Be Excellent To Each Other

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/ ... eople-work

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... adder.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... -wage.html

Or you can watch the bastard in action here, (fair play he did go on telly to defend himself, although this only served to make it quite clear that he is indeed, a bastard). There is a brief moment where he almost manages to sound reasonable, but then flunks it by saying he doesn't think there should be a minimum wage at all. (£5.93 an hour, which is a pittance to start with for christ's sake.)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b0120y4d/?t=17m42s (The wonders of iplayer, that'll take you straight to the right bit.)

It all comes down to 'productivity', and disabled people might not be as 'productive' as folks who don't have a disability (he's talking about both mental and physical disabilities), as such, they should apparently be able to volunteer themselves as slave labour.

I hate the underlying principle here that our worth in society, as a human being, is determined by our 'productivity', it's deeply dehumanising IMO and this twat's comments seriously made my blood boil.

I can see where he's coming from. I don't agree with his solution or venom.

Ummm, in what regard?

If you change the question to "should anyone be able to opt of the minimum wage?' How does that affect the responses?

Well then it's just a race to the bottom, isn't it?

Generally speaking you can always find someone, somewhere, who'll work any given job for less than someone who's already doing it.

In this case I felt it to be particularly pernicious to single out disabled people, almost as a foot in the door, to break the minimum wage legislation. (Which seems to be this guy's not-so-hidden agenda.)

So on a wider level, I don't think anyone should ever work for less than the minimum wage, and indeed it should be illegal for any employer to attempt and/or offer to do so, and no employee or potential employee should ever be put into the position where they can 'opt' to do so.

Exactly. The moment there is an "opt out" for the minimum wage, see how long it is before employers will require employees to "voluntarily" opt out in order to gain employment (see: recruitment agencies requiring "voluntary" opt-outs the of EU Working Time Directive).

Anyway, Davies is a verminous cunt. Doesn't really surprise me that the Tories consider people who suffer from disabilities to be sub-human, but this is pure victim-blaming. Oh, and what about the higher cost of living associating with disability, which minimum wage jobs barely cover? Sickening.

As a misguided attempt to make hiring disabled people more attractive to employers, I suspect. Right now if most people interviewed two equally qualified people, one with a noticable disability, I would think that unfortunately 90% of employers would hire the non-disabled person.

Having people opt out of the WTD actually increases the burden upon the employer.

And what Craster said.

And probably insult, laugh at, or even swear at the disabled applicant, if my experiences are the norm. I hit it lucky eventually, but the odds are always stacked against you, the prejudice is essentially hegemonic and unquestioned.

Note that Davies didn't suggest hypothetically that employers pay less but the government makes up the difference via tax credits or something (a suggestion which isn't without merits). He instead merely suggested out-and-out starvation wages for the social 'deviance' of having a disability.

This, yes. It's a difficult thing to manage without either fucking disabled people over, or fucking everyone else through positive discrimination; it'd be nice if everything was a bit more objective, but it isn't.

I'm also of the briefly considered opinion that Davies exists on the fringe of the Tory Party. His views don't seem to be terribly well represented, and I'd wager cash monies that they are made public to appeal to his core followers rather than anything substantial. Consider him a blowhard, then be pleats you didn't vote for him.

+ve discrimination only applies to women in the redundancy pool on maternity leave.

But how could the answer to this possibly be to pay disabled people less than the already derisory minimum wage and then invite them to volunteer to do so? (And really, how long would it before any unemployed person was 'invited' to make the same offer? Long term unemployed, less than the minimum wage. Rehabilitated offender, less than the minimum wage. Single mother getting back into the job market, less than the minimum wage. Had an operation and been on long term sick, less than the minimum wage etc etc ad nauseum. It's so obvious.)

I don't think the fucker was making a 'misguided' attempt to do anything, he was being a typical Tory cunt, and what Tory cunts do is fuck over the working classes in any way, shape or form that they possibly can - this wanker would probably see us back in the mills if he fucking could.

The mistake he made was being an honest Tory.

I have nothing to possibility add to that beyond "this".

…

Sorry I was responding more to Craster than I was to you, should have quoted more clearly or at least made that distinction clear.

I still don't understand what you mean by 'I can see where he's coming from' though.

I can see where he's coming from in that there's a problem that he's seeking to address - that being that employers don't want to hire disabled people. His solution is repugnant, of course.

Who actually believes for one second that he's 'seeking to address a problem' though? Do you honestly believe that man gives a flying fucking monkey bollock for disabled people in the workplace?

The problem here is the mercenary capitalist system, not disabled people, or anyone else who might not be 'first choice' in the workplace.

Human beings are reduced to units of production, and therefore assessed in terms of their 'efficiency' and 'productivity', and now with social media monitoring, our 'compliance and obedience', you know that scene in The Matrix where it shows us all plugged in like fucking batteries......

Philip Davies has done us a favour insofar as he's shown us how his type of foetid little mind actually operates, and it's not pretty.

Of course he sees a problem he wants to address. I have no doubt of course that he sees it as a problem of expenditure on disability benefits rather than one of wanting to restore equality in the workplace, but he's not just frothing for the sake of it.

Honestly, I don't see what your point is here. The guy's a cunt, but that doesn't mean he's going to insanely start gibbering to the press because, I don't know, someone in a wheelchair once ran over his dog or something.

