Thursday 3 June 2010

Recommended reading

Yesterday morning, the Mail website's top story was The £18,000 council job you can't apply for if you are white.

It was a lot of sound and fury about Bristol City Council advertising two training posts (not jobs) for BME graduates.

By early afternoon, the BNP had the story on their website, claiming:

The anti-white and anti-British establishment has abandoned any pretence at fairness and at last broken its cover with the advertising of local government jobs for which white people are forbidden from applying.

Both Five Chinese Crackers and Angry Mob have looked at the story and both articles are well worth reading.

As 5CC says:

The [Mail] could approach issues from a far more sensible perspective, but chooses to exaggerate and lie instead. When those lies and exaggerations extend to how much of a wonderful and unfair advantage ethnic minorities and other out-groups get, it's particularly nasty, and so are the potential consequences.

That's when the paper stops being just disappointing and starts being potentially dangerous.

4 comments:

  1. I'm not sure about this one.

    I agree they should have explained the situation more accurately, but on the other hand it is clearly established in employment law that how the employer describes the relationship is not binding, and a court or tribunal can look behind the description to establish the true relationship.

    A position which pays £18k sounds more like a job than the kind of training this exemption was intended for.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tom Evans usually when you train with a company you earn a wage so 18k sounds fine. Training is full time and it is a graduate training scheme. It's like going to college to take a vocational course which teaches you skills on the job and gets you experience. Like the way hairdressers go to college their in training schemes at proper hairdressers for 2/3 days out of the week and they get paid for their time. They all pay. The trainees can't train on no cash other wise they wouldn't be able to live.

    Training posts are much different to a job and the contracts are too. It's not permanent it's temporary and it usually last 1-2 years after which you can apply for an actual job in that sector with the experience and a a job reference. I suppose it's like an apprenticeship.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well I looked up section 37 of the RRA 1976. It doesn't create a general exemption for all training. It allows discriminatory procedures in either promoting training, or giving access to training facilities. This hardly covers a newly created paid post and is probbaly meant to cover promoting training to existing staff.

    Furthermore, s. 37(3) specifically excludes from this exception any act prohibited under the employment sections.

    I'm far from convinced this situation is legal.

    ReplyDelete
  4. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3001107/Transsexual-made-his-caged-kids-scoff-pet-food.html

    Tip for something to write about.

    ReplyDelete

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