Julia Langdon reports in The Daily Telegraph today of the scandalous waste of public funds on the part of the Labour Government by virtue of there now being 3,259 "experts" employed in the Government's PR business, a figure swollen from the few hundred employed when the Conservatives left power in 1997.  The cost to the public purse of these 3,259 salaries, pensions, benefits and provisions has not been publicly quantified.

Furthermore,

"there is the stunning threefold rise in the cost of the marketing exercise run under the name of the Central Office of Information (COI), which was £322 million last year as opposed to £111 million in the year Tony Blair's Labour broom swept into power."

Then,

"[these] press officers have been raised in a culture that does not seek to enlighten public opinion about the processes of government.

 

On the contrary, their job is to present the Labour Government and all its policies in the most favourable light possible. A press officer is more likely to telephone to dispute a published article — and to do so more quickly (under orders, of course) — than he or she will return an urgent request for information."

Finally,

"They tell you as little as possible and their words are meaningless. They use words with a literal accuracy that obfuscates the truth and does not allow for any suggestion of original thought or imagination."

For his part Graeme Wilson reports that the Labour Government spent £154 million on advertising over the past 12 months, more than Tesco and Sainsbury's combined, and that Government spending on advertising has almost quadrupled since Labour came to power nine years ago when it inherited a budget of only £39.5 million.

The Conservatives say (but wouldn't they just) the huge increase in the advertising budget proved that Labour was more interested in spin than delivering better services for the public.

It does seem a bit like that though, doesn't it?

On 29^th August 2006 The Law Society published a report entitled "Career experiences of gay and lesbian solicitors."

The report explained,

"There is a large body of work, including a growing body of research undertaken by the Law Society, which explores how social divisions of ethnicity, race and gender impact on workplace experiences and career choices. To date there has been a gap in consideration of sexual orientation in this equation — something that this research begins to address with the encouragement and support of the Law Society Equality and Diversity Committee."

Under the heading "Sample" we are informed,

"Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with a sample of fifteen gay men and ten lesbians [my emphasis], who were working as solicitors in private practice or the employed sector, through regions of the South-West, London and the North-West."

This report came to be mentioned in the Guardian earlier in the week and had prompted me to post an article about one of its sillier recommendations.  Having now read the report, I am even less impressed.

The common weakness of much "research" these days is that it is just assumed there is a problem that has to be resolved, in this instance sexual orientation discrimination, and the researcher goes looking for it.  If the Law Society is going to undertake this sort of research, it must do it properly, with carefully chosen, representative samples.  It would have been helpful to establish for instance, what heterosexual respondents thought.  If, as was likely, they had thought the atmosphere at work was not particularly accepting and inclusive, that finding would have had considerable weight.  It is very foolish to create policy in reliance upon a survey involving such a small unrepresentative sample.

The Law Society research was interesting in one respect in that when discussing the factors that determined whether a gay would "out" at work, those factors seemed to comprise self-imposed constraints.  These included; the age of the solicitor; self-confidence; and the desire or ability to maintain a double life.

Too often individuals who perceive that they are significantly different to the majority[1] ascribe to that majority a viewpoint which in fact mirrors their own doubts and negative feelings about themselves.  What is not understood by many who consider themselves to be part of a minority group, any minority group, is that the "homogenous, unsympathetic majority" are mostly possessed of a complete indifference to their dissimilarity and accordingly cannot discriminate against them on that basis.

I can say without any fear of contradiction that nothing is more likely to drive a wedge between people of differing preferences than for one group to claim to be discriminated against merely by members of the other group being themselves.  Those who wish to transform and mould Society into their own image should dwell upon that fact long and hard.

Career experiences of gay and lesbian solicitors