Monday 30 June 2008

Positive Discrimination

From the very outset there is no such thing as positive discrimination. If one group is being favoured it negatively discriminates against all others. The idea that women and ethnic minorities should be put above other groups is wrong. It creates a feeling of injustice. I agree that the world is an imperfect place but you can only gain a utopian society of equality through education, by the abolition through practice, that what we call bigotry, but really is just another word for ignorance.
All positions have to be based on the ability of a person to do the job. Being a woman does not mean that they have any special insight into how to run a company or be an MP than a man does, but its their ability to do the job in hand that counts. This new law does two of the most divise things that have happened in recent years. It discriminates against middle class white men, the majority of the working population, more by historical factors than anything else and it allows the ignorant to claim a racial argument. I agree that all people should be paid the same as anybody else for the same job, but introducing a quota system as they have in Norway can only create a feeling of unrest and disharmony. I bet the BNP could not believe their luck when this new law was first muted. This is their next election campaign already written for them.
This is not a utopian society, in fact as every day goes by it becomes more and dystopian, but this law will not help. Unless of course you take it to the fullest extent.
After all surely its discrimination for MP's to be paid for a second home. I don't and as I'm paying for theirs surely they could pay for mine. In a world of equality which this law pretends to be a key text, where does equality start and end. Surely all people who work in the public sector should be given the same opportunity to have their second home expenses paid by the state. I actually can't see why the government don't buy a block of flats or a gated community and house the MP's in it, so that when they are unelected they can take over from the previous incumbent. One in as one goes out.
I know this seems to be on the trivial side of things but actually its not. A great many people cannot afford to pay for the single dwelling that they are living in, without MP's bleeting about how hard done by they are. Their is a choice of profession like everybody elses. I know several people who live in one part of the country and have to travel regularly on business to other parts. Their company does not pay for a second house for them. They have to stay in a reasonable priced hotel.
Students have to stay in a hall of residence provided for by the university which they pay for. An obvious template if ever I saw one. They are secure and affordable housing for people to sleep, eat and study.
Students come in for a bit of bad press. It has been said that they are all too thick so that the degrees are being devalued, but then if universities are devaluing the degrees to keep their figures up due to market forces then why should the government complain. Its exactly what they wanted, that market forces dictate the level of the product. You can't complain on one hand that universities are manipulating results to keep student numbers up when funding comes from the government who dictate how much funding is allocated based on student numbers.
The governemt have to decide if education is going to be a degree factory or if its going to be something that is worth while and an investment in the future on behalf of the country. The government have lost the point of education. They know how much it costs but they seemed to have lost its value.
Education is now driven by paperwork and league tables and statistics. The trouble with all these things is that they are all perceptive based.
A school may well achieve high standing in the league tables, but some schools are producing some really good members of society who will build our houses, dig our roads, get up at 3 in the morning to enable others to get to work. They don't get involved in crime, drugs, or violent acts. They will go unflinchingly to war if asked but according to the governemt figures they are failures.
It seems very strange that in their strive to achieve excellence through legislation that ordinary people like me never seem to come into the good figures, in fact ordinary people like me are discriminated against, because we just get on and do the job, don't make fuss or expect anything other than we get. Now thats positive.

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