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May 26, 2005

'Orders must be obeyed at any cost'

Just when I think it's just the USA in the grip of PC bureaucracy -- the kind that sucks common sense out of the very air with a deafening sound -- I read of things like the plight of John Booth of England, a modest, hardworking business man who has run afoul of Britain's own Disability Rights Commission (DRC). Irony, too, is that Mr. Booth is disabled himself. He runs a "caravan site" (American translation: RV camping site) and a wheelchair-bound couple had a snit fit because he couldn't book them in April, instead he offered booking them in June. Enter the DRC, who dismissed in total all of Mr. Booth's explanations of delay

[The DRC] wrote to Booth warning him that, following a complaint from the couple, he would be taken to court unless he made a formal apology and gave them £2,000 in compensation for ‘the injury to their feelings they have suffered caused by your discriminatory behaviour’. Booth was understandably outraged by this monetary demand, given that the actual cost for a two-week stay at the site is only £120. The DRC had therefore ordered him to pay the couple more than 15 times the sum he would have received from their booking.
Of course, besides the monetary hit the DRC was imposing on Mr. Booth, they demanded he take a "Disability Awareness Training" class and provide proof to the commission.
As a disabled man himself, Booth found the mixture of threats, indoctrination and extortion intolerable. ‘It was nothing more than emotional and financial blackmail. I felt so robbed, so bullied,’
Sue 'em? His own lawyer told him it would be a losing proposition. The power, time and money was with the system, not a disabled business owner at the mercy of the Easily.Offended.

These petty dictators grow and flourish like the mold under a leaky sink.

One of the greatest crimes of modern Britain is to fail to show full obeisance to the doctrine of equality. John Booth has led an honourable business life, but now, because of the new culture of rights and victimhood, he has been fined a four-figure sum.
Mr. Booth now thinks of quitting his business after finding himself shackled, silenced and fined for the the crime of being a business owner. Then there will be no camping, for either the abled or disabled.

But "equality" has never been what people like those of the DRC are really after.

Posted by Darleen at May 26, 2005 06:31 PM

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