Wanting young people to suffer: the new sadism

It starts out as a seemingly harmless thing that most of us have heard from our parents or grandparents: "Young people today! They don't know they're alive! They know nothing of the suffering we went through as kids..."

Hell, as I become an increasingly old hack, I'll roll my eyes at journalism graduates when they baulk at having to make a phone call or look aghast at the days of heavy reliance on fax machines or dial-up internet only being available on one computer in the office. But I'd like to think that I'm not a bitter sadist, mercilessly wishing we could all go back to the paste-up era of newspaper production, or wanting to deprive young journalists of the convenience of fast internet to teach them a lesson.

But the cries of young people not knowing true suffering now go beyond the jocular overtones of the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch or laughing at trigger warnings supposedly demanded by the snowflake generation. There's a nastiness, a disdain for comfort, a yearning for good old days that were actually terrible, a desire to see young people have as hard a life, or harder, than previous generations, rather than wanting to see the next generation be more successful, more comfortable and more prosperous.

Misplaced nostalgia for WWII is a good example of the new sadism, and it is particularly embarrassing when it comes from people who were not alive during the horrors of WWII or have never served in the military. Someone who courageously tweets anonymously as Brexit Stonking Majority Tory tweeted the following miserable nonsense:

In 1941 teenage RAF pilots were flying old MK1 Hurricanes & putting their life on the line against Luftwaffe veteran pilots in the brilliant ME109F.
Remainer teenagers today.... #marr

The image is a still from a video of a pink-haired teenager dancing joyously in support of the UK staying in the EU rather than spending his youth bombing neighbouring countries in a war that we won with the help of European allies (but don't tell Brexit Stonking Majority Tory that...).

We've had almost four years of Brexity blathering along the lines of: "We got through two world wars, we'll survive Brexit!" to jolly people along in the face of evidence of a forthcoming recession, increased prices, bending to US standards to get a trade deal with Trump, job losses and anything else that indicates that the leave campaign's grand promises turn to dust upon any contact with reality.

The reality is that leaving the EU will most likely lead to hardships - because Brexiters can't refute this, they are instead revelling in the possibility of suffering, getting their pitiful excuses in early, saying it'll be a price worth paying for some intellectually bankrupt notion of sovereignty, rather than preparing to take any responsibility for any hardships which might come as a result of their vote.

Wishing another war on young people to somehow harden them up is appalling. There are already plenty of young people across the world suffering the horrors of war on a daily basis. Adding more young people to their number won't make anything better for anyone. 

Liz Kershaw joined in the sadistic idiocy last month in an awful attempt to squash the notion of period poverty, that anyone in the UK was suffering from a lack of access to sanitary products. She tweeted:

Sorry if this is gross.
But #periodpoverty FFS?!
My mum had to use old rags which my grandma boil-washed and she re-used.
How did she ever manage to get a scholarship to grammar school, go to Uni or become a headteacher without free tampons???

The most charitable reading of this tweet is that Liz Kershaw is an eco-warrior, calling for more widespread use of reusable sanitary products, but she's really just advocating a time when things were harder, especially for girls and women. There are certainly very good reusable sanitary pads on the market today but they are not cheap and they do rely on access to good laundry facilities. A return to shoving any old rag in in your pants is a return to, at best, the risk of a humiliating bloodstained accident and, at worst, the risk of infection. Liz mindlessly generalises from the example of one person and glorifies suffering as a result. She is the same woman who twisted the 430 job losses in East Anglia as a result of the closure of the Philips factory as some kind of Brexit benefit so you'll have to forgive me if I fail to see any altruism in her sadistic period tweet.

Still, the good news for anyone crowing about the possibility of young people suffering or wishing hardship on them all is that their sadistic dreams are coming true. There are measurable examples of things getting worse rather than better for the next generation.

