If your house were on fire, how worried do you think you would be about the gender, faith, sexual orientation or hair colour of the person doing their best to put it out?
If you needed to be carried, dragged or otherwise physically removed from a burning building, how desperate would you be to know the extent and intensity of the diversity training the person saving your life had enjoyed in the previous 12 months?
These are not rhetorical questions. They actually need to be addressed and answered.
If the Lincolnshire Fire Service is to be believed, the thorny problems that firefighters have to confront are to do with gender and faith; not the physical strength or mental ability needed to save life, limb and home.
So, they have splurged precious time and money designing a range of clothing which does not, apparently, compromise Moslem restrictions on dress and public modesty in order to attract more female members of that faith into the fire service.
Take a long moment to consider the sheer lunacy of this proposition if you really want to appreciate the damage that the PC culture is doing to our society.
Like most Fire Services, Lincolnshire does not struggle to attract would be firefighters. In fact, they have candidates queuing up for the job. The big problem is that they're the wrong type of candidate; white, male and, like most of the population, either irreligious or CofE. All of which, from the standpoint of the Lincolnshire Fire Service, disqualifies them from applying. What they desire, above all, are female firefighters and, preferably, female firefighters of a Muslim persuasion. They have quotas to fill and Brownie points to earn. Hence the lady Muslim firefighter's uniform complete with all-enveloping skirt and blouse and a hoodie that shields the face and covers the hair.
Now, Lincolnshire is not the South of England and, although it attracts its fair share of immigrants, they tend to be agricultural workers drawn from Eastern Europe; Poles, Czechs, Estonians and the like. Not too many of a Muslim bent, in other words. So, no meaningful argument can be made for the need for more Muslims - male or female -to be recruited to achieve some bureaucratically contrived racial balance.
But, let's assume for the sake of argument that there were some Muslims who might be interested in firefighting as a career - and that some of them were female. Now, here is where the conundrums really start to roll.
If these women's beliefs were orthodox enough to welcome a westernised version of the burkah as a uniform, they would have husbands of an equally orthodox bent. And these men would be the last people on earth to allow their wives to take a job that involved direct, unchaperoned, contact with men every working day.
On the other hand, no self-respecting woman - Muslim or otherwise - would seriously entertain the notion of doing the tough, physically demanding job of a fire fighter wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy. Like their counterparts in the Police and the Armed Forces, they would want to wear clothes that were practical, comfortable and suited to the rigours of the role. That takes our mock-burkah out of the equation straight away.
What this sorry tale tells us is that the Lincolnshire Fire Service, like so many of our traditional services, has been infiltrated and taken over by the PC tendency. It's main purpose is no longer to provide protection for life and property but a career path for social engineers whose only goal is self-advancement and aggrandisement. The day is not that far off when people's lives are lost because some PC idiot prevents firefighters actually confronting a fire until it has burned itself out because of Health & Safety issues. Don't bet against it being someone from the Lincolnshire Service who issues that command.
Monday, 6 April 2009
Thursday, 26 February 2009
Unnatural selection
Around fifteen years ago, I was living in the US and working, among other things, as a freelance journalist. The Group of Newspapers that I worked for gave every new arrival a large tome that would have made War & Peace look like a pamphlet. It included the style guide, which covered practical matters like where and how to use apostrophes, the company's approach to freebies for journalists (Answer: accept any and you are toast) and its dos and don'ts regarding what could loosely be labelled relationships and discrimination.
Although I thought it unnecessary to spell everything out in such detail, at least it left everyone who worked for the paper in no doubt about its attitude to discrimination of any kind. Put briefly, one was not allowed to discriminate against any group or individual based on gender, sexual orientation, religion or race. I remember talking about it with friends and work colleagues whenever I was back in the UK - about twice or three times a year. Generally speaking the reaction was one of disbelief coupled with comments about bloody pc Yanks and a general sense of relief that we, the British, were far too sensible to need any such guidelines. Oh how easy it is to be smug: And wrong.
I look around the UK now and I doubt that there are many more politically correct countries in the world. Occasionally I read blog sites that make the same claim on behalf of Canada but, never having had to live there, I am happy to claim the PC Cup on our behalf.
Well, happy is probably not the word I am looking for; resigned, disillusioned and bloody furious would be closer to the mark. Because, as with all things in modern Britain, we have embraced political correctness with a degree of enthusiasm that I would never have thought possible twenty years ago.
Like most people I let the sheer irrelevance and pointlessness of most politically correct policies wash over me andwhile I try to get on, probably slightly more grimly, with my life. Recently, though, I have witnessed a prime example of what happens when political correctness becomes the key driver in a decision making process. My company - a global engineering firm- has recently decided, with no small degree of satisfaction, to identify a number of female managers from different parts of the global organisation that it will groom for future occupation of the most senior management positions. In fact, so proud of this initiative were they that they announced it on the company's global intranet. And were, somehow, taken aback by the ferocity of the reaction. A reaction, it has to be said, that was equally disillusioned from whichever side of the gender divide it came.
