In the News Institutional madness

[Cougar377]

A young lad decides to follow in his dads footsteps and applies to join the same police force.
He is successful in his interview and even receives compliments on being so well prepared.

He doesn't get the job.

Following a complaint, it transpires that he didn't get the job because he was discriminated against for being a straight, white male. He wins his employment tribunal case and the aforementioned police force is now about to find out how much it will have to cough up for using "positive action" to reject the lads application. Good use of funds Cheshire Police.

All in all, quite depressing really, given that the police forces of this country are severely undermanned as it is.

But what really gets my goat is this practice called "positive action" that was apparently used to reject the guys application. It's supposed to "encourage and train people from under-represented groups to help them overcome disadvantages in competing with other applicants", but the reality is that it's being used as a cover for "positive discrimination".
e.g. if an organisation is under-represented in the 3 legged, tri-sexual martian department then they will actively seek to recruit someone who meets that criteria....in preference to ANY other candidates, regardless of the fact that they might be better suited, more qualified or have more experience.

Call me naive but I thought that you got the position based on merit....not because the company hadn't met it's quota for employees who had green skin.

Could someone please explain to me why that is not classed as discriminatory behaviour and therefore illegal...?

 

[slim63]

Could someone please explain to me why that is not classed as discriminatory behaviour and therefore illegal...?

Not really apart from the poor folk who feel they have been discriminated against in the past have somehow ended up making the laws & think half the country are as weak minded & as bloody useless as them

There is a lot to be said for natural selection you know

 

[Pow-Lo]

The only thing that surprises me here is that the establishment is stupid enough to pursue this practice. The Americans tried this back in the late 80s; it was called ‘affirmative action’ and failed miserably.

I thought ‘we’ were intelligent enough to learn from the Americans’ mistakes. It would seem that I was mistaken.

Thing is, ‘we’ won’t learn from this. The lad will be paid off , it’ll be swept under the carpet only for them to carry on the same practice.

 

[derek kelly]

It pays to be an idiot.
In the Prison service it used to be near impossible to get sacked so anybody who was an embarressment, who couldn’t do the job or were dodgy got promoted & moved on,obviously these people aren’t going to change so they kept getting promoted & are now running the prison service.

 

[andyBeaker]

A young lad decides to follow in his dads footsteps and applies to join the same police force.
He is successful in his interview and even receives compliments on being so well prepared.

He doesn't get the job.

Following a complaint, it transpires that he didn't get the job because he was discriminated against for being a straight, white male. He wins his employment tribunal case and the aforementioned police force is now about to find out how much it will have to cough up for using "positive action" to reject the lads application. Good use of funds Cheshire Police.

All in all, quite depressing really, given that the police forces of this country are severely undermanned as it is.

But what really gets my goat is this practice called "positive action" that was apparently used to reject the guys application. It's supposed to "encourage and train people from under-represented groups to help them overcome disadvantages in competing with other applicants", but the reality is that it's being used as a cover for "positive discrimination".
e.g. if an organisation is under-represented in the 3 legged, tri-sexual martian department then they will actively seek to recruit someone who meets that criteria....in preference to ANY other candidates, regardless of the fact that they might be better suited, more qualified or have more experience.

Call me naive but I thought that you got the position based on merit....not because the company hadn't met it's quota for employees who had green skin.

Could someone please explain to me why that is not classed as discriminatory behaviour and therefore illegal...?

 

[Lee337]

It pays to be an idiot.
In the Prison service it used to be near impossible to get sacked so anybody who was an embarressment, who couldn’t do the job or were dodgy got promoted & moved on,obviously these people aren’t going to change so they kept getting promoted & are now running the prison service.

It's not restricted to the Prison Service, it's the same in most Civil Service departments.

 

[andyBeaker]

A young lad decides to follow in his dads footsteps and applies to join the same police force.
He is successful in his interview and even receives compliments on being so well prepared.

He doesn't get the job.

Following a complaint, it transpires that he didn't get the job because he was discriminated against for being a straight, white male. He wins his employment tribunal case and the aforementioned police force is now about to find out how much it will have to cough up for using "positive action" to reject the lads application. Good use of funds Cheshire Police.

All in all, quite depressing really, given that the police forces of this country are severely undermanned as it is.

But what really gets my goat is this practice called "positive action" that was apparently used to reject the guys application. It's supposed to "encourage and train people from under-represented groups to help them overcome disadvantages in competing with other applicants", but the reality is that it's being used as a cover for "positive discrimination".
e.g. if an organisation is under-represented in the 3 legged, tri-sexual martian department then they will actively seek to recruit someone who meets that criteria....in preference to ANY other candidates, regardless of the fact that they might be better suited, more qualified or have more experience.

Call me naive but I thought that you got the position based on merit....not because the company hadn't met it's quota for employees who had green skin.

Could someone please explain to me why that is not classed as discriminatory behaviour and therefore illegal...?

The problem with this kind of stuff is that a lot of people don't know how to apply it correctly. We all, whether we admit it or not, have bias, whether conscious or unconscious, and it is important that these biases are managed properly.

It appears Cheshire Police have fallen into the trap of letting the wrong factors divert them away from making a correct decision (that assuming the aggrieved in this case should have got the job, it may be the case but not necessarily so, one side of the story, etc). It seems Cheshire have bent to the forces saying 'you don't have enough Asian/LGBT/Hindi/whatever in your workforce' as an overriding factor in their decision making process. What they should have done is used that factor if they have two equally capable candidates - some won't like that but it is the way of the world.

When I was allocating bonuses the final step was always to run a programme analysing allocation by gender, ethnicity, religion and a few other factors. This was a valuable tool in managing biases - it wasn't a case of 'hang on a minute, no (say) LBGT employees are getting bonuses, we have to change that', more a case of 'ok, let's take a look at why no LGBT employees are getting bonuses and make sure that is right, fair and justifiable and, if not, do something about it'.

