[harriet harman] let's bully the private sector again

Please - I do urge you to go over to Flipchart Fairytales and look at the latest government coercion on the drawing board. To shamelessly lift a section of Rick's article:

The Government Equalities Office has launched its Post Your Pay Gap initiative. The idea is that companies use the online system to calculate the gap in pay between men and women then post it on the web-site. It’s a bit like a corporate confessional - “We know we’re doing wrong but we will try better.”

But just in case there isn’t a mad rush from private sector organisations to post their pay gaps, the equalities secretary, Harriet Harman, has said that she might consider compelling them to do so.

This is the Harriet Harman who is supposed to be the most able, intelligent operator the government has. Here is her level of intelligence and sense of fair play:

Equality minister Harriet Harman has set out plans to allow firms to discriminate in favour of female and ethnic minority job candidates. She said firms should be able to choose a woman over a man of equal ability if they wanted to - or vice versa.

I have gone for a number of jobs recently and every time they have been forced to ask me to give details of my:

1 gender
2 age
3 ethnicity

No other details, such as experience or ability were required at this point of the interviews. If Ms Harman is equal and fair, then why should she be interested in these? Does she plan to discriminate towards me? Does she heck as like:

Allowing "positive action" would help organisations such as the police better reflect the communities they serve by recruiting more female and ethnic minority officers, said Ms Harman.

Positive discrimination? Positive? How is it positive to the ordinary members of the public? In the private sector they employ people they feel they need for the reasons they feel they need. I'm happy enough to stand on my own two feet this way but not with Numbers 1 and 3 officially working against me, even if Number 2 is working for me.

Let's look at Number 2.

The moment you send your CV, the employer sees your decades of experience and concludes your age. It needs no legislation. They can then make up any excuse they like as to why your application did not proceed. In the end they need only conclude they prefer the other person. End of story.

You can't legislate to make people do things which are their own legitimate concern to administer as they see fit. Age is a sad thing but it is inevitable and we just have to lump it. If we are still up to speed and look like we could be for some time yet then we must work hard to sell our skills, always remembering that there is a lot of competition out there.