Just received:
Hi Everybody,
What worrying times we live in, with the corona virus rightly dominating all our news at the moment. I know so many people who are facing such gloomy prospects with work drying up, friends in the medical profession concerned about our stretched resources, the worries about caring for elderly parents who might be at risk.
Last week I was out at a little pizza joint listening to a jazz band. In his patter during a break, the singer started talking about COV-19. “There’s one person in this room who is very happy about the corona virus because it’s got her off the front page,” he quipped, pointing at me. It was very disconcerting but, of course, he had a point.
We built this city
With all the dreadful news, I thought it might be nice to focus on something positive.
My correspondent wanted to know if anything was planned to promote International Men’s Day, this year to be held on November 19, 2020. He suggested pairing this extraordinary poster with the slogan “We Built This City” – as a means of celebrating the men who “work in dangerous jobs to feed their families and build our civilisation.”
I thought that was a great idea and was really happy when a little team of my supporters contacted me, volunteering to help bring people on board to make this happen. They are calling themselves the MensDay team.
The idea is to make the day really positive. They suggest it should be a day to recognise the men around you at home and at work. A day to celebrate the diversity of backgrounds, personalities, talents and experience they bring to tasks large and small, and to acknowledge men more widely as builders, providers, mentors and protectors.
Sound good? Well, to start with they want people everywhere to get to work, looking around them to see what local organisations, councils, workplaces were involved in International Women’s Day. And then start making careful, polite enquiries about whether these organisations would consider doing something to support IMD on November 19. They suggest you try to get a couple of people you know to work with you to start making these approaches, preferably including some women. Often having women make the case for doing something for men means organisations are more likely to take notice.
If you are willing to start working on this, contact the MensDay team so they can help coordinate activities. Eventually they will produce posters and flyers that could be used to advertise the event and also will circulate advice regarding possible activities. Write to [email protected].
They would love more people to join the coordinating team so if you have time and skills to contribute please get in touch with them.
Douglas Murray and the Madness of Crowds
In the middle of last month’s feeding frenzy, I managed finally to pin down the very busy Douglas Murray. I am sure most of you know this brilliant British journalist whose latest book, The Madness of Crowds, so skilfully exposes the destructive grip of identity politics on our culture. I’d arranged to speak to him last year only to be struck down by a bug which left me voiceless just at the critical time.
Anyway, I thought it was a very appropriate moment to have Douglas Murray share his views on the great crowd derangement. “In public and in private, both online and off, people are behaving in ways that are increasingly irrational, feverish, herd-like and simply unpleasant.”
The wonderful thing about interviewing Douglas is that he’s so wonderfully erudite. One question and he’s off, with paragraph after paragraph of clever ideas pouring out of him.
If you haven’t yet read his book, I’d thoroughly recommend it. The Madness of Crowds is available in audio book as well, read by Douglas himself. Listening to him tell his funny stories is a particular treat.
Here’s the video of my interview with him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-VCzitJ-C4. Just the thing for those of you unexpectedly stuck up home, experiencing compulsory social isolation. Please don’t forget to subscribe, like my videos and click the bell so you receive an alert about new videos. That’s the only way to counter YouTube’s censorship.
That’s it for now. Some of you will have heard from me recently, urging you to provide us with more details so we can organise our volunteers into groups working on particular issues. I’m keen to spread the load, with teams working independently to make progress on the many men’s issues that need attention. If you can help, please provide us with that information asap so we can get this show on the road.
All the best, Tina
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