Why equalities minister Harriet Harman is wrong to want to ban discrimination against northerners
So equalities minister Harriet Harman wants to introduce rules to stop inequality against people 'up North'.
She is said to be looking at how to make sure national boards of taxpayer-funded organisations are not dominated by Londoners and other southerners.
For the sake of declaring an interest I was born in Doncaster, I went to the University of Newcastle and have spent my entire professional life working in the North West (Lancashire and Liverpool).
So yes, it's fair to say that I like the North, but I've never bought into this whole North/South debate.
We all know that London gets loads more cash spent on it than other regions, but it is the capital after all and 20m people live there.
I do think it is a shame that more public bodies are not based in the North. But is legislation the answer?
The Daily Post has made much in recent times of the lack of civil servant jobs in Merseyside, and rightly. When the government promises to relocate thousands of jobs from London and then fails to deliver on the promise the issue should not merely be left to rest.
I find myself agreeing with the Conservatives who have rejected the proposals as 'patronising' and as an 'unhealthy obsession' with 'tick-box culture' at the expense of efficiency.
Is this some sort of desperate ploy to shore up votes with the Labour grassroots?
When will Labour learn that you can't just legislate and then miraculously expect the world to change?
4 Comments
Leave a comment
Dale Street Associates
David Bartlett
City editor of the Post and Echo covering politics, regeneration, and urban affairs.
Read My Posts »
If anything is patronising it is you and the Tories claiming that appointments to quangoes should be based on merit when everyone knows they are jobs for the (London) boys. Are you suggesting that Northerners are not qualified to serve on these quangoes? I am certain they are as well qualified as any southerner. It is incorrect to assume that because someone works in London that they are somehow more clever than sensible people who choose to live in the North
Any self-respecting northerner wouldn't want anything to do with unelected, unaccounatble quangoes...
Norseman,
I think you have misunderstood me. Of course I am not saying that northerners are not qualified to sit on these boards. My point is that we should not be surprised that their boards are made up from people of the south if that is where they are based. I was trying to say that more of these organisations should be based outside of London. Northerners are just as qualified and sensible as anyone else to make decisions. Some of this may be beside the point if the Tories win the next election as they have promised a bonfire of the quangos.
Having lived in Hereford for a number of years, i have decided enough is enough and have decided to move back up north. I have taken this stance because i find Herefordians not to be very intelligent with general issues. Herefordians are very insular people and beleive anything other than the truth. They have seen me as a threat and have destroyed my job prospects by inuendo.
This place is HELL on earth!!!
GET RID OF HARRIET HARPERSON" she hasn't got a clue what she is doing.