In this episode, we're joined by journalist and author of the book, "Diversity and Inclusion in the UK: Evidence from the Public Sector" to discuss the impact of diversity and inclusion in the public sector, and why it's so important.
00:01:12.360You've done a bunch of different things.
00:01:13.680And one of the things you've been writing a lot about recently is something we often talk about in an American context.
00:01:18.780But actually, the figures came out that I think we have in the UK twice as many diversity officers per head of population than any other country.
00:01:26.780And we don't really talk about DEI so much in the British context.
00:02:20.760People are getting paid tens and tens of thousands of pounds to be diversity and inclusion consultants.
00:02:25.700And, in fact, I think there was some research done by an organisation called Conservative Way Forward
00:02:33.920that found just under half a billion pounds is spent in the UK on diversity and inclusion roles within the public sector alone.
00:02:43.100When you start talking about the private sector, you're talking about billions and billions of pounds.
00:02:47.840In America, it's, you know, tens of billions of dollars probably being spent on this stuff.
00:02:51.820So what I was doing with Kemi, for Kemi, was we appointed a panel, basically, to look into the data and what it says
00:03:02.720and about whether things that the diversity and inclusion industry say are effective, like diversity training,
00:03:09.060like unconscious bias training and all those things.
00:03:11.500What the actual evidence says, the peer-reviewed academic research.
00:03:17.260And just to figure out the extent of the industry, basically, and what needs to be done to actually make sure organisations are doing things properly.
00:03:25.640So that report was published a few weeks ago now in late March.
00:03:34.180And what it found was that, one, the diversity and inclusion industry is a very, well, let's put it this way,
00:03:42.460organisations who are using diversity and inclusion interventions, they're more or less virtue signalling.
00:03:48.880They don't really know whether it works, they don't evaluate what they implement to check if it's value for money,
00:05:05.320I think we had different definitions sometimes of what equality means and what it entails.
00:05:10.040But I think fundamentally, we want people to be treated fairly.
00:05:13.800And I think everybody, regardless of political persuasion, can agree that if there are actual barriers that are stopping certain groups,
00:05:23.080and they're genuinely, that they're not a result of meritocracy or not a result of differences in career choice, for example, then that's fair.
00:05:32.300You know, you don't have to have X percent of black people in an organization for that to be fair.
00:05:39.400What's fair is that everybody's given the same opportunities.
00:05:43.820But what the problem is, is that organizations are resorting to these really crude, ineffective, kind of pointless measures.
00:05:52.160And often, actually, it ends up backfiring.
00:05:55.440So there's been lots of academic studies done on this that found, and lots of long-term studies looking at the impact of diversity and inclusion training, especially in America.
00:06:07.340And many of them find little to no effect, basically, didn't achieve its intended aims.
00:06:13.460And some of them even find that the opposite effect happens.
00:06:20.940But it ends up making people who already work in a place feel excluded, or certain people won't actually apply based on how a company's framing its sort of job applications and its job descriptions.
00:06:37.580So sometimes it has the opposite effect.
00:06:41.220Then you're actually excluding people from applying for certain jobs.
00:06:48.020And there has been some evidence that it also makes some people more racist as well, which is like they're tired of being told that they're racist.
00:06:55.640And they're like, well, F these people.
00:07:22.880That might come as a huge shock to some people, especially people on the left.
00:07:26.680But the vast majority of people aren't racist.
00:07:28.760They don't have anything against immigrants.
00:07:30.840But then when you're having all these things about diversity and inclusion, when it looks to you like you as a native are a second class citizen because, you know, certain people are being favored ahead of you when you're being positively discriminated against, which happens increasingly so now.
00:07:49.680Well, then you are going to start saying, hang on, I don't want these people coming here and undercutting me.
00:07:56.560And I actually think that's quite a human response.
00:07:59.520And the problem is those people are kind of dismissed as racist when actually their concerns are legitimate.
00:08:05.420But, you know, obviously, that's not to say there aren't outright racist that exist in society.
00:08:12.000But I just don't think we should dismiss people's concerns when they do have concerns about diversity and inclusion or things like immigration.
00:08:19.160You know, we talk about these DEI officers and then I try and read what they actually do and I still don't understand it.
00:08:31.780That's something I'd love to know, basically.
00:08:34.460And I don't think it's justified, quite frankly.
00:08:36.800I mean, I think the average figure, if I recall correctly from the Conservative Way Forward report, which is obviously, you know, from a conservative leaning organisation.
00:08:47.860So you have to take it with a pinch of salt, I suppose.
