"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
I admire you for doing such cases. I have been involved in a few investigations which have involved such stuff - all referred to the police. But I found them deeply disturbing. I do not think I could do them day in day out.
They are disturbing. I am assured by my new boss (a rather brilliant woman) that you learn to compartmentilise them. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. Do I really want to lose the raw compassion in exchange for some professional objectivity? Right now I feel rage on behalf of the victims. Rage that I have rarely felt in my life.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
Ridiculous. ALL politics has failed
Because Humanity is failing. Birth rates plunge. The climate roils. People R gettin stupid
We are all fucked
You remind me if my father as he was getting older. Convinced he would see the end times.
I though Brexit was supposed to have reinvigorated you.
Brexit baby is now in its shitty sixes and shows every sign of being a low achieving unlovable wee prick. Parenthood can be a wearying and dispiriting business, as an article by some sage or other once suggested.
Nicely argued header, but based on a basic misapprehension - that the only way to make Brexit work is to make it less. This is demonstrably false. The best way to make it work is to diverge in areas where it's in out interests to do so, to lay aside European restrictions where they were cumbersome, and to solve the NI issue, preferably by negotiating with the EU, but if not, reserving the right to act unilaterally. Brexit can only be allowed to work if those wielding power can bring themselves to say goodbye to EU law and projects - we saw how unwilling they are to do this with the unprecedented civil service call for EU law to remain in force. These people do not want to run a post-EU country.
It’s rare to see such a vacuous point being made so forcefully. What EU restrictions and laws are hampering the country still? If you want to unilaterally ignore the NI Protocol all you will end up doing is putting the border in land and what benefit will that provide?
The EU waterways directive is afaik still enforced in full by the Environment agency, making it almost impossible to dredge, and thus opening the possibility of winter flooding.
This legislation also opposes the building of new water infrastructure including reservoirs, that are badly needed with a rising population. Instead of the necessary infrastructure, we're now given adverts advising us to shower for less time (at least in Scotland), which is, again, from the waterways directive, and is the sort of grotesque anti-human garbage that should have been tossed the minute we signed the divorce papers.
HS2 is an EU rail project. It is even rumoured to be part-funded by the EU, though I cannot find any verification of that. It is a crushing dead weight on the Exchequer and should be binned. It's quite clear that with the current shower, of people were starving on the streets it still wouldn't be.
On the CAP, Boris's Government made a lot of 'breaking out' of the CAP, but actually, there's no difference in policy:
It's the same deeply misguided set of incentives that put rewilding ahead of food security. Liz had big changes planned here - as we know, the blob has now reasserted itself, so that won't happen for now.
On energy - it's clear to all that we need a strategy to be self sufficient in energy - we cannot be dependent on the continent, which is itself short of energy and dependent on Russian gas. It is also clear that our grid needs to be upgraded, to make more use of remote wind installations that are currently getting paid to switch off. So why is the National Grid building expensive interconnectors to Germany? https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/new-cable-between-germany-and-uk-advances-europes-integrated-power-system
Simply because it is a move toward a single energy market. A move that was never in Britain's interests and can now thankfully be scrapped and the resources redeployed - but it isn't.
Interconnectors means the ability to import and export energy as required. Because of their cost compared to capacity, you can easily have over capacity on them. Which means they become an insurance plan for things going wrong - see the sale of electricity to France at the moment to cover issues with their nuclear power plants.
Interconnectors also mean that we can sell more surplus wind, incidentally.
Brexit is an institution. Some people put Brexit before country.
Not at all, Brexit is a process. It seems unfair to me to condemn the process when it hasn't actually been allowed to happen.
I suppose that just as the proponents of Brexit never specified what it would be, the apologists of Brexit will always be able to claim that it hasn't really been.
I think most laymen - most of those who voted for or against Brexit, would have assumed Brexit to mean a process after which the UK Government and its administrative arm would work independently of the EU, co-operating where it was in our mutual interests to do so, and diverging where it was in our national interest to do so. The current 'keep everything in line' strategy is harmful to the national interest and is little more than a holding pen of EU membership from where is is clearly planned that the errant cattle will be prodded back in at some point. That is unacceptable and will not succeed.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
There's nothing wrong the site.
The site isn't poorer for losing its bullies and trolls but insightful, intelligent and interesting below the line posters like @Richard_Nabavi@AlastairMeeks@Cyclefree@david_herdson and even @SouthamObserver . We still have many great regulars, of course, but not as many as we'd like to.
It has been achingly dull the last week or so, and that's because of the World Cup and the fact there's no live politics betting going on.
The site really is much poorer for losing people like @IshmaelZ
I know he irked you, but people like him are necessary. They provide needle. The annoying grit that nonetheless makes the pearl of debate
It was an amusing in-joke on PB that we should “stick to betting”. Of course that WAS a joke. If the debate is one day reduced to basic betting advice then it will be an intellectual desert inhabited by nerds and geeks. And the odd Scot Nat
I fear it is already halfway down that road
Completely disagree with you. Nasty unpleasant poster who drove several people off this site with his personal abuse and bullying.
Move on please.
Free the Canaan One.
We need him back.
What happened? I missed it, whatever it was. I'd miss him. Unusual range of interests, and he was known to change his mind on the evidence (alleged wokery of NT and slavery, for instance).
Too many people were “offended” by him. Also he doubted the veracity of a pollster
He’s done his time. Release the Ish
Not sure the offending had much to do with it. But you and I both know that persistent attempts to undermine or tarnish a pollster is considered a capital crime.
But I agree. I don't particularly like Ishmael and certainly have plenty of run ins with him, but I don't think active posters like him who keep the debate rolling along should be banned.
To be honest if they are going to ban posters for offending people then you and I are totally screwed.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
Yes, sadly I think that's true.
I can believe all what you say - what isn't acceptable is to make excuses for it and pass the buck though.
Far too many people choose the easy path when dealing with poor behaviour, and the first step is to call it out with the individual - it evens happen when dealing with poor performance of an employee, many would simply prefer not to and pass the problem onto someone else.
It is also why I am so concerned about Sturgeon's Gender Recognition Bill. We are in the process of creating a loophole that such vile people will readily exploit. Having worked hard as a society to protect some of our most vulnerable we are opening the door to more abuse. I have enormous sympathy for people who are transgender. They are as entitled to respect and decency as anyone else. But we cannot open the doors of safe places for those with evil intent. We have been there and bought the T-shirt many times before.
I fear that's a losing battle because the zeitgeist is at a place right now where that's seen as transphobia and so people will only come to their senses when the downstream consequences become very clear.
Of course, when they do, they will blame anyone but themselves and won't thank you or others for being right all along.
The UN Rapporteur on Violence against Women wrote a report this week explaining her grave concerns about the Scottish proposals. It raises all the points the ECHR, equality lawyers, social workers, womens' groups and others (including some of us on here) have been raising for ages. Sturgeon's graceless response was to dismiss everything without engaging with any of the substantive points and to call her "that woman from the UN" in her address to Holyrood, a moniker which the Rapporteur has now adopted in her Twitter bio.
In the meanwhile women will be raped and abused and put in fear and forced to withdraw from places they might otherwise use and denied services they need. It is unconscionable.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I don’t have time to comment at any length today, but just noting it’s good to have you back, and I agree it’s worth discussing further.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
Ridiculous. ALL politics has failed
Because Humanity is failing. Birth rates plunge. The climate roils. People R gettin stupid
We are all fucked
You remind me if my father as he was getting older. Convinced he would see the end times.
I though Brexit was supposed to have reinvigorated you.
Brexit baby is now in its shitty sixes and shows every sign of being a low achieving unlovable wee prick. Parenthood can be a wearying and dispiriting business, as an article by some sage or other once suggested.
It's that fat kid with a permanent green number 11 on his upper lip and a predilection for eating worms to try to impress others.
Nicely argued header, but based on a basic misapprehension - that the only way to make Brexit work is to make it less. This is demonstrably false. The best way to make it work is to diverge in areas where it's in out interests to do so, to lay aside European restrictions where they were cumbersome, and to solve the NI issue, preferably by negotiating with the EU, but if not, reserving the right to act unilaterally. Brexit can only be allowed to work if those wielding power can bring themselves to say goodbye to EU law and projects - we saw how unwilling they are to do this with the unprecedented civil service call for EU law to remain in force. These people do not want to run a post-EU country.
It’s rare to see such a vacuous point being made so forcefully. What EU restrictions and laws are hampering the country still? If you want to unilaterally ignore the NI Protocol all you will end up doing is putting the border in land and what benefit will that provide?
The EU waterways directive is afaik still enforced in full by the Environment agency, making it almost impossible to dredge, and thus opening the possibility of winter flooding.
This legislation also opposes the building of new water infrastructure including reservoirs, that are badly needed with a rising population. Instead of the necessary infrastructure, we're now given adverts advising us to shower for less time (at least in Scotland), which is, again, from the waterways directive, and is the sort of grotesque anti-human garbage that should have been tossed the minute we signed the divorce papers.
HS2 is an EU rail project. It is even rumoured to be part-funded by the EU, though I cannot find any verification of that. It is a crushing dead weight on the Exchequer and should be binned. It's quite clear that with the current shower, of people were starving on the streets it still wouldn't be.
On the CAP, Boris's Government made a lot of 'breaking out' of the CAP, but actually, there's no difference in policy:
It's the same deeply misguided set of incentives that put rewilding ahead of food security. Liz had big changes planned here - as we know, the blob has now reasserted itself, so that won't happen for now.
On energy - it's clear to all that we need a strategy to be self sufficient in energy - we cannot be dependent on the continent, which is itself short of energy and dependent on Russian gas. It is also clear that our grid needs to be upgraded, to make more use of remote wind installations that are currently getting paid to switch off. So why is the National Grid building expensive interconnectors to Germany? https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/new-cable-between-germany-and-uk-advances-europes-integrated-power-system
Simply because it is a move toward a single energy market. A move that was never in Britain's interests and can now thankfully be scrapped and the resources redeployed - but it isn't.
Interconnectors means the ability to import and export energy as required. Because of their cost compared to capacity, you can easily have over capacity on them. Which means they become an insurance plan for things going wrong - see the sale of electricity to France at the moment to cover issues with their nuclear power plants.
Interconnectors also mean that we can sell more surplus wind, incidentally.
Actually, they won't. If you read the article, it means that we can import more power, solving Germany's issue of wasted wind power from their North, not ours. Our wind farms, largely in Scotland, aren't well connected to our own grid, and aren't likely to be exporting significant power due to this scheme. So we'll be importing excess from Germany, and subsiding our own farms to switch off still. If any interconnectors are needed, they are intra-UK, so we can actually use the power generated domestically. Oddly reminiscent of the EU don't you think?
I couldn't care to list the number of times I've bet on a "dead cert" only for my position to fall apart in the last 6 hours as it becomes clear that isn't what's going to happen.
Be careful.
Nothing in life is certain. Except for death and taxis.
On Starmer, I agree with HYUFD! Of course Starmer didn't (and still doesn't) want Brexit. But Brexit has happened - so the question is what next?
If Starmer wants to lose the next GE, here's what he should do: -promise the British public that he's going to re-open the most acrimonious debate in recent UK political history - push freedom of movement to the top of the political agenda.
I think what people are missing is that it's not just about winning the Red Wall. It's also about not alienating the millions of voters (remainers and leavers) who couldn't bear going through the Brexit shenanigans again. Starmer is not going to win, and he knows it, with an election slogan of:
Let's piss people off with five more years of 'oh no, not fucking Brexit again'.
(Once Labour has won the GE of course, it's a different matter).
Brexit like Jim Callaghan’s Labour government isn’t working but trying to fix Brexit present huge risks for Starmer and Labour.
Its working very nicely for those people who voted for it from Boston to Barnsley.
As we now have full employment and pay rises and better control of immigration.
We've even had the increase in NHS spending and now higher taxes on the high earners.
But perhaps the Conservative 'Britannia unchained' types aren't happy - you'd have to speak to the likes of Liam Fox and Dan Hannan about that.
Excellent point. The CBI complains re 'skills shortages' but the whole attitude of British businesses is to look for the quick fix of cheap and replaceable labour as opposed to investing in skills and training. Same with the farmers - get a bunch of Eastern Europeans and house them in shitty conditions rather than invest in crop-picking technology.
Nicely argued header, but based on a basic misapprehension - that the only way to make Brexit work is to make it less. This is demonstrably false. The best way to make it work is to diverge in areas where it's in out interests to do so, to lay aside European restrictions where they were cumbersome, and to solve the NI issue, preferably by negotiating with the EU, but if not, reserving the right to act unilaterally. Brexit can only be allowed to work if those wielding power can bring themselves to say goodbye to EU law and projects - we saw how unwilling they are to do this with the unprecedented civil service call for EU law to remain in force. These people do not want to run a post-EU country.
It’s rare to see such a vacuous point being made so forcefully. What EU restrictions and laws are hampering the country still? If you want to unilaterally ignore the NI Protocol all you will end up doing is putting the border in land and what benefit will that provide?
