A rather heavy touch of class

What is it about Britain and the British people that Harriet Harman hates so much? She knows as much about class as I do about Maasai warriors - she might have seen something about it on telly or in the Sunday supplements but that is about it.

As someone whose father was a boiler maker and whose family worked in cotton mills, on railways and in factories I can tell her that the real working classes deeply resent toffee nosed pillars of privilege telling them what to do and sorting out how they should live their lives - particularly, I suspect, as no one has ever asked their opinion.

For those who have missed it our deputy leader and minister for meddling and really loony ideas wants every organisation that Whitehall can boss about to consider ethnic origin, race, religion, disability, sexuality, age and now . . . roll of drums and fanfare . . . social background before they offer a job or a place or whatever.

I suppose the really stroppy authorities, schools and universities might also consider suitability, ability or even qualification but that sort of reactionary attitude would not last long in Harman's brave new world.

The White Paper is a dog's dinner of dogma and experiments in social engineering which, if past record is anything to go by, will provide several million quidsworth of consultancy contracts, create another batch of quangos and spawn enough performance and compliance units to take up the taxes of scores of thousands of real workers. Oh, and it will also give a whole new generation of lawyers a secure pension plan as the quantifying and blancmange-like definition of social background and class is debated in courtrooms and tribunals for evermore.

Still, as the economy goes into freefall, the jobless are rising faster than a Saturn V and it is all going pear-shaped in Whitehall, it is reassuring to know that Harriet in Wonderland has got all her priorities right. Now where is Guy Fawkes when you need him?