From: julianlzb87@gmail.com   
      
   Hold your wine glass steady: the BBC has news for you. This week it   
   splashed the news that train drivers in the UK are ‘overwhelmingly   
   middle-aged white men’. The story was accompanied by a picture of a   
   black woman driving a train – under the supervision of a white man, it   
   might be noted – as though to signal that this glass ceiling too can be   
   smashed.   
      
   Personally I would expect train drivers to be overwhelmingly   
   middle-aged, white and indeed male. Most of the UK is white and half of   
   the UK is male. And the male half of the species tends to be more   
   train-oriented. You don’t see many single women standing at the end of   
   Reading station noting down train numbers in a little book. There may be   
   hardwired reasons for this. So I would put the BBC’s train-driver story   
   into the same ‘breaking news’ list as ‘most kindergarten teachers are   
   women’ and ‘most people who run successful corner shops are immigrants’.   
   In other words: not a story.   
      
   But of course it’s not really about news. It is another example that   
   tells us something deeper about the age.   
      
   Until recently, the only professions in which people obsessed about   
   ‘representation’ were the more high-status ones. One of the madnesses   
   that came out of the #MeToo movement was the idea that if an actress in   
   Hollywood is paid eight million bucks and her male co-star is paid ten   
   million for the same movie then we should all take to the streets to   
   protest this appalling inequality and indeed oppression. Pity the   
   stunning multi-millionaire actress, everyone; we are all Angelina Jolie   
   now, etc.   
      
   Company boards were another focus – as though most of the public were   
   regularly bothered by the question of which company boards to sit on. It   
   was decided at some point in the past decade that any company whose   
   board had too many men on it must be ‘diversified’. Which means it’s   
   been a boom time for any potential ethnic–minority board members, while   
   some of the cannier gays spotted a useful ladder. And then there were   
   women, of course. California passed legislation a few years ago   
   insisting that all companies registered in the state must have a quota   
   of people from a list of minorities. That list was itself pretty   
   interesting. It included trans people, obviously. Because if you are   
   after diversity of thinking, it is always good to have input from   
   somebody whose body is being pumped full of oestrogen or testosterone.   
      
   The Californian list also included Pacific Islanders. I did the maths   
   and worked out that given the demand for trans and Pacific Island board   
   members vs the relative supply in the state, if you were a trans person   
   or a Pacific Islander living in California, you should clear your diary   
   for the 2020s, because you’ll be shuttling from board meeting to board   
   meeting with never an hour for yourself.   
      
   Personally, I had expected this diversity obsession to remain fixed on   
   high-status professions. Because it was noticeable that, for example,   
   while the vast preponderance of road-layers who mix the tarmac to   
   sometimes fill in the nation’s potholes are men, there is yet to be an   
   outcry along the lines of ‘none of us are free until women are made to   
   lay more tarmac’. Now it seems that the age is indeed even madder than I   
   thought.   
      
   This is why we now have the idea that even train driving must be   
   diversified. Take the words of Zoey Hudson, who is the head of talent,   
   diversity and inclusion at Southern Railway. You may not have known that   
   such a role existed, but it does, and Zoey is able to spout the usual   
   verbiage that comes with her line of work. As she told the BBC,   
   diversity ‘freshens’ the rail network. ‘It’s really important that we   
   have diversity of thinking within the railway, which is as important as   
   diversity of ethnicity. It brings creativity.’   
      
   For my part, I’m not sure I want much creativity in my train drivers. In   
   fact I prefer them to be slightly plodding, uncreative types. Loyal,   
   punctual, good in a crisis: these are the sort of qualities that I look   
   for before boarding the 7.48 to Totnes. But creativity?   
      
   Happily for their own career prospects, a diversity officer’s work is   
   never done. Because only one in ten British train drivers is a woman, it   
   seems that Zoey and her colleagues are also on a mission to push more   
   women into the railways. It’s something to do, I suppose, but there is a   
   rather glorious perversity in the idea of persuading women to qualify   
   for a profession that is about to go fully automated. And what will all   
   those creative female train drivers do then, desperate as they will   
   remain for the thrill of the railway while their profession goes driverless?   
      
   Let me show my own cards: I don’t believe any of this. I think the whole   
   thing is bunk. This desire to concentrate on stories where middle-aged   
   white men can be cast as blocking the way for everyone else seems a   
   deliberate policy not just of highlighting but of demeaning and   
   demoralising anyone who belongs to what in Britain is still the   
   majority. There is nothing wrong with being white and male. And in a   
   country which is still predominantly white, you would indeed expect   
   white people to be the majority in many industries, as they are in the   
   general population. If you go to India you will find an awful lot of   
   Indian people, and China is strikingly Chinese. But none of these   
   countries have their majority populations addressed as though their very   
   existence is some sort of affront to minorities.   
      
   The latest phrase to wheedle its way into the corporate world is ‘global   
   majority’. While job advertisements in Britain used to ask for people   
   from ethnic minorities to step forward, this has been flipped. ‘Ethnic   
   minority’ has become ‘global majority’. If you think that has a slightly   
   menacing air to it, you’d be right – that’s the point. As I have often   
   said, none of this is about justice, equality or letting talent fly.   
      
      
      
   Douglas Murray   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)