ManWomanMyth maintains our YouTube channel, but he’s away on holiday at the moment. If we can’t make alternative arrangements, this interview may be available for only seven days on BBC iPlayer.

The presenter of the programme, Cathy McDonald, was very professional. She didn’t interrupt excessively, and she didn’t use the shaming tactics I’ve grown accustomed to with BBC radio interviews.

The following sections on the audio file contain contributions from Trisha Marwick (Presiding Officer, Scottish parliament), who was clear she’d faced no barriers with respect to a career in politics, Ian Dunt (Editor, politics.co.uk), myself, and a number of callers.

1:00:42 – 1:09:32
1:17:01 – 1:36:02 (my own contribution ends at 1:26:23)

As we often say, you couldn’t make this s*** up.

Well, after a remarkable conference in Detroit, things are finally returning to normal. It was such a pleasure – and, more importantly, so useful – to meet many prominent men’s human rights advocates for the first time including Paul Elam, Dean Esmay, Sage Gerard, Jack Barnes, Karen Straughan, Alison Tieman, Janet Bloomfield, Attila Vinczer, Dan Perrins… and many others including, of course, Erin Pizzey, who was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award. It was good to have a number of J4MB supporters along too, and we look forward to next year’s event, which will doubtless be even better and bigger.

With about 10 months remaining before next May’s general election, we are now focusing again on our campaigns in Bedford & Kempston, where I’ll be standing, and in Wolverhampton South-West, where Ray Barry – leader of the Equal Parenting Alliance and Real Fathers for Justice – will be standing. We plan to carry out some activities after the summer holidays are over, and the scale of those activities will depend on the money we have available at the time. It’s been some time since we last appealed for donations, but I now need to in order to cover the costs of those activities. You already know, I hope, that not one penny will go into the pockets of anyone associated with J4MB. We have an accountant who’s very careful with party funds, so you can be sure your money will be put to very good use.

If you feel able to make a donation, however small or large, you may do so here. Thank you for your support.

We’re huge admirers of Karen Woodall at J4MB, so we thank Ray for pointing us towards her recent open letter to Yvette Cooper MP. It ends with the following words:

Women like you have created a world in which educating boys to be ashamed of their masculinity is seen as desirable instead of cruel and about equality instead of what it is, an oppressive, discriminatory reality.

As parents and grandparents, practitioners and ordinary people, we will hold  you to account for your crimes against our children and our grandchildren.  I hope I stay alive long enough to see the day.

Our thanks to the people who’ve pointed us towards an article written by Yvette Cooper MP, shadow Home Secretary. It was published in the Independent last week, and reported widely elsewhere. A link to the piece is on Ms Cooper’s award certificate, along with a link to Karen Woodall’s powerful open letter to her in response:

Our thanks to Paul for this story, written by a female journalist (what are the chances?). Dr Gijsbert Stoet is a Reader in Psychology at the University of Glasgow, and a rare example of an academic who dares to talk sense about gender-related matters. A link to his university web page is here.

Harriet Harman is without doubt the most over-promoted politician of her generation. Reflecting on some of her recent witterings, Suzanne Moore of the Guardian is calling for the launch of a feminist party – here. What on earth could a feminist party seek, which isn’t already being delivered – or promised – by the Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems? All three parties (when in power) relentlessly advantage women and girls, and disadvantage men and boys, at the behest of feminists. Just not enough, it seems. Never enough.

On the bright side, if such a party were to be launched, the mainstream media might look for an anti-feminist party to debate with their spokespeople. J4MB is the only political party in Britain – indeed, the only one in the English-speaking world – in a position to meet that challenge.

Our thanks to Jeff for pointing us to this piece. Firstly, note the headline wording. Male applicants for degree places are ‘boys’, female applicants ‘women’. Secondly, it was written by a female journalist. Is there a blanket ban on male journalists writing about gender-related matters?

Women account for 57.2% of applicants, very close to the current proportion of university students who are women. As usual some concern is feigned for men, but nothing will actually be done, and the article ends with the customary reversion to concern over women, who as always need to be ‘encouraged’ into subjects such as computing and engineering (usually at taxpayers’ expense):

Meanwhile degree courses which saw the biggest rise in demand were technology, which saw 13 per cent more applications, computer science, up 12 per cent and engineering, up 10 per cent. Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK, welcomed the figures but warned that women still less likely (sic) to study courses such as engineering.

‘The increase in applicants applying for subjects such as engineering and computing is also welcome. Those subjects play a vital role in meeting the skills needs of UK employers in globally competitive industries. However, it is still a concern that the number of women applying to study these courses remains disproportionally (sic) low when compared to the number of male applicants. Universities are aware of this and continue to work hard to encourage women into technology and engineering through their outreach activities.’

My warm thanks to all of you who’ve sent me links to some interesting materials during my short break sur le Continent, including a report on Radio 4 yesterday about someone thinking of forming a feminist party. Given that all the main parties (with the possible exception of UKIP on a good day) slavishly follow feminist agendas, we can’t wait to hear what a feminist party might demand above and beyond what the parties are already delivering, or planning to deliver, with respect to advantaging women and disadvantaging men. I digress. I’ll get to all the emails and linked materials in the next 2-3 days, but I simply had to send you a link to a piece published by the fine folk at AVfM about Laura Bates getting married. Dear God, does her fiancé not have other options? They’ve lived together for years, it seems; so many years, so much laughter. Given the choice – which, to be fair, Ms Bates is unlikely to offer me – I’d sooner be a Cistercian monk and embrace a life of celibacy than marry her. And gnaw off both feet without the benefit of anaesthetic, if that’s what it took to save me from such a grim fate.

Some months ago, in the course of one of her innumerable media interviews, Ms Bates drove me to drink – two stiff drams of Highland Park, to be precise – as she usually does, whenever I hear her speak. How can her fiancé have coped with the tsunami of whining to which he’s surely been exposed for years? And how will he cope with being exposed to it until his dying day? The piece in question was about whether the cosmetic surgery industry should be regulated, a subject on which Ms B held firm opinions, quelle surprise. Laura debated the matter with the president of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons (‘BAPS’, appropriately… and pleasingly).

The AVfM piece includes a link to Laughing Laura’s Guardian piece on the matter, which – based on word count alone, please don’t ask me to read the damned thing, unless you’re prepared to donate £1,000 to J4MB – serves as a reminder that, as with other prominent young feminists (Laurie Penny, Caroline Criado-Perez, Kat Banyard come inevitably to mind) a diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder wouldn’t come as a huge surprise. Three of these four women have won our Lying Feminist of the Month awards, two of them – CC-P and Special Snowflake – twice.

A quick check on Wikipedia informs me that the estimated population of the world today is 7.175 billion, from which we can logically conclude – if we ignore the fact that women are more than half the population of the world, because men work themselves into early graves, and health systems treat men as second-class citizens  – and guesstimate that 25% of the males on the planet are of marriageable age and single, the number of lucky men in the world at this moment is precisely:

896,875,000

Laura Bates is making almost 897 million men happy. Now that’s not a sentence I ever expected to write.

Terrence Popp is a remarkable man, with a long and distinguished career in the US military behind him. Among his numerous awards are two Purple Hearts. He posts memorable videos at http://redonkulas.com and his email address is redonkulas12@gmail.com. It was a pleasure and an honour to meet him in Detroit. During his presentation he showed this award-winning video. A colleague, who he trained and to whom the video is dedicated, committed suicide just before Popp planned to do so himself. The suicide rate among returning veterans is astronomical. Many more soldiers die at their own hands than at the hands of enemies.