Kemi Badenoch: Diversity obsession has led to Kafkaesque madness (KB for PM?)

[IwantToRetire]

Another really straightforwarded down to earth practical commentary of where chasing the rainbow has led us. And ideas on how Government cant, without being dictatorial help solve the mess.

The root of the problem is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Equality Act 2010, often exploited by those with a separate agenda. The Equality Act is a shield, not a sword. It is about preventing discrimination, not social engineering. There are no protected groups in the act, only protected characteristics. A white man is just as protected on the characteristics of race and sex as a black woman, yet many believe the act is there just to protect minorities, when in reality it protects us all.

Many companies’ diversity and inclusion activities are falling foul of the law; for example by confusing legal positive action and positive discrimination, which is illegal — except when selecting political candidates (a handy get-out-clause Labour devised to use all-women shortlists). Encouraging people from underrepresented backgrounds to apply for a job or go for a promotion is positive action, and legal. Restricting applications for a position to a certain group is positive discrimination and most certainly isn’t. This has led to increasing calls for the Equality Act to be scrapped. The act is 13 years old and could be improved but the issue is not the law. It’s bad actors misrepresenting it to suit their agenda.

Many of these laws were written at a time when institutions knew how to self-regulate. Someone proposing a terrible idea would be checked by colleagues in the organisation. Today, those colleagues are scared of being called bigots for disagreeing, so they say nothing. What the Farage and Sawers cases have done is show that this problem is getting worse. Long-held tenets of liberal democracy — freedom of association, freedom of conscience, the presumption of innocence — are being tossed aside in favour of dubious inclusion strategies that themselves fall foul of the law. In some cases they’re cancelling people before any wrongdoing occurs, leaving them with no way to prove their innocence.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kemi-badenoch-banking-scandal-natwest-niigel-farage-wdp3mmq0w
Also available via archive.ph

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/16/girls-death-contributed-to-by-air-pollution-coroner-rules-in-landmark-case

This is why we need ULEZ

It's a thoughtful essay. She is taking counsel wisely.

I know very little about the woman, but she's more decisive and clear headed than Starmer.

And where do you propose to find one of those?

I thought Starmer had a go at Khan over ULEZ

Which Labour politician would you want as leader?

that's just irrational. You guarantee by your stance that you will get nothing you want, whereas I would try. Where is your sense of proportion?

Do you not think that women within and without Labour have been trying, and have been doing so for years? And look how they were treated, Mr Apology Streeting was part of a group dedicated to spying on women who may be GC and having them forcibly expelled from the Party.

Labour refused to listen, smeared and dismissed anyone who brought the subject up and now as an election is beckoning they are scrabbling around throwing a few crumbs out there to salve their conscience and woo GC women to vote for them and their airy-fairy, wishy-washy promises and double speak.

Cynic that I am thinks this is because they need the women to do the leg and grunt work around election time, you know that unglamourous unrewarded stuff whilst the men swan about doing the 'important' stuff.

Has the pp not noticed how much women have put into the GC cause on here and off here?

Exactly. As laid out by GailBlancheViola above, women have been trying to engage for years and years.

This is why we need ULEZ

Nobodies saying we dont. The quesiton is how to implement it.

At the moment most "green" policies are easy to be adopted by those with money.

But are often beyond the means of those on a limited income.

A better scrappage scheme and better public transport would be a start.

At the moment, ironically a rich person could continue to use their high emissions car, because they just pay.

So thinking that somehow fines solves the problem doesn't. It looks more like punishing the poor for being poor.

And the sentinemantal exploitative use of Ella Kissi-Debrah by left liberal papers, ignores the issue that when you push traffic from one area it goes somewhere else. And her own mother has pointed this out.

Until there is a coherant policy that actually achieves equality of access to low emision travel, its just another divisive issue. And unfortunately indicates that Labour doesnt know how to organise on a practical level to achieve equality. And going by my local inner city borough, Labour couldn't find their way out of a paper bag. In fact they give the impression that their role as the Labour Party is to be some dutiful factotum to rich incomers to enable them to party and boast of being cyclists but every evening clutter the roads with ubers. And in fact given the level of incomers is a good tactic because as the Labour Party will get back in not for being socialist but for functioning like a holiday rep in Ibiza. (The borough has one of the worst records for slum living conditions in local housing, including those hospitalised by lung and breathing complications because of gross dampness and mold. Without being macabre how many deaths of children have been caused by bad housing?)

