Sunday, March 22, 2009

Trevor Phillips Presides Over an Unhappy (& Bloated) Ship

There are some rather unhappy people at the Equalities & Human Rights Commission, it appears. Trevor Phillips is presiding over a far from happy ship. Not only has his chief executive resigned, but now the Director of Strategy, Patrick Diamond is clambering back aboard the sinking ship that calls itself Number Ten Downing Street. Gaby Hinsliff wrote it up yesterday HERE.

It seems that Nicola Brewer had great concerns about the leadership of Trevor Phillips, highlighted by his moonlighting as an adviser on equality issues for Channel 4. I'm told it was at her urging that the EHR Commission Board told Phillips to cease his consultancy. Phillips and Diamond were also reported to have clashed over Diamond's ideas for the future of the Commission.

I reckon there's a lot more to come out about what is going on there. Should any unhappy personnel of the EHR Commission want to unburden themselves, my email address is at the top of the blog.

All this raises the question of what will happen to the EHR Commission under a Tory government. It has a huge staff and a huge budget. According to a House of Lords written answer in December 2008, the Commission has a staff of ... wait for it... 409, with a further 35 being recruited! What on earth do they do all day? I dread to think what its annual budget is. Anyone know?

41 comments:

Wrinkled Weasel said...

Oh come on Iain, useless members of your actual minorities like David Lammy have to be found jobs somewhere. Where is your sense of charity?

Some of my best friends are one legged black lesbians.

Alan Smart said...

Bloated, unhappy and new Labour - the words a synonomous with each other

And Trevor - move over - Give someoby else an opportunity - you've hogged that limelight for 25years or more now.

You sound tired, from another age

AD627 said...

Why not abolish all equality legislation? This would free up tens of thousands of HR muppets, lawyers and lobbyists to go and do something productive. Any business dumb enough to actually discriminate on grounds other than merit would be punished by the market since it would not be employing the best employees.

Oldrightie said...

Public sector could face a failure by Government to pay their salaries. Then watch the implosion!

Dave H said...

Spending money freely on minority issues is a symbolic way of establishing bona fide PC credentials, like burning a candle towards a chosen Saint.

God forbid any investigation into what it actually achieves.

At a time of recession I don't think think Joe Public would be very happy if they found out.

Salmondnet said...

According to their business plan their provisional budget for 2008/9 was £70.3 million. Perhaps someone could convert that into Shreds.

Lallands Peat Worrier said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lallands Peat Worrier said...

I know a few coves in the Commission myself. Their comments echo the theme you raise, Iain. Bunnies radiant with pleasure they are not.

It is my understanding that when these high profile departures were announced, staff were obliged to gather around their monitors and observe and absorb in silence the information from on high.

On a cheekier note, there is also a touch of scuttlebutt that a certain Scottish local authority with be getting a knock on their doors from the EHR Commission shortly by dint of their unequal employment policies...

neil craig said...

A good rule of thumb seems to be about £100,000 per public sector employee which would make their budget £41 million. In this case I would tend to bet higher since they are high visibility & what is called centraly located (ie in that big city in the south east).

If he has been at it for 25 years that is 40% of the cost of an aircraft carrier http://www.strategypage.com/militaryforums/9-743.aspx
or, more usefully, about twice the cost of an X-Prize to get a fleet of orbital space planes.
http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2008/08/orbit-for-price-of-flight-to-australia.html

Lester Holloway said...

Wrinkled Weasel, your comment that "some of my best friends are one legged black lesbians" is very offensive and not at all humourous.

And your comment that "useless members of your actual minorites like David Lammy have to be found jobs somewhere" betrays a nasty and patronising attitude to a whole section of society that is as intelligent and able as anyone else.

Lester Holloway said...

Its £70m by the way.

Martin S said...

The problem is not that people get jobs because they are of the 'right' skin colour, but because they get jobs because they are mates of someone or someone's lover. Or have the 'right' views.

neil craig said...

Thanks Lester. So, as I guessed, they are indeed pocketing more than average. That comes to 2/3rds of an aircraft carrier or a space fleet & a prototype solar power satellite.

Does one need a humour lobotomy not to appreciate what useless parasites this lot are?

Simon Gardner said...

The first thing I’d do is abolish all the religious provisions of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006.

It was always a nonsense and that should reduce some of the problem immediately.

Bird said...

What do they do all day? Wait for calls from victims of white racism and rebut claims of black crime and educational underacheivement.
To improve race relations? Dismantle the race relations industry.
I remember reading some years ago that the Commission was 50% black and 50% Asian. And they weren't on speaking terms.
Bin them.

