Professional Diversity and Mission Creep

One of our long established professions is asserting that “the case for diversity is simple”, and promoting forums to its members, to enable them better to understand equality and diversity, in the following terms. “Society is changing fast and with it our clients, from hard done by citizens who walk into a high street firm, to multinationals with multiple Magic Circle firms on their roster. We must understand our clients. We also need to ensure we’ve got the best team to serve them. To do this, we need a diverse workforce.”

Hang on a minute. If this was supposed to be referring to the need for a diversity of skill and expertise across a wide variety of professional specialist areas, few would dissent. But that’s clearly not what they’re promoting. It is plain in context here that “a diverse workforce” is meant as one that deliberately and overtly includes individuals with differing personal characteristics, notably those protected under the Equality Act regime.

Now consider the word “need” in the italicised sentence. Might it not be considered patronising and insulting to clients to assume that their professional needs can only be fully met by someone sharing their personal characteristics, as opposed to holding the necessary knowledge to provide accurate and cost effective advice?

The mission creep that the profession’s model diversity questionnaire displays in turn may be a taste of things to come. Over and above the range of questions that an employer is invited to put to its employees, many of which we would not dream of asking our best friends, we find a section covering “socio-economic background (education) and caring responsibilities”. No, it’s not yet a prohibition under the Equality Act to discriminate against the differently educated. But how long before it is suggested that it should be?

And why stop there, they might ask. Not long ago, there were suggestions that the visibly tattooed community might be facing difficulties in obtaining and holding employment, because interviewers and bosses found their corporal decorations offensive, or thought that customers might be similarly inclined. Well, there’s the next big thing, you equality zealots. Take no notice of the fact that these downtrodden individuals may have been the authors (almost literally) of their own misfortune. Here’s the next milestone in your crusade - the Body Art Discrimination Act. What are you waiting for?

Where Do You Go To My Lovely revisited: Peter Sarstedt meets an Essex Girl

How fascinating it was to watch a recent Top of the Pops nostalgia journey back to the 60s and 70s. No, not to find out how the Beeb would manage to airbrush Jimmy Savile out of history, but to see some of our best known musical performers in their innocent (?) youthful days, before indulgences took their toll and the cosmetic surgeons stepped in. Not forgetting some memorable performances of long forgotten songs.

One notable example, Peter Sarstedt. What a haircut. Bouffant does not do it justice. More like a crash helmet, or a bearskin from Royal Guardsmen's Surplus. Not that this should be taken in any way as a denigration of his performance of Where Do You Go to My Lovely, that immortal tale of a sophisticated continental jet setter who rose to the heights from humble origins.

Now just suppose that our performer had been transported forty years into the future, and found himself contemplating an entirely different subject for his lyrical tribute - an Essex Girl, one of the UK's finest. The song might have turned out something like this.

You talk like Denise Van Outen
And you dance nothing like Fred Astaire
Your clothes are all made by Primark
And there’s bling and fake pearls in your hair, yes there are

You live in a run down apartment
On a Brentwood council estate
Where you keep your R&B records
And you play them full blast when it’s late, yes you do

But where do you go to my chavling
When you've thrown up in your bed
Tell me the thoughts that surround you
I won’t find much inside your head, no I won’t

I see you’ve no qualifications
From the bog standard school down the street
And the picture you knocked off from Poundland
Your lack of taste stands out a treat, yes it does

When you go on your summer vacation
You go to Club Med for the booze
With your carefully designed string bikini
You show off your frightful tattoos, on your back and on your legs.

And when the snow falls you'll party in Essex
With the others of the chav set
And you neck down your Bacardi Breezers
You spill them and get your tits wet, yes you do

But where do you go to my chavling
When you've thrown up in your bed
Tell me the thoughts that surround you
I won’t find much inside your head, no I won’t

Your name is heard in low places
You know a baron from Tilbury Dock
He gave you a vajazzle for Christmas
And you keep it just for a shock, for a laugh, ha-ha-ha

They say that when you get married
It'll be on reality TV
And they’ll certainly know where you came from
So OK! will fund it for free, yes they will

But where do you go to my chavling
When you've thrown up in your bed
Tell me the thoughts that surround you
I won’t find much inside your head, no I won’t

I remember the back streets of Harlow
Two teenagers dressed in fake tat
Both touched with a burning ambition
To get pregnant and a new council flat, yes they were

So look into my face, Chardonnay
And remember just who you are
Then go live your mad life forever
But I know you still bear the scars, deep inside, from your tattoos

I know where you go to my chavling
When you’ve thrown up in your bed
I know the thoughts that surround you
`Cause I can’t find much inside your head.

