Now there is a phrase which has me reaching for something sharp to cut out the tongue of the manager [usually NHS] who has uttered it most recently. We, the corporate 'we' of the public sector, appear to have only one gear in the box which drives the organisation - forward. Everything is 'going forward'. Even when we are so obviously about to flush something down the toilet of political or economic convenience, it will somehow or other be prefaced or couched in context as 'going forward'.
It has got to the stage where I would probably cry if someone used plain language, as in 'from tomorrow we will .........'.
In the context of equality, for that is my passion, not only are we not going forward, the UK government's latest efforts to write specific equality duties to shape how public bodies will deliver equality are about as credible as being offered a long-term contract at the News of the World. With the current regulations in the House of Commons, government has clearly signalled that equalities will be pushed to the margins of the society we are building today. The tomorrow we are creating will have no place at its heart for disabled people, lesbian, gay and bi-sexual people, black minority ethnic people, and too many others who had hoped the Equality Act 2010 legacy of Labour would provide a passport to a decent society.
This government has tossed that legacy after shredding the detail of the Act and offers people not even a temporary visa to a decent society. MPs have a few more days in July 2011 to insist that government gets out of reverse gear on equalities and hits the fast forward button on the remote instead.
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