Last year, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries reported that life expectancy in the UK is declining and it is a trend rather than a statistical blip. Compared with 2015 figures, the institute now expects men aged 65 to die at 86.9 years, down from 87.4 years, and women aged 65 are likely to die at 89.2 years, down from 89.7 years. While this is not on par with Chad, with a life expectancy of 50.6 years, it's not something we should be celebrating either as it reflects a decline in healthcare, living standards, individual affluence and the overall economy.

The Learning and Work Institute projected last year that the UK will drop four places in world literacy and numeracy rankings by 2030 - so the good news for the sadists is that we're apparently less healthy and less educated.

Housing is becoming less affordable too, even if those pesky kids quit spending their deposit on avocado toast. A report released by the Office of National Statistics last year revealed that on average, full-time workers could expect to pay an estimated 7.8 times their annual workplace-based earnings on buying a home in England or Wales in 2018. The figure was 7.6 times annual earnings in 2016 and 3.6 times earnings in 1997. And these figures are based on people in full-time employment - this does not take into account the gig economy or people languishing on zero hours contracts when they would love job stability.

This is not catastrophising or being what Boris Johnson, a man who cares little for facts, stats, details or nuance, would call a "doomster and gloomster". This is modern reality.

So, well played, sadists! Take a fucking bow. You're achieving your dream of the next generation having it worse than you did. If this is what you need to do to feel proud, I feel sorry for you - but I feel even more sorry for the young people who are genuinely suffering, even if you're deluding yourself that they're all pampered softies living a life of luxury.




Photography by kai Stachowiak

Who needs standards in journalism?

In this era of "citizen journalism", insisting on high standards in reporting - demanding pesky things such as accuracy, genuine balance, correct spelling, punctuation and grammar and, God forbid, paying journalists for their work - exposes one to mockery. 

Never mind that accuracy is the foundation on which credible journalism is built, or that balance on issues of climate change will not be achieved by wheeling out Lord Lawson to punch science in the face, or that journalism is more readable when spelling, punctuation and grammar are in order, or that journalists should be paid for their work because, well, it's work...

Instead, as part of the world's inexorable descent into idiocracy, the rise of the "citizen journalist" means that anyone, it seems, can call themselves a journalist. We wouldn't allow "citizen brain surgeons" to open our skulls but, it seems, many of us are happy to let "citizen journalists" tell us what to think, whether its accurate or not.

"Well, you would say that, wouldn't you?" I hear the indignant crowd shriek at me. After all, I've made a pretty good living out of being a journalist for more than 20 years now. Why would I want these untrained upstarts parking their tanks on my lawn? Why don't I just go back to my manual typewriter and report on the intrigues of the church fete and let "citizen journalists" take over?  

OK, I'll tell you why. Because journalism is a profession. Training is required. Journalists do not need to spend years and years at university, as is the case for doctors, and it is a shame that the days of cadetships, where aspiring hacks could leave school at 16 and work their way up the ladder at newspapers, have fallen by the wayside. But there are skills that need to be taught, an understanding of media law is essential, and ethics are as important as ever. These can be taught at college, university or on the job - or a combination of these - and they are essential for professionalism. 

This is not about Old Lady Lewis yelling at technology. It's great that social media can be used to break news, for people who are on the spot as news events unfold to film or write about what they see through platforms such as Twitter and Facebook Live. 

Hell, I'd be a massive hypocrite if I demanded that bloggers get shut down, particularly as bloggers have shown incredible bravery in less liberal parts of the world in their quest to expose true horrors and corruption. Raif Badawi, for example, is still languishing in a Saudi Arabian jail. He has been publicly lashed over charges, including insulting Islam and apostasy, because of his pro-free speech blog.

But plenty of bloggers and assorted social media users seem to be unaware of the responsibilities that come with writing either reportage or opinion pieces. They risk getting sued for libel or prejudicing court cases. Often, they contribute to the growing mountain of bullshit that can be filed under "fake news". 

