Ive been banned from Surrey Twitter page...

Sir Winston Churchill wrote:Don’t be so daft Benmug. ACE is 100% to do with cricket. Its head office is at the oval, it was conceived by Surrey CCC.
My only guess is that you yourself must be woke.

Chinaman wrote:Might be wise to get back on track with the cricket ...

guildfordbat wrote:

Chinaman wrote:Might be wise to get back on track with the cricket ...

I'm just glad Adelaide is on holiday.

Steve wrote:Reflects how many snowflakes follow county cricket.

Sir Winston Churchill wrote:Don’t be so daft Benmug. ACE is 100% to do with cricket. Its head office is at the oval, it was conceived by Surrey CCC.
My only guess is that you yourself must be woke.

Benmug wrote:

Sir Winston Churchill wrote:Don’t be so daft Benmug. ACE is 100% to do with cricket. Its head office is at the oval, it was conceived by Surrey CCC.
My only guess is that you yourself must be woke.

Woke was a word created to group together anyone you disagree with, so yes, I’m woke. Unlike you I don’t really see it as a massive insult.

adelaide wrote:

Benmug wrote:

Sir Winston Churchill wrote:Don’t be so daft Benmug. ACE is 100% to do with cricket. Its head office is at the oval, it was conceived by Surrey CCC.
My only guess is that you yourself must be woke.

Woke was a word created to group together anyone you disagree with, so yes, I’m woke. Unlike you I don’t really see it as a massive insult.

Woke was a word used in the context of the "underground railroad" that helped fugitive slaves away from the South. Its more recent meaning seems to be something like being aware of inequalities, again initially in the States. With that meaning, I would have thought that most people were at least a bit woke.

The third meaning, which is the context in which it becomes an insult, is when opponents associate it with a whole bundle of actions to counteract said inequalities. That seems to me to be a deliberate attempt, particularly by certain parts of the media, to tar people with a whole B&Q worth of brushes and seems no more helpful or sensible than describing as a racist anyone who opposes things like ACE. Both raise the temperature and it seems to me that they are intended to avoid sensible discussion. One so-called woke person may be an enthusiast for something like ACE, another may think it is unhelpful, or even harmful. Their attitudes might be the other way round on a different initiative. Look at the bewildering trans issue for diametrically opposed attitudes amongst the so-called woke!

Getting back to ACE itself, I don't think there is much doubt that the private/public education split results in disproportionately few state school pupils in professional cricket. The issue was whether ethnic minority state school pupils faced additional barriers, either real (though quite likely unintentional) or assumed. The low numbers in the game suggest there probably are issues, in which case what do you do about it? ACE might not be the answer but what is?


Many words change their meaning over time, often with little rationale. For example, a "chauvinist" in modern parlance is used as a form of insult towards a particularly arrogant male, but its original meaning was to describe someone who was extremely patriotic, after Nicolas Chauvin, a french soldier who was noted for his love of France and devotion to Napoleon. There was once a lovely innocent three-letter word, widely used in the English language to describe "carefree", "joyful", "mirth". It was 'adopted' by the homosexual community sometime in the 50s or 60s, so that now you rarely if ever hear it used in its original context unless you happen to catch an old episode of The Flintstones.

So forgive me if I don't feel it necessary to apologise for using "woke" as many of us  now do to encapsulate, as Chinaman says, a whole raft of (as we see it) over-the-top, virtue-signalling behaviours, initiatives and statements, while ackowledging that its original meaning was  simply "awake to injustice".