00:08:51.860But it was about £40,000 was the average sort of wage for a DEI person in the public sector.
00:09:01.460For those students who don't live in the UK, that's more than double average wages, basically, or median salaries.
00:09:10.200So these people are getting a heck of a lot of money.
00:09:13.560Now, you have some doctors who don't even earn that in the UK.
00:09:16.780So how you're justifying paying somebody just because, and often, let's be honest, you know, they're not hiring white male diversity and inclusion officers.
00:09:26.940They're hiring people pretty much on the basis that they are diverse candidates and they tick some right boxes, not because they actually have any real sort of expertise on anything diversity related.
00:09:40.940Yeah, I suppose if you had a DEI officer and it came out and looked and sounded like me, it might not, you know, it might sound a bit weird.
00:10:01.740Yeah, I mean, I wish it was that methodical because I feel like if they're looking at a workforce and saying, this is where, you know, based on the data you have, this is where we feel you have gaps.
00:10:14.400And, you know, if they were taking a kind of scientific approach, I'd almost be in favour of that.
00:10:19.360I'd be like, great, use the data to figure out what's going on.
00:10:23.520And we know that because of surveys from businesses.
00:10:27.520We know that from the academic literature that organisations really don't know what they're doing.
00:10:33.540They're just kind of going along with it.
00:10:35.780So honestly, I don't know what they do.
00:10:38.040And I think what they do is they create work for themselves, basically.
00:10:41.580They say you have a problem, often a problem that probably doesn't exist within that organisation.
00:10:47.700But, for instance, you know, if you have a disparity between workers of a certain group compared to a different group, they might say, oh, well, that means necessarily that there's some discrimination at play.
00:11:01.500So let's see how we can, you know, increase that.
00:11:05.440But, you know, nobody, I think one in three doctors in the UK is Indian or something.
00:11:37.140Well, sometimes these things are just a natural kind of organic product of people's career choices.
00:11:43.060And just the industries that lend themselves to the different genders and different cultures, like men are going to go into construction more than women.
00:11:53.320That's perfectly reasonable and perfectly fine.
00:11:55.800Have we got to this point where you say when men are more likely to go into construction and suddenly that becomes a contentious statement?
00:12:04.240I don't, I think somewhere along the line, we, and I'd love to identify when it was, I'm not exactly sure.
00:12:14.380But somewhere along the line, we kind of lost common sense.
00:12:18.540We lost the ability to reason and we lost the ability to point out that I, this thing is a biological reality here.
00:12:25.800I can show you, or, you know, this thing is a product of X, Y, and Z.
00:12:29.820And we've, the scientific, I think, you know, the, the left has obviously dominated much of this stuff and the narratives and the discourses on a lot of this stuff.
00:12:41.920And some of the, we know, fields like sociology, for example, and social sciences are very left-leaning and we know that people teaching those are very left-leaning.
00:12:53.340And I think the scientific method, when you look at, you know, the scientific method and who's actually caring about using the scientific method to get to some kind of truth, it doesn't tend to be people working in the social sciences.
00:13:06.740And I say that as somebody who actually took social sciences.
00:13:10.040So I'm not surprised, and actually when you look at the political split between different fields, different academic fields, you'll find that the fields that don't require too much science tend to be very left-wing.
00:13:28.660The people working in those fields tend to be very left-wing, where fields that do very much require science and truth, they don't have as much of a left-wing bias.
00:13:36.940And so I think some of this stuff comes from academia, some of this stuff comes from us importing America's very many racial problems that don't apply here.
00:13:48.220And I think we're exposing people from just not being very smart as well, because I just don't get how you can have any sort of reason and come to some of the conclusions that so many people do.
00:14:01.780So in many of these identity politics conversations, not least the trans one.
00:14:07.700Well, obviously, culturally, all of that makes sense.
00:14:10.760But I'm a little bit worried that you say you don't quite know, because you're working for the minister whose job it was to deal with this stuff.
00:14:17.540Right. And this is the question I was going to ask you anyway, because Kemi, this is no slight on her or on you.
00:14:24.420She hasn't been in that role for the entire time the conservative government has been in charge of this country.
00:14:30.780But there has been a conservative government in charge of this country for 14 years.
00:14:35.600So you'd sort of hope that they would have got to the bottom of it by now.
00:14:38.800Do you know what I mean? And maybe even start to sort it out.
00:14:41.720So are we going to see some kind of rollback?
00:14:45.280And I don't mean, you know, idiots like me and Francis talking about this on Trigonometry.