The tidal wave of ignorance about the British criminal justice system and rules in regard to reporting on court cases has been brought into sharp focus in recent weeks. First, there was the #FreeTommy crowd, foaming and indignant that Stephen Yaxley-Lennon could be guilty of contempt of court when they thought all he was doing was telling the truth about rapists - except that his "reporting" has the potential to cost the taxpayers thousands in aborted trials and could cause rapists to go free. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon is not a journalist.

And ever since the trial of cricketer Ben Stokes commenced earlier this month, the armchair experts have been out in force crapping all over social media with their inane pronouncements of guilt or innocence. These fools do not care that the trial is ongoing and, at the time of writing, not all evidence has come before the jury. 

As well as being told to avoid the traditional forms of news media, jurors are now being advised to steer clear of social media, lest their decision is coloured by online pitchfork-wavers. The journalists reporting on the case have to be very careful with the language they use, to not allow opinion to creep into their stories, but head over to Facebook and everyone seems to know exactly what happened that night and what should happen to those involved. It's pathetic.

Of course, not all journalism is perfect and bad journalism should be called out. This week, for example, there was a mass outrage because apparently an innocent British woman was jailed in Dubai for the heinous crime of having a glass of wine on an Emirates Airline flight. Except that's not quite what happened - and the reporting of this case in the UK media was almost universally terrible.  

The woman in question, Ellie Holman, a Swedish citizen who lives in Kent, arrived in Dubai from London with her daughter. At passport control, she handed over an expired Swedish passport. Understandably, she was not allowed into the country, as would be the case if she tried to enter any country with an expired passport. Ms Holman then produced an Iranian passport - Iranian citizens cannot get a tourist visa on arrival to the UAE, just as they can't if they want to visit the UK. She had the option of paying on the spot for a visa which would allow her, as an Iranian citizen, to spend 96 hours in the UAE. But she refused. 

As the situation escalated, she filmed the border control officials - again, this would land you in trouble at pretty much any international airport. In the UK, for example, while filming in public places is legal, airports are privately owned businesses and, as such, they can set their own rules in regard to filming and photography. 

Ms Holman was asked if she had been drinking and she said she'd consumed a glass of wine on the plane. But her detention was not for drinking a glass of wine - it was for visa irregularities. However, it was decided that charges would not be pursued and Ms Holman and her daughter should be arriving back in the UK today. 

If someone rocked up to Heathrow on an expired Swedish passport and then tried to enter the country by producing an Iranian passport without a valid UK visa - and then filmed border control officials as the situation escalated - they too would be taken aside and public sympathy would be non-existent. 

As someone who has herself fallen foul of the law in the UAE, I am not going to sit here and tell you all that UAE law is perfect. It's not and there are plenty of good reasons to criticise it. But I am also someone who believes in accurate journalism and there is nothing to be gained by reporting on Ms Holman's case in such a shoddy manner. It undermines the good work other journalists have done on reporting on legal matters in the UAE and neighbouring states.

If people who declare themselves "citizen journalists" would like to become professional journalists, there are multiple options available for training. It would be great if such people did take the time to make themselves aware of media law, of rules and conventions particularly in regard to court reporting, and of media ethics. Good things have come out of the rise of blogging and social media - but when you publish something, you have responsibilities. I'm sure plenty of people, if they have made it to the end of this blog post, will still dismiss me as a boring and bitter old hack, trying to take all the fun out of their crusades - but if you cannot be bothered with accuracy, you are not a journalist. 

Photography by rawpixel.com from Pexels

Charity and the cult of the personality

Today, #kidscompany and Boris Johnson were trending at the same time on Twitter. It was quite the coincidence because both stories that led to the social media noise illustrated precisely why the cult of the personality continues to make idiots of us all. We may look back with the privileged superiority of 20/20 vision in hindsight at how people fell under the spell of Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin but we are not necessarily any smarter in 2015.

Boris Johnson was in the news because he rugby-tackled a 10-year-old boy. Everyone reported this with the usual "Oh,  isn't Boris hilarious!" tone. It's another Boris distraction from his appalling record as Mayor of London and his ineffectiveness as an MP. He does this on purpose, because he knows it's what people will talk about instead of anything serious.

