Is there a cause left that Surrey don’t support?!!!

Chinaman wrote:

Jackers wrote:

VicNorth wrote:Can't say anything anymore..

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68826577

I was going to suggest taking discussion of this appalling example of anti free speech cancel culture across to the "Anything But Cricket" thread, but I can't seem to find it. Can anyone shed any light?

Looks like the wokeists on here have managed to remove it. I will check with the Administrator. I really don't like being referred to as right wing by certain people above who are, to say it mildly, rather unpleasant. In fact I may make an official complaint if this shit continues..

Oh, the irony.

VicNorth wrote:Only cricket has anything to do with cricket, as CLR James never wrote.

Why don't you just go away and bury yourself in a hole.

Chinaman wrote:

VicNorth wrote:Only cricket has anything to do with cricket, as CLR James never wrote.

Why don't you just go away and bury yourself in a hole.

Because you believe in free speech?

Everyone is a far right extremist nowadays.

Chinaman wrote:
Looks like the wokeists on here have managed to remove it. I will check with the Administrator. I really don't like being referred to as right wing by certain people above who are, to say it mildly, rather unpleasant. In fact I may make an official complaint if this shit continues..

Nothing to do with me. IIRC the complaints about the existence of that thread have come from some of your fellow anti-wokeists, so perhaps you should look in a different direction. Perhaps the mods can enlighten us, as its disappearance does seem odd, unless someone has posted something so abusive or libellous that it simply had to be pulled.

Whatever you say.

https://www.facebook.com/share/eLAZoCU2axK1Didj/

They have plumbed new depths. Why do Surrey need to organise and promote LGBTQ+ "taster sessions"?! And why free - are these individuals especially hard-up compared to the rest of us?

What the hell does it matter which side anyone bats for? Stop the woke identity nonsense.

Forget "woke", there is a really good business case for spending money on ventures such as these.  Many employers started doing it decades ago.   In a competitive world, you need every advantage you can get, so reach out to every colour, creed, orientation etc etc.

Stuff like this attracts people to the Club, both on the field and off.  There are many reasons why our membership is sharply rising whereas 17 other counties' are flat or falling.  Of course part of this is the success of the team, but it is also because the club has invested in trying to make everyone feel welcome.  Many clubs have been very happy to continue selling to the white, male, straight demographic.  And they have missed out on a large reservoir of potential supporters/playing talent.

It is estimated that a disproportionate 10% of London's population is LGTBQ+.  If a venture like this makes them think "Oh, maybe I would be welcome there", then why not do it?  Where I worked, we became key sponsors of Stonewall and our recruitment showed a substantial uptick in gay applicants.

The other, more cynical, reason to do that is that a track record of "woke" projects will inoculate us against a heavy ECB fine/points deduction if, heaven forfend, something similar to the Yorkshire/Essex shitshows has been happening somewhere in our club.

You're making a huge assumption that Surrey's success in attracting new members has anything whatsoever to do with this sort of nonsense. In the absence of statistical evidence, the well-established principle that "correlation does not imply causation" is relevant here. There are likely to be a plethora of reasons why people have joined the club. Making people feel welcome does not necessitate dividing them into black, white, straight, gay, christian, muslim. It means treating them all equally well as part of the one "Surrey family".
We should aspire to be a club that wants everybody to feel welcome REGARDLESS of rather than BECAUSE of colour, race, sexuality etc

I'm not sure what stereotypes you're associating with county cricket clubs selling to the "white, male, straight" demographic. Perhaps in the early days of T20, the pom-pom girls - I'd give you that. But otherwise, evidence suggests that the core barriers to learning to love cricket are far more to do with class (the lack of exposure to cricket in state schools) than they are to do with colour or race, and less still to do with sexuality.

I can respect most of your argument, though I profoundly disagree with it. The final paragraph is, I am afraid, abject nonsense. To suggest that organising and paying for separate events for members who happen to be gay is necessary to ensure we aren't tarred with the same brush as Yorkshire by the ECB is insulting. There is a world of difference.

Thank you for a very considered response to what I knew would be a controversial post.