Lester Holloway said...

Calls to abolish the 'race relations industry' have been around since the old Race Relations Board (predecessor to the CRE) was set up. Thing is, we'd have never made the progress we have in the intervening 40 years if we'd listened to those critics then. If any of you are asking "what progress?", just ask a member of an ethnic minority who was living in Britain 40 years ago.

How revealing that the old record of those who think everything is hunky-dory and there is no need for any organisation to tackle discrimination, has never failed to change in the last 40 years.

Mirtha Tidville said...

Lester old son, this will come as shock to you....there`s lots of peeps in this country who find your views not only unfunny but very offensive as well.....pipe smoke put!!!

Lester Holloway said...

Budget-wise £70m was the INTENDED budget of the CEHR when it was being set up. I have no idea what they are actually spending. If they are still recruiting staff, I'm guessing they are spending less than whatever their eventual budget was.

Lester Holloway said...

Mirtha Tidville, my views were not intended to be funny. If you find them offensive, all I can say is that you're on the right blog.

Desperate Dan said...

In these straitened times when we all have to forego unnecessary luxuries and tighten our belts until we've paid off Gordon's debts, it seems fairly obvious that the Commission for Racial Equality (or whatever they call themselves these days) should be disbanded until further notice. There are at least another trillion charities, trusts, pressure groups, encounter groups, mentors and black/Asian associations of one sort or another to fill the gap. The bigger the cull the greater the saving.

Wrinkled Weasel said...

Lester Holloway. My remarks were intended to be offensive. Thanks for the positive affirmation.

Tokenism is wrong, wrong, wrong. Peeps should get jobs on merit, not on skin colour. There are a lot of black people in jobs because they are black. It's crap and it stinks like crap and I for one don't want to pay for it. I am not a racist, I am a free man. I believe in equality, not gerrymandering.

You are probably in a minority of one on this blog, so well done for being so brave.

The Grim Reaper said...

It's quite amusing to watch all these rats desperately trying to find a ship which isn't sinking.

Lester Holloway said...

Well done Mr Dan. You've successfully solved 0.0007% of our one trillion debt, and elminated the only statutory organisations aimed at creating a fairer society. You deserve a prize.

Simon Gardner said...

Wrinkled Weasel said... “Peeps should get jobs on merit.”

And yet they don’t. [US-Slang]Go figure.[/US-Slang]

Lester Holloway said...

Wrinked Weasel, one of the great contradictions of life and why those who say they believe everyone should be promoted on merit rarely question why this is not happening in practice.

If people were promoted on merit alone, I'd be the first to say abolish the Commission for Equality and Human Rights.

Bert Rustle said...

Lester Holloway March 22, 2009 6:46 PM wrote ... we'd have never made the progress we have in the intervening 40 years if we'd listened to those critics then. If any of you are asking "what progress?", just ask a member of an ethnic minority who was living in Britain 40 years ago. ...

Ask a member of the indigenous majority who was living in Britain 40 years ago.

Unknown said...

How anyone can sit on their arse all day doing something so utterly pointless is quite beyond me.

And why we pay for these bloody non productive and pointless quangos is even more bizarre!

JP said...

A budget of £70,300,000 and 409 employees (both figs rising). That's £171,882 per employee. I doubt any serious cut could be made whilst we remain in the EU (the same with the health and safety industry).

Desperate Dan said...

"You've successfully solved 0.0007% of our one trillion debt"

Every little counts. It all adds up you know.

Lester Holloway said...

Jonthan, that's £1.19 per year for every citizen. Less than the cost of three walnut whips per year.

As Norman Lamont might say, for equality that's a price worth paying.

strapworld said...

This is one quango that Cameron should abolish. It perpetuates racial tension!

Scary Biscuits said...

Lester, I don't normally agree with ad hominem attacks, but you really are a humourless, miserable, stuck-in-the-mud old git.

Anybody who is against racism can't possibly be in favour of the CRE. It's not just the waste of money; it's that it gives ordinary people who just want to work together a bad name. None of the progress in race relations has anything to do with the CRE. The money spent would be better given back to taxpayers who could perhaps create real jobs with the money.

Trumpeter Lanfried said...

Four hundred and nine and still recruiting.

WHAAAAAAAT?

I can't believe it. A bureaucracy totally out of control.

(Deafening silence from the Tories, as usual.)

Martin S said...

But in the meantime, this is how ordinary people are surviving. By sorting a holiday for £15.00.

Whilst Quangocrats jet all over the place at our expense!

Lester Holloway said...

Scary Biscuits said: "None of the progress in race relations has anything to do with the CRE."

