World Cups and Tampons

Towards the end of August, as Libyan citizens fought bloody battles over the future of their country, teams of homeless and marginalised people from 64 countries played in a ‘Homeless World Cup’ final in Paris.  Libya did not have a team there.  Somalia, with over 1,463,780 people who are what the UN describes as ‘internally displaced persons’, did not have a team there.  Scotland did send a team and won, beating Mexico 4-3.  The Cabinet Secretary for Health & Wellbeing & Cities Strategy, Nicola Sturgeon, took time out from not doing anything on equalities to tweet her congratulations.

Nicola Sturgeon - took time out from
not doing anything on equalities to
tweet her congratulations

 Mel Young, President and co-founder of the Homeless World Cup said :

"The Homeless World Cup exists to end homelessness. The impact of this competition is profound.

"It has engaged over 100,000 homeless people since it started [2003] with participants changing their lives for the better."

This reminds me of the similarly grandiose claims made for Band Aid by Bob Geldof in the 1980’s.  And yet there are thousands of people dying of starvation in Somalia this year, some 30 years on from Bob’s expletive laden demands to give him money for Africa.  Early in August, it was estimated that 29,000 children under 5 had died as a result of the famine in the preceding 90 days.  This is an awful, sickening and deeply shameful testimony to the sustained and deliberate failure of the affluent west to break the invisible chains of a structural economic dependency – a contemporary form of slavery - the west has created in its relationships with Africa.

In many ways, using football as a focus for filling one of the many gaping holes in the supposed safety nets of society seems as irrelevant now as using pop music was then to eliminating the cycle of famine and death in Africa.  Quite how the obscene earnings of footballers, the corruption of football’s governing bodies, and the deep-rooted racism in football in such as Spain, can combine to offer a model for much these days is not at all clear.  Even Forbes magazine [speciality in publishing lists of obscenely rich people] has recognised that football players are being paid such shed-loads of money they need their own ‘rich lists’ [which in May of this year David Beckham headed with income over the last 12 months of $40million].

That aside, the basic numbers on homelessness offers a more sobering context for Mel’s wishful thinking that the HWC “exists to end homelessness”.  Data available from the Poverty Site shows that, in the last 11 years, the numbers of households in Scotland [not people, households] found to be ‘newly homeless’ in any year was 32,000 in 1999/2000 and at 2009/10 had reached around 38,000.  It reached 40,000 in 2003/04. 

Mel may be right about the HWC participants ‘changing their lives for the better’.  Ending homelessness?  No, and it is cruel to pretend that it could.  Homelessness is a structural problem which is a direct legacy of how we have shaped and refined our society over these last few centuries.  We could, if there was a collective political and societal will, permanently solve homelessness in the next 10-20 years.  Society and government does not have that collective will.  Homelessness is, and has been for a very long time, part of the unwritten and unspoken ‘price’ [along with low pay, unemployment, poor education and the mortality of such as Shettleston man] we have paid for an unequal distribution of wealth where, as a recent Office for National Statistics report explains :

In 2006/08, the least wealthy half of households in Great Britain had 9 per cent of total wealth (including private pension wealth), while the wealthiest half of households had 91 per cent of the total. The wealthiest 20 per cent of households had 62 per cent of total wealth including private pension wealth.

In return for the middle class reaching their Nirvana of bungalow-land, we choose not to provide decent housing for all who need it in Scotland.  We choose not to design a real safety net to stop people in Scotland becoming homeless.  We choose these outcomes.  We have made our Faustian pact.  Homelessness on this scale does not happen as a result of some random outcome in some universal pin ball machine.  It is an inevitable by-product of the deliberate creation of permanent poverty in our society and of our regularly choosing not to change it. 

Kicking a football around the parks of Paris will not change it either.  So just why was Nicola tweeting her congratulations?

Couple more quotes from the UN on life for the 1,463,780 non-Homeless World Cup playing ‘internally displaced persons’ from Somalia.

Women have to walk long distances to collect water, exposing them to the risk of rape and other forms of violence.

