Harriet Harman. Simon Heffer. Together at last.

It can’t have helped that Heffer Hate Figure Number One, David Cameron, also supports the equalities bill.

I think Heffer long ago stopped attempting to make anyone sane listen to him. He’s now off in his own little hateworld, where he appears to be happy, surrounded by people as thoroughly unsatisfactory as himself.

Comment posted at Stilettoed Socialist the other day….

What blinkered, illiberal, doctrinaire meddlers like Harriet Harman will never hoist in, is that legislating for equality never achieves its objective.

The end result is always that one injustice is replaced with another.

Just one example among thousands….

Where, other than in some kind of Swiftian dystopia, would it be considered right that universities offer places to candidates with inferior grades simply because they fall into some kind of arbitrary demographic?

Please, when you talk about equality, have the decency, and honesty, to tell it how it really is.

Let’s call it polarisation from now on.

Heffer’s one of those really weird righties who look like they boil themselves. If I met him in public I’d embarass myself by staring.

Also, Simon, if you respond to any argument with the phrase “life’s not fair”, most normal human beings will conclude that (a) you’re a dick, and (b) you haven’t got an argument.

The odd thing is, a sense of fairness seems to be deeply hardwired into most humans. That Heffer apparently doesn’t have this sense implies he’s either (a) a sociopath or (b) not human.

What a dick.

“Where, other than in some kind of Swiftian dystopia, would it be considered right that universities offer places to candidates with inferior grades simply because they fall into some kind of arbitrary demographic?”

Ah, I do love this myth. You know someone’s losing an argument about equality or fairness or racism or whatnot because they just pull out this bloody line, straight out of shitthatneverhappened.txt.

Anyway. ‘There are some imperfections in this change therefore we should not bother to try’ is not an argument, especially when that change is something you strawmanned. No system will ever be entirely fair and equal and perfect, but to say that because we cannot achieve utopia we must stay at dystopia is just ridiculous. If what we do is an improvement, then that is enough, surely?

On your specific point on ‘you can’t legislate for fairness/equality’, well, yes, you can. Here’s one way in which we legislate for equality – and this one doesn’t create any sort of inequality at all, not even a justifiable one. Let’s say we make it so employers don’t get their applicants’ personal details (such as name, ethnicity, etc.) before they decide to interview. Congratulations, you just put legislation in place that makes the system fairer.

Hell, even in cases like quota-based affirmative action, while there may be individuals who lose out on the wider level you’re making the situation more equal by weighing for the ethnic and culture-based advantage some have in, say, exams. I wouldn’t agree with quota-based affirmative action, mind, but it can be in fact an improvement still.

Disproving generalisations aside, government has to play a role in reducing inequality, because without some sort of intervention it won’t happen. Maybe figures such as Harman and bills such as the Equality Bill through their action won’t eliminate inequality, but what’s better; taking some action, or just letting inequality and social division grow because of some childish utterings about how life isn’t fair and how you shouldn’t have to spend your money on the workshy lumpenproles.

But, of course, that article pulls a Godwin’s variant in the fucking first picture subtitle, so I really shouldn’t be reading too far into this. You know, because it’s just fucking stupid and whatnot.

I like this, but the conclusion is misleading:

“The only people who should logically object to fairness are those that gain from the unfairness that has always characterised Britain.”

Then it should follow that the only people who should logically object to unfairness are those that want to see Britain characterised by fairness. I think this much is true, but stops at ‘those that WANT TO’ (caps for emphasis). In this sense, I’ve little doubt in my mind that the equality bill has been drawn up with good intentions, and that Dave is just too damn clever, and so I would like to add that:

Harriet Harman doesn’t object to fairness, and wants to see Britain characterised by fairness, but her bill won’t do it, inequality is deeper rooted, “mere existence of inherited wealth” is one such example.

It might seem a trivial inclusion, but lets at least acknowledge the intention, even the bill’s remedy on does to harness inequality proper.

My last paragraph should’ve read:

It might seem a trivial inclusion, but lets at least acknowledge the intention, even if the bill’s remedy only does to harness inequality proper.

‘This works profoundly to society’s disbenefit, by allowing the mediocre to edge out those more able but still skint. Moreover, such a patent disconnect between effort and reward contributes to the alienation widely felt among the poorer sections of society.’

You slip between ‘fairness’ and what would be more correctly described as ‘merit’ throughout the OP: they aren’t remotely the same thing.

A ‘meritocratic’ society is no less unequal than one based on exploitation, or race, or sex. A ‘meritocratic’ society rewards people for attributes (innate or aquired) that are socially defined as worthy of such rewards. It has sod-all to do with ‘effort’.