But falling for the cult of the personality isn't limited to the BoJo fan club. The #kidscompany Twitter trend centred on the terrible story that is the collapse of the Kids Company charity. Kids Company was founded in 1996 by British-Iranian psychotherapist, Camila Batmanghelidjh.

Batmanghelidjh was lauded across the political spectrum. Celebrities, such as the members of Coldplay and JK Rowling, donated generously to the charity that started as a youth drop-in centre in London's Camberwell neighbourhood and grew until it had therapy centres, alternative education facilities and a presence in 40 schools in London and Bristol, as well as a performing arts programme in Liverpool.

And, crucially, David Cameron hailed her as a heroine, as part of his "Big Society" concept. Remember that? That thing in which we are all meant to be in together? That one.

Kids Company received £30m of taxpayers' money. Three million of this was meant to be spent on restructuring an organisation that had grown perhaps too fast with ego and ambition overtaking reality. Instead, it was mostly spent on overdue staff wages and, if we're lucky, the government might be able to recoup £1.8m. When a government has to prop up a charity that is attempting to provide vital social services, we have a serious problem.

When Camila Batmanghelidjh became a public figure, she was very quickly known for her brightly coloured caftans and turbans. She was charismatic, she was passionate, she was patronisingly described as "larger than life", which we all know is code for "overweight but makes up for it with personality".

And it seems that her dizzying presence blinded people to a lot of things. There is an ongoing police investigation into sexual assault. Today, we had the unedifying spectacle of the Commons committee hearing into the inner workings of Kids Company. The committee heard that despite claiming to care for 36,000 clients, there were only records for 1,699 people. There were questions about handing out cash to vulnerable minors and whether that really is the best way to deal with the complex issues that go along with social and economic disadvantage. After this day of testimony, it would appear that Kids Company was poorly run with no real strategy for solving social and economic problems at their root causes or for how the charity should expand.

Just because Kids Company is a charity, that should not make it immune from scrutiny. If anything should be scrutinised, it's charities because people who donate have the right to know how their money will be used. It is a huge responsibility.

The elephant in the room is that the government saw fit to give £30m of our money to one charity without a whole lot in the way of due diligence. The very notion that £30m of public money can be thrown at a charity to try and solve complex problems in three different cities is ridiculous.

While tweeters waste bandwidth giggling at Batmangelidjh's weight and outfits and at Boris tackling a child, not enough people are talking about how few answers the government has for elevating people out of poverty.



Photography by George Hodan

So, who is allowed to say what we're all really thinking?

Every time Katie Hopkins vomits a deliberately outrageous tweet or Nigel Farage says something about not wanting to live next door to a group of Romanian men or someone, almost always from a right-leaning perspective, creates an outrage, someone will always rise to their defence by saying: "They're only saying what we're all really thinking.".

Obviously, this statement is not literally be true. Nobody can ever say something that echoes the thoughts of every single one of us. But someone like Hopkins or Farage is frequently afforded the "TOSWWART" defence, as if they are speaking out for a silent majority too scared to say something that might cause offence.

But the TOSWWART defence is not applied equally. Witness the debacle this week over Emily Thornberry's ill-considered tweet that caused her to lose her job as Shadow Attorney General. All the tweet said was "Image from #Rochester" with a photograph of a house festooned with St George flags and a white van parked out the front. It was a tweet that was open to interpretation but the mob verdict - which was ultimately the only verdict that mattered - was: "Check out the north London Labour snob looking down her nose on a working class household." 

And Thornberry may well have rolled her eyes as she passed the house. Or maybe she was just sharing the sights of the electorate. Here is a tweet she cooked earlier. Whatever the case, she probably shouldn't have tweeted anything more controversial than a selfie with the Labour candidate, but what's done is done. Ed Miliband said the tweet made him "furious" - so furious, in fact, that she had to jump before she was pushed, thus keeping the story in the news cycle all bloody weekend. 

