Discrimination knows no bounds

The professional victims have unearthed another group to blame. I speak, of course, of that new scum of the earth - the loathsome sub species known as Old White Men.

Old White Men are odious. You'll have read that these bullying buffoons cling viciously to power, persecute the poor, obstruct social progress, and stand in the way of sex and gender freedom.

It seems Old White Men are also the haters responsible for Brexit and the election of President Donald. They've ruined politics, screwed justice, and changed the recipe for Cadbury chocolate. (We await proof that each Old White Man is a flasher with a dirty raincoat).

This labelling suggests there is something shameful about being old, white, and male.

If the blamers rewrote the past and called it The History of Old White Men, they could invent a decent yarn. Take the world's most despicable despots. Hitler and Mussolini were Old White Men, weren't they? So were Lenin, Stalin, and Ivan the Terrible. Vlad the Impaler however, can't count as truly bad because while he boiled children and fed them to their parents, he was a youngish 49 when the Turks removed his head. Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, and Pol Pot, are excused, on grounds of colour.

Old White Men are a group who can be safely vilified, while remaining comfortably within the bounds of political correctness.

Oddly, you couldn't invent a phrase that more perfectly expresses today's magnificent PC hypocrisies. Old, White, Men. Here we have Ageism, Racism, and Sexism, perfectly gift-wrapped into the one prejudiced slur.

If I scratch my head, and pull out my calculator, I can count a handful of Old White Men who aren't busily suppressing the good. There's the guy who repairs my car, the old codger who delivers firewood, the plumber, and the retiree up the street who does Meals on Wheels.

My Old White Dad also drove hot dinners when he wasn't writing to the papers about World Peace. Both my Old White Grandads apparently conned me into thinking they were good buggers. My Uncle eventually grew into an Old White Man too - but only after he'd survived fighting for his country.

There's a very good chance (69%, I read) that your own dad is an Old White Man. I'm not sure how you should handle this. But is it absolutely essential you invite this aged deplorable round for Christmas? (There are the kids to consider).

The Left once properly railed against something they called The Establishment. This was the bogeyman which owned the money, family, and influence. The Establishment was an immovable grey blob largely made up of - surprise, surprise - Old White Men. But protests against it were about privilege, fairness, and justice. The gender, age, and race of the majority of its members weren't actually the problem's core, so weren't worth discussing.

That all changed when along came the Identity Politics interpretation, which doesn't fight for the ''Common Good'', but for the narrower me-based issues like gender, race, age, and religion. We're on a downhill road as these people - the real ''haters'' - morph into our new Establishment.

Old White Men don't really get Identity Politics, but they've learned it is best to keep their heads down. The need is well illustrated by John Allan, the head of the UK's Tesco grocery chain, who recently risked tongue in cheek remarks that careers are getting tougher for white males. (Corporate types shouldn't do humour on this subject).

''If you are female and from an ethnic background - and preferably both - you are in an extremely propitious period,'' joked Allan. ''If you are a white male, tough. You are an endangered species and you are going to have to work twice as hard.''

Humour exaggerates, of course. But while Allan has since apologised, his remains have nonetheless been scattered from Land's End to John O'Groats.

The top-of-the-tree ''Establishment'' job in New Zealand is Governor-General. John Allan would be interested to note that during the past 30 years, only one of the seven people elevated to this totemic station has been an Old White Man. There have been two Old Maori Men, one Old Indian Male, and three Old White Women.

Dear me. Statistically, this is clearly discrimination against Old White Men. But I doubt they're a group who worry about it.

-John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer.