“The Army has carried the American … ideal to its logical conclusion. Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on ability.”

Discrimination is good if it’s relevant. Looking for an actor to play the part of an 18th century African slave? Please discriminate on skin colour. I really don’t want to see Jeremy Clarkson blacking up to play the role. Looking for an accountant? Probably best not to worry about skin colour at all, if we’re being honest.

I’ve not read through the bill, because I’m at work, but from what I can tell from this (that link may well break, as it’s stupidly got spaces in…) the class-discrimination thing actually applies to Local Authorities providing services. The examples they give are things like:

“A transport authority could review how accessible its services are. It finds residents from deprived neighbourhoods find it difficult to travel to the local hospital because of infrequent public transport, low car ownership rates and high parking costs.The authority decides to work in partnership with the hospital to develop a strategy to tackle this, which could include introducing a free or subsidised shuttle bus service to the hospital from pick up points around town.”

I’m in two minds about the positive discrimination aspects of the bill – I don’t like it in principle, but in practice I work in an office with fifty-odd people working in it, of whom three are women, so I can see that it might be an idea sometimes, though on balance I’m against. But as far as local authorities having a duty to try to improve access to services for those who might need them more but have more difficulty accessing them, I really can’t see a problem there.

Hmm, I don’t quite agree with that Tristan. Can only be fought through voluntary means? Who says so? I would be happy for prejudice to be fought from every direction. And state actors have a major role to play, surely – not merely through legislation, but also in showing personal leadership.

If you’re telling me that this particular piece of legislation is bollock-brained, then I believe you. That said, I’m hoping for an amendment regarding faith-based school selection. Let’s see if parliament can go where Lib Dem conference feared to tread.

Prejudice can only be fought through voluntary means. It is through hard work of non-state actors that prejudice against most ethnic groups is unacceptable to the majority, the same goes for sexuality and gender – although we still have a long way to go.

The only place government comes in is through repealing legally sanctioned prejudice (of which there is a significant amount still in existence) as was the case with the illegality of homosexuality and many other aspects.

Today we still have state sanctioned prejudice against immigrants, gypsies, the ‘mentally ill’, homosexuality and others, yet the government insists on tying us up with regulation which will only hurt those its meant to help.

I haven’t looked at what the Bill actually demands of people, but it sounds like the sort of thing that has good intentions but in reality means more pointless bureaucracy, form-filling and box-ticking.

Which is true, but it’s also true that rich people live longer than poor people, full stop. I don’t think it’s ‘worse’ when poor women are dying before rich men.

However for a giddy moment I thought she was about to suggest a diversion of healthcare resources away from women, towards men, in the name of equality.