The EU waterways directive is afaik still enforced in full by the Environment agency, making it almost impossible to dredge, and thus opening the possibility of winter flooding.
This legislation also opposes the building of new water infrastructure including reservoirs, that are badly needed with a rising population. Instead of the necessary infrastructure, we're now given adverts advising us to shower for less time (at least in Scotland), which is, again, from the waterways directive, and is the sort of grotesque anti-human garbage that should have been tossed the minute we signed the divorce papers.
HS2 is an EU rail project. It is even rumoured to be part-funded by the EU, though I cannot find any verification of that. It is a crushing dead weight on the Exchequer and should be binned. It's quite clear that with the current shower, of people were starving on the streets it still wouldn't be.
On the CAP, Boris's Government made a lot of 'breaking out' of the CAP, but actually, there's no difference in policy:
It's the same deeply misguided set of incentives that put rewilding ahead of food security. Liz had big changes planned here - as we know, the blob has now reasserted itself, so that won't happen for now.
On energy - it's clear to all that we need a strategy to be self sufficient in energy - we cannot be dependent on the continent, which is itself short of energy and dependent on Russian gas. It is also clear that our grid needs to be upgraded, to make more use of remote wind installations that are currently getting paid to switch off. So why is the National Grid building expensive interconnectors to Germany? https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/new-cable-between-germany-and-uk-advances-europes-integrated-power-system
Simply because it is a move toward a single energy market. A move that was never in Britain's interests and can now thankfully be scrapped and the resources redeployed - but it isn't.
Interconnectors means the ability to import and export energy as required. Because of their cost compared to capacity, you can easily have over capacity on them. Which means they become an insurance plan for things going wrong - see the sale of electricity to France at the moment to cover issues with their nuclear power plants.
Interconnectors also mean that we can sell more surplus wind, incidentally.
Actually, they won't. If you read the article, it means that we can import more power, solving Germany's issue of wasted wind power from their North, not ours. Our wind farms, largely in Scotland, aren't well connected to our own grid, and aren't likely to be exporting significant power due to this scheme. So we'll be importing excess from Germany, and subsiding our own farms to switch off still, when if any interconnectors are needed, they are intra-UK, so we can actually use the power generated domestically.
Which is an argument for more Interconnectors, not less.
Brexit is an institution. Some people put Brexit before country.
Not at all, Brexit is a process. It seems unfair to me to condemn the process when it hasn't actually been allowed to happen.
Brexit is a "process". A process of mismanaged, chaotic decline. Sunak understands this. The New Sunak Conservatives need to jettison Brexit as a failed Johnson project.
Jettison Brexit and the Tories face the fate of the Liberals in the 1920s, Farage's party would overtake them as Labour overtook the Liberals then.
No they won't. Brexit the project is in steep decline. Sunak and Hunt lose the idiots but reclaim BlueWall Remainers and other former Remainers too. You have fallen into the same elephant trap as Statmer.
About 3/4 of current Tory voters are Leavers, leftwingers wanting BINO Brexit would go Green not Tory.
So BINO sees the Tories lose 3/4 of their current vote to Farage while gaining only a handful of upper middle class LDs. That leads to wipeout in the blue wall as well as redwall
They are stained, crushed and yellowing but Balenciaga’s range of “worn-out” sneakers, launched in collaboration with Adidas this month, have sold out. This is despite an eye-watering price tag of almost £700.
The brand-new shoes, described by one reviewer as “looking like they’ve been flattened by a 20-ton steamroller”, are no longer available on the Balenciaga website, and are being priced on one specialist sneaker auction site at £2,500.
Notably, the age of luxury consumers is getting younger. A Bain & Company report released this month found that the Gen Z and millennial demographics were driving luxury in 2022, a sector that is forecast to grow by 21% in 2022. This demographic will probably appreciate Balenciaga’s meme-worthy irony.
There's probably some explanation involving unaffordable housing and student debt.
Nicely argued header, but based on a basic misapprehension - that the only way to make Brexit work is to make it less. This is demonstrably false. The best way to make it work is to diverge in areas where it's in out interests to do so, to lay aside European restrictions where they were cumbersome, and to solve the NI issue, preferably by negotiating with the EU, but if not, reserving the right to act unilaterally. Brexit can only be allowed to work if those wielding power can bring themselves to say goodbye to EU law and projects - we saw how unwilling they are to do this with the unprecedented civil service call for EU law to remain in force. These people do not want to run a post-EU country.
It’s rare to see such a vacuous point being made so forcefully. What EU restrictions and laws are hampering the country still? If you want to unilaterally ignore the NI Protocol all you will end up doing is putting the border in land and what benefit will that provide?
The EU waterways directive is afaik still enforced in full by the Environment agency, making it almost impossible to dredge, and thus opening the possibility of winter flooding.
This legislation also opposes the building of new water infrastructure including reservoirs, that are badly needed with a rising population. Instead of the necessary infrastructure, we're now given adverts advising us to shower for less time (at least in Scotland), which is, again, from the waterways directive, and is the sort of grotesque anti-human garbage that should have been tossed the minute we signed the divorce papers.
HS2 is an EU rail project. It is even rumoured to be part-funded by the EU, though I cannot find any verification of that. It is a crushing dead weight on the Exchequer and should be binned. It's quite clear that with the current shower, of people were starving on the streets it still wouldn't be.
On the CAP, Boris's Government made a lot of 'breaking out' of the CAP, but actually, there's no difference in policy:
It's the same deeply misguided set of incentives that put rewilding ahead of food security. Liz had big changes planned here - as we know, the blob has now reasserted itself, so that won't happen for now.
On energy - it's clear to all that we need a strategy to be self sufficient in energy - we cannot be dependent on the continent, which is itself short of energy and dependent on Russian gas. It is also clear that our grid needs to be upgraded, to make more use of remote wind installations that are currently getting paid to switch off. So why is the National Grid building expensive interconnectors to Germany? https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/new-cable-between-germany-and-uk-advances-europes-integrated-power-system
Simply because it is a move toward a single energy market. A move that was never in Britain's interests and can now thankfully be scrapped and the resources redeployed - but it isn't.
Interconnectors means the ability to import and export energy as required. Because of their cost compared to capacity, you can easily have over capacity on them. Which means they become an insurance plan for things going wrong - see the sale of electricity to France at the moment to cover issues with their nuclear power plants.
Interconnectors also mean that we can sell more surplus wind, incidentally.
Actually, they won't. If you read the article, it means that we can import more power, solving Germany's issue of wasted wind power from their North, not ours. Our wind farms, largely in Scotland, aren't well connected to our own grid, and aren't likely to be exporting significant power due to this scheme. So we'll be importing excess from Germany, and subsiding our own farms to switch off still, when if any interconnectors are needed, they are intra-UK, so we can actually use the power generated domestically.
Which is an argument for more Interconnectors, not less.
No it isn't. It's an argument to prioritise the upgrading of our own grid, over costly investment connecting us to the continent. Interconnectors between England (demand) and Scotland (wind supply) are currently poor. There is also virtually no investment in storage. Those are the priorities, but again, policy setters are firing on with the EU projects as if we never left.
They are stained, crushed and yellowing but Balenciaga’s range of “worn-out” sneakers, launched in collaboration with Adidas this month, have sold out. This is despite an eye-watering price tag of almost £700.
The brand-new shoes, described by one reviewer as “looking like they’ve been flattened by a 20-ton steamroller”, are no longer available on the Balenciaga website, and are being priced on one specialist sneaker auction site at £2,500.
Notably, the age of luxury consumers is getting younger. A Bain & Company report released this month found that the Gen Z and millennial demographics were driving luxury in 2022, a sector that is forecast to grow by 21% in 2022. This demographic will probably appreciate Balenciaga’s meme-worthy irony.
There's probably some explanation involving unaffordable housing and student debt.
Nicely argued header, but based on a basic misapprehension - that the only way to make Brexit work is to make it less. This is demonstrably false. The best way to make it work is to diverge in areas where it's in out interests to do so, to lay aside European restrictions where they were cumbersome, and to solve the NI issue, preferably by negotiating with the EU, but if not, reserving the right to act unilaterally. Brexit can only be allowed to work if those wielding power can bring themselves to say goodbye to EU law and projects - we saw how unwilling they are to do this with the unprecedented civil service call for EU law to remain in force. These people do not want to run a post-EU country.
It’s rare to see such a vacuous point being made so forcefully. What EU restrictions and laws are hampering the country still? If you want to unilaterally ignore the NI Protocol all you will end up doing is putting the border in land and what benefit will that provide?
The EU waterways directive is afaik still enforced in full by the Environment agency, making it almost impossible to dredge, and thus opening the possibility of winter flooding.
This legislation also opposes the building of new water infrastructure including reservoirs, that are badly needed with a rising population. Instead of the necessary infrastructure, we're now given adverts advising us to shower for less time (at least in Scotland), which is, again, from the waterways directive, and is the sort of grotesque anti-human garbage that should have been tossed the minute we signed the divorce papers.
HS2 is an EU rail project. It is even rumoured to be part-funded by the EU, though I cannot find any verification of that. It is a crushing dead weight on the Exchequer and should be binned. It's quite clear that with the current shower, of people were starving on the streets it still wouldn't be.
On the CAP, Boris's Government made a lot of 'breaking out' of the CAP, but actually, there's no difference in policy:
It's the same deeply misguided set of incentives that put rewilding ahead of food security. Liz had big changes planned here - as we know, the blob has now reasserted itself, so that won't happen for now.
On energy - it's clear to all that we need a strategy to be self sufficient in energy - we cannot be dependent on the continent, which is itself short of energy and dependent on Russian gas. It is also clear that our grid needs to be upgraded, to make more use of remote wind installations that are currently getting paid to switch off. So why is the National Grid building expensive interconnectors to Germany? https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/new-cable-between-germany-and-uk-advances-europes-integrated-power-system
Simply because it is a move toward a single energy market. A move that was never in Britain's interests and can now thankfully be scrapped and the resources redeployed - but it isn't.
Interconnectors means the ability to import and export energy as required. Because of their cost compared to capacity, you can easily have over capacity on them. Which means they become an insurance plan for things going wrong - see the sale of electricity to France at the moment to cover issues with their nuclear power plants.
Interconnectors also mean that we can sell more surplus wind, incidentally.
Actually, they won't. If you read the article, it means that we can import more power, solving Germany's issue of wasted wind power from their North, not ours. Our wind farms, largely in Scotland, aren't well connected to our own grid, and aren't likely to be exporting significant power due to this scheme. So we'll be importing excess from Germany, and subsiding our own farms to switch off still, when if any interconnectors are needed, they are intra-UK, so we can actually use the power generated domestically.
Which is an argument for more Interconnectors, not less.
No it isn't. It's an argument to prioritise the upgrading of our own grid, over costly investment connecting us to the continent. Interconnectors between England (demand) and Scotland (wind supply) are currently poor. There is also virtually no investment in storage. Those are the priorities, but again, policy setters are firing on with the EU projects as if we never left.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
I admire you for doing such cases. I have been involved in a few investigations which have involved such stuff - all referred to the police. But I found them deeply disturbing. I do not think I could do them day in day out.
They are disturbing. I am assured by my new boss (a rather brilliant woman) that you learn to compartmentilise them. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. Do I really want to lose the raw compassion in exchange for some professional objectivity? Right now I feel rage on behalf of the victims. Rage that I have rarely felt in my life.
You are going to have to compartmentalise to keep yourself sane. And channel your rage to try and do right by the victims for all of us.
I worked once with the QC who prosecuted the Fred West case. He said that he coped by talking about his reaction / his feelings to whoever would listen rather than bottle them up. He'd been advised to do this by someone who had seen the very different "stiff upper lip" reaction of those involved in the Moors murders case. Of course this may not work for everyone but I thought it interesting.
Nicely argued header, but based on a basic misapprehension - that the only way to make Brexit work is to make it less. This is demonstrably false. The best way to make it work is to diverge in areas where it's in out interests to do so, to lay aside European restrictions where they were cumbersome, and to solve the NI issue, preferably by negotiating with the EU, but if not, reserving the right to act unilaterally. Brexit can only be allowed to work if those wielding power can bring themselves to say goodbye to EU law and projects - we saw how unwilling they are to do this with the unprecedented civil service call for EU law to remain in force. These people do not want to run a post-EU country.
It’s rare to see such a vacuous point being made so forcefully. What EU restrictions and laws are hampering the country still? If you want to unilaterally ignore the NI Protocol all you will end up doing is putting the border in land and what benefit will that provide?
The EU waterways directive is afaik still enforced in full by the Environment agency, making it almost impossible to dredge, and thus opening the possibility of winter flooding.
This legislation also opposes the building of new water infrastructure including reservoirs, that are badly needed with a rising population. Instead of the necessary infrastructure, we're now given adverts advising us to shower for less time (at least in Scotland), which is, again, from the waterways directive, and is the sort of grotesque anti-human garbage that should have been tossed the minute we signed the divorce papers.
