Equality for All. The Right to Be Bullied, Courtesy of Islington Council.
Back in 2009, in the bad old days of daft legislation (sic), one of my favourite quango’s, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, launched its latest brain dead salvo.
They decreed that in order to stop the bullying and discriminatory behaviour towards those whose sexual orientation was different:
The Equality Bill will introduce a new single public sector equality duty. For the first time, public authorities will have the responsibility to ensure that their services are properly meeting the needs of every part of the population – including lesbian, gay and bisexual people. It will mean a significant shift in culture.
All well and good. In order to ascertain how many people in each area were liable to be bullied or subject to homophobic discrimination, it was considered essential that local councils should know who was at risk of this treatment. Naturally there was an app law for that.
Instead of assuming that they are meeting different people’s needs, authorities will need to gather evidence and undertake analysis to be sure that they are. […] When it comes to sexual orientation, the state lacks the basic facts. There isn’t even a robust figure on how many lesbian, gay and bisexual people there are. Government works on the basis of 5 to 7 per cent of the population. That’s a margin of uncertainty of more than a million people. Not good enough.
There were doubting naysayers at the time, who expressed anxiety that such confidential information could land up in the wrong hands.
However, the fact that LGB people feel that they can’t be open about their sexual orientation in their local neighbourhood, that LGB students still experience unacceptably high levels of bullying, and that LGB people would not even consider certain jobs for fear of other people’s reaction, is a worrying sign that prejudice and discrimination still limit people’s choices and chances in life. […] Some people fear that they will be forced to reveal personal information they regard as private; many are concerned that it will fall into the wrong hands. Those are understandable anxieties.
Perfectly correct anxieties, it turns out. What did Islington council do with this sensitive information once it had got its hands on it?
Town hall officers managed to leak the names, addresses, relationship status, gender, ethnicity, religion and sexual preferences of 2,400 people re-housed by the council.
The highly-sensitive dossier of supremely private information was freely accessible to the public for a full 19 days, from the WhatDoTheyKnow website as a result of a Freedom of Information request.
I understand that this report is now freely available on several bit.torrent sites, for downloading by any interested party. A prize to whoever spots the first tort launched at Islington council for revealing exactly which of their citizens were re-housed for reasons of sexual orientation or religion……
Strewth.
July 30, 2012 at 23:28
-
The Equality Bill will introduce a new single public sector
equality duty. For the first time, public authorities will have the
responsibility to ensure that their services are properly meeting the needs of
every part of the population – including lesbian, gay and bisexual people. It
will mean a significant shift in culture.
A shift in culture is a long and slow evolutionary process. Legislation
won’t achieve this but it will add to a growing body of resentment amongst
those who were happy with their culture as they understood it to be.
- July 28, 2012 at 02:43
-
Joe public you surely mean that most discriminated group – white ,
anglosaxon. protestant, heterosexual , left handed ( all doors are on the
wrong way roiund), tall ( bump – ouch), mature ( ie old), hair challenged and
suspicious ( ie ‘who you looking at’) . With sore feet.
- July 27, 2012 at 23:09
-
I wonder how many WASPHM* people Islington have devoted resources to?
*White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, Hetero-Sexual, & Married
- July 27, 2012 at 21:27
-
“managed to leak the names, addresses, relationship status, gender,
ethnicity, religion and sexual preferences of 2,400 people re-housed by the
council”
And why not? Am I not entitled to know the full details of people who are
sticking their thieving hands into my pocket?
- July 27, 2012 at 18:47
-
The problem, yet again, is councils being given things to do courtesy of
the handwringers and opportunists in the Westminster Dream
Factory.
Logically just another box to be ticked with the minimum expense
and committment; political objectives met, not many dead.
Where it goes
dangerously wrong is when’issue’ councillors do not exercise balanced
judgement and are diverted from the usual activities of maxing expenses and
doing favours for friends.
It could be worse.
My local council is
obsessed with having big supermarkets everywhere.
- July 27, 2012 at 18:22
-
I’m confused – if they really are a community, surely they live near each
other already?
- July 27, 2012 at 17:55
-
Ah, Social Engineering, the most unstable element in the mix with
consequencies seldom forseen. Add it at your peril.
- July 27, 2012 at 15:02
-
Strewth indeed.
Have Islington Council designated a specific street to rehouse LGBT people
together, so that they can enjoy the feeling of being part of a community?
Named Queer Street, perhaps?
On a more serious note, what happens if people (perfectly reasonably, in my
view), when quizzed about their private lives, tell council officials to get
knotted and mind their own business?
- July 27, 2012 at 16:24
-
Ooh, you’re SO FUNNY.
-
July 27, 2012 at 16:41
-
It does seem to be the logical conclusion of all this officious
prod-nosing. Why it doesn’t occur to said busy-bodies that bullying can
occur among such ‘communities’, and that there are probably far more
people of any sexual persuasion who don’t bully others than do, is beyond
me.
There’s an old quote to the effect that any Englishman has only to open
his mouth and speak to incur the utter contempt of some others that really
encompasses it all. Bullying to the point of harassment and outright
criminality should be prosecuted, but is it really the duty of a council
to be engaged in social engineering? Especially when the unintended
consequence (resulting from rank incompetence) is the open publication of
people’s very personal information?
- July 27, 2012 at
16:43
-
July 27, 2012 at 16:55
-
You are right that there should be prosecutions, but do you think
that the families of those convicted will be any kinder to those
“victims” who have stood up for themselves and brought them about?
Sometimes the best solution is to get those on the receiving end out of
trouble, and that is not social engineering, but simple care and
protection.
Gay people can and do feel part of a wider community when they can go
home and not have bricks through their windows, fireworks through their
letterboxes or dogshit smeared over their front doors.
-
July 27, 2012 at 17:34
-
Quite – but non of that requires the routine recording of peoples’
personal information. There are also many people not in ‘the LGBT
community’ who suffer bullying and anti-social behaviour, and they
deserve equal attention from council housing departments.
Comments are closed.
{ 13 comments }