00:14:49.160I mean, actually, people in government going, we can see that part of this is because the Equalities Act is the way that it is.
00:14:55.340And part of this is because of this. And here's what the action plan is.
00:14:59.260No offence in the six months that we have left.
00:15:15.680Well, I mean, and in context, I mean, I can't remember how many seats they have now, but they have around an 80 seat, maybe a bit below that now majority.
00:15:24.200You need, you know, we have the parliament of 650 seats.
00:15:28.620So, you know, do the math. 80 seats is not great.
00:15:33.660I don't think there's any time left, to be honest, to make the fundamental cultural changes in this area that we need to see.
00:15:42.640There's not time massively to change legislation that needs to be changed.
00:15:48.260And I completely agree about there has been a lot of wasted time.
00:15:53.380And I do find some people do kind of corner me and try to blame me for all the ills of the conservatives because I have been an outspoken kind of advocate of many of their policies.
00:16:05.640But I was 15 when they were David Cameron was elected.
00:16:10.460So, you know, you can't blame me for everything.
00:16:12.300I was but a child when they were elected.
00:16:15.040But I do completely agree that they should have done a lot more on the social front.
00:16:20.060And I think, sadly, now it will be left to labor to enact some of the things that they want to enact.
00:16:27.800And I'm not particularly excited about what they have in mind.
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00:17:04.520I guess the question would be, had Kemi had more time now left, what are some of the things that you might think about doing in order to say, look, we're all for, as you say, people being treated fairly.
00:17:17.820In fact, it's one of the core principles of our society and a principle around which it's based.
00:17:23.520But some of these completely unscientific, untested and where they are tested, unproven methods are being introduced at great expense, both in the public and the private sphere.
00:17:35.460Here's what we're going to do about it.
00:17:41.720Well, so when it comes to some of the trans stuff and some of the positive discrimination stuff, I think changing the Equality Act would have been necessary.
00:17:52.460And, you know, that's obviously something that's been rumbling on in the background and those conversations and that work to see what needs to be changed.
00:18:00.700There's been various consultations and things like that.
00:18:03.200But when you're talking about, you know, a piece of legislation, you know, Equality Act was enacted in 2010.
00:18:11.140It brought together lots of all the different pieces of equalities legislation.
00:18:15.820It needs primary legislation to change.
00:18:18.420So you actually need to kind of go through the whole legislative machine to even change any part of it.
00:18:23.800And that would have helped because what we've found is a lot of organizations in trying to sort of increase proportions of different groups, they end up positively discriminating, for example.
00:18:38.320So and even our own Royal Air Force was recently found by an inquiry to positively discriminate against white men.
00:18:47.060Unlike in America, positive discrimination is unlawful in this country.
00:18:50.900So you cannot positively discriminate against anybody.
00:18:54.160But the Equality Act has something called positive action provisions in it, which is a kind of positive discrimination light version.
00:19:02.820But because organizations don't know what they're doing and they're getting really bad advice from various lobby groups, they end up accidentally positively discriminating.
00:19:12.600There's also the issue of free speech.
00:19:15.240And what needs to happen with free speech is employers don't understand their duty to actually protect freedom of belief.
00:19:26.340And we've seen a number of cases where employers have been found to be in breach of the Equality Act by not protecting freedom of belief, which is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act.
00:20:21.160Under the Equality Act, there's something called the public sexual equality duty.
00:20:25.480And part of that means any public body has a duty to ensure good relations between different groups in the community, basically.
00:20:35.640A lot of organizations, public bodies are doing the exact opposite by sort of employing diversity and inclusion and cultural spokespeople who are actually advising them things that are divisive and that aren't fostering good relations between communities.
00:20:56.340So there's lots of stuff that could have happened that should have happened before.
00:21:01.500But I think the political turmoil has really not helped.
00:21:04.680I mean, we've gone through God knows how many prime ministers.
00:21:07.900I think we're on the fourth, fifth prime minister in whatever, seven years, who knows?
00:21:11.780And then obviously there was Brexit, there was the pandemic, you know, there was so much going on that it took up so much political time to actually change some of the problems we're facing in Britain.
00:21:33.120The one thing when it comes to the DEI stuff, you know, I just don't understand why they don't talk about how people who come from deprived socioeconomic backgrounds find it tougher to get into certain industries.
00:21:47.220I think most people would actually be a little bit more sympathetic if people came forward and go, look, if you grew up in a part of Middlesbrough, you might be super talented.
