Another terrific piece from Kathy Gyngell, Co-Editor of ‘The Conservative Woman’.

Herbert Purdy has just loaded this video of Laura Bates on his YouTube channel. I couldn’t get past 30 seconds, maybe you’ll be able to, but the comments made by Mr Purdy introducing the video are well worth catching, and include some comments on her using the feminist lie about two women a week dying at the hands of partners or ex-partners.

From time to time, when I have an idle moment, I amuse myself by checking out the reviews of Laura Bates’s book on Amazon. The most recent one – here – is a (minimum) 1-star review (lowest rating possible) from Eddie Jones:

My ‘postman’ is a woman. To my horror I finally discovered why this (and other items) take so long to arrive. She is not strong enough to carry much. So, must do a bit at a time. Meanwhile her Ikea kitchen is lying empty while her hungry husband waits for his dinner.

The preceding review is a (maximum) 5-star review by a woman whose short review ends with this gem:

Essential reading for human beings.

I’ve left her a comment along the lines of, ‘Essential reading for human beings… as opposed to essential reading for…?’

We’ve just had the latest of our FoI requests responses, this one from the Crown Prosecution Service – here. As usual with FoI responses, material of interest has been highlighted in yellow. The letter has a link to an interesting report – here. The report was presented to the Director of Public Prosecutions in 2012. It was the joint effort of Alison Levitt QC, Principal Legal Advisor to the CPS, and the Equality and Diversity Unit of the CPS, so we cannot be surprised by the feminist thinking that runs through it. The CPS has for some time been notorious for being driven by feminist thinking. From the report:

In recent years we have worked hard to dispel the damaging myths and stereotypes which are associated with these cases. One such misplaced belief is that false allegations of rape and domestic violence are rife. This report presents a more accurate picture. (Our comment – it does nothing of the sort)

At the outset it is important that we acknowledge the very damaging impact that a false allegation of rape or sexual assault – be it either malicious or misguided – can have on the person falsely accused. Reputations can be ruined and lives can be devastated as a result. Such cases will be dealt with robustly and those falsely accused should feel confident that the Crown Prosecution Service will prosecute these cases wherever there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest to do so. (our emphasis)

Ah yes, ‘public interest’. The explanation given for the fact that no British woman has ever been charged by the criminal justice system for the egregious crime of paternity fraud. But when, you might reasonably ask, would it not be in the public interest to prosecute someone for making a false rape allegation?

The report reveals that between January 2011 and May 2012, the police brought 121 cases of allegedly false rape accusations to the CPS for charging decisions. Common sense tells us that this would have been a miniscule proportion of the false rape accusations made by women against men over a 16-month period. So the fact that the police presented cases for charging decisions suggests they believed the prospects for convictions in these 121 cases, if charges were brought, were high. The CPS decided to press charges in just 35 cases, 29% of the total – 25 for perverting the course of justice, 10 for wasting police time. It’s impossible to escape the obvious conclusion.

The CPS itself is perverting the course of justice, and wasting police time.

An excellent new piece by Frank Furedi for Spiked.

J4MB considers committed relationships and the nuclear family to be cornerstones of a civilized society, so people are sometimes surprised that we operate the website Men shouldn’t marry. About 50% of marriages in the UK end in divorce. When men marry, they’re unlikely to be conscious of the financial devastation that may well befall them, if and when they divorce. This blog piece explains what the 50% of married men who will eventually be divorced – probably at the behest of their wives, as two-thirds of divorce applications are filed by wives –  can look forward to.

How can it be fair and just that decades after women have had the same employment opportunities as men, it’s invariably men, not women, who are financially devastated by divorce? Men tend to invest disproportionately in their careers – in plain English, men are more likely to work harder than women, and as a result earn more – and their partners benefit from their partners’ work in many ways.

It’s common knowledge that women seek partners who are better-off than themselves, or partners with good future earnings potential. Anyone with any doubt on the matter should read Steve Moxon’s excellent book The Woman Racket which cites numerous academic studies. But why should men be disadvantaged, and women advantaged, by divorce? It’s little wonder that women get so excited at the news of females friend getting engaged. Women are advantaged by marriage whether the marriage lasts, or it doesn’t. The state provides an incentive for wives to sabotage their relationships, and destroy their own families, leading to great emotional suffering of children, fathers, grandparents, and others.

In our election manifesto we’ll be covering the issue of the financial devastation of men by divorce, particularly when their ex-partners are ‘primary carers’ of their children – children to whom the men aren’t guaranteed reasonable access by the family court system, needless to say. Following the financial impact of their divorces, few men are in a position to pay the high legal costs required to have any chance of reasonable access to their children in the face of malicious ex-partners.

We’ve just received a response to a FoI request we sent recently to the Ministry of Justice, and it’s here. We’ve highlighted the pertinent areas in yellow, and they includes some material on prenuptial agreements. As I related in The Marriage Delusion: the fraud of the rings? – available from my publishing concern LPS Publishing as well as smaller outlets e.g. Amazon – the first recognition of a prenuptial agreement in England and Wales was that of Katrin Radmacher, a German heiress, and her relatively poor French husband. An all-male judge sitting of The Supreme Court upheld the prenuptial agreement, in order to prevent Radmacher’s ex-husband benefitting substantially from her fortune.

