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Harman pushes discrimination plan
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7474801.stm
I've read and re-read the entire article and i've come to the conclusion that it doesn't actually say anything.
Really? Seriously? Is that OK with you Harriett? I was under the impression i was legally bound to employ the the most qualified candidate, even if they were an utter cunt. I'm glad you said absolutely nothing with many words and cleared the matter up for me.
Thoughts?
I've read and re-read the entire article and i've come to the conclusion that it doesn't actually say anything.
The equalities minister said firms should be able to choose a woman over a man of equal ability if they wanted to.
Really? Seriously? Is that OK with you Harriett? I was under the impression i was legally bound to employ the the most qualified candidate, even if they were an utter cunt. I'm glad you said absolutely nothing with many words and cleared the matter up for me.
Thoughts?
0
Comments
It also stops age discrimination on insurance - which if the BBC has reported this right (and they may not have done) is going to bugger up Car Insurance.
It is deeply patronising and marks out the difference between people because of their ethnic background.
A company is employing 20 men and 10 women because there are more men in the workplace, then hire 5 new staff, and there are 10 candidates (5 women and 5 men) then if they were all equal merit, would hire the 5 women.
This gives a natural advantage to women and people of ethnic minorities on a grander scale because there are less of them in the workplace. If you are supposed to hire 50% women and 50% men, but in the labour market if 75% of the labour is male, then if you do a quick calculation:
- men have a 50% handicap in getting jobs
- women have a 2x chance of getting jobs
all due to gender.
All my figures are made up but they are unreasonable for demonstrative purposes as as far as I'm aware there are more men in work. These may be for many reasons such as women who opt to stay at home and raise their kids etc. It's worse in some cases with ethnic minorities as many job positions these days are 'exclusively' for people from certain ethnic backgrounds. So if you're part of the majority (white british in our society obviously) - you won't even get an interview.
but without it how will certain barriers ever get broken down. I think its too deeply ingrained, and sometimes positive discrimination can be a very good thing
....which is absolute nonsense.
Budda is right: it does increase racial tensions - although imo, because people exaggerate the effects of affirmative action.
Educated and well qualified middle class white people don't end up stacking shelves because they're so disadvantaged by affirmative action and can't 'even get an interview' for other work. The idea is to make a more level playing field... I'm not advocating affirmative action because I think it's a pretty arbitrary and clumsy way of trying to sort out society's inequalities, it's also flawed: I'm not convinced that a black person who was privately educated and got into Oxbridge is 'disadvantaged' to a greater extent than a working class white person, who slogged their way through night school to eventually get a degree...
It's completely not. There are some jobs / positions that are advertised exclusively for people from certain ethnic minorities. Often these are graduate placement schemes or something like this. I'm not saying it makes it impossible for white middle class people to get jobs at all, I'm saying in the positions which are advertised as such, then a white person is excluded from the interview process for that position.
So on an individual basis, if you're looking for a job, it doesnt matter how good you are - for that role the fact you have paler skin pigmentation means you will not get it. There are plenty or roles where there is no such barrier but the ones with them do exist.
http://www.seo-london.org/ - internships for people from ethnic minority backgrounds
Just look back at what Affirmative Action acheived.
NOT ALOT!
Bullshit, it's been in action in America since the mid-60's and it's done fuck all. Major African American figures have even spoke out about it recently, it assumes there are differences there and that ethnic minorities need a hand out because they'll not get a job otherwise. How demeaning is that?
Good point. The way an individual White man got to the position of interview could well be a lot more difficult than an individual Black man - but the White man will not get the job because he isn't the 'right' colour. Affirmative action just opens up a can of worms. If the government needs to promote the number of Black people into positions, they should start ensuring that they get appropriate education - and then after that, the job should go to the 'best man' (or woman) for the job, regardless of skin colour.
The biggest barriers really are because of the disproportionately bad start a lot of ethnic minority kids get.
Walk into virtually any office in the country and you will find that in terms of sex discrimination a massive amount has changed, certain sectors are now almost entirely female - marketing for one.
We need to move towards treating everyone the same, not pointing out that people are different because of their skin colour or genitals.
I thought that when I watched it too. They seemed to sort of tag that on at the end. It would also fuck up health insurance and life insurance to some degree. Although as I've argued previously, they will still effectively charge younger drivers more, because it's still perfectly acceptable (and rightly so) to charge people on the basis of their driving experience. And so not much will actually change, except that a 40 year old who's just started driving will pay the same as an 18 year old who's just started driving, which is right imo. Similarly, an older person who's had very few medical problems won't be charged more for health insurance than a middle-aged, alcoholic smoker purely on the basis of their age. But the general trend would still be that older people pay more because the general trend is that older people will more than likely have used their insurance more, as it should be.