of the Parliament of the United Kingdom
covering the United Kingdom
. The 2006 Act is a precursor to the Equality Act 2010, which combines all of the equality enactments within Great Britain and provide comparable protections across all equality strands. Those explicitly mentioned by the Equality Act 2006 include age; disability; gender; proposed, commenced or completed gender reassignment; race; religion or belief and sexual orientation.
The changes it made were,
- creating the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) (merging the Commission for Racial EqualityCommission for Racial EqualityThe Commission for Racial Equality was a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom which aimed to tackle racial discrimination and promote racial equality. Its work has been merged into the new Equality and Human Rights Commission.-History:...
, the Equal Opportunities CommissionEqual Opportunities CommissionThe Equal Opportunities Commission was an independent non-departmental public body, in the United Kingdom, which tackled sex discrimination and promoted gender equality...
and the Disability Rights CommissionDisability Rights CommissionThe Disability Rights Commission was established by the British Labour government in 1999. At that time, the DRC was the UK's third equality commission alongside the Commission for Racial Equality and the Equal Opportunities Commission....
) - outlawing of discrimination on goods and services on the grounds of religion and belief (subject to certain exemptions)
- allowing the Government to introduce regulations outlawing discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation in goods and services, which led to the Sexual Orientation Regulations 2006
- creating a public duty to promote equality on the ground of genderGender equalityGender equality is the goal of the equality of the genders, stemming from a belief in the injustice of myriad forms of gender inequality.- Concept :...
(The Equality Act 2006, section 84, inserting section 76A of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975Sex Discrimination Act 1975The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which protected men and women from discrimination on the grounds of sex or marriage. The Act concerned employment, training, education, harassment, the provision of goods and services, and the disposal of premises...
, now found in section 1 of the Equality Act 2010)
With the exception of the provision relating to goods and services discrimination in Northern Ireland on the grounds of sexual orientation, the Act relates to equality law in Great Britain as a separate legislative framework exists for Northern Ireland
which also has a separate equality body, the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland
(though by and large reflecting the general approach to equality legislation in Great Britain).
The Equality Bill first appeared in the 2004/05 Session, but did not make it into law before Parliament was dissolved ahead of the 2005 general election
.
One has to reach to the absolute state of awareness: that is Zen|Zen. You cannot do it every morning for a few minutes or for half an hour and then forget all about it. It has to become like your heartbeat. You have to sit in it, you have to walk in it. Yes, you have even to sleep in it. 
I am the rich man's guru.
I have never been a celibate. If people believe so, that is their foolishness. I have always loved women – and perhaps more women than anybody else. You can see my beard: it has become grey so quickly because I have lived so intensely that I have compressed almost two hundred years into fifty.
It is not decided by votes what is true; otherwise we could never come to any truth, ever. People will vote for what is comfortable – and lies are very comfortable because you don't have to do anything about them, you just have to believe. Truth needs great effort, discovery, risk, and it needs you to walk alone on a path that nobody has traveled before.