Tag Archives: award inflation

Diary Blog, 18 October 2024, including a few thoughts about IQ and related topics

Morning music

[“Eighteen Years“]

Talking point

I happened to see on TV an elderly, over-90 years, but very compos mentis, retired professor, talking to the TV chef Rick Stein about the decline in average IQ since 1950, as apparently noted in a study done by, or under the auspices of, Bradford University. The professor cited as a (or even the) causative reason the decline of consumption of fish and shellfish in the UK over the past 74 years.

That may be part of it. Certainly some types of fish popular with the mass market have become expensive; even standard British favourites such as cod and haddock. I bought some fish and chips recently: 1 large cod, 1 large haddock, 1 small bag of chips. £20.50.

Whether you think that £20.50 for a smallish bag of chips and 2 large pieces of fish is expensive or not will depend on your general financial level, but it is at least certainly more than most citizens will want to pay out on a daily basis.

Some fish in the UK is not, however, expensive, however poor you are. Mackerel, for one, which can be bought (uncooked) in a supermarket for as little as a pound or so for a good-size fillet.

I recall that, when I lived in Fethiye (Turkey) for a few months in 2001 (I drove there from the UK, a trip that was more difficult then than it now is), I went to the fish market in the town almost daily, about 4-5 times a week. The hierarchy of price descended from the most expensive, which were huge langoustines, or tuna steak and swordfish (cut from massive whole tuna and swordfish, some 5 or 6 feet or more long and 1-2 feet wide), through many other types of fish and shellfish and down to tiny fish, presumably by-catch, which cost only about 5% or even 2% of the most expensive. There is always a decision to be made by the individual on what is affordable or not.

[the fish market, Fethiye, Turkey. The many restaurant tables and chairs were not there when I used to patronise the market (neither was that sign in English) but, at that time, in 2001, the fish market was new, having been built or rebuilt and possibly having also been relocated from a different place. That was 23 years ago. How time flies when you are older…]
[Fethiye, Turkey; the marina part of the harbour area]
[Fethiye, Turkey. The best part of town, by the marina]

IQ in a general population is obviously affected by diet, but is also a function of other factors. The UK’s average IQ level has been badly affected by, inter alia, the mass immigration that has been such a feature of the past 75 years.

Importation of non-European peoples into the UK has had many negative consequences. A lower average IQ is merely one.

One sees evidence of decline in IQ and/or educational levels everywhere. One example might be secondary school exam papers. When I was studying, belatedly, in my mid-twenties, for “A” Levels (and an “S” level) in 1983, studying alone and without tuition, I sent off for papers from a number of previous years, from the 1950s and 1960s right up to 1982. Even in 1983, one could see that the level of difficulty had steadily declined over the previous 30 years.

Since the 1980s, of course, there has been massive award inflation. Not only at secondary educational level but also at tertiary (university) level. Hardly anyone actually fails a university degree now, unless the student drops out. The kind of average degree, normal only 30 or more years ago, a 2:2 (as earned by Tony Blair, among others), is now not even considered a reasonably “good” degree. The real standard has not improved, but dropped, while presented as something wonderful.

Not that IQ (and knowledge) mean everything, anyway. “EQ” (“emotional intelligence”) is also important: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence.

As for myself, long ago, in the 1980s, my IQ was tested at 156 (UK average being 100, and university students typically testing at 125), certainly in the top 1% of the population, but that was in the mid-1980s, when I was about 30, and it may well be (I do not know) that I would test lower today. By way of compensation, though, I think that I can say that experience, and other infusions from the stream of Life, make up the difference, and perhaps more.

We often hear that “things do not work properly any more in our society”, and that may become a greater problem as average IQ drops ever lower.

Our society should be travelling, by design, in the other direction.

Tweets seen

At this point, anyone who submits to being injected with those “vaccines”, especially the “Covid” ones, is just an idiot or loonie.

See also:

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“Tel Aviv Keith” Starmer is a very nasty little man, a typical bureaucrat given power and unable to handle it.

[“Off with their heads!“]

Do not imagine that words alone will sort out this whole mess.

