Vera Baird QC is the elected Police and Crime Commissioner for Northumbria, a post with an income of £80,000 p.a. She was the Labour MP for Redcar from 2001 – 2010, and was appointed solicitor general in 2007. She and Harriet Harman are cut from the same cloth:

http://verabaird.biz/biography/

From what we can see on her website http://verabaird.com her concern about the victims of domestic violence appears to be strictly limited to women and children. She promised Sunderland women she’d tackle domestic violence if elected:

http://www.sunderlandecho.com/news/crime/police-commissioner-candidate-promises-sunderland-women-she-will-tackle-domestic-violence-1-4855113

She issued the following before her election:

http://verabaird.biz/2012/07/17/tackling-domestic-violence-against-women-and-girls/

From the document, with gender-specific terms in bold type:

Now Vera Baird has promised a step change in the way the police force will deal with the problem if she is elected in November. Ms Baird has announced plans to introduce a pilot project in Northumbria which will seek to prevent domestic abuse incidents occurring by using active monitoring and management of known serial perpetrators of domestic and sexual violence.

The proposal is part of five priorities to address the problem of violence against women and girls, which will be adopted by Labour Police & Crime Commissioners across the UK:

– Develop and roll out an integrated local action plan to tackle violence against women and girls – ensuring that VAWG is also prioritised in the local crime and policing plan and appointing a lead specialist, responsible for delivering the plan;

– Ensure specialist domestic violence and public protection units within the police service continue to be supported – whilst also striving to maintain the important existing network of independent advisers and advocates to women survivors of violence;

– Deliver specialist training in dealing with domestic and sexual violence, and stalking – as well as other forms of violence against women and girls, for neighbourhood police officers, for those in specialist protection units and for those involved in commissioning services for the survivors of violence;

– Support early intervention to tackle violence against women and girls – valuing the importance of working with schools, local authorities and community-based organisations to change attitudes and behaviour;

– Pilot preventative policing projects in areas including Northumbria– to promote the active monitoring and management of serial perpetrators of domestic and sexual violence, and stalking…

Vera Baird said:

I know from speaking to women’s group and refuges the challenge they face in dealing with this problem, especially in light of the cuts in funding from the Tory-led government. As Police & Crime Commissioner I would ensure an absolute commitment to increasing convictions and driving down incidences of violence against women and children…

I’m announcing today that if elected I will make tackling violence against women and girls a priority. Police forces in other areas of the country have brought in preventive measures to monitor and deter repeat perpetrators which we in Northumbria can adapt and improve.

We’re issuing the following challenge to Ms Baird:

Almost 300 studies and reports from around the world show that women are as physically aggressive or more aggressive than men towards their intimate partners:

https://j4mbdotorgdotuk.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/women-are-as-physically-aggressive-or-more-aggressive-in-their-relationships-with-spouses-or-male-partners/

Given the large numbers of male victims of domestic violence in Northumbria, what commitment will you be making – if any – to increase the number of convictions of female perpetrators of domestic violence, thereby driving down the incidences of violence against men and children?

70% of medical students today are women, and by 2017 more than half the doctors working in the NHS will be women. We’ve covered the negative impact of the feminisation of the NHS on patients and taxpayers before, but we thank M for pointing us to an interesting new piece in the Daily Mail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2532461/Why-having-women-doctors-hurting-NHS-A-provovcative-powerful-argument-leading-surgeon.html

The author of the article, Professor J Meirion Thomas, is a surgeon, and we’d guess him to be in his sixties. It was painful to read at the start of the article, ‘Although I am a feminist…’, but it’s worth pressing on. Some extracts:

 …most female doctors end up working part-time – usually in general practice – and then retire early. As a result, it is necessary to train two female doctors so they can cover the same amount of work as one full-time colleague. Given that the cost of training a doctor is at least £500,000, are taxpayers getting the best return on their investment?

