How boring are those curling stones matches at the winter olympic ?

[redgunamo]

With my tin foil hat on....big pharma

Surely there can't be enough of them for it to make sense, or profit.

Maybe I need to get out more. Or less

[redgunamo]

Nobody wants to pay for it. The problem wasnt the money.

The problem was that a fairly prominent psychotherapist wanted to research atlernatives to the affirmation route that is pretty much forced on therapists- effectively arguing that kids need their feelings 'challenged' as part of therapy.

Along came online trans groups, NHS Trusts (you pay for them!), charities and employers pressuring the university to stop the research on 'safety grounds'. And they succeeded.

Individual effectively branded as transphobic, career destroyed.

Thank you for the explanation. I understand better now.

Why not just tell them all to get stuffed. That's what King Donald the Wicked would do.

[Peter]

Thank you for the explanation. I understand better now.

Why not just tell them all to get stuffed. That's what King Donald the Wicked would do.

If you deliver nursing course you cant piss off the NHS. Whatever you deliver you cant annoy employers, charities etc.

And you dont want negative traction on social media labelling you transphobic and accusing you of endangering children etc etc....

All that for one research degree student? No chance. They'll cut and run. And the lobbyists, acitivists and captured institutions know it.

So instead you get a load of research on straight people being fascists.

[redgunamo]

If you deliver nursing course you cant piss off the NHS. Whatever you deliver you cant annoy employers, charities etc.

And you dont want negative traction on social media labelling you transphobic and accusing you of endangering children etc etc....

All that for one research degree student? No chance. They'll cut and run. And the lobbyists, acitivists and captured institutions know it.

So instead you get a load of research on straight people being fascists.

People are so sensitive nowadays. Not me, of course

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

Too long to lay out here but in basic terms, fundamentally I am only interested in political history. How governments arise, operate and interact with their people and other governments.

I dont give a crap what the poets thought. And I'm not going to let Shelley tell me what my rights are anymore than I am going to let Don Henley tell me how to vote.

When it comes to music, I may be a romantic. In politics, I am Enlightenment all the way. So I see the American revolution as a significant achievement and the French revolution as an absolute mess.

And he is a Spurs fan.....so there's that.

You're not though. Politically, you're a Romantic.

It was Romanticism that ended slavery and the slave trade. It was Romanticism that started the ideas of communism long before Marx. Robert Wedderburn, the mixed race son of a slave, was giving proto-commie speeches in the early C19th, for example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wedderburn

And when you say the French Revolution was a mess, you have to see it as a series of revolutions between 1789 and 1871 {or even 1968.} In 1830, there was the revolution that created a UK-style parliamentary democracy and ended the ancien regime for good. The July or Second French Revolution, or les Trois Glorieuses of 1830 led to the 1832 June rebellion that Hugo's Les Mis is about with an attempt to restore a republic.

This happened in France with their 4th Revolution in 1848 when revolutions swept Europe and the Communist Manifesto was written. {Interestingly the UK was the only major European power to avoid this because Peel had split the Tories by repealing the Corn Laws in 1846. Political Romanticism GB-stylee.} This created their 2nd Republic and 3 years later, their next revolution created the Second Empire which saw the most liberal workers rights in Europe.

This ended with the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-71 {with the unification of Germany, which like the Risorgimento in Italy in 1861 and the taking of Rome a decade later, being fundamental parts of Romanticism.} The Fr-Pr war led to the Paris Commune and then the creation of the 3rd Republic in 1871. It may have been a mess but got there in the end, while the Yanks still have black people being murdered by the state and ICE on the streets with no free health care and a school-funding system that means the poor, especially the blacks, have far less money spent per pupil than the rich, white kids in state schools. Enlightenment mindset compared to the Romanticism of NW Europe.

So unless you support the continuation of slavery, of autocracy or oligarchy, the denial of workers rights and of national self-determination, then politically you are a Romantic, not Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment ended the Wars of Religion era, which is why the English Civil War {Wars of the 3 Kingdoms} was the the final act of the wars of religion in the UK while also being the first political revolution.

It was Romanticism that started all the political liberties you support, whether freedom from slavery or having democracy or workers' rights or the welfare state or the ending of the political dominance of the landed elite or of the ending of imperialism being replaced by national self-determination. Your Yank Enlightenment revolution kept slavery, entrenched the power of the financial oligarchy and allowed them to slaughter the natives and steal their land - all things that Romanticism fought against and defeated.