Only a limited number of IDP women and girls receive sanitary materials, often in insufficient quantity and on an irregular basis. The lack of domestic and hygiene supplies prevents many women and girls in IDP settlements and host communities from participating in community functions.

Tampons.  We can’t even organise an adequate supply of tampons for Somali women and girls.

70 more years of state sponsored theft

The Equality & Human Rights Commission recently published a report on how women are still being excluded from power.  Called 'Sex & Power: 5,400 women missing from top jobs' it explains that :

"at the current rate of change it will take around 70 years to reach an equal number of men and women directors of FTSE 100 companies. It also found it could be up to 70 years before there are an equal number of women MPs in parliament – another 14 general elections. "

Just to show that Scotland, under Alex Salmond's leadership, will do anything England does but better, have a look at the evidence below of just how important women are in the Scottish Cabinet :

Aside from it being obvious that if you are a wheelchair user you have no political future in Scotland, it is also fairly clear that Scotland's government offers no measurable equality for women.


You will remember that in another blog, 'Hewers of the Stone of Hope', I explained why.  Our First Minister gave up the ghost on equality for anyone in his opening speech to the current session of the Scottish Parliament.  He said then :

"the struggle for fairness, equality, tolerance, rights of free speech and thought - these are struggles which are never won"

Not only are we going backwards on gender equality in power sharing between men and women, getting near equal pay is proving equally elusive.  What is particularly sad is that the Cabinet Minister with lead on equality matters is Nicola Sturgeon.  You might have thought that equal pay is something she would chase and with some vigour?  Not really.  As Cabinet Secretary for Health, Wellbeing and Cities Strategy [I don't make up these titles] she could have whipped the NHS into shape on equal pay.  She hasn't.


In a report she signed off in 2009, 'The Big Picture 2009' looked at benchmarking performance of Scotland's NHS Boards on a range of equality obligations, including Equal Pay.  The equal pay analysis of the 'Big Picture' found that only 3 out of 22 Boards said they had conducted an equal pay review, as required in law.  Analysis of the 3 who said 'yes' found that only 1 had actually done it, with the others a work in progress.


With the NHS one of the biggest employers in Scotland, you would have thought government would use its power to make equal pay happen in the lifetime of the Scottish Parliament.  You would have thought.  


You would have thought that with the government minister for the NHS being a woman, she would use her power to get the men who dominate the management cadre of the NHS to do what they should be doing in law.  You would have thought.

You would have thought that the prospect of men being allowed to thieve from the wallets, purses and bank accounts of women for another 70 years would have spurred women in government to make men to get their thieving hands out of there - now.  You would have thought state-sponsored thievery was something we left behind a couple of centuries ago.  You would have thought.

Looks like Nicola needs a nudge on equal pay

Looks like Nicola needs a nudge on equal pay.  You can nudge Nicola by email.  You can also nudge Nicola via Twitter  - @NicolaSturgeon.  

No sooner do I finish a blog on men thieving from women, than along comes the Guardian publishing yet another report on the subject.. Yesterday I used the Equality & Human Rights Commission report to give oxygen to estimates that equal pay will not arrive for women [assuming current rates of ‘progress’] for another 70 years. This inspired me to blog on the subject and suggest action to stop men thieving [for that is what unequal pay is] from the purses, wallets and bank accounts of women for another 70 years.

And then today the Guardian publishes news of another report [from the Chartered Management Institute], suggesting that it will take another 98 years for women executives to get equal pay with men who are executives.

Weird world we are living in. Rupert Murdoch gets dragged in to face a grilling by a Select Committee over phone hacking, his media empire share price takes a hit, people get sent to jail, senior police officers resign, and more will follow. Nicola Sturgeon [carrying the government’s equality bag in Scotland] isn’t being grilled over government’s failure to close the pay gap in the public sector. Nobody is to be sent to jail for the theft from women that has already gone on and is set to continue. No resignation is offered by civil servants who have failed to stop the continuing thieving from women in local government and the NHS.

I reckon women should vote for the Meerkat Party next election.

