Our thanks to Stu for going to the trouble of identifying all the MPs who spoke during the IMD debate, and chronicling when they were speaking. We’ve added this information to the description under the video.

Our thanks to William for this.

Three months ago we posted a piece on Natalie Saul, a 37-year-old accountant who stole £350,000 from her technology firm. From the article:

Saul was given a two-year suspended sentence and 250 hours unpaid work by Judge Catherine Newman, who admitted her sentence was ‘wholly exceptional’ and fell outside sentencing guidelines.

She told Southwark Crown Court Saul was ‘not the general stuff of which the prison population is made’. [J4MB: Possibly true, but if so, it’s only because gynocentric judges are so reluctant to send women to prison.]

The judge added: ‘I’m taking a considerable risk that the Crown will think it lenient and appeal, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.’ [J4MB: What risk is the judge taking upon herself? Precisely none.]

Lucie Daniels, defending Saul, had argued her client was ‘shaken’ by the loss of her grandmother in 2013 and was a committed charity worker.

‘This offending is so out of character, she has worked hard and paid her taxes and been a responsible citizen,’ said Ms Daniels.

Yet her charitable efforts could not mitigate the loss to Idio, who hemorrhaged a total of £348,439 to her gambling addiction. [J4MB: The company lost a total of almost £350,000 not to Natalie Saul, you’ll notice, but to her ‘gambling addiction’. The “journalist” of the piece is, predictably, a woman.]

Our thanks to our video man for this (video, 1:30:22). My thanks to Natoya and Raymond for joining me there.

An appalling piece in HuffPo, concerning a meeting of the Women & Equalities Committee. The ‘experts’ are, predictably, feminists – in this case, feminists we contacted with evidence that increasing the proportion of women on corporate boards leads to financial decline, and refused to engage with it. The piece ends with this:

Denise Wilson OBE, the review’s chief executive officer, said women faced a “higher bar” when competing for top positions. [J4MB: An absurd claim. The government has been threatening major companies with legislated gender quotas since the Davies Report, which led to a doubling of female representation on FTSE100 boards from 12.5 % in 2011 to 25% in 2015. Virtually all the women appointed over the period were appointed as non-executive directors, a cushy well-paid number.]

[Maria] Miller, a former women and equalities minister, said the assertion was shocking and that more drastic action needed to be taken.

“Imagine if we said women faced a higher bar to get into university, or to become doctors,” she added. [J4MB: 60% of students are female, and 70% of medical students. Is it concluded by Manatee Miller that men face a higher bar? Of course not.]

“While these reviews show that progress has been made, it is clearly not fast enough. We run real risk of missing the 33% target by 2020 and both businesses and government should take responsibility.

“Too many companies are risking their performance by failing to ensure gender diversity on their boards [J4MB: We repeat – increasing gender diversity leads to corporate financial DECLINE] and among their executive managers.

“We will be looking at the findings of the reviews, considering the current figures and asking what more needs to be done to make sure the most senior positions in companies are as often held by women as by men.” [J4MB emphasis. You heard it here first, folks. The chair of the Women & Equalities Committee is seeking gender equity in senior positions in the private sector, regardless of merit, and regardless of the evidence that increasing more women on corporate boards leads to financial decline.]

Another strong piece from HEqual.

We shall shortly be announcing officially that ICMI18 is ‘on’, just a few things to sort out first. In the meantime, herewith the latest conference image:

Another piece, from the US, for our overflowing “You couldn’t make this s*** up!!!” 4-drawer filing cabinet. Isn’t it just wonderful that taxpayer-funded academia (men pay almost three-quarters of the income tax collected in the UK) offers so many employment opportunities to otherwise unemployable feminist land whales? An extract:

In an article called “Teaching about Eating Disorders from a Fat Studies Perspectives,” [Professor Patti] Lou-Watkins discusses the sorts of “pedagogy” she now applies in her courses.

“I grew to embrace feminist pedagogy in terms of course content as well as classroom practices,” she explains. “My course now frames body image disturbances more as a function of oppressive societal structures than of individual pathology.”

In yet another article, Lou-Watkins celebrates the fact that “the field of fat studies has undergone tremendous growth in recent years, with colleges now offering courses in this area,” such as hers.

In 2012 my book Feminism: The Ugly Truth was published. I like to think I nailed the issue of female obesity in Chapter 9, Why are fat women fat?

Interesting.

My thanks to Keith for pointing out that my interview with Frances Finn of Notts TV, recorded shortly before the 2015 general election, has so far attracted over 890,000 views on Captain Nemo’s channel – here (video, 10:23). Comments are still coming in, the last five days ago. My thanks to Captain Nemo and all other online aggregators who amplify our material to large audiences. Our own YouTube channel is here.

A lengthy and disturbing piece on ConservativeHome. An extract:

In the proposed new constitution, a whole chunk of the rules on candidate selection is simply deleted. This deleted section (from 15.1.1 to 15.2.5 in the document) sets out how an Association should go about selecting a Parliamentary candidate – it includes: the composition of a local selection committee; the rule that that committee should produce a longlist which is presented to the Association Executive for interview; and that the Executive must then shortlist ‘not less than two candidates for consideration by a General Meeting of the Association’.

In short, the section proposed for deletion is the foundation of the normal, local and democratic selection process – the very process which many members value dearly and which was ridden roughshod over in the last General Election, with disastrous results.

As ConservativeHome has argued since May, those mistakes must not be repeated, and a proper commitment to the principle of local, democratic candidate selection must be made. Deleting even the current statement of the rules from the constitution certainly does not do that. Worse, the replacement for these rules is a catch-all clause which would give total control of selection rules to the Candidates Committee:

“The selection of all candidates, including Parliamentary, Police Commissioners, Elected Mayors and local government candidates shall follow a process in accordance with rules and guidance published from time to time by the Committee on Candidates of the Board of the Party”

This is the very committee which chose and then oversaw the hugely damaging over-centralisation of candidate selection during the General Election. For candidates and Party members still upset and angry about what went on, the news that the official response is to further centralise even greater powers, and remove even the theoretical commitment to Associations controlling selections, will be distinctly unwelcome. [J4MB emphasis]

It’s obvious where this will lead, if implemented – to the Committee on Candidates insisting on a minimum number of female candidates on shortlists, and possible all-women shortlists, such as those which have been employed for years by the Labour party, resulting in toxic feminists such as Jess Phillips becoming MPs. The Conservative party already has its fair share of toxic feminist MPs, the gormless Maria Miller being a prime example.

I worked as a business consultant for the Conservative party at its London headquarters over 2006-8, and became a party member and minor donor at the time. In the autumn of 2009 David Cameron announced his intention to introduce all-women shortlists to select candidates in some constituencies for the 2010 general election. I resigned my party membership that day, and was later told many other members had done the same. Shortly afterwards I started work on my first book about gender politics, David and Goliatha: David Cameron – Heir to Harman? The front cover image was drawn by the legendary cartoonist Martin Honeysett, and consists of an outsize Harriet Harman in dungarees, holding hands with David Cameron as a schoolboy.

The full content of David and Goliatha, and much more, were included in my later book, the snappily-titled The Glass Ceiling Delusion (The Real Reasons More Women Don’t Reach Senior Positions).