#Snowflake a definition in modern parlance.

I am of a generation - a baby boomer - so old now - ha!. Despite trying to keep abreast of current affairs and enjoy the company of younger people, now and again a new term crops up in common parlance - that it not familiar. Such a term now cropping up regularly - is he or she is "a snowflake" or the "snowflake generation". What does it mean? Wikipedia provides a definition. I copy it here! :

Generation Snowflake, or Snowflake Generation, is a neologistic term used to characterize the young adults of the 2010s as being more prone to taking offence and less resilient than previous generations, or as being too emotionally vulnerable to cope with views that challenge their own. The term is considered derogatory.

It goes on to provide more as follows :

Background

The term snowflake has been used to refer to children raised by their parents in ways that give them an inflated sense of their own uniqueness.This usage of snowflake has been reported to originate from Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 novel Fight Club, and its 1999 film adaptation. Both the novel and the film include the line "You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.In January 2017, Palahniuk claimed credit for coining this usage of snowflake, adding "Every generation gets offended by different things but my friends who teach in high school tell me that their students are very easily offended." Palahniuk referred to the young adults of the 2010s as exhibiting "a kind of new Victorianism".According to Merriam-Webster, Palahniuk was not the first person to use the metaphor saying, "It's the stuff of self-help books and inspirational posters and elementary school assurances. The imagery before negation is lovely; we are each unique snowflakes, each worth treasuring because each is uniquely beautiful", furthering "Palahniuk's denial of the individual's snowflake status struck a chord."
The term "Generation Snowflake", or its variant "Snowflake Generation", probably originated in the United States and came into wider use in the United Kingdom in 2016 following the publication of Claire Fox's book I Find That Offensive!. In it she wrote about a confrontation between Yale University students and faculty Head of College, Nicholas Christakis.The confrontation arose after Christakis's wife, Erika Christakis, a lecturer at the university, had suggested students should "relax a bit rather than labeling fancy dress Halloween costumes as culturally insensitive", according to Fox.Fox described the video showing the students' reaction as a "screaming, almost hysterical mob of students".Fox said the backlash to the viral video led to the disparaging moniker "generation snowflake" for the students.^[9]
Although the term "snowflake generation" was previously considered no more than slang, it was recognised as one of Collins Dictionary's 2016 words of the year.^[11] Collins defines the term as "the young adults of the 2010s, viewed as being less resilient and more prone to taking offence than previous generations".^[11] Similarly, in 2016 the Financial Times included snowflake in their annual Year in a Word list, defining it as "a derogatory term for someone deemed too emotionally vulnerable to cope with views that challenge their own, particularly in universities and other forums once known for robust debate" and noting that the insult had been aimed at an entire generation.^[2]

Usage

"Generation Snowflake" and snowflake have been used in relation to purported generational differences; snowflake and similar terms have also been used more broadly.^[3]

Generational differences

According to Claire Fox, members of Generation Snowflake "are genuinely distressed by ideas that run contrary to their worldview"; they are more likely than previous generations of students to report that they have mental health problems.Fox and journalist Bryony Gordon described these traits as being coupled with a strong sense of entitlement.According to an article titled "The 'Snowflake' Generation: Real or Imagined?" from the John William Pope Center reasons proposed by researchers for the reported increase in mental health problems among university students differ.They vary from increased pressure on students, reduced self-reliance resulting from overuse of mental health services, to university authorities' expectations of student fragility.
Fox argues that Generation Snowflake was created by over-protecting people when they were children and she argued the emphasis on self-esteem in childhood resulted in adults "tiptoeing around children's sensitivities" to avoid "damaging their wellbeing". In the UK, Tom Bennett was recruited by the government to address behaviour in schools.He commented that Generation Snowflake children at school can be over-protected, leading to problems when they progress to university and are confronted with "the harsher realities of life".Bennett argues being sheltered from conflict as children can lead to university students who react with intolerance towards people and things that they believe may offend someone or toward people who have differing political opinions, leading to a phenomenon called "no-platforming", where speakers on controversial topics such as abortion or atheism are prohibited from speaking on a university campus.
In 2016 some law lecturers at the University of Oxford began using trigger warnings to alert students to potentially distressing subject matter. This drew criticism from Fox and GQ writer Eleanor Halls, who related the phenomenon to Generation Snowflake, and questioned how well law students educated with trigger warnings would function as lawyers.The university had not adopted a formal policy on trigger warnings, leaving their use to the discretion of individual lecturers.

