IS being middle aged, white and male now bad for you career? 

The term ‘male, pale and stale’ is increasingly being used as a withering putdown when everything from BAFTA nominations to the membership of the cabinet are perceived as lacking in diversity.

Theresa May’s reshuffle sought to position her government as being more representative of the electorate. The PM axed a string of white men in their 50s and 60s while promoting younger, female and minority ethnic MPs.

Savvy Echo readers will have realised this was largely window dressing. Four of the 10 women attending meetings are not full members of cabinet, which means the PM’s leading team has a gender pay gap with men earning on average 11 per cent more. The lion’s share of power in cabinet is still held by old guardsmen, such as Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson, whose stubborn refusal to budge repeatedly undermines Mrs May’s authority.

Nevertheless, it’s interesting to see that even a PM as out of touch with the way modern Britain works as Mrs May has woken up to the fact that kicking older geezers into touch can be a popular move among some voters.

This editorial comment has been written by a white, middle-aged man, but other days it’s written by someone younger and more female, albeit just as pale.

For the record this bloke finds it embarrassing to hear white men bleat on about being hard done by. We've been running things for a heck of a long time and ultimately we’ve no divine right to hold power.

But ousting people from jobs for their skin colour, age or gender is discriminatory - even when it applies to older, white men - and that's not something this newspaper condones.