have given credence to a view that anti-Semitism is a singular problem that “exists on the other side of the aisle.” This results in cognitive dissonance and is shortsighted.

All forms of this deadly disease—far-right Nazi-based, religious-based and leftist anti-Israel-based—are responsible for deadly attacks against Jews worldwide, having escalated during the past 25 years.

In 1967, when the Arabs were roundly defeated by Israel in the “Six Day War,” the Khartoum Resolution was passed. It consisted of three NO’s: no peace, no recognition, no negotiations, as a means of heightening the historic and deep hatred exhibited against Jews and Israel. The present Islamist terrorists openly call for the annihilation of the state of Israel and have, successfully, propagandized the UN (which no longer is a “peacekeeping” agency), and infiltrated the universities.

Right-wing anti-Semitism is mainly associated with Nazi sympathizers. Conservatives who often are in actual opposition to the liberal social agenda of Jewish advocacy groups, e.g., AIPAC, which includes minority rights, church-state separation, and multiculturalism/pluralism in its platform are being accused of anti-Semitism. 

The postmodern Marxists spread anti-Semitism through BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions), Gender and Ethnic Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies (all identified through proven research by AMCHA Initiative), and echoed by Islam scholar Daniel Pipes, who says there no longer exists any scholarship in Middle Eastern Studies, strictly ideology only.

Israel gets singled out for boycotts, threats and intimidation, and hatred of the “other,” which happens when society doesn’t leave room for difference.

The left-right divide is not new to Jewish communal politics. In fact, at a Tikvah conference in N.Y. in December 2017, Professor Ruth Wisse challenged Jews to examine why they continue to be part of a destructive and murderous movement (communist/socialist) in whose name tens of millions of people have been oppressed and murdered (under Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot to name just a few). Now they must add an examination of anti-Israel hatred to the mix.

The “progressive” left continues to think that social justice is vital, making coalitions with other minority groups, including Muslims. Social justice has been conflated with Judaism (Tikkun Olam). The actual long-term gains from these coalitions appear to be negligible. A case in point is Black Lives Matter (BLM), a group linked to the left and BDS, which has taken up the pro-Palestinian cause while not helping its own black community. It is clear that this group, BLM, has lost all moral authority.

The old anti-Semitism is thriving in Europe, in Greece through the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, the anti-Semitic Jobbik Party in Hungary, and worldwide intolerance and violence perpetrated by a murderous Islamic fundamentalism that has turned 7th-century barbarism into a new phenomenon of terrorism.

The left has accepted the outright lies told by the Islamists as a means of undermining political opponents. This is the old tactic of scapegoating/blaming the Jews/Israel for the ills of the world, again failing to take responsibility for their own behavior.

The postmodern Marxists have successfully inverted the meaning of anti-Semitism. It is no longer hatred of Jews. It is acceptable (normative) to attack pro-Israel Jews for their Jewish identity (part of their program of identity politics and intersectionality.)

Linda Sarsour, women’s movement activist and representative of the terrorist organization Hamas in America, recently redefined anti-Semitism at the New School in N.Y.  She reformulated the age-old hatred of Jews so that progressive left activists could continue to be anti-Zionist or anti-Israel.

Hating Jews is not the definition of anti-Semitism under this new language formulation.

Criticizing progressive left activists for being anti-Israel is the new definition of anti-Semitism. Thus, this is a corruption of language and evidence of compelled speech, the very kind that Dr. Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto refused to use in Canada.

This redefinition by a Muslim who represents a terrorist organization in America is a ploy and a shield to protect its own anti-Israel activities. It is benefiting the leftists to the detriment of the Jews and of Israel.

The American Jewish community needs to have the necessary discussion about its safety and security. The time to educate is now so that the community has the tools to take collective action on its behalf.

SOURCE





Mayday! Britain’s heroic lifeboat volunteers are drowning in a sea of political correctness imposed by highly-paid pen pushers... with one rescuer sacked after 34 years taking an unauthorised passenger aboard

When Andy Hibbs isn’t hauling lobster pots aboard his fishing boat Matauri Bay, he devotes himself to helping those who, as the hymn goes, find themselves in peril on the sea.

The son of a lifeboatman, he joined the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) at the age of 21 and has spent his adult life serving at its station in his hometown St Helier, the capital of Jersey.

For doing this skilled, time-consuming, and often dangerous job, the 45-year-old father of one hasn’t earned a penny (like almost all RNLI crew members, he’s an unpaid volunteer). But it offers other rewards.

His crew have saved countless lives, becoming pillars of their seafaring community.

One morning in 1995, to cite perhaps their greatest triumph, Hibbs was part of a team which helped a catamaran carrying 300 passengers that had hit rocks off the coast of Jersey, and was sinking.