A society which rewards people for effort, and for sacrifice, would be closer to ‘fairness’.

You know someone’s losing an argument about equality or fairness or racism or whatnot because they just pull out this bloody line, straight out of shitthatneverhappened.txt.

At the very least, Joseph, it’s been floated, and I suspect you know it.

Let’s say we make it so employers don’t get their applicants’ personal details (such as name, ethnicity, etc.) before they decide to interview. Congratulations, you just put legislation in place that makes the system fairer.

Excellent idea. File under imposed equality or freedom of information? We’ll make a libertarian of you yet!

well I strongly agree with this, and if any one thing is at the centre of what I think it means to be left wing, this sort of thinking is.

[I can’t stop myself from quibbling – it’s more accurate to say that the composition of the elites by initial income does not match any feasible distribution of talent according to income. It’s just wrong to say “any talent that can properly be described as inherent must, by definition, be distributed across rich and poor alike in a bell curve manner” because of course income is partially determined by talent and you also have things like assortative mating and heritability to worry about. Some very interesting work by solidly left-wing economists Bowles & Gintis on that Unequal Chances:
Family Background and Economic Success and The Inheritance of Inequality

(If there’s one book I’d like Tim Worstall to read, it’d be Sam Bowles’ excellent Microeconomics text)

@9: You seem to have a strange definition of fairness. I tend more towards the Rawlsian formulation myself…

Actually, Dunc, I think Shatterface @ 9 is making a Rawlsian point.

This post accepts too readily Heffer’s premise that fairness is essentially about meritocracy. It then says, quite rightly, that our society is far from meritocratic. That’s certainly one reason why it isn’t fair. But even if society were perfectly meritocratic, this wouldn’t suffice for fairness because, as Rawls argues, where you are in the underlying distribution of talent is itself morally arbitrary. If it is wrong for Smith to have less chances in life than Jones because of the accident of their parents’ occupation or class, it is no less wrong for them to end up with less prospects (for income, wealth etc) because they happen to be born less smart, strong, beautiful or with whatever other charcateristics the market currently values.

Very odd to see Dave Osler apparently agreeing with the likes of Brown and Mandelson that fairness is all about meritocracy.

Well Dunc/Stuart

Bear in mind that I am not a Rawlsian or a liberal of any description.

But I am currently reading ‘A Theory of Justice’ for the first time.

Meritocracy is for people who assume society *has* to be unequal in order to function but who want a ‘morally justifiable’ reason for it being so. It’s actually more insidious than other forms of inequallity because even the Left have bought into it.

It’s closer to Social Darwinism than Socialism.

@12: Yes, you’re right. It’s been a while…

Let’s say we make it so employers don’t get their applicants’ personal details (such as name, ethnicity, etc.) before they decide to interview. Congratulations, you just put legislation in place that makes the system fairer.

Great idea, but I’m not convinced it goes far enough.

To ensure that all applicants have, in reality, a fair and equal chance of getting a job, why not compel the employer to recruit by way of selection at random from a list of incognito applicants. The candidate list could be drawn up weighted in favour of minority applicants.

It is quite probable that a black bricklayer, say, will have had his development stunted by unfair socio-economic factors. He could, given the chance, be an excellent stockbroker or heart surgeon and with this sytem in place he would not be precluded from obtaining such prestigious jobs.

Now that’s fair.

Everyone forgets that the word Meritocracy was invented by Michael Young (I think) as a form of satire, not as a good way of sorting out problems.
As outlined by others above, it isn’t.
I highly recommend Young’s dystopian “The Rise of the Meritocracy” for anyone interested in this subject.

re: my last post

read this , the man himself talking about the abuse of the word “meritocracy”.

well I strongly agree with this, and if any one thing is at the centre of what I think it means to be left wing, it is this sort of world view.

[I can’t stop myself from quibbling – it’s more accurate to say that the composition of the elites by initial income does not match any feasible distribution of talent according to income. It’s just wrong to say “any talent that can properly be described as inherent must, by definition, be distributed across rich and poor alike in a bell curve manner” because of course income is partially determined by talent and you also have things like assortative mating and heritability to worry about. Some very interesting work by solidly left-wing economists Bowles & Gintis on that Unequal Chances: Family Background and Economic Success and The Inheritance of Inequality

(If there’s one book I’d like Tim Worstall to read, it’d be Sam Bowles’ excellent Microeconomics text).

Who cares ? She ‘s one bloody great reason Labour will not be elected this time round. Did they not learn from the Michael Foot fiasco.

Harriet Harman is essentially Labour’s Troll. Her purpose is to annoy the daily mail, and rally the grassroots by reminding them why they joined the labour party.

