Month: November 2016

Campaign for Merit in Business referenced in a Guardian piece – MPs’ corporate governance inquiry: what are the key issues?

/ Mike Buchanan / 4 Comments

We recently sent a written submission to a DBIS inquiry on corporate governance, and were pleased to see it covered by The Guardian yesterday – here. The relevant extract:

Diversity
A read through the submissions to the committee so far shows that breaking free from white, middle-aged male [my emphasis] groupthink is almost universally popular. [Racist, ageist, and sexist – well done, The Guardian!] The Institute of Directors criticises companies for rejecting alternative voices at the risk of stagnation and calls for younger directors. LGIM opposes quotas but wants the chairman to push for a greater mix of ethnicity, skills and background. The TUC calls for mandatory quotas for women. The Campaign for Merit in Business has a different view, asserting the diversity drive is “anti-male” and asking why the government does not encourage more women in sewage work and bomb disposal.

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Married GP (45) who spent six months in jail (of an 18-month sentence) for groping a 19-year-old woman’s breasts during an examination is cleared at a retrial after jury hears it was a ‘terrible misunderstanding’

/ Mike Buchanan / 3 Comments

Our thanks to Mike P for this. A 19-year-old female fantasist put a doctor through a nightmare, assisted by the criminal injustice system. She will doubtless face no repercussions.

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Glenda Jackson’s King Lear shows that men play unhinged warlords better than women

/ Mike Buchanan / 1 Comment

The feminist desecration of Shakespeare’s plays continues, but thankfully there are still a few theatre critics including Lloyd Evans prepared to tell the truth. His review of King Lear, with Glenda Jackson (80) in the title role, is in the current edition of The Spectator. Excerpts:

Deborah Warner sets the play in modern times, which muddles everything. Britain in the Dark Ages is represented by a scout hut or a therapy suite. Plain walls, bleached flooring, a semi-circle of blue plastic chairs. Enter the king’s court led by a crownless Glenda Jackson (Lear), sporting a black ensemble topped by a chic scarlet cardigan. Is this a brutal tyrant on the brink of a psychotic meltdown? Nope. It looks like Granny wearing ‘something special’ for her 80th at the care home. She and her colleagues discuss the dismemberment of the kingdom and the scene moves to a vacant warehouse with a fridge full of beer, centre-stage. It’s Goneril’s palace, apparently…

One imagines that the placement of a female in the lead role was intended to make this mad old yarn clearer and more dramatic. Consider another mad old yarn. ‘Humpty Dumpty’. Would it be clearer or more dramatic if Humpty were played not by an egg but by a satsuma? The four-hour grind reveals very little except that history dramas should be set in the past and that men play unhinged warlords better than women.

Naturally the show has delighted its target audience, the connoisseurs and the aficionados, the been-there-done-that crowd who need novelty to mask their frustration that they can never again approach Shakespeare with the feverish excitement of a novice. Hesitate for an eternity before exposing teenagers to this ordeal. Chances are you’ll convert them into lifelong Bard-dodgers.

The director, Deborah Warner, once had a woman play the lead role in Richard II, in 1995. What is wrong with these women?

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An invitation to be in the public gallery of the House of Commons for Philip Davies’s debate marking International Men’s Day – Thursday, 17 November

/ Mike Buchanan / 1 Comment

Because International Men’s Day (19 November) falls on a Saturday this year, Philip Davies’s debate marking the day will be held on Thursday, 17 November. It will be held in the main chamber of the House of Commons, where debates on International Women’s Day have long been held.

Parliamentary guidance on attending debates is here. Security information is here.

I’m looking forward to being in the public gallery for Philip Davies’s debate. If you’d like to join me, please email me (mike@j4mb.org.uk) as soon as possible. Thank you.

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