While on the subject of discrimination…

… As of course I just have been, speaking about maternity rights, I wanted to highlight this individual example of how unbending bureaucracy and rigid adherence to rules, not the needs of human beings, will cause not only distress, but also risks forcing a brilliant young person to think differently about himself.

My friend’s son, now aged 12, started at secondary school in September, like thousands and thousands of other eleven year olds. Equally, like thousands and thousands of eleven year olds, the school’s about eight miles away so he has transport arranged to take him to and from the school. He has Downs Syndrome, but thanks to his own attitude and that of his parents, this is not the defining factor of his life. Sadly I have not met the lad in person, but from Facebook posts from his mum one thing that’s very clear is that the defining factor of his life is all the things he can and does do – drama, hanging out with friends, learning at school – which are identical to those thousands and thousands of eleven year olds I referenced previously.

For very good reasons, as a result of a risk assessment he travels to school in a minibus, on which for the moment there are no other kids, simply because no other kids in that area right now need it.

So there’s lots of room in that minibus.

On the main school bus, there is usually sufficient room so that when one of the kids travelling on that bus wants to bring a friend home, they pay £2, and that friend travels as well. So my friend’s son wanted to pay his £2 and bring a friend home with him, too. Like everyone else. And the answer from the council was – you’ve probably guessed it – no. Because apparently no-one else is insured to travel in this spacious transport option bar my friend’s son and the driver. It is – this makes me so angry on their behalf – ‘against policy’.

So this lad who never considers himself disabled or different, because of the work his parents and others have done to make this so, now at the age of eleven, only eleven, is being told by the system that unlike everyone else he cannot invite a friend back from school, because he is ‘different’ to the others. Previously, why would he think that? Now, because of their blinkered actions, thoughtless discrimination and refusal to look at the circumstances of an individual person, the risk is that ‘different’ – negatively – is how he will start to feel.

It is horrible and it is wrong and it is thoughtless. It is unthinkable that a child able to manage happily in a secondary school with all his peers is suddenly told that actually, usual rules do not apply. I wanted to highlight this firstly to say to his inspiring parents: anyone who thinks ‘people first’ is outraged by this treatment of your son, and you are right to fight this all the way, you will find waves of support wherever you turn.

But secondly to highlight that we – collectively, including local councils and other public bodies who I appreciate are constrained by budgetary and other requirements – must think first about the effect that rules and regulations have on people before these rules and regulations are set in stone. Ask questions, consider scenarios, talk to service users… Just look at the human element before you apply a cost to the service you deliver. As a country we run a risk of becoming utterly enslaved to available budget coupled with risk aversion (I refer to my previous post for a macro application of this principle) and every individual has a responsibility to apply ‘people first’ to their own activities in order to counteract this insidious trend.

Maternity pay discrimination – the tip of the iceberg

Oh joy. At the moment there is such a plethora of rampant lunacy being spouted by people in the public eye that I scarcely know to where I should turn my attention.

This week however I believe the winner (to date – no chickens being currently counted) is Godfrey Bloom MEP, and his comment: “No self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age”.

An excellent blog on the full comment is here in The Spectator, written by Isabel Hardman.

Now, I only want to focus on two things. Firstly, Mr Bloom discriminates against one small group in society in this way, when it is actually impossible to do so for the following reason. Is there any way to identify who is going to need to take significant time off, for a plethora of often terrible, tragic reasons? No. So discriminating against women like this is not only offensive in terms of the skills, experience and capability being confined to the scrapheap because of a ‘maybe’; it is also bonkers, because there is absolutely no way to tell who will actually cost your business cold hard cash by their unexpected absence. And to look at it one way, at least with maternity leave you have some time to prepare for what’s going to happen. There is a good reason why it is illegal to ask someone about their future baby life choice plans in interview. Would any employer think about saying “are you planning on having a massive car crash while you work for me?” or “do you reckon you’re likely to have a stroke within first 12 months of working with us?”. Should we start asking about how many hours’ sleep a night people have, as part of the interview process? No? Well maybe we should. Being overtired leads to a whole range of risk factors. Claiming that you won’t employ child bearing age women to ‘mitigate risk’ is discrimination, pure and simple. There are an awful lot of more, um, risky risks to keep an eye on here.

And secondly, let’s be practical for one small moment. No matter how you cut it, it wasn’t ever an option for M to take the mat leave on my behalf, now was it, yet we both wanted the children. So let’s say I was a bloke and everything else was exactly the same – background, experience, achievements, even the penchant for unnatural hair colouring – would that make me as a man a better employee, or simply less of a risk? It’s the latter; therefore it is discrimination, as the deciding factor is dictated by circumstance not skill. I feel very lucky that both my maternity leaves were taken while I worked for a truly enlightened boss. Or maybe he was just being fair, and it is the alternative ways that many other employers react that make him appear enlightened.

Parental leave – where either parent can take the time off – will make things easier on the individuals taking the leave to decide who and when, supporting both careers (allegedly), but oooh that’s a UKIP quandary then. Because shouldn’t that as a result mean that men of any age ought to be viewed as an employment risk, since a man at any stage of life could become a dad, and take the time off.

I read Richard Godwin’s Farage interview in the Evening Standard on Monday, and was chilled by UKIP’s current lack of a deficit reduction policy, and apparent lack of ability to deliver one. “In October, we have to put down a plan of how we would deal with the deficit — and that is going to be one of the biggest challenges we’ve had to face,” said Farage blithely. Perhaps UKIP should concentrate on working out this, rather than trying to dictate demented business policy.