Belle Curve De Jour: GCSE Chinese and Indians not British

What's wrong with this headline?

Chinese and Indian pupils get more top grades at GCSE than British children

The Daily Mail does it again. In an article that's supposed to prove Chinese and Indian kids are high in Geek Factor when it comes to exams, Laura Clark effectively says that UK Chinese and Indians living, studying and most likely born here aren't British. At no point are we described as such. I know it shouldn't come as a shock to me that on Planet Mail, only white children can be classed as Brits, but it still annoys me to see us defined as "Other" in this underhand way.

Clark writes:

Chinese and Indian pupils gain more top grades than white British children in every school subject, official figures reveal. The biggest gulf in attainment is in GCSE maths, where Chinese children are three-and-a-half times more likely to get an A than white British children.

Yeah, we're fiendishly clever and foreign. So watch out!

This naked expression of a fear of (a) intellectuals and (b) forners plays on the dawning realisation that deteriorating living standards threaten to regress us all back to Victorian levels of poverty. Someone ate all the pies, but the the finger keeps getting pointed to other groups struggling to make a good life instead of the kleptocrats currently stealing everything that isn't nailed down (and, thanks to the clawhammers supplied under Blair, quite a lot that was). While Dyson relocates his domestic appliance business to hoover up cheap labour in Malaysia, company directors lay workers off and then pay themselves the stolen wages in fat bonuses and peers of the realm on both sides of the House refuse to pay British taxes, we're supposed to blame other workers. We should at least be smart enough not to allow politicians and media to turn us into rats in a sack while the super-rich wreck our lives.

Lies, damned lies and The Bell Curve
I was greatly amused when all the rednecks started quoting soi-disant "libertarian political scientist" Charles Murray (no relation, thankfully, to the British blues-rock guru of almost the same name), whose mission seems to be to render racism respectable. His dubious 'Bell Curve' statistics were supposed to prove that whites were intellectually superior to blacks, as if there were no other factors in the way these tests were organised. But the same tests and dodgy methodology also showed that Chinese, Japanese and Koreans scored higher than whites. Somehow his adherents excised that latter chunk of data from their arguments whilst waging their race war.

So, what do we learn from the latest statistics? Curry feeds the brain? Eating with chopsticks increases your intelligence? Perhaps it's the delicate co-ordination required every mealtime that forges those synaptic links in the young brain which will stand you in such good stead when it comes to writing your dissertation on genetic degeneration in the grey matter of certain white scientists and Daily Mail journalists.

Hat-tip, Navjot Singh.

Belle Curve De Jour: GCSE Chinese and Indians not British

What's wrong with this headline?

Chinese and Indian pupils get more top grades at GCSE than British children

The Daily Mail does it again. In an article that's supposed to prove Chinese and Indian kids are high in Geek Factor when it comes to exams, Laura Clark effectively says that UK Chinese and Indians living, studying and most likely born here aren't British. At no point are we described as such. I know it shouldn't come as a shock to me that on Planet Mail, only white children can be classed as Brits, but it still annoys me to see us defined as "Other" in this underhand way.

Clark writes:

Chinese and Indian pupils gain more top grades than white British children in every school subject, official figures reveal. The biggest gulf in attainment is in GCSE maths, where Chinese children are three-and-a-half times more likely to get an A than white British children.

Yeah, we're fiendishly clever and foreign. So watch out!

This naked expression of a fear of (a) intellectuals and (b) forners plays on the dawning realisation that deteriorating living standards threaten to regress us all back to Victorian levels of poverty. Someone ate all the pies, but the the finger keeps getting pointed to other groups struggling to make a good life instead of the kleptocrats currently stealing everything that isn't nailed down (and, thanks to the clawhammers supplied under Blair, quite a lot that was). While Dyson relocates his domestic appliance business to hoover up cheap labour in Malaysia, company directors lay workers off and then pay themselves the stolen wages in fat bonuses and peers of the realm on both sides of the House refuse to pay British taxes, we're supposed to blame other workers. We should at least be smart enough not to allow politicians and media to turn us into rats in a sack while the super-rich wreck our lives.

Lies, damned lies and The Bell Curve
I was greatly amused when all the rednecks started quoting soi-disant "libertarian political scientist" Charles Murray (no relation, thankfully, to the British blues-rock guru of almost the same name), whose mission seems to be to render racism respectable. His dubious 'Bell Curve' statistics were supposed to prove that whites were intellectually superior to blacks, as if there were no other factors in the way these tests were organised. But the same tests and dodgy methodology also showed that Chinese, Japanese and Koreans scored higher than whites. Somehow his adherents excised that latter chunk of data from their arguments whilst waging their race war.

