The bastards bosses who run the UK's businesses have not been slow to notice what Trump is all about. Nor have their friends in the press been either. As the Telegraph notes this morning:
Financial chiefs are calling on the City regulator to tear up plans to impose diversity targets in the latest sign of a mounting business backlash.
I don't have a Telegraph subscription and could not read the rest, but I learned all I needed from that opening. It says that the callous individuals who have sought to pretend they are human beings for the last few years are now intent on being ruthless in tooth and claw in their pursuit of profit again.
They can be so, of course, because they, apparently, have no family members who are:
- Disabled
- Neurodiverse, in all its forms
- Women
- LGBTQ+
- Old
- Sick
- Suffering stress or anxiety
- Members of an ethnic minority
Those characteristics are, of course, unknown amongst financial chiefs, all of whom are white, male, Christian in name only, and have wives at home who promised to love, honour and obey whilst caring for children when they are not at boarding schools, when they look after those childrens' ponies instead.
Please forgive my anger, but if that is what British business leaders are really now saying (and I suspect not all of them are, whilst some noisy ones will be), then I have every reason to be angry.
We have fought hard over decades to make this country a fairer place to live. It's not fair. Let no one pretend we have won. It's just fairer. And if the bastards bosses want to roll that back to enrich themselves - which is what this is all about, after all - I have every reason to be angry and to loathe those in the media promoting this.
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It needs to be argued that diversity targets improve the quality of employees by ensuring that a poorer quality person is not selected simply because they belong to what has been a favoured group. Diversity targets help employers get better people from groups that are normally overlooked.
Trumps large scale firing of federal employees appears to be so that they can be replaced by political apointees who may be less competent.
“Trumps large scale firing of federal employees appears to be so that they can be replaced by political apointees who (may) WILL be less competent. ”
There, sorted for you old chap.
Diversity targets – a substitute for white male hetero CEOs removing blinkers and not hiring from the same pool that they swim in.
(Amusing really that they think that the “best” candidates are white male (maybe female) hetero …………but perhaps I’m being too kind using the word “think” when very little of that is involved……witness the actions of the mango mussolini.)
It’s poor form but it’s what you would expect from a lobby group. They don’t want to roll back what hasn’t happened, that’s not how opposing a new plan for them works. What they want to avoid is having to show concern for disadvantaged groups by compulsion which is not the way to show compassion at all.
I wonder what ‘neurodiversity in all its forms’ means. And note your observation that Britain is a fairer place to live.
Neurodiversity everything from autism, to ADHD, to being an introvert, to being left handed, and onwards.
Well in my opinion these companies were never on board with diversity right from the outset .
Diversity in the workplace is way more than just hiring people from minority backgrounds , that’s just box ticking .
The culture of these companies has to be in the right place from top to bottom , just because you were invited to the dance it doesn’t mean they are asking you to step on the dance floor .
All they are doing Richard is to tear up a bit of paper , they weren’t on board anyway .
Won’t be long before many of these “exemplar” capitalists will be pushing for “diversity cleansing”!
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-murder-of-people-with-disabilities
The point is that by even publicising this, they are inviting the non thinkers to gather behind them in rolling back a lot of hard won, civilised human rights.
Where the USA goes, the British are bound to follow…
Sir “Freebie” Starmer and his sidekick Rachel from accounts will no doubt be relishing the prospect of down-grading human rights in the name of increasing “growth” for their rich chums!
Want more evidence of the down-grading of human rights not to mention ignoring the sustainability of the planet comes in thick and fast these days from this rotten government. Apparently evidence for expanding the terminal to boost the UK’s economic growth was ordered by Heathrow itself!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/01/reevess-heathrow-third-runway-report-was-commissioned-by-london-airport
I was going to bog it
I still might …..
Absolutely love the Freudian slip in Richard’s reply!
I will leave it then…
This is a question, not directly to do with above piece. Do natural disasters, like floods, hurricanes, wildfires decrease GDP? I think it would increase GDP, as so much must be spent dealing with the consequences. Google’s AI says these events decrease GDP, because of the destruction of assets. I though GDP was about flow, not fixed assets, so can this be right?
These events increase GDP as they have to be cleaned up
They harm well-being.
Ask why in that case politicians want growth.
Thank you. And a useful example of AI getting it wrong/ being fed with biased info.
Clearly many of the voting public are beginning to move to a position where they won’t be voting for a Labour MP because those now in Parliament won’t stand up to get rid of the noxious, hypocritical and useless “Freebie” Starmer!
https://telegraph.co.uk/gift/ab849eb295905c32
Thanks
It was as bad as I expected.
I nite the actuaries are reactionaries. No surprise there.
I ‘nite’ you don’t have a clue what you are talking about – why should the IFoA have a policy to actively disadvantage white males?
It hasn’t.
Without DEI policies it has a policy to advantageb white males.
Let me guess what you are?
the comments on the Telegraph article show the extent of the problem.
I seem to remember that one of the financial crashes, can’t remember which, had excess testosterone and group think identified as a major cause. Let’s just keep employing those macho all white male bastards who love nothing so much as money and care nothing about society. It’s all been working out so well – though of course it has for them, just not so much for the rest of us.
