The Cambridge Chat Thread - it's over 90,000!

You can have age discrimination. (It has inspired a wonderfully confused series of cases on EU directives). I don't think it would be age discrimination here but legally, the concept exists

(Sorry if you knew this - too tired to read properly methinks)

Oh, in terms of what should actually happen, I quite agree. I'm not convinced that I disagree with men being charged more insurance than women. I was just curious if there was any obvious reason for a similar case to have yet been brought to court.
Also, terrible pun

Ok fair enough. I'm just attacking the whole political correctness gone mad thing, since the result is that the really important things stop being attended to because people get fed up and dismissive of the whole idea of discrimination. The only time these kind of groupings matter is when there are actual significant levels of disadvantage and unfair treatment going on around these. If you started complaining about discrimination indiscriminately , it makes a joke of the whole effort to tackle the issues that really do matter, and do cause a huge amount of injustice and unhappiness.
Arguably the elderly and students have a set of concerns and face certain issues that are correlated to their age. But the kind of disadvantages students and the elderly face in the UK are nowhere near as severe as the issues affecting ethnic minorities, women and the working classes.

Yeh, I'd want to know the particular cases related to it before I was convinced that it was actually important, rather than someone being opportunistic.

As I recall, it was mostly in employment areas? I seem to remember someone telling me they went to a course on age discrimination which was basically telling them when it was fine to discriminate.

Haha weird, I probably got mixed up with the order we were in! I know we were pretty near the end though which section did you do? I was the one talking about bursaries and travel grants

Does the law specify that the negative effects of the discrimination have to have a certain level of severity? Or even that the discrimination needs to have such negative effects? I think it is important to be consistent and it is difficult to do so if you start specifying that the law should only concern itself with discrimination where there are sufficiently negative effects on those involved.

Also, I've never heard of "discrimination against the working classes".

I think it is mainly labour law. Such as using fixed-term contracts only for people above a certain age rather than paying attention to how well that person works. Or ruling out certain ages from certain jobs in an industry for no substantial reason. Certainly employment law is the only one I can think of off the top of my head.

Does the law specify that the negative effects of the discrimination have to have a certain level of severity? Or even that the discrimination needs to have such negative effects? I think it is important to be consistent and it is difficult to do so if you start specifying that the law should only concern itself with discrimination where there are sufficiently negative effects on those involved.

High praise from me-I love punning

I think it would be better if laws were based on the research of trends for issues in these areas. You can be consistent by applying the same rule in judging which issues count as discrimination or not. I just think of it as there being two meanings for discrimination:
1) Judging/deciding/making a definition between things in a neutral sense.
2) Being prejudiced against a person based on assumptions drawn from a category that they belong to, particularly assumptions that are based on stigmatization.

I think the real motivation behind having these kinds of laws is to stop (2). But people might hop on the bandwagon and try and get benefits from applying it to things that fall under (1).

I think it would be better if laws were based on the research of trends for issues in these areas. You can be consistent by applying the same rule in judging which issues count as discrimination or not. I just think of it as there being two meanings for discrimination:
1) Judging/deciding/making a definition between things in a neutral sense.
2) Being prejudiced against a person based on assumptions drawn from a category that they belong to, particularly assumptions that are based on stigmatization.

I think the real motivation behind having these kinds of laws is to stop (2). But people might hop on the bandwagon and try and get benefits from applying it to things that fall under (1).

While I agree that the idea is to stop (2), I don't think that it's often that easy to discern (1) from (2). Having higher car insurance for younger drivers is a good example. Would you say that falls under (1) or (2)? Personally I think that it's more (2) than (1) and yet it isn't covered by the law.

Statute may be based on empirical statistics (though there's a labour law case on part-time workers which used statistics to show how women were discriminated against).

From my basic understanding of discrimination law (admittedly taken mainly from EU law but I think England and Wales have similar principles) you can have discrimination in law (e.g. "Only White people may do X&quot and discrimination in fact (e.g. "Part-time workers cannot attain continuity" - more women than men do part-time work hence discrimination in fact. Apparently). Discrimination in fact does pay attention to whether there is actually a prejudice against a category.

I've already made it pretty clear I think its 1 in my two posts discussing why age isn't really a category that invites much abuse in society.

And no I disagree with you. A priori it might well be difficult to discern the difference between (1) and (2), but that's what research is for, and we have more than enough of that to make these kinds of distinctions based on the evidence.

I do remember that bit (although I still have no idea what you look like). I was absolutely terrible, but I briefly spoke about how good it is that everything's so close. I really wish we'd had a different section!

There exists evidence to suggest that younger drivers are more likely to be involved in road accidents because they are younger? Rather than, for instance, due to their individual personalities? I'm struggling to see the distinction between this and discrimination due to race (if, for instance, it was found that a particular race had a higher than average probability of being involved in road accidents that couldn't be attributed to any other observed characteristic).

Anyway, I just realised that it's almost 2 AM, so good night all.

Haha, likewise - I remember your bit but I have no idea what you look like. I'll probably meet you at the training on Tuesday though? I'm short and have short hair, and that's about as much as I'm going to say on here, so it's not very illuminating Finance was a pretty easy section really - I love doing it because I always get to talk about how much college have wasted on sending me on holiday!

Yep I DEFINITELY remember your bit, because I started thinking about all the linguists on TSR being given money

I'm going to do a facebook stalk now