HS2 is an EU rail project. It is even rumoured to be part-funded by the EU, though I cannot find any verification of that. It is a crushing dead weight on the Exchequer and should be binned. It's quite clear that with the current shower, of people were starving on the streets it still wouldn't be.
On the CAP, Boris's Government made a lot of 'breaking out' of the CAP, but actually, there's no difference in policy:
It's the same deeply misguided set of incentives that put rewilding ahead of food security. Liz had big changes planned here - as we know, the blob has now reasserted itself, so that won't happen for now.
On energy - it's clear to all that we need a strategy to be self sufficient in energy - we cannot be dependent on the continent, which is itself short of energy and dependent on Russian gas. It is also clear that our grid needs to be upgraded, to make more use of remote wind installations that are currently getting paid to switch off. So why is the National Grid building expensive interconnectors to Germany? https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/new-cable-between-germany-and-uk-advances-europes-integrated-power-system
Simply because it is a move toward a single energy market. A move that was never in Britain's interests and can now thankfully be scrapped and the resources redeployed - but it isn't.
Interconnectors means the ability to import and export energy as required. Because of their cost compared to capacity, you can easily have over capacity on them. Which means they become an insurance plan for things going wrong - see the sale of electricity to France at the moment to cover issues with their nuclear power plants.
Interconnectors also mean that we can sell more surplus wind, incidentally.
Actually, they won't. If you read the article, it means that we can import more power, solving Germany's issue of wasted wind power from their North, not ours. Our wind farms, largely in Scotland, aren't well connected to our own grid, and aren't likely to be exporting significant power due to this scheme. So we'll be importing excess from Germany, and subsiding our own farms to switch off still, when if any interconnectors are needed, they are intra-UK, so we can actually use the power generated domestically.
Which is an argument for more Interconnectors, not less.
No it isn't. It's an argument to prioritise the upgrading of our own grid, over costly investment connecting us to the continent. Interconnectors between England (demand) and Scotland (wind supply) are currently poor. There is also virtually no investment in storage. Those are the priorities, but again, policy setters are firing on with the EU projects as if we never left.
Is the EU bogeyman still keeping you up at night?
Not at all, I've never been troubled by the EU - the problem lies in Britain.
Freedom of movement seems like Election Kryptonite so Starmer isn’t going to go there .
He should however promise closer economic ties with the EU which I don’t think will be a problem .
There’s really no mileage in re-opening the EU debate as most Remainers I know including myself realize the ship has sailed and we don’t want more division and acrimony .
Just read a series of tweets re Brexit from Starmer and he is more anti rejoin than the conservatives
It adds to the narrative he will say anything he thinks is popular but I would suggest a large number of Labour supporters will be dismayed this morning
This is a golden opportunity for the lib dems to come out for rejoining
I expect a Starmer led government but I have no idea how or whether it will be a majority or a coalition
If the very impressive Mr Sunak went full-frontal Single Market, the Conservatives would lose the RedWall but clean up everywhere else.
Starmer is so politically inept he cannot read the EU tealeaves. Sunak can. If he went EEA including FoM, I'd vote for him.
Not going to happen, though. The Tory Brexit ultras would destroy him before he could touch it. In opposition it might be different. For Nixon to China reasons I could easily imagine it being the Tories not Labour who first pivot back to EU or EU-like status.
They are stained, crushed and yellowing but Balenciaga’s range of “worn-out” sneakers, launched in collaboration with Adidas this month, have sold out. This is despite an eye-watering price tag of almost £700.
The brand-new shoes, described by one reviewer as “looking like they’ve been flattened by a 20-ton steamroller”, are no longer available on the Balenciaga website, and are being priced on one specialist sneaker auction site at £2,500.
Notably, the age of luxury consumers is getting younger. A Bain & Company report released this month found that the Gen Z and millennial demographics were driving luxury in 2022, a sector that is forecast to grow by 21% in 2022. This demographic will probably appreciate Balenciaga’s meme-worthy irony.
There's probably some explanation involving unaffordable housing and student debt.
Just read a series of tweets re Brexit from Starmer and he is more anti rejoin than the conservatives
It adds to the narrative he will say anything he thinks is popular but I would suggest a large number of Labour supporters will be dismayed this morning
This is a golden opportunity for the lib dems to come out for rejoining
I expect a Starmer led government but I have no idea how or whether it will be a majority or a coalition
If the very impressive Mr Sunak went full-frontal Single Market, the Conservatives would lose the RedWall but clean up everywhere else.
Starmer is so politically inept he cannot read the EU tealeaves. Sunak can. If he went EEA including FoM, I'd vote for him.
Not going to happen, though. The Tory Brexit ultras would destroy him before he could touch it. In opposition it might be different. For Nixon to China reasons I could easily imagine it being the Tories not Labour who first pivot back to EU or EU-like status.
Not happening given most Tory voters are Leavers. EFTA/EEA would only happen under a Labour government as most Labour voters are Remainers with the Tories in time accepting that
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I don’t have time to comment at any length today, but just noting it’s good to have you back, and I agree it’s worth discussing further.
Well, that is very nice of you to say so. I am here because the cat has been sat on my lap for the last 3 hours preventing me from doing any of the things which I must do - writing and also fixing a leaky sink. She has a will of iron and claws like steel traps.
The first major free trade agreement signed by Britain after Brexit has been branded a failure after new figures showed exports had fallen since it came into force.
Liz Truss signed a “historic” deal with Japan as trade secretary in October 2020, describing it as a “landmark moment for Britain”. It was claimed it would boost trade by billions of pounds and help the UK recover from the pandemic.
However, figures collated by the Department for International Trade show exports to Japan fell from £12.3bn to £11.9bn in the year to June 2022. Exports in goods fell 4.9% to £6.1bn and services fell 2% to £5.8bn.
Bizarre to assume that no other factors may have affected things over the past 2 years. Unless they factored in the COVID effect.
Bizarre that nothing is ever the fault of Brexit yet, as the poll indicates, only 12% of voters think it's going well.
Oh indeed but this one seems ridicxulous to me. Brexit is not the success those whpo voted for it wished but now was the UK doing that well in the EU which itself has many issues. Tghese sort of headlines rahte rlike the endless whinges from Scott, et al fall into the trap of assuming that Rejoin and all would be well. We all know that isn't going to happen nor is it the panacea for the UK's ills .
They are stained, crushed and yellowing but Balenciaga’s range of “worn-out” sneakers, launched in collaboration with Adidas this month, have sold out. This is despite an eye-watering price tag of almost £700.
The brand-new shoes, described by one reviewer as “looking like they’ve been flattened by a 20-ton steamroller”, are no longer available on the Balenciaga website, and are being priced on one specialist sneaker auction site at £2,500.
Notably, the age of luxury consumers is getting younger. A Bain & Company report released this month found that the Gen Z and millennial demographics were driving luxury in 2022, a sector that is forecast to grow by 21% in 2022. This demographic will probably appreciate Balenciaga’s meme-worthy irony.
There's probably some explanation involving unaffordable housing and student debt.
Bought with Klarna?
Never heard of Klarna before.
Having now looked into it I suspect that's going to end in disaster for someone or other.
They are stained, crushed and yellowing but Balenciaga’s range of “worn-out” sneakers, launched in collaboration with Adidas this month, have sold out. This is despite an eye-watering price tag of almost £700.
The brand-new shoes, described by one reviewer as “looking like they’ve been flattened by a 20-ton steamroller”, are no longer available on the Balenciaga website, and are being priced on one specialist sneaker auction site at £2,500.
Notably, the age of luxury consumers is getting younger. A Bain & Company report released this month found that the Gen Z and millennial demographics were driving luxury in 2022, a sector that is forecast to grow by 21% in 2022. This demographic will probably appreciate Balenciaga’s meme-worthy irony.
There's probably some explanation involving unaffordable housing and student debt.
I sense they may be the straw that broke the TSE label-queen camel’s back.
Nicely argued header, but based on a basic misapprehension - that the only way to make Brexit work is to make it less. This is demonstrably false. The best way to make it work is to diverge in areas where it's in out interests to do so, to lay aside European restrictions where they were cumbersome, and to solve the NI issue, preferably by negotiating with the EU, but if not, reserving the right to act unilaterally. Brexit can only be allowed to work if those wielding power can bring themselves to say goodbye to EU law and projects - we saw how unwilling they are to do this with the unprecedented civil service call for EU law to remain in force. These people do not want to run a post-EU country.
It’s rare to see such a vacuous point being made so forcefully. What EU restrictions and laws are hampering the country still? If you want to unilaterally ignore the NI Protocol all you will end up doing is putting the border in land and what benefit will that provide?
The EU waterways directive is afaik still enforced in full by the Environment agency, making it almost impossible to dredge, and thus opening the possibility of winter flooding.
This legislation also opposes the building of new water infrastructure including reservoirs, that are badly needed with a rising population. Instead of the necessary infrastructure, we're now given adverts advising us to shower for less time (at least in Scotland), which is, again, from the waterways directive, and is the sort of grotesque anti-human garbage that should have been tossed the minute we signed the divorce papers.
HS2 is an EU rail project. It is even rumoured to be part-funded by the EU, though I cannot find any verification of that. It is a crushing dead weight on the Exchequer and should be binned. It's quite clear that with the current shower, of people were starving on the streets it still wouldn't be.
On the CAP, Boris's Government made a lot of 'breaking out' of the CAP, but actually, there's no difference in policy:
It's the same deeply misguided set of incentives that put rewilding ahead of food security. Liz had big changes planned here - as we know, the blob has now reasserted itself, so that won't happen for now.
On energy - it's clear to all that we need a strategy to be self sufficient in energy - we cannot be dependent on the continent, which is itself short of energy and dependent on Russian gas. It is also clear that our grid needs to be upgraded, to make more use of remote wind installations that are currently getting paid to switch off. So why is the National Grid building expensive interconnectors to Germany? https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/new-cable-between-germany-and-uk-advances-europes-integrated-power-system
Simply because it is a move toward a single energy market. A move that was never in Britain's interests and can now thankfully be scrapped and the resources redeployed - but it isn't.
Interconnectors means the ability to import and export energy as required. Because of their cost compared to capacity, you can easily have over capacity on them. Which means they become an insurance plan for things going wrong - see the sale of electricity to France at the moment to cover issues with their nuclear power plants.
Interconnectors also mean that we can sell more surplus wind, incidentally.
Actually, they won't. If you read the article, it means that we can import more power, solving Germany's issue of wasted wind power from their North, not ours. Our wind farms, largely in Scotland, aren't well connected to our own grid, and aren't likely to be exporting significant power due to this scheme. So we'll be importing excess from Germany, and subsiding our own farms to switch off still, when if any interconnectors are needed, they are intra-UK, so we can actually use the power generated domestically.
Which is an argument for more Interconnectors, not less.
No it isn't. It's an argument to prioritise the upgrading of our own grid, over costly investment connecting us to the continent. Interconnectors between England (demand) and Scotland (wind supply) are currently poor. There is also virtually no investment in storage. Those are the priorities, but again, policy setters are firing on with the EU projects as if we never left.
Is it perhaps because of the transmission charges, which are as I understand it by distance to the consumer? French leccy might turn out to be cheaper than stuff from north of the border. No idea if that is the case, but it's something I wondered about when reading your comments.
They are stained, crushed and yellowing but Balenciaga’s range of “worn-out” sneakers, launched in collaboration with Adidas this month, have sold out. This is despite an eye-watering price tag of almost £700.
The brand-new shoes, described by one reviewer as “looking like they’ve been flattened by a 20-ton steamroller”, are no longer available on the Balenciaga website, and are being priced on one specialist sneaker auction site at £2,500.
Notably, the age of luxury consumers is getting younger. A Bain & Company report released this month found that the Gen Z and millennial demographics were driving luxury in 2022, a sector that is forecast to grow by 21% in 2022. This demographic will probably appreciate Balenciaga’s meme-worthy irony.
There's probably some explanation involving unaffordable housing and student debt.
I sense they may be the straw that broke the TSE label-queen camel’s back.
(In recent years, so many Pulitzers have been awarded in error that I sometimes refer to them as the "Pulitzer Reprimands". And a few times I have suggested they be renamed the Duranty Prizes.)
Nicely argued header, but based on a basic misapprehension - that the only way to make Brexit work is to make it less. This is demonstrably false. The best way to make it work is to diverge in areas where it's in out interests to do so, to lay aside European restrictions where they were cumbersome, and to solve the NI issue, preferably by negotiating with the EU, but if not, reserving the right to act unilaterally. Brexit can only be allowed to work if those wielding power can bring themselves to say goodbye to EU law and projects - we saw how unwilling they are to do this with the unprecedented civil service call for EU law to remain in force. These people do not want to run a post-EU country.
It’s rare to see such a vacuous point being made so forcefully. What EU restrictions and laws are hampering the country still? If you want to unilaterally ignore the NI Protocol all you will end up doing is putting the border in land and what benefit will that provide?
The EU waterways directive is afaik still enforced in full by the Environment agency, making it almost impossible to dredge, and thus opening the possibility of winter flooding.