The stated purpose of this initiative was to redress a perceived imbalance in the number of women on the main board. Which was ironic in itself. You see, my company is Scandinavian, but its reach is genuinely global, with subsidiaries in almost 100 countries many of which have been around for almost 100 years. Despite this fact, the main board is composed almost exclusively of Scandinavians and is, apparently, closed to almost everyone whose name doesn't end in sson, irrespective of gender.
The point of this little anecdote is that "positive discrimination" is an oxymoron. It is impossible to discriminate positively in favour of one group without discriminating negatively against everyone else who isn't a member of that select group. The truth of this is so self-evident that it shouldn't need explanation or justification. Unfortunately, it's a measure of our PC times that, simply for saying so, one can be labelled mysoginistic and anti-female. It engenders the same kind of reaction - a mixture of pity and condescension - that one receives for expressing doubts about Global Warming.
Anyway, since promoting discrete groups seems to be the order of the day, I am currently lobbying for people of the Romany persuasion to be promoted to the main board. If that fails, I might be tempted to turn my lobbying skills to the benefit of left handed, ginger-headed Albanians.
Although I thought it unnecessary to spell everything out in such detail, at least it left everyone who worked for the paper in no doubt about its attitude to discrimination of any kind. Put briefly, one was not allowed to discriminate against any group or individual based on gender, sexual orientation, religion or race. I remember talking about it with friends and work colleagues whenever I was back in the UK - about twice or three times a year. Generally speaking the reaction was one of disbelief coupled with comments about bloody pc Yanks and a general sense of relief that we, the British, were far too sensible to need any such guidelines. Oh how easy it is to be smug: And wrong.
I look around the UK now and I doubt that there are many more politically correct countries in the world. Occasionally I read blog sites that make the same claim on behalf of Canada but, never having had to live there, I am happy to claim the PC Cup on our behalf.
Well, happy is probably not the word I am looking for; resigned, disillusioned and bloody furious would be closer to the mark. Because, as with all things in modern Britain, we have embraced political correctness with a degree of enthusiasm that I would never have thought possible twenty years ago.
Like most people I let the sheer irrelevance and pointlessness of most politically correct policies wash over me andwhile I try to get on, probably slightly more grimly, with my life. Recently, though, I have witnessed a prime example of what happens when political correctness becomes the key driver in a decision making process. My company - a global engineering firm- has recently decided, with no small degree of satisfaction, to identify a number of female managers from different parts of the global organisation that it will groom for future occupation of the most senior management positions. In fact, so proud of this initiative were they that they announced it on the company's global intranet. And were, somehow, taken aback by the ferocity of the reaction. A reaction, it has to be said, that was equally disillusioned from whichever side of the gender divide it came.
The stated purpose of this initiative was to redress a perceived imbalance in the number of women on the main board. Which was ironic in itself. You see, my company is Scandinavian, but its reach is genuinely global, with subsidiaries in almost 100 countries many of which have been around for almost 100 years. Despite this fact, the main board is composed almost exclusively of Scandinavians and is, apparently, closed to almost everyone whose name doesn't end in sson, irrespective of gender.
The point of this little anecdote is that "positive discrimination" is an oxymoron. It is impossible to discriminate positively in favour of one group without discriminating negatively against everyone else who isn't a member of that select group. The truth of this is so self-evident that it shouldn't need explanation or justification. Unfortunately, it's a measure of our PC times that, simply for saying so, one can be labelled mysoginistic and anti-female. It engenders the same kind of reaction - a mixture of pity and condescension - that one receives for expressing doubts about Global Warming.
Anyway, since promoting discrete groups seems to be the order of the day, I am currently lobbying for people of the Romany persuasion to be promoted to the main board. If that fails, I might be tempted to turn my lobbying skills to the benefit of left handed, ginger-headed Albanians.
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
Inhuman rights
Long before Jack Straw did us all a massive disservice by enshrining the European Charter of Fundamental Rights into our Law, the average person had a fairly clear idea of what did or did not constitute right and wrong.
For instance, under English Common Law the idea that crime begat punishment went unchallenged for a thousand years.
Behaviour towards others was, for the most part, covered by the ten basic laws that Moses handed down to the children of Israel. If one wanted a settled, orderly society it made pretty good sense not to steal, or covert your neighbour's ox or his wife. Stealing, likewise, was proscribed for the very good reason that it tended to upset the victim. Of course, the first four Commandments are not particularly relevant in our increasingly secular society. But, the other six provide a fairly straightforward framework for civilised behaviour.
So, we ticked along for a milennium and built a pretty reasonable legal system around these relatively few basic ideas. Because the rules were so few and easy to grasp, there was never any real doubt when lines were being crossed. If you stole, killed, lied about your neighbour or coveted his goods and chattels you were going to be held to account. It was easy to distinguish between the victimiser and the victim in the majority of cases.
That is no longer the case. Jack and his lawyer chums have altered the basic rules with the introduction of their human rights legislation.Six simple commandments have been replaced by 54 Articles, creating a whole new stratum of legal argument. This may be great for the lawyers, but it takes the legal process several steps further away from most people's instinctive sense of what constitutes right and wrong.
