If we had a league table of commenters, weighted to value both quality and quantity of comments, “Groan” would be surely among the leading ones, if not the leading one. It’s always a pleasure to read his contributions (and he’s a consistent and generous donor, too). A few hours ago I posted a piece titled Clarification on consultations. Groan has just sent the following insightful comments:

Thanks. The information published so far is very important. It has long been the success of the feminist lobby to have focussed on the people producing policy and guidance, probably to a greater extent than on politicians. As we saw with the Police in both the concealment of evidence in sexual assault cases (whistle blown by barristers ) and the creation of huge spurious “political” historical abuse cases in which fantasists were used to mount campaigns against public figures it is often how the Law is implemented that is the problem not the law itself. In the case of Stephen Cobb it is clear he has been stopped once by knowledgeable interventions. I think anyone interested in simple justice for men has to try to fathom the complexities of the semi shadowy links between lobbyists and the civil servants/public officials.

Having worked most of my working life in public services I know how easy it is to deflect complaints and interventions from the public. The first hurdle is for the right part of the public services to be approached (pretty hard in fact) and in my experience most complaints fall at this first hurdle. The next is that it identifies the correct persons and uses accurate jargon. It is important to try to understand in order to launch accurate attacks. Government consultations similarly are intentionally difficult to find out about, civil servants make sure those people or organisations that are in favour are invited to comment but they certainly don’t want wide circulation as this increases the risk of contrary evidence coming to light, disturbing a plan already in place which the consultation is to confirm.

In recent weeks one has despaired at the triumphs of the VAWG lobby however it’s important to note positive moves, such as the first government statement on male victims of Domestic Abuse, or indeed the undermining of the “believe” guidance for the Police and the review of Police practices in concealing evidence from courts and defence. These rely on people finding and shining lights on the hidden world of collusion by civil servants and public officials with lobby groups.

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

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Paul Apreda, the indefatigable National Manager at FNF BPM Cymru, gave a well-received (if all too brief) talk at the 2016 London conference – The State’s War on Fathers (video, 19:35). I’ve had a number of emails from people who are confused about a number of consultations, and raised the issue with Paul, to whom I’m grateful for this clarification:

Hi Mike – yes, happy to conform that we’ll be contributing to BOTH consultations. I just want to be clear that there are TWO happening at the moment – both involve Stephen Cobb.

The safeguarding one is being run by the MoJ – details here https://www.gov.uk/government/news/spotlight-on-child-protection-in-family-courts and here https://www.gov.uk/government/news/family-justice-panel-update

The other one is also headed by Cobb but is under the President of the Family Division – Sir Andrew McFarlane – here https://www.judiciary.uk/publications/consultation-children-cases-in-the-family-court-interim-proposals-for-reform/

Hope that makes sense

cheers

Paul

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Our thanks to Steve for this. An extract:

It expands the Family Court’s jurisdiction to allow it to enter protective orders to provide for the safety and welfare of household pets in domestic abuse situations.

To provide for the welfare of household pets, in practice, will mean ex-husbands having to pay for the cost of the animals, when many men in the United States are already struggling to pay child maintanance demands. The welfare of pets is being put above the welfare of men. What next? Men being expected to pay for the welfare of their ex-partners’ house plants?

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

If everyone who read this gave us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. £5.00 monthly would entitle you to Bronze party membership, details here. Benefits include a dedicated and signed book by Mike Buchanan. Click below to make a difference. Thanks.

[Update 12.7.19: The conference is only five weeks away, some recent generous donations have taken the total to £1,600. Just £200 to go. Please donate what you can. Thank you.]

[Update 6.7.19: The Chicago conference is now just six weeks away. We need to pay for Jon’s plane fares soon, before prices start to escalate. Paul Elam has donated £50, as I have, and a number of generous MRAs have taken the total to £930. If the target of £1,800 isn’t met, donations will be refunded in full, and Jon won’t be going to Chicago. But I am optimistic. Jon deserves to go to Chicago, and I urge you to donate what you can afford, to enable that. Thank you.]

Jon Baily and his 16-year-old son attended our recent Cambridge University talks. Both were later assaulted by protesters. He’s courageously allowed his identity to be known, and has publicly spoken the truth about those assaults.

We’ve just launched a crowdfunder to raise the £1,800 required to cover the costs for Jon to attend the Chicago conference. Please donate what you can. Jon richly deserves to attend the conference. Thank you.

