Define: 'Fair and open competition'

[r0lan6]

I agree, particularly when you look back at our former Labour government's meddling with our education system. They wanted universities to positively discriminate against middle to upper class students!? I thought the whole point of higher education was to select according to ability? Of course this would favour the more abled families who would typically send their children to highly reputable private schools, but isn't that where they should have tackled the problem, and not to instead indirectly endorse positive discrimination?

[DeadBase]

...the more abled families who would typically send their children to highly reputable private schools, ...

Can an expensive school really polish an intellectual turd?

[r0lan6]

Now thats a whole new debate! But if we look at the empirical evidence, you will find the majority of the top performing schools within our humble league tables to be derived from private schools. Of course subjectively in answer to your question I would have to go for the nurture argument.

[eggopp]

I'm sure positive action gives assistance to those from minority groups to help them in work applications etc. The wording on this one says you can only apply if; not you are encouraged to apply etc. I work for a public body and we only use the encourage one when advertising posts within the body.

Yes me too... BUT.. does the ethnic minority form that you stick in an envelope seperatly actually get looked at witht he application? or do you elude to ethnicity in the application questions?

Otherwise how would anyone know until you arrive for interview.?

[Simon-JG-hr]

We could always just draw names out of a hat. Statistics would dictate that it is likely that the work-place would roughly reflect the country... Of course, you may have people doing things that they are completely incapable of doing though...

Reminds me (a little) of some idiot's comments on Jeremy Vine's show a few weeks ago. The chap in question said that the armed forces should be almost exactly representative of the UK's population. Now, there are a fair few ex/current members of the forces here, I want the armed forces to be made up of the best - I don't want to be in a damage control situation on a ship, or a contact in Afghanistan and not have someone next to me who is there for any other reason than being amongst those deemed capable of performing.

Wow... this thread's gone off at a tangent. As is the way I suppose.

[G-man]

I think its a crying shame that we the people who's fore Fathers blazed the trails to our governments only for us to be locked out. If a person has all the qualities for the job then he or she should get that appointment to it. If I were a minority I would feel like a turd taking a job that was handed to me because of anything short of knowledge.
My .02

[cohibaIV]

Ok, I will look like an ass.... BUT! What is a FCO??

[Simon-JG-hr]

It's the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

I suppose it is to be expected then... Margaret Thatcher did once comment that: "We've got a department of agriculture to look after the farmers, a department of defence to look after the soldiers, and a Foreign Office to look after the foreigners."

Although on the basis that neither of the first two do their tasks any more...

[cohibaIV]

I now understand...

Thank you Si

[Soulmanure]

Can an expensive school really polish an intellectual turd?

Interesting question, and the cognitive science within education of late seems to indicate that, yes, indeed you can! A good compendium of this is found in the following book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-Dont-Students-Like-School/dp/0470279303/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274490588&sr=8-1

I suppose this whole discussion gets down to that educational question in the sense of the merit vs. equal opportunity question, and then on to what constitutes equal opportunity in the first place. I tend to think the term 'merit' is ambiguous--who merits what, especially when starting points aren't the same? Is fairness less important than productivity? Is equality second to profit? Not easy questions to answer, no doubt, and perhaps best discussed over a fine whiskey and a fine cigar, or two.

[monkey66]

What a shame we have to worry about discrimination and then the attempt to counter it (usually in a very poor way) ...one day we might move on from this but currently we live in a world of 'haves' and 'have-nots'. Us 'haves' (and anyone in this world who smokes fine puro's is a 'have', indeed anyone who is fairly sure they will eat tomorrow is a 'have').

There are also many ways we discriminate that are nothing to do with colour of skin or gender .... obiecity, deformity, acne, accents, religion, smell (try walking into an interview after spending an afternoon in JJF's sampling room), political affiliations, age (both young and old), hair styles etc.