With disregard for their safety, they got alongside the vessel, which was listing dangerously, and plucked off men, women and children.

‘It was a real eye-opener,’ he recalls. ‘It brought home how serious the job was, and the responsibility in our hands.’

More recently, Hibbs was coxswain (the effective captain of a lifeboat) when his 25-strong crew featured in an ITV News item about the ‘brilliant’ and ‘capable’ RNLI teams in the Channel Islands.

Yet this summer, one aspect of their job will be different.

When they motor out of St Helier harbour to save lives, they won’t fly the RNLI flag. They are no longer associated with the famous charity.

It follows an extraordinarily bitter row, initially centring on an alleged breach of a health and safety procedure, which has placed the island’s lifeboatmen in conflict with the wealthy maritime charity’s headquarters in Poole.

The dispute — which led to allegations of bullying, intimidation and mendacity on both sides — rumbled on for more than a year. It has seen public demonstrations and rumours of corruption and cover-ups.

Matters culminated before Christmas with the entire St Helier lifeboat crew resigning.

Hibbs and his team have relaunched as an independent operation, the Jersey Lifeboat Association, and will soon take delivery of their first vessel.

‘I’m sad that it has come to this, but the RNLI caused this mess,’ Hibbs says. ‘They have been unpleasant and confrontational, and treated us volunteers with contempt.’

We’ll explore this ugly business (in which no side seems blameless) later.

But first, an important point: the lifeboatmen of Jersey are not alone.

Two other crews are embroiled in public disputes with RNLI leadership.

One, in Whitby, North Yorkshire, revolves around jokey Christmas gifts exchanged by lifeboatmen, including a mug with a picture of a naked woman on it and one of the crew’s faces superimposed on to the model’s head. A female superior found the mugs in a cupboard and the pair were sacked.

The offending items were either saucy or obscene, depending on your point of view. The RNLI insists they were ‘pornographic’.

Either way, an investigation talked of ‘safeguarding’ issues and found the images on the mugs ‘could have been seen by visiting schoolchildren’.

It also uncovered ‘conduct issues’ related to the crew’s social media use, which compromised the station’s status as a ‘safe and inclusive environment’.

In protest at the men’s sacking, four crew members resigned. Some 11,000 people have signed a petition demanding their reinstatement.

Down the coast in Scarborough, the Mail this week revealed that RNLI coxswain Tom Clark has been sacked, after 34 years of service, for allegedly breaking health and safety guidelines by going on a sea exercise with unauthorised passengers on his lifeboat.

He accused the RNLI of ‘bullying and intimidation’, saying that volunteer lifeboatmen were being ‘bombarded’ with ‘new rules, forms, acronyms and health and safety’.

A petition to reinstate him has 5,000 signatures.

Drowning sailors are, of course, unlikely to care whether their rescuer owns an inappropriate item of crockery, or once set sail with unauthorised passengers.

Yet the RNLI insists its actions are warranted, arguing that it’s duty-bound to protect staff from bullying and harassment, and must enforce its safety protocols.

This clash, between what one might call traditional lifeboat culture and the forces of political correctness, turns out to be the source of heated conflict in RNLI stations nationwide.

Before Christmas, Coxswain Tommy Yule, of the Scottish fishing port of Arbroath, was sacked after an incident at a party where visiting Dutch lifeboatmen were entertained.

Reports of what happened vary. But it appears to have involved a prank known as a ‘three-man lift’, in which a crew member exposed his backside. Yule was seemingly fired after failing to intervene.

Fellow crewman Jamie Robertson also went. A third man, Alan Russell, who served the RNLI for two decades, quit in protest, saying it was just ‘a practical joke’.

As a result of their departure, Arbroath went without a lifeboat for months. Meanwhile, in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, two senior helmsmen lost their jobs after allegedly taking incorrectly trained staff on a rescue.

In Moelfre, on Anglesey, a cancer-stricken Coxswain was sacked (and an ally resigned) in 2016 after a mysterious ‘personnel issue’. In New Brighton, Merseyside, 12 crew members were sacked that same year after falling out with RNLI management over the sacking of a former colleague.

Thanks to the latter rebellion, the station had a restricted service, or was ‘off watch’ on more than 70 occasions over the next 12 months.

To have mass resignations at one lifeboat station might be considered unfortunate, but to suffer at least seven such cases in a period of around 18 months is somewhat more worrying.

One possible explanation to the situation is, ironically, that the RNLI has become too popular for its own good — at least when it comes to fundraising.

The charity has enjoyed near-universal support since its foundation in 1824. In addition to substantial public donations, sailing enthusiasts often leave the organisation a large bequest when they die.

Its most recent published accounts, for 2016, show income of £191 million, including £130 million from legacies — more than the £177 million it takes to run its 238 stations.

