Our thanks to Martin for this on MailOnline. You’ll note from the headline (above) that greater offence is taken at Coombes for fraudulently claiming her dead father’s pension, than for killing him. Most of the article consists of criticisms of the dead man’s character, as if that mitigates his murder and burial in the back garden. A flavour of that:

Bill Coombes, a former bricklayer who has a daughter, Islay, 29, with his ex-wife from their seven-year marriage, also told MailOnline that his former father-in-law could be ‘domineering.’

Other relatives described the ex-soldier, who served as a bombardier in the Royal Regiment of Artillery in the Second World War, as ‘difficult’. [J4MB: Many of the men who served in that war, as in all wars, were scarred mentally from their experiences. It’s not surprising he was ‘difficult’.]

Mr Coombes, who took his wife’s name after they married, said of his former father-in-law: ‘He was a domineering man, a real control freak…

Former neighbour Terry Sever, 70, remembered Kenneth Coombes being very strict with Barbara and her daughter.

He told MailOnline: ‘If he wanted to watch something on television, her and her daughter used to have to go out of the room. He was very strict.

Four years ago we reported the story of a 56-year-old woman who (with the help of two buried her husband in the rockery, and pocketed over £77,000 of benefits and pension payments on his behalf, over the course of four years afterwards. Extracts from the MailOnline piece:

A wife who secretly buried her dead husband under a garden rockery and continued to collect his benefits payments for four years was jailed yesterday.

Rebekah Sturdey disposed of her husband Geoffrey’s body on their isolated small holding – and pocketed over £70,000…

The 56-year-old carried out the secret burial with two other women after he died aged 60 of a suspected heart attack.

A court heard Mrs Sturdey told investigators her husband had gone on a touring holiday around Europe.

But checks revealed he had no valid passport and a £20,000 aerial and land search was launched by a specialist forensic team to find his body in a plot on the land near Tregaron, West Wales.

Sturdey buried her husband with the help of his paid carer, Boqer-Ore Adie and Adie’s daughter, Karmel…

Mr Rees (prosecutor) said: ‘He was buried in a rockery at twice the depth of a normal grave. [J4MB: Presumably in an attempt to hide the burial even from an aerial search? Such burials are sometimes visible from above, as growth of vegetation is unusually vigorous as a result.]

‘The women later admitted the rockery was the easiest place to bury a body but it was what he wanted. [J4MB: The women’s claim is simply taken as true. Switch the gender, such a claim would NOT have been taken as true.]

Our thanks to Martin for this. An extract:

According to Bernardino, her work is a comment on human perception and her belief in the potential of art to encourage social change.

According to Buchanan, she’s a talentless narcissistic blithering idiot.

Our thanks to Martin for this. Extracts:

The case of a former Connecticut college student accused of lying about being raped by two university football players is headed to trial.

The Connecticut Post reports 19-year-old Nikki Yovino rejected a plea deal Wednesday in Bridgeport Superior Court. Prosecutors offered a two-year prison sentence and a judge offered one-year sentence. [J4MB: That was gentlemanly of him.]…

The native of South Setauket, New York, accused two Sacred Heart University football players of sexually assaulting her during an October 2016 party. The players said the sex was consensual.

Police say Yovino admitted making up the allegations because she worried another student would lose romantic interest in her when he found out about the sexual encounter. [J4MB: Lying about rape to cover up infidelity is the first of Janet Bloomfield’s 13 reasons women lie about rape.]

Yovino’s lawyer says they’re eager to present the whole story to a jury.

Our thanks to Rick for this short but interesting piece (video, 4:19). Published yesterday, it’s already attracted 180,000+ views.

In the course of my 30-year-long business career I once found myself working in a company, and once for an individual boss, I loathed. On both occasions, I resigned. Why won’t women do the same thing? In my view, it’s partly because they’re more risk-averse than men. You have to laugh at the current claims by many female BBC presenters that they could earn more with private sector broadcasters. I invite them to resign, then see what they’re worth in the real world.

Women want the high incomes and perks that come with some lines of work, but without associated pressures. As always, women want the upside of everything, and the downside of nothing. To their minds, they shouldn’t have to adapt to pressurised work environments, those environments should adapt to their preferences.

I’ve been reflecting on this following a Law Society Gazette article sent to me by Chloe. Extracts:

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has criticised a firm for creating an atmosphere where a junior lawyer said she was ‘terrified’ of admitting her mistakes.

Sovani Ramona James, who worked at the time for south east firm McMillan Williams, was found to have acted dishonestly in creating and backdating letters to give the impression that a clinical negligence case was progressing.

James’s misconduct had included dating four letters for opponents and medical experts as September 2014, when metadata on the firm’s computer system found they were created in November that year. The misconduct was only detected after James, 34, left the firm in 2015.

But the tribunal opted against striking her off the roll after concluding her primary motivation was ‘fear’ of the consequences from the firm’s management of the discovery of her wrongdoing… [J4MB: This is tortuous logic, because vagina. Her primary motivation for the wrongdoing was ‘fear’ that management would discover her wrongdoing. That makes sense… in the context of not holding women properly accountable, anyway.]

