"White men may miss out under proposed job plans"

White men could be stopped from getting jobs under controversial government plans to allow employers to hire ethnic minority and female candidates ahead of them.

Instead, the measure involves giving employers the right to take race or sex into consideration when choosing between candidates with exactly the same qualifications.

Source

And they say the "white working class doesn't have a voice"?

Just like "Affirmative Action" in the U.S., this looks like another scatter-brained attempt at changing a "meritocratic" society, where one is judged on one's skills/abilities, to one where one is judged on sex and ethnicity.

Could the last white male in the U.K. please turn out the light?

How sad. Are the government trying to breed rioting and unease? I can't help but see moves like this as distractions. 9/11 and 7/7 happened in order to instill a sense of fear among the everyman. We now have a new fear - that the majority of Brits are destined for marginalisation. And the worst thing about it is that despite how obvious it is that these are goverment-led initiatives, they will always be hidden behind the banner called 'multiculturalism', which as we all know, is an untamed beast of inevitablility, running amok with no possible hope of being controlled - so we might as well just accept it and let the goverment feed it once in a while.

I am currently on the "Job Market" and have to go through "ethnic profiling" for any vacancy I choose to apply for.

Just by having to complete the required information makes me suspect that there is a filtering process done at this stage.

I do not mind losing out to someone more qualified or experienced, regardless of race, sexuality, creed etc, but I take offence when it is due to me being a white, hetrosexual, working class male.

I honestly don't understand this obsession with race, gender or whatever when giving people jobs. It should be based on skills and suitability for the job, and nothing else.

In one of my university seminars recently we discussed Members of Parliament and looked at all women shortlists, and every single female member of the group said that, whilst they'd like to see more women in Parliament, they don't think 'positive' discrimination is the way forward because it means these people aren't necessarily the best for the job and it would feel terribly patronising to think you've got a certain post because of your race or gender rather than your skills and qualities.

Discrimination is discrimination, however you try to package it; it is wrong whether it's carried out against Christians, Muslims, atheists, white people, black people, Asian people... no exceptions.

Don't worry peeps. These idiots will be out on their ear next year. Boring brown has to call an election by then and current polls have the Tories in the lead by 13 % (although that isn't enough for the predicted 18% swing needed to oust Labour from power)

Typical of the "poor me" attitude that today's society has. This already happened in Northern Ireland to an extent when our police force was made to make Protestant officers redundant whilst introducing new policies to employ more Catholics, women and ethnic minorities as part of the Good Friday Agreement. At that time though, the force was definitely not representative of the whole community, so I could understand it and agree with it partly. I have to say that I disagree with any of these 'positive discrimination' schemes though because it is just a complete double standard. If this is tolerance, I want to be intolerant. Wait, I already am.

There's nothing odd about this, in very large part this is just the usual nasty attempt at the disingenuous myth creation & laughable exaggeration.

The whole point of all these supposedly 'positive discrimination' schemes is that where one has a spread of candidates of equal merit, then in a situation where certain groups are clearly under-represented, one can then move to select from the under-represented group to try to help redress the imbalance.

I have never seen anyone ever endorse the placing of unqualified candidates simply on the grounds of sex, race or creed, unfortunately where this sometimes gets (deliberately, IMO) blurred is when the candidate not selected is perhaps even more highly qualified than the candidate from a particular group that was selected.
The fact that they were all qualified for the job is often (conveniently) ignored.

But there are no dark conspiracies and there is no plot for attacking 'the white man' etc etc
(good God, I can't believe how fast some people want to rush to claim that able-bodied white males are a group terribly suffering from wicked discrimination ).

This is not about forcing gangs of one-legged black lesbian single parents (or whatever other ludicrous Jeremy Clarkson-like pantomime exaggeration one prefers) with barely one poor GCSE, if that, into Professorships at Cambridge, running the UK's nuclear power industry or anything remotely similar.

BTW I wouldn't hold out any hope on a tory party riding to the rescue stu.
To Cameron's credit he has forced them to face up to the truth (and they have recently agree this) that the only way to effect practical change in anything like an acceptable timetable where the imbalance is outrageous & wholly unjustifiable is to engage in active measures (ie positive discrimination.

As Exoploitician said, here in Northern Ireland we have had similar moans.....set against a background of obvious and very clear under-representation for certain groups (mostly members of the Roman Catholic faith).
We even have politicians coming on TV to whine that in certain areas Roman Catholics are getting an gross advatage over their Protestant neighbours because in a handful of places in the world of work RC people are in a majority - as they willfully ignore the fact that in the workplace as a whole RC people still are under-represented in many areas and more likely to be unemployed etc etc.

I remember similar in certain London boroughs where it was claimed that because say, Hackney or Towner Hamlets had a fair number of black people working for them (and in a few depts even a majority) that this proved things were now completely fine & OK to the point of (usually whispered under breath) perhaps going 'a bit to far the other way'.

It's ridiculous.
IMO it's often spread by those intent on ignoring the wider facts of the situation & in whipping up ill-informed and sometimes plain nasty trouble.

[edit on 18-3-2008 by sminkeypinkey]

Originally posted by sminkeypinkey
There's nothing odd about this, in very large part this is just the usual nasty attempt at the disingenuous myth creation & laughable exaggeration.

Yes, it's "just a myth/exaggeration":
70 years ago, the Jews would never have believed that a genocidal dictator would wipte out 6 million of them, and millions of "Slavs", homosexuals, Roma, Freemasons...
60 years ago, American whites would never have believed blacks would get "equal rights" to them.
40 years ago, Americans swallowed JFK's lies that, on the creation of the "Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965", white Americans would still make up approximately 90% of the U.S. population.

Originally posted by sminkeypinkey
The whole point of all these supposedly 'positive discrimination' schemes is that where one has a spread of candidates of equal merit, then in a situation where certain groups are clearly under-represented, one can then move to select from the under-represented group to try to help redress the imbalance.

I believe they tried that in South Africa - look how that turned out!
But seriously, this is another case of Big Government knows best.

Originally posted by sminkeypinkey
I have never seen anyone ever endorse the placing of unqualified candidates simply on the grounds of sex, race or creed, unfortunately where this sometimes gets (deliberately, IMO) blurred is when the candidate not selected is perhaps even more highly qualified than the candidate from a particular group that was selected.
The fact that they were all qualified for the job is often (conveniently) ignored.

Here's a list of..."Affirmative Action" horror stories:

List

Originally posted by sminkeypinkey
But there are no dark conspiracies and there is no plot for attacking 'the white man' etc etc
(good God, I can't believe how fast some people want to rush to claim that able-bodied white males are a group terribly suffering from wicked discrimination

).

Of course, there can't be a plot if the white folks in question are merrily marching their way to destruction - as they say, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions....

Originally posted by sminkeypinkey
BTW I wouldn't hold out any hope on a tory party riding to the rescue stu.

While I don't particularly agree with your overall point of view on this topic, you're right on the money there. I find it amusing that people think the Conservatives would solve our excessive immigration problems. The political parties are bought and paid for. They'll do whatever keeps their beneficiaries happy and most likely, that will require them to pretty much continue what Labour have started.