What didn't help is that we seemed to have an awful lot of employees that had 'Jedi' recorded as their religion.....and I'll put my hand up to that

 

[noobie]

The trouble with so many of these conversations it is almost obligatory to have a starting statement to say you are not a racist or homophobic, I'm not.

Affirmitave action, reverse racism, positive discrimination are all the same thing which are covered by law as discrimination, there is nothing positive about it.

In the case of the police, what do the politically correct want the police to do, round up bame members and force them to work where they want them too? Last time that was tried, well we all know how badly that went.

The bigger question, I would be asking the bame community is why the modern bame community see's putting something back in, is a problem? I say that because it is not just the police, some focus on the police so they can say racism, but then look at the majority of public services where people traditionally felt they were putting something back in. For me that would be the Police, ambulance service, nhs, fire service, armed forces etc etc We need to find out why they see those services as ones they are not interested in and then accept what they tell us.

Where it goes wrong is many of the liberal elite almost have industries in being offended on behalf of people they see as lesser beings, it's almost a middle charity class colonialism.

If the bame community say, to be honest we are not interested in joining any of those civil services, then we should accept that and move on and not listen to the idiots that keep trying to force an issue that very few are interested in

 

[Jaws]

I had to google bame!

 

[noobie]

Sorry John, I couldn't be arsed to type the long name

 

[Cougar377]

The problem with this kind of stuff is that a lot of people don't know how to apply it correctly. We all, whether we admit it or not, have bias, whether conscious or unconscious, and it is important that these biases are managed properly.

It appears Cheshire Police have fallen into the trap of letting the wrong factors divert them away from making a correct decision (that assuming the aggrieved in this case should have got the job, it may be the case but not necessarily so, one side of the story, etc). It seems Cheshire have bent to the forces saying 'you don't have enough Asian/LGBT/Hindi/whatever in your workforce' as an overriding factor in their decision making process. What they should have done is used that factor if they have two equally capable candidates - some won't like that but it is the way of the world.

When I was allocating bonuses the final step was always to run a programme analysing allocation by gender, ethnicity, religion and a few other factors. This was a valuable tool in managing biases - it wasn't a case of 'hang on a minute, no (say) LBGT employees are getting bonuses, we have to change that', more a case of 'ok, let's take a look at why no LGBT employees are getting bonuses and make sure that is right, fair and justifiable and, if not, do something about it'.

What didn't help is that we seemed to have an awful lot of employees that had 'Jedi' recorded as their religion.....and I'll put my hand up to that

"What they should have done is used that factor if they have two equally capable candidates". That's just another form of racism. To say that if you have two equally capable people to choose from then you should always choose the one that meets your "quota" is just selective discrimination....and what's worse is that, as Noobie pointed out, by declaring it to be so you then get branded as being racist yourself.

 

[andyBeaker]

"What they should have done is used that factor if they have two equally capable candidates". That's just another form of racism. To say that if you have two equally capable people to choose from then you should always choose the one that meets your "quota" is just selective discrimination....and what's worse is that, as Noobie pointed out, by declaring it to be so you then get branded as being racist yourself.

Ho,w else would you suggest choosing between two candididates that are equal in every way other than (say) race/religion/gender/sexuality?

 

[andyBeaker]

The trouble with so many of these conversations it is almost obligatory to have a starting statement to say you are not a racist or homophobic, I'm not.

Affirmitave action, reverse racism, positive discrimination are all the same thing which are covered by law as discrimination, there is nothing positive about it.

In the case of the police, what do the politically correct want the police to do, round up bame members and force them to work where they want them too? Last time that was tried, well we all know how badly that went.

The bigger question, I would be asking the bame community is why the modern bame community see's putting something back in, is a problem? I say that because it is not just the police, some focus on the police so they can say racism, but then look at the majority of public services where people traditionally felt they were putting something back in. For me that would be the Police, ambulance service, nhs, fire service, armed forces etc etc We need to find out why they see those services as ones they are not interested in and then accept what they tell us.

Where it goes wrong is many of the liberal elite almost have industries in being offended on behalf of people they see as lesser beings, it's almost a middle charity class colonialism.

If the bame community say, to be honest we are not interested in joining any of those civil services, then we should accept that and move on and not listen to the idiots that keep trying to force an issue that very few are interested in

Personally I do not believe there is a person on the planet that is not discriminatory in one form or another, whether this is conscious or unconscious.

Your argument about 'bame' (never heard that before) is one way of looking at the issue in question. Another is to try and understand why the public services you have put forward are not appealing to 'bame' and address it.

Logic says that having multicultural public services in a multicultural society (which is what we have) is a good thing and needs to be encouraged. That isn't 'positive discrimination', that is understanding the problem and addressing it. For example, Scarman identified elements of the police as 'institutionally racist', fortunately things have moved on since then, a result of accepting the issue and addressing it.

 

[Quiney]

Not much difference to political parties putting up a female candidates. Which could then lead to all LGBT/coloured/muslim shortlists.

 

[Cougar377]

Ho,w else would you suggest choosing between two candididates that are equal in every way other than (say) race/religion/gender/sexuality?

Well let's see then...

1)Set them a test
2) Mark them according to experience/qualifications/aptitude
3)Pick the one who is the more enthusiastic
4) Offer them each a weeks trial
5) Get them to sit with a member of staff for a day, who shows them what the job involves....then ask that staff member what they think.
6) Make them arm wrestle for it

Anything except picking the three legged, green skinned tri-sexual...."because the workforce is under-represented in that area of society".

 

[Minkey]

it seems to me you cannot discriminate on race, gender or sexuality but it is ok to discriminate on age