26 September, 2008
Another one bites the dust
Another little corner of the race relations industry has fallen. The Kirklees Equality and Human Rights Agency (KEHRA), formerly the Kirkless Race Equality Council, has had its local authority grant of £100K withdrawn after the discovery thats its boss, one Carl Hayes, has a recent conviction for defrauding the NHS in his former employment, or rather spending the NHS's money as if it were his own.
I've been scouring the web for a photograph of Mr Hayes. His English-sounding name is puzzling, since White people rarely feature, certainly not at senior level, in the race relations industry, and I am curious to know if he is, for example, one of our Afro-Caribbean residents. Perhaps a reader with access to the print media in the Huddersfield area might be able to shed light on this.
The website of Mr Hayes' former organization is instructive. One local authority quotes the URL http://www.kehra.org.uk. This domain name is in fact not registered. You can however visit the organization under its old name of http://www.krec.co.uk.
The stock photos on this page feature only smiling Black people, which is a little odd given that the target client base is minority ethnics in the Huddersfield area, who are predominantly, perhaps overwhelmingly Pakistani. Indeed, another local authority listing quotes the additional language support offered by KREC/KEHRA as Punjabi and Urdu.
The KREC/KEHRA homepage has lots of more or less random and vaguely relevant sounding links. But try clicking through them and you end up at one of those generic search result pages, in this case hosted by something called http://www.kolmic.com, much favoured by cybersquatters, typosquatters and the less scrupulous internet domain registries. In short, the KREC/KEHRA website is an opportunistic Potemkin site which might cream off a little revenue for its publishers.
One does rather wonder what Mr Hayes has been doing for his hundred grand a year. I think, as they say in all the best newspapers, that we should be told.
I've been scouring the web for a photograph of Mr Hayes. His English-sounding name is puzzling, since White people rarely feature, certainly not at senior level, in the race relations industry, and I am curious to know if he is, for example, one of our Afro-Caribbean residents. Perhaps a reader with access to the print media in the Huddersfield area might be able to shed light on this.
The website of Mr Hayes' former organization is instructive. One local authority quotes the URL http://www.kehra.org.uk. This domain name is in fact not registered. You can however visit the organization under its old name of http://www.krec.co.uk.
The stock photos on this page feature only smiling Black people, which is a little odd given that the target client base is minority ethnics in the Huddersfield area, who are predominantly, perhaps overwhelmingly Pakistani. Indeed, another local authority listing quotes the additional language support offered by KREC/KEHRA as Punjabi and Urdu.
The KREC/KEHRA homepage has lots of more or less random and vaguely relevant sounding links. But try clicking through them and you end up at one of those generic search result pages, in this case hosted by something called http://www.kolmic.com, much favoured by cybersquatters, typosquatters and the less scrupulous internet domain registries. In short, the KREC/KEHRA website is an opportunistic Potemkin site which might cream off a little revenue for its publishers.
One does rather wonder what Mr Hayes has been doing for his hundred grand a year. I think, as they say in all the best newspapers, that we should be told.
# posted by Edwin Greenwood @ 10:08 
