Equality overdrive

Rhoda Klapp

Most of the work has been done, we will all be poor soon. But we will have plenty of money. It just won't buy much, for inflation IS the plan. Secrets about how much money being printed? Trillion pound debt? It all adds up, doesn't it?

kardinalbirkutzki

The core function of public services and the only relevant one is to deliver public services. They are already pathetic (after 10 years of unaffordable over-spending that helped precipitate the current crisis) by developed world standards. Where on earth will they be if this misguided piece of socialist social engineering comes into force. The irony is, I suppose, that if one of the basic public services -state schools- wasn't absolutely abject then we would have more equality and social mobility than we do have. Oh, I know, let's dumb down exam standards so that even those from failing state schools can go to Oxbridge....

Chuck Unsworth

Setting aside the crass stupidity of this proposal, it is direct cofirmation that this Government regards the public services and all those who work in them as NuLab apparatus and apparatchiks. So much for their politicial neutrality.

We can now kiss goodbye to any independence in any public service. Everything is to be politically bound. This government is determined to enchain us all.

Verity

Excellent piece, Pete! You've said everything I would have said.

Unbelievable. They're not even trying to hide that they're Communists any more.

My guess, this grand new world order will still not get the slagas and slagos off the couch to vote.

David Lindsay

She should resign, then.

While the party hijacked by her and the other old student Marxists (and we note the return of Alan "Haze of Dope" Milburn) has been busy removing hereditary peers, banning foxhunting, forcibly closing down Catholic adoption agencies, and all the rest of it, this country has acquired its widest gap between rich and poor since records began.

Tiberius

The real tragedy is that she takes all this stuff seriously.

Philip Wright

Why don't Labour get it? We have had nearly 12 years of their social engineering interventions, particularly in education, but the gap between rich and poor has widened significantly over their watch.

Legislating for this will not make it happen. It only ever going to deal with the symptoms, rather like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, rather than focusing on the root causes of the problem which of course are harder and would require them to admit their culpability. But then again I forget New Labour do not do apologies and wrong ever.

Also what happens when the targets, like the Child poverty one is not (inevitably) met despite being enshrined in legislation? Does the relevant department stump up a fine and pay it to the Treasury - not feasible; the appropriate Minister take responsibility and accountability and fall on their sword - most unlikely; or the Government go to the country asking forgiveness for its lack of progress - never going to happen. Legislation is a fig leaf purporting to be action.

Finally the other thing I find interesting is why it is always those ministers who have been privately educated, such as Harman and Balls, who are the first to invoke a "class divide" as a reason for promoting their actions?

mac

Equality of opportunity through positive discrimination. Whatever the euphemisms, Harman's zealotry is unwavering and her intentions clear.

With her as PM rather than the great British patriot, the East German model state could arrive all the sooner.

Trumpeter Lanfried

Instead of 'legislating to make clear that tackling socio-economic disadvantage ... is a core function etc. etc.' why don't they just pass a law to say that as from a certain date, say January 1st 2010, everybody has to be rich, good-looking and happy?

Anyone objecting to such legislation (e.g. Conservatives) could then be accused of 'perpetuating inequality.'

Slim Jim

Don't be surprised, as this is just a continuation of Enforced Cultural Change. Unfortunately, it has created a kind of neo-apartheid system where various 'victims' and minorities compete with each other for the largesse from the perfidious political class. They never seem to analyse the potential outcomes of their actions, but people like Screechy-Preachy Harriet never pause for breath. After realising they are flogging a dead horse, they simply move round to the other side of the corpse, and keep on thrashing. Equality legislation, like health & safety law, has morphed into something quite sinister.

Hawkeye

Harman must be on something to dream this pile of drivel up. What kind of society will we get if we start appointing people based on factors like "poorly educated" and "unsuitable - has lots of ability, but has rich parents"? We will wind up with a public sector full of politically correct people incapable of doing ANY job. There is a reason why many of the unemployable are unemployable.....

I thought the Labour Party called itself the party of social justice, not the party of "if your face doesn't fit then don't bother applying".

This is simple out and out discrimination being foisted on us via the statute book and it will last until the first human rights challenge in the ECHR.

Of course, you could get lucky and have an election beforehand!

Rosie Friedman

No surprised really, Harman's policies are blinkered by her urge to attack middle class men.

She's a liability to this country

Steve

Isn't this plan already in action? After all if you knacker the economy enough, then the gap between rich and poor disappears.
Hey presto! Income gap vanishes, and everyone lives happy ever after.

