More on Perverts

Dear Mrs A¬¬¬¬____,

You ask if she has any disabilities I know of. If I did know of any I would not be able to tell you under disability law and you are not able to ask her. In telling you she has no disabilities I may have committed an offence under discrimination law, and certainly against the spirit of the law, because I have unfairly discriminated in her favour against those with disabilities.

Either way your disclaimer suggests I write “No responsibility… can be accepted for any…inaccuracies … or damage that may result …”. This means I can and may be writing accurately or inaccurately without responsibility. Moreover you have stipulated the information given is confidential. Thus I expect you to talk to no one of what I write. If you have a similar disclaimer exonerating you from responsibility or accuracy and damage caused, you can go ahead. If your disclaimer is confidential, then so much the better; you don’t even need to inform me that your claim to confidentiality is not expected to be honoured.

You ask “Has the candidate been subject to any concerns, where the concern … was unfounded … If so, give details.” I won’t be obliged under law to do this, it is bad law. Moreover such concerns may have been covered by a similar confidentiality clause, similarly provisoed that they need not be accurate, so I would not have been able to give you the details you oblige me to give and may have made them up without the need to accept responsibility for the damage it would cause . But I tell you I have no cause for concern because I, as a decent human being, recommend K____; not because the law demands I tell you – and not – at the same time.

Yours sincerely,

Bill Brookman

Perverts

Dear Mrs A___,

I am sorry I have not found time to reply to the questionnaire about the lovely K____, who, if you have met her, you will know is a wonderful person and excellent for the post.

However the point of the questionnaire is to take a roundabout way of asking do I think she is a paedophile and a pervert. Interestingly those words appear nowhere on the forms but are the only salient points the government has said you must discover. (For the record I am quite sure she is neither; if I thought otherwise I would have let you know without the need of a government law.)

You will be aware that you, I and K____ may be criminally liable if we get any of the form filling wrong. Thus it has a ridiculous disclaimer making it not worth the paper it is written on.

So now you have a dilemma and so does K____ and so do I because she does not deserve this.

I am sorry for this most unsatisfactory state of affairs. It will get better when laws, which largely miss the point (in that the great majority of paedophile cases occur within the family, or people known to the family - by males) hastily made and poorly thought through, to please a prurient press and public demanding instant no-risk fixes; which are enforced by the threat of criminalising those left with bureaucratic tasks which in no way should come within criminal jurisdiction for non-compliance, are found to be unworkable and are repealed.

Yours sincerely,

Bill Brookman