Following on from my last post, it’s great to see Paul Ince take the job of manager at Blackburn Rovers, becoming the first ever English black man to manage a club in the top flight of English football. (Ruud Gullit and Jean Tigana were 1st and 2nd black managers respectively).

However, Paul Ince needed special dispensation to take the job, as he does not have the required qualifications to manage a club in the top flight.

Now, make no mistake, Ince has excelled in his two previous jobs at Macclesfield and MK Dons. And when he started managing, he was talking about going all the way to the top, hopefully managing Inter Milan one day.

What surprises me is that he has been managing for two years, and has not managed to get any of the UEFA badges. You see, to manage in the premiership, you need a UEFA Pro License, which is the highest qualification you can get. But you can also get a lesser ‘A’ badge or a ‘B’ badge when you start coaching. I read in the press that last year, Paul Ince was meant to go to college to get his ‘B’ badge, however, he didn’t turn up, and went golfing instead. And Roy Keane, who only just retired, has already completed his qualifications.

For someone who wanted to manage at the top, I’m surprised he didn’t prepare for the role. He’s been retired for years, and could have taken his badges a lot earlier. Current and recently retired players are already talking about getting their badges, Stephane Henchoz started his while still playing for Blackburn, and Steven Gerrard has been thinking about doing his for a while. Neil Lennon is starting his A badge this summer.

Make no mistake about it, the UEFA Pro License is hard work. Generally, the course takes a year to complete, with 240 hours of work to be put in. Prospective coaches are taught on their handling of top-class players, their use of the latest technology, and their abilities to deal with off-the-field problems. The English course begins in June with a 10-day residential period at Warwick University.

Glen Roeder and Gareth Southgate are both working towards obtaining their qualifications, after being given dispensation to manage with it in the past. And we hear that Ince should be one of the last people to take a job in the premier league without one.

We have another black former player in the shape of John Barnes, who is claiming that the only reason why he has not been offered another management job since he was in charge of Celtic, is because he’s black. However, I don’t see his name on the list of holders of the UEFA Pro license. For all I know, he may have an A or a B badge. However, if someone in the premiership decides to offer him a job tomorrow, he won’t be able to take it, because he’s not ready. They say opportunity knocks but once. I’ve heard another expression, ‘If opportunity doesn’t knock, then build a door.’ or ‘Chance favours the prepared mind’.

Both Paul Ince and John Barnes were great footballers. And Ince has done really well as a manager. But both would be wise to follow Roy Keane’s example, and prepare for the future in good time.

N.B. Just realised that Roy Keane’s name is not on the list of managers who have the qualification. However, I don’t remember the Premier League making a special case for him unlike Glen Roeder, Gareth Southgate, Avram Grant and of course Paul Ince, so I assume he has it.

Last week, the British government put forward plans to introduce a new law that will allow firms to discriminate in favour of female and ethnic minority job candidates . The entire country has been debating this since it was announced, with most people it would seem against the idea. Personally, I’m in favour of it, and I think the problem is that most people don’t understand the law.

First of all, the ‘positive discrimination’ aspect is just a tiny part of the legislation, which also targets age discrimination, and tackles the gender pay gap in the public sector. Secondly, this is not an affirmative action law, as operated in the US, which forces you to choose ethnic minorities over other people. As far as I understand it, affirmative action means that, for example, when a university is picking new students, they have to pick a number of black people, and this most likely means that some white people will be overlooked for blacks who may not be as qualified as them. This creates resentment a lot of the time. The UK law is not the same though. The UK law means that if you are recruiting staff, and for any reason you have to decide between two equally qualified candidates, you can pick a woman or an ethnic minority in order to ‘balance out’ your team, allowing you to have a more diverse team. So why would you need a law to do this? Well, because this protects you against an employment tribunal.

Make no mistake about it, women and ethnic minorities need some help out here. A couple of years ago, I saw a hiring manager glance at a CV, and toss it in the bin after looking at it for less than one second. When I asked him why, he said because the person had an Indian name. A few weeks later, the same person said he had decided to hire only ‘white British people’, because they gave the least trouble. To be fair, we had a team member who was of Bangladeshi origin (born in the UK), who left the company suddenly, using a story which we found to be a lie. However, I think it was unfair to tie this behaviour to his race.

It’s not too long ago we had a case of a Pakistani man looking for job in Wales, who was told there were no suitable vacancies. He decided to write a similar CV, with a Welsh name, and fewer qualifications. And guess what, within 3 hours, he was asked to apply for a position paying £33,000 p.a.

So how many times has this happened to me?  How many times have I applied for a job I am more than qualified to do, only to have my CV tossed in the bin because I don’t have an English name? How many times does this happen daily to other applicants in recruitment offices all over the country? The truth is that I will never know. Take a walk around the City of London, and all you’ll see for the most part are white men. Of course, they are in the majority in the population, so that’s not too much of a surprise. But check the boardrooms of major UK companies, check key positions in the government, and black men and women are few and far between. There are a few exceptions though. Like Trevor Williams, Lloyds TSB’s chief economist, who speaks regulalry on BBC’s breakfast show.

But as you can see, he’s the only black man on the board. And I suspect there are very few black man on boards of other banks and financial institutions in the country. I certainly didn’t see any at the Mansion house dinner.

But will this law help? I don’t think so. As long as the people making the decisions are not forced to pick ethnic minorities or women, they will always be at a disadvantage. Until there are more ethnic minorities in influential positions, and more hiring managers who are ready to pick people solely based on ability and talent, this new law is just a drop in the ocean. It’s a step in the right direction though, and hopefully, in the not too distant future, attitudes will change.

And you know what? I like to think that the two jobs I have gotten since I got here, I got them because I was the best person who applied for the job. If I found out that I got the job for any other reason, I would not be happy. And I think most ethnic minorities or women would think in the same way.

I still remember when I was working in London, we had someone come in to fix the photocopiers. He was black. When he asked who he was to report to, he was directed to me. You should have seen the look on his face. When he left, and I was signing off his job, he said he was proud to see a black man doing very well for himself in ‘The City’. And you know what, it wasn’t until that day that I realised that I was the only place person in  my office. And when I went out for lunch later that day, I walked down the length of Fenchurch street, and I could count the number of black people I saw on one hand. Coincidence? Maybe. But it had never occurred to me. An d from that day onwards, I became more concious of myself, of my race, of the colour of my skin.

I heard an argument on TV that a white working class man in the UK is less likely to go to university than any other section of society, and that if anyone needs help in the workplace, it is them. That’s not an argument I want to get into, the whole ‘working class white man’ story is something that perplexes me completely, but they are becoming more and more of a political force in the guise of the British National Party. And from my Nigerian roots, I know how much emphasis our people put on getting an education. However, statistics in the UK show that blackboys don’t do too well at school. All sorts of reasons have been postulated as to why this is so. But the truth is that, at least, they are in school in the first place.And I’ll stop here, because I don’t want to say anything controversial.

I just hope that by the time my daughter starts looking for her first job, she won’t get chosen because of the colour of her skin, or her gender, but because of her ability to do the job.

Saw this story yesterday, but it’s really gone round today.

A Nigerian undergraduate has reportedly been making helicopters out of old car and bike parts. Imagine my surprise when this story appeared on Slashdot, the tech news Mecca.

With all the bad news about Nigeria that normally goes round, and some so called smart person claiming that black people are not as intelligent as whites, this makes me really proud.

Let’s just hope that the exposure this boy has gotten will help him out, although sadly, it would almost definitely mean him leaving the country.