C Powell

It's worth reading Polly Pot's column on this in today's Grauniad - by far and away one of the worst she has ever written and, as one of the CIF commentators put it, "unsatirisable" plus all the comments under it, the vast majority of which tear her and La Harman to shreds.

Nick Kaplan

Pete; why do you feel it necessary to state the platitude that “reducing inequality is an extremely important cause?” Reducing inequality is about as important as reducing the gap between the ground and the sky, i.e. not even slightly.

What is important is reducing poverty and encouraging social mobility, but please note that these things have nothing to do with equality. The desire for equality has nothing to do with absolutes; a very poor society can be very equal while a society in which everyone is rich can still (and in all likelihood will) be very unequal. Equality of outcome is all about relativity; concern for equality is like having a fetish about a gap.

Also, it is worth mentioning that not caring about equality does not mean that one desires inequality, the point is that one should be indifferent about both. Desiring inequality would also be to fetishize a gap and hence is equally pointless, stupid and arbitrary.

What is important however is the process that leads to inequality and this process is freedom. If you leave people (who are from birth fundamentally unequal in talents and attitudes to work) to decide for themselves what to do with their lives and how to spend their incomes, then the result will be inequality. The only way to ensure equality is to have a command economy, to end free choice and to hand absolute power to a bunch of Procrustean bureaucrats such that they can constantly interfere in our lives to bring about their ludicrous aim.

One can raise the floor without having to nail the ceiling to it, and usually letting the ceiling rise is the only way to encourage the floor to do the same.

Elf

Surely the best way to improve social mobility would be to sort out education?

Ian C

Queen Canute rides to the recue of the unequal... well that'll fix it.

BrianSJ

So a woman who had received a very expensive education and was the neice of a Countess. How many public posts would she be allowed to have?

C Powell

"Of course, reducing inequality is an extremely important cause. "

Sloppy thinking, Peter: reducing inequality OF OPPORTUNITY is an extremely important cause. But to say that the person who works hard should be made equal to the person who does not work so hard or doesn't bother to work at all is hugely unfair.

The real problem is not that some people are better off than others but, rather, that those who are not fortunate enough to have supportive, encouraging parents have no other way of transcending their background, of getting the opportunities others take for granted. An "equality law" and a lot of interfering busybodies do nothing to address the poverty of aspirations for too many of our children. Only by having good schools, a focus on excellence, achievement and high standards will we even begin to give children the opportunities they deserve. What they then do with those opportunities is up to them. The only effect of this proposal will be to level down what centres of excellence are left in this country, alas, to the detriment - eventually - of everyone.

Andrew Forbes

If the racial/gender etc diversity etc industry is anything to go by, this creates a load of paperwork for every step of local and national govt:

All this work will have to be done by social mobility compliance officers, in every council and every govt dept.

Heart sinks. It just shows that the govt really doesn't get it; that there's no more money to waste; that they have no more ideas to combat the recession than to create public sector jobs.

George Laird

Dear All

I wish that New Labour would stop the lie that they are committed to equality for poor people, they are not.

Britain is a corrupt society were Labour attempt to give the illusion of hope as a carrot to the working class.

In Britain, you have rights but you cannot access your rights or have your rights enforced unless you have money.

I know from personal experience that the system put in place by New Labour has one objective to deny people justice through process.

Labour should abandoned the myth of hope as it leaves a sick taste in the mouth of the poor.

No one is buying Labour lies anymore.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

Anan

Labour is crap.

Nick Kaplan

George Laird; I’m not fan of New Labour but it is your kind of backwards thinking that gives rise to the poverty of aspiration that is so responsible for the actual poverty at the bottom of society.

The sort of rubbish you just spouted about not being able to access rights unless you have money is a baseless assertion about as interesting as one of David Icke’s conspiracy theories.

My farther for example came from a poor working class background, he grew up in a council flat and left school at 14 or 15, yet through high aspirations and hard work he made his way out of that life and has done considerably well for himself, he had as many rights as anyone else and made good use of them.

Have you ever considered that telling people that the whole of society is out to get them might just have some effect on their incentive to achieve, thereby consigning them to the life of continued poverty you complain about?

Pete Hoskin

Nick Kaplan and C Powell: points taken! Good points, too, and ones that I agree with. Was trying to capture them in the sentences that followed the one you've pulled out, but was probably a bit sloppy/unclear in my writing.

seb

How can you legislate 'to make it clear' that redressing social inequality ought to be a priority of government and its employees? This is the Château d'Yquem of drivel. No, it's worse. On re-reading this harmanite spew, I see that she is 'considering' such legislation. She and the Kirkcaldy Autist make a fine pair. When they're both eventually sectioned, I wonder if they'll be confined in the same institution.