Honestly, Ed, there are million things more infuriating than that tweet, and now you've lost a woman from a working class background, an MP who is popular in her constituency and largely seen as someone who does a good job, from your shadow cabinet. Cue a slow hand clap for the Member for Doncaster North.

An apology would have been sufficient. That would be an apology to the same mob that routinely calls out the left for being nothing but a homogenous rabble of sandal-wearing, muesli-knitting professional outrage-takers. An apology to one stereotypical group that stereotypes another group who stereotypes those who disagree with them in return. And so we have a cycle of stereotyping that rinses around the news cycle and the world of social media and achieves absolutely nothing.

Predictably, The Sun pounced on Dan Ware, the flag-flying, white van man who admitted he doesn't vote and didn't know there was a by-election on in his own town, and published his stage-managed manifesto. It was an incoherent splattering of ideas that basically boiled down to: "Send 'em all back where they came from, lower taxes but make public transport cheaper and build better roads, and while I'm at it, let's bring back the cane in schools and spend more public money jailing anyone who burns a poppy!".

Good to see Ware surprised everyone by completely shattering the stereotype of the English flag-flying, white van man, then.

Is that ridiculous manifesto really what everyone is secretly thinking and only Ware has the courage to say it via The Sun? 

I doubt it. Ware is being used by The Sun to push their agenda in the lead-up to the election and it is one that plenty of people can see right through. The paper had Ware photographed outside Thornberry's "£3 million house" because apparently you can only live in a big house if you were born in one or you play football.

But why can't Thornberry also be afforded the TOSWWART defence? 

Either by accident or design, Thornberry shone a light on the thoughts that cross many people's minds when they see a house like Ware's. It is naive to think that none of us stereotype or make assumptions. We all do, regardless what our politics might be. I know people from across the political spectrum whose hearts sink when they are out canvassing door-to-door for their party and they come across the house with the St George flags flying. They expect a difficult conversation, possibly about immigration, and this is often precisely what happens.

Of course, the challenge for all the major parties is to find ways to engage with people whose choice of home decoration causes them to pause before knocking on the door, especially if they feel they are so far removed from the political process that they never bother to vote. Knee-jerk reactions, such as forcing someone out of a job over a three-word tweet and slamming that same person as a champagne socialist who would only have any political credibility if she lived her whole life in an unheated council house, are equally unconstructive. 

It's time we all grew up. Twitter is a great source of breaking news, of getting quick reactions and engaging with our politicians. But when the news cycle is bogged down for days in the fallout from one tweet, regardless of who sent the tweet, we have a serious problem.

Eternally seeking the perfect victim...

In the past few weeks, two cases have been in the news and these two cases shine a rather horrible light on our notions of victimhood. Monica Lewinsky's affair with Bill Clinton and the subsequent legal and political ramifications again made headlines when Lewinsky started a Twitter account and was, predictably, faced with assorted trolls. And in the UK, Ched Evans, a convicted rapist, has won a fast-tracked inquiry into his conviction - and regardless of the outcome of this, Twitter and the court of public opinion - which led to the inquiry being fast-tracked in the first place - will ensure the woman at the centre of the awful incident will still be living in the shadow of that night in a hotel room.

What is disturbing about both these cases is the rush to condemn the women largely because neither one fits the narrow, demure image of a victim that guarantees sympathy or, at the very least, stops a mob of keyboard warriors from behaving like anonymous, irrationally angry vultures.

In the case of Monica Lewinsky, it really didn't matter how she chose to live her life and conduct herself in public after the story broke, she was never going to win. Being open about what happened in the Oval Office all those years ago and trying to make the most of her accidental fame with money-making ventures such as a line of handbags, has led to inevitable slut-shaming and a desire to silence her. I had a bizarre Twitter exchange this week in which a conservative American woman was disappointed that she hasn't been more critical of Bill Clinton and, as such, she is a poor role model who is not serving other women well.

