2022 School Census states that 34.5% of children in England are from ethnic minorities

[Grace O'Malley]

Too much off-topic about Ireland. Loki, are you around please?

This forum is not exactly moderated. If it was you wouldn't be seeing the bigoted comments in this thread so good luck with getting off-topic posts removed but yes the bigoted comments here should be removed.

[JamesBond007]

This forum is not exactly moderated. If it was you wouldn't be seeing the bigoted comments in this thread so good luck with getting off-topic posts removed but yes the bigoted comments here should be removed.

**********

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident. --Arthur Schopenhauer

If you are afraid to speak against tyranny, then you are already a slave.

To attempt to silence a man is to pay him homage, for it is an acknowledgement that his arguments are both impossible to answer and impossible to ignore.

Bigotry: Your enemies' opinions; as opposed to Truth: Your own.

The free society will always eclipse the unfree one; for while totalitarianism may forbid the bad, it can never compel the good -- something which arises spontaneously among free men.

Free speech is offensive speech.

Truth hurts -- especially if it's funny.

The reason men are silenced is not because they speak falsely, but because they speak the truth. This is because if men speak falsehoods, their own words can be used against them; while if they speak truly, there is nothing which can be used against them -- except force.

A good writer should be both insightful and inciteful.

The best ideas are those alive with manly vigor, which rape each virgin mind and fill it with the seed of unborn thoughts.

You will know you have spoken the truth when you are angrily denounced; and you will know you have spoken both truly and well when you are visited by the police.

Things are interesting to the extent that they arouse controversy; and things which are the most interesting are those which are cursed and consigned to Hell.

To be taken seriously, you must first offend. If you do not, people will say, "Oh, he's just like so-and-so, with perhaps a touch of such-and-such", and forget about you entirely; while if you touch a raw nerve, you at least know that you are on the pathway to the brain. The point is, men will rarely think new thoughts without a jolt, and if you expect them to think the ones you have, then you must first crash your way into their consciousness.

Truth has no manners. It is no respecter of persons. It wounds kings as deeply as commoners. It cuts down the high, and confirms the lowness of the low. It may dress up for formal occasions, but it does so only in order that it may more shockingly expose itself in front of the assembled company. And just as it respects no one, likewise there are few who respect it. But those who do are granted many favors -- power, understanding, dominion, and of course the honor of the unswerving hatred of the ignorant millions.

What I say may seem outrageous and outre, but my purpose is to push the envelope of discourse to its outer limits on the theory that freedom of speech, like both mind and body, requires vigorous exercise to remain healthy. Beyond this, the act of pushing the free speech envelope will embolden others to speak, and their acts of boldness reinforce the perception that free speech is tolerated, thereby increasing the probability that it will be. But as I embolden others to speak, so I embolden them to act; and in this way I help insure that free speech is more than a sounding gong or a tinkling symbol. Put another way, I hope to make the world safe for bigotry, ie, safe for the opinions to which -- in Ambrose Bierce's words -- others are intractably and vociferously opposed

[Grace O'Malley]

**********

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident. --Arthur Schopenhauer

If you are afraid to speak against tyranny, then you are already a slave.

To attempt to silence a man is to pay him homage, for it is an acknowledgement that his arguments are both impossible to answer and impossible to ignore.

Bigotry: Your enemies' opinions; as opposed to Truth: Your own.

The free society will always eclipse the unfree one; for while totalitarianism may forbid the bad, it can never compel the good -- something which arises spontaneously among free men.

Free speech is offensive speech.

Truth hurts -- especially if it's funny.

The reason men are silenced is not because they speak falsely, but because they speak the truth. This is because if men speak falsehoods, their own words can be used against them; while if they speak truly, there is nothing which can be used against them -- except force.

A good writer should be both insightful and inciteful.

The best ideas are those alive with manly vigor, which rape each virgin mind and fill it with the seed of unborn thoughts.

You will know you have spoken the truth when you are angrily denounced; and you will know you have spoken both truly and well when you are visited by the police.

Things are interesting to the extent that they arouse controversy; and things which are the most interesting are those which are cursed and consigned to Hell.