RIP Sir David Frost: yesterday TW3, today HS2

The sad news that Sir David Frost is no longer with us has reminded me of an MP in the early 80s who sought to attribute the UK’s moral decline, at least in part, to the ground breaking TV show from 1962/63 That Was The Week That Was, otherwise known as TW3.

Presented by Frost, TW3 was said to have broken ground in lampooning the establishment and political figures of the time, notably those involved in the Profumo scandal. As they put it, every hypocrisy was highlighted and no target was deemed out of bounds.

 

With that in mind, the MP in question was surely mistaken. Respect for moral standards was hardly to be equated with unthinking deference and loyalty to those supposedly responsible for their upkeep, especially when they let themselves and their electors down in the process.

 

And TW3 led in turn to its successors, Not The Nine O’Clock News and Spitting Image, two TV classics from an era where its politicians had some distinct character to them. We would have been poorer without them.

 

Which leads to the present day. With the honourable exception of Have I Got News For You, where is our flagship political satire? Could it be that the current crew of ministers and opposition spokesmen have unintentionally rendered themselves beyond parody? Just look at their enthusiasm for the great white elephant of HS2, their worship of the green energy delusion, their impatience to get involved in foreign wars that are none of our business (thank God for backbench independence) and their loyalty to the dismal millstone of EU membership.

 

So let’s leave the last word to Sir David from his TW3 days. This is how he would end many a satirical attack on a political or establishment figure, a quotation which may be well overdue for resurrection. “But seriously, he’s doing a grand job.”

First Chapters: read the first chapters of great books for free!

A big thank you to another great site for readers and writers, First Chapters, for publishing the first chapters (yes, it does what it says on the tin) of Hatred Ridicule & Contempt here.

To express my gratitude, here is their "About" entry in full: -

"First Chapters is a book discovery site where readers can sample the first three to four chapters of great books free of charge. First Chapters promotes books in all categories and genres, including poetry and short stories. It includes works of both fiction and non-fiction. There are biographies of contributing authors and recommendations for similar books. First Chapters uses ‘crowd power’ techniques to publicise the site. Authors and readers are encouraged to promote First Chapters on their own blogs, and on social networking sites."

They are warmly welcomed to my blogroll too.

Joan Edwards' Will: Ross v Caunters negligence?

One of the many ways of introducing law students to the joys of tort law and negligence is to make them read two offbeat cases featuring solicitors. The first, Ross v Caunters, involved a legacy under a will being rendered void because the beneficiary’s husband had been allowed to witness the will, contrary to the Wills Act. The second, White v Jones, saw the solicitors failing to draw up a testator’s intended new will before he died, and as a result his daughters – not named as beneficiaries under the old will – inherited nothing.

Why are they offbeat? Because in each case, the solicitors’ client – the testator – had died. The aggrieved beneficiaries were not the solicitors’ clients. But they succeeded in negligence claims against the solicitors because of the clear link between their interests and the solicitors’ responsibility towards their clients.

This makes today’s political storm (in a teacup?) over Joan Edwards’ will all the more interesting. As the Conservatives and Lib Dems take steps to hand back their shares of the legacies that the deceased left to “whichever Government is in office at the date of my death for the Government in their absolute discretion to use at they think fit” – no mention of political parties there – out comes a press release from Davis Wood, the solicitors who drafted the will: -

“…it was confirmed by Miss Edwards at the time of her instructions that her estate was to be left to whichever political party formed the Government at the date of her death.”

OK then, Dave and Nick. It looks as if your parties may have just lost out on a whopping great inheritance, all because a firm of solicitors made a bit of a cock up. Where there’s blame, there’s a claim. What have you got to lose by suing the pants off them and indirectly recouping the legacy that is now all set to disappear into the gigantic morass of government waste (that both of you are still perpetuating)? It might even be cast iron, to coin a phrase.

Well, if you did, you might make your respective parties look just as shifty and underhand as your troughing members in the last Parliament when the Telegraph exposed their house flipping, dry rot claims, moat cleaning, duck house purchasing and all the rest of their dodgy expenses claims. But that’s surely only a minor detail. Go for it!

Socrates and UKIP: Impious Gadflies?

Having just finished watching “The Greeks: Crucible of Civilisation”, which brought back memories of long forgotten ancient history studies from schooldays, two points of interest stood out.

The first was how the city state of Athens, the forerunner of modern Greece, once dominated the world and saw off an unprovoked attack from the mighty Persian empire, before sowing the seeds of its own decline and fall by picking a needless fight with its local rival Sparta and losing the resulting Peloponnesian War. Modern lessons, anyone?