Not at all. I worked for an accountancy firm for a while and had to do a lot of Know Your Customer training, I would not like to be involved in deciding whether or not to give an account to a PEP like Farage.

And no, I'm not too bothered about "discrimination" against rich white politicians with dubious connections to Russia.

For you. Not for me.
For me feminism is about getting rid of patriarchy and gender stereotypes, so women have the same freedom of choice as men. Anyone who writes about any aspect of feminism without directly addressing how men/patriarchy contribute to the situation isn't a feminist.

Cates is a traditionalist. Nothing wrong with that, but it isn't feminism.

They are throwing out promises to trans people.

They have promised to get rid of the Gender Recognition panel.

Remove the spousal consent clause, overuling the consultation outcome.

They talked about improving trans access to health care. Promised to allow a dr to approve the certificate.

Everything they have announced is for trans people.

For women they have promised to OBJECT to anything the government tries to do on the Equality Act, and the only thing currently happening is the EHRC recommendation on biological sex.

That's not crumbs. It's all anti women. To quote Baroness Nicholson, it's a tide of sewage.

Great post

Yes. I find it bizarre that after all that we are in any way at fault.

People have called us bigots and transphobes and worse with violence. We keep explaining why it will be bad.

And now, you didn’t do enough, I mean wtf

I take that as acknowledging Labour will be woeful, but they don’t want the responsibility past the vote.

Fair point @Hepwo and yet this is being trailed as a big win for GC women. It's nothing of the sort.

Funny how Mr Apology Non Apology Streeting says it was Pink Leggings Bryson who made him see the light, yet women who repeatedly said this would happen, has happened, is already happening were on his hit list to be removed from the Labour Party. The light he saw was just how badly Pink Leggings Bryson went down with the public and that as a result the unassailable Nicola Sturgeon was brought down, that is what he and Labour want to avoid so they are going to be sly, underhand and obfuscate whilst carrying on as before and hoping the public don't notice.

But women are not men, and men are not women. 'The patriarchy' is just an explanation for the evolution of the many differences in both mentality and arrangements between the sexes.

Theer are many differnt interperetations of feminsim; and some of them are rooted in the facts of the female body; its power; sexuality; particularities......Women have their own integrity - an integrity that has got nothing to do with men and what men do or do not do.

Being a woman/female is not just about how oppressed women are.

And yet, look at the profoundly anti-woman positions that Labour comes out with? What on earth is that about?

To most feminists,the patriarchy is the system that elevates men and their needs, and likewise represses women and their needs.

It's unusual for someone to call themselves feminist but dismiss the patriarchy as "explanation for the evolution of sex differences".

Noone said it was.
It's very common for women to be anti-feminist or have misogynist or patriarchal views, they are still women/female.

Feminism is political not biological.

And furthermore your particular take on feminsim is, I believe, a large opart of what lies behind so many supposed feminists support for gender identity theory: that women and men are just the same except for external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics.

Ah. So discrimination is fine when it happens to people of whom we disapprove. Marvellous. Let’s not worry about what happens when we become the disapproved-of. That won’t happen, because we’re the good guys.
careful with the old libel BTW

Feminism is about women. Women are adult human females. That is about biology, not about personality.

That so many women support the idea that males can be women is the most misogynist thing i've ever come across. How do you explain that?

Yes, yes , yes, in the 1970's perhaps. Most of us have been there.

Women;'s oppression also results from the denial of the ways in which women are differnt; and which devalues their roles as mothers; which suggests that liberation can only come through entry into the workforce and assimilation into capitalist economy.

Personally, no longer use the term feminist.; it seems to have become just another form of intersectionalist identity politics, and the politics of grievance....I'm simply an adult human female, for whom some issues are of particular importance on account of the female bit - and the consequneces of the female bit.