I’m a big fan of the legendary motorcycle racer Guy Martin, who’s been involved in some remarkable documentaries in recent years, as a presenter and otherwise. There’s nobody remotely like him on British TV, and as the proud possessor of similar sideburns in the 1970s, I hope for them to become popular once again. Proper sideburns.

Last night on the ‘More4’ TV channel there was a repeat of the first episode of a series first broadcast in October 2012 – How Britain Worked. It concerns the renovation of a steam locomotive, repair of tracks, and much more besides. An episode well up to Guy Martin’s usual high standards. You can catch it here:

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/how-britain-worked/4od#3459272

You may have to register but it won’t take long. All six episodes of the series, as well as much more archived Channel 4 material, are available for free. When I watched this episode through the link above, it was preceded by a minute-long advert – you can’t skip it – for Nivea Sensitive Moisturiser for Men. I’m guessing wildly that Guy Martin isn’t a big user of the product.

Guy Martin himself was clear on who was responsible for the astonishing achievement of the building of the British railway system’s infrastructure and locomotives, referring admiringly and frequently to the ‘grafters’ as ‘boys’ and ‘men’. But the background narrative – not spoken by Guy Martin – kept slipping into political correctness. It started with this gem at 4:28, concerning the extensive renovation required to restore a dilapidated steam locomotive to full and safe functionality:

Renovating it all will mean mastering the skills of the people who were considered the best engineers in the world.

From memory, not one woman in the programme made a substantive contribution to the project. Isn’t it remarkable that when a collection of men do something evil they’re ‘men’, but when a collection of men do something truly remarkable and praiseworthy, they become ‘people’?

Never let it be said these women don’t have a highly-developed sense of humour:

140512 hilarious joke

Would they find the piece with the genders switched so amusing?

In conflicts in developing countries it’s common to see even young boys carrying firearms. Little interest in the boys’ plight – let alone sympathy for them – is ever displayed by either the mainstream media or politicians. We thanks L for pointing us to a piece concerning Nigeria. Of course we hope every effort is  made to return the kidnapped girls to safety. We just want proportionate concern to be shown towards boys who generally suffer worse outcomes.

Why Did Kidnapping Girls, but Not Burning Boys Alive, Wake Media Up to Boko Haram?

The article ends with this question:

Why did the press spring to action when young women were kidnapped, but were virtually unmoved when it was young boys who were being slaughtered and burned alive?

Our thanks to Ellie Slee, our favourite HuffPo contributor, for recent publishing a piece (link below) in which she confesses to loathing all human contact, and being incapable of operating a supermarket self-checkout till. Neither confession will surprise you any more than it surprises us, we imagine. Enjoy:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ellie-slee/fear-and-loathing-at-the-self-checkout_b_5229032.html

She also says in the piece she’s a member of ‘Wolf Whistled’ http://twitter.com/wolf_whistled. This group of cheerful women describes itself thus:

Wolf Whistled is a forum of 800+ young women who make noise, exchange ideas, rant, ask questions, solve problems, swap articles and thrash out female issues.

We look forward to hearing from Ellie or another of the other 800+ geniuses just how many problems they’ve solved, and female issues they’ve thrashed out. Being the target of wolf whistling can’t be a problem faced by many gender feminists, I think we can all agree, unless sarcastic wolf whistling has suddenly become popular. Maybe belonging to this group of women is just her way of saying:

Look, I’m a feminist, but not the sort with a weight problem, hairy legs, or a beard, yeah?

We eagerly look forward to Miss Ellie’s next gem on HuffPo.