The rest of this blog piece is an extract from the Ministry of Justice FoI response, concerning division of matrimonial assets following divorce, and possible alimony payments. When reading through it, consider which elements are designed to typically financially advantage ex-wives and financially disadvantage ex-husbands. This will help you understand why, decade after decade, most divorce applications have been filed by wives. In the past 10 years, as statistics in the letter shows, wives have applied for about two-thirds of them. The extract:

“I can let you know, again outside of the Act and on a discretionary basis, that the division of property on divorce and dissolution of a civil partnership in England in Wales is governed by the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 and the provisions of the Civil Partnership Act 2004. Section 24 of the 1973 Act enables the court, on granting a decree of divorce, nullity or judicial separation, or afterwards, to order that property be transferred from one party to the other, or to a child of the family, or to another person for the benefit of a child of the family. Probably the most frequent use of this power is by courts ordering a divorced man to transfer ownership of the matrimonial home to his ex-wife. Other provisions give the courts the power to order the making of periodical payments, to order the sale of property, to make orders in respect of pensions and so on. The court can order periodical payments for maintenance of a former spouse, and can order that the payments can be made for as long as the court considers appropriate.

The courts have discretion as to what orders they make in any particular case, in order to meet the demands of that case according to its particular circumstances. Section 25 of the Act lays down various matters which the courts are to consider in exercising their discretion. The first of these is the welfare of any child of the family under the age of 18. The other matters are:

• the income, earning capacity, property and other financial resources which each of the parties has or is likely to have in the foreseeable future;
• the contribution, both financial and other, made by each of the parties to looking after the home and children is also considered
• the financial needs, obligations and responsibilities which each of the parties has or is likely to have in the foreseeable future;
• the standard of living enjoyed by the family before the breakdown of the marriage;
• the age of each party and the duration of the marriage;
• any physical or mental disability suffered by either party;
• the contributions which each party has made, or is likely to make in the future to the welfare of the family;
• the conduct of the parties, if it is such that it would be inequitable to disregard it;
• the value to each of the parties of any benefit which that party will lose the chance of acquiring because of the divorce or annulment.

I am not aware of any evidence that the courts exercise their discretion in divorce cases in a discriminatory way. In the nature of these cases, most of them will involve a net transfer of assets away from the richer of the two parties (usually the ex-husband) in favour of the poorer (usually the ex-wife). In the many cases where a couple’s only substantial asset is the former matrimonial home, it is likely, if there are children, that this will be given to the wife, as the primary carer for the children. Wives are therefore likely to obtain significantly more than half of the capital assets of a divorcing couple in a substantial proportion of cases.”

We’ve just received a high-resolution image from the noted Canadian meme creator, Francis Roy, and it’s here.

Our thanks to Steve for this. Apparently Laura Bates has written in her Guardian column today that her Everyday Sexism Project accepts stories from men as well as women. We must assume ‘stories from men’ will only be accepted if they relate to anti-female sexism, because this is the key content of Laura’s home page:

The Everyday Sexism Project exists to catalogue instances of sexism experienced by women (our emphasis) on a day to day basis. They might be serious or minor, outrageously offensive or so niggling and normalised that you don’t even feel able to protest. Say as much or as little as you like, use your real name or a pseudonym – it’s up to you. By sharing your story you’re showing the world that sexism does exist, it is faced by women (our emphasis) everyday and it is a valid problem to discuss.

Steve has a friend, Martin Buckingham, who in his spare time likes to write autobiographical limericks. Martin has emailed me the content of the note (below) he’s about to post on the ESP website. I wonder if Ms Bates will pass it for publication?

Laura, you write in a Guardian article today that ESP accepts stories of sexism from men, do you mean stories of anti-female sexism only? I ask because your home page says ‘sexism experienced by women’ and that ‘sexism… is faced by women’. This is clearly anti-male sexism, ironically. Could you please publish this, and email me at mb1957@hotmail.co.uk if and when you add ‘and men’ after ‘women’? Thank you. In the meantime I’ll have to post my anti-male sexism stories to http://thealternativesexismproject.wordpress.com. Have a nice day.

Let’s end with a story from the ESP website:

Leah 2014-02-25 01:14

I receive comments about my appearance on a daily basis from men in the form of “compliments” that just don’t feel flattering. I’m sitting on the bus and a man says “you’d be so much prettier if you smiled”, oh I’m sorry I don’t have a permanent smile glued to my face, but it usually comes out when I’m happy and not trying to look pretty if you’d ever like to see it.

My favourite is when a man says “its a good thing you’re so pretty” this can come after literally anything I say. I honestly think they are trying to be charming saying it by pointing out and complimenting my looks. No it’s not flattering to disregard everything I said by implying that my looks will make up for my stupidity.

You might reasonably think we’ve invented the story, to discredit ESP. Not so. Here’s a screenshot of it on the ESP website, taken a moment ago:

Our thanks to a number of people for pointing us to this story from Arizona. The best coverage so far, in our view, has just been published by Toy Soldiers. The site’s strapline is:

For the forgotten men and boys who suffer in silence

In a moment we’ll be emailing this letter to Ms Horley. and we’ll let you know what response, if any, we receive.