00:21:58.380But for whatever reason, if you come from a deprived socioeconomic background, you know, if you grew up with one parent family, you might not have the opportunity to go into this type of career.
00:22:09.060And we need to open these types of careers up to these types of people because actually what we're doing is we're wasting talent.
00:22:16.140I'm far more sympathetic to that argument than the other stuff.
00:22:29.040So to their credit, the BBC, they've now started having a target.
00:22:34.160I'm not a massive fan of targets, but they do now have a target for the number of people from working class backgrounds that they want to employ, which is a step in the right direction.
00:22:43.280I suspect the reason people don't want to talk about class is because we all know once you start talking about class, you realise that actually white working class people have it the worst for the most part.
00:22:56.320They have it the worst when it comes to educational outcomes.
00:22:58.800And once you're screwed in education, you're pretty much screwed everywhere else.
00:23:02.880So when you look at how immigrants are doing, even working class immigrants, they're doing really well for themselves.
00:23:13.140They do far better than white working class people.
00:23:17.300So I think a lot of people on the left, they want to ignore the elephant in the room because it means admitting actually perhaps race isn't the be all and end all.
00:23:27.540I can never say that. Be all and end all.
00:23:56.320I think we definitely should be talking about why working class people don't do as well.
00:24:02.120And a lot of it has to do with culture, which is the same reason I say that Caribbean young people do really badly compared in school and just on a range of measures compared to black African people and students.
00:24:20.620Teachers aren't choosing to kind of, you know, be racist to the Caribbean kids and not racist to the African kids.
00:24:29.580That would, of course, be ridiculous to suggest that that's what's happening.
00:24:32.980What's happening is that Caribbean people who are often, you know, second, third, fourth generation migrants have a completely different culture to people who are new African immigrants like myself.
00:24:54.180You know, so we need to talk about culture and that includes white working class culture as well and how that impacts how people are not only received in society, but how they're probably discriminated against and how they underperform and how the expectations aren't very high for that group either.
00:25:17.720You know, there's also a part of me that thinks this, which is a lot of these middle class, let's just call them progressives, wouldn't like the white working class because they're not going to agree with what they think.
00:25:33.120You're not going to get someone from, I don't know, Grimsby banging on about white privilege.
00:25:40.200Or someone from Cornwall, which hasn't had industry, put a town in it, which has had all the mines shut down, hasn't had a lot of jobs there for generations.
00:25:49.380They're not going to be on board with this stuff.
00:25:51.740And automatically, you're going to bring somebody into your particular industry or corporation that you're going to have fundamental disagreements with.
00:26:00.500And as human beings, we kind of like to surround ourselves with people who agree with us, don't we?
00:26:05.320Yeah, and there's a lot of recruiting.
00:26:08.600So one of the causes of why traditionally workplaces have been homogenous, which is where the diversity and inclusion thing stepped in, because they said, you know, hang on a second, we need a bit of diversity in here, a bit of heterogyny, is because people recruit in their own image just naturally.
00:26:27.180People surround themselves and people that agree with them.
00:26:29.700You know, you know, people like to be affirmed, to have their identity affirmed by the people around them.
00:26:37.340And so there is some of that, you know, even accent discrimination is a real thing.
00:26:42.900People, there are polls done on this and surveys done on this, on how intelligent you perceive somebody to be based on what their accent is.
00:26:51.660So if you are from the North, sadly, you're not seen as intelligent as somebody who has a received pronunciation accent who's from the South.
00:27:02.040Things like that play into it as well.
00:27:04.600And as you say, a lot of white working class people, they're not bought into all of this stuff.
00:27:09.740They don't, they don't care about, you know, trans, you know, all this liberal stuff, essentially.
00:27:14.580And that's why I think liberals have a condescending attitude, or let me say white metropolitan middle class liberals have a condescending attitude towards white working class people.
00:27:27.920And they dismiss them as racist, as xenophobes, because it's easy to do that because they actually, I think, deep down see themselves as culturally inferior.
00:27:38.260They see themselves as highbrow and they see working class, white working class culture as lowbrow.
00:27:44.340And so I don't even think they care, to be honest.
00:27:49.060Well, this is what I was going to ask you, because it strikes me that I think maybe one of the reasons is that they're not willing to look at how to actually help people is that's not the objective.
00:27:58.760The objective is to go along with the narrative that you've talked about, which is, this is about racism, this is about sexism, because these are the virtuous things to currently be concerned with, rather than going, who are the people that are actually struggling in education who we can help?