John Page

Sounds like a mandate for state bodies to be less efficient. Positive discrimination, vague targets involving lots of measuring (££££) and naturally monitoring (££££), more staff because some of them will be less effective than thry should be (££££), has anyone thought this through, why bother it's only tax money. Of course it's the schools they should be sorting out. But how much more agreeable to install grey socialist monitoring throughout society.

The Cat Anan

Not just crap, but DOG crap.

Commondog

When we talk of social mobility, why is it we only ever focus on those who are to move upwards? If it is to mean anything - if we are actually to get cracking and DO it, then it would be irresponsible to neglect this aspect.

How will these people be selected?

Richard

Seriously folks, don't worry about it. Contained in the 1998 Crime & Disorder Act was section 117 which required all statutory public bodeies to consider the implications of crime & disorder in all their activities.

Guess what? Yup - bugger all happened. Unless of course consideration means, "yowzers, crime & disorder's pretty bad round there innit?".

Useless, useless etc etc.

Commondog

If the country was all running sweet as a nut, then I would look at developments such as this one, and have a little chuckle.
But here we are, the nation sailing headlong towards an iceberg, and those who should be steering are all at the arse end playing quoits.

Pure pantomime.

Thomas Cussans

Seb:

Harman and the Kirkaldy Autist are indeed something of a pair. But is unfair to claim that, like Brown, she is mad when she is merely very stupid.

That said, Brown is now demonstrably certifiable, absolutely frothing-at-the-mouth-ranting-and-raving-eye-swivellingly-George III-style-drooling bonkers.

Commondog

George Laird. If you really want to see the back of Labour, then please offer us some original thoughts on the matter.

Glasgow University? Whoopedoo. I hope you don't hold any kind of teaching post with literacy skills like that my friend.

Commondog

I's gonna Oxford.

You's gonna Oxford.

All God's chilluns gonna Oxford.

If there's any manual workers left to take us there.

jon dee

The Politburo,nay the "Cabinet signed off" each part of the White Paper.
Did that include busy Geoff Hoon,reputedly a true champion of equality?

David Preiser

Not "equality of opportunity" but "equality of outcome". Meet Britain's first Handicapper General, straight from the pages of "Harrison Bergeron".

Verity

David Preiser - Ha ha ha ha!

I find it a bit unsettling that the photo of Harriet Harpy above looks a lot like David Cameron. Are they related?

Andy

Are they planning to genetically engineer future generations so that nobody can run faster, be smarter, think more logically than anybody else? After they've confiscated all our wealth of course, which is clearly going to plan. I hope if Harman needs an operation her surgeon will have been selected purely on the grounds that she came from a disadvantaged home, went to a bog standard comp and ticks the right boxes, rather than because she is the best in her field!

J H Holloway

It's obvious. Labour will now start rolling out eye-swivelling mad legislation which has two purposes. First to allow the public sector to go meddling mad and second, to dare the Tories to repeal it.

Another Labour elephant trap. They're preparing fpr opposition and there'll be plenty more of this to come.

Alexander Walker

Harriet Harman = Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General in Kurt Vonnegut's 1961 short story.

hysteria

you really couldn't make this stuff up - where do I sign up for the revolution?

Hawkeye

Get Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Beregon" where the Handicapper General (a woman!) ensures that everyone is made equal by forcing disabilities on anyone too fit or well.

It all goes well until one day a young man throws off the handicap devices and brings, for a few moments, sheer joy into the lives of all those who see him.

Considering it was written many decades ago, it could the the Britain of Harman's dreams.

RudeBoy

Its all just the neighing of dinosaurs.

CCTV

There will be lots of Labour MPs de-selected before the GE, so we can see more Working Class Labour MPs and fewer from the Media ?

Roger

Just stop taxing the Poor and wasting their money. Well I suppose that's far too simple for Harperson.

StephenDC

Very disappointed with comments here really.

Anyone who is committed to a meritocratic society should be appauled at the difficulty many kids from poorer backgrounds still face in getting access to the same opportunities as those with affluent upbringings.

Of course public bodies should have a duty to tackle this.

Ian C

StephenDC

It all stems from education and the unuseful idiots of the left have screwed that so badly that nothing will work until we start educating those from poorer backgrounds properly. That will take 2-3 generations to achieve, which is why we have to find a way of constitutionally barring the left from f****ng the system ever again with ridiculous artificial social engineering such as that of the past 40 odd years.

