Saga feels the heat of the Single Equality Act

I have a rule to not comment on the idiocies of politicians in my blog postings. But it is Saturday, it is a beautiful morning and so what the hell, rules are there to be broken.

Politicians in the UK are, in the main, a well meaning bunch but are not the brightest group of people you are likely to meet. Most of them are on a mission to solve the world’s problems, well at least to talk about solving them, but cannot think further than the end of their nose when it comes to the policies they cook-up to do this. So it is with the Single Equality Act.

The UK has commissions for all sorts of ‘inequality’ (real or assumed) and to make a mess worse it has been decided to combine them all into a super-commission for ‘equality’ to enforce this new legislation that will cover gender, sexual preference, religion, race and AGE. This brings me back on track to subject of 50-plus marketing.

If you cannot discriminate in terms of age what happens to companies like Saga? It seems nobody has thought of this problem other than the folk at Saga.

The Times published the details of a memo that Saga sent to Government explaining their predicament:

We fear the unintended consequences of such legislation might be to subvert our cruise and holiday business, and our financial services business, whilst causing great collateral damage to our brand.

“One must also question whether Saga as a business could survive if it is forced to abandon its ethos, its branding so painstakingly built up, and to suffer the inevitable perturbation of its local customer base.”

This legislation will, theoretically, have implications for all types of 50-plus marketing. Paul Green, Saga’s communications chief, said: “There is a danger from blunderbuss legislation. It could bring to an end older people enjoying discounts on their fish and chips, or cheaper care insurance.”

Ministers will publish their plans for the Single Equality Act next month – I will read it with interest.

Of course what this legislation doesn’t even begin to address is the culture of youth that pervades the way most companies operate. Will it mean that new products and services must all be equally accessible to people of ages – NO? Will it mean that companies will have to change their marketing to provide equal consideration to all ages – NO.

What it means is that politicians can preen themselves for having done some good whilst actually not changing things a jot, other than to screw up the workings of the market. What a bunch of dimwits. Dick Stroud