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Inigo Wilson: Was he pushed or did he jump?
Guido and other tory bloggers have been building up Inigo Wilson for martyrdom, after Orange suspended him from his job in the wake of a posting on ConservativeHome.
They pin the case on his definition of Islamophobe:
Islamophobic - anyone who objects to having their transport blown up on the way to work.
and the subsequent complaints from the MPAIC,
Sunny at Pickled Politics has more on the subject though. His source tells him that the real problem here was not bad taste, but another definition, just a giggle to most of us, but important to Orange:
Consultation - a formal system for ignoring public views while patronising them at the same time. London's Congestion Charge for instance.
Why does this matter? Because Inigo Wilson's job is to "persuade people to accept mobile phone masts near their homes and schools. He has to “consult� local communities on behalf of Orange."
Yet another definition in Wilson's lexicon is
Diversity - creating a workforce based on how people look rather than on their skills or aptitude.
We´ll let Orange decide, but there must be a question as to whether Wilson has the appropriate skills for his job. Meanwhile he had better think about revisiting his penultimate definition:
Victim - see ‘Terrorist’, ‘Palestinians’, ‘gender issues’, ‘race issues’ and ‘social exclusion’

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In my experience his definition of consultation is about right...
Councils 'consult' with 'stakeholders' (ie those with a vested interest who are likely to agree with the council). They ignore what people tell them, often by claiming 'they know best' and the people who complain are a minority and the council 'knows what people want', or even worse, that Blairite phrase 'I have to make difficult descisions'.
Explanation for the reasons of decisions are held back as much as possible as well.
Diversity: Surely you can see where he's coming from. There have been ridiculous attempts to ensure diversity with positive discrimination. A liberal positions would be to ensure that you are treated equally depending on skills, filling quotas for numbers of particular groups is ridiculous and offensive (apart from in a very small number of jobs where it is necessary). If the workforce doesn't reflect the community from which it is drawn there is something wrong, but you don't fix it by enforcing quotas on groups.
Above all, remember, this is humour, no matter how poor the taste is...
(and Guido is not a Tory blogger...)
Agree on consultation. And Inigo should know. It is his own job he is attacking after all.
I also agree on the humour, and personally I hope he avoids the sack. It is the blame game I find bizarre.
Peter
How on earth do you or Sunny know exactly what Inigo's job entails?
Hold your judgement.