00:28:17.340Because there'll be times when you can't help people who are struggling, because they're struggling because they don't have the right culture, or they don't have the right values, or they don't have the right intelligence, or whatever.
00:28:30.120I think this whole idea of diversity is a broader conversation as well, because you're just talking about how well people recruit people who agree with them.
00:28:39.580We have about 10, 12 people working for us.
00:28:42.420And there's various range of opinions.
00:28:44.580I don't think we have any people with blue hair and nose piercings working here.
00:28:49.460But I do wonder to what extent the idea that you must have lots and lots of people who have completely different opinions within an organization is necessarily true.
00:28:59.700I don't think having two people who are in here all the time telling Francis and I how we're completely wrong is the way to take what we do forward.
00:29:09.080We do need people who are broadly aligned with the mission of what we're trying to create.
00:29:13.020So even on that metric, introducing things artificially, I don't know how much that makes sense.
00:29:19.240Now, if there was somebody who was black who wanted to come in and had those same values as us and wanted to create the same thing, but they didn't get an interview because they were black, that's a very different conversation.
00:29:30.400Yeah, I completely see what you're saying.
00:29:33.080And that's where one thing this report, the report that was commissioned by the Minister for Women and Equalities that was produced by the independent panel.
00:29:45.240One thing it pointed out is that it's all about context, the context of an organization.
00:29:49.880There's no one size fits all because it doesn't make sense.
00:29:53.520It doesn't make, quite frankly, if there's a sandwich factory, who cares what, you know, how is how diverse the sandwich factory is going to improve any anything to do with the company's productivity or its mission or anything like that.
00:30:07.560There are cases like public services where there will need, who are actively dealing with and making decisions that impact significantly the lives of a whole range of different sorts of people.
00:30:21.400Where the case for having people within that organization who has different experiences, who are from different backgrounds, the case for that is obviously quite strong there.
00:30:31.080Yeah. So this report said it's about context.
00:30:35.800What are your, the diversity and inclusion thing should be to, in aid of improving your organization's goals.
00:30:44.460And it should actually be productive, a productive thing, not just sort of I've plucked out some targets out of thin air and they're going to have no impact whatsoever.
00:30:54.860Well, that's right. And one of the things I was talking to somebody the other day who made, I think, a very good point,
00:30:59.260which is there is this myth now that diversity automatically improves performance.
00:31:04.980And the way they've done that is basically all the really successful companies have been guilted into creating more diversity.
00:31:12.140So then you go, do successful companies have diversity?
00:31:15.580Yes. Therefore, diversity means you're going to have a successful company.
00:31:18.800And I just think we have to get away from this idea that a government Mandarin is going to come in, look at a private business and know how to improve it.
00:31:25.720These people haven't built anything in their lives.
00:31:27.240Yeah. Yeah. I, I do. I couldn't agree more, to be honest.
00:31:31.860And I think, again, this report wasn't saying that government should come in and do anything.
00:31:38.100And actually it was saying the quite opposite is businesses should be empowering themselves to figure out what's best for me.
00:31:44.480And actually, they should just have the facts and the data and they should be abiding by their legal obligations at the very, very minimum.
00:31:52.180But there's also a risk, I think, of just completely as much, you know, obviously people who are advocate for this diversity, diversity and inclusion stuff, they think it has been ignored.
00:32:05.000The diversity and inclusion thing has been ignored for a long time, but there's a massive risk of also overdoing it.
00:32:10.660And that's where I think we are at the moment.
00:32:13.280And I think if you arm organizations with the tools to and the knowledge of what exactly are you trying to achieve, how can you figure out what your company needs?
00:32:25.920Then that's a good thing. And actually just give people who run organizations, you know, cut them some slack and say, it's OK to not, you know, want to have X number of people, these random quotas.
00:32:42.400It's OK not to do that. And you can justify why you don't want to do that when you actually think properly about what your organization is trying to achieve and what role diversity and inclusion would have in that.
00:32:55.000So, yeah, I think some it's morally, to some extent, the moral case for diversity and inclusion insofar as it is saying we don't want discrimination.
00:33:08.060This is what I was going to say to you, right. Do you think this is we have to abandon the framework entirely and go, we don't care about diversity.
00:33:14.840We care about making sure there's no discrimination. If there's no discrimination, the outcome is the outcome.
00:33:20.060We don't care whether that's all black or white, not white, not black, whatever.
00:33:25.400Like as long as people were treated fairly when they were recruited and during their employment, then the outcome is what the outcome is.