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

If everyone who read this gave us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. £5.00 monthly would entitle you to Bronze party membership, details here. Benefits include a dedicated and signed book by Mike Buchanan. Click below to make a difference. Thanks.

Our thanks to Sean for this gem (video, 5:38) with David Menzies of Rebel Media. The solution to the heinous problem of men potentially leering at woman is obvious, and we outlined it in a piece we published in 2013, The next feminist campaign? Men should wear ‘blinkers’.

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

If everyone who read this gave us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. £5.00 monthly would entitle you to Bronze party membership, details here. Benefits include a dedicated and signed book by Mike Buchanan. Click below to make a difference. Thanks.

Enjoy (video, 31:15).

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

If everyone who read this gave us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. £5.00 monthly would entitle you to Bronze party membership, details here. Benefits include a dedicated and signed book by Mike Buchanan. Click below to make a difference. Thanks.

Enjoy. The study to which James Delingpole refers was published in The Leadership Quarterly three weeks ago – Women directors, firm performance, and firm risk: A causal perspective. The full Abstract:

Norway was the first of ten countries to legislate gender quotas for boards of publicly traded firms. There is considerable debate and mixed evidence concerning the implications of female board representation. In this paper, we explain the main sources of biases in the existing literature on the effects of women directors on firm performance and review methods to account for these biases. We address the endogeneity problem by using a difference-in-differences approach to study the effects of women directors on firm performance with specific consideration of the common trend assumption, and we explicitly distinguish between accounting-based (i.e., operating income divided by assets, return on assets) and market-based (i.e., market-to-book ratio and Tobin’s Q) performance measures in the Norwegian setting. The control group are firms from Finland, Sweden, and Denmark. We further extend the analysis of causal effects of women directors to firm risk. Our results imply a negative effect of mandated female representation on firm performance and on firm risk.

Published yesterday, Delingpole’s article has already attracted 391 comments. The most up-voted comment, from “Loose Cannon”:

If women’s executive abilities were being undervalued/underutilized, then enterprising female investors and leaders would arbitrage the discrepancy and create more female driven businesses. Same applies to the so-called gender pay gap which would signal employers to hire an all female workforce and reap the cost advantage.

Regular visitors to this website will be aware that in 2012 I gave evidence to House of Commons and House of Lords inquiries on behalf of Campaign for Merit in Business, confirming the causal link between increasing female representation on boards, and corporate financial decline. I’ve just added details of this new study to our short briefing paper with direct links to the studies confirming that causal link – here.

Along with Dr Catherine Hakim and Steve Moxon, I gave oral evidence to the House of Commons inquiry in 2012 – here (video, 56:50).

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

If everyone who read this gave us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. £5.00 monthly would entitle you to Bronze party membership, details here. Benefits include a dedicated and signed book by Mike Buchanan. Click below to make a difference. Thanks.

We’ve just taken delivery of our latest order of J4MB wristbands, available in two sizes, regular (200mm) and small (180mm). They cost just £5.00 (inc p&p) for two, the modest profit goes towards funding our work. You can make your donation here, email us (info@j4mb.org.uk) with the size(s) you want, and your mailing address.

If you’re feeling a bit flush, who not complete your ensemble with a J4MB shirt?

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

If everyone who read this gave us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. £5.00 monthly would entitle you to Bronze party membership, details here. Benefits include a dedicated and signed book by Mike Buchanan. Click below to make a difference. Thanks.

Another piece by Caroline ffiske for TCW. An extract:

There is a graph showing that women spend 2.4 hours a week doing laundry. Men spend 0.39 hours. You go, men – that’s brilliant! I hate ironing too. But the Government wants you to do more.

“Doing laundry” – thanks to male inventors, this hasn’t been onerous for decades. So women spend longer doing easy tasks than men. It shouldn;t be allowed.

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

If everyone who read this gave us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. £5.00 monthly would entitle you to Bronze party membership, details here. Benefits include a dedicated and signed book by Mike Buchanan. Click below to make a difference. Thanks.

You couldn’t make this s*** up. Ms Laurel took inspiration from Laura Bates’s Everyday Whining Project.

UK Men’s Rights Action, our official supporters’ Facebook page, is here.

If everyone who read this gave us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. £5.00 monthly would entitle you to Bronze party membership, details here. Benefits include a dedicated and signed book by Mike Buchanan. Click below to make a difference. Thanks.