Would you believe it? Here’s a twenty-one-years-old particle physics and cosmology honours graduate who can’t get a job as a police constable – no, not even when his father is a senior officer in the force. Matthew Furlong was described by his interviewing panel for the Cheshire Constabulary as, “Very good. He could not have done any more.” The chairman of the panel added, “It was refreshing to meet someone as well-prepared as Matthew.”
So they failed him.
Why? The official answer is that his application was disallowed “on grounds of sexual orientation and race.” Matthew’s problem is that he is white, male and heterosexual, and at the moment Deputy Chief Constable Janette McCormick is having a politically-correct diversity drive. Poor Matthew just happened to be the wrong sex, the wrong colour and of the wrong sexual orientation at the wrong time: he’s not a woman, he’s not black and he’s not gay.
I was so put out by this outrageous politically-correct travesty – this blatant example of sexism and racism combined – that I looked around for something to take my mind off the subject. Something to read perhaps? Well, I’d read all my back copies of The Philosophical Quarterly, Bella, Cosmopolitan, Woman’s Own and Gay Times so where was I to turn?
Luckily, I found the answer in our local newsagent’s. It was a copy of The Voice which is advertised as “a weekly newspaper for black Britons.”
This brought Matthew’s unfortunate experience of rejection back into my mind and I wondered what would have been the result if the candidate turned down for the Cheshire job had been a black lesbian? Well, we know damn well what would have happened, don’t we? The Cheshire Constabulary would have been hung, drawn and quartered for its racism and sexism.
I turned back to The Voice, that weekly newspaper for black people. And I wondered what would happen to anyone who tried to publish a newspaper – let us call it An Alternative Voice – which advertised itself as “a weekly newspaper for white Britons”?
You know the answer to that too.
One of the crucial points about this case is, the young man found out because he was an exceptional candidate, and he won his case because his father was still serving, and therefore able to gather evidence on his behalf. How many other cases occur in which the candidate has a niggling feeling that political correctness cost him the post, or the interview, but he is unable to verify that fact, far less gather enough evidence to take the potential employer to court?
I would think the main reason he was turned down is he is too smart to be a policeman. An Honours particle physics graduate sholuld be looking elsewhere.
I comfort myself with the thought that things may have to get worse befor they get better. Perhaps a tipping point is not too far away. I keep in mind Jesus’ words to Peter……”Upon this Rock I will build my Church and the Gates of Hell will not prevail against it”.
Thank you for highlighting this incident Peter which, though unsurprising, does fill me with a deep sense of dread as it is quite obvious that we are lost as a country, a society and a civilisation.
When all of our leaders and every important institution is infested with such decadence, irrational posturing and an ideology of perpetual revolution, there is no other direction but down.
Of course, there will eventually be something to fill this moral and spiritual vacuum in the West but it will almost certainly not be a resurgent Christianity…at least not for a long time anyway.