This legislation also opposes the building of new water infrastructure including reservoirs, that are badly needed with a rising population. Instead of the necessary infrastructure, we're now given adverts advising us to shower for less time (at least in Scotland), which is, again, from the waterways directive, and is the sort of grotesque anti-human garbage that should have been tossed the minute we signed the divorce papers.
HS2 is an EU rail project. It is even rumoured to be part-funded by the EU, though I cannot find any verification of that. It is a crushing dead weight on the Exchequer and should be binned. It's quite clear that with the current shower, of people were starving on the streets it still wouldn't be.
On the CAP, Boris's Government made a lot of 'breaking out' of the CAP, but actually, there's no difference in policy:
It's the same deeply misguided set of incentives that put rewilding ahead of food security. Liz had big changes planned here - as we know, the blob has now reasserted itself, so that won't happen for now.
On energy - it's clear to all that we need a strategy to be self sufficient in energy - we cannot be dependent on the continent, which is itself short of energy and dependent on Russian gas. It is also clear that our grid needs to be upgraded, to make more use of remote wind installations that are currently getting paid to switch off. So why is the National Grid building expensive interconnectors to Germany? https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/new-cable-between-germany-and-uk-advances-europes-integrated-power-system
Simply because it is a move toward a single energy market. A move that was never in Britain's interests and can now thankfully be scrapped and the resources redeployed - but it isn't.
Interconnectors means the ability to import and export energy as required. Because of their cost compared to capacity, you can easily have over capacity on them. Which means they become an insurance plan for things going wrong - see the sale of electricity to France at the moment to cover issues with their nuclear power plants.
Interconnectors also mean that we can sell more surplus wind, incidentally.
Actually, they won't. If you read the article, it means that we can import more power, solving Germany's issue of wasted wind power from their North, not ours. Our wind farms, largely in Scotland, aren't well connected to our own grid, and aren't likely to be exporting significant power due to this scheme. So we'll be importing excess from Germany, and subsiding our own farms to switch off still, when if any interconnectors are needed, they are intra-UK, so we can actually use the power generated domestically.
Which is an argument for more Interconnectors, not less.
No it isn't. It's an argument to prioritise the upgrading of our own grid, over costly investment connecting us to the continent. Interconnectors between England (demand) and Scotland (wind supply) are currently poor. There is also virtually no investment in storage. Those are the priorities, but again, policy setters are firing on with the EU projects as if we never left.
Is it perhaps because of the transmission charges, which are as I understand it by distance to the consumer? French leccy might turn out to be cheaper than stuff from north of the border. No idea if that is the case, but it's something I wondered about when reading your comments.
It's German electricity, and I'm pretty sure that's further away than Scottish.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
I admire you for doing such cases. I have been involved in a few investigations which have involved such stuff - all referred to the police. But I found them deeply disturbing. I do not think I could do them day in day out.
They are disturbing. I am assured by my new boss (a rather brilliant woman) that you learn to compartmentilise them. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. Do I really want to lose the raw compassion in exchange for some professional objectivity? Right now I feel rage on behalf of the victims. Rage that I have rarely felt in my life.
You are going to have to compartmentalise to keep yourself sane. And channel your rage to try and do right by the victims for all of us.
I worked once with the QC who prosecuted the Fred West case. He said that he coped by talking about his reaction / his feelings to whoever would listen rather than bottle them up. He'd been advised to do this by someone who had seen the very different "stiff upper lip" reaction of those involved in the Moors murders case. Of course this may not work for everyone but I thought it interesting.
I recognise that. Indeed it is one of the reasons I am boring people with this this morning. It is therapy and I apologise to those bored or upset by it. But another rape case awaits.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
I admire you for doing such cases. I have been involved in a few investigations which have involved such stuff - all referred to the police. But I found them deeply disturbing. I do not think I could do them day in day out.
They are disturbing. I am assured by my new boss (a rather brilliant woman) that you learn to compartmentilise them. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. Do I really want to lose the raw compassion in exchange for some professional objectivity? Right now I feel rage on behalf of the victims. Rage that I have rarely felt in my life.
You are going to have to compartmentalise to keep yourself sane. And channel your rage to try and do right by the victims for all of us.
I worked once with the QC who prosecuted the Fred West case. He said that he coped by talking about his reaction / his feelings to whoever would listen rather than bottle them up. He'd been advised to do this by someone who had seen the very different "stiff upper lip" reaction of those involved in the Moors murders case. Of course this may not work for everyone but I thought it interesting.
I recognise that. Indeed it is one of the reasons I am boring people with this this morning. It is therapy and I apologise to those bored or upset by it. But another rape case awaits.
Not bored or upset.You should use this forum to share what you feel you can or need to. It is illuminating - for me, certainly - and if it helps you so much the better.
They are stained, crushed and yellowing but Balenciaga’s range of “worn-out” sneakers, launched in collaboration with Adidas this month, have sold out. This is despite an eye-watering price tag of almost £700.
The brand-new shoes, described by one reviewer as “looking like they’ve been flattened by a 20-ton steamroller”, are no longer available on the Balenciaga website, and are being priced on one specialist sneaker auction site at £2,500.
Notably, the age of luxury consumers is getting younger. A Bain & Company report released this month found that the Gen Z and millennial demographics were driving luxury in 2022, a sector that is forecast to grow by 21% in 2022. This demographic will probably appreciate Balenciaga’s meme-worthy irony.
There's probably some explanation involving unaffordable housing and student debt.
Trust fund babies.
The grads in the bank I work at all live in rooms in shared properties.
One told me that she was living in 2 bed flat. The landlord came in and divided the living room into 2. So now she lives in a 4 bed flat with on living room. Finding a new place is apparently hard….
The grads in general seem not have vast amounts of personal possessions, but have some quite expensive items for what they do have. Compensating for shitty accommodation?
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
It is rare for us to be on the same page but reading Starmer's comments this morning on rejection of the single market and freedom of movement could just as well come from a conservative PM
The truth is Brexit needs to be addressed, including improvement in trade and relationship with the EU, and Strarmer is well to the right of me on this
I note Owen Jones is furious with him
"Ripping up the Brexit deal would lead to years more wrangling and arguing, when we should be facing the future. I’m worried that there are senior members of Rishi Sunak’s government who don’t seem to understand that".
If that IS a quote by Starmer rather than a flight of fancy from Hodges (not impossible) then Labour have landed themselves another Jeremy Corbyn. A leader who absented himself on the biggest issue of the last half a century.
He's never been in a better position to put a positive case for the EU. I heard this morning that it has cost £120 billion so far being out of the EU. That's 150 brand new hospitals 600 shiny new schools. Starmer needs to look forward not backwards. It's not leaving the EU that'll keep the Red Wall onside but the benefits that all that extra money could buy.
I don’t think the Red Wall is quite there yet, but another 12, 18, 24 months of Brexit reality will do the trick. People aren’t stupid, they can see what the ongoing process of Brexit is delivering. And they’re not impressed.
I wish Starmer was full-throated, if not quite full fat rejoin, then at least making noises about single market access, but - I hope - he’s simply boxing clever. He needs to win first.
A coalition with the Lib Dems and SNP would suit me, that would give him the pro-EU push he needs. The right-wing press will go big on that possibility, and continue stoking immigration fears, as we go into the next election. They’ll drag up Starmer’s second referendum stuff. He needs to neutralise it.
Moves back towards the EU, Tories out of power for at least a decade, House of Lords reform, maybe even PR. What bliss that little lot would be.
I couldn't care to list the number of times I've bet on a "dead cert" only for my position to fall apart in the last 6 hours as it becomes clear that isn't what's going to happen.
Be careful.
Nothing in life is certain. Except for death and taxis.
I'm desperate to think of a quip for that typo (or joke), but I just can't.
Brexit is an institution. Some people put Brexit before country.
Not at all, Brexit is a process. It seems unfair to me to condemn the process when it hasn't actually been allowed to happen.
Brexit is a "process". A process of mismanaged, chaotic decline. Sunak understands this. The New Sunak Conservatives need to jettison Brexit as a failed Johnson project.
Much better that Starmer jettison those Red Wallers who think Brexit is the Messiah. Let them go to Farage or Sunak.
Starmer said he would lead from the centre. He'll never get a better chance. All the loopy loos are sitting behind Sunak. It's not difficult. Do a Macron. I'm sure a right wing Brexit Party will emerge under Sunak or Johnson or Farage or all three.
Meanwhile Starmer can stand on the centre ground where a large majority of the country stands and from that position lead the rejoiners
I couldn't care to list the number of times I've bet on a "dead cert" only for my position to fall apart in the last 6 hours as it becomes clear that isn't what's going to happen.
Be careful.
Nothing in life is certain. Except for death and taxis.
I'm desperate to think of a quip for that typo, but I just can't.
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
It is rare for us to be on the same page but reading Starmer's comments this morning on rejection of the single market and freedom of movement could just as well come from a conservative PM
The truth is Brexit needs to be addressed, including improvement in trade and relationship with the EU, and Strarmer is well to the right of me on this
I note Owen Jones is furious with him
"Ripping up the Brexit deal would lead to years more wrangling and arguing, when we should be facing the future. I’m worried that there are senior members of Rishi Sunak’s government who don’t seem to understand that".
If that IS a quote by Starmer rather than a flight of fancy from Hodges (not impossible) then Labour have landed themselves another Jeremy Corbyn. A leader who absented himself on the biggest issue of the last half a century.
He's never been in a better position to put a positive case for the EU. I heard this morning that it has cost £120 billion so far being out of the EU. That's 150 brand new hospitals 600 shiny new schools. Starmer needs to look forward not backwards. It's not leaving the EU that'll keep the Red Wall onside but the benefits that all that extra money could buy.
I don’t think the Red Wall is quite there yet, but another 12, 18, 24 months of Brexit reality will do the trick. People aren’t stupid, they can see what the ongoing process of Brexit is delivering. And they’re not impressed.
I wish Starmer was full-throated, if not quite full fat rejoin, then at least making noises about single market access, but - I hope - he’s simply boxing clever. He needs to win first.
A coalition with the Lib Dems and SNP would suit me, that would give him the pro-EU push he needs. The right-wing press will go big on that possibility, and continue stoking immigration fears, as we go into the next election. They’ll drag up Starmer’s second referendum stuff. He needs to neutralise it.
Moves back towards the EU, Tories out of power for at least a decade, House of Lords reform, maybe even PR. What bliss that little lot would be.
I think you should change 'People aren't stupid' to 'not that stupid'
I couldn't care to list the number of times I've bet on a "dead cert" only for my position to fall apart in the last 6 hours as it becomes clear that isn't what's going to happen.
Be careful.
Nothing in life is certain. Except for death and taxis.
I'm desperate to think of a quip for that typo (or joke), but I just can't.
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
It is rare for us to be on the same page but reading Starmer's comments this morning on rejection of the single market and freedom of movement could just as well come from a conservative PM
The truth is Brexit needs to be addressed, including improvement in trade and relationship with the EU, and Strarmer is well to the right of me on this
I note Owen Jones is furious with him
"Ripping up the Brexit deal would lead to years more wrangling and arguing, when we should be facing the future. I’m worried that there are senior members of Rishi Sunak’s government who don’t seem to understand that".
If that IS a quote by Starmer rather than a flight of fancy from Hodges (not impossible) then Labour have landed themselves another Jeremy Corbyn. A leader who absented himself on the biggest issue of the last half a century.
He's never been in a better position to put a positive case for the EU. I heard this morning that it has cost £120 billion so far being out of the EU. That's 150 brand new hospitals 600 shiny new schools. Starmer needs to look forward not backwards. It's not leaving the EU that'll keep the Red Wall onside but the benefits that all that extra money could buy.
I don’t think the Red Wall is quite there yet, but another 12, 18, 24 months of Brexit reality will do the trick. People aren’t stupid, they can see what the ongoing process of Brexit is delivering. And they’re not impressed.
I wish Starmer was full-throated, if not quite full fat rejoin, then at least making noises about single market access, but - I hope - he’s simply boxing clever. He needs to win first.
A coalition with the Lib Dems and SNP would suit me, that would give him the pro-EU push he needs. The right-wing press will go big on that possibility, and continue stoking immigration fears, as we go into the next election. They’ll drag up Starmer’s second referendum stuff. He needs to neutralise it.
Moves back towards the EU, Tories out of power for at least a decade, House of Lords reform, maybe even PR. What bliss that little lot would be.
Starmer has explicitly ruled out rejoining the single market and freedom of movement, so there is no other way to have a closer relationship with the EU with Starmer
I know some Labour supporters seem to think that this is a ruse to gain power, but then he will go back to a pro EU stance so that says he is just another dishonest politician despite all his self righteousness
I support rejoining the single market and certainly a closer relationship, and it is remarkable that overnight Starmer has become more of a Brexiteer then Sunak who is seeking a closer relationship
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
You keep repeating this banal point. Like you’re the bearer of some unique wisdom
Yes, Labour are extremely likely to win. I don’t know anyone on here that denies it
I deny Labour are going to get a outright majority.
