Thames Valley Police lost an Employment Tribunal this week, despite the force's efforts to combat racism and a zero tolerance approach they racially discriminated against three officers. How?
A tragedy - in the classical sense of a rock meeting a hard place. Replayed over and over when mortals try to do good and right past evils. Thanks for your generous and sober analysis of yet another replay of this phenomenon. At an evening of sketches, long ago at my university, I recall an undergrad (to become a famous comedian) standing up at a stage podium to deliver, in cod-German accent, a speech about what "is now being done about people who'd served in the Nazi regime"; how the courts were working under new "focused legislation" to track down "these people" who are "everywhere"; how kindergartens, schools, colleges and universities were at last refining their recruitment and personnel policies to assist the state in recognising the "traits", often well-hidden, of "so-called" ex-Nazis; how businesses and local authorities and the media were winkling out "the guilty" at every level, working "fearlessly with discipline and efficient intelligence", to identify "the foulness in our midst...these people who infect our new Germany" with their "diseased sub-human thoughts". As the sketch continued the actor's initially sober voice grew heated. His words came faster, adjectives amplified and given deeper emphasis with rigid hand and manic arm gestures. The sympathetic and virtuous figure who'd begun the speech had slowly transformed, growing grimmer, glistening, reddening, and in a grand finale, showing a face contorted into a mask of enthusiastic - almost joyful - rage; flecks of spittle reaching the front row of the audience; even a little foam at the mouth - near apoplexy, rage and hate personified "there will at last be a final solution to this problem!". The silence before the applause was deafening.
All it needs is for someone to add the individuals responsible for the discrimination to the claim. If you sue not only the employer but those who made the decision, as you can for discrimination and it might concentrate minds. This was a dreadful decision ut sadly unsurprising these days.
A tragedy - in the classical sense of a rock meeting a hard place. Replayed over and over when mortals try to do good and right past evils. Thanks for your generous and sober analysis of yet another replay of this phenomenon. At an evening of sketches, long ago at my university, I recall an undergrad (to become a famous comedian) standing up at a stage podium to deliver, in cod-German accent, a speech about what "is now being done about people who'd served in the Nazi regime"; how the courts were working under new "focused legislation" to track down "these people" who are "everywhere"; how kindergartens, schools, colleges and universities were at last refining their recruitment and personnel policies to assist the state in recognising the "traits", often well-hidden, of "so-called" ex-Nazis; how businesses and local authorities and the media were winkling out "the guilty" at every level, working "fearlessly with discipline and efficient intelligence", to identify "the foulness in our midst...these people who infect our new Germany" with their "diseased sub-human thoughts". As the sketch continued the actor's initially sober voice grew heated. His words came faster, adjectives amplified and given deeper emphasis with rigid hand and manic arm gestures. The sympathetic and virtuous figure who'd begun the speech had slowly transformed, growing grimmer, glistening, reddening, and in a grand finale, showing a face contorted into a mask of enthusiastic - almost joyful - rage; flecks of spittle reaching the front row of the audience; even a little foam at the mouth - near apoplexy, rage and hate personified "there will at last be a final solution to this problem!". The silence before the applause was deafening.
All it needs is for someone to add the individuals responsible for the discrimination to the claim. If you sue not only the employer but those who made the decision, as you can for discrimination and it might concentrate minds. This was a dreadful decision ut sadly unsurprising these days.