Pagar – straw man. Its reasonable that employers dont see a candidates name, ethnicity, gender etc – indeed it is standard HR practice in most organisation. They do however get to see qualifications and experience, and I doubt anybody has every seriously suggesed they don’t.

They do however get to see qualifications and experience, and I doubt anybody has every seriously suggesed they don’t.

But my point is that some candidates will have gained qualifications and experience whilst others will not. This will often be a consequence of extraneous factors not of the unqualified candidates making- social background, quality of education, natural intelligence etc.

The inexperienced candidate is less capable of doing the job only because of such circumstances which are outwith his control. That he is not of equal value to the employer is not his fault and it is therefore unreasonable he be discriminated against.

If he is it’s NOT FAIR.

We already have positive discrimination in some roles- where a poorer candidate is selected over a stronger one on grounds unrelated to their value. It’s time we followed this policy to its logical conclusion.

To give you another example, I have been doing the lottery since it started and never won a thing. But last week somebody won more than £50m on a lucky dip.

By any yardstick you care to mention, that’s NOT FAIR.

I thought socialists wanted to create a fair society where everyone was equal?????

Time to make a start, comrades.

And the trolls get upset because I call them Brownshirts . That is mild compared to the rubbish that comes from Heffer.

The thing about Conservatives is they love inequality. It is in their make up. They just love the idea of someone being worse off than them. In fact, they are never happier than when they are looking down on someone who is worse off than them. And if they can find some in total despair that is their perfect day.

Conservatives get more pleasure from some one else misfortune than they do from their own success.

Any talent that can properly be described as inherent must, by definition, be distributed across rich and poor alike in a bell curve manner.

This seems pretty obviously wrong to me. Are you really saying it’s impossible for there to be any inherent traits which are positively correlated with wealth?

It is quite probable that a black bricklayer, say, will have had his development stunted by unfair socio-economic factors. He could, given the chance, be an excellent stockbroker or heart surgeon and with this sytem in place he would not be precluded from obtaining such prestigious jobs.

Elegant.

@13

How can anyone not be a liberal?

“Any talent that can properly be described as inherent must, by definition, be distributed across rich and poor alike in a bell curve manner.”

This is the greatest piece of meaningless gibberish I’ve read today.

6. Joseph Edwards – “No system will ever be entirely fair and equal and perfect, but to say that because we cannot achieve utopia we must stay at dystopia is just ridiculous. If what we do is an improvement, then that is enough, surely?”

We are not at a dystopia. We have an excellent system as it is.

“Here’s one way in which we legislate for equality – and this one doesn’t create any sort of inequality at all, not even a justifiable one. Let’s say we make it so employers don’t get their applicants’ personal details (such as name, ethnicity, etc.) before they decide to interview. Congratulations, you just put legislation in place that makes the system fairer.”

No you haven’t. Or at least you don’t know you have. You are simply assuming that employers are discriminating against people with odd personal details. This is an utterly unjustifiable assumption. Nor does it follow that hiding such details will make one lick of difference to employment outcomes. Not to mention it is utterly impractical – how do you plan to do it? Force all job applications through a central registry? How do you stop someone writing in their cover letter “As my uncle, the Bishop of Chichester said to me once …. ” or the like?

“Hell, even in cases like quota-based affirmative action, while there may be individuals who lose out on the wider level you’re making the situation more equal by weighing for the ethnic and culture-based advantage some have in, say, exams. I wouldn’t agree with quota-based affirmative action, mind, but it can be in fact an improvement still.”

You again assume there is some ethnic or cultural based advantage in exams. This is something you need to prove, not to assume. And yes, this means taking the less qualified simply because they fall into some arbitrary demographic.

“Disproving generalisations aside, government has to play a role in reducing inequality, because without some sort of intervention it won’t happen.”

B*ll*cks. If left alone, discrimination vanishes. There is no need for the State to play any role at all. What is more we *know* that when a Government benefit is created, it creates a lobby that defends that benefit. Such programmes do not end discrimination, they entrench it as powerful lobbies are created that demand the on-going benefits.

“We are not at a dystopia. We have an excellent system as it is.”

Oh yes. Everything is just fucking brilliant, isn’t it? Have you read a newspaper in the past two years?

“If left alone, discrimination vanishes.”

Beyond hilarious. Darnit, there was no need for the American Civil War, WWII and the extension of the voting franchise after all! We could have sit back and just waited for bigots and racists to just…well…stop.

Dave @ 13: but on this point – meritocracy isn’t sufficient for justice – Rawls’s liberalism is on common ground with socialist critiques of meritocracy (e.g., Marx’s in the Critique of the Gotha Programme), so you ought to be sympathetic to Rawls’s view!

