Outrage D'Jour

I don't know much about art, but I know there's too many honkeys:

A civil liberties group is to challenge an art gallery's decision to exclude white people from applying for a job as a curator's assistant.

Gerald Hartup, the director of Liberty and Law, has written to Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, urging him to ask the Arnolfini arts centre in Bristol to freeze the recruitment process.

Hmmm.. don't think they get much of a response, judging by this latest atrocity:

Business leaders have criticised new rules that require companies to provide prayer rooms and give religious holidays to non-Christians as "unacceptable and ridiculous".

In a 99-page document published last week, the Commission for Racial Equality set out draft guidance on how companies should prevent discrimination against religious and racial minorities.

Avoid discrimination: - give a minority of your staff extra holidays and time off. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

It gets better:

The guidance also contains several other controversial instructions, including recommending that firms should discriminate in favour of ethnic minority job applicants in some circumstances.

For instance, if a black applicant lacks the relevant qualifications for a job with a company that has no black people at a similar or more senior level, he or she should still be considered for the post.

Well, OK, Mr Kawunga is not strictly an MD, but....

The draft guidance also suggests other circumstances where black people can be favoured over white people. As an example, the guidance states that a black applicant for the post of a nursery nurse should be favoured over a white candidate if the job needs someone who can speak in a West Indian accent - even if the black person has no such accent.

Jamaica, Somalia, all much of a muchness. Glad it wasn't a White guy who said that.

The advice, officially entitled the Statutory Code of Practice on Racial Equality in Employment, is intended to show businesses how they should implement the Race Relations Act 1976 and the more recent Race Relations Amendment Act 2000, which made it illegal to discriminate on religious as well as racial grounds.

It is intended to help employers to interpret complex legislation and aid understanding of race equality policies. It will become a statutory code of practice in August and will be used in employment tribunals.

And so the ratchet turns once more.