Gypsies - 70 years on from the Holocaust

From time to time, we look to government to act on our collective behalf and to ensure that the structures of our society are equally accessible to those people who live, sometimes literally, on the margins.

Gypsies, Travellers or Roma [it is for them to tell us how they identify] are people who choose to live differently from most other people.  Over a long period of time, this difference has been used as a basis for hatred, abuse, discrimination and death, with the Holocaust targeting the Gypsy men, women and children for racial persecution and annihilation.  It is known that some 250,000 Gypsies were killed in the Holocaust, and that proportionately they endured death greater than any group except Jews.

A Gypsy couple at the Belzec concentration camp

 70 years on from the Holocaust, you would imagine that some things had changed.  Not sure that they have.

For instance, because Gypsies rarely have a fixed address, our system of registering with a GP for access to the NHS insists that you do have a fixed address and has consistently created real barriers to Gypsies enjoying equal access to health services.  This inevitably means that their overall health is not as good as that of the rest of the population.

Around 6 years ago, the government’s web site announced that :

The Scottish Executive has funded the development of a Patient Record for Personal Health (PRPH and also known as the Handheld Health Record) for Gypsies/Travellers in recognition of their lifestyles and the difficulties they can experience in accessing health services. This has been delivered as part of the work programme of the National Resource Centre for Ethnic Minority Health (NRCEMH).

That looks like a simple yet very welcome and very effective piece of work.

The web site goes on to explain that :

A health needs assessment is also being carried out with Gypsy/Traveller communities to ascertain their particular health needs, and how best to maximise their access to health information and health services.

The NRCEMH developed the Patient Record for Personal Health in partnership with Gypsy/Traveller communities. The Record was officially launched at the first meeting of the Executive's Strategic Group on Gypsies/Travellers. The PRHP is now being rolled out across the country.  The PRHP will allow for greater continuity of care for Gypsies/Travellers. It is anticipated that most Scottish Gypsies/Travellers will carry the Record, especially when they are away from their home base, travelling for social, business or other reasons.

The effectiveness of the PRPH will be reviewed after a reasonable period of usage.

Gives you a sense that here is Scotland doing the decent thing for a community of people who were almost exterminated in the name of racial purity.


Get back on to that web page.  Scroll down to the bottom right hand corner.  Read the small print : Page updated: Wednesday, October 12, 2005.


At 12 August 2011 it still said that.


Shocking.  Suggests what? Complacency?  Lack of commitment?  Structural and institutional discrimination?


Rather than speculate, I thought it best to invite the government to explain, as one does.


On 5^th July I asked the Cabinet Secretary for Health & Wellbeing, Nicola Sturgeon, what had been the findings from the health needs assessments, why that had not been used to update the web page, why the web page was almost 6 years behind times, and what the effectiveness review of the handheld record had revealed, and why it had not been used to update the web page?

Nicola Sturgeon

On 12^th August, just as the shotguns were annihilating the grouse from Scotland’s skies, I got a reply.  I have reproduced it in full below.  Before you read it, just go back to the paragraph before and refresh your mind as to what it was I asked.  OK?  Now read on:

Thank you for your email of 5 July to Nicola Sturgeon, Cabinet Secretary for Health Wellbeing and Cities Strategy about the Scottish Governments work in tackling healthcare for inequalities in Gypsy/Traveller communities.  I have been asked to reply.

I can confirm that the section on the Scottish Government on Patient Record for Personal Health (PRPH) for Gypsies/Travellers is indeed out of date and I would like to thank you for bringing this to our attention, we will ensure this is updated as soon as possible.

As you are aware, in 2005 a PRPH was developed to assist Gypsy/Travellers in accessing health care.  This record was produced on request from communities.  The records were widely distributed through Scotland and in 2006 training programmes were delivered for health and social care professionals to understand the community and the role of the hand held record.

As stated on the Scottish Government website, we did commit to carrying out a review of the effectiveness of the Gypsy Traveller PRPH after a reasonable period of usage.  A review of the PRPH was carried out in October 2009 in the form of an email questionnaire which was distributed to 170 people who had previously attended Gypsy Traveller Awareness Raising Sessions in 2007.  Unfortunately, this review did not provide many findings due a very small response rate of 19%. 