But unless I've totally misjudged you, and you think all of the above like slavery, autocracy and imperialism are "good things" as Sellar and Yeatman would put it, then politically you're a Romantic. Not a 1770s Enlightenment Septic traitor determined to keep slavery {threatened by GB's 1772 Somerset Case saying slavery in GB was illegal} and keep the right to steal native Indians' land {threatened by Article 40 of the Capitulation of Montreal in 1760 that guaranteed the land rights of Canadian natives.}

Politically, P, you're a Romantic. Whether you prefer Leonard Cohen to Byron is irrelevant on this point.

I know you love Yank history, and the revolutionaries like Franklin were pure Enlightenment, but the Yanks never got Romanticism in the way the Europeans did. Which is why their country is still so ****ed in the C21st when it comes to race or the rights, security and liberties of the poor.

I'm afraid that politically, you're a Romantic. Which is why you should preserver with the Scharma series.

[Peter]

You're not though. Politically, you're a Romantic.

It was Romanticism that ended slavery and the slave trade. It was Romanticism that started the ideas of communism long before Marx. Robert Wedderburn, the mixed race son of a slave, was giving proto-commie speeches in the early C19th, for example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wedderburn

And when you say the French Revolution was a mess, you have to see it as a series of revolutions between 1789 and 1871 {or even 1968.} In 1830, there was the revolution that created a UK-style parliamentary democracy and ended the ancien regime for good. The July or Second French Revolution, or les Trois Glorieuses of 1830 led to the 1832 June rebellion that Hugo's Les Mis is about with an attempt to restore a republic.

This happened in France with their 4th Revolution in 1848 when revolutions swept Europe and the Communist Manifesto was written. {Interestingly the UK was the only major European power to avoid this because Peel had split the Tories by repealing the Corn Laws in 1846. Political Romanticism GB-stylee.} This created their 2nd Republic and 3 years later, their next revolution created the Second Empire which saw the most liberal workers rights in Europe.

This ended with the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-71 {with the unification of Germany, which like the Risorgimento in Italy in 1861 and the taking of Rome a decade later, being fundamental parts of Romanticism.} The Fr-Pr war led to the Paris Commune and then the creation of the 3rd Republic in 1871. It may have been a mess but got there in the end, while the Yanks still have black people being murdered by the state and ICE on the streets with no free health care and a school-funding system that means the poor, especially the blacks, have far less money spent per pupil than the rich, white kids in state schools. Enlightenment mindset compared to the Romanticism of NW Europe.

So unless you support the continuation of slavery, of autocracy or oligarchy, the denial of workers rights and of national self-determination, then politically you are a Romantic, not Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment ended the Wars of Religion era, which is why the English Civil War {Wars of the 3 Kingdoms} was the the final act of the wars of religion in the UK while also being the first political revolution.

It was Romanticism that started all the political liberties you support, whether freedom from slavery or having democracy or workers' rights or the welfare state or the ending of the political dominance of the landed elite or of the ending of imperialism being replaced by national self-determination. Your Yank Enlightenment revolution kept slavery, entrenched the power of the financial oligarchy and allowed them to slaughter the natives and steal their land - all things that Romanticism fought against and defeated.

But unless I've totally misjudged you, and you think all of the above like slavery, autocracy and imperialism are "good things" as Sellar and Yeatman would put it, then politically you're a Romantic. Not a 1770s Enlightenment Septic traitor determined to keep slavery {threatened by GB's 1772 Somerset Case saying slavery in GB was illegal} and keep the right to steal native Indians' land {threatened by Article 40 of the Capitulation of Montreal in 1760 that guaranteed the land rights of Canadian natives.}

Politically, P, you're a Romantic. Whether you prefer Leonard Cohen to Byron is irrelevant on this point.

I know you love Yank history, and the revolutionaries like Franklin were pure Enlightenment, but the Yanks never got Romanticism in the way the Europeans did. Which is why their country is still so ****ed in the C21st when it comes to race or the rights, security and liberties of the poor.

I'm afraid that politically, you're a Romantic. Which is why you should preserver with the Scharma series.

Well, if you're going to lay claim to every success of the last 230 years then I guess I dont have much choice, do I.

[Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult]

Historians are not for sale, if for no other reason than that nobody is buying.

But research at universities is highly questionable in many respects. And it has nothing to do with the part of the sector you look at. Most research takes place at the Russell Group places (indeed, it is why the group exists).

If you look at how research is funded, both privately and publicly, you'll see clear patterns. Where the money goes and where it doesn't. And why.

Try undertaking a doctorate questioning the approach to treating trans kids and see what happens. I've seen it. Not pretty at all. Horrifying.