It is time to stop thinking of MPs, not all but many of them, as merely “mistaken” or “wrongheaded“, and to awaken to the fact that some, perhaps many of them, are —in a word, in lay meaning— “traitors” to the British people and their future. Not necessarily the above MP, though; I am talking generally.

Whatever one may think of “Tommy Robinson”, he has a point, nicht wahr?

This decision by the SRA about Lewis’ negligent advice is just awful. Mark Lewis told Pete Newbon that the defamatory publication did not identify me. It was startlingly incompetent advice because the publication contained a clear photo of me and Tolley v Fry (possibly the most famous defamation case) says a claimant can be identified by a photo or sketch. The SRA’s own Code of Conduct says solicitors must “ensure that the service you provide to clients is competent…” So contrary to what the SRA says, incompetent advice is a regulatory matter. And the SRA’s strategy for dealing with Lewis’ incompetent advice is for Newbon to bring a negligence claim or complain to the ombudsman. Obviously, Newbon will not do either of those things. It scares me that the SRA – faced with a solicitor who appears not to grasp the absolute basics of the area of law he works in – won’t take action to protect the public from incompetent advice. Surely it is the SRA’s job to identify and deal with solicitors who give incompetent advice?@sra_solicitors @lawsocgazette.

[James Wilson, successful claimant in the legal case Wilson v. Mendelsohn, Cantor, and Newbon (deceased)]. ]

Mark Lewis, as previously noted, is a self-publicizing and —by the “occupied” UK msm— hugely overrated solicitor who should have been struck off (not merely reprimanded and fined, as he was) for some of his previous professional (meaning unprofessional) defaults. He is, and has been repeatedly proven to be, dishonest, untruthful, and professionally negligent.

Only a complete idiot would now instruct “Mark Lewis Lawyer”.

What is protecting Lewis, in my view, is the fact that the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority was screeched at in 2019 by the organized Jew-Zionist lobby, after the SRA fined and reprimanded Lewis, after which he performatively decamped to Israel (but then slunk back quite often to the UK to make money). The SRA may be running a little scared of “the screechers” (((them))).

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[Wanda Landowska and Tolstoy, either at Yasnaya Polyana or, more likely, at Tolstoy’s house in Kropotskinskaya (Moscow); possibly around 1900. I have visited Tolstoy’s Moscow house]

Diary Blog, 21 December 2023, with brief discussion of Charlotte Owen, “super-injunctions”, and Press freedom

Morning music

[Akademgorodok, nr. Novosibirsk, Western Siberia]

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I think that I was one of a small minority who distrusted “Boris”-idiot from the time when he first became an MP in 2001. I was right…

As to the young woman in question, she quite obviously is either secretly related to “Boris” Johnson, or was sexually-involved with him. I think the former.

As for the rumoured “super-injunction”, no-one has told me…

The Internet makes mock of many things, and the various “little Britain” things especially. The overall situation, however, is not new.

In the 1930s, the public of the USA, France, Germany etc were aware, if interested at all, that Edward VIII was involved with a Mrs. Simpson. In Britain and its colonies, though, that was kept secret (from the British public) until 1937 (to be exact, from December 1936).

In the 1980s, similar situations arose. In the early 1980s, I was told that, at a State banquet held at the Banqueting House in Whitehall for an important Soviet delegation, and attended by someone I knew, the leader of the Soviet group said to a British minister how sad it was that former Prime Minister, Harold Wilson [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Wilson], had become completely demented (Alzheimer’s, or similar). Apparently, the British minister nodded sagely before changing the subject.

So the Soviet Government knew, the British Government knew, but of course the British public did not know.

Later, in 1987, the Spycatcher scandal blew up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spycatcher. The British Government went to absurd lengths to try to suppress publication, taking legal action in England and Wales, and in Australia. In the Australian trial, the Head of the (UK) Civil Service, Sir Robert Armstrong, made his still-famous comment about being “economical with the truth“: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economical_with_the_truth#Political_catchphrase.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, those interested in the rather underwhelming book could buy it and read it without let or hindrance. Absurdly, the same was true in Scotland, because Scotland has its own legal system and the British Government had not thought to apply for any restrictions in that jurisdiction.

