Thread: Avon fire services don't want white men

Here is a story that contains some important messages for those with ears to hear and a brain to think with. It is in effect the story of political correctness taken to the point of insanity.

Here is the background:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=510418&in_page_id=1770

This story attracted a lot of publicity, nearly all adverse. The above is just one example of how the UK press reported it; I selected it because it gives a fair representation of the facts. Most other reports were a lot more histrionic. In a nutshell: Avon Fire & Rescue Services (AF&RS) recently advertised five "open" days for potential recruits to try their hand at activities. One was for women only (i.e. all men excluded), one for ethnic minorities only (i.e. all white men and all white women excluded), two for women and ethnic minorities only (i.e. all white men excluded), and one for everyone (white men included along with everyone else). Sorry to be pedantic in explaining what "women only" etc means, but it is the crux of the matter. And apparently there are a lot of people high up in the UK fire service that don't understand, so it must be a rather difficult concept for many.

The Avon Fire & Rescue services have reacted by issuing this press statement:

http://www.avonfire.gov.uk/Avon/News/CFOA+Press+Statement+-+CFOA+committed+to+more+diverse+culture.htm

Which readers will recognise as a typical piece of PC froth that includes at least one barefaced lie (spotted it yet?) as well as numerous non-sequiturs so beloved of these morons.

The AF&RS Chief officer is one Kevin Pearson. He is quoted as saying:

"I totally refute the allegation that Avon Fire Service is engaged in any form of positive discrimination. It is unlawful and we wouldn't do it."

- which leads me to question his clearly dubious concept of logic and truth. There is a convenient "Ask the Chief" email facility on the AF&RS site - please feel free to use it. Apparently the Chief would love to hear from you. I also hope you think he deserves a good pasting, because I have given him one. If only he gets to read it. But so that it will not be lost to posterity, here it is:


Dear Chief

I have had my attention drawn to your organisation because of the publicity surrounding your recent series of "open days" which have focused on women and BME groups. I have enjoyed reading your website which has told me a lot about you and your organisation. Much of it good; some of it rather bad.

Your highly-publicised "open days" have of course inevitably been interpreted, quite accurately in my opinion, as excluding white men. This is not a difficult concept: "women only" also means, inescapably, "no men". "BME only" also means, inescapably, "no whites". The attempts to deny this in the CFOA press statement are feeble and insulting to the intelligence. "Open days do not exclude white men" indeed; those that exclude white men do! Wake up!

Now I fully understand that you are compelled to comply with the legislation, and the legislation lays down that you cannot discriminate against any group. But it is how that legislation is interpreted that can cause all sorts of problems, as you have discovered. If you insist on bending over backwards so far to accommodate women and BMEs, i.e. non-white men, to the point that white men are specifically excluded from an activity or opportunity, then you can hardly be surprised if quite sensible people decide that you have actually broken the law. After all, white men count as human beings too, and are therefore not to be discriminated against. Nor can you be surprised if quite sensible people regard you as a sexist and racist. Nor can you be surprised if you get a very painful crick in your neck. These are all consequences that you have sat up and begged for, and are richly deserved.

You, as the Chief, have an opportunity to show the world that your primary aim is to provide the best public service in the key areas of fire safety and rescue; and that you will recruit the best people for that job. Lives will depend upon your doing exactly that. But instead you have chosen to show the world that you are more concerned with airing your politically correct credentials and joining the game of artificial social engineering, which seems to me to consist largely of trying to squeeze the wrong people into the wrong jobs for the sole purpose of making the diversity mix look good, and to hell with the consequences.

Why can you people not distinguish between equality of opportunity and equality of result? Look at it this way. You have a foot race where everyone starts at the same point at the same time. That's fair. But by the time they get to the end, one will be out in front, others strung behind, and the slowest a long way back bringing up the rear. The reason for this is that people have different abilities. Now most sensible people would accept those facts as they stand; some people are just good at running, others less so, others still rather useless. But you PC people can't accept the facts, can you? You insist that somehow or other, everyone must finish together in equal first place. So you will try every means you can to engineer that result. This means you have to introduce all sorts of distortions; some of them bizarre, some of them idiotic, and some of them downright cruel. In effect, you become race "fixers" while failing to recognise that by fixing the race, you have effectively destroyed it.

That is what your so-called anti-discriminatory policy is doing here. You have looked at your particular race in the AF&RS and noticed that the winners are overwhelmingly white men. A sensible person who had not been fitted with PC blinkers might have reasonably concluded that perhaps white men have a particular enthusiasm for, and ability to perform, fire and rescue services in Avon, in rather higher proportions than other sectors of the population of Avon. Indeed your own website suggests this is so - it is full of "good news" telling us how effective and efficient you are. Nowhere on your site have I found any story of AF&RS's failure in any area, still less an admission that any failure is because you only had white men to do the job, whereas a BME or woman would have been expected to do better. So can we reasonably conclude that these white guys are, in reality, rather good at what they do? You are one yourself. Are you useless? Do you believe yourself inferior to a BME or a woman? In particular specifically because of your whiteness and male gender? Presumably not, or you would never have accepted the job - or been offered it in the first place.