Overall assets (including property and boats) have grown to £712 million, of which £271 million is now held in ‘investments’.

In the past, the charity’s cash pile has spawned controversy. In 2001, a group of campaigning accountants called ‘Ethical Audit’ criticised it for having £200 million tucked away, arguing that many donors would not give if they knew the scale of its wealth.

For lifeboat crews, the biggest recent change (and a key factor in squabbles) has been a ‘restructuring’ of middle management last year by a senior executive called Leesa Harwood, formerly of Save The Children, who was hired as the RNLI’s ‘community lifesaving and fundraising director’ on a salary of about £95,000

For lifeboat crews, the biggest recent change (and a key factor in squabbles) has been a ‘restructuring’ of middle management last year by a senior executive called Leesa Harwood, formerly of Save The Children, who was hired as the RNLI’s ‘community lifesaving and fundraising director’ on a salary of about £95,000

The Charity Commission agreed that the figures were ‘on the high side’ and asked the RNLI to reduce them. So the charity came up with a way to dispose of cash: changing its historic remit from rescuing people at sea and on inland waterways to a role including ‘drowning prevention’.

The Times reported that the charity was ‘awash with so much money that it has decided to introduce Baywatch-style beach lifeguards, inland waterway patrols and a fleet of hovercraft’.

Seventeen years later, the RNLI employs 523 lifeguards in Britain. It has invested in a £25 million HQ at Poole with a roof in the shape of a wave and windows that resemble portholes — which was opened by the Queen in 2004.

Crucially, RNLI’s payroll has risen dramatically in other areas, too. In 1999, it had 750 employees, but within five years it had 1,000. By 2016 there were 2,366, with 35 senior executives earning more than £60,000, overseen by chief executive Paul Boissier, on a total package of £162,705.

Its French equivalent employs just 75 and 1,200 managerial roles are filled by volunteers.

Speak to disgruntled lifeboatmen and supporters, large numbers of whom contacted Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn after he highlighted the Whitby scandal last week, and you’ll hear a simple answer: many head office staff have become pointless jobsworths.

‘Like many big charities, the RNLI has become an empire builder’s dream,’ is how one fundraiser put it.

‘There are whole departments making up ridiculous health and safety protocols or human resources codes of conduct. It drives crews up the wall.’

They added that many are ‘third-sector careerists with no knowledge of the sea, or what makes lifeboats tick, who try to import Left-wing values.

‘Lifeboatmen, who are often working-class lads, won’t buy it.’

Evidence of this apparent trend — typical of the way the Left has taken hold of so many public bodies — can perhaps be seen in the RNLI’s annual report.

Though it used to limit its operations to the UK and Ireland, the RNLI now boasts of running ‘drowning prevention programmes’ in Tanzania, Zanzibar, Bangladesh, Ghana and Lesbos. (The latter refers to helping migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean in unseaworthy boats.) It talks of trying to ‘influence policy makers and partners’ and lobbying the UN to reduce deaths at sea.

It has a ‘new national team of health, safety and environment advisers’ winning ‘health and safety’ awards, speaks of creating a ‘diversity leadership group’ among staff and supporting the ‘International Day Against Homophobia.’

Posts currently advertised include a ‘safeguarding officer’ earning up to £41,926 — a job that generally involves responsibility for ‘health, safety and wellbeing’.

For lifeboat crews, the biggest recent change (and a key factor in squabbles) has been a ‘restructuring’ of middle management last year by a senior executive called Leesa Harwood, formerly of Save The Children, who was hired as the RNLI’s ‘community lifesaving and fundraising director’ on a salary of about £95,000.

The exercise created 42 ‘area lifesaving managers’ to supervise half a dozen lifeboat stations each.

As a result, there have been dramatic changes in the relationship between crews and RNLI HQ.

In the past, ‘regional managers’ responsible for dozens of stations would visit every six months. Under the new regime, local volunteers are inspected monthly or even weekly. That often causes friction.

According to Tom Clark, who was sacked after 34 years of service: ‘Too many area managers, including the one who got rid of me, are young graduates who have never been to sea, and have no idea of the skill and effort required to be a lifeboatman. They rely on forms and procedures to make up for their lack of experience.’ As a result, volunteers such as Clark — nominated for an MBE by the RNLI in 2016 — complain of disciplinary investigations over breaches of protocol which, they say, would in previous years have been dealt with informally, if at all.

‘We are having our hands held by politically correct busybodies,’ is how one puts it.

In Clark’s case, one element that led to his sacking were claims that he swore at a colleague — an apparent breach of the RNLI’s code of conduct (‘Yes, I swore. It’s a rufty-tufty place at sea and people do swear,’ he admits). Other lifeboatmen say this new culture of micro-management means basic operations are preceded by risk assessments and team briefings.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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