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No need to be watching over your shoulder if you simply treat all human beings like human beings.

IIRC Kip and I had this one in the smoking debate, about it being a sad state of affairs when a society feels the need to introduce legislation, in an attempt to force people by law to show each other the respect and consideration they should be showing anyway as a matter of decency.

Kip, it must have been infuriating to be falsely accused of racism. But just because you are not racist, does not mean that racism does not exist, nor does it mean that racism is a non-issue brought up only by people who are out for someone to blame. The same goes for any form of discrimination.

So far, I've never made a claim or sued anyone when I have experienced discrimination. I have a limited amount of time and energy and I choose to spend it in other ways (like setting up a business). However, no matter how positive my attitude, I assure you that I experience discrimination every single day of my life. Sometimes it's on a fairly minor level, like not being able to get into a shop or some idiot making a stupid comment. Other times it's at a major level, such as losing a job because of managers being unwilling to consider making access adjustments. A friend of mine was almost killed by discrimination and prejudice - a dentist assumed that because she was visibly disabled, she was stupid and could not possibly know about her own allergies, so he lied about what was in the syringe, and went ahead and injected her with an anasthetic that sent her to the ICU for a week.

Saying that society should acknowledge that (a) this happens, (b) it has a significant impact on the people to whom it happens, and (c) it is not acceptable, is not the same thing as "wanting something for nothing". It does not indicate a deficit in the individual's mentality or morality.

(Oh, and my friend, who is thankfully now out of hospital, is worried that if she makes a formal legal complaint about the man who nearly killed her, she will get it in the neck for being litigious.)

I have a dream of one day having a house with a library. I accept that it will likely have to double as a dining-room or something, but mostly we're just looking at a room that won't need wallpaper because it will have books instead.

I tend to read by author - I pick up random books in the Waterstones 3 for 2 offers and then if I like something, I buy more things from the same person. And the Penguin Classics, although I can't get my head round the idea that they've gone up to

Hello Dave!

Is there a reason why you specialise in clocks?

I think that discrimination is difficult to comprehend for people who don't often find themselves on the wrong end of it.

I think that when it is connected with work, it goes a step further. In our society, so much of our self-worth is bound up in what we do for a living. You meet someone for the first time, one of the first questions they ask is "so what do you do?" If, for whatever reason, you're not in work - you're a full-time parent, or you're too ill to work, or you're a full-time student, or you got made redundant two weeks ago and haven't found a new job yet - a cloud descends over the conversation.

If you're unfortunate enough to not have an alternate source of income, savings, or family support, and you end up claiming benefit - well, you might as well just start ringing a leper's bell as you are going to be utterly despised by half the people you meet. "Oh, you're not welfare scrounging scum are you?" is a phrase that echoes in your ears even after you've managed to get a job again.

To lose or be asked to leave your job is to lose your pride, self-respect, dignity, self-worth, social status... I'd even go so far as to say you lose part of your identity.

If it happens because you're rubbish at your job, made a major mistake, punched a client, sexually assaulted a co-worker, then it's your own fault and you need to suck it up and learn from it and bloody well Not Do It Again.

But if it happens because of something beyond your control, such as your gender, race, disability, age... if it happens not because of something you did, but because of something intrinsic to who you are, then it is an appalling and unjustified personal attack.

You find yourself wondering exactly what it is you are supposed to be learning from the experience. It is an enormous effort of will to resist absorbing the now-proven fact that people in the world view you as an inferior. Sometimes, in the dark moments that occur while you are struggling to adjust to the financial and circumstantial changes that are part of being unemployed, you start to wonder if they're right. If enough people think of you as "scum", if enough people believe that you're so sub-human that it's okay to call you scum to your face - does it become true?

It crushes you.

Which is all rather a lot of preamble to explain why I hold the following position:

Wrongful dismissal is about telling employers that they did something wrong in thinking it would be okay to discriminate on the basis of colour/disability/gender/etc. It sends a message to them and to the rest of the business world that treating a "minority group" in this way is not acceptable - which is necessary if we are ever going to overcome the discriminatory attitudes which are ingrained in our society.

Injury to feeling, on the other hand, has less to do with the employer, or to do with minority groups, and is more about telling the individual person who was discriminated against in this particular instance loud and clear that it was wrong for them as an individual to be treated in such a manner. That they are NOT inferior. It is a way of acknowledging the punch to the gut that discrimination feels like.

This one tickled me:

Dan and Dan - the Daily Mail song.

Break a leg! Or install non-slip flooring, or whatever

Yeah, I originate from one of those depressed, high-unemployment seaside towns with no more fishing industry and precious little tourism.

You grow up in a town like that, and then, if there is any way on God's green earth that it is possible for you to leave, you leave. You leave to get married. You leave to go to university. You leave because you got a good job offer. You leave to start a new life from scratch in Asia or Australia on the basis that it's as far away as possible.

The poor saps who remain are rarely the ones who could be described as a skilled workforce. The ones who have the potential and the motivation to be a skilled workforce are elsewhere and working in other jobs. You'd need a very particular type of idiot genius to spend years learning about marine engineering in the hope of a possible single six-month contract making turbines in a hellhole town at the edge of nowhere.

It's a vicious circle. The cause is that the town is a depressed sh!thole. The effect is that the town becomes an even more depressed sh!thole.

No wonder they can't find a local skilled workforce.

Hahaha, I like it.

I'm currently having this with the artist who's doing the pictures for my website. I've been a fan of her work for years - before I was even thinking of business - and I was absolutely thrilled to bits when she agreed to do my business artwork.

However, my admiration of her work, combined with the way I'm not the world's most assertive person, means she's had to put considerable effort into persuading me that as a paying client I'm supposed to nitpick, and that she needs me to be fussy so that she can be sure that she's delivering something I'll be thrilled with rather than just "happy enough".

Granted on the aspect of there being a small portable bit of fire in the car. That does add an extra element of risk and, if it goes to the wrong place (like the back seat) a whole new range of issues. Weirdly, I think a lot of those issues are exacerbated by having the windows open to let the smoke disperse - as a kid both my parents smoked with the car windows shut and stubbed the ends in the ashtray, I don't ever recall glowing ends going anywhere they shouldn't have.

But I still can't equate smoking a cigarette to taking/making a phone call without a handsfree set.

Time to light cigarette: 2 seconds and you choose when you do it.
Time to take a drag: 2 seconds and you choose when you do it.
Time to change radio station: 2 seconds and you choose when you do it.
Time to scratch nose: 2 seconds and you choose when you do it.

Time to take phone call: never had a phone call take less than twenty seconds and usually it's several minutes. And in the case of accepting phone calls, you don't get to choose when you do it - there's no "I'll just get round this roundabout and then it's a nice clear run and I can (whatever)," or "heigh-ho, red light, while I'm stopped I'll (whatever)." The phone rings and you try to answer it.

Taking a call on handsfree is different again, that's just the same as a passenger in the car talking to you.