I think that they may end up in a Red-Orange-Purple-Green coalition. Colours that are combined in nature only to warn "This critter is highly toxic. Beware..."
You gave the world Truss.
And took her away again. You really think she has any relevance to an election two years away?
History will show that the biggest impact of Brexit was to break up a cosy little Russo-Franco-German pact to allow Russia to take over Ukraine in return for energy security.
If you doubt this, look at the respective reactions in Moscow, Paris and Berlin to the events of 2022.
History will show that the biggest impact of Brexit was to break up a cosy little Russo-Franco-German pact to allow Russia to take over Ukraine in return for energy security.
If you doubt this, look at the respective reactions in Moscow, Paris and Berlin to the events of 2022.
History will show that the biggest impact of Brexit was to break up a cosy little Russo-Franco-German pact to allow Russia to take over Ukraine in return for energy security.
If you doubt this, look at the respective reactions in Moscow, Paris and Berlin to the events of 2022.
History will show that the biggest impact of Brexit was to break up a cosy little Russo-Franco-German pact to allow Russia to take over Ukraine in return for energy security.
If you doubt this, look at the respective reactions in Moscow, Paris and Berlin to the events of 2022.
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
It is rare for us to be on the same page but reading Starmer's comments this morning on rejection of the single market and freedom of movement could just as well come from a conservative PM
The truth is Brexit needs to be addressed, including improvement in trade and relationship with the EU, and Strarmer is well to the right of me on this
I note Owen Jones is furious with him
"Ripping up the Brexit deal would lead to years more wrangling and arguing, when we should be facing the future. I’m worried that there are senior members of Rishi Sunak’s government who don’t seem to understand that".
If that IS a quote by Starmer rather than a flight of fancy from Hodges (not impossible) then Labour have landed themselves another Jeremy Corbyn. A leader who absented himself on the biggest issue of the last half a century.
He's never been in a better position to put a positive case for the EU. I heard this morning that it has cost £120 billion so far being out of the EU. That's 150 brand new hospitals 600 shiny new schools. Starmer needs to look forward not backwards. It's not leaving the EU that'll keep the Red Wall onside but the benefits that all that extra money could buy.
I don’t think the Red Wall is quite there yet, but another 12, 18, 24 months of Brexit reality will do the trick. People aren’t stupid, they can see what the ongoing process of Brexit is delivering. And they’re not impressed.
I wish Starmer was full-throated, if not quite full fat rejoin, then at least making noises about single market access, but - I hope - he’s simply boxing clever. He needs to win first.
A coalition with the Lib Dems and SNP would suit me, that would give him the pro-EU push he needs. The right-wing press will go big on that possibility, and continue stoking immigration fears, as we go into the next election. They’ll drag up Starmer’s second referendum stuff. He needs to neutralise it.
Moves back towards the EU, Tories out of power for at least a decade, House of Lords reform, maybe even PR. What bliss that little lot would be.
Starmer has explicitly ruled out rejoining the single market and freedom of movement, so there is no other way to have a closer relationship with the EU with Starmer
I know some Labour supporters seem to think that this is a ruse to gain power, but then he will go back to a pro EU stance so that says he is just another dishonest politician despite all his self righteousness
I support rejoining the single market and certainly a closer relationship, and it is remarkable that overnight Starmer has become more of a Brexiteer then Sunak who is seeking a closer relationship
I can’t find those tweets, possibly because Twitter has started to degrade on me and fill up with spam-like content.
However, based on reports, I do think Keir might be making a mistake. Of course I don’t expect full-throated Remainerism, far from it, but he has to show some leg to working families and that includes something that approaches an economic strategy, and that’s not possible if you have decided to be militantly Brexit.
History will show that the biggest impact of Brexit was to break up a cosy little Russo-Franco-German pact to allow Russia to take over Ukraine in return for energy security.
If you doubt this, look at the respective reactions in Moscow, Paris and Berlin to the events of 2022.
This is some performance-art level bullshit.
Happy for you to bookmark it.
It’s worth remembering as an example of the desperation of Brexiters to conjure up wholly imagined “benefits”.
History will show that the biggest impact of Brexit was to break up a cosy little Russo-Franco-German pact to allow Russia to take over Ukraine in return for energy security.
If you doubt this, look at the respective reactions in Moscow, Paris and Berlin to the events of 2022.
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
It is rare for us to be on the same page but reading Starmer's comments this morning on rejection of the single market and freedom of movement could just as well come from a conservative PM
The truth is Brexit needs to be addressed, including improvement in trade and relationship with the EU, and Strarmer is well to the right of me on this
I note Owen Jones is furious with him
"Ripping up the Brexit deal would lead to years more wrangling and arguing, when we should be facing the future. I’m worried that there are senior members of Rishi Sunak’s government who don’t seem to understand that".
If that IS a quote by Starmer rather than a flight of fancy from Hodges (not impossible) then Labour have landed themselves another Jeremy Corbyn. A leader who absented himself on the biggest issue of the last half a century.
He's never been in a better position to put a positive case for the EU. I heard this morning that it has cost £120 billion so far being out of the EU. That's 150 brand new hospitals 600 shiny new schools. Starmer needs to look forward not backwards. It's not leaving the EU that'll keep the Red Wall onside but the benefits that all that extra money could buy.
I don’t think the Red Wall is quite there yet, but another 12, 18, 24 months of Brexit reality will do the trick. People aren’t stupid, they can see what the ongoing process of Brexit is delivering. And they’re not impressed.
I wish Starmer was full-throated, if not quite full fat rejoin, then at least making noises about single market access, but - I hope - he’s simply boxing clever. He needs to win first.
A coalition with the Lib Dems and SNP would suit me, that would give him the pro-EU push he needs. The right-wing press will go big on that possibility, and continue stoking immigration fears, as we go into the next election. They’ll drag up Starmer’s second referendum stuff. He needs to neutralise it.
Moves back towards the EU, Tories out of power for at least a decade, House of Lords reform, maybe even PR. What bliss that little lot would be.
You are right - Red Wall voters are not that stupid. They have worked out that businesses have been using cheap labour for years to undercut their wages and that all the Remain talk that uncontrolled EU immigration had nothing to do with wage stagflation at the unskilled / semi-skilled level was bollocks.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
I admire you for doing such cases. I have been involved in a few investigations which have involved such stuff - all referred to the police. But I found them deeply disturbing. I do not think I could do them day in day out.
They are disturbing. I am assured by my new boss (a rather brilliant woman) that you learn to compartmentilise them. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. Do I really want to lose the raw compassion in exchange for some professional objectivity? Right now I feel rage on behalf of the victims. Rage that I have rarely felt in my life.
@Cyclefree rolling back a few steps thanks for pushing the Fire Brigade story - I confess I am one who scrolled past it and probably wouldn’t have taken enough notice without your provocation upthread.
We are in an interesting time with anything to do with discrimination against groups. As someone who finds himself very much at the centre of overlapping aspects of privilege (British white male in a secure job, heterosexual and with a secure life partner, and relatively few past traumas) I’m increasingly aware of the need not to just not be consciously discriminatory, but also to listen to accounts of institutional or structural discrimination and to challenge them.
At the same time, and despite the above being my own political view, I am increasingly aware that this IS a very political area, and many people will react strongly to my paragraph above, believing it to be woke nonsense.
For some people that reaction is simply a fragile response to having their hidden privilege exposed to them. For others, though, I think there is a genuine concern about the implications for society of admitting to the levels of structural and institutional discrimination that exist.
I’m not defending that point of view except to say that I think the latter concern I refer to is genuinely held, and it is probably what motivates a muted response to a report that asks us to face up to institutional sexism and misogyny.
I’m really not sure what the answer is - but agree we should be discussing it much more than we are.
It's a fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances.
So I'm not criticising those oldies on here who are finding it hard to accept the reality that Labour will win a comfortable majority.
But you do need to wake up and smell the coffee, especially if you are betting money.
Early for pointless stereotypical twattery don't you think?
Not really, no.
It's hard for the older folk to take but there really has been a once in a generation sea-change. I know that TSE and Mike are struggling to accept that a Labour majority is likely (go figure Leon) but it behoves those of us who bet serious money to study the facts.
The biggest block to this thinking, apart from the fact that older people find it harder to adapt to changing circumstances, is that people believe in precedence. An outright Labour win from such a poor starting position is unprecedented.
But, and this is the killer to that argument, we have just gone through, and still are, the most unprecedented period in British life since the second world war, which also yielded an unprecedented Labour win.
And unlike 1997, which heralded the last sea-change, the economic circumstances are dire.
I will bet anyone my house that Labour will win an outright majority if they bet me theirs that they won't.
But I agree with virtually everything you say here. And am I not meant to be one of your old timers? Unable to accept the passing of the days?
Labour will win big. It’s certain
It is possible that @TSE and OGH are staying neutral or being provocative to drum up interest. A dead cert is not an interesting bet. And, as I said last night, the site needs some pepping up
The site is fine.
Politics is going through a post Johnson/Truss/Trump recovery. That level of crazy was unsustainable. PB always reflects the world outside.
Meanwhile crazy lurks just below the surface. Yesterday I was called Hitler before 9.30am by our enraged resident Nat.
The total failure of right wing politicians and the pitiful demise of the right wing ideology is an interesting topic.
Ridiculous. ALL politics has failed
Because Humanity is failing. Birth rates plunge. The climate roils. People R gettin stupid
We are all fucked
You remind me if my father as he was getting older. Convinced he would see the end times.
I though Brexit was supposed to have reinvigorated you.
Brexit baby is now in its shitty sixes and shows every sign of being a low achieving unlovable wee prick. Parenthood can be a wearying and dispiriting business, as an article by some sage or other once suggested.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
I admire you for doing such cases. I have been involved in a few investigations which have involved such stuff - all referred to the police. But I found them deeply disturbing. I do not think I could do them day in day out.
They are disturbing. I am assured by my new boss (a rather brilliant woman) that you learn to compartmentilise them. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. Do I really want to lose the raw compassion in exchange for some professional objectivity? Right now I feel rage on behalf of the victims. Rage that I have rarely felt in my life.
You are going to have to compartmentalise to keep yourself sane. And channel your rage to try and do right by the victims for all of us.
I worked once with the QC who prosecuted the Fred West case. He said that he coped by talking about his reaction / his feelings to whoever would listen rather than bottle them up. He'd been advised to do this by someone who had seen the very different "stiff upper lip" reaction of those involved in the Moors murders case. Of course this may not work for everyone but I thought it interesting.
When I was a Children’s Panel member, we had some harrowing cases. We were strongly encouraged to talk about our feelings amongst ourselves with the other Panel Members, as we were forbidden to discuss cases with anyone else, including our families. I hope all of you working in challenging areas have a network of supportive colleagues.
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
It is rare for us to be on the same page but reading Starmer's comments this morning on rejection of the single market and freedom of movement could just as well come from a conservative PM
The truth is Brexit needs to be addressed, including improvement in trade and relationship with the EU, and Strarmer is well to the right of me on this
I note Owen Jones is furious with him
"Ripping up the Brexit deal would lead to years more wrangling and arguing, when we should be facing the future. I’m worried that there are senior members of Rishi Sunak’s government who don’t seem to understand that".
If that IS a quote by Starmer rather than a flight of fancy from Hodges (not impossible) then Labour have landed themselves another Jeremy Corbyn. A leader who absented himself on the biggest issue of the last half a century.
He's never been in a better position to put a positive case for the EU. I heard this morning that it has cost £120 billion so far being out of the EU. That's 150 brand new hospitals 600 shiny new schools. Starmer needs to look forward not backwards. It's not leaving the EU that'll keep the Red Wall onside but the benefits that all that extra money could buy.
I don’t think the Red Wall is quite there yet, but another 12, 18, 24 months of Brexit reality will do the trick. People aren’t stupid, they can see what the ongoing process of Brexit is delivering. And they’re not impressed.
I wish Starmer was full-throated, if not quite full fat rejoin, then at least making noises about single market access, but - I hope - he’s simply boxing clever. He needs to win first.
A coalition with the Lib Dems and SNP would suit me, that would give him the pro-EU push he needs. The right-wing press will go big on that possibility, and continue stoking immigration fears, as we go into the next election. They’ll drag up Starmer’s second referendum stuff. He needs to neutralise it.
Moves back towards the EU, Tories out of power for at least a decade, House of Lords reform, maybe even PR. What bliss that little lot would be.
You are right - Red Wall voters are not that stupid. They have worked out that businesses have been using cheap labour for years to undercut their wages and that all the Remain talk that uncontrolled EU immigration had nothing to do with wage stagflation at the unskilled / semi-skilled level was bollocks.
An increased level of living wage, and punitive sanctions against employers breaching the rules, may encourage some of them to invest in skills and equipment.
The first major free trade agreement signed by Britain after Brexit has been branded a failure after new figures showed exports had fallen since it came into force.
Liz Truss signed a “historic” deal with Japan as trade secretary in October 2020, describing it as a “landmark moment for Britain”. It was claimed it would boost trade by billions of pounds and help the UK recover from the pandemic.