There is another important issue. Women in hospital medicine tend to avoid the more demanding specialities which require greater commitment, have more antisocial working hours and include responsibility for management…

In truth, general practice is organised for the convenience of doctors – particularly, I suspect, for female GPs – and not their patients…

No wonder many people, faced with a medical problem, ignore their local surgery and go straight to A&E – one reason why emergency medical services are at breaking point. The problems with A&E are very much in the public eye. Not so the issue of part-time working – but it certainly should be, as it is linked.

In the UK we have a serious shortage of medical school places, with the result that more than half of male applicants with the required grades are rejected. As we have seen, many women who take up medical school places subsequently work part-time and, on the whole, tend to avoid A&E. We make up the shortfall in medical manpower by importing about 40 per cent of the doctors we need. Most now come from austerity-stricken EU countries. Does this make economic sense? We need accurate data on the extent of part-time working in order to allow public debate which could then inform medical school selection. For my part, I believe medical school places should be given to those most likely to repay their debt to society.

The article ends disappointingly:

Last year the U.S. businesswoman Sheryl Sandberg published a book called Lean In. It should be compulsory reading for female medical students. Her thesis is that too few women make it to the top of any profession. She acknowledges the conflict between professional success and domestic fulfilment, but says women should commit more professionally and not ‘lean out’. How do we persuade female doctors to ‘lean in’? It is a question we urgently need to address.

Female doctors will never be persuaded to ‘lean in’. What’s in it for them? We return, as we so often do, to Catherine Hakim’s Preference Theory. Four in seven British men are ‘work-centred’, but only one in seven British women is. The denial of this simple and persistent reality is leading to ever more inefficient and ineffective public services, at ever higher cost to taxpayers. And of course men pay 72% of the income tax collected in the UK, which is funding all these social engineering exercises.

We’re planning to be the first British political party to host a national conference on fathers’ rights. It’s expected that it will be held in November, in central London, and we’ll have more to say in due course. Of course it’s not only fathers whose human rights are assaulted by legislation and the family courts system. So too are the rights of children, grandparents, and a small number of mothers. The conference will cover their rights too.

In the 17 months which remain before the 2015 general election, we’re going to focus our efforts on the assaults of the human rights of fathers, mothers, children and grandparents, through primary legislation and the family courts system. We live in an age when a mother can defy 82 contact orders with no repercussions, as we reported three months ago:

https://j4mbdotorgdotuk.wordpress.com/2013/12/09/father-with-no-rights-mother-stops-him-seeing-daughter-for-12-years-despite-82-court-orders-demanding-she-back-down/

Lord Justice McFarlane described the father as ‘unimpeachable’. Over the past seven years the man has spent over £100,000 on legal costs in an effort to see his daughter, now 14, all to no avail.

We’re planning to host the first national conference on fathers’ rights in November, in London, and we’ll have more to say on that in due course. But of course it’s not just fathers whose rights are assaulted. So too are the rights of children, grandparents, and a small number of mothers. With this in mind, one of our projects over the coming 18 months will be the development of a video library of interviews with fathers, mothers, children and grandparents. We’ve been inspired by a video of a young English lady, Aimee Nicholls, who last year – at the age of 16 – recorded a moving video after leaving her mother to live with her father. She’s not allowed to have contact with her younger sister, Kitty. She recently recorded a Xmas message, and both videos are available through this link:

http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/government-tyranny/must-see-video-of-the-week-84-of-uk-agree-christmas-is-ruined-for-dads/

If you, or anyone you know, might have an interest in being the subject of an interview for our video library, please contact me mike@j4mb.org.uk or call me on 07967 026163. If you wish, for legal reasons or otherwise, we can pixellate images and disguise voices so that identities are hidden.

The interviews will be carried out by Ray Barry, our prospective candidate for Wolverhampton South-West at the 2015 general election. He’s the man behind the Equal Parenting Alliance http://equalparentingalliance.com and Real Fathers for Justice http://realfathersforjustice.org. He provides fathers (and occasionally mothers) with hands-on support when they’re seeking to gain access to their children, or custody. Details here http://courtwithoutalawyer.co.uk.