Tag Archive for Discrimination

The Nationality Lottery strikes again

Cross-posted from English Commonwealth

The Nationality Lottery: It probably won't be you

It’s a well known fact that the British government distributes our taxes unfairly, subsidising Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland at England’s expense but that sort of thing wouldn’t happen with charity would it?  The answer, of course, is yes.

Figures released by the Big Lottery Fund show that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland receive significantly more funding than England – as much as three times more if you live in Northern Ireland.

The average lottery funding per head in England is just £9.46 compared to £13.49 in Wales, £25.27 in Scotland and £31.33 per head in Northern Ireland.  There is a Big Lottery budget for the UK as a whole as well but no figures have been released for this fund so it’s not currently possible to tell whether this disparity is replicated in the UK-wide budget.

A spokesperson for the Big Lottery Fund has tried to justify spending so much more on Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by saying that grants are given based on population and deprivation.  England’s population is 5 times that of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined and parts of England are the most deprived in the whole UK but England received just a third of the funding Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland got.  They also cite a one-off award for £49m to the Life Changes Trust as a reason for the disparity in funding this year but previous years’ figures show that England has always received less funding per head that the rest of the UK.

Some will no doubt point to the money the British government took from the lottery to pay for the London Olympics and claim that it was lottery money given to England but the Olympics weren’t English and the lottery money has to be paid back (eventually) by a corporation owned by the Mayor of London.  It was an expropriation of Lottery funds by the British government, not a grant by the Big Lottery Fund.

The Big Lottery isn’t the only charity to unfairly allocate extra funding to the other member states of the UK.  The Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal diverts funding to Scotland whilst allowing Poppyscotland, who it merged with, to keep all the money it raises for itself, for example.  There are many other charities that have Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and British arms but that’s a topic for future discussion.

26 week suspended sentence for murdering a baby

A muslim woman has been given a 26 week suspended sentence for murdering her newborn baby because she was worried about her family being dishonoured by her having a child out of wedlock.

Firstly … 26 weeks?  182 days for murdering a baby, going out with her family and then burying it in a garden.  Not just a paltry 26 weeks for murdering a baby, but a suspended sentence – she won’t even go to prison!  It’s obscene and a miscarriage of justice.  She put her family’s standing in the muslim “community” ahead of the life of her own baby and the baby died.  She should be punished properly for murder, not given tea and sympathy and let off with a slapped wrist.  A baby was killed for fuck’s sake and she’s walking around with nothing but an ASBO tag on her ankle (if that) by way of punishment.

The criminal justice system in England is an absolute joke.  A woman gets away with murdering a baby because it’s cultural.  Labour’s Lord Ahmed was convicted of causing death by dangerous driving and not only kept his peerage and party membership, but served less half of his outrageously low 12 week prison sentence and looks set to get away relatively lightly with allegedly putting a $10m bounty on the head of Barack Obama and George Bush at a public meeting in Pakistan.  A man was jailed for 70 days for burning a copy of the koran in April last year, a week after a muslim was given a £50 fine for burning poppies outside the Albert Hall on Remembrance Day and shouting “British soldiers burn in hell”.  There is very little justice in the justice system.

Equality for all (women)

She'll make someone a lovely wife one day





Parent forces school to cancel trip

A primary school in Inverness has cancelled an adventure holiday for its pupils after the mother of a disabled pupil threatened to sue the school for discrimination because her daughter was incapable of taking part.

Rather than tell the idiot mother to crawl back under whatever rock she’d dragged herself out from underneath, Highland Council has cancelled the trip.

The British government’s DirectGov website has these guidelines on obligations for service providers under the Disability Discrimination Act:

Under the DDA, it is against the law for service providers to treat disabled people less favourably than other people for a reason related to their disability. Service providers have to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to the way they deliver their services so that disabled people can use them.


What is considered a ‘reasonable adjustment’ for a large organisation like a bank may be different to a reasonable adjustment for a small local shop. It is about what is practical in the service provider’s individual situation and what resources the business may have. They will not be required to make changes which are impractical or beyond their means.

Is there any reasonable adjustment that can be made to enable a disabled child whose mother says would be unable to take part in any of the physical activities to take part in an adventure holiday?  No, quite obviously not and Highland Council need a slap for caving in to this idiot.