Yes, yes, I do realise that you, my regular readers, utterly rely on me to keep you up to date with the very latest news and views but, have a heart, I can't cover everything! Anyway, mea culpa and all that sort of thing, I totally missed the Kevin Myers brouhaha until I noticed this morning that he has been sacked as a commentator at The Times. If you can be arsed to check this blog 'way back when' you will find paeans of praise from me for Mr. Myers who was one of the very best commentators on all those 'Oirish' shenanigans a few years back. Alas, he changed newspapers and I lost track of him but now he is back in the headlines but not, perhaps, for the best of reasons.
He has been sacked by The Times for an opinion piece he wrote on the subject of the huge pay disparities between men and women presenters at the BBC. I have not been able to find the original article, it has been well and truly 'disappeared' by the 'PC Brigade' who were shocked, I tell you, shocked, by Mr. Myers' acute observation that the two top exceptions amongst female presenters who were paid massive amounts virtually equal to their male counterparts, were - wait for it! - Jewish! What he actually wrote was this:
Two of the best paid women presenters in the BBC with whose, no doubt, sterling work I am tragically unacquainted - are Jewish.
Good for them. Jews are not generally known for insisting on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which is the most useful measure there is of inveterate, lost-with-all-hands stupidity.
Cue: total 'SHLOCK-HORROR' all round with the 'PC Brigade' fainting all over the place. Of course, stereotyping is a very rough and ready measure of reality but usually there is a grain of truth in it. Thus, as we all do know, Jocks are penny-pinching misers, Italians are excitable, 'rezzidents of Summerzet' are a bit dim, Germans are over-fond of militarism (whodathunkit?) and so on and on. Jews earned their reputation over the past thousand years by taking over the money-lending business in a Europe that used every trick in the book to stop them from entering most other professions - and nobody loves their bank manager!
But Mr. Myers' main point is totally missed amongst the mass hysteria that has broken out. What he is saying is that Jews, on the whole, are more intelligent than non-Jews. Alas, despite the very many attempts to measure intelligence (or even to define it!) I remain doubtful as to their exactitude. However, I am totally unsurprised that Jews invariably come out on top. That is not to say that they never make mistakes or occasionally plumb the depths of dumbness like other people, it's just that on the whole, taken in the round, they are, on average, slightly brighter than the rest of us. Which is why I am totally unsurprised that the two highest paid ladies in the BBC are Jewish. Jolly well done, gals!
Truth spoken in the House of PC! No! I'll bet the fainting couches are full and a line is waiting.
I believe it is true that Jewish people of northern European descent do measure far ahead of other measured groups in the intelligence arena. Maybe it has to do with that group keeping their DNA within as opposed to cross pollinating with every Tom, Dick and Harry in the world. But then, I ain't no expert.
PC is a war against noticing.
Posted by: Whitewall | Monday, 31 July 2017 at 12:26
Yes yes yes, never mind all that! Where are the jokes? We need jokes!!
Posted by: Timbo | Monday, 31 July 2017 at 12:52
Did you get to see "Dunkirk" David? I was going to give it a miss, to be honest, but it has stirred the ire and the wrath at someone at "Marie Claire" since it apparently celebrates Maleness too much, and not, say, the "disposability of men".
I could understand this attitude if it portrayed men being shot at but a la The A Team, manage to struggle on with no evidence of being injured or if there were men leaping from moments of impossible death by using pieces of wood in the water. From what I have seen of the trailer, it looks reminiscent of the wholesale slaughter as depicted in "Saving Private Ryan". How can people watch that and tsk over the fact that there were 'a lot of men' in it?
Anyway, I was looking forward to a potentially well informed discussion of the film.
Are we still on about the Gender Pay gap? I lost all interest when some bleating woman from BBC 4 decided to question why her pay was a fourth of her male counterpart and then proceeded to inform her audience that she worked a fourth of the time that he did. She didn't seem to get why that might have been a big clue. FFS, why take the job if it doesn't pay you a wage you can live on? I don't need to know what the men around me are earning, I am earning enough to keep a roof over my head. If I want to earn more, I will do what is necessary to do that. And when you work for minimum wage, the only discrimination you face is if you're a youngster. I can't stand this "You hold me back because Patriarchy" rubbish.
