I am a member of The British Association. This excellent organisation exists to link scientists in the UK with the untrained laity. The Cambridge branch has stopped holding meetings because of lack of activists to organise them. Everyone in this town can manipulate partial differential equations and sketch out a timeline of the Precambrian anyway. I still get their magazine, though: the heartstoppingly named Science and Public Affairs. There was an insert in it this month, carrying an article about getting more people with “ethnic minority backgrounds” into science. Normally the BA’s publications are clear and simple, but this piece had been infected by the vocabulary of the diversity industry. I quote verbatim:

“Over a two-year period, the BA and ACNST will be developing an effective national framework to facilitate empowering networks and sustainable partnerships by engaging ethnic minority groups and the science communication community in consultation and dialogue.”

As a scientist from an “ethnic minority background” my response to that is: “Fuck off back to where you came from, and don’t talk to me until you’ve learned some Anglo-Saxon.”