Until we learn to feed and cloth everyone on our planet these issues of redressing the balance will always come up (probably worth referring to the Reverend Hicks for more information). I also suspect it will be a lot easier to reduce the various security issues when people don't have to watch their children starve and die, the appeal of radical action will demises significantly.

The are some areas where opportunity needs to be focused towards clear need, the tricky bit is doing this without discriminating others.

We also are still dealing with the blow-back of having an Empire (as are many Nations) and the responsibility/payback/guilt of raping countries of their resources and environment (hell we are still doing it) in the name of religion/civilisation/money etc.

Very hard to find balance in our have/have not world.

Optimistic outcome - we learn to love and share, human spirit and compassion wins through.
Pessimistic outcome - get it where you can, we will all kill each other soon enough.

Shall we have a poll

Sorry to get so philosophical but unfortunately I think these micro issues will never be addresses until we deal with the macro ones.

[r0lan6]

Very well said. I theorise that a perfect world can never be, and that the more we try to build towards making our world perfect, the less perfect the world becomes. Discrimination is a fact of life and will always exist in one form or another, just as death is an inevitability. I think it is all down to the individual and how they perceive their life. You can be the most successful person in London or New York, yet feel life is not worth living. Contrast that with the poorest living in a council estate, yet that person might feel the happiest with his family and friends all around him. Its all relative.

I guess the same can be said with a nice cigar! Some can feel on top of the world with a nice fresh pack of Henri Winterman Slim Panatelas (sorry but I really did not like the taste of those wonders!), or your basic casio watch, or being a traffic warden! Its all down to the individual and how they perceive things.

Actually I'm getting a little confused as to what this thread was all about in the first place...

[Simon-JG-hr]

Excellent points all (especially the last - some top end thread-drift happening here).

One only has to look at the fall-out from WWII to see a very strong argument that there will never be a perfect world. The likes of Morgenthau and Carr were very successful (in my opinion) in discrediting the vision of a 'liberal utopia' which followed WWI.

I think that there must be plenty of people who, like me, are probably liberals at heart, but realists in the mind.

monkey66 - whilst I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiments about micro vs macro issues, the original situation was in reference to a position which (due to nationality and educational requirements) is only open to people who would fall into the 'haves' category.

[daverave999]

Apply anyway! Eggchops has a point!

[Soulmanure]

Very well said. I theorise that a perfect world can never be, and that the more we try to build towards making our world perfect, the less perfect the world becomes. Discrimination is a fact of life and will always exist in one form or another, just as death is an inevitability. I think it is all down to the individual and how they perceive their life. You can be the most successful person in London or New York, yet feel life is not worth living. Contrast that with the poorest living in a council estate, yet that person might feel the happiest with his family and friends all around him. Its all relative.

I guess the same can be said with a nice cigar! Some can feel on top of the world with a nice fresh pack of Henri Winterman Slim Panatelas (sorry but I really did not like the taste of those wonders!), or your basic casio watch, or being a traffic warden! Its all down to the individual and how they perceive things.

Actually I'm getting a little confused as to what this thread was all about in the first place...

I suppose this would inevitably drift off topic, or go down to what you well identify as the root of the issue, which Adam Smith encapsulated fairly clearly with the invisible hand metaphor, but which goes pretty far back to Mandeville and other conservative thinkers. I think it's interesting that even Adam Smith believed in things like government regulation, preventing the leaders of industry from meeting in one place, cheap universal education, and preventing a society from letting it's poorer elements stay poor through government intervention. I think it's at this point where I think that working towards a more perfect world makes sense, as in the efforts of MLK, Ghandi, and the usual suspects. What I would not want to be is a surf or a slave. That would suck.

It's that fine balance between protection of rights, working towards a commonwealth (as in the wealth that is at minimum common to all), and the preservation of individual freedoms. It seems that we can't really have choice without some sort of institutional protections, and locating that sweat spot between anarchy and totalitarianism is our current predicament.

Pardon, I just drifted far away. Back to my Trini.