BBC: Bill set to expose gender pay gap

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8019605.stm

That wicked and wretched woman Harriett Harman is marching forward as she has done in the past with her collectivist agenda.

Many employers will be made to reveal how much male staff are paid compared with their female colleagues, under a bill being published later.

The Equality Bill aims to tackle discrimination against a range of groups including women, the elderly and those from lower social classes.

It will also make it a legal duty of public bodies in England and Wales to address social inequalities.

The Conservatives have described the plans as "class war attacks".

Minister for Equality Harriet Harman pledged the bill would help to "narrow the gap between rich and poor and make Britain more equal".     The result of this [bill] will mean that it will take longer to get out of recession and companies will be loathe to take on more employees
David Frost
British Chambers of Commerce

Ministers say the need for new measures is borne out by evidence showing that by the age of six, bright children from poor families are overtaken by less able children from wealthier homes and that people in deprived areas tend to suffer more from ill health.

The government had promised the bill, which will also ban age discrimination outside the workplace, in its manifesto before the last election.

Ministers also want to tackle the fact that - 40 years after the introduction of the Equal Pay Act - women in the UK still earn on average 23% less per hour than men.

The new bill will require companies employing at least 250 staff to publish their gender pay gaps by 2013. If too few have done so voluntarily, the government will use laws to make it happen.

It’s the usual stuff. Equality really mean sameness. The government will be expanded, the power it will have in intruding into our lives and businesses will increase.

People like Harman do not change their tune or their blinkered views of the world. A demonstration of this can be seen in her following words:

David Frost, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, will tell its annual convention on Monday that the government too often sees the answer to a problem as being more legislation.

"The result of this will mean that it will take longer to get out of recession and companies will be loathe to take on more employees," he will say.

But Ms Harman said there was "no excuse for having unfairness when times are difficult".

"The economies and societies which will prosper in the future are not those that have rigid hierarchies, where women know their place and where you can't go forward because of the colour of your skin," she said.

"That's a very backward-looking argument."

The usual rot: The gap is proof of unfairness (it is not), women have their place (they do not, what age does Harman live in?). She bangs on about race like the leftist is wont to do and then sums up her ridiculous straw-man by saying "That's a very backward-looking argument.". Yes, yes it is Harriett.

As for Mr.. Frost. I’m glad that some people get it but in all honesty this country is fucked. i consider Britain to be fascistic. A good story that was sent to me by a viewer is this:

Thought police muscle up in Britain

BRITAIN appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.

There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent.

Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution's principal tasks was "to alter people's actual psychology". Britain is not Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people's psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.

The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years' prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the "global baggage of empire" was linked to soccer violence by "racist and xenophobic white males". He claimed the English "propensity for violence" was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race were "potentially very aggressive".

In the past 10 years I have collected reports of many instances of draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political correctness.

Countryside Restoration Trust chairman and columnist Robin Page said at a rally against the Government's anti-hunting laws in Gloucestershire in 2002: "If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as you." Page was arrested, and after four months he received a letter saying no charges would be pressed, but that: "If further evidence comes to our attention whereby your involvement is implicated, we will seek to initiate proceedings." It took him five years to clear his name.

Page was at least an adult. In September 2006, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, Codie Stott, asked a teacher if she could sit with another group to do a science project as all the girls with her spoke only Urdu. The teacher's first response, according to Stott, was to scream at her: "It's racist, you're going to get done by the police!" Upset and terrified, the schoolgirl went outside to calm down. The teacher called the police and a few days later, presumably after officialdom had thought the matter over, she was arrested and taken to a police station, where she was fingerprinted and photographed. According to her mother, she was placed in a bare cell for 3 1/2 hours. She was questioned on suspicion of committing a racial public order offence and then released without charge. The school was said to be investigating what further action to take, not against the teacher, but against Stott. Headmaster Anthony Edkins reportedly said: "An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark. We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form."

A 10-year-old child was arrested and brought before a judge, for having allegedly called an 11-year-old boya "Paki" and "bin Laden" during a playground argument at a primary school (the other boy had called him a skunk and a Teletubby). When it reached the court the case had cost taxpayers pound stg. 25,000. The accused was so distressed that he had stopped attending school. The judge, Jonathan Finestein, said: "Have we really got to the stage where we are prosecuting 10-year-old boys because of political correctness? There are major crimes out there and the police don't bother to prosecute. This is nonsense."

Finestein was fiercely attacked by teaching union leaders, as in those witch-hunt trials where any who spoke in defence of an accused or pointed to defects in the prosecution were immediately targeted as witches and candidates for burning.

Hate-crime police investigated Basil Brush, a puppet fox on children's television, who had made a joke about Gypsies. The BBC confessed that Brush had behaved inappropriately and assured police that the episode would be banned.

A bishop was warned by the police for not having done enough to "celebrate diversity", the enforcing of which is now apparently a police function. A Christian home for retired clergy and religious workers lost a grant because it would not reveal to official snoopers how many of the residents were homosexual. That they had never been asked was taken as evidence of homophobia.

Muslim parents who objected to young children being given books advocating same-sex marriage and adoption at one school last year had their wishes respected and the offending material withdrawn. This year, Muslim and Christian parents at another school objecting to the same material have not only had their objections ignored but have been threatened with prosecution if they withdraw their children.

There have been innumerable cases in recent months of people in schools, hospitals and other institutions losing their jobs because of various religious scruples, often, as in the East Germany of yore, not shouted fanatically from the rooftops but betrayed in private conversations and reported to authorities. The crime of one nurse was to offer to pray for a patient, who did not complain but merely mentioned the matter to another nurse. A primary school receptionist, Jennie Cain, whose five-year-old daughter was told off for talking about Jesus in class, faces the sack for seeking support from her church. A private email from her to other members of the church asking for prayers fell into the hands of school authorities.

Permissiveness as well as draconianism can be deployed to destroy socially accepted norms and values. The Royal Navy, for instance, has installed a satanist chapel in a warship to accommodate the proclivities of a satanist crew member. "What would Nelson have said?" is a British newspaper cliche about navy scandals, but in this case seems a legitimate question. Satanist paraphernalia is also supplied to prison inmates who need it.

This campaign seems to come from unelected or quasi-governmental bodies controlling various institutions, which are more or less unanswerable to electors, more than it does directly from the Government, although the Government helps drive it and condones it in a fudged and deniable manner.

Any one of these incidents might be dismissed as an aberration, but taken together - and I have only mentioned a tiny sample; more are reported almost every day - they add up to a pretty clear picture.

Scary scary stuff.