Please be assured that the Scottish Government is determined to drive forward the health equality agenda, as part of our overall health quality strategy, for all the people of Scotland.

You may be interested to know that we have funded a number of recent programmes to tackle health inequalities in Gypsy/Traveller communities.  Outputs from these programmes include: 

·         the Equally Connected initiative in NHS Lothianhttp://www.healthscotland.com/equalities/mentalhealth/equally-connected.aspx

·         the West Dunbartonshire Gypsy Traveller Strategy, improving access to health services http://www.west-dunbarton.gov.uk/law-and-licensing/equality-and-diversity/gypsy-traveller-strategy/

·         the Highland multi agency action plan on Gypsy/Travellers http://www.highland.gov.uk/livinghere/housing/gypsytravellersinhighland/  

Officials in NHS Health Scotland are also currently undertaking scoping work to identify what support is in place across Health Boards to meet the needs of the Gypsy/Traveller community across Scotland. Please let me know if you wish to be updated on the findings from this work. 

Remember the questions I asked ?

What had been the findings from the health needs assessments? – government chose to ignore that altogether in its response.

Why that had not been used to update the web page? – government couldn’t answer that unless it answered the previous question, which it didn’t.

Why the web page was almost 6 years behind times? – government didn’t answer that either.

What the effectiveness review of the handheld record had revealed? – “this review did not provide many findings due a very small response rate of 19%”

Why it had not been used to update the web page? – government didn’t answer that.  Possibly because of shame and embarrassment ?

I shall continue to press the Nicola Sturgeon on this.  Gypsy Travellers need more than vague promises which are allowed to slide and slip off the list of ‘things to do’ that Nicola has had for a while now.

A group of Gypsies about to be gassed in Belzec
extermination camp. Picture found on an SS prisoner.

We need more than this kind of pathetic performance by our government if we are to claim we have created a decent society.  For a community of people who were almost annihilated in WWII, one would imagine our creating equal access to health services for them would be a small goal for our government to achieve and yet a powerful signal from us to them that their health matters to us and that we embrace their difference.  It would appear not.  It would appear that Nicola and her officials need a serious nudge in the ribs to make them do the right thing on gypsy travellers.  Go on.  Nudge Nicola.

Catch-22 with patient rights and peeing on a stick

It may have slipped your notice but in February 2011, government provided you with some rights in relation to the NHS.  They are tucked away in the unexcitingly labelled Patient Rights [Scotland] Act 2011.

I reckon they must have sweepstakes in the civil service to see who gets to give government Bills their titles.  How else to explain the title of this Act, which introduces no new rights at all, got a serious kicking as it made its way through Parliament, and is simply yet another fine example of the smoke and mirrors trickery frequently used by government to pretend that it is doing something ?

Way back in 2009 when government was first consulting citizens over what should be in the Bill, I offered some analysis and commentary.  A sample of that is reproduced here :

It is believed the basic concept of the planned Bill is fatally flawed as it refers to ‘rights’ many of which already exist in the context of other existing legislation but which government chooses to ignore and instead places these rights in a new [Woolworths?] shop window and attempts to pass them off as new goods. They are not, and other than causing confusion to people who use the NHS and those who work in the NHS, it is likely that the cynicism which has affected political life in Scotland for so long will be further deepened by these proposals once it becomes clear that there are few if any real and new rights.

If you want to read more in that vein, follow this link to open up my January 2009 comments on the Bill.

Even if you think my critique was harsh then, there is no escaping the reality that government has taken citizens for a ride with this Act.

No matter what it says in the 10 or so pages of hollow promises and IOUs on how things can only get better, when you get to section 20 on page 11, you will find the health service has been given a permanent ‘get out of jail’ card to play when it comes to these ‘rights’ of ours.  Here it says :

Nothing in this Act gives rise to—

(a) any liability to pay damages,

(b) any right of action for specific implement,

(c) any right of action for specific performance of a statutory duty,

(d) any right of action for interdict,

(e) any right of action for suspension.