Back to me - ha! Now it is clear. Yes "snowflake" makes sense and recognise the characteristics and like so many of our citizens are exasperated by them. New Victorians indeed. Politically correct and judgemental to exaggeration. Paper thin self esteem. Too easily offended. Fragile. Wrapped up in "mental health issues" - or shall we call it what it really is - normal stress or anxiety. They have an unhealthy obsession with "me me me" - to their paramount so called human rights - which include not being verbaly offended.  They seem to believe they can have the benefits without the down side - and struggle to handle they are not actually entitled. Many suddenly realise life away from over indulgent parents is tough. They now have to compete - but they have been cosseted from the school of hard knocks by "loving" parents. The real world is not always a place focussed on their "feelings" - and of course the bombshell - they find out in the real world - they are relatively ordinary rather than special.

But maybe they are not culpable - it is the loving parents and grandparents faults. Everybody meant well. However it does not take away from the fact they will have to toughen up and get on with it - otherwise it will be a miserable life for them (and us - ha!).

 

#Remoaners

Out on my bike early. True it was cold - but wind chill has dropped and although the huge sun low in the east was not giving off much discernible heat it was giving off fantastic warm light. The tide was well out and the pools and puddles around the shoreline were glistening and the feeding winter birds were unusually clear to see. Spring came to mind but there are still some frosts to come for sure.

As usual Brexit is in the news. I feel positive. Theresa May continues towards  delivering her Lancaster House and Lisbon  undertakings - Brexit means Brexit - taking back control of our laws, money and borders with an ability to go out and trade with the world. It is what the people voted for - and as a democrat she is striving to deliver on our behalf. She has correctly concluded therefore that we cannot be in the Single Market or Customs Union. 

My thoughts turn to the miserable lot of the persistent "remoaner" by contrast. How are they feeling this morning? This is their negative and oft bitter reality :

• They still curse the Tories for giving us a democratic referendum (after 40 years of waiting.)
• They still claim the public did not understand what they were voting for and were hoodwinked by the promise of £350 million a week for the NHS (as the decisive factor).
• They still claim project fear did not exist.
• They still have to claim it was not clear the public voted to take back control of our laws, money and borders - so we can "leave" nominally / "stay "in all but name only and still deliver the referendum result! How can they look themselves in the mirror - it is a blatant undemocratic lie on their part. It was clearly stated in the exhaustive referendum debates what leave meant.
• They have to argue there are different types of Brexit - hard and soft - (because they want to block our leaving or make it nominal) but actually they know in reality this is not true. There is only one Brexit that gives back full sovereignty - which they know is what we voted for and want - so they have to lie - they have to be disingenuous.
• They want to argue Brexit is only really about what is best for the economy - wilfully denying we voted to leave primarily to reestablish freedom and democracy and to once again stand on our own two feet in the world. (to disentangle ourselves from the EU project we no longer believe in).
• They still claim that the public did not understand it might be harder to trade seamlessly with the EU if we want to trade with the rest of the world on our own terms (which we do).
• They have to claim leavers are racists just because Brexit means planned migration not free movement.
• They have to deny or gloss over the excesses of EU bureaucrats, sovereign debt problems, migrant problems and the federalisation of Europe and political union..

The position persistent remoaners are now in, is in effect to want their country to fail. Worse than that some are actively plotting with the EU. Traitor is a strong word but in some instances seems an  appropriate term. They cannot prevail because democracy must prevail. 

So you the remoaners are cheerleaders for the narcissistic egos of the likes of  Nick Clegg, Chukka Umunna, Anna Soubry, Gina Miller, Michael Heseltine and now George Soros. What a depressing prospect. How much more negative or out of touch with the people of your country could you be? You are waking up every morning having to lie about things you know to be true. What a negative way to exist - to have to be disingenuous - to exist by using weasel words - by trying to frustrate and undermine the democratic decision of the people of your country. Shame on you. Why not get behind your country and make it work - which it surely will. Why be a bitter outsider - a fifth column - there is not much happiness or fulfillment to be gained from that.

#BREXIT and free movement of people.

I have copied and pasted below an article by David Goodhart. David  is Head of the Demography, Immigration and Integration at Policy Exchange and the author of Immigration After Brexit.

I have done so because this is a very balanced and measured article and therefore valuable to the Brexit debate and the struggle to find consensus in the Brexit project. Brexit supporters like me are regularly labelled "racist". This is a cheap lazy gibe from those whose minds are closed to considering the impact of uncontrolled and unlimited economic migration to the UK. I hope this article might go some way to raise the level of debate and why Brexit handled properly (as we all want) will be so very good for all of us.