OK, I promise not to post again about Rawls on this thread. Well, I’ll try.

I rather assume that if I looked like Simon Heffer, let alone had his ghastly personality, I’d want the world to be as “fair” as possible, for fear of being exiled to a rocky outcrop somewhere and left to live on lichen so that I can’t scare the children.

Any talent that can properly be described as inherent must, by definition, be distributed across rich and poor alike in a bell curve manner.

This MIGHT (and it’s a big might) be true of the children of the rich and the poor. But surely the relative positions of rich and poor adults must owe something to differences in talent? You’re not claiming, are you, that all status differences are the result of structural inequities?

If everyone could go as far as their talents could carry them, that would be reflected in the social composition of the political elite and the legal profession and national newspaper columnists and FTSE 100 chief executives. It most obviously is not.

Are you sure not?

The political elite contains plenty of people who came from under-privileged backgrounds. John Prescott made it to deputy PM, the Home Secretary is a former postman, David Davis, David Blunkett… there’s quite a long list. The last three Tory Prime Ministers were the son of a circus acrobat, the daughter of a grocer and the son of a jobbing carpenter.

Legal profession: the same. Peter Smith, a High Court judge, was brought up by a single mum on a council estate. Several of the Supreme Court justices went to state schools. Cherie Booth QC did quite well at the Bar, didn’t she?

National newspaper columnists – Simon Heffer himself is surely a prime example of a poor-boy-made-good?

“Simon Heffer himself is surely a prime example of a poor-boy-made-good?”

I’d say he was more a prime example of a fuckstick.

30. Col. Richard Hindrance (Mrs), VC, DSO & Bar Six, KitKat – “Oh yes. Everything is just fucking brilliant, isn’t it? Have you read a newspaper in the past two years?”

So you’re a Daily Mail reader I take it?

“Beyond hilarious. Darnit, there was no need for the American Civil War, WWII and the extension of the voting franchise after all! We could have sit back and just waited for bigots and racists to just…well…stop.”

Also true. The American Civil War was not about discrimination but slavery. It is pathetic you would try to mis-use the suffering of slaves for your argument. As with the Holocaust. Bigots and racists don’t just stop. But they die and are replaced by other people who don’t give a damn. A free market punishes a lot of things including discrimination. Let to themselves, people simply stop discriminating. It is not worth it and there’s no point.

Careful about predicting bell curves. While you might assume that in a large population genes are distributed randomly with regard to the class, race or other group that doesn’t mean that talents you associate with merit follow such a curve. There may be external factors such as culture, diet or social factors involved.

Its a lot even to assume that random distribution of genes given human behaviour. Our royals have spent centuries inbreeding, for example.

Oh dear this touches on nature and nurture and opens a great big can of worms if you try to fall back on human biology.

This is best looked at as a political issue: How to make a society that allows talent to flourish wherever it arises and rewards merit, not accident of birth. Y’know. Equal Opportunities.

Legal profession: the same. Peter Smith, a High Court judge, was brought up by a single mum on a council estate. Several of the Supreme Court justices went to state schools. Cherie Booth QC did quite well at the Bar, didn’t she?

He’s done very well for himself but Peter Smith is a truly shocking judge. His judgements have ‘Court of Appeal’ written all over them.

And the Bar is about the best (or worst) example of middle class capture there is. In order to get there, you need to be prepared to take on £40-50,000 in debt – or have very rich parents. This is why the solicitors’ route is so much more diverse (and even then only up to a point – the Magic Circle is as middle class as you get).

It never ceases to amaze me how many times John Major’s background is used to argue that people from underprivileged backgrounds can rise to the top. In reality the list is quite sparse, and if you take it as a percentage of all British primeministers, it is miniscule, considering that the working-class make-up the majority of the population.
@33 One swallow still doesn’t make a summer, it is probability not possibility that counts.

“Careful about predicting bell curves. While you might assume that in a large population genes are distributed randomly with regard to the class, race or other group that doesn’t mean that talents you associate with merit follow such a curve. There may be external factors such as culture, diet or social factors involved.”

Even if the genes are randomly distributed — that doesnt mean they follow a normal (bell-shaped) distribution. Pseudoscience is always ugly and this piece is stuffed to the gills with it.

In truth, the PM was not actually stating the election phrase, “A future fair for all” the actual words he meant to use were intended as a promise to his MP’s & ministers, should he still be in power after the election, and were the end remarks of a speech concerning the “new rules” governing expence claims. They were in fact ” A future free for all “

I believe in women only list’s unless my husband is standing.