Equality Audit, what a brilliant idea

I’m a great admirer of statism, that is the state’s increasing control over our lives. Just imagine the harm we’d do ourselves if left to our own devices. We wouldn’t know what to do, say, think, drink or eat – we’d be like anonymous foundlings dropped at orphanage doors, Rousseau-style.

The state is our father, especially since so many of us are these days raised without the biological version thereof. And a father needs to be big and strong to protect us from life’s perils. Since every penny we pay the paternalistic state increases its size and power, our tax money is always well spent, even when it’s spent badly.

Sticks-in-the-mud will scream that conducting this massive audit will put extra pressure on public services, which aren’t exactly awash with funds. No, it won’t. The government will simply ask – nay tell – us to cough up more tax money, and we should all be happy to do so.

Hence I cheer Theresa May’s decision to create a new layer of bureaucracy required to conduct this audit, covering all aspects of the state: schools, universities, GP surgeries, hospitals, police, courts, job centres and benefits offices.

Yes, it’ll cost us. But I for one am tired of tossing and turning all night pursued by the nightmares of all those mistreated ethnic and poor people. So I’m prepared to pay for sound sleep and peace of mind.

However, while supporting this initiative wholeheartedly, I’m not so sure about the thinking behind it. Let me stress once again that I welcome any exercise of state power, however spurious the rationale for it is.

However, one has to admit that we still aren’t rid of reactionary fossils who feel differently. Such spoilsports may embarrass Mrs May by asking awkward questions and making her look bad.

For example, when Mrs May was still Home Secretary, she commendably highlighted the disproportionate number of blacks being stopped and searched by police. Stop and search equals SS – get it?

Indeed, though black people make up only 2.7 per cent of the UK population, they account for 14.6 per cent of all SS victims. You know and I know and Mrs May knows that this can only be caused by racial prejudice on the part of the police.

However, the aforementioned fossils may aver that this disparity is disproportionate the other way. They’ll cite statistics showing that, while blacks make up 14.6 per cent of SS victims, they commit, in London, 54 per cent of street crimes, 59 per cent of robberies and 67 per cent of gun crimes.

Since Met cops are too shorthanded to stop and search every iffy-looking individual, they have to go by probabilities. And – much to the indignation of progressive persons like me – these point at their laxity in only including such a small percentage of blacks in the group so egregiously abused by SS.

HMG also cites statistics showing that black pupils are three times more likely than whites to be permanently excluded from school. This outrage has to be testimony to rampant racism on the part of those blue-rinsed head mistresses.

However, the fossils may again argue that this situation may have a different explanation: the somewhat understated commitment to learning in black families. For example, 54 per cent of black boys can’t read or write properly at age 14 (to be fair, the statistic for poor white boys is even worse).

Then of course boys aged 10 to 16 commit 40 per cent of all street crime, and the proportion of blacks in this subset is even higher than in the population at large. If you think of the time and effort going into selling drugs and mugging toffee noses, you’ll understand why 60,000 pupils, most of them from black or poor-white families, skip classes every day.

It’s not just the cops’ and head mistress’s racism that’ll be investigated. Access to good schools, acceptance to universities, graduation rates and progression to graduate jobs, the availability of services such as free childcare will all come under scrutiny.

And, you’ll be relieved to know that, according to Downing Street, it’s not all about blacks: “The audit will show disadvantages suffered by white working-class people as well as ethnic minorities… For example, it will give more details about why white working-class boys are much less likely than others to go to university.”

Could it be because, when they call for an interview, they sound like blacks, thereby triggering the innate racism of potential interviewers? Worth pondering, that.

And, are you ready for this? “The employment rate for ethnic minorities is ten percentage points lower than the national average.” Of course racial bigotry is the only possible explanation for what Mrs May so rightly calls a “burning injustice”.

Methinks HMG should take its cue from the US, where blacks widely receive preferential treatment called ‘affirmative action’. That system has worked wonders there, and it can do the same to us… sorry, I mean for us.

“The audit will reveal some difficult truths,” says Mrs May. No, it’ll only reveal easy ones, those that progressive people like me will welcome with open arms.