Untrue, the 2000 Race Relations (Amendment) Act was largely the result of the CRE's work under Gurbux Singh. This law seeks to move the emphasis from addressing not just negative discrimination, but positive promotion of good community relations.

It produced lots of good reports in the 80s and 90s but most of this was ignored by the Conservative government that wanted to abolish the CRE but ultimately bottled it.

The new Commission for Equality and Human Rights had a big part to play in the new Equalities Bill.

Personally I think the CRE would have been more effective if its chairman during the Tory years had been Trevor Phillips, and the chairman during Labour had been Herman Ouseley. Obviously it was the other way around! But anyway, just a personal theory!!

Wrinkled Weasel said...

I agree that people of ethnicity, sexual orientation, blah, blah,should be appointed on merit. In fact, I go further and say that discrimination of this type should be challenged vehemently, on a personal basis. That means that if I think someone is discriminating on racist terms I will challenge them, and believe me, they get a f*ck's site worse in real life than some of the objects of my displeasure on here.

What I do not agree with is quangos, gravy trains and glib shows of political correctness at our expense, together with vast sums of public money being sunk into a black hole for political reasons. The Equalities and Human Rights Commission is a pardigm of nanny state interference in the affairs of private individuals.

That makes me a libertarian, not a racist sympathiser.

Devil's Kitchen said...

According to the answer given here...

"The [Equality and Human Rights] Commission has an overall budget for the six months from 1 October 2007 until 31 March 2008 of £30 million."

Nice work if you can get it...

DK

DespairingLiberal said...

I wonder why we aren't discussing the chaos in Tory economic policy right now, with Ken Clarke effectively taking control of tax policy from George Osborne?

A lot of the Tory blogs seem strangely silent on the subject, although it is on the front page of almost every media outlet this morning. Odd.

cassandra said...

There are plenty of parasites who can only survive with gravytrain nonjobs like the race(ist)commission and its generous funding, the whole purpose was to buy off trouble makers and hitch them upto to gravytrain, the race(ist)industry is owes its miserable parasitic existence to grubbing up examples of racism, the cynical expolitation of immigrants is nothing short of a crime.
Power corrupts doesnt it, power gained is never given up and the result is the grubby and dishonest picking at open sores never allowing healing to justify their thier existence, in their eyes they see racism everwhere because their jobs depend on it, cushy nonjobs need victims and where victims dont exist they are faked/created!
The British people have been demonized and attacked by these useless bloated parasites for far too long, the race(ist)commission thrives on jelousy and the creation of scapegoats, too lazy or stupid to get a job on your own merits? tough luck..... unless you happen to be the right colour, then come on up, its not your fault you are a victim of the evil and racist native inhabitants, roll up roll up all the victims of whitey, its never your fault if you have the right skin colour, want a top job but cant read or cant get out of bed? as long as you are the right type of victim with the right colour skin it doesnt matter!
Blame shifting and scapegoating, demonizing the native inhabitants to gain advantage and power, manipulation of a powerbase to invent more cases of supposed racism that creates more anger which in turn gives more power to the race(ism)industry a veritable eternal cash'N'power machine, never mind that the real victims of this race(ist)industry the native majority are getting ever more angry and that their anger will one day boil over, as long as the short term gravytrain leeps on running the race(ist)commissars care not a jot for the conflict they are actively stoking up.

jailhouselawyer said...

I recently approached the Equality and Human Rights Commission to ask what it intended to do about convicted prisoners human right to vote and the government refusal to amend the law.

The EHRC replied, in effect, that it would sit on the fence. Isn't that what guard posts did in Nazi concentration camps?

neil craig said...

I think Lester is being very optimistic if he thinks that because the budget given to them is £71 million they are likely to have spent less. Normal experience suggests that government goes over budget a lot more often than they come in under.

That means over 25 years it would be, inflation adjusted, about £2 billion. That would give us a Moonbase. Or 83 km of automated overhead monorail, from the M25through central Londo & out as far as Heathrow, at international prices http://www.swedetrack.com/eflwa14.htm#2
though probably nearer 8.3 at UK prices.

Or 3 nuclear power stations, again at international prices.

Incidentally £70 million is not 0.00007% of our £1 trillion debt it would be 0.00007 or 0.007% but this is mixing the apples of total debt with the oranges of annual debt. It is 0.04% of the £180 billion annual deficit Labour is running up this year. That Labour supporters don't believe in making even such small sacrifices explains exactly why we have that deficit.

I wonder if Trevor Philips would have his job if it had been allocated without racial discrimination. (Well OK I don't)