Changing Times

It’s just not good enough.

I asked for your assistance and look what happened.

Nothing.

Maybe you’re far too busy with other matters to consider my needs? Well, that doesn’t help me does it? What am I supposed to do now? It’s too late to apologise, you had your chance. I’m taking matters into my own hands, in a vigilante approach to debating.

I propose a democratic process. Where we are all free to join with like-minded folk and stand for election. The biggest number of like-minded folk from one particular group gets to be in charge for a few years. They get to decide what rules the rest of the country should live by. As well as other pretty neat stuff.

They could set these rules based on promises made before the election. Or, they could base them on their own morals and beliefs. Or on what the people who voted for them want. Too boring? They could try setting them based on whatever the flavour of the month is in the popular press. That would work. After all, no-one in the Fourth Estate has an agenda.

Now for the tricky bit. Who do you get to enforce these rules?

As we’ve already agreed, you need to have someone. If you’re going to start from scratch you need to get it right. That means the first thing you need is a recruitment policy. This will probably be beyond the capabilities of a single lady. No matter how nice she is.

You’ll need a whole Directorate for this one. Of course, they’ll need to set their own rules. To give them a bit of a leg up I thought I’d make a suggestion for part of their policy:-

No job applicant will be treated less favourably than another on the grounds of sex, marital status, race, colour, ethnic origin, nationality, religion, politics, disability, age, social position, sexual orientation or is disadvantaged by conditions or requirements which cannot be shown to be justified.*

Seems pretty inclusive to me. You wouldn’t want stereotypical robots would you? Those that conform to your ideals? That would exclude many people. It wouldn’t be fair.

Say someone who supported one of the more extreme political parties wanted to join? It wouldn’t be right to reject them for this. It would be against policy anyway. Wouldn’t it?

You may get one or two problems with whatever recruitment policy you decide on.

For instance, there could be an expensive, government funded report that highlights errors. Like the 2001 National Census. I’m not talking about the under representation of those of us in the Jedi religion. It’s much worse than that.

We’re institutionally sexist.

Well, we must be. The census says so. Over 51% of the country is female. Yet, only 20% of the Police are of the same sex. How can we mere blokes be expected to understand the needs of the fairer sex? How can we effectively engage with them? How can we provide a visible presence that lets them know we’re on their side? How can we offer practical advice on shoe/frock combinations?

Of course we can’t. I struggle with this every time I go to a ‘disturbance in private premises’ call. My first instinct is to sit down with the bloke and put the world to rights over a beer. I have to fight this urge, to make it look like I’m interested in what the little lady has to say.

That would be the first problem I’d address if I were you.

You could set targets. We like targets.

The more unachievable the better.

(*courtesy of South Yorkshire Police)