About six weeks ago we published a piece – ‘Proof that Gloria De Piero doesn’t care about men’ – concerning four posters in the window of GDP’s constituency office in Kirkby in Ashfield, here.

Two of the posters related to breast cancer. There were no posters about prostate cancer. Prostate cancer kills as many men as breast cancer kills women. Taxpayers spend £250 million p.a. on national screening programmes for early detection of breast cancer and cervical cancer. 72% of income tax in the UK is paid by men, that’s £68 BILLION more than women pay every year. Despite this:

There are no national screening programmes for any male cancers.

Early this evening I passed Gloria De Piero’s office, on my way to a delicious yet affordably-priced dinner at an excellent JD Wetherspoon pub in the centre of Kirkby, The Regent. Most of the earlier posters have gone, including those concerning breast cancer – my photograph of the window is here. I noted, however, that the two posters about domestic violence which led to GDP’s second Lying Feminist of the Month award were still there – the first relating to a helpline supporting only female victims, the second a poster of a male perpetrator.

In this relentless radical feminist narrative – the Duluth Model – only women are victims, only men are perpetrators. For decades we’ve known this is an outrageous lie. British Crime Surveys consistently show that around 40% of victims of domestic abuse in the UK are men, but given that men are far less likely than women to report being victims of domestic violence, that’s surely an under-estimate.

Why would any man (or woman, for that matter) in Ashfield vote for this anti-male MP – selected from an all-women shortlist, an abomination in a democracy – on May 7? I have no idea.

I’ve just spent two days in the company of David Hyatt, who’s been helping with door-to-door leafleting, and I thank him for his efforts. We delivered over 2,000 leaflets between us, and he was good company. He hopes to join us again before the election.

If you can spare some time helping Ray Barry and/or myself with leafleting, please let me know – mike@j4mb.org.uk. Thank you.

We’ve just learned that in Ashfield we can have up to 13 ‘count agents’ at the Festival Hall, Kirkby in Ashfield, for the vote counting and declaration on May 7/8. There are no duties, but you’ll be able to see the individual parties’ votes mounting at the counting tables.

Polling ends at 10pm on May 7, and the current ‘best guess’ is that the vote declaration will take place between 04:00 – 05:00 the following morning. We’ll have rosettes for everyone there supporting us. It should be an exciting few hours.

If you’d like to join me, please email me mike@j4mb.org.uk with your name and address – the election people will send you a letter which you’ll need to bring with you in order to gain admission. Priority will be given to donors and other supporters.

I’ll post another blog piece if Ray Barry also wants some people at his count in Broxtowe.

An article by Peter Lloyd in the print edition of yesterday’s Daily Mail took up over two pages. The online edition is here.

I’m about to go out door-to-door leafleting for the day with a supporter. We always ask people to lay the leaflets on a wooden spatula to push through letterboxes, lest a dog bite their fingers. A small minority of dogs are silent, and clearly lay by the door waiting for the opportunity to sink their teeth into fingers. We’ve already lost six spatulas to dogs, and in every case there was no notice on the door warning people. On one door yesterday there was a poster with this warning:

BEWARE OF THE DOG.
(The cat’s got an attitude problem, too.)

My thanks to a couple of supporters who’ve spotted that Wikipedia now has an entry on J4MB – here. We don’t know who prepared the entry, nor how long it’s been there. While the entry is broadly fair and accurate, there are a few slightly misleading points. After the election we’ll suggest changes, and some additional material.

Between now and 28 April, Royal Mail will be delivering J4MB leaflets to all 95,000 households in the Ashfield and Broxtowe constituencies, where around 170,000 registered voters live. The leaflets were delivered by the printer to a top-secret Royal Mail distribution facility at 9am today. Yesterday afternoon I dropped into the printer’s factory to ensure everything was correct for the delivery, and it was. I recorded a short video (2:30) whilst there, and it’s just been uploaded to our YouTube channel – here. Please leave any comments there rather than here. Thank you.