In this new Human Rights wonderland, for instance, judges see nothing odd or insensitive in refusing to deport a convicted terrorist back to Iran because the possible threat of torture would breach his Human Rights. As he can't be deported, he has to remain in this country. He has no job and, having spent the last 28 years incarcerated in a British gaol, he's unlikely to have had much opportunity to play the stock markets or build a buy-to-rent empire.
So, the only way he can remain in one of the world's most expensive cities is at the taxpayers' expense.
The judges who reached this great decision would probably tell you that they have to consider the Law as it exists, not the consequences of its implementation. Which is why I hate the Human Rights culture we have fostered. Because, while our ex-terrorist gets to visit the gym, the library, meet his mates and generally lollygag around our capital city, there are old people all over Great Britain who might have to choose this winter between heating their home or eating. Some of them, undoubtedly, will be in their parlous position because they failed to salt something away for their old age. A fair few might have gone through their whole lives scrounging off the state. But the majority will be people who have worked all of their adult lives and, in many cases, through their teenage years as well. They will have paid taxes for forty or possibly fifty years and made National Insurance contributions for a similar length of time. Many would have spent time in the Services.
Now, in their dotage, they have to scrape by on £40 to £100 per week. Of course, these pensioners can always apply for additional benefits but, unlike our Iranian friend, whose every need will be met by solicitous officials keen to ensure that his Human Rights are left unsullied, they will have to fill in copious forms, take various means tests and have their lives generally poked and prodded by nosey officals to qualify for them. This is what happens when you allow the law to become an abstract thing. It might be an amusement to those of a legal bent to debate the nuances of a particular point of Law. But it has as much relevance to Natural Justice as the old religious debate concerning the number of angels that could dance on a head of a pin. It constantly throws up anomalies like our Irtanian terrorist friend and countless others who end up sucking the life out of our benefits system while native British pensioners are left to flounder on the fringes of the system with insufficient money to feed or keep themselves warm.
For them, the only Human Right, apparently, is to live an impoverished but dignified old age until such time as they give up the ghost and quietly fade away.
For instance, under English Common Law the idea that crime begat punishment went unchallenged for a thousand years.
Behaviour towards others was, for the most part, covered by the ten basic laws that Moses handed down to the children of Israel. If one wanted a settled, orderly society it made pretty good sense not to steal, or covert your neighbour's ox or his wife. Stealing, likewise, was proscribed for the very good reason that it tended to upset the victim. Of course, the first four Commandments are not particularly relevant in our increasingly secular society. But, the other six provide a fairly straightforward framework for civilised behaviour.
So, we ticked along for a milennium and built a pretty reasonable legal system around these relatively few basic ideas. Because the rules were so few and easy to grasp, there was never any real doubt when lines were being crossed. If you stole, killed, lied about your neighbour or coveted his goods and chattels you were going to be held to account. It was easy to distinguish between the victimiser and the victim in the majority of cases.
That is no longer the case. Jack and his lawyer chums have altered the basic rules with the introduction of their human rights legislation.Six simple commandments have been replaced by 54 Articles, creating a whole new stratum of legal argument. This may be great for the lawyers, but it takes the legal process several steps further away from most people's instinctive sense of what constitutes right and wrong.
In this new Human Rights wonderland, for instance, judges see nothing odd or insensitive in refusing to deport a convicted terrorist back to Iran because the possible threat of torture would breach his Human Rights. As he can't be deported, he has to remain in this country. He has no job and, having spent the last 28 years incarcerated in a British gaol, he's unlikely to have had much opportunity to play the stock markets or build a buy-to-rent empire.
So, the only way he can remain in one of the world's most expensive cities is at the taxpayers' expense.
The judges who reached this great decision would probably tell you that they have to consider the Law as it exists, not the consequences of its implementation. Which is why I hate the Human Rights culture we have fostered. Because, while our ex-terrorist gets to visit the gym, the library, meet his mates and generally lollygag around our capital city, there are old people all over Great Britain who might have to choose this winter between heating their home or eating. Some of them, undoubtedly, will be in their parlous position because they failed to salt something away for their old age. A fair few might have gone through their whole lives scrounging off the state. But the majority will be people who have worked all of their adult lives and, in many cases, through their teenage years as well. They will have paid taxes for forty or possibly fifty years and made National Insurance contributions for a similar length of time. Many would have spent time in the Services.
Now, in their dotage, they have to scrape by on £40 to £100 per week. Of course, these pensioners can always apply for additional benefits but, unlike our Iranian friend, whose every need will be met by solicitous officials keen to ensure that his Human Rights are left unsullied, they will have to fill in copious forms, take various means tests and have their lives generally poked and prodded by nosey officals to qualify for them. This is what happens when you allow the law to become an abstract thing. It might be an amusement to those of a legal bent to debate the nuances of a particular point of Law. But it has as much relevance to Natural Justice as the old religious debate concerning the number of angels that could dance on a head of a pin. It constantly throws up anomalies like our Irtanian terrorist friend and countless others who end up sucking the life out of our benefits system while native British pensioners are left to flounder on the fringes of the system with insufficient money to feed or keep themselves warm.
For them, the only Human Right, apparently, is to live an impoverished but dignified old age until such time as they give up the ghost and quietly fade away.
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