Loose Ends

Misogyny: noun Dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women. Simple huh? But no The very idea of misogyny has always seemed rather bizarre to me. My mother was an incredible woman, as was her mother, I loved them both deeply, the idea I could have a dislike of them is just completely alien. Yet recently, public discourse (lets talk Twitter) is littered with the word. Laurence Fox finds himself on the verge of the sack from his latest job because he wouldn't want to shag a particular type of woman (ie: feminists who regularly mock men) In particular his ire was directed toward an obscure, female journalist with a history of mocking men. But is that misogyny? It doesn't fit the dictionary definition, he doesn't have a dislike or prejudice toward ALL women, just a certain type. I have to be honest, I wouldn't want to shag a raging feminist either, but this doesn't narrow the dating pool much, very few women buy into the idea of feminism anyway (certai...

Its nice to be able to forgive yourself, after all, everybody makes mistakes. Who among us have never regretted something they said or did? So forgiving oneself is never all "that" bad. Unless you're an axe wielding, homicidal maniac that is, then you would have to be a narcissist on an unprecedented level to be able to forgive yourself. But what if you wanted to not only blame and forgive yourself, yet also blame everyone else and forgive them too?  Well that's a problem, to cloak yourself and everyone else in the shadow of guilt, only to forgive everyone (including obviously yourself) suggests a level of self love and appreciation that very few of us possess. Not for The Guardians Marina Hyde it isn't though. OK Russell Brand is the object of Hyde's self forgiveness, but this isn't really about Brand at all Article here So lets have a look under the hood in this textbook example of self-flagellation with a twist of brutish collective responsibility all t...

So, the boy Russel Brand seems to be in a spot of bother. After the latest Dispatches episode dropped on Channel 4 where numerous allegations have been made about him, Twitter has blown up. Opinions range from he is 100% guilty (obviously from the believe all women far left camp) to, its not fair for someone to have this trial by social media and all this information should have been handed to the police. And of course there's the conspiracy theorists, these are always the most fun. Kevin Maguire (affectionately known as Commie Kev) always known for his unusual takes seemed to think that there was a mass movement of cheers and standing ovations for Brand. Yet as much as I looked, I never saw a shred of this anywhere. Kev very often likes to build himself a strawman to attack, and this one was a whopper Jack Rear of The Telegraph appears to believe that the very left wing, Jeremy Corbyn voting Brand is now part of the "alt-right" I cant quite get my head round that one. Ja...

I like studies, some are good, based on solid evidence, yet some are really bad, manipulating the data to fit a certain agenda. But the important thing when looking at a study is to appreciate that you're very often not looking at the data itself, rather, you're looking at someone else's interpretation of that data. So lets analyse how someone interprets data from what essentially isn't a very good study (not asking good enough questions) Twitter user Greta McLachlan, who is apparently a General surgical trainee is a prime example in reading the top sheet only. I always find it best that if you're going to quote something, at least have a look underneath what you're actually quoting. But it seems to me that Greta is only seeking to qualify her own preconceived ideas. Tweet begins You cant deny the experience of 1400 people 89% of women and 81%of men witnessed sexual misconduct 63% of women and 23% experience sexual harassment 29% of women and 7% of men are sexua...

So, Nick Fletcher (conservative MP for Don Valley) has recently suggested a minister for men. This seems like a fairly reasonable idea, after all, Kemi Badenoch is currently minister for women, so why shouldn't men have their own MP who can focus on issues relating specifically to men? Personally, I'm not a fan of this kind of identity politics, its all very left wing ideology and is always going to promote discord rather than harmony. After all, why not a minister for black people? or a minister for Christians, or how about a minister for the elderly? Where would you stop? A minister for trans people? That could get interesting, but you will inevitably get starkly overlapping needs, its the third rail of identity politics, its where the controversial theory of intersectionality collapses in on itself, because the root of all this is fundamentally flawed. Men have unique issues, but not all men are the same, promoting women as part of all-women shortlists (as The Labour Party l...

I think it was satirist Andrew Doyle who said on some podcast I was watching a year ago (or so) that the next culture war will be about language. How right he was, he (or she) who controls the language controls the discourse. In todays world more than ever its not just language that matters, even the words we use have been redefined (then re-redefined) making culture war battles interesting (yet almost meaningless) while the left wing of the political spectrum on the face of it have all the cultural capital on their side (corporations, Universities etc) the right wing have the numbers (Brexit didn't just come out of nowhere) But it does place us in a rather unusual situation. Historically, the Liberal left have been the ones raging against the machine, but we see little evidence of that machine being a right wing construct, in fact, the right wing has taken the place of the left in terms of being the "broad umbrella" when you consider how many feminists (normally a fierce...

Populist right winger Nigel Farage has just announced that his bank is closing his accounts. He's tried 6 other banks all of whom have declined him a banking service. One has to ask why, many pundits are pointing to Chris Bryant hiding behind parliamentary privilege to make some outrageous claims against Farage Behold Did he or didn't he? Politicians and activists get paid all the time in order to secure influence and favour. But until conclusive proof is supplied, they remain nothing more than a rumour. The fact Bryant daren't repeat his accusations outside of parliament suggests to me he has zero proof of anything. Much like conspiracy theorist Caroline Cadwalladr, if you want to claim something, make sure you can back it up, or in the case of Bryant, don't hide. But influencing banks to shutdown accounts of people you don't like is not uncommon. Politically exposed people (PEP) come under much more scrutiny than the likes of the common man (or woman) in the stree...