Letter to Wera Hobhouse, MP for Bath regarding lived experience in the UK and her new legislation Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023

 

I would like to share my recent experiences with you regarding this legislation, and would ask for some advice on my plans for my recovery from schizophrenia.

 

I feel that I have not received protection from harassment at work for my protected characteristics:

I am an Anglo Indian and from a visual inspection look like the leader of the Indian opposition (to my eyesight), yet I have to deal with comments ranging from ‘I couldn’t tell you were Indian’ to ‘you look like you are from Southern Europe’, or ‘where are you from’ even though to my ear I usually speak in the central Bath accent as opposed to RP. 

 

I have the diagnoses of dyslexia, autism and serious mental health (schizophrenia). I have had my mental health triggered recently by a colleague from Banes council harassing me at work, so I quit my job to focus on studying to become a reflexologist.

 

I am a Christian having been a member of the congregation at Bath Abbey and getting confirmed at Wells Cathedral a few years ago. I feel like I am not being accommodated for my religious beliefs and this has led to a break down in communication with people who are allowed to make issue of it.

 

I feel that how I have been treated has cost the UK, I was a 40% tax payer before I went to university and since being harassed I have not really been well paid enough to pay income tax and my contribution in work has been limited by my disabilities.

 

I feel I am a “woke” person and always have been before I knew the term but I keep being accused of being “posh” by people which I feel is annoying as it’s like defamation, I have a completely different mindset to the one I am being accused of having. It’s not a crime but in a court case I would be afraid of being the victim of perjury.

 

I live in supported accommodation in my own flat being supported by a social care provider. Recently, my neighbour’s mother randomly knocked on my door to accost me about an incident that I felt harassed by when I was a student at Bristol University. I started to have the thought I have been the victim of a campaign of harassment regarding the issue. I had felt harassed by a classmate during my time at Bristol who had made me feel like I couldn’t be myself after encountering her in class for a term like falling in love and it being unrequited but I don’t feel that was the problem. At the end of my time in Bristol I had written her an email hoping to resolve the issue by discussing with her how she had made me feel in the context of it affecting my ability to study. I am not promiscuous so I think it would be unfair given my track record that I would have been propositioning her as I have been on 100s if not 1000s of dates by now with none of them involving the kind of behaviour I feel she has accused me of and contacted other people about – I don’t know how to be that person if I wanted to. Anyway, I feel harassed and triggered by this incident to the point I decided to potentially think of emigrating to another country if I recover from my mental health. I am Anglo Indian and proudly British – to the point I have been targeted for an attack in the run up to Independence Day celebrations in India but I didn’t feel safe fighting back against my assailants or reporting the incident to police as they have not supported me in the UK and I didn’t feel like the consular services would have offered any help that I would have appreciated. Today, I got chatting to worker from India at my local convenience store who expressed anti British colonial sentiment to me and support of the freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose. I told him that his method’s wouldn’t have won, and it reminded me that Gandhi who had been an advocate of the British in India and worked as a lawyer had become upset by his perceived racial harassment by a British woman in South Africa and so had resolved to lead India to independence from Britain. I started to think perhaps Gandhi was right and that Britain is a racist country. Anyway, the point is that when I tried to tell her I felt she had harassed me and ruined my time she got me suspended form Bristol University for emailing her and so I felt annoyed and contacted the police as I felt this was unfair and when they called her up to caution her for me, she started crying so I don’t know if they even told her that she harassed me and then  I had to deal with the spin surrounding the situation as she had managed to convince people that she didn’t need to hear my complaint against her and neither should they…. I feel it has been a campaign of harassment and at least I got the mental health treatment as it was triggering for me. I am concerned that if people stop knowing about the situation and that if I need help or support for my disability in the future and there is nothing on the DBS certificate to indicate this is how she is likely to treat someone with my disabilities then she may want to work with vulnerable people like me and upset them as it must have amused her in the past to go out of her way to get me suspended from university. I am still scared of situations where I encounter someone who would harass me and trigger my mental health.

 

Since I have worked previously for a Lichtenstein bank and through colleagues had the designation of director as a credit risk analyst I thought I could perhaps move there and try to have a better quality of life away from harassment if I recover from mental health, even if not in such a high position as I have already held maybe just as a janitor or security guard if I can’t work as a reflexologist and get a visa initially. I want to walk away from the trouble I have been caused rather than making a scene.

 

Regarding my recent complaint of harassment against a colleague, I was aware of your new piece of legislation so I had written to the PCC to explain how difficult it was for disabled people in the work place and how would they police it as I felt that half of people with mental health disabilities could return to work if they were accommodated and protected by the police. I got a response from the HR department of Avon and Somerset Police saying that it was optional for employers to accommodate such.

 

So, when I decided to quit my job I did my final week of work and reported to the CEO of Banes the situation, that I had been harassed by a colleague and that I would make a whistleblowing complaint and police report, as I would do for anyone behaving like that as the previous line manager had said I should call the police in those situations. The police took the time to speak to me and I have left the matter in their hands but I don’t think it is a police matter to them. I also made a whistleblowing report and the chap who responded instead of perhaps passing on the feedback to the individual said he didn’t know what the matter was. I mean I don’t feel it’s my position to tell him what his job is as I just filled in the form as I was still being paid to do my job so I am not sure anything has come of it. I was reporting that the individual wasn’t taking gaining planning permission for changes to listed buildings seriously and was laughing about how she could do what she wanted and in the past I have observed a different culture in regards to such things in Bath (I feel I was working in the field of tourism and heritage management so this was relevant). I just wanted to communicate that if I hadn’t have felt harassed at work because of my disability then I would have continued in my job.

 

Anyway, what advice can you offer me on perhaps emigrating to Lichtenstein if I recover from schizophrenia? I don’t feel accommodated in the UK as I still feel strongly that as I went to the top school Eton College and have physics degrees and lived experience for me it would be easiest to do the job of CEO of Banes rather than working in the cleansing department as I feel it is something to do with sexual humiliation that I am treated badly after having worked hard for so long and also paid my way. I do not feel comfortable about speaking about such things with the mental health services as their approach has been unconstructive and at odds with my sensibility.

 

I know that the welfare benefits in the UK are good and Bath is a nice city and I speak to so many people in my job who want to move here. A problem I see is that benefits are a bone of contention and that people are getting more out of it than me and making less of a contribution to the economic welfare of this country than me. They are being pandered to and I feel like I don’t want to carry on supporting their economic ideas as a credit risk analyst as I feel it is a risk to the UK economy – people who are claiming more in benefits from the state than a welfare benefits claimant and claiming that it is costing the economy to support people and local businesses with welfare benefits. I don’t think they should be allowed to say that in a democracy if there is a law against harassment and also in a developed economy that is service based, why should they profit more than someone else if they won’t even take feedback about their service or pay their way? I know this is something you were talking about in Mulberry House when I first met you in reference to Karl Marx.

 

One last point is that the ONS added the Jedi religion to the census but not Anglo Indian or even Anglo as there are other people from the Commonwealth who feel like Britishers this is outrageous!

 

Well thanks for you contribution to life in the UK and I think your new law should help some girls make it in life instead of feeling harassed like I did because of my disability!