00:33:32.840Well, see, I would agree with that, but with one caveat, which is that I do think there's some legitimacy in the argument that we, there are forms of discrimination that actually are very subtle, but matter.
00:33:47.620Now, I'm not talking about microaggressions or things like that, which are clearly just ridiculous and just, you know, only narcissists talk about that stuff.
00:33:56.420But, you know, I think it does kind of matter if somebody comes, has a working, an accent that's associated with working class, you know, working class communities.
00:34:08.520It does matter that that person is not going to get a job, even if they have the exact same qualifications or even better, just because they don't present themselves in a particular way.
00:34:18.580So, I think, in a sense, there is a role to support those people and try and give them the social and cultural capital that they need in order to thrive in the workplace.
00:34:48.660I think there's a role to empower people to recognise that actually all of us discriminate.
00:34:55.800All of us say, you know, probably won't hire that person because of X, Y.
00:34:59.720Well, not all of us because not all of us run companies, but we all have it in us to, you know, discriminate subtly based on different social and cultural cues that somebody's giving.
00:35:10.860Frances, sorry, I know I've hooked the mic for a long time.
00:35:13.880It's like there's not been a single person that we've hired where we've given a share about anything other than their potential performance.
00:35:26.300And I think that's where I'm saying where it becomes evident that actually some people aren't getting jobs, not because they're not perfectly qualified, but for other subtler reasons.
00:35:41.900I don't know what that looks like necessarily, but I think it's about, first of all, exposing those people to different environments when they're younger.
00:35:51.620So some people genuinely grew up in households where their parents didn't work and they've been on benefits all their lives.
00:35:57.700They don't know how to fill out a job application.
00:35:59.740They don't know what to say in an interview.
00:36:01.560They don't even know how to greet somebody necessarily.
00:36:07.740Those soft skills matter because, you know, it's a rough old world out there in the employment, in the workplace.
00:36:15.520And getting a job, even if you're really qualified, is increasingly difficult because everybody is qualified these days.
00:36:22.740And so we should help people have the soft skills to actually navigate the world.
00:36:29.180And I think those sorts of things do matter.
00:36:31.800So I'm not dismissing every aspect of diversity and inclusion altogether, but I'm saying let's actually base it on some facts rather than random stuff plucked out of dinner.
00:36:46.240You know, I left teaching in 2020, so four years ago now.
00:36:51.920And looking at the corporate workplace, when we interact with people who send official emails, it seems like every corporation now has pronouns in the bio.
00:37:04.400And I think to myself, what is going on?
00:37:07.840And actually, what happens if you refuse to adhere to that particular ideology?
00:37:12.500Well, I have always said that if I'm ever asked to, because I know some, my auntie works in education.
00:37:22.020She's a professor in Canada, I mean, and she teaches education.
00:37:27.060So you can only imagine the kinds of stuff she has to put up with, basically.
00:37:33.620And she says when they have their meetings, they have to introduce themselves as, hi, I'm so-and-so and my pronouns are X.
00:37:40.460And I've always said, if ever I'm in a situation where I'm expected to do that, I am not doing that at all.
00:37:49.820I am absolutely never being put in a situation where I feel, well, you can put me in that situation if you want, but I'm going to refuse to say my pronouns are she, her.
00:38:47.760And so even if I was cancelled, I think I'd still be sensible enough to find an okay job.
00:38:54.140You know, I won't ever be in a position where I've been sacked from my job and I've lost, I mean, God, let's hope I'm not.
00:39:00.760But, uh, where I've lost my entire livelihood because I'm, I think I'm a sensible person and I think I'm reasonable.
00:39:07.620Um, whereas there are people who genuinely, if they don't say that in a meeting and they get sacked from, you know, wherever they work, that is incredibly damaging for them.
00:39:19.160And that person ends up homeless, potentially, if they lose that job, they're living, you know, paycheck to paycheck.
00:39:25.280And so people feel compelled to go along with all this stuff.
00:39:29.380And nobody wants to, um, stick their head above the parapet anymore.
00:39:34.300That's the, that's the real shame of the world we've created.
00:39:37.520That nobody feels that they can truly stand up for what they believe in.
00:39:42.700And nobody feels that they can challenge the things that they don't believe in.
00:39:46.200And if that's not a slippery slope to a hellish world, then I really don't know what is.
00:39:52.820So I would encourage everybody to actually, if you don't want to say something, don't say it.
00:40:00.800Don't, don't be compelled to say something you don't want to say or to believe, pretend you believe in something you don't believe.
00:40:07.220Because it might start with a pronoun here and there, but it won't end with that.