Our thanks to the ever-industrious Nigel for these comments, in response to a recent piece by Prof. Stephen Baskerville:
The Professor’s comment, “Men spend too much time complaining and opining about their oppression and not enough understanding why it happens and what can be done about it” sounds a bit dismissive. Yet it has an important truth. Politicians (local and national) tend to preside over their civil servants and officers. Unless particularly motivated to engage with the detail of their “portfolios” in fact what happens is that they are really pretty much in the hands of their supposed underlings. The current discomfort of the Chancellor is a good example. The Treasury has long had the winter fuel payments for pensioners on its lists of easy “efficiencies”. The hapless Rachel Reeves is easily persuaded this is an easy win and announces it. Coinciding with dramatic wage rises for public servants, and expected 10% increase in fuel costs just when people are starting to think about the coming autumn and winter. Queue political shitstorm. Rachel looking every bit a sheepish as she should. Because of course Treasury civil servants need not bother themselves with public opinion or much with political sensitivities.
This is how feminism became the norm in our “state”, by working closely with civil servants and lobby groups. I recall a book by a minister in the latter years of the Thatcher government in which he came to realise his political objective of supporting children and families had in fact been traduced by “his” reforms which had in fact been enacted by Gingerbread and Civil Servants to ensure mothers were “married to government” through the operation of the benefits regime.
Feminists (like many on the “left” but too few on the “right”) have an overall strategic direction and plenty of energy for the boring stuff like committees, drafting of documents, publishing guidance documents and lobbying. The result is that in the two decades prior to the Blair Government they had already created much of the policy frameworks that removed fathers from contact from their children and dismantled anything supportive to traditional roles. In a sense from the Blair years all that happened is that this dominance simply became more clear.
Sadly the wonderful Philip Davies lost his seat but his story about his “red pill” is important. In a number of debates he had simply taken it as true that women were treated more harshly than men in the criminal justice system. In preparation for yet another debate he asked for a briefing on the topic from the Library of Parliament (the research and information support for MPs). Much to his surprise he found that he briefing told him the reverse was in fact the case! Not only were MPs in the previous debates talking rubbish because the premise was wrong, but the information that proved this is from the Government came from the Agencies and Departments themselves!
This instance illustrates a number of important issues. The first is that legislation and public policy is rarely informed by data or research, national and local government collect vast amounts of data and funds huge amounts of research. But “Inquiries”, Committees, Commissions and Consultations are usually very superficial and tend to involve opinions from individuals or lobby groups selected by civil servants/officers. Only rarely do they interrogate the data they have, let alone research that has been funded by the various “research councils”. The second is that politicians rarely look into the details given to them, in this case Mr. Davies took the simple step of asking for the data! The third that this often isn’t a conspiracy as such, it’s just that it’s a small “world” and the relationship between civil servants and groups they rely on to feed the politicians with photo ops., pleasing speeches etc. is very close not to say personal (same University, schools even, same restaurants, theatres… social milieu).
As Bettina Ardnt reminds us ” sexual assault and domestic assault – what I regard as the twin pillars of feminist crusade to destroy men. “An area where policy is so evidently not made with reference to any of the actual data and where initiative after initiative reflects the strategy of a small number of highly influential lobbyists and groups. Often completely sidestepping politicians through such Quangos as the College of Policing or Ofsted who promulgate “guidance” on things as varied as education for infants to special courts for rape. The point is that its important to encourage the Philip Davieses of this world to probe the detail to lift the rocks to find the creepy crawlies busy underneath.
Justice for Men & Boys 