The second, the life and times of the philosopher Socrates, which neatly tied in with the Athenians’ pursuit of their futile war, their loyalty to theological doctrine and their fixation on their past glories. True to form as a nonconformist free thinker, Socrates championed an ethical system based on human reason, and set out to inspire his audiences to think through problems to their logical conclusion. Charged with impiety and corrupting the minds of youth, Socrates relished being described as “a gadfly” and was untroubled by the death sentence that followed the guilty verdict. With supreme irony, it was not then long before Athens welcomed the great philosophical age that lives on to this day.

Let’s take that “gadfly” description, possibly the earliest historical usage of the comparison. Socrates was delighted to be depicted as someone stinging into action the tired old horse that the Athenian city state had become. Could this have been in Michael Howard’s mind when he tied the word in with “crank” before the 2004 European elections to describe UKIP supporters? Unlikely. Probably just “confounded nuisance”. In marked contrast with the subtle “provocative stimulus” paraphrase that UKIP gladly adopted, no doubt mindful of the UK’s apathy in the face of ever encroaching EU powers.

And “impiety”? Well, in Socrates’ times this would have comprised absence of proper respect for the gods of the state, hardly a surprising charge to be levelled against an advocate of reason. Here and now in the UK, we can see all three major parties supporting a modern day god of the state, EU membership, while paying lip service to the cause of reform (pie in the sky as this may be). So if and when the referendum comes, it would not be at all surprising to hear them describing opposition to EU membership as impiety. And indeed lack of propriety, and quite a variety of unpleasant names, as Tom Lehrer would put it.

But while Socrates was only vindicated after he had taken the hemlock, this is surely the last fate we would wish upon the impious gadfly in the form of Nigel Farage. Far better that he and his kind are given free range to sting the UK horse into action and save it from an undeserved fate in the EU knackers’ yard. And indeed to follow Lehrer's rallying call and use the hemlock to poison the pigeons in the Brussels park.

Sir Humphrey and the Energy Swindle

Those awfully nice Taxpayers’ Alliance people make it so easy nowadays to let your Member of Parliament know what you feel about crucially important political issues. Forget the Parker fountain pen and the green ink, the Olivetti typewriter and the carbon paper, the Word document and the laserjet printer. Just call up the TPA’s online template, complete your details, enter your postcode to locate your honourable member, hit Send, and your view has been expressed. All you need is a burning issue.

And what issue more burning than the Energy Swindle, when consumers’ bills are hitting the roof, security of supply is on a knife edge, and billions of pounds are being squandered on expensive and unreliable renewables, all because the political class is devoted to decarbonising, emissions targets, and fighting climate change?

There’s just one problem. Easy as it may now be to express a view, it is just as simple to bat one away via a standard form response combining platitudes, spin and downright lack of candour in a hideous amalgam of civilservicese. A few extracts from the one I have just received: -

Para 2: “I understand your concern about this issue which is why I welcomed the Prime Minister’s personal commitment to help get energy bills down. Helping households with the cost of living and their energy bills is a priority of this Government.” [Fancy that. I’d never have guessed.]

Para 3: “However, it is important to note that recent increases in energy bills have mainly been as a result of rising international prices for fossil fuels and not climate change policies…” [What about the dramatic fall in USA gas prices thanks to shale?] “…The calculations used in the ‘Stop the Energy Swindle’ campaign are incorrect and the Secretary of State, Ed Davey, has written to the Taxpayers’ Alliance setting this out.” [The TPA disagrees – link here.]

Para 5: “Policies which help decarbonise the UK’s energy supplies will reduce the vulnerability of UK energy prices to movements in fossil fuel prices. Were the UK not to act, the country’s energy supplies would become much more dependent on imports, more vulnerable to volatility in global fossil fuel prices, and there would be a far higher chance of disruptive blackouts.” [So how do you explain the plans to import French electricity through the Channel Tunnel? The need to back up wind turbines with conventional fossil fuel stations when the wind does not blow? The recently disclosed plans for the fleet of backup diesel generators – why decarbonise in the first place?]

Para 6: “The carbon price floor brings certainty and support for low-carbon investment…” [I’ve had enough. Whenever you see a politician using the I-word, just remember the proverbial “I invest. You subsidise. He squanders” and run for a mile.]

You may think it would be vicious, vindictive and cruel to name the MP who obtained this missive from Sir Humphrey’s word processor and top & tailed it in the name of constituency duty, even though there's a fair bet that this won't be the only instance. I agree entirely. So I will refer to the honourable member as G…. No, on second thoughts, I’ll just end up with a gratuitous reference to my political/legal suspense Sackcloth Ashes & Penance, set against the background of the UK 2010 General Election, and ask out loud whether the PM’s once stated determination to see ordinary people break the grip of the political class on Westminster has been borne out in practice, when we see an attitude like this to an issue as important as the astronomical cost of energy and the reasons for it.