I agree that everyone should be equally welcome. But how do minorities know that they will be welcome?  These ventures send the message: "you will be welcome here". That's why there a pictures of female players plastering The Oval. I went, not that long ago, to an ECB Women & Girls meeting held in the members' area at Chelmsford.  Someone pointed out that there were maybe 30 pictures on the wall and not one of them was female.  She said that that sent a pretty strong message to her that she was not welcome at Essex. Just 52% of the population ignored.

Is it a coincidence that Steven Davies became the first out cricketer when he was at the Club?  I don't know.  But maybe he thought, rightly, that he would be supported.  On the stats, there will be something like 25 gay men playing county cricket at the moment.  But the vast majority of them (if any) are scared of the reaction if they came out.

You are absolutely right that I don't have any stats to back up my belief that reaching out to minorities will have made a contribution to the club's exploding membership.  But equally I have none to say that I am wrong beyond minimal anecdotal evidence.  But I have seen plenty of stats in the past of what initiatives such as these have done in other organisations.

Forgive me, I was not saying anything like what you understood from my last sentence. That would indeed be insulting nonsense.  Let me try again.

Are you confident that no one, whether in the professional game, the age groups, Penny Davies Trophy, Foundation etc has done something in the past 15 years which would look quite bad under today's spotlight?  I'm not.  If that happens, at least we can point to our initiatives whereas Yorkshire and Essex were screwed as they had done nothing.

Let's assume, purely for the sake of argument, that there was serious discrimination in the past but that there is none now. Even if that is the case, what happened to groups in the past still has echoes as people in those groups may retain an outdated view of where they are welcome. Isn't that what is being addressed by this sort of initiative? Once you knowi that "people like you" are present, you would be more likely to join up yourself and you get the start of a virtuous circle. But as Vauxhall Rey points out, how do you know?

25 gay men playing county cricket? That must be more than state-educated men?

Can’t they just treat everyone the ruddy same? Naturally women’s cricketers need to be separate due to physical differences.

Surely “inclusivity” is including everyone! Ie we should perhaps have open days for local schools kids, not just kids who are a different colour.

Last time I looked our membership did not preclude anyone. Gays, black, disabled, white, we are are entitled to apply for the same membership and receive the same privileges.

What this is about is ticking boxes. I do actually think there is something in the idea we don’t want to end up being accused of the nonsense that may have happened at Essex and Yorkshire.

At the end of the day it’s a load of cobblers. If we get half a dozen new members as a result of all these daft schemes I would be amazed.

Cricket should just accept people who want to go to cricket will do so if that’s what they want regardless of the demographic.

At the risk of being labelled as another “ far right  winger“  , I totally concur with the view that we should let people be and choose to participate in cricket or any other sport  ( whether as player , administrator, or spectator) for themselves .  I am suspicious of any campaign designed and/or implemented to fulfill a quota or similar box ticking requirement. Race , colour , gender , sexuality etc doesn’t matter in this context and bringing it directly to the forefront is likely to be counterproductive. This aggressive woke ideology and its associated global political movement is helping to destroy our country.

SCCC is a business, marketing itself. Whatever they do is only going to be counterproductive in commercial terms if more existing members leave because of an initiative than join because of it. Is anyone seriously going to give up membership because of this?

There is an argument that all SCCC is doing is chasing after a market segment that it thinks (you may think wrongly) that it is underexploiting for some reason. In other words, doing what all businesses do.

I don't much like John Major and his party even less today. However, he did once get things spot on. Having lost the General Election in 1997, he immediately tendered his resignation to the Queen in the morning and went to the Oval in the afternoon saying that watching cricket provided the opportunity to immerse himself in the game and not worry or have concerns about anything else.

I just wish those running our Club would concentrate more on the cricket and allow its members the same opportunity as Major enjoyed then.

That's precisely it. However hard those who are defending, excusing or even supporting the club's relentless identity politics try to spin it as 'strictly business sense', it is nothing of the sort - it is driven by woke ideology.  You'll notice that I don't ever use the term "go woke, go broke", which others who also hate this sort of stuff do to try to persuade that it is the way to financial ruin.

Neither path is necessarily the way to becoming more or less financially prosperous. It is quite simply about being a cricket club which focuses on cricket and leaves the identity politics outside the door: rainbow laces, black history month, just knock it all on the bloody head.

Knock the Tory love-ins on the head.

Cricket has nothing to do with politics nor should it . These sort of initiatives run the risk of distraction at best or division within the club at worst .Bad for the game and for business all round .