To be taken seriously, you must first offend. If you do not, people will say, "Oh, he's just like so-and-so, with perhaps a touch of such-and-such", and forget about you entirely; while if you touch a raw nerve, you at least know that you are on the pathway to the brain. The point is, men will rarely think new thoughts without a jolt, and if you expect them to think the ones you have, then you must first crash your way into their consciousness.

Truth has no manners. It is no respecter of persons. It wounds kings as deeply as commoners. It cuts down the high, and confirms the lowness of the low. It may dress up for formal occasions, but it does so only in order that it may more shockingly expose itself in front of the assembled company. And just as it respects no one, likewise there are few who respect it. But those who do are granted many favors -- power, understanding, dominion, and of course the honor of the unswerving hatred of the ignorant millions.

What I say may seem outrageous and outre, but my purpose is to push the envelope of discourse to its outer limits on the theory that freedom of speech, like both mind and body, requires vigorous exercise to remain healthy. Beyond this, the act of pushing the free speech envelope will embolden others to speak, and their acts of boldness reinforce the perception that free speech is tolerated, thereby increasing the probability that it will be. But as I embolden others to speak, so I embolden them to act; and in this way I help insure that free speech is more than a sounding gong or a tinkling symbol. Put another way, I hope to make the world safe for bigotry, ie, safe for the opinions to which -- in Ambrose Bierce's words -- others are intractably and vociferously opposed

No it is bigotry and not truthful. It is just a way for some people to feel better about themselves because they really don't feel good about themselves so they put others down. No one with that much hate and anger is a healthy human being.

Anyway these posts are off-topic and you started it all.

[JamesBond007]

No it is bigotry and not truthful. It is just a way for some people to feel better about themselves because they really don't feel good about themselves so they put other's down. No one with that much hate and anger is a healthy human being.

Anyway these posts are off-topic and you started it all.

Philosophy : a system of thought that deals with general truths but that differs from science by its methods.

Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain. --Ambrose Bierce

Bigot: One who disagrees with a liberal.

Equality: The theory that black equals white, dumb equals smart, incompetence equals competence, lies equal truth, and bad equals good.

Feminist: A man-eating tigress; a female with all the vices of women and none of the virtues; a woman who couldn't find a man and couldn't even get work as a whore.

Hate: The love a white man has for his own people, his own nation and his own culture.

[JamesBond007]

No it is bigotry and not truthful. It is just a way for some people to feel better about themselves because they really don't feel good about themselves so they put other's down. No one with that much hate and anger is a healthy human being.

Anyway these posts are off-topic and you started it all.

There is no such thing as truth, but only various opinions. In saying this, however, I do not mean to say that truth does not exist, but only that we cannot know that it exists. What we can know -- or at least what we can have a strong opinion about -- is that men's opinions often converge, and that such convergence makes it convenient to say that we have "discovered some truth" at the point of convergence; and it was precisely this which I meant when I once stated that "Truth is the asymptote of opinion". I hasten to point out, however, that the fact that men's opinions often converge is not sufficient to prove the existence of truth, or even a truth, for men's opinions once converged in agreeing to the truth of the proposition that the world is flat, and yet most men would not now say that such a proposition is (or was ever) true.

But what then does all this mean when we say -- as both "truth believers" and "truth disbelievers" do -- that something is "true", "false", "a lie" or some other phrase which would indicate that we believe in the existence of truth? That is, if the theory that truth exists is false, are we not constrained from using its theoretical terms? Indeed, if it is false, are we not thereby prevented from saying just that? The answer, to use a phrase made famous by Harvard philosopher WV Quine, is that truth is "a good and useful myth". It is helpful in speaking about things, in part because the theory that truth exists is fundamental to our linguistic structure, or at least closely interwoven with it. But is it essential? That is, can we abandon speaking of truth in favor of speaking only of opinion, ie, can we translate all statements of the form "X is true (false, a lie, etc)" into "It is my (his, etc) opinion that-x"? The answer, surprisingly, is No, because the latter statement is a covert expression of the theory that truth exists, because it is a sotto voce expression of the statement "It is my (his, etc) opinion that x is true". Or in other words, our very linguistic structure requires us to employ a theory which is false -- or at least false in my humble opinion.

