When he delivered the annual Margaret Thatcher lecture last November, Boris Johnson claimed that humans were far from being equal in "raw ability".
He said, "Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16 per cent of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2 per cent… have an IQ above 130."
(Since he is indubitably referring to brightness/dimness, I have to ask why none of AnswerBank’s right-wingers howled about ‘condescension’ back then. Why the difference regarding Umunna? Surely not the fact that he’s an opposition politician!)
It’s rare, indeed, for me even partially to agree with Johnson; however, there is undoubtedly truth in what he said. It is surely beyond debate that some people are brighter than others and the inevitable corollary is that some are dimmer. For example, Stephen Hawking is manifestly brighter than Iain Duncan Smith and Grant Shapps is assuredly dimmer than Richard Dawkins. (According to The Telegraph, even George Osborne said of IDS, “You see Iain giving presentations and realise he’s just not clever enough.” )
Svejk, you ascribe to me a statement which is simply not the case. At no point did I say a single word about AnswerBankers as such, never mind say they were dim. My belief is that there is much the same literate intelligence-distribution within AnswerBank as there is in the British population…some bright, some not so. An hour or two’s browsing here will confirm that. It’s obvious.
Since it seems clear, Svejk, that you are happy to make false claims about what I have said, there is little point in my continuing the discussion.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-thick-of-it-is-boris-johnson-right-when-he-says-that-equality-is-impossible-because-some-peoples-iqs-are-too-low-8971026.html