Friday Links

• [content note:rape] We Mixed Our Drinks Rape culture: still around; still as grim as ever
• Helen G at The F-Word: Argentina's Senate passes gender identity law
• richie79 at Big Fat Blog: Chewing the Fat in the UK
• Neue Politik: Civil Partnerships and Marriage: What's The Difference?
• Same Difference: Coalition Failed To Test Fairness Of Spending Cuts, Finds EHRC Report
• Lisa Wade at Sociological Images: Are Our Politics More Consistent Than Our Opinions?

The Government Inequalities Office

The recent newsletter from the Government Equalities Office can basically be summed up as "Well, it's all a bit difficult. Let's not bother". It's the result of their previous "regulation is evil" review.

The measures announced today include:

Repealing Third Party Harassment law, which will ensure employers are no longer liable for the harassment of an employee by a third party (for example, a customer). A consultation on this change is launched today.

The Law Gazette has a summary of the existing law, and the case law it's based on.

Note that it firstly requires this to happen more than once and secondly requires that the employer could reasonably have done something about it but didn't.

The 'Bernard Manning' case (which held that the employer was liable for inviting a racist and sexist comedian to insult their staff, even though the comedian was not a direct employee) is fairly important since third parties include suppliers and contractors.

It's not clear that repealing this part will actually stop employers being liable, as the Equalities Office apparently holds the view that all harassment is direct discrimination, and of course the case law establishing liability predated the law they're going to repeal. Unless they intend to repeal it by adding a statement that employers are explicitly not liable, of course, which is unlikely to stand up in court.

Next...

Reviewing the Public Sector Equality Duty - a legal obligation on public bodies to consider the impact of their decisions on different groups - to establish whether it is operating as intended.

Repealing the Socio-Economic Duty - a legal obligation on public bodies to consider the impact of their decisions on social class.

I'd be more worried about the first point if the government had not repeatedly shown that it's completely trivial to ignore it anyway, if you are the government. Repealing the Socio-Economic Duty is hardly surprising either, given how obviously they've been ignoring it so far.

Then...

Tackling gold-plating and over-compliance by working with the British Chambers of Commerce to help small-and-medium-sized companies understand what they do and don't need to do in order to comply with the Equality Act.

We must remember that the Act's purpose is to give plausible deniability when people are discriminated against. Some companies have got confused and gone beyond this to attempt to actually stop the discrimination.

Repealing employment tribunals' 'wider recommendations' powers, which will remove the power of tribunals to recommend the introduction of, or changes to, policies that affect all of an employer's staff - not just the employee who brought the case. A consultation on this change is launched today.

We must remember that it is far more effective, and good for the employer, if they have to deal with several separate discrimination cases for the same issue, rather than a tribunal being able to suggest a way to improve general practice after the first one.

The "individual solution to systematic problem" approach of course never fails to keep discriminated-against people from causing too much trouble.

And a bunch to do with the EHRC

Repealing unnecessary powers and duties. Some of the EHRC's powers and duties under the Equality Act 2006 will be scrapped in order to help it focus on its core functions.

Tighter financial controls. The EHRC will comply with government-wide spending rules - in particular, controls on recruitment, consultancy and marketing.

Budget review. The EHRC's budget was cut by over half as part of the 2010 Spending Review. There will now be a comprehensive review of the remainder of the EHRC's budget, to be completed this autumn.

New leadership. A new Chairman and a new, smaller Board will be recruited.

"Having funding, powers, and staff is interfering with the EHRC's duty to pretend everything is fine. We will review this."

They're not necessarily the most useful or sensible organisation, but I doubt these changes will help.

...all in all, about what you'd expect from the Conservative Party.

About four years ago, you couldn't talk about an issue like this without a Lib Dem popping up to say that they were the only major party to have:

Upholding these values of individual and social justice, we reject all prejudice and discrimination based upon race, colour, religion, age, disability, sex or sexual orientation and oppose all forms of entrenched privilege and inequality.

in their Constitution. The lack of an entry for "social class" is telling, in light of the above repeals, isn't it.

I haven't seen a Lib Dem mention that for a while now. Whether that's because there are fewer Lib Dems or because they've realised that like a lot of Constitutional statements it's basically meaningless words, I'm not sure.

Friday Links

• eastsidekate at Shakesville: On Why I Left the Academy
• [content note: terrorism] Left Outside: Who’s responsible? You fucking are!
• [content note: rape] Too much to say for myself: Justice for survivors
• s.e. smith: What’s So Bad About Feelings, Anyway?
• Patient C: Words and Political Correctness
• DavidG at Where's the Benefit?: The Price of Hate #BADD2012
• The universe in powers of 10 (very visual, needs modern browser)

A few reports that Ed
Miliband will be attending the Gala this year. Now, even saying
he'll attend and then not turning up is closer than any of his
predecessors got, but will he actually make it this year? It's one prediction I'll
be quite happy to be wrong about.

No-one could possibly have predicted that

Well, no-one could possibly have predicted that: Secondary school pupils 'not eating enough' according to the BBC headline. No, it's not an article about child poverty and malnutrition.

It turns out that...

For example, in 2004 43% of pupils had chips with their lunch compared to just 7% in 2011.

And almost all schools have ditched the sale of chocolate, sweets and crisps.

...if you remove the provision of food which is both tasty and provides lots of energy...

School Food Trust research suggests pupils get a quarter of the recommended daily intake from lunch, rather than the third that is advised.

[...]

"Despite huge improvements to what's on the menu, teenagers are still not choosing food combinations that will give them enough energy and nutrients to stay alert all afternoon."

...the people eating that food will be short on energy.

Apparently...

[the research] found significant improvements in the nutritional value of meals offered by secondary schools and healthier choices made by pupils.

It may well be true that the vitamins and other nutrients are
better provided than they were a decade ago. But as regards basic
energy, complaining that students aren't getting enough when there's
been a near-ban on the foods best at providing energy is absurd.

But then, this is a society where some "energy drinks" are actively
marketed as "low calorie"¹, so perhaps it shouldn't be all that
surprising that nutritionists are acting baffled at the reduction of
calorie content leading to a reduction in energy.

Footnote

¹ Because the way that calorie content of food is
calculated bears very little resemblance to most human's metabolic
processes², I can believe that it's very possible to
produce an energy drink which metabolises well but doesn't test high
in calories.

² Essentially: set fire to the food, see how much energy
this releases, then apply some 19th century adjustment factors to
vaguely account for composition. Modern
measurements skip the "set fire to the food" step and just
calculate based on broad composition approximately how much energy
would be released if one did set fire to it, but the underlying
principle is the same. People with furnace-based instead of
chemically-based digestive systems will probably get reasonably
accurate results from this.