Misanthrope Girl

Overlooked on Monday in favour of other, more gripping, items (for which its target is probably very grateful) was the release of a report by the think tank Cvitas ‘Small Corroding Words’ which recommended that

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) contributes very little to meaningful equality in Britain today and should be abolished.

According to the press release (and I’m afraid that in the absence of spending £7 for the full document, the press release is all I have) the report, by Jon Gower Davies (a former Head of the Religious Studies Department at the University of Newcastle and for 20 years a Labour Councillor on Newcastle City Council)

… demonstrates how impractical the EHRC’s goal of equality is, wishing that life outcomes be entirely divorced from health limitations, cultural practices and lifestyles. Examining the philosophy of Trevor Phillips, chair of the EHRC, Davies argues:

[Trevor] Phillips conceives of humans as existing independently of their birth, their race, their gender, their age, their religion, their belief or their physical competence – his ‘list’, above: and on such human beings, so conceived, he is able to confer Rights no matter where they live or how or when they were created or what they have done or do.

Naturally this didn’t sit well with members of the EHRC with the chief executive of the organisation saying:

“There are many reasons why people experience different levels of prosperity, health and happiness,” he said. “But in some cases this can be because of discrimination and unfairness.”

Hardly the most passionate of defences me thinks and indeed perhaps one admitting that they are reduced to focusing on the trivial? Or is it that, with the NAO making waves about their financial propriety, they are too busy putting out the existing fires to worry about a new one? Especially one that’ll go unnoticed by most.