In other words, government not only tries to sell you a pup, but it adds in a killer catch-all which ensures that even though you might have been persuaded you have been given some new ‘rights’, this makes sure that in law you can’t use the courts to get your health board to deliver them.  This is the closest I have come to understanding just what it must be like to be persuaded to have unprotected sex with someone who promises to respect me in the morning but when peeing on the stick shows up blue, finds them backing out of the door and my life faster than goose-shit off a shovel.

You might want to tell Nicola Sturgeon that
you have now pee'd on your stick

You might want to tell the Cabinet Secretary for Health & Wellbeing, Nicola Sturgeon, that you have now pee'd on your stick and want to know why she went to all this bother of giving you these ‘rights’ and then added in her own version of Catch-22 to make sure you couldn’t use the courts to force the NHS to deliver them.

Turkeys and Equality

I am advised by officials in the government Equality Unit that a new draft of the specific equality duties is due to be published soon, and that all of us will be consulted on these - again.


One of the many issues which I and a small disparate - some would even say desperate - group of dissenters queried earlier this year, was just how well the previous consultation process had been handled and how well the few responses received had been analysed and reported on to government ministers.  


One of the points made to the Parliamentary Equal Opportunities Committee in March was that public bodies responding to the 'lite' duties proposed then would be highly unlikely to formally respond with arguments for stronger duties.  It was suggested, and accepted by MSPs, that turkeys rarely vote to have Christmas more often and indeed usually try to vote for it to be moved on to only occurring on a blue-moon cycle.


Part of this comes from the innate conservatism of public bodies, with innovation and risk taking squeezed out by the various tools of fear which are commonly passed off as management techniques and which Oliver Letwin proposes should be cranked up even higher.


Another cause of the turkey syndrome in the sector is that it doesn't, corporately, understand why all of this fuss about equalities.  Most of the public sector remains the plaything of white, non-disabled, heterosexual, middle-class, 'people like us' who design and deliver public services for 'people like us'.  And none of them would harm the proverbial fly never mind discriminate, they tell me.  Some of their best friends are gay/black/Irish/single parents/blind/deaf, and sometimes we embody all of these identifiers in the often perfectly formed shape of one human being.  So it must always be in some other part of the sector that discrimination is rife, where opportunity is a permanently closed door, and where good relations is what you have with all the contractors and consultants you use to deliver services.  Discrimination is structural, institutional and it flourishes at the heart of public life.


If we are to come up with specific equality duties which are good for Scotland, which delivers a Scottish approach to Scotland's daily experiences of discrimination and inequality, we need to use every part of how we work to shift the balance of power from 'people like us' to people who are different and diverse.


When public bodies are asked again what they think about new draft specific equality duties, the Cabinet Secretary for Health & Wellbeing must require that they, when answering, show and evidence as part of their response how they have involved and engaged with the equality communities who use their services, in shaping their response to government.  

'the endless 'gobble, gobble, gobble'
 of public  sector-speak
which Nicola gets to hear ....'

This way it would not just be the endless 'gobble, gobble, gobble' of public-sector-speak which Nicola gets to hear on how her draft duties will of course deliver equalities-Nirvana in the public sector.  By insisting responses from the sector must be partnerships with those people who the duties seek to protect and free from the oppression of living in a world designed for 'people like us', she would this time get a motorway route to equality instead of being taken down the predictable public sector pot-holed B-road which always arrives at a Scotland where BME people are forever stopped and searched in airports and where being gay is OK as long as it is in a fictional context.

she would this time get a motorway route to equality instead of being taken down the predictable public sector pot-holed B-road which always arrives at a Scotland where BME people are forever stopped and searched in airports

You can, if you share this view, let the Cabinet Secretary know by emailing her and asking her to ensure the consultation over the new specific equality duties needs to be handled in this way.  That way it is not just me who she is hearing from, but other people who are not 'people like us'.

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it

Earlier this year, Scottish Government proposed new specific equality duties and asked the Parliamentary Equal Opportunities Committee to approve them.