 

[Note added 12.5.14: An edited version of this piece has just been posted onto our YouTube channel. We invite you to leave comments there rather than here. Thank you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE9GQtp2LfI ]

Our thanks to the supporters who’ve pointed us to a programme which broadcast this morning. We’ll be putting this up on our YouTube channel before it’s lost from iPlayer (on 18 May):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04446xv/The_Big_Questions_Series_7_Episode_17

The debate was titled ‘Are fathers doing their fair share?’ The presenter, Nicky Campbell, was in his usual operating mode – one that’s almost universal across both male and female BBC presenters – of fawning on women and berating men. Among the contributors were three female whine merchants. In stark contrast, Alison Ruoff, a lay member of the CoE General Synod, made some good points. Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist and my heart always sinks whenever I see him on TV programmes. He put his usual feminist-inspired position forward on this programme. But by far the most insightful contributions came from Glen Poole of http://equality4men.com. Key points in the debate:

41.05 – Introduction by Nicky Campbell, input from two of the three whine merchants. No mention from them that far more women than men work part-time – whether or not they have children. The key message is always the same:

Men must do more.

Women must do less.

The American whine merchant started wittering about the ‘gender pay gap’ at which point to my intense relief…

44:30 – Glen Poole interrupted and made some good points. That said, it’s our conviction that in most cases couples will choose to have the mother look after children in their early years, rather than the father. It’s both a gender-typical biological preference, and Dr Catherine Hakim’s Preference Theory (2000) would lead us to expect this too. But of course fathers should enjoy the same rights as mothers.

49:26 Alison Ruoff made some good points.

54:25 Owen Jones started his predictable contribution. You might want to skip this bit, for the sake of your sanity.

57:09 Glen Poole made exactly the same point which had occurred to us concerning the wider meaning of ‘fair share’.

A series of old (and not so old) men continue to be subjected to show trials relating to alleged sexual assaults, some of the assaults said to have been committed as long ago as 50 years. A number of these men have had to pay enormous legal bills despite having been convicted on no charges. We recently had the spectacle of a clearly infirm and distressed Stuart Hall (84) handcuffed to a young policewoman when walking slowly between the court house and a prison van.

Anyone thinking this isn’t a war on men must be living on another planet. The double standard remains alive and well. A female ‘television celebrity’ accused of sexual bullying has been granted anonymity:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2625226/Female-television-celebrity-wins-bid-allegations-sexual-bullying-secret.html

From the article:

The Mail on Sunday has learned that the woman’s lawyers argued that, because sexual misconduct allegations were being made, if her identity was made public, regardless of the outcome of the tribunal, her reputation would be irreparably damaged.

 

We presented Philip Davies, a Conservative MP, with a ‘Winston’ award on the strength of a contribution he made in a debate about gender bias in sentencing two years ago – here.

A valued donor/supporter has just posted the following comment on the piece we’ve just posted on the ‘Clean Break’ theatre company – this month’s ‘Gormless Women of the Month’. His comments take up the rest of this blog piece, and we thank him warmly for it:

Calling these women gormless is fair enough, but actually they are basically stupid and unconscionable liars. Here is what Philip Davies MP said in a debate in Westminster Hall on 16th October 2012. He is quoting the House of Commons Library, which is an unimpeachable source of truth:

“There is an old political maxim that if someone tells a lie often enough, people will believe that it is true. I can only conclude that has happened in this case. I heard the lie that women are more likely to be sent to prison than men and that they are treated much more harshly by the courts, and I was taken in by it. I presumed it was true, because I had heard it so often, and I thought it was an absolute outrage. I was so outraged by the inequality in sentencing that I decided to do some research into it. As many people know, I spend a lot of time researching matters to do with prisons, sentencing and justice, and I wanted to get to the bottom of why women were being treated so badly.

Imagine my surprise when, having looked at all the evidence, I found it was not the case that women are treated more harshly by the courts. The unequivocal evidence is that the courts treat women far more favourably than men when it comes to sentencing…. I will continue with the quote from the Library:

‘In 2009 58% of male offenders who entered a guilty plea for an indictable offence were given an immediate custodial sentence compared to 34% of women. For each offence group a higher proportion of males pleading guilty were sentenced to immediate custody than females.’

The Ministry of Justice’s publication, “Statistics on Women and the Criminal Justice System”, published in November 2010—it is produced to ensure there is no sex discrimination in the system—states:

‘Of sentenced first-time offenders (7,320 females and 25,936 males), a greater percentage of males were sentenced to immediate custody than females (29% compared with 17%), which has been the case in each year since 2005.’

