The requirement for numerical literacy was removed from the programme for recruiting new graduates to Britain’s Treasury shortly after George Floyd’s death.
The Black Lives Matter hysteria took control of the British economy in 2020, and in the six years that have passed since then, all the arrows have pointed in completely the wrong direction. In fact, the process had already started in 2019, before Floyd’s killing.
John Connolly points in an article in The Spectator to the massive challenges that Andy Burnham faces when he becomes the new leader of Labour and thereby also takes over as Britain’s new Prime Minister, as it looks.
Burnham is considered to be part of the «soft left», which means he belongs to a moderate faction within the left wing of the Labour Party. Burnham appears to be incapable of understanding the economic problems he will have to manage when he, in a few weeks by all indications, moves into 10 Downing Street, which he plans to open a copy of in northern England.
Burnham wants to show his gratitude to all who supported him as King of the North, and therefore a large share of tax revenues will probably flow northwards.
On Monday Andy Burnham finally presented some of his plans for the government. It surprised no one that much of this involves increased spending, and the likely next Prime Minister promised that a new «No. 10 North» would lead the «largest council house building programme since the post-war period».
Burnham says nothing about how this is to be financed. Instead it looks as if whoever Burnham chooses as his Chancellor will be forced to find the money, while at the same time creating «good growth in every postcode area, as well as hope in every heart».
Probably the whole of Great Britain will experience growth in the social-democratic way, with a clear and distinct growth in public spending and a new increase in taxes collected from Britons who actually work and struggle. There will hardly be any hope.
But Britons shall have diversity, whether they want it or not. Board protocols and other published documents show that the leadership of the Treasury decided to remove the requirements for numerical literacy in order to increase diversity after a review of the department’s graduate recruitment campaign in 2019.
According to the documents that The Spectator has obtained, the «numerical reasoning test (NRT) was removed due to evidence that the test had «a negative impact on diversity among the candidates».
So immigrants lack mathematical skills. Therefore mathematical requirements must be removed from the Treasury. «Diversity», which at best is a value-neutral term, means everything in today’s European madhouse.
The «negative consequences», which in this case must be understood as a lack of the holy diversity, had decreased after numerical literacy was dropped as a requirement in the recruitment campaign in 2020.
The decision was motivated among other things by the reactions after the killing of George Floyd, which caused the Black Lives Matter movement to explode in demonstrations and riots in large parts of the West.
This development must be reversed, since diversity trumps everything. Who cares if the British economy follows into the bottomless pit?
After requests for disclosure of documents, it emerged from the minutes of a Treasury board meeting that the department wanted «greater ethnic diversity at the selection centre», and claimed that the requirement that candidates had to complete two tests created an additional «barrier» and gave applicants yet another opportunity to be sorted out of the process.
The Treasury discovered in 2019 that numerical reasoning as a requirement led to proportionally fewer candidates from ethnic minorities advancing. Such things cannot of course be accepted if equity (outcome equality) is the goal. Ethnic minorities from African and/or Muslim countries had poorer numerical literacy than the despised white Britons and the clever Asians from countries such as China, Japan and South Korea.
The solution was to increase the number of candidates who passed an earlier situational judgement test, in an attempt to «maximise the number of diverse candidates» who got through the recruitment process.
Documents showed that diversity continued to influence the design of the recruitment process in the following years. In 2023, after receiving a higher number of applications, the department let more candidates advance from the initial selection, because raising the threshold entailed a risk of reduced diversity among those who advanced.
Insane way of thinking
Zubir Ahmed, a former parliamentary under-secretary who represents Labour in the House of Commons, said that the policy was «insane and helps no one».
Jack Rankin, who sits in the House of Commons for the Tory party, added that it was «really something in the style of Through the Looking-Glass», a term taken from the world that Lewis Carroll describes in the sequel to the literary masterpiece Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
«They have sat together and without opposition decided that ethnic background is more important than numeracy skills in appointments to the Treasury. We must change this way of thinking — from top to bottom.»
Even language proficiency was removed from the list of requirements when it was discovered that these assessments had had an even greater «negative impact on ethnicity» than numerical literacy. Candidates with minority backgrounds tended to struggle more with the verbal tasks. They simply did not master the English language.
In 2024 the verbal assessment was replaced by the «Civil Service Work Strengths Test», where candidates are asked to respond to statements about their preferred ways of working and personal behaviour, instead of directly testing verbal reasoning ability.
A Treasury spokesperson said at the time:
«It is complete nonsense to suggest that we have lowered our recruitment standards for the sake of diversity. We are proud that we recruit people from very different backgrounds, while maintaining a rigorous, competency-based recruitment to ensure that we have the very best staff to develop and deliver economic policy.»
The sentence is self-contradictory in itself. He thus says that it is nonsense to claim that they take diversity into account, before he expresses pride that they recruit people from very different backgrounds. But background, especially in ethnic format, does not in itself create competence, does it?
One almost has to summarise to understand the madness. The Treasury in a former great power does everything it can to avoid employees who understand language and numbers. The main requirement is diversity and variation, of course only consisting of so-called minorities. Intelligence and level of knowledge are uninteresting.
Is it then so strange that the British economy is going to hell? The Britons are not alone in the journey towards ruin: Similar thoughts are widespread across Europe, especially here at home in Norway.
During the Biden period the USA ran in seven-league boots in the same direction, in absolutely every way. The combination of open borders, Fat Camps for recruits to the U.S. Army, BLM riots in the streets while simultaneously arguing for Defund the Police, and no requirement for ID at elections are some examples.
Forsvaret i USA er et skremmende symbol på en kultur som er i ferd med å råtne
Then Donald Trump returned to the White House, and he has managed to reverse some of these processes. There is still much work left, for the bureaucracy is rotten at every level, and the radical Democrats do everything they can to oppose all measures from the Trump team. It also goes slowly to change broken institutions such as universities and schools.
Such is the situation: We are not experiencing Alice in Wonderland in our time. We are experiencing All of us in Wasteland. The eternal focus on diversity will lead to a society that collapses due to simple-mindedness.
It is difficult to become an optimist in the situation Europe and Norway find themselves in. Fortunately some among us are leading by good example. I am not one of them, but I can at least express my admiration for those who still believe that the development can be turned in the right direction.
The least we pessimists can do is to support those among us who still see a sliver of hope on the horizon.