But then again, perhaps all this is the problem of the relation of perception and existence all over again -- the one expressed so often (and so poorly) by the question, If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it fall, does it make any sound?, ie, if the sound is not heard, does it "really" exist? Now if we believe, as Bishop Berkeley believed, that God hears the sound -- or can see the truth -- then we would not hesitate to say it exists after all and that we don't have to be worried about the fact that mere mortals do not or cannot perceive it. Unfortunately, however, this particular theory is beyond my cranial carrying capacity.

So what then to do for those, like myself, who do not believe in truth, but only in opinion? To begin with, both believers and non-believers agree (or mostly agree) that the thing called truth -- whether real or just a good and useful myth -- is determined or indicated by convergence of opinion, so it seems that there is no "objective" problem of determining "the truth", no matter how much we may disagree about its "ultimate nature". The problem -- if you can call it that -- is that for the "truth believers", convergence of opinion represents a metaphysical-like reality (like dust for my mother on Saturday morning: you can't see it, but it's there, so sweep!), while for the non-believers it represents a ghost-like entity which is admitted to the company of other more respectable ideas only because nothing can keep it out. So this then leaves the non-believer but one alternative, namely, to accept the existence of truth but to deny that it can be known, or alternately, to accept its existence but say that it can be known only with uncertainty or degree of probability. He can, of course, happily point out that he doesn't "really" believe in truth, because something whose existence cannot be perceived (except in the ghostly outline of opinion convergence) does not "really" exist, and thus all the tortures he has been put through in order to make him confess the existence of truth are therefore negated by this clever little observation.

In my opinion, the resolution to this conundrum -- if it may be called a resolution -- is that it is a matter of opinion, tho obviously the believers in truth will demur since they believe it is a matter of Truth. To be specific, my resolution is that the controversy is one of those irresolvable problems of philosophy, and thus the "resolution" depends not on Truth, but simply on which way you prefer to look at it. In particular, you can be a "truth believer" on the basis that (a) opinions tend to converge over time (tho there are some embarrassing discontinuities, like the flat-earth theory) and (b) that the concept of truth is embedded in language and thought and is thus inescapable. Or you can be a "truth disbeliever" on the basis that, even tho (like Plato's cave) you can see truth's shadow on the wall (the convergence of opinion), you nonetheless refuse to believe what you see is truth because you can never see anything more than the shadow and you know there are embarrassing discontinuities in the shadow which may mean that truth does not exist after all.

[Grace O'Malley]

There is no such thing as truth, but only various opinions. In saying this, however, I do not mean to say that truth does not exist, but only that we cannot know that it exists. What we can know -- or at least what we can have a strong opinion about -- is that men's opinions often converge, and that such convergence makes it convenient to say that we have "discovered some truth" at the point of convergence; and it was precisely this which I meant when I once stated that "Truth is the asymptote of opinion". I hasten to point out, however, that the fact that men's opinions often converge is not sufficient to prove the existence of truth, or even a truth, for men's opinions once converged in agreeing to the truth of the proposition that the world is flat, and yet most men would not now say that such a proposition is (or was ever) true.

But what then does all this mean when we say -- as both "truth believers" and "truth disbelievers" do -- that something is "true", "false", "a lie" or some other phrase which would indicate that we believe in the existence of truth? That is, if the theory that truth exists is false, are we not constrained from using its theoretical terms? Indeed, if it is false, are we not thereby prevented from saying just that? The answer, to use a phrase made famous by Harvard philosopher WV Quine, is that truth is "a good and useful myth". It is helpful in speaking about things, in part because the theory that truth exists is fundamental to our linguistic structure, or at least closely interwoven with it. But is it essential? That is, can we abandon speaking of truth in favor of speaking only of opinion, ie, can we translate all statements of the form "X is true (false, a lie, etc)" into "It is my (his, etc) opinion that-x"? The answer, surprisingly, is No, because the latter statement is a covert expression of the theory that truth exists, because it is a sotto voce expression of the statement "It is my (his, etc) opinion that x is true". Or in other words, our very linguistic structure requires us to employ a theory which is false -- or at least false in my humble opinion.