Really? Why does Monica Lewinsky have to be a role model for anyone? Why is it up to her to serve other women over an incident that she did not intend to become public? The woman I argued with on Twitter agreed that Lewinsky was indeed a victim but she was not behaving like the kind of victim she wanted her to be. As if Lewinsky owes it to Random Conservative Internet Woman to behave in a certain way.

If Linda Tripp had not betrayed Lewinsky on such an enormous scale, we may never have known about any of this.

If Lewinsky just wanted to confide in someone about her relationship with the President and move on without pressing harassment charges, that should have been her choice to make.

If Bill Clinton hadn't hung her out to dry with the infamous "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" quote, an inevitable statement to make in an often puritanical society, it might have been a different story all round. But it is Lewinsky who has come out of this worse, lost so much more, and been fed to the wolves on a far more regular basis than Clinton ever will be.

If Lewinsky decided to slink away quietly after the voracious news cycle had moved on and Clinton completed his presidency relatively unscathed, that would be perfectly understandable but she would probably then have been accused of letting Clinton get away with it, of letting herself be silenced and so on. And, frankly, it'd be naive to think that even if she did exile herself in some rural backwater and open a five-and-dime, the scandal would still cast a long shadow over her life, such was the global notoriety she achieved. She still might not have settled down with a nice lad and led a quiet, anonymous existence - and who is to say that is even what she wants out of life?

Lewinsky was in an extraordinary situation, one that she could never have imagined when she started her White House internship, and there are any number of ways she could have reacted. If 100 different women were in that exact same situation, there would probably be 100 different responses.

As a victim, Lewinsky was only ever going to be acceptable if she was either silent and absent from public life or she was demure and contrite. Instead, she told government lawyers to go fuck themselves when she was questioned and threatened with 27 years in prison. Good for her and bad luck if that offends anyone.

In the Ched Evans rape case, again we have a victim who does not fit the mould of a victim that is acceptable to the hordes on the interwebs. It is astounding how quickly people have gone straight to the "she is clearly a slag" defence on behalf of Evans.

As it stands at the time of writing, Evans is a convicted rapist. A jury found that the victim was too drunk to consent and the fact that she consented to sex with one of his friends before Evans joined in was deemed to be irrelevant. Consent to sex with one man does not equal consent to sex with his mate.

So what if she was not a virgin when Evans let himself into the hotel room. So what that this is not a rape that fits the "man jumping out of an alleyway" image that many seem to associate with this awful crime. So what if Natasha Massey, his girlfriend, is standing by her man. Even if Evans' conviction is overturned, I have no idea why you'd stay with him - but that is Massey's choice, just as Hillary Clinton stayed with Bill, even though she is bright and qualified enough to hold high office on her own merits.

But, I repeat, as I write this, Ched Evans is still a convicted rapist. And his victim, who was only 19 at the time, is still trying to rebuild her life.

The morons on the internet who have named the victim and then named her new identity, forcing her to change her name and location yet again, are absolutely disgraceful excuses for human beings. Just as the events of 1998 will always be with Monica Lewinsky, the events of May 2011 will always be with this woman.

She deserves privacy and the right to get on with her life, regardless of the outcome of the inquiry into the conviction. She is not seeking to be a public figure and that choice should not be denied her just as Lewinsky should not have to be forced into exile. You can disagree with anything Lewinsky might have to say about the events of 16 years ago but if you seek to silence her, or any woman who might not fit the mould of demure contrition, you are part of the problem.

If Sheffield United want him to play for them, that is their choice. If people want to support a club and pay for tickets to watch Evans play, that is their choice too. But the club's managers or fans or the #JusticeForChed zealots cannot expect others to be silent. If Evans returns to top level football, nobody should be stunned if others use their right to free speech and peaceful protest to picket the Bramall Lane stadium. If people refuse to watch Ched Evans play and refuse to renew their season tickets on that basis, that is also a choice that must be respected.

The conservative woman on Twitter believes that Lewinsky's unwillingness to condemn Bill Clinton is a great disservice to all women. But the bigger disservice to women is to force them to conform to the prejudices of others, and to want them to only behave in a certain way when they are confronted with awful situations where there is no one correct way to react.

