The BBC reports that our mad government is about to attempt to warp time by the application of law:
The government is to bring forward new legislation to outlaw all forms of age discrimination, the BBC has learned. Equalities Minister Harriet Harman is expected to announce the plan on Thursday as part of a package of measures in an Equalities Bill.[…] Travel, health and motor insurance is also expected to be included, where cover is simply withdrawn beyond a certain age or is prohibitively expensive.
How is this going to work with mortgages, and those annuities that HMRC forces people to buy with their pension funds on retirement? Women live longer, so they get less for their money in retirement annuities, which they wouldn’t with another investment.
(Digression: Annuitants also pay more tax than they might from some other forms of investment. This is one explanation for HMRC maintaining insurance companies in this monopoly. That’s slightly more creditable than the one that senior tax officials and treasury ministers are accustomed to give more effort to understanding of the problems of the big financial institutions than those of ordinary pensioners because they have an eye to supplementing their own retirement funds by directorships and consultancies.)
It gets weirder:
Under plans to make workplaces more diverse, Ms Harman wants to allow employers to appoint people specifically because of their race or gender. The proposals would only apply when choosing between candidates equally qualified for the job. But it means, for example, women or people from minorities could be hired ahead of others in order to create a more balanced workforce. Some employers argue they already do this, while others may say these policies will need careful handling to reduce the risk of causing resentment amongst existing staff.
You don’t say. The capacity for bureaucrats lunacy, personal distress, and horrifically abstruse legal dispute where racial and sexual discrimination is both banned and permitted at the same time is going to be vast.
I predict an efflorescence of debates between ‘equalities’ officials in which several contradictory standards are created. (Should recruitment ‘represent’ the locality or the country at large? is its current makeup relevant? Or can you hire an exclusively Kazakh workforce because they are the only Kazakhs in the country?). Ethnic and other demographic categorisation of individuals will be even more ramified. And employers will be under more pressure to collect information about people’s family background and personal habits in order to ensure they are either correctly not discriminating, or discriminating correctly.
The government has faced criticism from some quarters for presiding over a society which has arguably become more unequal.
All animals are unequal, but some animals are more unequal than others. All it requires is an official licence.
Guy, totally agree. I watched the largely uncritical TV coverage of this item last night. As someone who knows a bit about things like pensions and the impact of changing lifespans, it is extraordinarily stupid for the government to do this on simple practical, actuarial grounds, never mind the obvious violation of freedom of contract.
Ageism may be unpleasant or silly or wrong, but it should not be illegal. And unlike race, there is sometimes some actual, objective, justification for treating people differently on the grounds of their age. In a free market, for instance, the benefits of accumulated wisdom, or the downsides of greater vulnerability to ill-health, are things that cannot be wished away.
Ah yes. Making things both forbidden and compulsory at the same time. It does have a certain War is Peace quality about it.
Ms Harman wants to allow employers…
Wants to force employers…
…would only apply when choosing between candidates equally qualified…
When you devise a scheme where traits such as skin colour, cultural background and gender contribute to selection the candidates are in fact unequal, and for the worst possible reasons.
in order to create a more balanced workforce…
a less productive but picturesque workforce.
Profits are down, but balance is up.
I do hope the deranged plans of this left wing slag mark the end game for this insane government.
If this evil law goes through as planned, the only people it will be legal to discriminate against will be white British males. Young working class white British boys are already the least well educated section of society, how on earth can anyone persuade them to work hard to gain qualifications, if their own government has just officially made them legal second class citizens?
I imagine the champagne corks are popping at the headquarters of the BNP today. Comrade Citizen Harman has just delivered the white working class to them.
If ageism is being outlawed, then I’ll start drawing my state pension now, please ;-).
More seriously, I assume they will also tweak the minimum wage legislation so that someone under 21, is required to be paid the same minimum as someone over 21?
John K also hits another nail on the head; there’s no such things as “positive discrimination”, as favouring one party over another results in the suffering of the other party. “All-female shortlists” equals “you can’t stand for election in this constituency, if you’re a man”.
(Well, not without leaving your party and standing as an independent, anyway.)
You have an Equalities Minister?
I am surprised she has only now discovered affirmative action. Or is this different?
So if all forms of age discrimination are banned, does this mean Britain is going to see every boy racer in the country ditching their Novas and Fiestas for Supras and Imprezas? Because when I was that age, it wasn’t the price of the car that stopped me, it was the price of the insurance. But if they can’t discriminate based on age… well, they’ll probably just come out and say “unless you’re young”, with a completely straight face.
As for the second one… well, yes, it could allow people to select minorities to create a more balanced workforce. Surely it could also allow them to select white people to make a more unbalanced workforce? Unless, similarly, they come out, and say “unless they’re white”.
I mean, it’s fairly obvious that government schemes don’t often work how they’re intended, this one has fairly amusing potential consequences, I reckon.
This looks a lot like the kind of stuff they have been doing for ages in Germany (& colonies). Wouldn’t be surprised if there is some EU directive behind this (which is presumably why the Tories don’t really try to capitalize on it).
On the other hand … I understand that to be truly PC you should respect people’s subjective gender identity. So if a white married man applies for a job, can’t he simply claim to be a pre-operative transgender woman who also happens to be in a lesbian relationship?
Or can you hire an exclusively Kazakh workforce because they are the only Kazakhs in the country?).
Heh! I bet I’m the only person reading this who employs a couple of hundred Kazakhs. 🙂
Tim:
I hope you have got your correct quota of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Kazakhs. If not Comrade Commissar Harman may wish to speak to you.
Thinking about it, I’d quite like her to go to Kazakhstan and never come back. If she could take the rest of the NuLabor Politburo with her, that would be a bonus.
Does this mean that you’re not allowed to discriminate against racists and promoters of racism, such as those who promote or support or take advantage of affirmative action?
*My* theory about annuities is that HMG enforces them because they provide a guaranteed and huge market for Treasury stock.
The result, unintended I’m sure, is that high demand for Treasury stock keeps interest rates down, thereby favouring borrowers (whose debt is simultaneously low-interest and inflated away) and punishing savers and the elderly. But as long as the government can binge on cheap debt, it’s unlikely to change the rules.