But then again, perhaps all this is the problem of the relation of perception and existence all over again -- the one expressed so often (and so poorly) by the question, If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it fall, does it make any sound?, ie, if the sound is not heard, does it "really" exist? Now if we believe, as Bishop Berkeley believed, that God hears the sound -- or can see the truth -- then we would not hesitate to say it exists after all and that we don't have to be worried about the fact that mere mortals do not or cannot perceive it. Unfortunately, however, this particular theory is beyond my cranial carrying capacity.

So what then to do for those, like myself, who do not believe in truth, but only in opinion? To begin with, both believers and non-believers agree (or mostly agree) that the thing called truth -- whether real or just a good and useful myth -- is determined or indicated by convergence of opinion, so it seems that there is no "objective" problem of determining "the truth", no matter how much we may disagree about its "ultimate nature". The problem -- if you can call it that -- is that for the "truth believers", convergence of opinion represents a metaphysical-like reality (like dust for my mother on Saturday morning: you can't see it, but it's there, so sweep!), while for the non-believers it represents a ghost-like entity which is admitted to the company of other more respectable ideas only because nothing can keep it out. So this then leaves the non-believer but one alternative, namely, to accept the existence of truth but to deny that it can be known, or alternately, to accept its existence but say that it can be known only with uncertainty or degree of probability. He can, of course, happily point out that he doesn't "really" believe in truth, because something whose existence cannot be perceived (except in the ghostly outline of opinion convergence) does not "really" exist, and thus all the tortures he has been put through in order to make him confess the existence of truth are therefore negated by this clever little observation.

In my opinion, the resolution to this conundrum -- if it may be called a resolution -- is that it is a matter of opinion, tho obviously the believers in truth will demur since they believe it is a matter of Truth. To be specific, my resolution is that the controversy is one of those irresolvable problems of philosophy, and thus the "resolution" depends not on Truth, but simply on which way you prefer to look at it. In particular, you can be a "truth believer" on the basis that (a) opinions tend to converge over time (tho there are some embarrassing discontinuities, like the flat-earth theory) and (b) that the concept of truth is embedded in language and thought and is thus inescapable. Or you can be a "truth disbeliever" on the basis that, even tho (like Plato's cave) you can see truth's shadow on the wall (the convergence of opinion), you nonetheless refuse to believe what you see is truth because you can never see anything more than the shadow and you know there are embarrassing discontinuities in the shadow which may mean that truth does not exist after all.

Stop copying and pasting to my posts. I'm not reading them.

[Sharpshooter]

What about people with Irish backgrounds in the UK are they ethnic minorities? I.e. The Gallagher brothers, Jimmy Carr etc.

White Irish of course is listed as its own separate category, but statistics show only around 25% of people with 2 Irish parents born and raised in the UK actually tick the white Irish box.

I ticked the white British box on the census but I have no idea whether that's considered incorrect or not.

[Tooting Carmen]

What about people with Irish backgrounds in the UK are they ethnic minorities? I.e. The Gallagher brothers, Jimmy Carr etc.

White Irish of course is listed as its own separate category, but statistics show only around 25% of people with 2 Irish parents born and raised in the UK actually tick the white Irish box.

I ticked the white British box on the census but I have no idea whether that's considered incorrect or not.

In theory the Irish are considered an ethnic minority group in their own right like you say, but in practice the Irish aren't seen as foreigners like e.g. Poles or Italians are whatsoever.

[Norse-Gael]

What about people with Irish backgrounds in the UK are they ethnic minorities? I.e. The Gallagher brothers, Jimmy Carr etc.

White Irish of course is listed as its own separate category, but statistics show only around 25% of people with 2 Irish parents born and raised in the UK actually tick the white Irish box.

I ticked the white British box on the census but I have no idea whether that's considered incorrect or not.

It's a peculiar feel.

[SilverKnight]

Sad, sad...