Oscar

Isn't it typical that people of Harman and Toynbee's labour aristocrat backgrounds favour this kind of social engineering. Is it to mask or attone for their own privilege? Either way the hypocrisy of it all is ghastly.

Thomas Cussans

StephenDC:

What you should be "appauled" at is the horrendous education "kids" from poorer backgrounds routinely receive at the hands of the state.

As has been repeatedly pointed out, it is an "egalitarian" state that condemns these children, not the unfair advantages enjoyed by those from more affluent backgrounds.

It is yet another example of why left-leaning social engineering not only never works but invariably has the opposite effect to that intended.

It is a matter for the deepest despair that the more glaring the failures of these experiments, the more the Left seeks to impose them. How many more need there be before the likes of Harman finally realise that socialism DOESN"T WORK?

CharlieRay15

There's a link to the Kurt Vonnegut short story mentioned above through the Wikipedia article "Harrison Bergeron".

Michael Booth

OK guys, how about a bit of light relief and a quick round of that well-known parlour game,
"50 Uses for Harriet Harman"

David Bouvier

Nice hat top from Peter Hoskins to Powell and Caplan.

What I like about this debate is that the general mantras about equality of outcome, or even opportunity are being subject to some analysis for once.

Re Stephen DC - your central mistake is to jump from disliking something to think that a vague general duty for all of government means anything or does anything useful.

Now just being policy is not enough - they have millions of those. A few years back they started putting general duties into law as if that meant something. The NHS has lots more now. But they have been devaluing this coin too, and now any big new policy has to have legal duties in it, otherwise the bureaucrats know they can safely ignore it. What next? Treaty obligations?

But what really happens is this: another chapter is added to the departmental annual report, and a small unit it is set up to survey research and monitoring. There is some hand-wringing, and processes will get more and more Kafkaesque to no-ones benefit except those employed to implement them.

To CHANGE something you need to identify specific injustices to reduce, or specific barriers to assist people in crossing.

Many people here clearly believe that urban state education outside certain middle class enclaves has become a barrier not an aid to social mobility.

I don't know the Vonnegut story but Waugh's short story "Love Among the Ruins" is also prophetic. The most put-upon class are those who suffer from NFB - Normal Family Background.

And Stephen DC - before you seriously consider yourself a committed meritocrat you need to read Michael Young's 1958 satirical demolition of the concept: "The Rise of the Meritocracy". Young COINED THE WORD and loathes it. See his comment piece at http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/29/comment

The biggest laugh though: I saw a report that they were considering making class discrimination illegal as per race, sex, disability, etc. The first prosecutions would be their own election team - and John Prescott would have to be put under house arrest.

David Bouvier

I worry a bit that Harman get more flack because she is a women - but them she goes and reminds me because she is awful and seemingly stupid.

David Lindsay

Rosie Friedman, "middle-class men"? The big losers here will be working-class men, especially working-class white men.

Take the Speakers' Conference on how to get more privately schooled daughters of Asian doctors into Parliament ahead of state schooled sons of white bus drivers and white shop assistants.

With any luck, Ronnie Campbell will publish a minority report saying that neither sex, nor ethnicity, nor disability (on which the record of British professional politics is relatively good) is the real issue, and instead setting out proposals to address that which is.

For a start, the trade unions should identify ten “dream” policies and ten “nightmare” policies, with ten per cent funding to any candidate (regardless of party, if any) for subscription to each of the former, minus ten per cent for failure to rule out each of the latter.

The unions and others should also fund the development and delivery of a qualification for “non-graduates” with life and work experience who aspire to become MPs.

Harman should get Dromey (tipped for Ken Purchase's safe seat, by the way) to look into these possibilities. Seriously.

George Laird

Dear Nick Kaplan

I enjoyed your rant, particularly how daddy did so well.

How exactly does his personal experience relate to me and my experiences?

If he was hit by lightening one day while standing in a field, does that mean if I walk about in the same field lightening would hit me too?

Why is it that some people get knocked down by cars and others don’t?

Wrong time, wrong place?

New Labour is all about promoting the myth of equality while at the same time denying people their rights by process.

You are the one off beam, if you trot over to the Express, you will see that New Labour are bring forward measures to try and con voters.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/79819/Labour-class-war-law-to-hit-Middle-Britain.

The Tories in the form of Shadow Equality Minister Theresa May said: “Yet again the Government thinks social inequality can be solved by passing a law. You don’t make people’s lives better by telling them they have a legal right to a better life”.

This is on the track of what I have been saying for years and years and years.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University