Here is Mr Goodharts article :-

"Ending unfettered free movement of people remains a vital element of Brexit.

Freedom of movement from the EU was one of the biggest single factors behind the Brexit vote. A Brexit without a clear end to free movement in its current form is neither possible nor desirable.

But a balanced outcome should be achievable which allows for gradual reductions in inflows, especially of low-skill EU workers, while retaining a high degree of continuity in other areas. We can respond to the legitimate anxiety about over-rapid change and labour market competition while remaining an open, hub economy and country, especially in relation to skilled professionals and students from the EU.

Earlier this week I produced a report, Immigration After Brexit, for the Policy Exchange think-tank that advocates several steps to achieve this balanced outcome. They include: no automatic right of residence for EU citizens coming in the future; a “light-touch” five-year work permit for future EU professionals to be cleared in less than a month; more restrictive two-year permits for unskilled workers with preference for those willing to work anti-social hours; continuing visa-free travel for tourism and short trips and no significant change in arrangements for students and retirees; creation of new temporary work programmes including in agriculture and for young people.

Critics in The Guardian and elsewhere caricatured the report as proposing that in future EU citizens would only be allowed to work under “night time only” visas. There was also a bizarre eruption of outrage on Twitter about my use of the term “stock” as in “the stock of EU workers in the UK”. The terms stocks and flows are completely commonplace when describing groups of people among social scientists and economists and you will find reports from organisations like the UN, OECD and ONS littered with this kind of language. But a history professor objected to such “objectification” and was supported by hundreds of others attached to the FBPE hashtag.

But it is worth reminding ourselves why it is so important to end free movement, especially for low-skilled workers. The creaking British growth model has been based in the past generation on easy hire and fire and constant expansion of the labour supply, and it has thus become dependent on high levels of immigration (most from the EU is of low and middling skill level).

Ending free movement in a measured way is just what the low-productivity British economy needs. EU citizens make up about 7 per cent of the UK workforce, rising to 17 per cent in London, and some sectors such as food manufacturing (30 per cent) and London house-building (56 per cent) have become damagingly over-dependent on EU labour.

These inflows over the last 15 years have underpinned economic growth but at some cost to British people in the bottom half of the income and educational spectrum: some irresponsible employers have sharply cut training budgets (see the paper by Francis Green at UCL), others have filled entire factories and warehouses with people from eastern Europe.

Indeed many British workers have experienced a kind of “double whammy”. First their factories closed, unable to compete with lower cost producers in the developing world, but then after the accession of the former communist countries into the EU in 2004 a new workforce arrived to compete with them in the domestic labour market.

And so long as already trained labour was flowing in from abroad, there has been insufficient incentive on government and business to sort out our own education and training systems, especially for people at the bottom end of society (many from ethnic minorities). Yet this is key to both higher productivity and to renewing the national social contract with some of our most powerless citizens. We need to focus more on raising “the general competence of society” (the phrase used by Christopher Lasch in his book The Revolt of the Elites) rather than sending everyone to university.

As Chris Bickerton of Cambridge University has put it:

“Immigration was a big issue in the referendum not because British people are xenophobic but because immigration is at the heart of the British growth model. As a result the UK experiences life in the EU single market through the prism of EU nationals coming to live and work in the UK. Other EU states, with different growth models, experience the EU single market in other ways: through violations of the labour code or through high levels of emigration.”

In this country there is a cultural aspect to this too. Freedom of movement has created a “neither one thing nor the other” category of resident: someone who is neither a temporary visitor/guest to a country, such as a tourist, nor someone who is making a permanent commitment to a new country in the manner of the traditional immigrant. Many of those taking advantage of free movement in recent years have enjoyed the rights of the latter with the attitude of the former, one reason free movement has been unpopular in many areas. The openness of free movement has also made it very hard for local and national authorities to plan for future population growth and infrastructure needs.

Nevertheless, apart from that work permit requirement — light touch for skilled, much less so for unskilled — much continuity is possible; and even when it comes to jobs and social rights, future EU citizens should continue to have some limited special access to the UK labour market and welfare state as a symbol of the “deep and special” relationship the UK is seeking.

And contrary to the scare-mongering, voiced by Vince Cable and others, ending free movement in the way I have suggested will not turn Britain into a kind of European North Korea with our young people all sitting miserably at home while the rest of Europe goes to the dance.