Our thanks to the indefatigable Paul for pointing us to a letter written by Geoffrey Littlejohns and published in the Nottingham Post in April 2010, following the announcement that Gloria De Piero had been selected from an all-women shortlist, an abomination in a democracy. Any man in Ashfield who votes for her in three weeks’ time will be a turkey voting for Xmas.

Two nights ago I was at a ‘husting’ with other candidates in the Ashfield constituency, at a church hall (capacity audience, 200+ people) in Sutton in Ashfield. The incumbent Labour MP, Gloria De Piero – 192 vote majority in 2010, have I mentioned that before? – feigned pleasure at meeting me, and I did likewise. She was a presenter for Sky before being selected from an all-women shortlist in Ashfield, so smiling at people she presumably loathes must come naturally to her.

The chairman was very professional, although his ‘random number generator’ had let to the two women among the five candidates being drawn #1 and #2 to speak. What are the chances? Seriously, please let me know. I’m a bit pushed for time right now.

In the second row in the audience were two middle-aged women who nodded vigorously at everything GDP said, so I think we can safely assume they were her supporters. During my five-minute-long initial speech they interrupted constantly, and cackled – both could be cast perfectly as witches in Macbeth – in contravention of what the chairman had requested, that the speakers not be interrupted.

During the interval I went up to one of the women, and asked if she hadn’t heard the chairman’s request about not interrupting speakers. Her doleful response was worthy of a six-year-old, after having been caught misbehaving:

I wasn’t the only one!

Two candidates had forbidden video recording, but the (lady) vicar kindly allowed speakers to audio record their own speeches – one of five minutes duration, one of two minutes. When I get a little free time I’ll upload the audio files or the transcripts.

As well as the candidates’ speeches there were questions from the audience, and this leads me into the key point of this post, misrepresentation by Labour party canvassers of what I’d said that night. In the last two weeks we’ve concentrated our door-to-door leafleting in Sutton in Ashfield, the largest centre of population in the Ashfield constituency. Tim and Jon have been particularly helpful with this tiring task, with which I’ll be engaged for seven out of the next eight days. If you can help, please email me mike@j4mb.org.uk.

Last night I received an email from a lady who lives in Sutton in Ashfield, Ann Smith. While I’d obviously challenge some of the content of the final paragraph, and would appreciate a discussion with her about equity feminism (we have no problem with it) and gender feminism (the cause of so much of men’s and boys’ suffering) we reproduce her email here in full, with her kind permission:

Dear Mike,

I am a stay at home mother with a partner and 2 children, and I have displayed one of your campaign posters in my window. I have just had the Sutton in Ashfield Labour leaflet brigade (all female) bang on my door and aggressively shout me down for supporting you.

They basically demanded to know why I was supporting a man who said just last night that “women and girls shouldn’t have access to the NHS or universities as women are taking places away from men” and someone said that “women shouldn’t be able to hold senior positions in companies”.

Now having actually read your election manifesto, objectively, without engaging my feminist victim complex, I know this is bunkum.

I pointed out the fact that the reason more women don’t hold senior positions is because they don’t want them. There has been a resurgence in recent years of women choosing to stay at home and be wives and mothers. Maybe that’s because for the most part feminism has lied to masses of women about having it all, when that is in fact physically and biologically impossible.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not anti-feminist and would regard myself as a feminist. But I hold the beliefs of actual feminism. Not female superiority. A real feminist should never stand for making women the dominant sex, that is not only ridiculous, but extremely naive. A real feminist actually fights for not only the rights and dignity of her own sex, but also for the rights and dignity of the opposite sex. And I believe that this is the kind of feminism you want to protect as well.

Best wishes,

Ann Smith

Ann Smith, we salute you. If you let me know your address, it would be good to pop by for a cup of tea and a biscuit. I’d like to thank you in person for your courageous email.

Another outstanding piece from Karen Woodall. If only Jane Powell (CEO, The CALM Initiative) had a fraction of Karen’s compassion for men at risk of committing suicide.

An insightful review.