Another day, another discrimination – pregnancy discrimination. Our thanks to Jeff for this article. The ladies at the Fawcett Society continue to trot out their ridiculous narratives. The start of the article:

One in 10 women in low-paid work is demoted when she returns from maternity leave, according to research that reveals the scale of discrimination against new mothers and the difficulty of challenging it.

A survey of women in the UK earning £7.44 or less found that ten per cent of mothers who returned to work in the last five years came back to a more junior role. The research by the Fawcett Society exposes the extent of prejudice faced by women in already poorly-paid jobs.

The Fawcett ladies were worthy winners of our inaugural ‘Gormless Women of the Month’ awards. Their certificate is here.

A woman from the DBIS managed to upstage the Fawcett ladies with a statement of such mind-numbing stupidity we just had to reproduce it here:

A spokeswoman for the department of Business, Innovation and Skills said: “Pregnancy discrimination is unacceptable; there is no excuse for it. Mothers coming back to work after maternity leave have the legal right to return to the same or similar job. Women deserve the right to pursue their goals and not feel they have to choose between having a successful career or having a baby.

What man ever thought he could take the time off work that women typically take off after having babies, without it affecting their careers? Why must women, uniquely, be compensated for the consequences of their freely-made choices?

There are few more shameful feminist narratives than the one about women earning less than men for the same work. It’s one of many feminist narratives which simply won’t die, despite there being precisely no evidence to support it. The Conservatives should be challenging the Labour party’s perpetuation of the lies, yet the Education Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities appears to be endorsing them. So we welcome an interesting new article on the subject from Glen Poole of Helping Men.

Among the people I most enjoyed meeting in Detroit was Dan Perrins, a Canadian MHRA. He was wonderful company, and even gave me his last cigar on the final morning, which was much appreciated. Dan’s a fine man on many counts, and he’s just posted this on AVfM. It includes two short files (the first video, the second audio) of Darwin’s Rejects – both male and female – at the CAFE event.

I watched a documentary once about a chimpanzee which had been trained to recognise hundreds of words. Darwin’s Rejects are unable to operate at such a high intellectual level, and like others of their type the world over, just about manage to memorise and later chant little rhymes consisting of two short lines apiece. In the first file you can see them chanting this gem:

 MRAs – telling lies,

We can see through your disguise!

It’s a surprise these people manage to put on matching shoes every morning. Maybe they get help with tasks like that.

Our thanks to Martin for pointing us towards this insightful article published by the Daily Telegraph last month. We shouldn’t be surprised that young men are increasingly disinclined to train to become teachers. So many children live in female-dominated environments (especially if they’re raised by single mothers) and attend schools which have become ever more female-dominated environments over the past 40 years.

Our thanks to Jeff for pointing us to this. It concerns a false allegation made by a social worker, Suzi Smith, against a man who had custody of his daughter. Key extracts from the article:

A social worker who accused an innocent father of abusing his daughter has claimed the police put pressure on her to stand by the lie. Suzi Smith has admitted falsely accusing Jonathan Coupland, 53, of attacking his six-year-old child in an official custody case note – which led to him being handcuffed in front of neighbours and thrown into a cell.

After the Mail revealed the case earlier this year, Mrs Smith was brought before a disciplinary hearing this week over her behaviour. Mrs Smith, who worked for Cafcass, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, which represents children in the family courts, admitted writing the damning note but claimed she later tried to retract the allegation – only to be put under huge strain by the police to stick to her story.

‘At the earliest opportunity, I repeatedly tried to correct this,’ she told the Health and Care Professions Council. ‘I would not give in to pressure. I would not submit to pressure placed on me to exaggerate or lie.’ Asked who was putting pressure on her, she replied: ‘I was under pressure at that police station … to exaggerate or confirm what I had written.’…

Mrs Smith made a home visit in January 2012 and wrote the case note while she was ‘really, really angry’, claiming she saw Mr Coupland stroking his daughter inappropriately – which he has always denied and she now admits was not true. Mrs Smith allegedly lied in a fit of pique after the single father criticised her handling of the case. She then waited three months to tell authorities about what she claimed she saw.

