A closer look at the Equality Bill

Wishful thinking. Alice in Wonderland. Away with the fairies. These are few of the phrases that come to mind having had a look at the guts of the new Equality Bill that apply to older people. I am astonished that something that must have taken so long to produce is so simplistic, ill defined and naive.

Fortunately it is unlikely to ever see the light of day after the change in Government (May 2010) but even so it is such a wasted opportunity to provide decent guidance and structure about genuine areas of discrimination.

Let me give you a couple of quotes – honestly these are taken from the document:

Ensuring private members’ clubs do not discriminate against older people. For example, a man in his 60s who is going to a nightclub as a guest with a younger friend cannot be refused entry simply because he is considered too old. Cripes, just think of it. Sorry folks, no more turning granddad away from dens of debauchery

Putting a new Equality Duty on public bodies. The Duty will mean public bodies need to think about the needs of everyone who uses their services or works for them, regardless of their age. For example, a local council puts extra benches in local parks so older people can enjoy the park too. The fact that many of the UK’s public parks are no-go areas and require a police escort won’t be much helped by sticking a few more park benches down.

Some might accuse me of being a tad cynical but I am truly amazed at this new proposed law but I reckon it is all form over substance.

Most of the restrictions it seeks to impose are aimed at the public rather than the private sector. The estimated first year cost of this is put at a quarter of £ billion. Believe me this ain’t going to happen. Dick Stroud

The UK’s Equality Bill

When I have some time I must wade through the 40 pages of the new Equality Bill and the 210 pages of its “impact assessment”.
Unfortunately for this new proposed legislation, its government sponsor is one of the worst and most ridiculed members of the Labour Government – Harriet Harman, or as she is commonly called - Harriet Harperson.

I am sure the bill contains lots of good things but dear Harriet has commandeered the thing and is using it as part of her pitch for replacing Gordo (Gordon Brown) when he is finally dumped.

I question how much time companies should spend on pondering the legislation since the chance of it being implemented, or implemented in its current state, is remote. Dick Stroud

The Single Equality Bill - toothless trivia

This a UK Government’s Green Paper (i.e. it invites comments and then goes ahead and creates the legislation it intended to in the first place).

It is 190 pages of Government speak. It makes profound statements like it will become illegal to stop women to breast feeding, wherever the fancy takes them and loads of other equally trivial nonsense.

My great fear was that this legislation might start trampling all over the 50-plus market creating a pile of unintended consequences. It looks like my fears were ill founded.

This gives a feel for how they intend to deal with age discrimination in the provision of products and services. This is an edited abstract from the report

Should we decide to legislate in this area, to ensure a commonsense approach to preserving beneficial and justifiable practices such as cheaper access to leisure facilities for people of State pension age. For example, we consider that exceptions would probably be needed to allow:

• age-based concessions

• age differences in the calculation of annuities and insurance premiums and benefits, provided they are reasonable and based on objective evidence of the underlying difference in risk

• insurance companies to design and provide products for specific market segments (for example, younger or older drivers);

• the use of age criteria to provide tailored, targeted housing services for older and younger people;

• age limits on group holidays.

So we it looks like we will still see “50-plus “ loans and Saga holidays for the 50-plus. If you are a UK company I suggest somebody in your organisation is tasked with reading the thing since the "devil is in the detail" with these types of documents. Dick Stroud

Saga feels the heat of the Single Equality Act

I have a rule to not comment on the idiocies of politicians in my blog postings. But it is Saturday, it is a beautiful morning and so what the hell, rules are there to be broken.

Politicians in the UK are, in the main, a well meaning bunch but are not the brightest group of people you are likely to meet. Most of them are on a mission to solve the world’s problems, well at least to talk about solving them, but cannot think further than the end of their nose when it comes to the policies they cook-up to do this. So it is with the Single Equality Act.

The UK has commissions for all sorts of ‘inequality’ (real or assumed) and to make a mess worse it has been decided to combine them all into a super-commission for ‘equality’ to enforce this new legislation that will cover gender, sexual preference, religion, race and AGE. This brings me back on track to subject of 50-plus marketing.

If you cannot discriminate in terms of age what happens to companies like Saga? It seems nobody has thought of this problem other than the folk at Saga.

The Times published the details of a memo that Saga sent to Government explaining their predicament:

We fear the unintended consequences of such legislation might be to subvert our cruise and holiday business, and our financial services business, whilst causing great collateral damage to our brand.

“One must also question whether Saga as a business could survive if it is forced to abandon its ethos, its branding so painstakingly built up, and to suffer the inevitable perturbation of its local customer base.”

This legislation will, theoretically, have implications for all types of 50-plus marketing. Paul Green, Saga’s communications chief, said: “There is a danger from blunderbuss legislation. It could bring to an end older people enjoying discounts on their fish and chips, or cheaper care insurance.”

Ministers will publish their plans for the Single Equality Act next month – I will read it with interest.

Of course what this legislation doesn’t even begin to address is the culture of youth that pervades the way most companies operate. Will it mean that new products and services must all be equally accessible to people of ages – NO? Will it mean that companies will have to change their marketing to provide equal consideration to all ages – NO.

What it means is that politicians can preen themselves for having done some good whilst actually not changing things a jot, other than to screw up the workings of the market. What a bunch of dimwits. Dick Stroud