h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So SWL, since you heroically accused me of it earlier, what is this other kind of bad discrimination you insist Im in favour of?

I know the answer but I want you to explain it to the people here

Post 136

So you're sticking to the lie that the idea od fairness Im trying to promote is about getting even.

Even with who?

Half my family are white? Am I trying to get even when i say I think that we should be taking measures to ensure more women are in Parliament and other levels of govermant because its blatanly obvious that there are barriers to womens involvment in them? How is that me getting even?

Thanks you tried but failed but seriously thanks for all the effort you put in.

Oh yeah, "Blairs Babes". That was a success wasn't it? People promoted not on ability but because of what they had (or didn't have) between their legs.

Any other pearls?

So sucessful that Dishy Dave the Cameroon has adopted it.

Just as he has faith schools, judging by his expressed intention to send his kid to one.

If a million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
Anatole France

A bit like the ZCT then...

Touche

Discrimination is only wrong if it is on grounds that are irrelevant. To have 'discriminating' taste is a good thing, and there is nothing wrong whatever with discriminating on grounds that are relevant. So the real issue to debate over any issue of discrimination is, are the grounds relevant or not? I think there's some confusion about this in this thread. Clearly there are some cases where the grounds are very clearly relevant (bomb disposal expertise for a bomb disposal task) and some where it clearly is not (ethnicity for a job in a bank). And there are difficult cases in the middle, around affirmative action/positive discrimination. My view on these cases is that it just has to be on a case-by-case basis - sometimes it can be justified, sometimes it can't.



I quoted from the legislation in post 8 - there's an exemption for religions exercising their religion (rather than religions providing other services) from the legislation when it concerns articles of doctrine, so it doesn't matter whether a Mosque is a public building or not.

So Mosques cannot be compelled to admit women on the same terms as men, and churches cannot be compelled to hold civil partnership ceremonies/gay weddings. It seems to me that consistency requires us to treat these cases the same - either religions are exempt when acting in pursuit of their religion or they are not.

So presumably everyone who opposes segregation in Mosques on grounds of *the law of the land* (rather than on grounds of Muslim religious doctrine), also opposes the right of churches not to host gay weddings?

Spot on Otto.

The discrimination I think Blicky and I disagree on is where it is a means to an end, i.e. ethnic quotas in the workplace. He would argue (and I'm sure he'll be quick to point out if I'm wrong), that discrimination is justified to rectify a perceived imbalance. Not enough Hindus in trash collection for example would require actively discriminating against every other group until sufficient Hindus have been employed. This IMO is fallacious and takes absolutely no account of the rights of individuals to make their own choices. I would argue that there should be no barriers at point of entry and let the dice fall where they will.

And that's the weakness of social engineering. It doesn't allow for the individual. It's patronising, unfair and self-defeating. Has there ever been a period of greater social engineering than in the last 30 years? What has it all achieved if we now have record prison populations, record bankrupties, record levels of criminality and violence, unemployment as high as it's ever been during an economically stable period?

TRiG, SWL - how is at an attack to point out someone is racist? Please explain that. Especially since it is true.

SWL - you consistenly can't address why you can judge blicky, but I can't judge PBS. I love the fact that you keep posting these long diatribes about why you don't trust blicky - especially the fact that they all apply equally well to PBS. You've singularly failed.

Oh and yes, I oppose the church refusing to carry out gay weddings but given that this is a very recent fad, I would be prepared to give churches time to catch up.

Arnie, there was a perfectly sensible discussion just starting to get going, then you burst in from left field with an attack on the person not the argument. Any relevance it may have had was lost in the vitriol. Similarly, Blicky joined in, not to advance the discussion but to derail the thread with insults.

I don't have the forbearance of PBS. He probably decided life was too short and just left whereas I react. I don't particularly care if my criticism of Blicky is relevant or not. I enjoy pissing him off when he starts the insults

Anybody who follows the threads will notice I don't tend to initiate the back-biting with Blicky. When he keeps a civil tongue in his head, he gets a civil response.

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So would I, if it were that simple. The fact is though, that the dice have been loaded in favour of white men for hundreds of years. As this situation wasn't rectifying itself with any great speed, the country, through Parliament, decided to intervene and make it illegal for discrimination to happen. Without that 'social engineering' we'd still have disproportionately more white men (and maybe women, who knows?) in jobs than we do now.

<<..takes absolutely no account of the rights of individuals to make their own choices.>>

This is more than slightly unfair to all the minorities who couldn't get jobs because of the prejudices positive discrimination tries to address.

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And that's because of social engineering? Or are you just looking at the world through shite-tinted glasses? When you do, everything looks shitty, eh?

And positive discrimination makes everything hunky-dory by being prejudiced against different social groups then? Hey folks, we've got a discriminatory society. Lets make it better by bringing in more discrimination.

I fully recognise that discrimination caused alienation amongst groups that were discriminated against. Why can't you recognise that further discrimination will have the same effect?

It was either you or Otto that showed convincing evidence a few months ago that forced me to reconsider whether equal opportunity legislation was close to achieving success. I recanted and conceded the point. I'll happily concede the point about Positive Action when someone makes a convincing argument that it solves more problems than it creates.

Is it the shite covered glasses showing up all those body bags being lifted out of SE London? Is it the same glasses that only show the 61% of Mosques that bar women? Do you have a rose-tinted pair that turn the graphs of unemployment, crime, illiteracy, divorces etc etc upside down?

>>Is it the shite covered glasses showing up all those body bags being lifted out of SE London?<<

A trifle senationalist I think. What's new?

Sensationalist? It bothers government enough to propose new laws and to send armed police onto the streets.

On the one hand Fanny, you describe your inner city as idyllic with virtually no crime and no tensions yet teenagers being murdered left right and centre causes you little concern.

Not in your back yard eh?

Interesting. I asked *how* was it an attack, and SWL repeats "you attacked!"

Am I using words you don't understand SWL?


"I don't particularly care if my criticism of Blicky is relevant or not. I enjoy pissing him off when he starts the insults"

Then why do you care if my criticism of PBS is relevant? is it because you are a hypocrite?

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And how does that take the discussion forward? It doesn't. It was never designed to. It was an attack on PBS with absolutely no relevance whatsoever.

I care about your criticism because it comes from someone with nothing to contribute towards someone with potentially a lot of useful information.

>>yet teenagers being murdered left right and centre causes you little concern.<<

For goodness sakes SWL it's not downtown Bagdhad!

And this PBS thing is getting really silly. Where is the man himself to explain his views. SWL sneered at blicky for admitting something on a message board under a pseudoname. Well I doubt his real name is PedanticBarSteward and this is a message board, so where the is he? I'm fed up with hearing SWL playing his ventriloquist.