People have had a briefing from the Prison Reform Trust, which tries to persuade them that women with no previous convictions are more likely to be sent to prison than men, but that is categorically not the case, as the Ministry of Justice’s own publication makes abundantly clear.

Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab): I congratulate the hon. Gentleman for providing us with an opportunity to help him understand the issue. Women convicted of a first offence—the same offence as a man—are more likely to receive a custodial sentence. I do not think he has the figures for that.

Philip Davies: No, they are not. That is the whole point. For every category of offence, men are more likely to be sent to prison than women. According to the Ministry of Justice’s own publication, of first-time offenders, men are much more likely—not just slightly—to be sent to prison. That is a fact.

Jenny Chapman: May I explain again? I am talking about the first offence and the same offence. The hon. Gentleman has figures for first-time offending overall and for different categories of offence. However, if we take the same offence for men and for women—the first conviction—women are more likely to get a custodial sentence.

Philip Davies: No, they are not. For the benefit of the hon. Lady, I have every single category of offence. I have figures for the likelihood of men and women being sent to prison for exactly the same offence. What she is saying is simply not the case.

The Home Office undertook statistical research some years ago to try to ascertain the best comparison for similar situations. Home Office Research Study 170, “Understanding the sentencing of women”, edited by Carol Hedderman and Loraine Gelsthorpe, looked at 13,000 cases and concluded:

‘Women shoplifters were less likely than comparable males to receive a prison sentence…among repeat offenders women were less likely to receive a custodial sentence. Women first offenders were significantly less likely than equivalent men to receive a prison sentence for a drug offence’.

The Ministry of Justice publication I mentioned earlier also covers the issue of pre-sentence reports and their recommendations for sentences in the courts. It says:

‘In 2009, a lower proportion of women who had a pre-sentence report that recommended immediate custody went on to receive this sentence than men (83% compared with 90% for males). For all other sentence options recommended in pre-sentence reports (Suspended Sentence Order, all community sentences or fines), a higher proportion of males received custodial sentences than females.’

The entire debate can be read here.

rel=”nofollow”>http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm121016/halltext/121016h0001.htm

Visitors to this site will need no reminding that there are around 80,000 men and 4,000 women in British jails, and that women are treated far more leniently by the justice system than men. The government is on record as saying it plans to move the majority of female prisoners into rehabilitation centres near their homes, where they’ll have the opportunity to spend their evenings and nights with their families. Isn’t that nice? The 4,000 places thereby released will then be available for 4,000 more male prisoners.

We’ve published many pieces about women committing serious crimes and receiving suspended sentences (often not even that) when men committing the same crimes would have been incarcerated. So we thank L for pointing us to the ‘Clean Break’ theatre company. From a section titled ‘context’ on http://cleanbreak.org.uk/mission:

The treatment of women by the criminal justice system is one of the clearest demonstrations that our society is still fundamentally unequal and that women are judged by different standards to men… first-time women offenders are twice as likely as men to be sent to prison…

Ironically, the first sentence is true, but the inequality overwhelmingly favours women. Women are judged by different standards to men – lower standards – often, as though they have no higher moral agency than young children. We’ve reported on a large number of such cases, and people are becoming tired of hearing the same narratives day after day. They ‘get’ the point:

The justice system is brutal towards men and lenient towards women. 

The women working for ‘Clean Break’ are presented with this month’s ‘Gormless Women of the Month’ award:

140510 ‘Clean Break’ theatre company’s ‘Gormless Women of the Month’ award

We’ll also be emailing them with the following public challenge:

Would you please email us your evidence substantiating a claim on your website, ‘first-time women offenders are twice as likely as men to be sent to prison’, or email us to say you’ll be retracting the claim? Thank you.

Our thanks to David – a cheerful man, not married – for this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2623873/You-really-nagged-death-Excessive-demands-partners-double-risk-dying-middle-age.html

140509 meme of the week