Muammar Al Khadafi

"There are reserved places for women, those from black, Asian or ethnic minority backgrounds, and for disabled people".



LGBT people are also welcomed, their eligibility will be on the basis of "self definition within these categories".



That, in case you wondered, is taken from the Liberal Democrats announcement of their Leadership Programme.



Tick those boxes, diversity for diversities sake, it's fine to discriminate providing you are discriminating against the permissable groups.



And, dress it up as positive discrimination, affirmative action, whatever politically correct window dressing is the flavour of the day, discrimination it is.



The Liberal Democrat blurb makes it clear that White, able bodied, heterosexual males will be discriminated against, they will participate on a less than level playing field compared to minority groups.



In the PC society some groups are more protected against discrimination than others, some groups receive far more equality than others.



Could I, as, let's say an employer in the heart of Birmingham with a mainly black/Asian workforce, decide that whites were under-represented in my leadership team and reserve places for them based on their ethnicity?



The same would apply to LGBT - my management team happens to all be comfortably pigeonholed in one or more of those sexual groups, can I reserve leadership places for heterosexuals only?



You know where that would end up, I'd be signing those compensation cheques, and standing before an EHRC inquisition and employment tribunal quicker than you could say boo.



It is one of the huge perversities of the PC, liberal program of social engineering, that it seeks to promote diversity by actively endorsing discrimination.



They can cloak the discrimination in whatever soothing, positive sounding terms they like, but stripped down to the bone it becomes simply - "discrimination is permissable in the name of creating diversity".



If you can't tick those checkboxes on the questionnaire to prove that you qualify for that sacred minority status and thus contribute to diversity, you're not wanted.



Decades of politically correct thinking has not created an equal society, far from it. It has created the contradictory situation whereby equality and diversity exist uneasily together, where discrimination is the norm in the name of some abstract ideal.



All that the political correctness zealots have achieved is to create a climate in which they got to choose the groups against whom discrimination is to be encouraged, and which groups are sacred cows.



And, those groups who it is fine to discriminate against include most of us.



We know no equality, the state has decided that discrimination against us is something to be sanctioned and encouraged. In the great redistribution of rights, we have become part of the underclass, less equal in society than any minority.



Discrimination has not been eliminated in society, rather it has just been redistributed - firmly on to our shoulders.



That's the simple truth of equality and diversity - it does not exist, the very foundation upon which the entire ideology is based inherently requires discrimination against a chosen group.



That group chosen to be the victims of discrimination is you, me, all of us who happen not to be part of a minority.

Beards and schools. Not the most controversial of issues, at least until you happen to be a pupil who gets suspended for not shaving, which is exactly what has happened to 15 year old Harrison Cerami, who has been banned from class at Ribblesdale High School for having a beard.

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What's really interesting is, of course, that nothing would have been done if he belonged to one of those religions - such as Islam - which appear to compel the growing of facial hair.

There's not a headteacher in Britain would go up against that, the beard would be allowed without question. Religious requirements would take precedence over school rules, the human rights and discrimination brigade would be out in their thousands if it was any other way.

The most pertinent question might be just how is that equality.

If a rule applies to all then that is equality. If some groups can circumvent it simply by virtue of belonging to those chosen groups then that is inequality and discrimination. Still, that's not a kind of discrimination that any of the rights groups care about.

If Ribblesdale High School wishes to exclude this boy for having a beard then they have a wonderful chance to show that they take equality seriously and to forbid the wearing of facial hair by all pupils irrespective of their faiths.

After all, if we're all equal, and nearly all schools literature takes pains to assure us that equality is at the top of their agenda, that is only fair.

Anything else just wouldn't be equality.