Appalling (Telegraph, £).

The jury of the Leeds International Piano Competition has been required to “consider advancing the woman” in the event of a tie between a man and a woman. Jurors must cancel their votes and start again if any round of the competition “significantly reduces the ratio of women to men”. They have also been required to undertake training with a view to “eliminating both conscious and unconscious bias in order to promote a more equal environment for all competitors”. The aim to help to “tackle male dominance”, according to the rulebook.

Why don’t they just have a prize without these absurd rules in competitions anyone can enter (and men will naturally win, most of the time) and one for people unable to compete with men, such as women?

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Enjoy. I partcularly enyoyed the speech by Rupert Lowe MP (Great Yarmouth). His speech was followed by other terrific speeches by Lee Anderson MP (Ashfield), Richard Tice MP (Boston and Skegness, Reform UK deputy leader), Zia Yusuf (Reform UK chairman) and Nigel Farage MP (Clacton, Reform UK leader).

I plan shortly to place a substantial bet on Nigel Farage becoming the next Prime Minister of the UK, at the head of a Reform UK government. Pleasingly, Sir Kier Starmer is already working hard to make this a cast-iron certainty.

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Enjoy (YouTube video livestream, the conference is about to start).

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Our thanks to Jeff for this. Extracts:

A report into the nurse’s misconduct said that by January 2019 “concerns about you were being raised on almost every shift”. She was suspended in April 2019…

A witness, mentioned in the 272 page report, explained that the nurse “often refused to provide prescribed medication to patients”.

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We’re linking daily to selected video / audio files from our YouTube channel. Today’s file is here (video, 40:17).

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This is going to be a blog post with a diifference. In 1971, as a 14-year-old, my father took me to Hatchards, a London bookseller, where Twiggy was signing copies of her (ghost-written) autobiography, which remains a treasured possession to this day. Her manager Justin de Villeneuve was a brooding presence nearby. A few years later she started a career as a singer, and I much enjoyed her concert at the Royal Festival Hall.

A few years after that, I totally fell in love with the German model / actress / songwriter Nico. I think I was 18 when I first saw her on The Old Grey Whistle Test (1975?). Sadly she died, aged 50, in 1988, after a cycling accident in Ibiza. She sings a couple of her songs here (video, 8:22). One of my most treasured CDs is her The End.

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Our thanks to Steve for this on GB News. Plenty of female store workers will be made redundant if the employment tribunal’s insane ruling – that store workers should be paid the same as warehouse workers – isn’t quashed.

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Interesting (video, 2:56).

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Appalling. An extract from the BBC article:

“Mr Siddiqui often began procedures just “a few minutes” after administering anaesthetic cream, the prosecutor said.

The court heard that Hampshire & Isle of Wight Constabulary and Avon and Somerset Police were involved in the investigation.

When interviewed by officers in 2019, the defendant said it was sometimes “difficult to know” why babies were crying and whether the cream was working, the court heard.

He told police he had carried out 1,200 to 1,500 such procedures since 2012, although the charges related to the years between 2014 and 2019, the court heard.”

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Madness on stilts. The United Arab Emirates are starting with one woman on boards but we all know the pressure for more women won’t stop until at least 50% of board members are women.

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