But you can't accept those facts at face value. Instead, you insist that this overwhelming preponderance of white males must mean that there has been discrimination against others; that white men do not have any particular merit that makes them stand out; they are really no better than any other person at fire safety and prevention. So they have only got their jobs because of discrimination. And you are going to end that discrimination by removing some of these white male people and giving their jobs to others who fit your diversity agenda. Despite your claims that these same white guys are actually very good at what they do (so is your site lying when it tells us that?) Despite the fact that you are not supposed to discriminate against anyone, and that includes white guys. Despite common sense.

To quote again from the CFOA press statement: "Our workforce must reflect the communities they serve." Ah yes; the greatest fallacy of them all. The concept that every job must reflect the community where that job is performed. Do you understand where that ideology is going to take you? By definition, about half of the population is below average intelligence, So presumably the CFOA - and you - believe that half of the workforce in the fire and rescue services should be below average intelligence. Perhaps 30% of the population has some form of physical disability - I don't know the correct figure, it might be 10% or 70% - but the point is that you must also believe that that percentage of your workforce should also have physical disabilities. A certain percentage of the population have a criminal record. Do you want that percentage among your workforce too? Another percentage of the population have a drink problem. Can they join the AF&RS as well, in the same proportion? How about representation for the small, but "equally" important, group of arsonists in our society? They have human rights too. They might like playing with fire engines and your other toys. You can't deny them, can you? Do you not see where such idiocy is taking you?

Fire safety and prevention is not a job like any other. It is not like a cashier at a supermarket or working in a laundry, a job that any Tom, Dick or Harriet can do provided they have two brain cells to rub together and can follow simple instructions. Nobody dies if they get it wrong. But they can do in your job, which is why you need the best. Why do I have to tell you this?

You can never have a workforce that reflects the same diversity as the population; otherwise you might just as well recruit the first bunch of random people you bump into walking down the street. The whole point is that special jobs demand particular qualities that, in real life (the one that takes place down here on planet earth) only certain people have. Talent and ability is not spread evenly among all sectors of the population. It just isn't. You might ache and yearn and dream for it to be so, but that damned thing called nature ensures that it isn't. This is the true meaning of "diversity" - that abilities are all mixed up in the population. If we were all equally good (and bad), there would be no diversity; we would all be the same, and it would not matter who you recruited to do any job.

But diversity in nature means that women are good at some things, men are better at others. Black men make the best sprinters and basketball players, and white men make the best businesspeople. They might also very well make the best firefighters. Not exclusively, but disproportionately to their numbers in the population. There has to be some explanation why they dominate the profession; do you have a better one? Or do you really think they are all just average people who have only got where they are by elbowing equally able women and BME people aside down through the years? If you believe that, you must at least give these white men credit for being spectacularly more successful at something than anyone else - they must make far and away the most successful sexists and racists we have ever seen. Perhaps their talents for brilliantly successful discrimination can be aired somewhere else once you have booted them out of the AF&RS.

But do you not see that this is exactly the point at which political correctness ceases to be a cause for laughter and derision, and becomes positively dangerous. It can even get people killed. It is entirely possible that one day your policy will do just that. One day, a heavy individual will be lying unconscious in a burning building somewhere in Avon, and you will send in one of your personnel to rescue them; a person who ticks all the correct PC and diversity boxes; a person who is the right colour (i.e. not white), the right sex (i.e.not male) and no doubt displays all the other credentials; but who is just not up to the job, and can't lift heavy person out of danger. So heavy person dies. Too bad. Do you care? You will obviously claim you do, but you are not displaying any proof. Again, sensible people are entitled to believe that you don't. Your actions point in another direction.

Your mission is stated to be: "To improve public safety through prevention, protection and response." Can I presume that you have decided it should now be changed to "To become as ethnically, racially and sexually diverse as the population we are supposed to serve; which service will be the best we can manage after we have turfed out those of merit but who have the wrong coloured skin and were born into the wrong gender."

As for your values: "Integrity, Trust, Respect, Learning, Can-do, Openness."

Oh dear. Fine words that are sadly way above your ability to deliver.

Your service - actually OUR service - is going to go downhill, and the good people of Avon will pay the price for your folly.

Wake up, for God's sake.

Please feel free to respond, but take note that I reserve the right to publish or quote from your reply on public forums.

Paul Parmenter
Just another white male