Listed below are comments made by U11235707 between Wednesday, 22nd October 2008 and Thursday, 23rd October 2008.
If as implied JG did say what FF has implied he said - then perhaps the modders should just delete JG's profile.
the old adage: "if you can't say anything nice, say nothing at all".
By the way, the reason I mention that I am employed not far from you is that I know there are companies just across the Solent who are employing people now in the Science and technical fields. I wa made redundant a few months ago from my old job in Oxfordshire. I found this job after looking for less than a month. The jobs are there for those who are prepared to look, irrespective of race, gender, creed, sexual orientation, etc. It's simply a matter of looking. I suggest you do some.
I find your 98 to be grossly offensive. To equate yourself to those who suffered torture and massacre under the hands of the Nazi regime simply because the majority of people here apparently disagree with you is sickening.
And the point of your mp3 is?
Your argument appears to be that because the IoW has many more male jobseekers than female, and the DWP employs many more females than males, then the DWP's selection procedures are biased towards women.
The headline figure "a woman is 27x more likely to be employed by the DWP than a man" certainly sounds staggering, but the DWP person clearly stated that the competency of the candidates is the primary factor in selection, and they are subjected to regular audits in which a selection of advertised posts are examined and the selection process investigated / audited to ensure correct procedures were followed and no discrimination took place.
So unless (a) the interview process is biased towards women, or (b) the auditors ignore gender bias, your argument doesn't hold water.
As for your question as to what is equality and diversity, from a HR point of view it is simply that if you have two equally qualified candidates, you do not dismiss one application on the grounds of gender / race / background etc.
Just because the gender ratio of the applicant field is 50:50, it doesn't necessarily mean that there will also be a 50:50 gender ratio in the most suitable candidates for the post. If the gender and socio-economic background of the majority of an organisation's employees is significantly different from the surrounding population, the organisation can expect stringent checks on its recruitment and retention policies and procedures, to work out whether the abnormality is caused by the applicant field, the selection process, or historic policies/procedures which may no longer be in place, but will take until a significant proportion of the staff in place during the earlier regime have left.
On a different track, you could argue that as towns with more discount shops than others had higher crime levels than towns with fewer discount shops, then discount shops caused crime. However, that would be overlooking such factors as the size of the town and the socio-economic background of its residents. Just because two sets of statistics appear to be related, it doesn't necessarily mean there's a direct correlation. There could be a third / fourth / fifth factor etc.
Hypothetical example: If you're interviewing for a teaching post, and 5 out of the six shortlisted candidates are "feminists", then there's a fair chance that the appointed teacher will be a "feminist"...
there are many successful male primary teachers (and a higher proportion in secondary). Even something as simple as a video showing a successful male teacher could be enough to encourage him to think more seriously about that particular career path. He might still choose an alternative career, but the point is that it helped him value teaching as a possible career more highly than before.