Posted by: Mayfly | Monday, 31 July 2017 at 13:23
Duffers - the damn' jokes??!!!
Posted by: Cuffleyburgers | Monday, 31 July 2017 at 13:34
It is noticeable that average IQ levels are dropping fast. The reason is obvious. Better healthcare. Mother nature has a mechanism to weed out the less able. Evolution. It works on the principle of the less able(the stupid and the like) by a process of elimination(not living too long so procreating less) gradually drop out of the gene pool. Medical and other advances has put a stop to that. So the gene pool of those with low IQ instead of diminishing is growing. A fact that a little research into current scientific thinking (not widely publishes as being not PC) accepts as being uncontroversially true.
Posted by: Epikouros | Monday, 31 July 2017 at 13:34
@ Epikouros - in fact among the poor and stupid birth rates tend to be higher.
Welfare favours offspring in rich countries among the unemployable while a lot of rich career people find themselves childless; and in Africa as Macron pointed out they breed like rabbits, to the extent they are now colonising our continent, and god knows what the effects will be 100 years from now. I doubt it will be pretty.
Eugenics is a hideous science, but we are engaged unwittingly on the opposite.
Posted by: Cuffleyburgers | Monday, 31 July 2017 at 14:11
Jews, on the whole, are more intelligent than non-Jews
According to SWMBO I am the exception that proves the rule
Posted by: AussieD | Tuesday, 01 August 2017 at 01:38
AD,
My SWMBO beat your SWMBO to it!
Posted by: TheBigHenry | Tuesday, 01 August 2017 at 02:19
Shalom TBH
If Mr Myers had bothered to poll a cross section of Jewish SWMBO's he would have come up with a different conclusion about general intelligence in the Jewish community.
Posted by: AussieD | Tuesday, 01 August 2017 at 03:01
Henry and AussieD, clearly you boys need some serious help!
Posted by: Whitewall | Tuesday, 01 August 2017 at 03:14
Shalom AD & WW,
Ah, but you see, AD, my SWMBO is not Jewish (other than by injection)! She is a Swedish/Irish Catholic by birth, though she hasn't been in church for years. So when she tells me Ashkenazi guys are not that smart, she is only half joking (perhaps only one quarter). And as of last month, I have to address her as "Doctor Trish".
So WW, what kind of help can you offer me? I sure could use some ...
Posted by: TheBigHenry | Tuesday, 01 August 2017 at 05:33
G'day Whitewall.
I think I am beyond assistance and now resigned to my fate - whatever that may be.
Well done on the Doctorate Mrs TBH.
Posted by: AussieD | Tuesday, 01 August 2017 at 06:13
AD,
Mrs. TBH says "Thank you, AussieD."
I must confess that I was only kidding around when I reported that she doesn't think Jewish guys are smart. After all, she is very smart and she married one. And I didn't have to beg her that much ...
Posted by: TheBigHenry | Tuesday, 01 August 2017 at 08:24
Henry, Dr. Trish huh? I know you have mentioned in the past but what is her field of study? Will this mean you can remove yourselves from your current address and fetch up elsewhere? She sounds like a determined and smart woman...current husband not withstanding!
AusieD, now you hang in there! Sounds like you are well married to a lady who always knows what's best for you :)
Posted by: Whitewall | Tuesday, 01 August 2017 at 11:32
WW,
Dr. Trish's field of expertise is cognitive science and linguistics. She currently teaches at U.C. Berkeley and will lecture in the upcoming fall and spring semesters at another University of California campus. But, yes, her main effort in the near future will be to find a more permanent academic position at some other American university, which most likely will get us out of Left-infested California.
I, of course, will gladly tag along wherever her career takes her. I travel light. With my computer, my Kindle, and my android smartphone (NOT an obamaphone!) I do what I do anywhere in the good ol' U.S.A.
Posted by: TheBigHenry | Tuesday, 01 August 2017 at 18:56