Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Equal Opportunites Commission celebrate thirty years discriminating against men

Institutional gender discrimination is alive and kicking at Britain’s Equal opportunities Commission [EOC] .The annual report of the government funded £10 million quango reveals that male staff has been reduced to just 18.2% after an unfortunate blip the previous year when 19% was reached. EOC could surely win the prize for the most successful homophobic major employer in the country. It would certainly be hard to beat over the last thirty years.

Glamorous and charismatic EOC chair Jenny Watson could also boast how her organisation had frustrated an attempt to prevent Avon and Somerset and Gloucestershire Police Services operating recruitment scams to arbitrarily exclude almost 300 men in favour of women. They were able to exploit their statutory powers to ensure these sexually discriminatory recruitment processes were successfully completed before making a pointless judgment on 26 June that they were unlawful, accepting a promise from the guilty authorities that they would not employ those particular tricks again. The cheats were allowed to walk off with their gains with no penalty.


Gerald Hartup director of civil libeties group Liberty and Law said: “ There is a lesson to be learnt. Rules are for little people. Why did I expect the EOC to act after informing them about discrimination so blatant that everyone knew it was a scam? Citizens clearly need to understand that for proper governance there is a requirement for double standards and to operate within the new system. Only in this way will they not be alienated from it. The EOC is the model to follow.”

Liberty and Law in November 2005 also reported the Metropolitan Police Service to the EOC over another version of institutional gender discrimination against men. It is confident however that the EOC is capable and determined to meticulously research the programme with the help of the Met with the result that no conclusion of any help to discriminated against men is arrived at.

Mr Hartup stated: “It will be another triumph for modern democratic management. The crude enforcement of the rule of law has proved to be unsatisfactory to progressives who require and can now utilize discretion to control the mob, the schmucks with their childish obsession with “objective justice". But we shmucks will still be shmucks.”

Ends

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Race watchdog to decide tomorrow whether to prosecute colour bar police forces. EOC to let them off sex discrimination scot free.

The Commission for Racial Equality’s Legal Affairs Committee will decide tomorrow [12 July] whether or not to take action against two police services who this year operated a sex and colour bar recruitment policy.

Avon and Somerset and Gloucestershire Police Services excluded a total of almost three hundred white male applicants from consideration for employment in a successful bid to favour minority ethnic and female candidates.

The method used according to civil liberties group Liberty and Law was to interrogate the Equal Opportunities page of each candidate’s application to determine their race although this page claimed that under no circumstances would it be used as any part of the recruitment process but for monitoring purposes only.

Avon and Somerset then randomly deselected 186 white male candidates to reduce their numbers. Gloucestershire assessed all applications before splitting candidates into two sections. All women and minority ethnic candidates who were successful in the paper stage were allowed to go through to the final selection stage but only the top performing white males were allowed through. 109 white males were unfairly rejected under this system.

When the police action was leaked Liberty and Law reported the race discrimination to the CRE and asked them to request the two services to freeze their recruitment processes pending its own assessment of their legality. The CRE declined to do this and as their investigations took about four months in both cases this facilitated the racially and sexually discriminatory recruitment to be successfully completed in both services.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup commented: “These are almost certainly the biggest racially discriminatory recruitment operations that the CRE has investigated but it has failed dismally to protect the people affected by this public sector scam. All competent lawyers were unanimous about the illegality of the two services’ secretive schemes but by their reluctance1 to act and their decision not to intervene and to procrastinate in coming to a conclusion the CRE has brought the Race Relations Act into disrepute. Legal action against the two police authorities is now the least that they can do in order to regain some credibility.”

Liberty and Law also reported the actions of the two police services to the Equal Opportunities Commission. These investigations, according to Liberty and Law were carried out at an even slower pace. The EOC finally wrote to both police authorities on 26 June stating that their actions were not in compliance with the Sex Discrimination Act to which Avon and Somerset have today [11 July] responded with the statement required of them by the EOC. The EOC awaits a similar response from Gloucestershire Constabulary. The EOC claims that no further action is required in either case.

Mr Hartup commented: “This is another triumph for the EOC. They believe the police broke the law. They are the body responsible for enforcing this law but using their discretion the police are allowed to get away with this blatant discrimination. It is a result for our untouchable politically correct establishment.”

End

Further information: Gerald Hartup Tel: 020 7928 7325 Fax: 020 7207 3425 gerald.hartupatbtopenworld.com

1. CRE chair Trevor Phillips’ view in speech to Social Policy Forum on 19 June “For example we recently had to order one police force - Somerset and Avon - to stop a programme to fast track some minority applicants into the force, because we thought a court might say that it was unfair to white applicants. Yet they were clear that they only brought in the scheme for operational reasons, not political or social reasons. I don't think it can be right that we have drifted into a situation where the CRE has to stand in the way of moderate measures to increase diversity in the police force - something which Scarman recommended twenty-five years ago, Macpherson more recently, and the Chief Police Officers are desperate to do so they can do their job better.”