I agree with all that. But I had been exclusively talking about historical academia throughout the entire Romanticism debate here. Yeah, my first uni, the LSE, was Russel Group, but if I'd continued researching for a PhD in WW1 or the British Indian empire for a PhD where I did my MA, there would have been no issue of my funding being dependent on getting the "right" answers.

{Btw, the trans thing is passed its peak, though it will still take a few more years to get back to normal. It was all just part of Gramsci's march through the institutions from the '70s that led to US academia embracing intersectionality and trying to force it on the rest of us. But you could argue that US intersectionality stemmed from their debate still existing in Enlightenment, or even wars of religion, terms as opposed to the Romantic approach we'd spent a couple of centuries furthering in Europe. But this is all just an aside to my main point.}

That while nothing is ever perfect - Irving's holocaust denial, for example, or certain 1937 memoranda being conveniently ignored - history academia is pretty objective in my experience. It's not about who pays for the funding or having PC conclusions. You must see that in the areas you've studied, that when looking at the historiography, yes, the changes will often result from the prism of the day - the success of WW2 creating a peaceful, secure Western Europe with a welfare state and homes for heroes while WW1 had failed in this regard {hence Oh, What a Lovely War and The Donkeys in the '60s}, or Vietnam influencing how the trenches were seen - but generally, the continual revisionism of historiography has led to an improving understanding of objective historical analysis.

And while the public had their negative view of WW1 from the '60s revisionism I've just mentioned, leading in the UK to Blackadder Goes Forth in 1989, at an academic level, Fischer's Thesis of German war aims in both wars being identical started in 1961, and had become the academic consensus over the following 50 years. Thus we were right {as Brits} to fight, and as Gary Sheffield explained in his seminal Forgotten Victory c.2000, the Blackadder narrative was wrong and it was a heroic feat of arms in a war that had to be fought to save Western European democracy.

In the parts of history I've studied in detail, there's a continual historiographical quest for objective truth and it's generally succeeded.

As I said, I'm only talking about historical academia.

Oh, and I know it was before peak-woke, but when the glw did her MA in doc film c.2012-13, she had to write two essays, one about the first r documentary, Nanook of the North, about an Eskimo. I helped her with all the research and planning for this. The contemporary academic articles were all woke, saying it was all racist etc. We wrote an essay ripping it to shreds and while writing it, we sent part of it to her {liberal, Indian-descent Londoner} tutor asking whether we could go down that route as I didn't want to **** it for her, even though the marks didn't count to the grade {that was solely based on her finished documentary.}

The tutor emailed back saying "****ing hell, xxxx. If you really want to give the liberals such a kicking you can if your argument justifies the conclusion."

I'd got the real hump because one of the main academic articles we read was by a half-Saudi Yank with a serious hang-up who said any white film maker making a doc about non-white people in the developing world is literally killing and stuffing their subjects in a form of digital taxidermy. So this bint was saying the glw {and I} were racists killing our Delhi street kid mates for the delectation of a white, western audience. That really pissed us off. So we took her {and the other main PC/early-woke} academic apart.

Got an A*. Though as I say, that was before peak-woke and trans rights. But it totally shredded their "it's all evil racism" *******s and the tutor was really impressed even though no-one else would have dared write something like that.

So in all of our experiences at post-grad level, we've been able to completely destroy the woke consensus and have got top marks for doing so. The talk I had to give for the WW1 MA on the Indian army on the Western Front 1914-15 totally destroyed the "empire is evil and racist in all forms" expected by all the youngsters on the course and again, I got far the best marks for doing so.

History's different. I'm proud of the tiny roles I've played in advancing the historiography on a couple of areas I've studied, including showing that the source quoted in an OU course book saying that the Brits imprisoned people who gave food to the starving during the 1877-8 Deccan Famine {that killed 5-15m Indians} was in fact a Swiftian satire, not a genuine govt Act.

They've changed the course book because of my research. Just like the next edition of my WW1 tutors' book on the BEF on the western front will have 2-3 paragraphs added as I'd shown him that there was no way that Haig wouldn't have agreed to put the BEF under Foch's command, no way that Foch would have allowed DLG to sack Haig {as the Welsh **** wanted} and thus there was no way the Doullens Conference at the start of the 1918 Spring Offensive wouldn't get the required unity between GB and Fr and that therefore there was no possibility, however small {as their book implied} of GB retreating to the Channel ports, the French going south to defend Paris, the armies being split and the war lost.

No-one was paying this piper, just like no-one said I couldn't go against the PC consensus. I was just working to find the objective academic truth.