Yesterday I was interviewed on three BBC radio programmes in connection with the gender pay gap, following the publication of a silly report jointly produced by the TUC and the Fawcett Society. Late in the afternoon I was interviewed by Andrew Easton for BBC Radio Hereford & Worcester – here. The piece of interest is 1:32:34 – 1:41:10. Up to 1:36:35 the content is a pre-recorded interview with Scarlett Harris of the TUC, who nominated herself for a ‘Gormless Feminist of the Month’ award with her response to the presenter’s remark that women choose lines of work which don’t pay well after having children, when their natural preference is for part-time work:

Choice is a tricky thing.

Why, those pesky mothers! If only they’d do what the feminists tell them to do, hand over their distressed children to child minders, freeing them up to work 18-hour days to smash the patriarchy. Then everyone would be happy.

Ray Barry is the leader of Real Fathers for Justice, and will be standing as a candidate for J4MB at the general election. This morning he was interviewed on BBC Radio WM on the subject, ‘Should absent parents be punished for failing to pay their child support demands?’ Ray’s section starts at 47:47 and it’s worth catching some remarks made by the presenter, up to 55:37. The programme is here.

The piece will be available on iPlayer for 7 days, and we’ll put it on our YouTube channel in due course.

We are constantly grateful to supporters for materials they send us. One is a lady living in London, who’s just made us aware of a remarkable paper on genital mutilation, both male and female. Brian D Earp is a Research Fellow in Ethics at the University of Oxford. He holds degrees from Yale, Oxford and Cambridge universities. His paper (published earlier this year) is here. Helpfully, the paper contains hyperlinks, so you can access the referenced materials.

We had a further £450 in donations overnight, including one of £300, bringing the total raised in our current appeal (to fund public advertising for J4MB in the May general election) to £3,720. The largest single donation was from a British man, numbCruncher, a sum of £1,000. We recently posted his reasons for making the donation on this website, and we also submitted a piece to AVfM. They’ve just published the article and as always with AVfM, the comments are well worth reading.

Lorely Burt is a Lib Dem MP, PPS to Danny Alexander, Treasury Secretary. She retained her seat (Solihull) with just 179 votes in 2010, so hopefully she’s making plans for alternative employment after May 7.

Almost three hours ago – from 07:05, to be precise – I was engaged in a discussion with Ms Burt on Pete Morgan’s programme on BBC Radio WM (West Midlands). We’ll have the edited piece on our YT library in a week or two, but in the meantime you can catch it here for seven days. The piece is over 1:05:57 – 1:14:55, and some time after 2:00 someone from the TUC was due to comment on the report they’ve produced with the Fawcett Society, which is published today. Can’t wait to read it…

An excellent new piece. Timely, too, at least for myself. At 07:05 tomorrow – less than 11 hours away – I’ll be debating the ‘gender pay gap’ with an MP on BBC radio, and covering the same issue at 07:40 on another BBC radio station.

An excellent piece by Neil Lyndon for the Telegraph. We’ll be doing our own piece on this sculpture in the coming days.

We’ve just had delivery of our first order of individually-numbered blue J4MB silicone wristbands, and we’re delighted with the quality. You can view the design through this link.

Why not make a donation of a minimum of £5.00 (£8.00 if you live outside the UK) to our current appeal, and get the wristband as a token of our appreciation? You can donate here. If you’ve already donated to the appeal – or you’re a known donor who hasn’t donated to the current appeal – and you’d like one or more bands, please email me at mike@j4mb.org.uk. Thank you.

Another excellent piece from Mr Purdy. If you haven’t already subscribed to his blog, we recommend you do so now. His posts all merit serious attention.

Oops. Once again, the Fawcett Society ladies demonstrate why they were worthy inaugural winners of our ‘Gormless Feminists of the Month’ award. Their certificate is here.