However, figures collated by the Department for International Trade show exports to Japan fell from £12.3bn to £11.9bn in the year to June 2022. Exports in goods fell 4.9% to £6.1bn and services fell 2% to £5.8bn.
Bizarre to assume that no other factors may have affected things over the past 2 years. Unless they factored in the COVID effect.
Bizarre that nothing is ever the fault of Brexit yet, as the poll indicates, only 12% of voters think it's going well.
Oh indeed but this one seems ridicxulous to me. Brexit is not the success those whpo voted for it wished but now was the UK doing that well in the EU which itself has many issues. Tghese sort of headlines rahte rlike the endless whinges from Scott, et al fall into the trap of assuming that Rejoin and all would be well. We all know that isn't going to happen nor is it the panacea for the UK's ills .
Rejoining is not an option at the moment, nor is it a panacea.
In political terms, the first step in my mind is to keep attacking Brexit hard until we get to the point where 75% of voters believe it was a mistake. 66% of under 50's already hold that view according to the last poll I saw so I think we are ready well on the way to seeing that. Give it another 5 years at most.The key demographic that still backs Brexit is, not to put put too fine a point on it, dying off year by year.
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
It is rare for us to be on the same page but reading Starmer's comments this morning on rejection of the single market and freedom of movement could just as well come from a conservative PM
The truth is Brexit needs to be addressed, including improvement in trade and relationship with the EU, and Strarmer is well to the right of me on this
I note Owen Jones is furious with him
"Ripping up the Brexit deal would lead to years more wrangling and arguing, when we should be facing the future. I’m worried that there are senior members of Rishi Sunak’s government who don’t seem to understand that".
If that IS a quote by Starmer rather than a flight of fancy from Hodges (not impossible) then Labour have landed themselves another Jeremy Corbyn. A leader who absented himself on the biggest issue of the last half a century.
He's never been in a better position to put a positive case for the EU. I heard this morning that it has cost £120 billion so far being out of the EU. That's 150 brand new hospitals 600 shiny new schools. Starmer needs to look forward not backwards. It's not leaving the EU that'll keep the Red Wall onside but the benefits that all that extra money could buy.
I don’t think the Red Wall is quite there yet, but another 12, 18, 24 months of Brexit reality will do the trick. People aren’t stupid, they can see what the ongoing process of Brexit is delivering. And they’re not impressed.
I wish Starmer was full-throated, if not quite full fat rejoin, then at least making noises about single market access, but - I hope - he’s simply boxing clever. He needs to win first.
A coalition with the Lib Dems and SNP would suit me, that would give him the pro-EU push he needs. The right-wing press will go big on that possibility, and continue stoking immigration fears, as we go into the next election. They’ll drag up Starmer’s second referendum stuff. He needs to neutralise it.
Moves back towards the EU, Tories out of power for at least a decade, House of Lords reform, maybe even PR. What bliss that little lot would be.
Starmer has explicitly ruled out rejoining the single market and freedom of movement, so there is no other way to have a closer relationship with the EU with Starmer
I know some Labour supporters seem to think that this is a ruse to gain power, but then he will go back to a pro EU stance so that says he is just another dishonest politician despite all his self righteousness
I support rejoining the single market and certainly a closer relationship, and it is remarkable that overnight Starmer has become more of a Brexiteer then Sunak who is seeking a closer relationship
‘Starmer has explicitly ruled out rejoining the single market and freedom of movement’.
Pre-referendum, Leavers explicitly ruled out losing single market access. They promised us that nothing would change in terms of our rights to live and work in Europe.
Working with Midjourney, director Tristan Holmes created this video over a 30 day period entering prompts, using AI image generation of more than 10,000 frames, and creating frames to link the video together.
Even the GUARDIAN adored the Wellcome Collection as recently as this summer gone
‘The permanent collection of medical artefacts is a ripe mix of Angela Carter, Freud and David Cronenberg, with dim red lighting hitting shining rows of gigantic curved forceps, rusty ancient prosthetic limbs, phrenology skulls, big-boobed fertility goddess effigies, historical sex aids, apothecary jars, smutty pictures carved on ivory, intricate medicine-themed oil paintings and Napoleon’s manky toothbrush.
My two favourite items are a Chinese doctor’s surgery sign strung with fronds of extracted human teeth, and, from Scotland in the early 1880s, an entire decapitated ram’s head complete with long curly horns, with a silver snuff box mounted atop the cranium. These fetishised objects are at once kinky and esoteric’
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
It is rare for us to be on the same page but reading Starmer's comments this morning on rejection of the single market and freedom of movement could just as well come from a conservative PM
The truth is Brexit needs to be addressed, including improvement in trade and relationship with the EU, and Strarmer is well to the right of me on this
I note Owen Jones is furious with him
"Ripping up the Brexit deal would lead to years more wrangling and arguing, when we should be facing the future. I’m worried that there are senior members of Rishi Sunak’s government who don’t seem to understand that".
If that IS a quote by Starmer rather than a flight of fancy from Hodges (not impossible) then Labour have landed themselves another Jeremy Corbyn. A leader who absented himself on the biggest issue of the last half a century.
He's never been in a better position to put a positive case for the EU. I heard this morning that it has cost £120 billion so far being out of the EU. That's 150 brand new hospitals 600 shiny new schools. Starmer needs to look forward not backwards. It's not leaving the EU that'll keep the Red Wall onside but the benefits that all that extra money could buy.
I don’t think the Red Wall is quite there yet, but another 12, 18, 24 months of Brexit reality will do the trick. People aren’t stupid, they can see what the ongoing process of Brexit is delivering. And they’re not impressed.
I wish Starmer was full-throated, if not quite full fat rejoin, then at least making noises about single market access, but - I hope - he’s simply boxing clever. He needs to win first.
A coalition with the Lib Dems and SNP would suit me, that would give him the pro-EU push he needs. The right-wing press will go big on that possibility, and continue stoking immigration fears, as we go into the next election. They’ll drag up Starmer’s second referendum stuff. He needs to neutralise it.
Moves back towards the EU, Tories out of power for at least a decade, House of Lords reform, maybe even PR. What bliss that little lot would be.
Move back towards EU plus PR and an elected Lords is also ideal for Farage. PR guarantees him dozens of seats unlike FPTP and PR also gives him the chance to be Kingmaker as the Sweden Democrats now are and as UKIP would have been with PR in 2015 or even PM as Meloni now is in Italy.
Plenty of chances for RefUK to pick up seats in an elected upper house too
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Even the GUARDIAN adored the Wellcome Collection as recently as this summer gone
‘The permanent collection of medical artefacts is a ripe mix of Angela Carter, Freud and David Cronenberg, with dim red lighting hitting shining rows of gigantic curved forceps, rusty ancient prosthetic limbs, phrenology skulls, big-boobed fertility goddess effigies, historical sex aids, apothecary jars, smutty pictures carved on ivory, intricate medicine-themed oil paintings and Napoleon’s manky toothbrush.
My two favourite items are a Chinese doctor’s surgery sign strung with fronds of extracted human teeth, and, from Scotland in the early 1880s, an entire decapitated ram’s head complete with long curly horns, with a silver snuff box mounted atop the cranium. These fetishised objects are at once kinky and esoteric’
Sounds fun. Of course it had to go. We can’t have fun, can we?
It should be replaced by one single huge statue of George Floyd, made of gold, kneeling on the necks of 17 billion evil white working class children
They will now have to flog themselves in order to cleanse themselves for enjoying a racist, sexist, ableist exhibition....in fact probably not enough, the reviewer needs to be cancelled as they promoted it.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
I admire you for doing such cases. I have been involved in a few investigations which have involved such stuff - all referred to the police. But I found them deeply disturbing. I do not think I could do them day in day out.
They are disturbing. I am assured by my new boss (a rather brilliant woman) that you learn to compartmentilise them. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. Do I really want to lose the raw compassion in exchange for some professional objectivity? Right now I feel rage on behalf of the victims. Rage that I have rarely felt in my life.
@Cyclefree rolling back a few steps thanks for pushing the Fire Brigade story - I confess I am one who scrolled past it and probably wouldn’t have taken enough notice without your provocation upthread.
We are in an interesting time with anything to do with discrimination against groups. As someone who finds himself very much at the centre of overlapping aspects of privilege (British white male in a secure job, heterosexual and with a secure life partner, and relatively few past traumas) I’m increasingly aware of the need not to just not be consciously discriminatory, but also to listen to accounts of institutional or structural discrimination and to challenge them.
At the same time, and despite the above being my own political view, I am increasingly aware that this IS a very political area, and many people will react strongly to my paragraph above, believing it to be woke nonsense.
For some people that reaction is simply a fragile response to having their hidden privilege exposed to them. For others, though, I think there is a genuine concern about the implications for society of admitting to the levels of structural and institutional discrimination that exist.
I’m not defending that point of view except to say that I think the latter concern I refer to is genuinely held, and it is probably what motivates a muted response to a report that asks us to face up to institutional sexism and misogyny.
I’m really not sure what the answer is - but agree we should be discussing it much more than we are.
Thank you.
I think there is much in what you say. It is uncomfortable to have to face up to what goes on under the surface or hidden away or not spoken about. See that extract from an article on The Critic posted earlier. The more personal section of this article I wrote is may attempt to set out some of the stuff which I have sought not to dwell on because it could paralyse you. (https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/why-this-7221bc795af0) I think I have reached a more reflective age but also I am angrier about it now because it should not be like this. And as an older woman I don't give a toss anymore about saying what needs to be said (not that I ever did) but I feel freer now.
Countries have had to do the same. A very good example is Ireland - for decades the stories about how women and children were treated by the Church was hushed up at every level. It was their shame. And then the stories came out and people realised that it was the Church's shame and society's shame. And it was the silence and the hushing that allowed it to continue and be dismissed. John McGahern, a very fine Irish writer (do read his books) wrote about this in his novels, was dismissed as a teacher and had to leave the country. "Cancel culture" if you want to put it in contemporary terms.
That is why I react so furiously at attempts to stifle debate, to say "we must not speak about this", "oh it's unimportant", you are being .... insert insult of choice....., to refusals to listen, really listen. Listening is hard - really hard if you do it properly. And it should make you think. Listen to the George Gibney podcast on iPlayer (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p08njhrm). A very successful Irish sports coach. A prolific sex abuser for decades. What makes it compelling listening is hearing the stories of the women he abused (girls when it happened). The relief at finally being heard, being able to speak about what happened, at being believed. The pain at having to live a life burying away the evil done to you, at having to think that this was normal and you had to accept it. There is one episode about a very promising swimmer raped by him at age 17 whose whole life was ruined. She gave up what she loved. She never recovered. She is now in a mental institution from which she will likely never leave. Her sister tells her story. Multiply that by hundreds. One man. The IICSA reports do much the same.
I do not know what the answers are. In the end I think it comes down to this. Always challenge, always be curious and ask and unpick assumptions rather than accepting them with blind faith. Question received opinions. Be like the child in The Emperor's New Clothes, asking the obvious.
And remember what Burke said: "For evil to happen, all it takes is for good men to do nothing." Though I think this is a better guide to action: "Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Melanie Keen - She also sits on the advisory board of the Government Art Collection
They really are the Cultural Revolutionaries, and they really do want to tear down all the temples
When Labour gets in, the great handover will begin, when the British Museum is stripped of most of its more compelling exhibits, many other museums will follow
At this point they are basically urinating on our favourite tea pot and daring us to stop them
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Sounds a bit thick, apart from anything. Like shutting down Auschwitz as a museum because it perpetuates outdated stereotypes about the correct treatment of Jews.
And it is a breach of trust. Wellcome left his collections to be seen. If you don't like them, bugger off and stop accepting his cash as salary.
French cloud operator OVHcloud has been granted dedicated funding for its expansion by the European Investment Bank (EIB), comprising a €200 million ($208 million) credit facility to help it open new datacenters.
According to the EIB, which describes itself as the "lending arm of the European Union," the €200 million credit facility demonstrates the bank's determination to actively support European digital players, and is in line with the EU's priorities for strategic autonomy in the area of new technologies. https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/25/ovhcloud_eu_funding/
Erm, wasn't one of the reasons for Brexit that we should be able to support strategic industries, at least until Dominic Cummings was sacked?
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
It is rare for us to be on the same page but reading Starmer's comments this morning on rejection of the single market and freedom of movement could just as well come from a conservative PM
The truth is Brexit needs to be addressed, including improvement in trade and relationship with the EU, and Strarmer is well to the right of me on this
I note Owen Jones is furious with him
"Ripping up the Brexit deal would lead to years more wrangling and arguing, when we should be facing the future. I’m worried that there are senior members of Rishi Sunak’s government who don’t seem to understand that".
If that IS a quote by Starmer rather than a flight of fancy from Hodges (not impossible) then Labour have landed themselves another Jeremy Corbyn. A leader who absented himself on the biggest issue of the last half a century.
He's never been in a better position to put a positive case for the EU. I heard this morning that it has cost £120 billion so far being out of the EU. That's 150 brand new hospitals 600 shiny new schools. Starmer needs to look forward not backwards. It's not leaving the EU that'll keep the Red Wall onside but the benefits that all that extra money could buy.