As there are about 35 million arrivals each year to the UK from EU countries, both the immigration authorities and the tourism industry have a strong interest in retaining visa-free travel for tourism and short visits (and the same is true in the rest of Europe). So don’t throw away the back-pack.

I further propose that we should offer continuity in arrangements for EU students in terms of fees and access to the government loan system (in the expectation that European colleges will do the same).

The number of undergraduates from the EU is not large, about 25,000 a year, and it would send a helpful signal about the UK wanting to remain the leading European centre for higher education, innovation and research (nearly half of EU students are postgraduates).

I also suggest that we should extend the current Youth Mobility Visa that offers two year access to the UK for 18-30 year olds from places like Australia and Taiwan to all EU states, something that should allay the fears of the hospitality sector.

Britain will remain a welcoming society to future EU citizens, on top of the 3 million already here. Ending free movement is, however, a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for healing domestic wounds and nudging us onto a new growth path, ironically one that’s more like the higher-productivity continental economies. "

#Brexit - I copied this because it made me chuckle.

Needless to say the confident, energetic and independent Brexiteer is on the charger (a staunch democrat). You don't need to be told who the wimpy defeatist is.

#FaithSchools wake up dozy Britain

Today the Chief Inspector of Schools has issued a warning about the indoctrination of young and impressionable children by religious extremists. It is a chilling warning. Here is the BBC news report :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-42902864

If you do not want to read the report - I have copied below some of the things the inspector has said.

"Ofsted inspectors are increasingly brought into contact with those who want to actively pervert the purpose of education.

"Under the pretext of religious belief, they use education institutions, legal and illegal, to narrow young people's horizons, to isolate and segregate, and in the worst cases to indoctrinate impressionable minds with extremist ideology.

"Freedom of belief in the private sphere is paramount, but in our schools it is our responsibility to tackle those who actively undermine fundamental British values or equalities law."

I do not really have the time to write a blog about it now but I feel compelled to at least say something so I will be succinct and you should do your own research.

• Historically in the UK we have always had Christian "church" schools - particularly C of E schools.
• As we have C of E schools of course we have Roman Catholic schools too. (and to some limited extent Jewish based schools)
• Generally the religious element in these schools has been pretty low key and they comfortably follow the National Curriculum.
• Generally these schools get good academic results which is why they are popular.
• Generally it is accepted they do not get good academic results because of religion but because these schools attract motivated aspirational parents - who will jump through hoops to get their child into the "best" local school available.
• Because academic results have been good (when government are desperate to find ways of driving up academic attainment) - governments have been supportive in allowing state "faith schools" to develop and for new state funded "free" schools to be opened.
• In todays multi cultural Britain it is only right and fair IF you are going to support faith based schools that any faith can back a school. As a result there has been significant growth in Muslim (particularly) and Hindu faith schools. 

While I agree Government should be striving to increase educational attainment it always seemed to me that by allowing schools to select pupils by religion we were building problems for the future - and so it has proved.

1. I believe it is immoral (and potentially dangerous) to allow young malleable innocent minds be indoctrinated by a particular religion. (I believe education offered by and through the state should be wholly secular with religions taught generally as an academic subject - to form the basis for children to make up their own minds about what they believe or not believe when they are old enough to do so.) An understanding and appreciation of other religions is surely essential in a properly integrated multicultural society.
2. On a practical level I cannot see how faith based schools can do anything to contribute to integration of religious groups in society - in fact the polar opposite. They have the clear potential to be isolationist and create suspicion.
3. It is clear there is a particular problems with some Muslim faith schools that have a "fundamentalist" belief that has been so damaging in our society.

What needs to happen now we have allowed this problem to develop.

• I recognise it will be hard to turn the clock back - and faith schools exist.
• I would immediately stop the expansion or opening of any more faith based schools in the state sector by withholding state funding. We have to treat all religions the same.
• I would be vigorous in ensuring (as recommended by the Ofsted Inspectorate) that all faith schools adhere to the teaching of the National Curriculum and core British values. Any school breaching this requirement should be deemed "failing" - placed in special measures and the governors/head challenged/replaced under the supervision of the Ofsted inspectorate. If necessary funding should be withheld or the school closed (as already can happen with failing schools).

It never ceases to amaze me how by being a tolerant and fair society we fail to see that highly motivated unscrupulous people can exploit us. My concern is our overweening political correctness will not allow us to deal with this potentially dangerous and definitely negative development.