The tribunal heard that James had been warned in an email in 2012 that she had recorded 75 hours short of her target of 1,440 hours for the previous year. Her target was subsequently increased for the next year to 1,515 hours.

A letter from managing partner Colum Smith in April 2013 said her record showed ‘fundamental problems’ with her time recording and it was assumed she would be working every weekend and long hours during the week to catch up.

This letter, the tribunal said, was ‘threatening and harassing in tone’, with the intention of frightening James into compliance and showing no interest in any pressures she was under. [J4MB emphasis]

The tribunal’s judgment said that awareness and openness around mental health issues had increased in recent years and law firms should be more alert to the warning signs… [J4MB: Is it a “mental health issue” when an employee cannot cope with the culture in which (s)he works?]

The tribunal heard that James lost a significant amount of weight during the period in question, her hair fell out in clumps and she would break down in tears.

A piece in The Guardian. The start:

The British army has been accused of bowing to political correctness after launching a campaign to recruit more people from a diversity of genders, sexualities, ethnicities and faiths.

It has also been criticised for appearing to mislead recruits by suggesting the army offers help for those with mental health problems.

In a series of animations released on social media, the campaign positively answers questions such as “Can I be gay in the army?” and “What if I get emotional in the army?”. [J4MB emphasis – hmm, which cohort of people might ask THAT question?]

Later in the piece:

Gen Nick Carter, the chief of the general staff, said the army needed to change how it recruited and looked after trainees. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he denied claims that the “This is belonging 2018” campaign showed the army had “gone soft”.

“We are getting new types of applicant, that’s why we need to adjust the approach we are using to how we nurture them into the army,” he said. “This campaign is a recognition that we don’t have a fully manned army at the moment, [J4MB emphasis] that the demography of our country has changed, and that we need to reach out to a broader community in order to man [J4MB: ‘man’? Arrest this man for thoughtcrime!] that army with the right talent.

“Our tradition cohort would have been white, male, Caucasian 16- to 25-year-olds, and there are not as many of those around as there once were. [J4MB: Can someone please explain how the claim in bold type can POSSIBLY be true?] It is entirely appropriate for us therefore to try and reach out to a much broader base to get the talent we need in order to sustain that combat effectiveness.”

Cue laughter from Russian and Chinese military personnel. What would have happened if half the troops in the Army, Navy, and Air Force on D-Day had been women? We’d all be speaking German today, and life’s difficult enough as it is.

Our thanks to Elizabeth for this. The start of the piece:

Scott Ard, Yahoo’s former editorial director and current editor-in-chief of the Silicon Valley Business Journal, filed a lawsuit against Mayer earlier this week in federal court in San Jose, California.

Our thanks to a number of people for this.

It’s only lunchtime and already we’ve covered the story of a doctor not sentenced to prison after two cases of drunk-driving, because of the stresses of studying and work – it’s clear she wasn’t resilient enough to have been a medical student, let alone a doctor – and a woman not sentenced to prison after stealing £130,000, because of her father’s bereavement.

Our thanks to D for this. The captain’s comments appeared yesterday in the comments stream following a video about the gender pay gap – here. They echo comments made to me by a highly experienced commercial pilot recently. The man (‘Goofus’) writes:

As a long haul airline Captain, I read this bbc article on easyjet pay and my heart sank.  The idea that more women being hired as pilots and presumably more men being hired as cabin crew is somehow the answer to this illusory problem in the modern world is complete madness.  Whilst I have flown with some very competent female pilots in my time (and I take my hat off to them for choosing to work in a very male environment) I have also flown with quite a large proportion of them that have been well below par.  Call me bigoted or misogynist or whatever else you like but that is my sincere personal experience.  Being generally fond of women I have found myself quietly willing them to do well on an approach to land.  Another bounced and hard landing later nothing is said and we move on to park the aircraft.  They tend to be very pleasant to work with and are more cooperative than some of my male colleagues have been but that doesn’t really compensate for ability.  As long as the autopilot is engaged they have been great colleagues to work with.  However, when the autopilot is not engaged and some spatial work is required to fly the aircraft things have not always gone so well in my experience. That’s not to say that there haven’t been male colleagues who have been as poor at handling an aircraft but it does seem in my humble opinion to be a common denominator in the female group.  Given how low their overall representation in the flying community is and that they are already currently being “given a pass” in the simulator where a male colleague would be given a serious bollocking or failed, I can’t understand why anyone with an ounce of sanity would set hiring targets of 20%.  Surely the current regime of hiring those with the best ability is the best course of action for a safety critical industry.  Flying is a competitive game and many of the young pilots that graduate don’t get jobs because they are actually not good enough to fly commercially.  Skewing the hiring requirements to being 20% female will mean all female pilots will be hired and they will still be short.  It will have the inevitable consequence of reducing the safety on board a commercial flight.  I hold my head in my hands at this thought.

An ageist (“older”), racist (“white”), sexist (“men”) piece in The Guardian. It includes a tweet from Michael Fabricant, a Tory MP:

So, it seems ok to talk about government ministers who are “male, pale, and stale”. What would be the outcry if we talked about “female, pale, and stale”????#Manpower

He should, of course, have ended his tweet with “female, black, and young”.