I knew a girl that fucked a battery once. She had the time of her life. Until she was escorted from the barracks the next morning. She had no money and couldn't call a cab so had to walk home. I say 'walk', jesus christ was she in a mess. We used to go out clubbing together. Nice girl, has a house in Fowey now. And a couple of horses.

I've been avoiding reading this chap's opinions because my lad is disabled and this is the kind of ignorance that drives a girl to go dump paint over politicians.

Unless I've missed something, he's saying that disabled people would be paid the same as everyone else, but the government would contribute to their pay to make them more attractive to employ?

Not looking at the whole "equality" thing, I can't see that's bad news for disabled people?

Where are you reading that? I can't see a mention of subsidisation in the original article.





Having a job at all is good news. Only having it because you bid lowest is bad news. And yes, the same applies to business IMHO.

Agreed. A drive to the bottom on salaries helps no-one.

I... I honestly don't know.

Statement retracted

At first glance that does sound like a more sensible idea, but there's always a catch

He's doing the unpopular thing by telling it like it really is. You can have all the anti-discrimination legislation you like but the reality of the world means that a majority of employers will always pick the non-disabled applicant. In that I think he's completely right, but most politicians would never admit to the fact. Ours is a capitalist society that wants/demands value for money, so whether it's true or not, the employers won't take a risk on what they perceive to be a 'less productive' person.

The problem is, he's trying to hide the symptoms without fixing the overall problem. The aspect of this argument that I disagree on is the concept of 'positive' discrimination (and I maintain there's no such thing) that would see a less-qualified disabled person get a job primarily because they're disabled. How is that possibly fair on the person who was better for the job? It's not, it's the same wrong thinking, just in the other direction.

The ultimate goal, as per the charity featured, is getting people to realise that a lot of disabilities make you no less capable of doing a job as well as anyone else, and should therefore be considered *absolutely* equally with all other applicants. You should always employ the best person for the job based on skills/experience. That's the only way it should be.

Of course, the bit where he says 'I don't like minimum wage for anyone, it should be an agreement between employers and workers', is fucking obscene.

Do you mean in this instance or generally?

Er, generally. I don't think it was actually mentioned in the clip. Giving someone a job based on an attribute not derived from skills/experience is not the way. Doesn't matter what the attribute is, or for whatever reason. If you want more disabled people working, you have to encourage them to apply, and then have them treated equally so they've got as much chance as anyone else. Giving a disabled person (or any other perceived minority) favour over someone else is a bizarre kind of hyprocrasy.

When I think of positive discrimination, it reminds me of this story from earlier in the year -

The problem is that he is arguing against positive discrimination by introducing discrimination on cost. Basically assuming that employers will always go for the cheaper option, but hey, it isn't a human being at the end of it, just a drain on their profits.

Only for a woman on maternity leave in the pool for redundancy.

And how, exactly, does one achieve that last bit?

You have an equal opportunities policy and ensure your staff are regularly trained in it.

One thing that might help is not having our elected representatives going around announcing that people with disabilites are officially worth less, and should like it.

Or, not electing those representatives in the first place. Water under the bridge, that one.

That's the question, of course.
I'd like to think I'd treat a (clearly) disabled person the same as an able-bodied person in an interview, but I guess I won't know until it happens. To be completely honest, my gut is telling me that I probably wouldn't.

And there we have the problem. A lot of us would like to feel we wouldn't discriminate, but in the real situation who's to say we won't subconsciously rule them out.

I've worked with a lot of disabled people, as the civil service has long had a policy of inclusion, and in all cases they were perfectly capable of doing the job.

Have you eaten the HR team?

HR or not, final employing decision (for IT, obv) rests with me.
Maybe it wouldn't matter to me. Or maybe I'd be so desperate to avoid discriminating that I'd swing the other way (!).

Dunno.

You have to be painfully naive to think some cheerleading from the HR department is going to undo hiring bias against minorities. It doesn't matter how many pom-poms are applied, the sort of subtle (even subconcious) discrimination when an employer chooses between two capable candidates differentiated by a disability is insidious and invisible.

Of course positive discrimination can work (mathematically speaking) if the quota level is set at or below the proportion of capable candidates who were disadvantaged.

I suspect this is the point MaliA was making, to be fair..

When I used to do the majority of hiring for my department, I was completely unbiased.
It was pure coincidence that my part of the software development department had more women than men...

I was most excited to have two women to interview last time around.
Unfortunately, they were both shit.

We're finding it hard to find good perl devs at all. I don't think we've seen any CVs from females in ages, good or no.

How shit? I don't always blame the applicant for that - I've had job agencies try to get me to apply for jobs I'm not even remotely qualified to do.

There are generally more women in the pool to choose from in the QA/Testing world, I usually have a 50/50 split to choose from.
I expect because the job mainly involves telling people they are wrong...

My old place managed to employ some Indian chap as a Java programmer who, it turned out, had *never done any programming before* nor a programming related course, aside from something presumably completely useless in high school.

He actually lasted 3 weeks before bottling it and resigning.

Still, Java. He should have been able to pick that up in 3 days, amirite?

"Recursive function?"
Then this face:

How's the new job going, Kal?

In general, keeping busy and happy ta.
It's mainly electronics but last week I "learned" Python to do some test scripts, which was nice. Currently banging my head against a wall somewhat due to this bloody awful Arduino stuff. I guess it suits some people but not me.

That job I turned down in London had a few female applicants. Not only did they all have their qualifications in fashion, not a single one of their CVs mentioned anything to do with web stuff or technology at all. Fuck knows what sort of net they were casting for that recruitment