You Need To Read More Than The Headlines
We Only Read The Headlines is the title of an amusing song from the 2004 album by the music project Lazyboy TV. The phrase itself and variants thereof can be traced back to at least 1916, but in the modern age it is a reference to something known as clickbait.
You see a headline on say Google News, something outrageous, spicy, weird...so click on it, and the story turns out to be something very unexceptional, although you may have to wait until the final paragraph to find that out. Last week, one such headline that appeared in Mail Online and other news sites claimed that offering a chair to an older colleague at work could be classed as discrimination, indeed a judge had so ruled.
However, when we turn to the actual judgment on the relevant British Government website, it is clear that the judge said no such thing.
Mr Edreira had been employed by a waste disposal company. The retirement age in England is now 66 for both men and women. Having reached that age, one might have expected him to have wanted to retire but he wanted to stay on although he believed his employer wanted him to retire, indeed wanted to force him to retire, not by sacking him for some contrived reason, but by making his position uncomfortable.
At one point, he was offered a chair for his work when he needed one. Other employees had been offered chairs, including a pregnant woman, something that sounds very reasonable. Also, the option of sitting on a chair when working sounds like his employer wanted to make his position more not less comfortable.
The full judgment runs to 27 pages, from which it is clear that Mr Edreira was not in the best of health, and that along with a large number of other employees he had been absenting himself from work. He had worked for the firm since December 2006 until his dismissal in October last year.
The final sentence of the judgment says Mr Edreira’s claim had been dismissed. What was that about the chair?
The reason this non-story hit the headlines probably has more to do with events north of the border. A Draconian law against free speech (not hate speech) having been brought in, the people of Scotland are rightly deluging the police with complaints in order to expose it for what it is – tyrannical and unworkable in equal measure. As age is now a protected characteristic, it will only be a matter of time before we see young people being dragged into court for using coarse words against their elders. There was no evidence Mr Edreira had suffered such treatment, and he would do well to enjoy his retirement as best he can. Heaven knows, many people don’t even live to his age.