Its interesting when you look at DEI – and environmental issues and who were some of the first people to take it on board.
Yes not various ‘Cuddly’ organisations but the US Military.
The US Military in the 60’s was fighting in Vietnam and either via the Draft and/or because it provided a career for African Americans, ended up with a large number of them in it ranks on the frontline. Clearly in combat ‘them and us’ is a recipe for disaster and not conducive to discipline. Also of course as you are fighting and everyone’s armed Sergeant Good Ol Boy might find himself charging the VC and dodging bullets from behind as well as the front.
Later largely because if the end of the draft they recruited women for ‘non combatant’ roles, cooks, drivers, clerks etc They found that overall they did a better job than men. They then realised that they could nit not train them for combat because if their line collapsed they would need all available soldiers which meant giving them combat training so now they are on the front line.
So DEI had real practical benefits for the US Military why not for the rest of us?
I suggest that the idea that after first the French then the Russian Revolution the ruling classes deciding to make enough concessions to save their necks has its merits. If however they now decide that they dont need to what might the consequences be?
Good point John
De -segregation was ordered by Truman -a southern politician- in 1948. I don’t know how long it took to ‘bed in’ but I expect the experience of war changed things in the armed services, as it usually does.
The exemptions for the draft tended to favour the white population in the 1960s as they had more access to education and that was a way of claiming deferment. Education in the South was still segregated until the end of the 60s. Young men with more education were often deployed to more technical units not front line infantry so the black population was over represented.
It got better over the years. General Austin became the Secretary of State for Defense under Biden. Compare him with Hegseth the new one!
I have no idea whether financial chiefs are all white, male and self-identified as Christian. I don’t believe that to be true of the broader category of ‘business chiefs’ where one may encounter a degree of diversity. In my experience, it is largely superficial. At first glance it may seem to be reflective of a genuinely inclusive and meritocratic organisational culture, but in reality it is not.
A requirement for conformity is an intrinsic quality of organisations, and I would argue that ideological conformity is the principal demand. On the greasy corporate pole, this entails demonstrating unequivocal loyalty to a particular class interest, and also to the peculiarly reductive view of humans and the world in general that is peddled in business schools. This does not automatically exclude people who superficially appear diverse, but it pretty ruthlessly excluded those who genuinely are diverse in thought and outlook.
It is this very reductivism that has led us to suppose that we can meaningfully understand or represent human variation and complexity using nine data points. This assigns people to conveniently countable categories, which is doubtless comforting to an unimaginative MBA student, but many of those categories are so absurdly broad as to be functionally useless. LGBTQIA+ is an example of this. It is a category to which I nominally belong, but I am unclear what useful information it conveys about me beyond being ‘somehow different’. It says nothing about my level of professional capability and may well distract from it. It certainly doesn’t preclude me from being a bastard.
I fully support the espoused principles of diversity, equality, and inclusion, but I despair at the tick-box ‘compliance framework’ approach that renders it lifeless and devoid of meaning.
My own experience is that organisations that engage in a great deal of performative hoop-la about diversity and inclusion can be some of the least comfortable places for people who are different. The best ones have a truly human-centred culture in which people are understood and valued for their uniqueness, complexity and capabilities without too much fuss being made about it. That requires a level of trust and a sense of necessary interdependence that can only exist in the presence of high moral standards in leadership. Sadly, this is very rare.
Don’t neglect the power of Tufton St etc to ginger up any disruptive or Trumpist groups. They are working hard in this country as Farage is on the youth.
This is yet another example of the ‘hyper-liberalism’ that John Gray explores in his book ‘The New Leviathans: Thoughts after Liberalism’ (2023).
Gray is not popular, a lot of reviews of this book are negative but I think that that is because our present society has too many self satisfied people in it who don’t like it up ’em – Neo-liberals and trad’ Liberals alike.
We have discussed here a return to some sort of medieval feudalism. Gray disagrees and pulls this idea apart on pp.130 -132:
‘Many twenty first century societies exhibit some of the features of medieval feudalism. Inequalities of wealth and opportunity have increased, while mobility between classes or castes has declined. An intellectual clerisy that justifies these hierarchies is also a reality. But this is not a new kind of medievalism…………(because)……
….Feudal societies conferred benefits on their subordinate populations that contemporary societies cannot provide. In return for their labour, serfs were promised protection by lords. Twenty first century serfs are abandoned to anarchy and despair. Feudalism was supported by myths of a divine order in which the poorest had a place. The 21st century underlcass are offered no place in the scheme of things. Like the ‘former persons’ of 20th century communist regimes, they are retrograde specimens of humanity on the wrong side of history’ (here Gray is in Abby Innes territory).
Gray says that medieval serfs and lords were bound together by a religious imperative, with serfs being helped to endure by it; today’s serfs have to rely on fentanyl to endure or just check out on it forever and nothing else.
Gray is contrasting medieval feudalism with today’s iteration arguing that the 21st century version is much worse, and that this proposition – that we are going backwards does not really stand up to scrutiny. Anyway, history may repeat itself but never exactly. At least the medieval version imposed a religious based obligation on the lords to protect their vassals that existed as long as the lords kept it. Today’s lords feel no such obligation it seems, there is no reciprocal contract because already the ‘lords’ are replacing us with AI?