So, what do we learn from the latest statistics? Curry feeds the brain? Eating with chopsticks increases your intelligence? Perhaps it's the delicate co-ordination required every mealtime that forges those synaptic links in the young brain which will stand you in such good stead when it comes to writing your dissertation on genetic degeneration in the grey matter of certain white scientists and Daily Mail journalists.

Hat-tip, Navjot Singh.

Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross: a modern lynching

Martin Rowson gets it right

Okay, I hate myself. I didn't want to but they made me do it. London Mayor Boris Johnson accused the Chinese of being incapable of original thought and here I am proving his halfwit point by blogging on the sodding Brand 'n' Ross stormette just like every other mofo and his dog.

But I am so furious. FURIOUS, I tells ya. Just when everyone was waking up, smelling the coffee, swallowing the red pill and dusting down the tumbrils for the long-awaited fate of the greedy overpaid city hotshots who've sucked all the money out of our economy, their mates at the Daily Mail swing it around and chuck two celebrities into the lions' den to draw all the flak that should have been zeroing in on the real fat cats.

Two silly little middle-aged boys go bullying the sainted Andrew Sachs on the radio over the sex-life of his granddaughter (yes, it was wrong, stupid and sexist and deserved a dressing-down — hey, make them wear polyester for a year, that'll learn 'em) and suddenly it's like Satan walked in and ate all the babies. Even poor old Sachs seems embarrassed by the whole pantomime and has called for calm.

With £18 million of publicly funded BBC dosh, Jonathan Ross is hugely overpaid. But I'd rather see someone who brings a modicum of pleasure to people's lives getting lots of lolly than the Masters of the Universe who merely shove money around and asset-strip rather than actually producing anything.

Bankers are still getting their bonuses despite receiving huge state hand-outs following years of hedge-funded short-selling avarice, but a couple of celebrities are being thrown to a torch-bearing, pitchfork-wielding mob, taking the heat off the proper thieving swine. And the BBC is made to kow-tow yet again for completely the wrong reasons! Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

Sense of proportion, much?

STOP PRESS: For anyone puzzled by events and wondering wtf Ross and Brand actually did, there's a thorough precis at New Internationalist.
... So when Gordon Brown insists, that the illegal invasion of Iraq, which has cost tens of thousands of lives and is paid for by the British taxpayer, is to ensure that ‘the new Iraqi democracy is properly safeguarded’ – where are the 30,000 complaints to the BBC when that that particular obscenity is broadcast on Newsnight? ...

Russell Brand responds to the Daily Mail

Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand's original offending phone message to Andrew Sachs

Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross: a modern lynching

Martin Rowson gets it right

Okay, I hate myself. I didn't want to but they made me do it. London Mayor Boris Johnson accused the Chinese of being incapable of original thought and here I am proving his halfwit point by blogging on the sodding Brand 'n' Ross stormette just like every other mofo and his dog.

But I am so furious. FURIOUS, I tells ya. Just when everyone was waking up, smelling the coffee, swallowing the red pill and dusting down the tumbrils for the long-awaited fate of the greedy overpaid city hotshots who've sucked all the money out of our economy, their mates at the Daily Mail swing it around and chuck two celebrities into the lions' den to draw all the flak that should have been zeroing in on the real fat cats.

Two silly little middle-aged boys go bullying the sainted Andrew Sachs on the radio over the sex-life of his granddaughter (yes, it was wrong, stupid and sexist and deserved a dressing-down — hey, make them wear polyester for a year, that'll learn 'em) and suddenly it's like Satan walked in and ate all the babies. Even poor old Sachs seems embarrassed by the whole pantomime and has called for calm.

With £18 million of publicly funded BBC dosh, Jonathan Ross is hugely overpaid. But I'd rather see someone who brings a modicum of pleasure to people's lives getting lots of lolly than the Masters of the Universe who merely shove money around and asset-strip rather than actually producing anything.

Bankers are still getting their bonuses despite receiving huge state hand-outs following years of hedge-funded short-selling avarice, but a couple of celebrities are being thrown to a torch-bearing, pitchfork-wielding mob, taking the heat off the proper thieving swine. And the BBC is made to kow-tow yet again for completely the wrong reasons! Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

Sense of proportion, much?

STOP PRESS: For anyone puzzled by events and wondering wtf Ross and Brand actually did, there's a thorough precis at New Internationalist.
... So when Gordon Brown insists, that the illegal invasion of Iraq, which has cost tens of thousands of lives and is paid for by the British taxpayer, is to ensure that ‘the new Iraqi democracy is properly safeguarded’ – where are the 30,000 complaints to the BBC when that that particular obscenity is broadcast on Newsnight? ...

Russell Brand responds to the Daily Mail

Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand's original offending phone message to Andrew Sachs