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An Irishman: “Christmas is already ruined.”
Our thanks to Tom for this (video, 0:55). Please don’t open the file in front of children, or if you’re easily offended by ranting Irishmen. Thank you.
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The World Conker Championships. Man beats a woman to become the new World Champion. Obviously.
As you’re hopefully aware, The World Conkers Championship took place yesterday in Southwick (pron. “Suth-ick”), Northamptonshire. In these dark times, the annual championship makes me proud to be British.
The BBC reported live on the event, here. As always in sport, men triumphed over women. Extracts from the BBC report:
“The new World Conkers Champion is Matt Cross from Lincolnshire.
Cross, 37 from Bourne, in Lincolnshire, is now King Conker and the World Conkers Champion.
Queen Conker is Margaret Blake from Corby, Northamptonshire.
Matt is now the world champion, beating Mags Blake in a short battle [J4MB emphasis. By “short battle” the BBC lady reporter means “Matt Cross’s conker and/or his technique was (or were) much better than Mags Blake’s”. To be fair, that’s a bit long-winded, but you get the point.] after they took the respective King Conker and Queen Conker titles.” [J4MB: Whoa, hold it right there! So men and women have their own conkers competitions? I think that tells us all we need to know about male v female performance in general.]
Men’s prowess in sports remains unchallenged. It makes me proud to be a man.
My late father lived most of his adult life in Northamptonshire, a little-visited but quite beautiful county, other than the town of Corby, obviously. The only good thing ever associated with Corby was the trouser press, invented by Peter Corby. The presses were first manufactured in Windsor, later in Andover (from 1986), then Peterlee (from 2005). For the avoidance of doubt, never in Corby.
To drive into Northamptonshire, one good way is to turn west off the M1. Ah, I hear you ask, but at which junctions? I applied the full might of AI technology to the question, a Google search revealing:
“Here are the M1 junctions that are east of Northamptonshire, starting with the nearest:
- Junction 19 (Catthorpe Interchange): This is the easternmost junction directly bordering Northamptonshire. It’s a major intersection with the M6 and M1, and the A14.
- Junction 20: This junction lies further east than Junction 19 and serves the A426 and M69.
- Junction 21: This junction is located east of Junction 20 and serves the A46.
- Junction 22: This junction serves the A50 and is located east of Junction 21.”
Northamptonshire has a curious tradition of place names being pronounced quite differently to what you might expect. Somewhere I have a photograph of a friend, Christine, and myself, looking downcast, holding empty wine glasses near our lips by a sign on the approach road to the small hamlet of Nobottle (pron “Nottle”). It borders the Althorp estate, which owns much of the property in the hamlet. Also a photograph of my beloved young daughters (looking somewhat put upon, for some unknown reason) standing next to a street sign in the village of Silverstone, where you will find the Silverstone Circuit which hosts the British Grand Prix. The sign reads, “Silverstone: Please drive carefully”.
In the early 90s Nigel Mansell won a British Grand Prix – I forget which, having little interest in motor racing – after gaining a few seconds every lap over several laps before overtaking the race leader (possibly Ayrton Senna or Nikki Lauda or Alain Prost, some foreigh chap, anyway) and going on to win the race. The overtaking took place right in front of me – and not in the view of 99% of the fans that day, one of the joys of motor racing as a sport – and was surely the most exciting sporting moment I’ve ever witnessed in person. My main memory of the day, however, is taking three or four hours to leave the muddy quagmire of a field laughingly described as the “car park”.
The World Conker Championships, the pronunciation of Northamptonshire place names, amusing road signs, and Formula 1 motor racing… be honest, how many other websites explore these important issues in a single blog piece? None, that’s how many.
Have a good week.
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Prince Andrew told Epstein ‘we’re in this together’ after he said he cut contact
A piece in today’s Sunday Mirror. As usual with mainstream media claims, the word “alleged” and its variants are employed to avoid possible legal ramifications if the claims are later found to be untrue (or it proving impossible to substantiate the claims).
I have never believed that the image (reproduced in the article) allegedly (I’ll use the word, too) showing Prince Andrew with his arm around Virginia Giuffre’s waist – the woman committed suicide earlier this year – is genuine. I base this view on three issues:
- the absence of any metadata for the image
- the unbelievability that the second-in-line to the throne would happily be photographed with his arm around the waist of a known young prostitute
- the unbelievability that Ghislaine Maxwell would happily be photographed in the same image
There are other issues that inform my view, but these will hopefully suffice so far as this blog piece is concerned. Of course even if Prince Andrew did have sex with the woman when she was 17, he’d have been committing no criminal offence in the UK. He paid her millions of pounds to settle the case, and continues to deny any guilt, understandably. Doubtless his lawyers would have told him that to risk a court case in the febrile court systems of either the UK or the US could have led to a prison sentence, regardless of the evidence (or lack of it) presented.
An extract from the article:
“On November 16 2019, during his BBC interview, Andrew claimed he has “no recollection of ever meeting” Ms Giuffre, denying the allegations against him.” “
In my view, Andrew’s lack of recollection genuinely stems from never having met the woman. I know of no evidence that proves otherwise.
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US: National Coalition for Men renew challenge to male-only draft rule before Ninth Circuit
Gender equity at UK top firms
Our thanks to Jeff for this. Dannii Mathers inadvertently touches on a long-understood phenomenon with this line:
“Maybe the problem isn’t finding female talent, it’s keeping it!!”
In her 2008 book The Sexual Paradox, the American psychologist Susan Pinker – sister of the better-known Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker – outlined how her research showed that the “under-representation” of women at senior levels in corporations (in particular) was attributable to women declining advancement to more senior roles because they wanted better work/life balance. Jordan Peterson was hired by a Toronto law firm wishing to end (or at least reduce) the departures of high-flying female lawyers after they entered their 30s. He admitted he’d failed with all of them.