Mr Coupland was arrested at home on suspicion of sexual assault and questioned for about ten hours, and officers threatened to put his daughter in temporary car. A day later, he was informed there would be no further action after Mrs Smith was interviewed and backtracked on her claims. Cafcass, which is funded by the Department of Justice, sacked Mrs Smith and has paid Mr Coupland £86,000 in damages…

Last night Mr Coupland told the Mail: ‘I was arrested for sexually assaulting the most precious thing in my life … Once you are tarred with that brush, that is it. People where I live think I am a paedophile.’

Suzy Smith was brought before a disciplinary hearing. The article ends with this:

Panel chairman Stephen Fash said Mrs Smith had ‘overstated’ what she thought she had observed. The panel found she made the false allegation, but did not do so dishonestly. It will decide whether she is guilty of misconduct at a later hearing.

Let’s critique the final three sentences:

‘Panel chairman Stephen Fash said Mrs Smith had “overstated” what she thought she had observed.’

No she hadn’t, she’d lied – and had admitted as much. Why do men in positions of authority repeatedly fail to hold women accountable for their actions and inactions, as they would hold men accountable? As it is, she’s managed to move the focus of attention from her offence to the behaviour of the police.

‘The panel found she made the false allegation, but did not do so dishonestly.’

What on earth does this MEAN? That she honestly made the false accusation?

‘It will decide whether she is guilty of misconduct at a later hearing.’

So falsely alleging that a father sexually assaulted his daughter doesn’t automatically make a social worker guilty of misconduct?

We leave with you with one of the comments made in response to the article, the one with the most upvotes (593):

What an absolute disgrace. Cafcass is full of people like Suzi Smith. Well done to the father for fighting this every step of the way.

Good. Constance Briscoe, 57, a barrister and part-time judge, is currently serving a 16-month jail sentence for trying to pervert the course of justice over the investigation into how disgraced former MP Chris Huhne passed speeding points to his then-wife Vicky Pryce a decade earlier. An extract from the article:

The 57-year-old, who was one of the first black women to sit as a judge in the UK, was jailed for twice the amount of time handed to Huhne and Pryce, after it emerged that she had helped economist Pryce, a friend and also her neighbour, to reveal information about Huhne’s points-swapping to newspapers after the couple split in 2010.

The court heard that Briscoe was intent on bringing about Mr Huhne’s downfall [our emphasis] and knew how to manipulate the criminal justice system to her advantage, misleading police in her witness statements and deliberately giving them an altered copy of one of her statements.

Briscoe and Pryce were friends and neighbours. This case is an interesting example of female in-group preferencing, which typically goes on ‘under the radar’ and so isn’t normally detected. Lady Hale, the only female judge in the Supreme Court, regularly says we ‘need’ more female judges. Ha.

We’ve enjoyed reading a review of Laurie Penny’s new book on Spiked. It was written by Ellamay Russell, who’s studying for a Master’s degree in literature at the University of Sussex. The review’s first sentence:

There is nothing that makes me more bored than disingenuous writing, and I’ve found Laurie Penny’s new book Unspeakable Things to be a great cure for insomnia.

All of Laurie Penny’s output, both written and verbal, has been a great cure for insomnia. The review’s final sentence:

Unspeakable Things is an obituary for so-called fourth-wave feminism – let’s have the wake and move on.

And so say all of us.

At the end of another busy week, we think there’s time for a little levity. We’re not a fan of the Independent, which we consider as ideologically-driven as the Guardian, but we enjoyed this story, particularly the following extract:

Number 10’s online social media policy stresses following a Twitter account “doesn’t imply any kind of endorsement”.

Are we to understand that David Cameron doesn’t endorse… er… breasts? The social media team hasn’t thought this one through. This is going to cost the Conservatives a lot of both male and female votes next May.

This evening I’ve been posting comments in response to a truly execrable article by Robert Webb – the comedian, the markedly lesser talent of ‘Mitchell and Webb’ – published online today by the New Statesman. It’s titled, ‘Roll up, roll up, to see a man talking about feminism. What could possibly go wrong?’ The article is so excruciatingly wooden, ill-informed, and not funny, we can only assume some particularly dim and miserable feminists wrote most of the content, and approved the final draft. Two of my comments led to responses from Andrew Montague-Cook:

ahhh your such a loser. boo

boooooooooooooooo. hissss booo

It’s always a delight to be the recipient of such penetrating and insightful arguments from feminists’ male apologists.

Our thanks to a supporter for this.