And now suddenly a bunch of faceless bureaucrats have accomplished what Europe’s greatest heroes/villains could not, and they did it without sacking a single town, without selling a single nation into slavery, without rape and pillage, without great battles with monster butcher bills. Nations who historically have always fought fearlessly and ferociously for their freedom have begged to be admitted to the EU.

If the EU should fail, then Europe is guaranteed another 2000 years of horror as the next bunch of national heroes/villains use great battles, rape, pillage, sacked cities, and every atrocity to rebuild and enlarge the EU.

Perhaps the memories of the German Catastrophe will be sufficient and these nations will find the balance between supra-national EU level authority, national authority and local authority – what our Founding Fathers called Federalism and States Rights – that will build a lasting, peaceful, prosperous, union of people who have life, liberty and need no one’s permission to pursue happiness.

The issue you raise, “which level of government should have the final say in laws governing the hiring of juniors by very small business?” needs immediate resolution. Unfortunately the people who run the EU have only the laws and policies of previous empires to use as building blocks, and the examples of the great heroes/villains as roll models. We live in interesting times.

Furthermore, I should like to point out the fact that this is an EU Directive. Thus it was not even put into law by our elected legislators much as I agree with you on that subject Renminbi. Well, it was but only because they have to do so. EU legislation cannot be thrown out by Parliament.

I thoroughly agree that Desrosiers has a natural right to operate her business as she sees fit and that her employees serve at her pleasure. I remind you that governments over regulate businesses and that these regulations always have bad consequences that the naive assume are unintended.

A small businessman does not have the resources to fight legal battles even when his/her cause is on the side of God and his Angels. Nor can he look to the police for protection; the police only show up after the crime and make things worse by getting everything dirty with finger print powder. They never find the perpetrators and they usually give insurance companies excuses for not paying claims.

On the other hand, if you choose a good location, 99% of the people who come through the door have good intentions. Only the small businessman can protect him/herself from the last 1%. No one else is going to do it for him/her. What I have suggested are some simple self-defense tactics.

You underestimate or refuse to understand the importance of that EU Directive and the concept of “indirect discrimination”. It doesn’t matter what reasons Sarah gave or not gave (actually, as Tatyana says, she should not have to give any reasons at all) for not employing Noah. (Btw washerwoman means something else not a junior in a hairdressing salon.) Under that legislation Noah could still claim indirect discrimination as she had no evidence of the direct kind, though she tried it on, and the burden of proof is on the defendant. That, in itself, is wrong.

Furthermore, it means that members of a tribunal decide whether the owner of a business was right or wrong in certain decisions that affected her business. The only people who should be deciding that are the customers. I don’t understand why you seem to think that this is an acceptable state of affairs.

Decisions like that destroy that core.

On the other hand if Noah fakes the pix and the recommendations and gets the second chair and fails to produce, she can be terminated for lying.

On the third hand if Noah has good pix and good recs and loyal clients, both Noah and Desrosiers win. After all Moslem women need hair cuts too. In London, Moslem women are a major market and who better to cut them than a devout, heavily veiled Moslem female?

Desrosiers forced the judgement against her by making wearing a headscarf the sole reason for failing to hire. If she had claimed artistic differences or simple incompatibility in addition to the headscarf, she would have won. There is no possible way any court can establish a precedent that allows modest religious dress, by itself, as cause for termination or refusal to employ.

The idea that our representatives represent us is a legal fiction in any case.They are,in fact our agents,and in any such relationship thereis ample scope for abuse.Public juries of taxpayers should be able to nullify the harm done by our representatives via impoundment and nullification of laws.What chance would such decision have if it were reviewed by real human beings?

The full costs of these cases never appear in official records.

She should have told the interviewee that she planned to continue interviewing people for several months. She should have thanked the interviewee for applying and should have asked for references from customers and employers together with a portfolio of her work. Artists always have a portfolio.

Then she should have kept interviewing and hired the person with the references and portfolio she liked the best. This is how you bring in a second chair who already has eager customers, has artistry that’s both proven and compatible, and makes you money.

In a small business, the owner can feel (at least I did) like every day was a challenge to work hard enough and smart enough to cover the bills and make sure the employees were paid. If there was enough left over to educate my kids, well, great. An employee becomes – to any reasonable business owner – a responsibility. They are respected and paid and kept on if at all possible (the company losing money, the incompetence, the dishonesty of a worker – sure that happens; but owners do not dream of passing out pink slips).

One of the recompenses was that it was mine – my employees, my customers, my bills. I chose the employees; I may have made some bad choices, but they were mine. Developing this level of intimacy with someone I had been coerced to hire would make me bitter. Collegiality has gone out as an explicit criteria, but I can’t imagine a business setting in which that isn’t (and shouldn’t be) the concern of anyone hiring or firing.

This is so far beyond that. I’m pretty casual about my looks and prefer a hairdresser that accepts walk-ins and doesn’t have much of a line and is cheap; still and all, I look at the cut of a hairdresser before she starts on my hair.

And then, well, it’s her dream to work! I can’t even begin to contemplate the idiocy of this. It would be my dream to work in a state job where I could read a book all day, retire with full pay at 40, and have benefits the rest of my life. It would not be my dream to live in a country where such a dream was likely to come true, since the rest of us wouldn’t retire at 70.

Hard America is experienced America. We need to get our kids working – at service jobs, under a boss, training others, trying to make a profit, etc. Only a fool or a narcissist who had any experience in the private sector could have come up with such a judgment.

Marxism infects all leftist thought, especially in Europe. They have only a vague notion that all work and production choices are not completely arbitrary. If everybody in society wants to be a hairdresser then they all have a right to that job and somehow the natural forces will provide food, clothing and shelter for a highly stylish civilization.

I think we are seeing the final evolution of the postmodernist meme which holds that all forms of human organization and action are ultimately arbitrary. We can simply choose any social or economic structure we collectively wish to and our wishing will make it so.