I don’t think the Red Wall is quite there yet, but another 12, 18, 24 months of Brexit reality will do the trick. People aren’t stupid, they can see what the ongoing process of Brexit is delivering. And they’re not impressed.
I wish Starmer was full-throated, if not quite full fat rejoin, then at least making noises about single market access, but - I hope - he’s simply boxing clever. He needs to win first.
A coalition with the Lib Dems and SNP would suit me, that would give him the pro-EU push he needs. The right-wing press will go big on that possibility, and continue stoking immigration fears, as we go into the next election. They’ll drag up Starmer’s second referendum stuff. He needs to neutralise it.
Moves back towards the EU, Tories out of power for at least a decade, House of Lords reform, maybe even PR. What bliss that little lot would be.
Starmer has explicitly ruled out rejoining the single market and freedom of movement, so there is no other way to have a closer relationship with the EU with Starmer
I know some Labour supporters seem to think that this is a ruse to gain power, but then he will go back to a pro EU stance so that says he is just another dishonest politician despite all his self righteousness
I support rejoining the single market and certainly a closer relationship, and it is remarkable that overnight Starmer has become more of a Brexiteer then Sunak who is seeking a closer relationship
‘Starmer has explicitly ruled out rejoining the single market and freedom of movement’.
Pre-referendum, Leavers explicitly ruled out losing single market access. They promised us that nothing would change in terms of our rights to live and work in Europe.
Things change.
They said there would be access, which if course is different from membership. Both sides were clear it meant leaving the single market.
Anyway the cat has now graciously granted me permission to get on with my day. So ....
I hope you gave the cat a stroke in gratitude 👍
I am but a humble servant there to service the cat's every needs, in her eyes anyway. And if I don't she makes her feelings known very loudly and persistently indeed.
She will expect food shortly, a saucer of milk and a well laid lit fire, along with my lap (again) and prime position on the sofa.
The thing with any of these exhibits that I am sure portray outdated stereotypes and a certain element of "white saviour", if you were really serious about education and telling an accurate story etc (rather than really driven by a political / cultural marxism), you simply add a load of additional info around the exhibit that states the context and that this comes from a different eta, we have thankfully moved on etc.
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Sounds a bit thick, apart from anything. Like shutting down Auschwitz as a museum because it perpetuates outdated stereotypes about the correct treatment of Jews.
And it is a breach of trust. Wellcome left his collections to be seen. If you don't like them, bugger off and stop accepting his cash as salary.
Not only that, they announced they wanted to close it on Saturday, then closed it on… Sunday. An historic and much loved London collection/museum. Gone in 24 hours. Bang
At what point do we ALL realise Woke is very real and very dangerous. Not least because these Woke people KNOW they are completely morally right and there is no room for debate. No time shall be given for discussion. They just burn what they hate
Bunch of Woke curators take over an historic and much loved London museum. They tweak it about for being politically correct, then they decide it is irredeemably racist and ableist and the rest, and they shut it down completely with a few hours warning
Sounds a bit thick, apart from anything. Like shutting down Auschwitz as a museum because it perpetuates outdated stereotypes about the correct treatment of Jews.
And it is a breach of trust. Wellcome left his collections to be seen. If you don't like them, bugger off and stop accepting his cash as salary.
Not only that, they announced they wanted to close it on Saturday, then closed it on… Sunday. An historic and much loved London collection/museum. Gone in 24 hours. Bang
At what point do we ALL realise Woke is very real and very dangerous. Not least because these Woke people KNOW they are completely morally right and there is no room for debate. No time shall be given for discussion. They just burn what they hate
There has been a big controversy in the computer science community recently. For a major conference, somebody proposed some new work tackling the "Byzantine generals problem" (a well known problem in computer science).
A reviewer flat out refused to review the paper and gave it lowest possible score (and thus would be an instant rejection to the conference) because they used the term Byzantine, demanding they withdrew any mention of that word.....of course they couldn't because they had to write in their paper what exactly the problem is they were addressing and all the historic literature.
The authors even tried bending over backwards by saying they would change the title and minimise the use of the word...no not good enough, all references to it must be removed.
Brexit is a poison chalice; Starmer's best tactic is to keep his approach to it as vague as possible for as long as possible.
To be fair there is nothing vague about Starmer's comments this morning
He is becoming a leading Brexiteer and it must annoy a considerable number of his supporters
You don't win anything by being pusillanimous. Voters will accept someone going against even deeply held views if they are presented logically and with conviction. Voters above all want a leader who leads and providing they have respect voters will follow. Blair should be Starmer's template not Theresa May.
It is rare for us to be on the same page but reading Starmer's comments this morning on rejection of the single market and freedom of movement could just as well come from a conservative PM
The truth is Brexit needs to be addressed, including improvement in trade and relationship with the EU, and Strarmer is well to the right of me on this
I note Owen Jones is furious with him
"Ripping up the Brexit deal would lead to years more wrangling and arguing, when we should be facing the future. I’m worried that there are senior members of Rishi Sunak’s government who don’t seem to understand that".
If that IS a quote by Starmer rather than a flight of fancy from Hodges (not impossible) then Labour have landed themselves another Jeremy Corbyn. A leader who absented himself on the biggest issue of the last half a century.
He's never been in a better position to put a positive case for the EU. I heard this morning that it has cost £120 billion so far being out of the EU. That's 150 brand new hospitals 600 shiny new schools. Starmer needs to look forward not backwards. It's not leaving the EU that'll keep the Red Wall onside but the benefits that all that extra money could buy.
I don’t think the Red Wall is quite there yet, but another 12, 18, 24 months of Brexit reality will do the trick. People aren’t stupid, they can see what the ongoing process of Brexit is delivering. And they’re not impressed.
I wish Starmer was full-throated, if not quite full fat rejoin, then at least making noises about single market access, but - I hope - he’s simply boxing clever. He needs to win first.
A coalition with the Lib Dems and SNP would suit me, that would give him the pro-EU push he needs. The right-wing press will go big on that possibility, and continue stoking immigration fears, as we go into the next election. They’ll drag up Starmer’s second referendum stuff. He needs to neutralise it.
Moves back towards the EU, Tories out of power for at least a decade, House of Lords reform, maybe even PR. What bliss that little lot would be.
You are right - Red Wall voters are not that stupid. They have worked out that businesses have been using cheap labour for years to undercut their wages and that all the Remain talk that uncontrolled EU immigration had nothing to do with wage stagflation at the unskilled / semi-skilled level was bollocks.
An increased level of living wage, and punitive sanctions against employers breaching the rules, may encourage some of them to invest in skills and equipment.
Which is why Starmer would be smart to fix those issues first.
Though apparently increasing the number of medical staff trained in the U.K. is Gammon, of course.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
I didn't.
My question was "Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave badly to so many women."
Not all men.
But lots of men. In lots of places. To lots of women. And quite a lot of senior men - see @Foxy's reference to the Head of the Royal Navy upthread - don't seem to understand what the problem is.
It is not good enough in response to this question to say that you love women etc. This may well be true. There are lots of lovely men around. But the fact is that the prejudice and bad behaviour and sexual abuse is being done by lots of men and they are men rather more like you than perhaps nice men like you are prepared to admit.
I had a case of two men at work sharing some appalling work emails about a female colleague and the effects of childbirth on a certain part of her anatomy and the sexual pleasure it could give. It was gross. It was on a work email channel which she would be able to see when she returned to work.
When I spoke to them and asked them whether they would like others to write about their wives and girlfriends in such a manner, they said of course not, they'd be appalled, would deck whoever did that etc . Then I asked why then they thought it ok for them to do it about a female colleague and you could hear pennies dropping in the embarrassed and long silence that followed.
I put in Greer's quote to provoke. The second quote was used by counsel to the Aberfan families in the public inquiry. It is worth reading how he uses it. (See here - https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/the-price-of-indifference-c25d96c64e0b.) Much the same sentiment was expressed recently by counsel in the closing speeches in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
There is I sense a reluctance to ask questions about why it is that behaviour like this persists despite everything that has been done - all the training and education etc. I have discussed this with my daughter and she has stories about male behaviour equal in unacceptability as those I endured when I was her age. There has been some change and some improvement but nowhere near as much as people seem to think and in some ways matters have got worse.
It is worth discussing I think.
I have now been responsible for a number of sex prosecutions and will no doubt soon be responsible for many more. The pattern that I see is that many men, and it is nearly always men in this context, abuse their power over another to obtain sexual satisfaction. So I have had a monster who picked up young and vulnerable drug addicts, taking them back to his flat on promises of drink, drugs or even warmth. I have had the inevitable step father. I have had the employee of numerous care homes who abused vulnerable young girls and simply got moved on when he was found out. I have had the men who take advantage of someone who is overcome with drink or drugs and vulnerable. I have also had the out of control youngster who had been led by pron to believe all he needed was to touch women in a particular place and they would become enthusiastic partners. I think that this is a different category, young men literally driven mad by their own hormones, but they share the gross, vile and evil indifference of the consequences on their victims.
I think it is true that for men the bully and the sadist often manifest themselves in sex acts as a way of emphasising control and humiliation of their victim. Women guilty of these things can be just as nasty but rarely use sex in the same way. This kind of behaviour is very much a part of the human condition. You can improve attitudes by teaching respect, you can introduce safeguards for those in vulnerable situation and you can try to ensure that young people who over indulge are safe but you will never end these predilections. It's human nature and it's vile.
I admire you for doing such cases. I have been involved in a few investigations which have involved such stuff - all referred to the police. But I found them deeply disturbing. I do not think I could do them day in day out.
They are disturbing. I am assured by my new boss (a rather brilliant woman) that you learn to compartmentilise them. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. Do I really want to lose the raw compassion in exchange for some professional objectivity? Right now I feel rage on behalf of the victims. Rage that I have rarely felt in my life.
@Cyclefree rolling back a few steps thanks for pushing the Fire Brigade story - I confess I am one who scrolled past it and probably wouldn’t have taken enough notice without your provocation upthread.
We are in an interesting time with anything to do with discrimination against groups. As someone who finds himself very much at the centre of overlapping aspects of privilege (British white male in a secure job, heterosexual and with a secure life partner, and relatively few past traumas) I’m increasingly aware of the need not to just not be consciously discriminatory, but also to listen to accounts of institutional or structural discrimination and to challenge them.
At the same time, and despite the above being my own political view, I am increasingly aware that this IS a very political area, and many people will react strongly to my paragraph above, believing it to be woke nonsense.
For some people that reaction is simply a fragile response to having their hidden privilege exposed to them. For others, though, I think there is a genuine concern about the implications for society of admitting to the levels of structural and institutional discrimination that exist.
I’m not defending that point of view except to say that I think the latter concern I refer to is genuinely held, and it is probably what motivates a muted response to a report that asks us to face up to institutional sexism and misogyny.
I’m really not sure what the answer is - but agree we should be discussing it much more than we are.
Thank you.
I think there is much in what you say. It is uncomfortable to have to face up to what goes on under the surface or hidden away or not spoken about. See that extract from an article on The Critic posted earlier. The more personal section of this article I wrote is may attempt to set out some of the stuff which I have sought not to dwell on because it could paralyse you. (https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/why-this-7221bc795af0) I think I have reached a more reflective age but also I am angrier about it now because it should not be like this. And as an older woman I don't give a toss anymore about saying what needs to be said (not that I ever did) but I feel freer now.
Countries have had to do the same. A very good example is Ireland - for decades the stories about how women and children were treated by the Church was hushed up at every level. It was their shame. And then the stories came out and people realised that it was the Church's shame and society's shame. And it was the silence and the hushing that allowed it to continue and be dismissed. John McGahern, a very fine Irish writer (do read his books) wrote about this in his novels, was dismissed as a teacher and had to leave the country. "Cancel culture" if you want to put it in contemporary terms.
That is why I react so furiously at attempts to stifle debate, to say "we must not speak about this", "oh it's unimportant", you are being .... insert insult of choice....., to refusals to listen, really listen. Listening is hard - really hard if you do it properly. And it should make you think. Listen to the George Gibney podcast on iPlayer (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p08njhrm). A very successful Irish sports coach. A prolific sex abuser for decades. What makes it compelling listening is hearing the stories of the women he abused (girls when it happened). The relief at finally being heard, being able to speak about what happened, at being believed. The pain at having to live a life burying away the evil done to you, at having to think that this was normal and you had to accept it. There is one episode about a very promising swimmer raped by him at age 17 whose whole life was ruined. She gave up what she loved. She never recovered. She is now in a mental institution from which she will likely never leave. Her sister tells her story. Multiply that by hundreds. One man. The IICSA reports do much the same.
I do not know what the answers are. In the end I think it comes down to this. Always challenge, always be curious and ask and unpick assumptions rather than accepting them with blind faith. Question received opinions. Be like the child in The Emperor's New Clothes, asking the obvious.
And remember what Burke said: "For evil to happen, all it takes is for good men to do nothing." Though I think this is a better guide to action: "Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."
