Friday 13 March 2015

Nigel Farage on Discrimination Laws

From the BBC

Mr Farage told the BBC his remarks, recorded last autumn, had been "wilfully misinterpreted", saying he was talking about nationality not race.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today Programme he said he was making the point that employers should be able to discriminate in favour of British workers.

Is there actually any demand out there for this? I challenge anyone to find a case of a company that hired a Pole but wished they could have hired an English person. How would you even get to that situation?

We already have an advantage - if I sit down 2 programmers, one from Poland and one from the UK with equal skills and experience that both seem to test OK, I'd hire the one from the UK because communication would be better with the person in the UK. You're not going to have language difficulties.

What's Farage's imaginary situation here? That an employer sits a Pole and a Brit down, and the Pole is a whiz programmer, and the Brit is a bit average, but the employer would want to hire the Brit over the Pole because of Queen and Country?

3 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

"What's Farage's imaginary situation here?"

Good question, not even he knows that.

Why didn't he just say "We are going to tear up all these laws about political correctness and quotas, we want employers to employ who they think best"?

He didn't say that because then employers would say "Thanks Nigel, does that mean we can ship in a load of foreigners, who are either better skilled or will accept lower pay than British workers?"

So all his situations are highly imaginary.

Lola said...

It's electioneering. NF has cottoned onto The Prime Mentalists 'British Jobs for British Workers' meme and has turned it back on New Labour. He's after the NL vote.

However, in one sense he is really on to something. The discrimination laws and Harmans appalling Equalities Act are some of the most egregious bits of social engineering that give opportunity to bureaucrats to capitalise on vexatious claims by similarly opportunistic con-persons.

I was talking to an FCA apparatchik the other day about the Public Interest Disclosure Act that is being exploited by disgruntled ex-employees in increasing their chances of success of a dismissal claim against a former employer on the basis that they were let go because they were about to / had made a public interest disclosure.

Given that he might capture fed up employers and fed up 'British Workers', this might be very clever electioneering indeed.

More worryingly you should have Edie Mayers NF hatchet job on the 'neutral' and 'balanced' BBC yesterday evening.

Bayard said...

"I challenge anyone to find a case of a company that hired a Pole but wished they could have hired an English person."

What better electioneering pledge than one giving people the right to do something they will either never want to do or already do anyway?