I myself had a copy of the book soon after publication. Not a total bore but not exactly riveting either. Had the Government simply let Wright, the author, sell the book without all the publicity occasioned by the attempt to ban it, it would never have become a bestseller. As it was, millions of copies were sold, and Wright died, possessed of huge royalties, in 1995.

In fact, had the Government paid Wright his full pension at an earlier stage, he never would have written the book, or at least published it.

Now we have the Internet. Anyone with, say, a Twitter/X account can publish or republish under their own name, or a pseudonym. The English courts are unable to prevent —and/or in most cases even punish— any breach of injunction, certainly not before millions of people around the world have seen the material.

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The guilty should be punished.

Dutch political commentator, Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar), on the WEF’s plan to impose a personal carbon allowance, connected to digital ID, under the guise of tackling the imaginary “climate crisis”:

“The CEO of one of the largest Dutch banks said, if everyone gets individual personal carbon credits, why don’t we make it so that rich people, who for example want to go on holiday a little too often, can buy personal carbon credits from people who can’t afford buying plane tickets or eating meat too often?”

So what will happen is the rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer, and they’re saying it openly as if it’s not a controversial thing at all. It’s neo-feudalism. That’s what it is.”

Regardless of whether or when Israel crushes the population of Gaza and maybe occupies Gaza indefinitely, Israel’s days are numbered. Hamas is not Israel’s only opponent.

I should not usually retweet a Jewish Zionist, but the veracity of the above tweet by “Hyman Kochanski” can hardly be denied.

When I opined, at various times over the years, that the UK would gradually decline, crumble, break down, most people either disagreed or replied that nothing could be done about it.

Somewhat akin to my curses as I traversed the crumbling roads of coastal southern England today. Potholed roads (mostly “A” roads, at that, not “B” or unclassified), and mostly not being repaired.

The UK Government has money with which to close down the economy for months and years because of panic over a virus that killed hardly anybody, it has money to spend on housing and feeding hundreds of thousands of migrant-invaders, it has money to throw away as “aid” to the corrupt, brutal shambles posing the the “state” (failed state) of “Ukraine”, but little for the British people.

At the same time, in the UK itself, almost nothing works properly: the migration-invasion continues, people generally are getting ripped-off right, left, and centre, living costs continue to increase relative to both pay and benefits, the NHS is at best now a skeleton service, and the schools and supposed “universities” are churning out “highly-qualified” (thanks to award inflation) “graduates” who know, most of them, ****-all.

That does not cover the entirety of the shambles; just a selection.

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Diary Blog, 18 August 2022

Morning music

[Alhambra, Granada, Spain]

On this day a year ago

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From where does the funding come?

Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan in action. White Genocide.

The “AI desktop pet” may be just an amusing idea now, but it is the direction of travel that matters. The Empire Windrush was just one quite small ship, but was the start of a massive migration invasion that has almost totally trashed the UK over the past 74 years.

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[painting by Levitan]

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Cosmetic. In reality, such exams are far easier than they were in the 1980s, let alone 1970s and 1960s, facts which can easily be verified by looking at exam papers from different decades.

The System actually wants to keep the ridiculous grade inflation, because it creates meaningless public happiness: the pupils or students are happy because they can tell themselves that they got “A” grades, the teachers and schools can pretend that they are doing a good job (rather than the pitiful job most of them do most of the time), the parents —particularly the sharp-elbowed middle classes— are happy that their offspring are on track to go to this or that university or college and so populate the usual professions, and the Government can claim to be reforming the exam award system when it is doing no such thing.

Meanwhile, real standards, in the real world, in official and business administration, the professions, political life, fall like a stone. Look at the standard of MPs now! All the System parties. Jess Phillips is merely one of hundreds of deadhead examples.

University Challenge

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11123187/Amol-Rajan-revealed-host-University-Challenge.html

As I predicted a few days ago, Jeremy Paxman has been replaced by a non-white. It’s all part of the conspiracy: see http://adam.curry.com/art/1543753587_mkXBrvrY.html.

“Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan”, “White Genocide”…whatever. Comes down to the same thing— white British people “cancelled”, and put down in every situation, even though they (we) are still 80% of the population of England, and more in the UK as a whole.

Someone like Paxman would have no chance today; that would be even more true of the original 1960s presenter, Bamber Gascoigne. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamber_Gascoigne; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Paxman; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amol_Rajan.

The new appointee is an atheist Indian, who is married to an Englishwoman with whom he has had three children. The Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan in operation, in short.

…and see https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11121391/PETER-HITCHENS-old-foe-Paxman-leaving-time-scrap-University-Challenge.html

A monstrous carbuncle…

“They” just cannot help themselves. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you…

I wish that I owned a bulldozer company.

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All the main online fora and search engines are subject to creeping censorship. The (((you know who))) is behind most of the repression, as always.

One example is the “@EternalEnglish” Twitter account. Still there, but it does not pop up automatically any more.

London. Zoo.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11123405/Moment-cops-arrest-man-44-accused-stabbing-death-87-year-old-busker.html

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See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/08/11/the-jew-epstein-and-prince-andrew-the-british-royal-family-has-another-scandal-maybe-its-time-to-just-get-rid-of-them/.

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Britain’s crippled, defective, future? Morning TV show, and both presenters are non-white, as is the scruffy Indian guest (who was once, absurdly, touted as both brilliant and the next UK Prime Minister).

At long last, people are starting to wake up to the damage that was done by the lockdown/shutdown, the facemask nonsense, the whole of the “panicdemic”/”scamdemic”.

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[Eden Project, Cornwall]

Diary Blog, 3 December 2020

I’m educated, me!

More farcical news. It seems that “because of the disruption caused to education by Coronavirus“, school pupils and others will have their exams marked “more generously” in 2021. In addition, they will be tipped off as to which topics within subjects will be particularly examined!

You really could not make it up! Or, as Victor Meldrew would say, “I don’t believe it!“. Except that I do believe it, because it is entirely consonant with the tenor of the times. Award inflation has become a notorious fact over the past two decades. Something like 35% of students at Oxford and Cambridge are now awarded First Class degrees (at one time awarded only to the brilliant few), and no less than 94% are now being awarded either Firsts or Upper Seconds.

Likewise at the secondary educational level. The school student who gets (in the Americanized vocabulary of the day) “straight-As”, is now almost the rule.

The reality is not so shining, and is not infrequently clear even on shows such as University Challenge, the showcase of “la creme de la creme“.

We might as well just give high marks to everyone, and have done with it! Oh, no, wait… we already do.

I suppose that the Government announcement is a political move designed to mollify the young, to “stuff their mouths with gold” (or at least Fool’s Gold).

Better news

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/03/uk-to-become-first-country-in-europe-to-ban-live-animal-exports

Loony feminist nonsense

The tweeter above carries the —increasingly meaningless— rank of “Professor”…

Corporate crime

https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/kingspan-manager-said-professionals-raising-fire-concerns-could-go-fck-themselves-grenfell-inquiry-hears-68801

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First, tragedy…?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9013447/Politician-named-Adolf-Hitler-wins-election-Namibia.html

Marx might even be amused at this “proof” of his dictum about historical recurrence as “first tragedy, then farce“.

Britain 2020

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/two-men-robbed-homeless-man-23107506

Mitigating for Moyo, defence lawyer Michael Goldwater said: “He came to this country at age 20 and lived in Coventry with his family and remained there until his release from his last prison sentence in 2016.”

Moyo…Goldwater…

Need one say more?

Tweets seen

The Tsar meant well, most of the time, but was not really up to ruling an empire in turbulent times.

That’s among Labour Party members and members of the voting public. Among the Jews, though, Starmer’s ratings are sky-high…

I blogged about both Owen Jones and Peter Hitchens, and about both meeting and talking together, quite a long time ago now: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/05/19/peter-hitchens-and-his-views/; https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/01/04/a-brief-word-about-owen-jones/

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