Tick that box. Tick it, I say!

If black people are 'coloured', does that mean we white people are just outlines? In which case, colour me baffled.

In the last few days there have been increasingly strident calls, more than usual, for 'more women' and 'more ethnics' and 'more of that other thing as long as they don't smoke or drink' in Parliament. No calls for 'more people who know what the hell they are doing and never mind their colour, sexual preference, gender, religion or whether they have dirty habits in private'. These calls come, of course, from the party that tried it and were royally crushed as a result.

Diane Abbott, a highly polished Labour MP, is now joining the race for the leader of the Labour party. She faces competition solely from white heterosexual male human beings and Ed Balls. Maybe she would make a great leader, I don't know. If she wins, will she win because she's the least bad (actually likely to be true) or because she is a black woman and therefore ticks the boxes? Will you be able to tell? I won't. Labour's agenda of ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, religion and everything-but-smokers quotas means that whenever a woman gets a position, it's seen as 'bah, that's just the quotas'. Even if it's a black lesbian ex-convict drug-addled alcoholic with fifteen children by nineteen fathers who actually happens to be the best choice for the job. As long as she doesn't smoke.

It's not about the job any more. It's about the applicant. I fully expect to be visited by the PC police any day because my one-man business is entirely white male heterosexual and not a prayer room in sight. I'm ready for them. I'll claim I'm a lesbian trapped in a man's body and demand compensation for my inability to bear children. The weird part is, I'd probably get it too.

Shiny Abbott speaks:

Abbott said Labour needed the "broadest possible" contest as it debated the future of the party after this month's general election defeat. "We can't go forward with a leadership debate where there is no woman," she said.

Why not? Hideous Harman and Why Vet Cooper have a good call on the contest and neither are standing. Nor is Jacq the Ripper. Oh, that's right, Jacq lost her seat to the Tories. Poor Jacq. I'd sympathise if I cared. But if no woman applies, why force the issue? Now it appears that Gleaming Abbott is applying only to tick the box as the 'Free Of Balls' candidate. And the 'Not an outline in a colouring book' candidate. Not forgetting the 'Brasso advert' candidate.

If there is a candidate who is right for the job, why does it matter whether that candidate is male, female, black, white, yellow, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Pagan, or prefers to sleep with the other gender, their own gender, or baboons in Lycra? In the days of reality, long ago, what mattered was the job. That came first. The job was defined and you'd look for someone who could do it. What they did with themselves outside the job was of no relevance. What they looked like was of no relevance (unless it's catwalk model. Apparently I don't have what it takes, or so they keep telling me every time I apply. Not much call, it seems, for a blob on stilts. Discrimination!). Who they slept with was of no relevance. As long as the job was done, and done well, the employer didn't care if your skin was green and you had antlers and your preferred mating technique was trout-style.

Not any more. Under Labour's Reign of Absurdity, every group (except smokers) must be represented in the workplace, whether they can do the job or not. I'm going to have to black half of myself up. I'll black up the bottom half to impress the ladies. I'll also have to have one boob implant and become a Christhindulim for the sake of equality. Then I'll have to sack myself for being a smoker. Unless I lie to myself about smoking and hope I don't demand I take a blood test for the presence of potato metabolites.

That's what thirteen years of Labour have done. True story - in my previous rented lab, I had to fill out risk assessments for every technique I used even though I was the only one doing the jobs. I had to sign the risk assessments as 'manager' and then sign them again to prove I had read what I had written! Their safety idiot actually checked! I had to sign them again every two years to prove I had read what I had written about techniques I have used for decades and which nobody in my employ uses because there isn't anyone. Now I rent a lab where they don't check. I flash my personal indemnity insurance and they sensibly say 'You don't work for us, your health and safety is your problem'.

So, should the Torydems follow the Absurdity party's example and employ more women, whether they are any use or not? I mean, it worked so well for Labour. Hideous Harman, Jacq the Ripper, Why Vet Cooper, the Motorbike Midget, Madge Bucket...

Have the Tories done better? They have Nadine Dorries but we'll excuse that. Every act needs a warm-up comedian. They also have that rejected model from Aardman Animations, Caroline 'Wallace' Spelman who has dropped them in it once again today.

It does not mean that women are not good politicians. I've known some who could run rings around PMQ's and leave the opposition on their knees, begging for logic. The way it is done nowadays is not to let the woman take her chances in the race, but to bias the race with all-women shortlists. So it's not about the best prospective candidate any more. It's about the least bad of a small subgroup of the available candidates.

Before you ladies get your handbags loaded with bricks and start swinging, I would make exactly the same comment about an all-male shortlist or an all-white shortlist... if they had ever existed.

Basing employment, at any level, on the candidate rather than the job is a recipe for disaster. We have had those disasters over and over again. Have 'lessons been learned' yet?

Work out what the job is and what needs to be done.

Find the best person to do it.

Does it really need to be any more complicated than that?