This followed the by now traditional consultation on a draft of these. 

In the last few days of this process it became clear that what was being proposed was pretty much what had been issued for consultation.  Some of us who had viewed the original draft specific equality duties as weak, and said so in our formal responses, sensed all was not as it should be when we realised that the government’s report on the consultation outcomes was only going to be available a matter of days before the Committee was asked to vote them into being.

An analysis of the consultation report revealed that it was less than objective.  In simple terms, the report claimed the vast majority of respondents positively supported the vast majority of the draft proposals.  Given that the vast majority of respondents were public bodies [lets call them turkeys] it came as no real surprise that they were sometimes wildly enthusiastic supporters of the draft specific equality duties, the overall effect of which, had  they been adopted, would have indefinitely postponed Christmas – or in real terms, the delivery of person-centred and measurable equality which changes the life experience of people from the diverse communities of Scotland.

A matter of days before the Committee was due to meet and vote, a small number of people who had argued for stronger, more challenging duties, concluded that the proposals were so weak as to present real dangers to the next few decades of work on delivering equalities.  They lobbied politicians from all parties, explaining the dangers of sleepwalking into adopting weak duties and the lost opportunities of designing duties which would deliver Scottish solutions to Scotland’s inequalities.

The Committee recognised that there were serious and legitimate concerns being flagged  and arranged for two of those dissenters to attend and present evidence to the Committee meeting at which the duties were to be formally considered and voted on.  Papers flew around networks and became part of the public record as they were also posted on the Committee web site by the Parliament Clerks.  The Equality & Human Rights Commission in Scotland got wind of this very late development and with 24 hours to go lobbied members of the Committee, urging them to adopt the specific equality duties as proposed.  At the same time, organisations such as the STUC and Unison also lobbied the Committee, expressing concerns that the duties were not what Scotland needed.

On the day, formal evidence against adopting the proposed duties was presented to the Committee, with the two people doing so being closely cross-examined by members.  They were followed immediately after by the Minister, then Alex Neil, and government officials.  They too presented a case - this time for adopting the proposed duties -  and they too were closely cross-examined by members.  The Committee was not persuaded by the Minister and the proposed specific equality duties were voted down.

I believe the Committee made a courageous decision.  The easy option would have been to dismissed the minority dissent and gone with the apparently overwhelming majority in favour of what was on offer.  The Committee did not take the easy decision.  They recognised that there were real questions around the consultation process, around the analysis of and report on what had been submitted by respondents, and overall on just how effective the duties would be in providing Scottish solutions to Scotland’s particular equality challenges.

I would, of course, say all this.  I was one of the minority dissenting.  You can make your own mind up, view and listen to the evidence, as it is all a matter of parliamentary film record.

What has happened since in many senses confirms to me that the Committee made the right decision.

I am advised that many good and decent people from across the spectrum of equalities work in Scotland have expressed dismay and even anger at my actions and those of the other very small band of dissenters.  Part of the reaction appears to be that having no specific equality duties is a seriously bad thing and hampers continuing work on equalities.  All I can say to that analysis is that if any set of specific equality duties [past, proposed, rejected, and yet to come] would in themselves guarantee delivering equalities rather than simply provide excuses for government and the public sector to spend a few more decades just talking about equalities, then I for one would have barricaded the Committee Room and not allowed members out until they had agreed to vote them through. 

I am also advised that the actions of the small band of dissenters are seen by some as arrogant, amongst other things.  For me personally, the characterisation is not unfamiliar and so bounces of a thick skin.  It also helps that I am deaf and invariably cannot readily hear the slings and arrows of the mainstream.  On behalf of those others who also dissented, I would question how one can work in the equalities field and not embrace diversity, difference and dissent, and show respect, particularly to those with whom one dissents.

"I disapprove of what you say,

but I will defend to the death

your right to say it" 

Evelyn Beatrice Hall

That capacity has to be at the heart of all our equalities work, else we are doomed to spend the next few decades locked in sterile debate, repeating the the endless loop of the lost opportunities of the last few decades of equality duties, and failing the people whose cause we claim to serve.  

