Our thanks to Dougie for this (BBC1, 8:30 this evening).

Our thanks to Christina Hoff Sommers for retweeting this.

Just published.

First the good news. Amber Rudd has resigned, principally over her mishandling of the Windrush affair, and evasion concerning the existence or otherwise of targets for expulsions of illegal immigrants. It need hardly be said that a man in the same would have resigned earlier. We’ll be seeing less of the woman whose every appearance on TV had me thinking, “Should’ve gone to Specsavers”.

Last week she was quizzed by Labour MP Yvette Balls (nee Cooper), chair of the Home Affairs Committee. Had the Home Secretary been a man, Balls would have torn into her like a rottweiler. But because Rudd is of the female persuasion – and Minister for Wimmin & Equalities, to boot – Balls treated her with kid gloves.

Now the bad news. One feminist has been replaced by another – Sajid Javid MP. In 2015, as Business Secretary, he failed to respond to the public challenge by Campaign for Merit in Business to halt the government’s threats on major businesses to increase female representation on their boards, despite knowing it would lead to financial performance decline. He duly won our Toady award, the award certificate is here. I urge you to download it, if only to enjoy the image.

A piece by Sam Coates, Deputy Political Editor, about Rudd’s resignation, in today’s Times:

Amber Rudd resignation: Alarm bells were ringing before Windrush

In the end it looks like Amber Rudd’s failure to get a grip on the Windrush scandal, and to show her mettle as a true reformer in the mould of her Labour predecessor John Reid, cost her the government’s most-challenging job.

While Tory MPs were ready to fight her corner, a string of fatal leaks came from inside the Home Office, from the same officials whom Ms Rudd had sought to blame when first getting into difficulties two weeks ago.

Alarm bells about Ms Rudd were already ringing after the Home Office’s serious crime strategy, released about a week before the Windrush scandal exploded into the news, highlighted faultlines.

This strategy, nearly a year in the making, contained little substance, was poorly presented in the media and was overshadowed by silly rows about budgets and police funding. Some guessed then that all was not well, and began to wonder whether Ms Rudd was right for the job.

You can subscribe to The Times here.

We’re delighted to report that Dr Catherine Hakim, a world-renowned British sociologist, will be attending the conference.

She’s best known to followers of this website as the originator of Preference Theory in 2000, when she was a Senior Research Fellow at the LSE. For us, the key statistics she reported in her paper were that four in seven British men are “work-centred”, while just one in seven British women is.

All else being equal, we’d expect the gender balance on (say) FTSE100 boards to be around 80% male, 20% female. But all else is far from equal. Two thirds of private sector employees are men, and men still occupy most of the senior positions in professions which disproportionately lead to board directorships, notably Finance. Adding in these factors, we’d expect women to take up fewer than 5% of FTSE100 directorships. Due to government threats of legislated gender quotas, women now occupy over 25% of those positions, and the figure continues to rise. Tellingly, more than 90% of female FTSE100 board directors are Non-Executive Directors.

In late 2012 my request to give oral evidence on behalf of Campaign for Merit in Business to the House of Commons inquiry “Women in the Workplace” was accepted, and at my request I was accompanied by Dr Catherine Hakim and Steve Moxon. The video (56:49) is here.

The committee utterly refused to engage with the evidence I presented of a causal link between increasing female representation on boards and corporate financial decline. Three months later we launched J4MB.

Our thanks to Alan for this.

If you’re not already a party member, you can join here. An extract from that web page below, the text at the end about books is new. The offer is open to both new and existing members:

We’ve established a range of membership grades, ranging from monthly sums of £5.00 (16 pence per day) to £100.00 (£3.28 per day):

Membership grade                  Monthly donation                   

Bronze                                                         £5.00

Silver                                                          £12.50

Gold                                                           £25.00

Platinum                                                     £50.00

Diamond                                                   £100.00

Members will receive a signed membership certificate, one of the A3 leaflets we were distributing during the 2015 general election – the window poster element is here – and four individually numbered silicone wristbands – two gentlemen’s size, two (slim) ladies’ (or children’s) size.

Members (new and existing) will also receive, on request, a complimentary copy of one or more of Mike Buchanan’s books, his Amazon author page is here. The book(s) will be signed and dedicated upon request (info@j4mb.org.uk). The offer for the different membership grades:

Bronze – 1 book
Silver – 2 books
Gold – 3 books
Platinum – 4 books
Diamond – 5 books

If you’re eligible, please email us to order your book(s). The following books are currently available (in reverse chronological order):

Feminism: The Ugly Truth (2016)
The Glass Ceiling Delusion: the real reasons more women don’t reach senior positions (2011)
The Joy of Self-Publishing (2010)
The Fraud of the Rings (2009)

A short piece by Andy Shaw in the current Spectator Life. The end:

7. Laugh — feminists are funny

It is a sexist myth that feminists do not have a sense of humour. Simply reading the tweets of many feminists shows that they are, in fact, extremely funny. We should not confuse heightened moralistic outrage with a humourless approach. Feminists love jokes. For example:

Q: What is the quickest way to a man’s heart?
A: Through his chest with a knife.

However, some jokes are designed to normalise the patriarchal ideological hegemony. When you hear these, you should ask the joke-teller to reflect on his inherent misogyny and apologise. An example could be:

Q: How many feminists does it take to change
a light bulb?
A: One to change the bulb and ten to share her pain.

If you hear the following joke, you should report the teller to the police. He would be guilty of a hate crime:

Q: How many men does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None, let her cook in the dark.

Show your support for feminist women and avoid the public shaming that results from making a mistake.

Be a new man. Go FeMan.

Interesting (audio, 12:12).

Shocking. The piece on the ITV News website includes a link to video footage (1:05) from Willard’s dashcam.