True but we have also seen people alive and dead from Lord Bramall to Sir Leon Brittan, Nigel Evans, Bill Roache and Sir Cliff Richard and Bishop George Bell and many other people not famous have their reputations trashed and police and court cases against them based on evidence which turned out to be lies or which did not hold up. Not everyone accused of abuse is guilty of abuse
Comments
Interconnectors also mean that we can sell more surplus wind, incidentally.
Because when you live within your means the only way to increase your spending is to increase your earnings.
Which would lead to a better focus on issues such as education, training, useful transport, energy costs and affordable housing.
But I agree. I don't particularly like Ishmael and certainly have plenty of run ins with him, but I don't think active posters like him who keep the debate rolling along should be banned.
To be honest if they are going to ban posters for offending people then you and I are totally screwed.
In the meanwhile women will be raped and abused and put in fear and forced to withdraw from places they might otherwise use and denied services they need. It is unconscionable.
From https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/why-this-7221bc795af0
If Starmer wants to lose the next GE, here's what he should do:
-promise the British public that he's going to re-open the most acrimonious debate in recent UK political history
- push freedom of movement to the top of the political agenda.
I think what people are missing is that it's not just about winning the Red Wall. It's also about not alienating the millions of voters (remainers and leavers) who couldn't bear going through the Brexit shenanigans again. Starmer is not going to win, and he knows it, with an election slogan of:
Let's piss people off with five more years of 'oh no, not fucking Brexit again'.
(Once Labour has won the GE of course, it's a different matter).
So BINO sees the Tories lose 3/4 of their current vote to Farage while gaining only a handful of upper middle class LDs. That leads to wipeout in the blue wall as well as redwall
@visegrad24
Something massive is happening in cities across China since yesterday and Western media isn’t covering it at all.
Chinese social media is flooded with videos.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1596584688516493312
They do seem to getting a bit tetchy over lock downs.
They are stained, crushed and yellowing but Balenciaga’s range of “worn-out” sneakers, launched in collaboration with Adidas this month, have sold out. This is despite an eye-watering price tag of almost £700.
The brand-new shoes, described by one reviewer as “looking like they’ve been flattened by a 20-ton steamroller”, are no longer available on the Balenciaga website, and are being priced on one specialist sneaker auction site at £2,500.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/25/645-pound-adidas-stan-smith-trainers-fly-off-the-shelves-at-balenciaga
This bit was interesting:
Notably, the age of luxury consumers is getting younger. A Bain & Company report released this month found that the Gen Z and millennial demographics were driving luxury in 2022, a sector that is forecast to grow by 21% in 2022. This demographic will probably appreciate Balenciaga’s meme-worthy irony.
There's probably some explanation involving unaffordable housing and student debt.
I worked once with the QC who prosecuted the Fred West case. He said that he coped by talking about his reaction / his feelings to whoever would listen rather than bottle them up. He'd been advised to do this by someone who had seen the very different "stiff upper lip" reaction of those involved in the Moors murders case. Of course this may not work for everyone but I thought it interesting.
He should however promise closer economic ties with the EU which I don’t think will be a problem .
There’s really no mileage in re-opening the EU debate as most Remainers I know including myself realize the ship has sailed and we don’t want more division and acrimony .
In opposition it might be different. For Nixon to China reasons I could easily imagine it being the Tories not Labour who first pivot back to EU or EU-like status.
David Quantick
@quantick
Fucking hell, Now That's What I Call Music were a great band. Prolific, consistent, but also eclectic and hard to pin down.
But I must be off. I have deadlines!!
As to the numbers I believe those of the last year include very large numbers of Ukrainian and to a lesser extent Afghan refugees.
Plus maybe 100k Hong Kongers - who will certainly skew towards the employable.
Having now looked into it I suspect that's going to end in disaster for someone or other.
https://twitter.com/WarMonitor3/status/1596504001616531456
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/26/revealed-half-of-english-police-forces-fail-to-meet-standards-in-investigations
I don't believe so. If this Wikipedia account is reasonably accurate, the Times dumped the problem on the Pulitzer Board, which failed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty#Calls_for_revocation_of_Pulitzer_Prize,_1990–2003
(In recent years, so many Pulitzers have been awarded in error that I sometimes refer to them as the "Pulitzer Reprimands". And a few times I have suggested they be renamed the Duranty Prizes.)
One told me that she was living in 2 bed flat. The landlord came in and divided the living room into 2. So now she lives in a 4 bed flat with on living room. Finding a new place is apparently hard….
The grads in general seem not have vast amounts of personal possessions, but have some quite expensive items for what they do have. Compensating for shitty accommodation?
I wish Starmer was full-throated, if not quite full fat rejoin, then at least making noises about single market access, but - I hope - he’s simply boxing clever. He needs to win first.
A coalition with the Lib Dems and SNP would suit me, that would give him the pro-EU push he needs. The right-wing press will go big on that possibility, and continue stoking immigration fears, as we go into the next election. They’ll drag up Starmer’s second referendum stuff. He needs to neutralise it.
Moves back towards the EU, Tories out of power for at least a decade, House of Lords reform, maybe even PR. What bliss that little lot would be.
Starmer said he would lead from the centre. He'll never get a better chance. All the loopy loos are sitting behind Sunak. It's not difficult. Do a Macron. I'm sure a right wing Brexit Party will emerge under Sunak or Johnson or Farage or all three.
Meanwhile Starmer can stand on the centre ground where a large majority of the country stands and from that position lead the rejoiners
I know some Labour supporters seem to think that this is a ruse to gain power, but then he will go back to a pro EU stance so that says he is just another dishonest politician despite all his self righteousness
I support rejoining the single market and certainly a closer relationship, and it is remarkable that overnight Starmer has become more of a Brexiteer then Sunak who is seeking a closer relationship
If you doubt this, look at the respective reactions in Moscow, Paris and Berlin to the events of 2022.
I think it looks fantastic btw.
However, based on reports, I do think Keir might be making a mistake. Of course I don’t expect full-throated Remainerism, far from it, but he has to show some leg to working families and that includes something that approaches an economic strategy, and that’s not possible if you have decided to be militantly Brexit.
They can get beat by Spain now and still have a reasonable chance of qualifying.
We are in an interesting time with anything to do with discrimination against groups. As someone who finds himself very much at the centre of overlapping aspects of privilege (British white male in a secure job, heterosexual and with a secure life partner, and relatively few past traumas) I’m increasingly aware of the need not to just not be consciously discriminatory, but also to listen to accounts of institutional or structural discrimination and to challenge them.
At the same time, and despite the above being my own political view, I am increasingly aware that this IS a very political area, and many people will react strongly to my paragraph above, believing it to be woke nonsense.
For some people that reaction is simply a fragile response to having their hidden privilege exposed to them. For others, though, I think there is a genuine concern about the implications for society of admitting to the levels of structural and institutional discrimination that exist.
I’m not defending that point of view except to say that I think the latter concern I refer to is genuinely held, and it is probably what motivates a muted response to a report that asks us to face up to institutional sexism and misogyny.
I’m really not sure what the answer is - but agree we should be discussing it much more than we are.
The percentage of working age people thinking it's going well is even lower.
https://twitter.com/PhantomPower14/status/1596514109465296898?s=20&t=opVxskC7HmoKyS-7TW2l-w
Then they tweet: do we even need museums?
True story
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/nov/27/wellcome-collection-in-london-shuts-racist-sexist-and-ableist-medical-history-gallery
Or maybe its just a general 'the government is unpopular, time for a change' mentality.
After all what has happened in the last 18 months to change minds on Brexit ? Very little.
Compared to the multitude of events that have happened to make the government unpopular.
In political terms, the first step in my mind is to keep attacking Brexit hard until we get to the point where 75% of voters believe it was a mistake. 66% of under 50's already hold that view according to the last poll I saw so I think we are ready well on the way to seeing that. Give it another 5 years at most.The key demographic that still backs Brexit is, not to put put too fine a point on it, dying off year by year.
We've got the biggest fall in real wages in history.
Pre-referendum, Leavers explicitly ruled out losing single market access. They promised us that nothing would change in terms of our rights to live and work in Europe.
Things change.
Working with Midjourney, director Tristan Holmes created this video over a 30 day period entering prompts, using AI image generation of more than 10,000 frames, and creating frames to link the video together.
Disturbed - Bad Man [Official Music Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpUpVznI4Yc
‘The permanent collection of medical artefacts is a ripe mix of Angela Carter, Freud and David Cronenberg, with dim red lighting hitting shining rows of gigantic curved forceps, rusty ancient prosthetic limbs, phrenology skulls, big-boobed fertility goddess effigies, historical sex aids, apothecary jars, smutty pictures carved on ivory, intricate medicine-themed oil paintings and Napoleon’s manky toothbrush.
My two favourite items are a Chinese doctor’s surgery sign strung with fronds of extracted human teeth, and, from Scotland in the early 1880s, an entire decapitated ram’s head complete with long curly horns, with a silver snuff box mounted atop the cranium. These fetishised objects are at once kinky and esoteric’
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/jun/27/macabre-biased-and-fascinating-why-you-should-visit-the-wellcome-collection
Sounds fun. Of course it had to go. We can’t have fun, can we?
It should be replaced by one single huge statue of George Floyd, made of gold, kneeling on the necks of 17 billion evil white working class children
Plenty of chances for RefUK to pick up seats in an elected upper house too
I think there is much in what you say. It is uncomfortable to have to face up to what goes on under the surface or hidden away or not spoken about. See that extract from an article on The Critic posted earlier. The more personal section of this article I wrote is may attempt to set out some of the stuff which I have sought not to dwell on because it could paralyse you. (https://medium.com/@cyclefree2/why-this-7221bc795af0) I think I have reached a more reflective age but also I am angrier about it now because it should not be like this. And as an older woman I don't give a toss anymore about saying what needs to be said (not that I ever did) but I feel freer now.
Countries have had to do the same. A very good example is Ireland - for decades the stories about how women and children were treated by the Church was hushed up at every level. It was their shame. And then the stories came out and people realised that it was the Church's shame and society's shame. And it was the silence and the hushing that allowed it to continue and be dismissed. John McGahern, a very fine Irish writer (do read his books) wrote about this in his novels, was dismissed as a teacher and had to leave the country. "Cancel culture" if you want to put it in contemporary terms.
That is why I react so furiously at attempts to stifle debate, to say "we must not speak about this", "oh it's unimportant", you are being .... insert insult of choice....., to refusals to listen, really listen. Listening is hard - really hard if you do it properly. And it should make you think. Listen to the George Gibney podcast on iPlayer (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p08njhrm). A very successful Irish sports coach. A prolific sex abuser for decades. What makes it compelling listening is hearing the stories of the women he abused (girls when it happened). The relief at finally being heard, being able to speak about what happened, at being believed. The pain at having to live a life burying away the evil done to you, at having to think that this was normal and you had to accept it. There is one episode about a very promising swimmer raped by him at age 17 whose whole life was ruined. She gave up what she loved. She never recovered. She is now in a mental institution from which she will likely never leave. Her sister tells her story. Multiply that by hundreds. One man. The IICSA reports do much the same.
I do not know what the answers are. In the end I think it comes down to this. Always challenge, always be curious and ask and unpick assumptions rather than accepting them with blind faith. Question received opinions. Be like the child in The Emperor's New Clothes, asking the obvious.
And remember what Burke said: "For evil to happen, all it takes is for good men to do nothing." Though I think this is a better guide to action: "Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."
When Labour gets in, the great handover will begin, when the British Museum is stripped of most of its more compelling exhibits, many other museums will follow
At this point they are basically urinating on our favourite tea pot and daring us to stop them
And it is a breach of trust. Wellcome left his collections to be seen. If you don't like them, bugger off and stop accepting his cash as salary.
According to the EIB, which describes itself as the "lending arm of the European Union," the €200 million credit facility demonstrates the bank's determination to actively support European digital players, and is in line with the EU's priorities for strategic autonomy in the area of new technologies.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/25/ovhcloud_eu_funding/
Erm, wasn't one of the reasons for Brexit that we should be able to support strategic industries, at least until Dominic Cummings was sacked?
I am but a humble servant there to service the cat's every needs, in her eyes anyway. And if I don't she makes her feelings known very loudly and persistently indeed.
She will expect food shortly, a saucer of milk and a well laid lit fire, along with my lap (again) and prime position on the sofa.
At what point do we ALL realise Woke is very real and very dangerous. Not least because these Woke people KNOW they are completely morally right and there is no room for debate. No time shall be given for discussion. They just burn what they hate
A reviewer flat out refused to review the paper and gave it lowest possible score (and thus would be an instant rejection to the conference) because they used the term Byzantine, demanding they withdrew any mention of that word.....of course they couldn't because they had to write in their paper what exactly the problem is they were addressing and all the historic literature.
The authors even tried bending over backwards by saying they would change the title and minimise the use of the word...no not good enough, all references to it must be removed.
Though apparently increasing the number of medical staff trained in the U.K. is Gammon, of course.