Should I stay or should I go now ........?

On 26^th July, the Equality & Human Rights Commission [EHRC] published a statement in response to the government’s Red Tape Challenge.  The statement set out what the EHRC called ‘principles’ for the case against government in Westminster repealing or amending the provisions of the Equality Act 2010.

The EHRC’s statement was made at around the same time the media was sniffing round some of the more abstruse ideas of Steve Hilton, Director of Strategy to David Cameron, such as abolishing maternity leave.  Did the EHRC publish another statement setting out principles which government should consider if acting on Hilton’s suggestion to abolish maternity leave?  No. 

So why the statement on the Red Tape Challenge?

Two thoughts.

Firstly, if there are any more amendments or deletions to the Equality Act 2010 [and there are already a few of its provisions which have been unilaterally ripped up by government], it will offer the flimsiest [thong-like as opposed to control-pant] of protections to people in the equality communities.  At what point does the EHRC, in the shape of Trevor Phillips, Chair of the EHRC, and the government-appointed Commissioners of the EHRC, realise that the proffering of pretty-please principles do not work with the Coalition? 

The EHRC’s statement was followed, coincidentally, by remarks from government minister Oliver Letwin that public sector reform and efficiency would only be achieved with the introduction of “discipline and fear” to the public sector workforce.  That reads to me as nothing less than state-sponsored bullying being given the green light in public sector services.  Given the EHRC is supposed to have a key role in safeguarding the human rights of citizens and to hold government to account when these are being breached or in danger of being breached, has the time not come for something rather more robust and challenging from the EHRC than drafting a set of 6 principles for government to consider as they take a wrecking ball to equality and human rights and positively encourage bullying at work ? 

Oliver Letwin - wants to
introduce 'discipline and
fear' into the public sector

Secondly, the government has not long closed its pretence at consultation over reforms to the EHRC itself.  In brief the plan is to massively reduce the EHRC budget, strip out its function of providing a helpline and advice to citizens on remedies for discrimination, and keep it from taking organisations to the courts as much as possible.  Oliver’s plan will no doubt require the leaner EHRC to also bully its staff into doing more with less.  The heart of the EHRC will be ripped out.

Government has started to dismember the legislation which is supposed to protect people from discrimination and offer us all equality of opportunity in accessing and getting outcomes from the fundamental elements of what we call society.  It plans to neuter the regulator which is supposed to enforce those legal protections. 

Trevor Phillips - 'should I
stay or should I go now .....'

At what point does the EHRC Chair and Commissioners think it might be a good time to resign rather than be complicit in this sham ?  Maybe Trevor and the rest should dig out an old track from the Clash and listen again :  “……should I stay or should I go now, if I stay there will be trouble, and if I stay it will be double ……..”

New brass equality plates for old

Over the years, much energy and too much paper has been used in trying to shift attitudes and change culture around equality issues, such as equal pay.

We appear to be incapable of learning from the history we ourselves have written these last 20-30 years, so it is small wonder our efforts to shift attitudes and change cultures continue to be bogged down in the twin shackles of ‘bado kidogo’ [see another post on this blog] and the sphincter-clenching fear of innovative risk taking.

Even in the minimalist, red-tape-slashed, buy-one-get-one-free, specific equality duties proposed by the UK government, there remains the requirement that bodies report annually on what they have done to meet the general duty, although bodies can publish the report as part of something else – not sure if ‘OK’  or ‘Hello’ would count.  In some senses, the basic reporting principle remains pretty much as it has been for some decades.  Which has achieved what?

In such as equal pay, not a lot.  The Fawcett Society report from 2010 reminds us that :

Forty years since the Equal Pay Act women are still, on average, paid a sixth less than men for full time work.

So.  How can we get bodies to ‘report’ key information on such as equal pay, the percentage of disabled people employed, the percentage of BME people in senior management, and the rest, while at the same time making sure it is ‘published’ in such a way as will become as familiar to people as the occupants of the Big Brother House, and in a way which might trigger a shift in attitudes and change cultures?

