LETTER: ‘We’re in a modern world where sex and age doesn’t automatically count when getting a job’

I have some sympathy for Councillor Alan Lay’s position as expressed in your newspaper’s letters page last week.

It certainly would be nice if we could all declare ourselves ‘the best person for the job’ and then, simply because we believe we are entitled to it, get that job. I expect it is satisfying, if you are not given the job that you are sure you are entitled to, to blame everybody else.

Far easier than to admit that maybe, just maybe, you aren’t promoted because the people who were voting on it thought somebody else might be better?

Might I respectfully suggest that if the position you want involves your colleagues voting on multiple candidates – regularly making nasty and unwarranted accusations about those same colleagues in the newspaper probably isn’t likely to endear them to you.

I also understand Cllr Alan Lay’s surprise that a younger woman might be voted for rather than him. The modern world has come rushing in and, he will be surprised to discover, you can no longer count on getting a job just because you have male anatomy or a couple of extra decades on your rival. You might have to prove you are the right person for the job now, rather than just ‘declaring’ it or writing angry letters to the newspaper.

Merry Christmas!

CLLR STEVE TIERNEY

Wisbech