Equality is just an excuse to meddle

Probably the most depressing thing about the equality report which shows the gap between rich and poor is wider than at any time since the Second World War is the Government response, or rather the response of poor little rich girl Harriet Harman.

You would have thought that after years of social engineering and meddling and 13 years of New Labour dogma, bigotry and rabid class warfare someone might just have reached that dawn of realisation that plans thought up over an agreeable chateau bottled red in the parlours of Hampstead and Islington do not translate that well into the dreary, ambitionless estates of our industrial cities.

Harman cannot help but meddle though, telling the less privileged what is good for them and what they need whether they like it or not. Sadly they are part of society with which she has neither experience nor empathy.

Any positive discrimination, as I have said before, is still discrimination and under Harman's vision any woman or applicant from the wrong side of town being awarded a job or promotion would never have any authority or respect because as far as the rest were concerned they only got the job because of Harriet's rules.

The same thing happened with positive discrimination in favour of ethnic minorities which did such a disservice to skilled and competent ethnic candidates where were tarred with the positive discrimination brush. They only got the job because . . .

Labour were the first to deny the poor and working classes an outlet when the privileged parlour Bolsheviks, as dear old Dick Knowles used to call those well heeled socialists, decided to kill off grammar schools.

It was an escape route, a chance for the brighter children of any class to have an academic education. I went to a grammar school and many my fellow pupils were from working class homes. It was a golden opportunity to break the cycle, to go from blue collar to white collar jobs.

But dogma trumps common sense and technical colleges, grammar schools and everything else was thrown together. Excellence and diversity were replaced by mediocracy.

At this point it might be worth noting how many Labour MPs and ministers have managed to find God - at least until secondary school has finished - to send their children to faith schools which still manage some of the ethos and rigour of the old grammar school despite Government interference.

Not for their kids the overcrowded jungles of the local comp battling relegation in the national league tables, no that is for the ordinary people.

The idea of lowering entry requirements for university for applicants from deprived areas is equally flawed. Apart from the fact the wealthy will buy into poor areas for an application address it will just mean the standards in universities will fall.

Who wants to be treated by a surgeon who scraped in because he was from a sink estate and was passed on lower marks because of his background?

The other Government solution is to throw yet more money at the problem they have created. I have a distant relative who left school and obtained the fashion accessory of the moment where she lives in south Manchester, a baby.

It helps with housing so she has a flat, rent paid by the taxpayers as part of a benefits package of about £1,000 a month. That's £12,000 - tax free - a year for doing nothing.

I am not condemning her. It is the system just as the area where she was brought up saw a remarkably unhealthy population based on the numbers on disability.

With that sort of payment for doing nothing then the appeal of employment for someone with no qualifications is hardly one that will float any boats. More money will just make the appeal of working even less attractive, if that is even possible.

Benefits are a career option in large parts of Britain with second and third generations relying on the state for income rather than jobs.

We now have the first generations to reach retirement age who have paid national insurance all their working lives (working being the key word) yet the Government are talking about people having to work until they drop before they can have a pension while at the same time talking of paying more to those who don't work - many have never worked in their lives.