Imagine.  You are on the main street of some UK city, mid-week, midday.  You are lucky enough to be in work, but are unlucky enough to work in the ………… [fill in the sector yourself] where management walks around with sphincters clenched and tries to convince you that this is part of good risk management practice.  You have had a hard week so far, and already deciding that you can’t be bothered cooking from scratch when you get home that night.  You are rushing along a crowded pedestrianised precinct, trying to get to the bank to persuade them to ease up on the threats to your overdraft.  You are passing M&S who have in the window their advert for ‘Dine in for £10’.  You instinctively alter course, causing a busking trombonist to collide with your sphincter-clenched manager, who happens to be strolling towards the local walk-in health spa for a weekly colonic irrigation [discounted for regular clients], and reach for the M&S door [you don’t do automatic doors so that you can pretend you are getting some exercise].

As you reach out to push the door in, at the same time trying to avoid knocking over some pervert standing too close to it and leering at some risqué item of bubble-gum pink underwear on display, your eye is caught by a brass plate set in the middle of the glass door and at head height.  You stop suddenly – and cause untold damage to the 4 or 5 people who were on auto-pilot immediately behind you [they could already taste the Cajun-spiced chicken breasts], to say nothing of the trombonist who has just managed to disentangle herself from your manager.

On the brass plate, under the M&S logo, are some brief figures ;

The M&S UK workforce at January 2011 has :

A gender pay gap of 0.25%

22% of staff identify as disabled

6% identify as BME

4% identify as LGB & T

10% of senior managers are BME

Slowing down you ponder the figures, now having time to accidently-on-purpose nudge the pervert into grappling with the model clad in the risqué underwear and so causing the bored security staff to put into practice some of their never before used anti-terrorist capture and restraining techniques.  Stifling a grin as you hear the muffled falsetto screams of pain, you grab the chicken breasts, greens, triple-orgasm chocolate dessert, bottle of ‘anything as long as it is red’ wine, and exit via the automatic doors [well you got greens instead of roast potatoes], wondering how M&S have managed to get the gender pay gap cut as low as that.

You speed along, aiming to get some light bulbs out of BHS before the bank.

Trampling on the donations hat of the painted robotic eejit who always seems to be busking outside BHS, you dodge a couple emerging from the store dwarfed by their two massive, 70% off, bargain suitcases of a colour pattern so extreme it reminds you that the cat was sick just as you left home this morning.  Just as your stomach heaves at the memory, your grin returns as one of the castors on the wardrobe-sized suitcases parts company with a rending nails-down-the-board screech that reminds you your manager will be back early at work as he will probably not bother with the colonic irrigation.  The shockwave of expletives from the castor-less suitcase propeller almost blows you through the doors but, again, you pause.  There is another small brass plate in each of the BHS doors.  These give you similar information to that you already registered at M&S, although you are impressed when you read that the percentage of BME staff employed by BHS is 11%.

Laden with not just light bulbs, but BHS light bulbs, you find yourself ready to face down the bank staff.  Grappling with their glazed doors – none of which appear to have ‘push’ or ‘pull’ marked on them – you find that a brass plate is now on each of them.  This gives you similar data to that already registered on your lunch-break travels.  This time the bank reveals that 8% of its UK senior management are LBG&T.  You are absorbing this as the doors slide open sideways with what sounds like a heavy sigh, bringing a slight reddening to your cheeks.  You find the expected ordeal with bank staff does not materialise and indeed as you leave, your light bulbs intact, you wonder if you too could carry off that particular shade of pink.

Rushing back to work, and as you approach the imposing and inaccessible steps up to headquarters, you notice that your manager seems to be mounting them in an unusually slow, sideways, crab-like, style.  You are so transfixed that you barely notice the brass plate only fixed that lunch-time to the sandstone pillar at the centre of the grand and inaccessible entrance [the glass doors are on closer springs which are too heavy for some people] to your workplace and which explains that as at January 2011 the gender pay gap in ………… is 12.8%.

Imagine.  Shift attitudes and change cultures?  Simples.