The Sunday Telegraph reported (also here and here) last Sunday that "The Cabinet Office, which oversees the honours process, has told Whitehall departments submitting nominations to ensure that their lists include more female and non-white candidates." It reported for example, that half of local government candidates to be awarded an honour must be women and that all Government departments had received the same order.
The UK Government in a number of posts in the Telegraph blog pages (see above) have said awards are still made on merit but that's not the point if men are 'weeded out' in the first place.
Firstly, the tone is clearly set, colour and gender are clearly more important than merit and by virtue of making nomination based on gender, there will be some men who are more qualified/deserving of an award who will not be put forward in the first place to be considered.
Secondly, for those women who deserve an award, and are there thousands, this policy will mean that some people will look at their award as being second class because 'you only received it because you were a woman'.
The clear point though is that in the UK this is another example where men are discriminated against by this Government. Any 'positive action' in favour of women discriminates against men so that men who are more qualified are passed over in favour of women who ar eless qualified. That is discrimination and in this case, some men who deserve to be considered for an honour will be overlooked solely because of their gender.
That's is what meant by equality in Britain?
Such an approach would certainly explain certain nominations of extremist feminists we have seen in recent years.
The only good aspect of this I can see is that it gives the governemtn even less excuse to give Erin Pizzey all the hours she so richly deserves (Incredibly, I believe she has absolutely none thus far!)
Posted by: John Kimble | Friday, 17 July 2009 at 03:16
Just taken the tiem to read some of the article - you've actualy misrepresented the severity of the problem. They haven't actually insisted on half of nominations being female, it's even worse than that and they want 55%
Insane!
Posted by: John Kimble | Friday, 17 July 2009 at 16:41
The honours list, having become hijacked by feminists, should be abolished.
Posted by: MIke1 | Thursday, 30 July 2009 at 20:40