This is the blog of a man, of no particular significance, who just wants to get on in life. I thought that a blog would be a good medium through which I can vent my frustrations as an angry young man. My first post starts on a negative note, and my postings will no doubt continue in this fashion if the recent announcement by Harriet Harman, Deputy Leader of the Government, is anything to go by.
After getting rejected by the Scottish Prison Service for no apparent reason, you can understand me being a little bitter at the moment. Out of 150 applicants I was one of 89 people to pass the assignment handed out to us all 3 weeks ago. The next stage was a trip to Polmont Prison College for a physical test, a psychometric test and an interview with 3 grumpy-looking middle-aged men(probably all members of the Freemasons ) I was informed on the day that I passed the physical with flying colours. Obviously, they couldn't hide that from me as I knew the standards which I had to meet. The psychometric test is a fancy title for a basic arithmetic/english test. I can't even entertain the possibility of having failed it; it just wouldn't happen. I'm not being arrogant, but it was just plain simple. I'm that confident I would bet all the money I've got in my bank account that I got 24 out of 24 in the Maths section. So this leaves the actual interview. Well, apart from my nerves affecting me in the first few minutes - of which everyone is guilty of - and a few brief pauses to collect my thoughts, I answered all their pointless questions fully. So what gives?
The letter I received from the Recruitment Manager informed me that although I was successful in the fitness test, I failed to meet the required standard in the other elements of the Assessment Centre. She gives me no evidence to back this up, though. What she does say is if I would like feedback on my performance, I can write to them with my request. As fruitless an exercise as I think this will be, I will certainly still be asking for feedback. However, I know what sort of response I will get. It will be a typically evasive and vague answer comparable to the responses given by politicians trying to get themselves out of hot water.
I've got my own theory of why I didn't get in. For all the Government's apparent efforts to protect the privacy of members of the public, with Data Protection Acts, etc., they want to know absolutely every bit of information - significant and insignificant - about us. Aren't medical records meant to be private? Not according to the Prison Service! They wanted me to give them a complete list of every mental and physical condition I have ever had. Also, any trip to the hospital. So what happened to privacy? I've suffered from depression in the past - it happens to the best of us - and so I had to declare this. I'm not trivialising the condition, but in all honesty, nowadays you only have to go to a GP, say "I'm depressed", and your immediately doped up to the eyeballs on prozac and "labelled" for the near future, possibly for the rest of your life. I'm willing to put money on this being the reason why they didn't want me. But they can't admit to that because then I'd be due some hefty compensation due to their contravention of the Disability Discrimination Act.
Meanwhile, the Prison Service and the Police are allowing young women who couldn't fight themselves out of a paper bag into their ranks. I actually saw a girl in the Prison College(it's also a young offenders institution) in her uniform, about 5ft tall and built like an anorexic. So they allow young women to work with potentially dangerous prisoners, but not myself as I've been on a few tablets prescribed by a doctor who, along with all other members of the medical community, is clueless as to their efficacy! To rub further salt in my wounds, a girl, who looked more suited to being a beauty therapist or hairdresser (the type that would be frightened to break a nail), failed the grip test in the physical. So she's failed? Maybe not! Apparently the physical trainer was thinking about passing her! As cute as she was, that's just bang out of order.
Western men die some five years earlier than women. They suffer more from nearly every medical disease and ailment that there is. And yet, far more money is spent by governments on women's health than on men's health. Men are also nowadays educationally disadvantaged significantly compared to women; with the curriculum, the teaching methods and the resources being designed to cater far more for women and girls than for men and boys. Men make up 80% of the homeless. There are more of them in social service care-homes as boys. They are many times more likely to be wrongfully arrested, wrongfully imprisoned, mugged, assaulted or murdered. They are 5 times more likely to lose their children when families break down, 4 times more likely to lose their homes, 4 times more likely to commit suicide, 20 times more likely to be killed or injured at work, 20 times more likely to be imprisoned, and, probably, more than 100 times more likely to be demeaned, denigrated and ridiculed by the mainstream media. Men also pay much more in taxes than women but receive far less in benefits from the government.
In other words, when compared to women, men are significantly disadvantaged when it comes to their health, their lifespans, their homes, their children, their education, their families, the tax burden, the law, the benefit system, and even when it comes to their own personal safety.
They are nowadays also being heavily discriminated against in interviews and in the workplace.
How is it possible, therefore, that women are being 'oppressed' more than men?
