This is vile. Businesses have decided it’s about time that they introduced their own version of the criminal record. The National Staff Dismissals Register, an online database going live later this month, will contain the details of all employees of signed up companies dismissed for simple allegations of certain offences. There doesn’t need to have been any proof, or criminal conviction - merely allegations.

These details will remain on the database for five years. They will be available to any company signed up to the site. That already means Harrods, Selfridges and Reed Managed Services, amongst others.

Presence on the Register is likely to scupper chances of employment entirely. Who’d employ someone who might be guilty of theft, forgery or fraud, if they even suspected them of it? No-one who valued their money, certainly…

They say it’s not a blacklist.

How?

The system is so open to abuse it’s frightening. People have been falsely accused of offences before.  They’ve been sacked for them. They’d lose their job, but they wouldn’t get a criminal record. It’d be unpleasant, but at least they could move on.

This destroys any chance of that. Once an employee is on the database, rightfully or not, they’re on it - and have less of a chance of getting a job. In a case where an employee is wrongly dismissed, that’s simply unfair. You can imagine it. Some lecherous old fart of an employer, as is known to happen, makes advances at an employee. Wisely cautious of flabby middle aged flesh and rampantly under-sexed bosses, they reject them. The boss gets offended, concocts a vague tale of misplaced paper-clips and laptops, and the employee is fired.

And now that goes on their record as theft. For five years.

So, that’s gross injustice number 1. But what about gross injustice number 2? This database utterly dismisses the notion that people can change. Yes, an employee might commit a crime at an early stage, and rightly be dismissed for it. But why can’t they change? Dismissal might be the very spur to drive them back into obeying the law.

If a greasy speck like Jonathan Aitken could do it…

There are reasons employers aren’t allowed to share details of employees. If a crime’s committed, and there’s enough evidence to collar someone, then they’ll get a criminal record. Future employers can judge them on that. If not, then past employers have no right to tar their future with semi-substantiated accusations so weak that they couldn’t even take them to the police.

If a government collected a database like this, there’d be (rightful) outrage. “Statist tyranny!” would go up the cry. “Evil socialists coming to steal your freedom, evil, evil…”

So why is there no outcry when the private sector does it?

This sort of thing makes me glad I’ve stayed away from Branson’s stab at Murdoch’s dominance of British media. Apparently their CEO is of the view that it is absurd to expect access to be given to the entire internet at equal rates and instead far prefers the system whereby the corporate websites capable of stumping up the cash to get a quick connect are given it and the rest are left in, as he says, the “Bus lane”.

It’s not just because our website would unquestionably fall within the latter category that I object strongly to this. It’s since the net has barely any principles, it’s mainly more of a medium than anything you can attach values and virtues to. But the notion of McDonalds and Sony being to buy their way ahead of Bad Science and Penny Red is one that is utterly at odds with it’s present form.

Gordon Brown’s latest re-launch has been scuppered by his Scottish party leader.  Just like he was recently scuppered by his own Chancellorship.  Both cases will significantly harm Labour - the latter in the North and the former north of the border.  With Labour heartlands already turning to a blue-ish hue, he cannot afford to keep making such stupid mistakes.

It is telling that the two issues most besetting the Labour party at the moment were caused and exacerbated by the Prime Minister and leader in Scotland.  Some governments are brought down by unfortunate circumstances.  This one will fall through the stupidity, incompetence and arrogance of its leadership.

Obviously most of the British left is still reeling from the Tory thrashing of us just about everywhere in the latest election. It is worth considering though, what exactly this result means, rather than accepting the rather predictable right-wing blog response that it shows a swing to the right of Britain. Certainly it shows that our local government is going to be of that nature, but I would suggest that the views of the British are not all that different lately, simply the conditions in which they voted.

To believe the right this would represent people turning upon leftism and its tendency to tax. I suspect that this is the sort of crude consideration given by people who consider Marxism to be something that once happened in Russia. The horror caused by Brown’s tax upon the poor was that this was the group the socialist and social democratic perspective consider the one meant to be aided by taxation. This was only exacerbated by Brown’s promise to swamp them with aid to compensate, begging the question of why it was worth bothering taking their money in the first place, especially in order to mildly aid the moderately affluent.

Thus the problem was more one caused by Labour than the left. I have little doubt that this crisis resulted in many voters for Labour by conviction, if not habit, simply remaining home. Although there unquestionably was a surge in voters willing to back the Tories owing to Cameron’s resurgence arguing that the left has collapsed is rather imprecise: they are still there, they simply didn’t show up.

So what can be done? I am not going to say that Blairism is dead or New Labour over. Simply that this has served as Brown’s Iraq. It has made it clear to the left that he is no longer one that they would tolerate were he not of their own party. He seems to lack the charm that Blair used to extricate himself from such situations but even for Tony this was wearing thin. What is required is some new form of central leftism, but attempting to “Send out a message” about weed and lock people away for six weeks without the police even asking you to let them seems to be an effort at the same old out-flank.

This will not work. Now that the voters have a Conservative Party that is not openly foul they will vote for Conservative policies by voting for it. Those further to the right of Conservatives will vote for the BNP. Labour requires a new position to evade being crushed and at present seems to be suffering from this compression in blindness.