Yet the attempts to push water uphill never end. Of course outside the private sector women have been far more “successful” in attaining senior positions, but that has little (if anything) to do with merit.
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Comments in response to Mike Buchanan’s thoughts on the decline and inevitable future collapse of Western civilisation
Two days ago we posted a blog piece, The best way to brew coffee, and a reflection on the future of Western civilisation. It concluded with these thoughts by Mike Buchanan:
The decline of Western civilisation is underway. Its collapse is both inevitable and irreversible.
I could have worded the second sentiment more accurately, and should have. If a collapse is inevitable it’s also irreversible. I should have replaced the sentence with, “Its collapse is inevitable.”
As he sometimes does, cp responded with some insightful comments, for which we thank him. They take up the remainder of this blog piece, the hyperlinks are ours:
“Hi Mike – Your observations on the trajectory of western civilisation and the root causes struck several chords at once!! The psychologist Joost Meerloo wrote a book in the mid-1950s – The Rape of the Mind – in which he described the methods of thought control which were were currently being used by authoritarian states. Magical Thinking features prominently. Meerloo and George Orwell probably knew one another through their wartime work for British intelligence. Orwell utilised his experiences to write a work of fiction in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Meerloo wrote his factual work. Both seem to have been utilised as a playbook for the feminist gaslighting we see all around us these days.
As companion volumes to Meerloo’s The Rape of the Mind, I’d heartily recommend The Master And His Emissary (2010) by Professor Iain McGilchrist. He details what can happen when the power-hungry (and oestrogen-sensitive) left brain is given too much of the power it seeks. Much of that behaviour we see all around us has its roots in female ressentiment.
The other companion volume is The Rape of the Male Mind by Michael Steane. It gets to the root of how Pandora’s Box was opened. Quote:
“Our big mistake was to give women the vote. After that, the modern male tragedy became inevitable. When women got the vote, they became the majority of the electorate. Politicians at odds with each other on every other issue fell over each other to pander to the female vote. These politicians, being men, did not understand what women want, and (convincing themselves that they were modern un-sexist men), wantonly gave away men’s rights. These are not the rights women want, but they are the rights men need. Thus, men have been impoverished, while women have not been enriched.”
This process began at a time when nearly all politicians were male. Slowly, but surely, like a ship running down a launchway, the chains which at one time slowed it down – the male checks & balances – are all but lost. Now, with a preponderance of feminist politicians (of both sexes), magical thinking can run amok… crew members of forced ‘equality’ vying to guide a mammoth, rudderless vessel which will take everyone down with it when it hits the rocks.”
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How Medieval Marriage Law Institutionalized Female Hypergamy (The Morgengabe Betrayal)
BBC Radio 5 Live: Mike Buchanan debates with Holly Combe the issue of consent to sex (Stephen Nolan Show, 2015). File #81 of 800+ files on the J4MB YouTube channel.
Today’s file is here (12:47).
Over a period of more than two years we’re posting links to one video daily from the J4MB YouTube channel. The channel includes our media appearances since 2012, 300+ videos of talks and other materials from the International Conferences on Men’s Issues (2014 – ) and other men’s issues conferences we’ve been involved with, and so much more. The individual conference playlists are here.
Our website Campaign for Merit in Business was created in the light of the considerable evidence of a causal link between increasing gender diversity on boards and corporate financial decline. Mike Buchanan, Steve Moxon and Dr Catherine Hakim (the originator of Preference Theory) presented evidence to House of Commons and House of Lords inquiries in 2012, the video of their House of Commons evidence session is here (56:50).
Finally, we run the award-winning website Laughing at Feminists. The comedy channel (170+ videos) is here. Remember, it’s more than important to laugh at feminists, it’s a civic duty.
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Diane Keaton RIP
I watch only one or two films a year, including one at the Irish Film Institute in Dublin every July, with a friend. So it would be fair to say few people are less knowledgeable about films than myself. But I watched more films as a young man, and one that remains dear to my memory is Annie Hall (1977), directed by and starring Woody Allen. The part of Annie Hall was played by Diane Keaton, who sadly died yesterday. Wikipedia reports that many of Keaton’s mannerisms and self-deprecating sense of humor were added into the role by Allen. Keaton once said that Allen wrote the character as an “idealised version” of herself.
I must have been 19 or 20 when I saw the film. and simply fell in love with the kooky main character, played by Keaton. It is said that Keaton remained close to Allen to the end of her days, and to her great credit never joined in the character assassinations of Allen in relation to his intimate relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, Mia Farrow’s then 21-year-old adopted daughter.
An extract from the Wikipedia page on the film takes up the rest of this blog post:
Annie Hall was screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival on March 27, 1977, before its official release in the United States on April 20, 1977. The film received widespread critical acclaim, and was nominated for the Big Five Academy Awards, winning four: the Academy Award for Best Picture, two for Allen (Best Director and, with Brickman, Best Original Screenplay), and Best Actress for Keaton. The film additionally won four BAFTA Awards, including Best Film, Best Direction (for Allen), Best Screenplay (for both Allen and Brickman) and Best Actress in a Leading Role (for Keaton), in addition to the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical (for Keaton). The film’s box office receipts in the United States and Canada of $38,251,425 are fourth-best of Allen’s works when not adjusted for inflation.
Regarded among the greatest films ever made, it ranks 31st on AFI‘s list of the 100 greatest films in American cinema, 4th on their list of the greatest comedy films and 28th on Bravo’s “100 Funniest Movies”. Film critic Roger Ebert called it “just about everyone’s favorite Woody Allen movie”.
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Justice for Men & Boys 