So, why are they changing the measurement system?

We have a little foible, which is that we think measurement is important. This has a corollary, which is that we always wonder what people are trying to do when they change the measurement system. It’s even possible that they’re making the measurement better although that’s not always so.

Consider that move from measuring poverty, actual deprivation, to worrying about relative poverty, or inequality. Clearly this was simply because actual deprivation had been beaten - as Barbara Castle pointed out in 1959 - and what’s a redistributive leftism if the moral imperative of the actually poor has already been dealt with? Invent some other reason for that same old policy of taking everything off those who have more.

At which point:

The term “BAME” should be scrapped as it “erases identities”, NHS-backed research has concluded.

The NHS Race and Health Observatory launched a four-week consultation with the public in July on how best to collectively refer to people from black, Asian and minority ethnic groups.

The independent body, set up and supported by the NHS to tackle health inequalities, has formally committed to never use the blanket acronym after feedback to its consultation said it was not representative.

The Observatory said it has become the norm in public policy to use initialisms to refer to a "hugely diverse" group of people, but that renewed scrutiny has been spurred on by the Black Lives Matter movement.

It said terminology that "crudely conflates" different groups "does not just erase identities, it can also lead to broad brush policy decisions that fail to appreciate the nuance of ethnic inequality in the UK".

You might call us cynics here although we prefer the name realists. Some ethnic groups are failing to perform their allocated roles of suffering under the pervasive and institutionalised racism of this country. Calling into doubt that diagnosis of a pervasive and institutionalised racism. This is becoming so obvious that the wheels are about to come off the handcart. So, let’s change the name, the system of measurement, so the bandwagon can roll on.

Hmm, perhaps you should be calling us cynics at that.