Discriminating between the discriminators

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is keen on fairness. But its own version. The spat with the BNP was absurd, with both sides looking to enjoy the fight. I can't imagine many ethnic minorities jostling for the door to get into the BNP. That would give entryism a whole new meaning if they did.

Some on the liberal left desired that the Church could be defeated over female ministers' employment. They hoped that the Roman Catholics would be given a lesson. Turned out not to be the case. The EHRC has a blurb about "genuine occupational requirements". It reads like this -

"A Catholic theological college can refuse to admit women to a course which is only designed to prepare candidates for the Catholic priesthood as women cannot become Catholic priests. However, a Church of England college could not confine training for the priesthood to men since women may also become Anglican priests."

What it fails to acknowledge is that a sizeable number of Anglicans do not agree with this and are afforded legal protection for the beliefs. It would be interesting to know what the EHRC might do if the See of Ebbsfleet wished to set up a training courses for priests of traditional belief.

I get the impression that the EHRC is trying to sneak a bit more onto the scales on one side only and if their side is too much up in the air they try to do something about it. All this means is that a Roman Catholic priest can be trained in a certain way but an Anglican Catholic priest may not. Is the law an ass?

God-fearing to God-bashing!

There was a time when the people of England could be fined a shilling for not attending divine worship. Only the most opinionated dissenter would hold his ground and not attend. Everyone trooped into the parish church for a good dose of mattins. When I was a child our church had 500 regular churchgoers out of a surburban parish of 5000. That makes 10% of the population. Given that some were Roman Catholics and others non-conformists, each taking a slice out of the 5000, it was certainly not unusual to know regular churchgoers. Discussing religious belief was not frowned on, even by non-churchgoers.

In the 1950's it was a 500-odd congregation, in the Sixties this dropped dramatically as we went into the 300 mark. The Seventies reduced it to around 200 and it bottomed out to around 150 where it stayed. The parish, however, had doubled in size so the 150 looked decidedly low in percentage terms. Going to church seemed more like an oddity in sociey than the norm.

The 21st century has brought about the end game as far as churgoing is concerned. Only the diehard faithful it seems are attending church. We have an established church but it is only on the margins. The Establishment, now made up of Blairite type thinkers, is very much of the opinion that religion is a private matter. In fact, so private it is virtually a criminal offence to mention it at work or in any public place that has not been sanctified. We have gone from fining people for not worshipping to fining them for discussing their beliefs in front of others.

The latest person to receive the backlash of the secular state is a nurse, Anand Rao, who has been sacked for suggesting patients could become less stressed if they went to church. If he'd suggested they went into a field to meditate, he'd probably have kept his job. The NHS is now run by christophobes (I made that one up, I think!) who sniff out religious talk better than a bloodhound.

I would not like to go back to the days of forced church attendance as in the Cromwellian age of protestant patronage, but neither do I think it right for Christians to be attacked for discussing beliefs. Instead of sacking people for such talk, these NHS mandarins should take a hand in getting rid of the unclean behaviour that infects hospitals and spreads unnecessary disease.

No woman, no flight!

Bob Marley could have written a tune about it. A distressed cabin crew boss is suing her employer because he allegedly forced her to employ only young, slim, single women to crew the private aircraft of his charter company. Alexandria Proud, from London, is claiming unfair constructive dismissal by charter aircraft firm Gama Aviation. That's the nub of all these disputes. Did the employer "construct" a policy of selective screening? Miss Proud says, "The successful candidate would be female, physically attractive, aged 18 to 30, single and no larger than a size 12." So if that was the criteria what were these young women employed to do exactly?

She says she was verbally abused by the company owner, Alireza Ittehedeh, who she claims did not support her. Mr.Ittehedeh would not permit her to employ male flight attendants who he believed to be gay, so she says.

What I gather is that Gama Aviation, as gleaned from its website, is aimed at American, British, French, Arab, and Russian corporate types. The majority of these customers could be described as male, macho and meaning business. It's not surprising that Mr.Ittehedeh may have thought they would expect female, physically attractive, 18 to 30, single and no larger than a size 12, women to be offering drinks and dainty morsels at every request.

My answer to this case is that Miss Proud found the pool from which to recruit exceedingly small and Mr.Ittehedeh's perceived or otherwise views on gays became a paramount issue. He may well have favoured women only as a business reason and he may well not favour gays, but his stance is little different from the 1950's version of flying.

There is something to be said for the anti-discrimination laws but sometimes it gets out of hand. Not all male flight attendants are gay, by a long stretch. Not all flying executives expect to be waited upon as if Peter Stringfellow was in charge of events. Common sense leaves the plane and both sides settle down to stoking up the accusation level. So we end up with pay-offs and not a lot else.

I'm not sure many gay men would be queuing up for such a job, but neither should they be refused just because of a perception. If only all employers ran companies with an eye on the "triangle". A business relies on three parts - the customers, the employees and the shareholders being in a win-win situation and meeting at the centre. Start to pull the centre towards one part and trouble begins.

Bushes must stay to hide gay couples

What a world! The UK went to great lengths to accommodate homosexuality. What people do in private is of no concern to others, so long as it is all consensual. However, for some this is not enough. In Bristol there is a rumpus over some bushes and the gay couples who hide amongst them.

Most visitors to a popular beauty spot would welcome overgrown bushes being cut back. But the council has had to tread carefully after being told that to some members of the gay community, the dense undergrowth was something to be protected. Removing it would discriminate against the gay men who use the area for outdoor sex, campaigners claimed.

Today most people are asking why on earth they need to go outside for sex anyway. Surely they have places to go like anyone else? In any event, public displays of sexual activity are illegal in England - for any kind of sexual preference! It's what the police call "lewd activity".

The whole point here, though, is that Bristol City Council is wasting valuable time even discussing the matter. I'd say, bugger the discrimination taunt, just cut the bushes back. Why should people lawfully walking in a beauty spot have to be confronted with such stuff.

Oh, and the PC Thought Police have been at it again, I see. Last year four firefighters were disciplined for allegedly disturbing a group of men at night by shining their torches into the bushes on the Downs. After complaints that their actions were homophobic, the four senior officers from Avon Fire Service were fined and transferred to other stations.

So illegal activity is OK but the Thought Police's brand new world must stand tall? All very sad!