Instead of going backwards, we are maybe lurching forwards and I do not think that I am dipping into eschatology by saying that we seem to be seeing humanity unravel. The stuff about human history that Michael Hudson and David Graeber taught us about human reciprocity and ‘deed debt’ (things that we did for each other – not money based) in human societies is maybe going out the window? It certainly is between economically defined hierarchies of society although it might endure within the social stratum to some extent.
But it is not good, whichever way we choose to look at it. Within our society, the people you mention in your post (another group is ex-service men and women harmed by war) are all vulnerable to ‘Atlas shrugging’*. That is unless they are very rich LGB&T, disabled, ethnic minorities etc., because we know that all that matters in that part of society is the size of your wad.
‘Atlas Shrugged’ a ‘book’ by Ayn Rand, high priestess of Neo-liberalism a book Adam Curtis of the BBC once said was as popular as the bible in the U.S.
I have read Gray’s New Leviathan – quite a bit to agree with – but I think he made a mistake basing so much on Hobbes (who hated democracy and was a royalist/aristo supporter – which of course informed his outlook). Anyway, given current events – it is clear humans are still unable to formulate a reasonably stable government and economic system that benefit a reasonable majority in a given country. Agree with the going backwards. So what to do – Acquiesce? or resist & what form resistance? (demos now forbidden). I have some ideas – mostly community related. I will contact you directly.
There have been places where alternatives have been set up and worked, for more than a dozen years. But of course, we are not told about them. Not or we told about how they are being deliberately undermined ad targeted by their neighbours.
https://rojavainformationcenter.org/2023/12/aanes-social-contract-2023-edition/
Thanks Mike, glad you have read it, Hobbes is very bleak isn’t he and I do prefer Jean-Jacques Rousseau in many ways but Hobbes is there just so we don’t get carried away and think that as we become more modern we leave our more animalistic and darker sides behind – because we don’t!
It reminds me of the Krell in the film The Forbidden Planet who, eschewing physical form, forget that the mind – no matter how capable or powerful it becomes – carries its primordial past with it all of the time. The primordial instinct that Gray latches onto is self-preservation.
Gray’s thesis is fascinating because after beating up Liberalism and lambasting the cult of the individual that has ben enabled by it, he then at the end goes back to the individual, and places upon the individual the responsibility to change themselves from within for the better. This is why he focuses on the life of Samuel Beckett and exhorts us to live our lives for others.
Note that Gray does not charge the state with engineering this new-Beckett like person or soul directly. But he does accept that the State should create the conditions for that new person or soul to engineer itself through the application of law and rules and forms of security. That is why I think he also used Hobbes ideas.
His definition of liberalism on pp.4-5 is a must read and also helps us to see where its inherent weaknesses are.
Thus at the end Gray reveals himself to be somewhat a Liberal dreamer himself Mike. He is not just trying to redeem society; he is also trying to redeem himself! But it is a fascinating read – a pocket battleship of a book – for me at least, one of the best books of 21st century so far.
The culture of large tech companies is to force those less able, or unable back to the office. This is being done for little, or no reason. People are often individual contributors with little or no team members in the local geographical region, and come to the office to have conference calls with other team members and customers globally. This is likely a quiet firing mechanism, and nothing to do with abilities.
Someone (not here) described DEO policies as “whatever” blindness i.e. hiring should be done on education and experience.
I so hate that concept. There’s a huge problem with “whatever” blindness.
The criteria have to begin with the mother and her pregnancy care, the neighbourhoods where the child grows up, the kindergartens and schools they attend, the access to University or trade apprenticeships.
When all else is equal (as in “equality of opportunity”) *then* you can say hiring policies are blind. But they won’t be if full account is not taken of “conception to interview” experience.
Being blind to the factors in a person’s earlier life is not conducive to equality of opportunity. Instead, a person is penalised in the name of “blindness” for factors entirely outside their control.
The best UK universities don’t take students just on the basis of exam results, but on the basis of controlled interviews that search for curiosity and openness to the new.
There is nothing worse than being surrounded by nothing but straight while male finance bros. I think having a wide range of backgrounds in an office is good for personal development.
“Diversity in the workplace is way more than just hiring people from minority backgrounds , that’s just box ticking.”
What does not make sense is that if you do not hire people from the “diversity pool” then there simply will not be enough people to hire. This is a demographics issue. Without importing skilled immigrants there simply are not enough people in the UK and USA to do the jobs.
No employer ever hired and retained a person who could not be onboarded and trained to do the job.
If you want a brilliant explanation of why DEI is good (for everyone), I strongly recommend this:
https://open.substack.com/pub/iratusursus/p/why-dei-matters-even-if-you-think?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1w1c61
An unfortunate part of the character of many people in the UK is to take great delight in standing on the hands of those people they perceive to be a couple of rungs below them on the ladder .
Why are people confused between ensuring all people have equal opportunities and policies which actively promote minorities above other individuals.
Surely all forms of discrimination are wrong?