Jessica Sacco, Phil Robertson and the free speech-free market conundrum

This is what the First Amendment says:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Stunning words. Indeed, they are words that should be enshrined in a written constitution in Britain. This week, in light of the Phil Robertson-GQ magazine-Duck Dynasty outcry and the Jessica Sacco Twitterstorm, plenty of people have cried foul about Phil and Jessica both suffering a loss of the first amendment rights.

Except they haven't lost any such thing.

Phil Robertson made his astounding comments about gay people and black people in an interview with GQ magazine, an excellent piece of magazine journalism. It is entertaining, interesting and offers GQ readers an insight into someone they probably hitherto didn't know much about. Now we all know about it.

We also know that the network, A&E, has suspended Phil Robertson from the reality show in the wake of the outrage. This is not an example, as per the First Amendment, of Congress "abridging the freedom of speech." Congress rightly has not intervened. It could well be an example of A&E breaching Robertson's contract, however. I haven't seen his contract but I'd be very interested to see what sort of terms exist for suspension or, as A&E have described it, an "indefinite hiatus". If the suspension is a breach of contract, Phil is well within his rights to seek redress. If it's not in breach of contract, A&E have made a perfectly legal business decision in a free market economy.

You might find his views appalling. You have the right to express just how appalled you are at his views, just as he has the right to express his views. Congress cannot interfere with any of this.

A&E has made a business decision in suspending Robertson in the wake of the furore. The powers-that-be do not want the brand associated with views that many see as bigoted. Given that Duck Dynasty merchandise has sold out at Wal-Mart since the suspension, it would appear that many people are prepared to support Robertson through the power of shopping. And that is their choice, just as it is the choice to either boycott A&E in support of Robertson or watch everything A&E makes in support of the suspension. Or you can be indifferent to Duck Dynasty. Freedom of speech does not mean it is compulsory to listen to anything anyone has to say.

Will Duck Dynasty rating plummet? Will advertisers pull out in droves? A&E is a business. How this ultimately plays out may indeed depend on how loudly money talks. Let the free market decide...

And speaking of businesses, last time I checked IAC is also a business. This would be the business that employed PR executive Justine Sacco until the other day. She was fired after tweeting: "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding, I'm white!".

Sacco was the very definition of blissful ignorance as she tweeted this just before a long flight from London to Cape Town. Upon landing, she discovered she was at the eye of a Twitterstorm and had thousands of new followers for all the wrong reasons. #HasJustineLandedYet started trending on Twitter and her tweets had been mercilessly combed by commentators from the left and the right.

It turned out that Sacco had tweeted a lame and unoriginal line about Brits having bad teeth, singled out a German man for having BO on a first class flight (no idea why his being German was relevant but hey-ho...), made a joke about having a sex dream featuring an autistic person, live-tweeted the worst service ever (if waiting a whole eight minutes for water is, in fact, the worst service ever) and generally offered a Twitter feed of much privilege.

The conservative website Twitchy was one of the first places to send the AIDS tweet viral as well as revealing while Sacco was mid-air that she is also prochoice. Twitchy misread American liberals by wondering out loud if her prochoice views meant she would be immune from being called out by the left for being racist. She was not immune from anyone. She probably broke the world record for Most Times A Single Twitter User Has Been Called Out For Unchecked Privilege.

It turns out Sacco is the daughter of a South African billionaire. She may lose her US work visa as a result of being fired but she probably won't end up on streets. Even so, it was a harsh lesson in how brutal the masses can be over an ill-judged tweet.

So was Justine Sacco trying to be funny? Probably. Several people have pointed out that if this came from Sarah Silverman or Seth McFarlane's Twitter feed, nobody would bat an eyelid. They're probably right. Unfortunately, Twitter lacks tone, even if one does put a cheeky exclamation mark at the end of a comment about AIDS in Africa. Sadly for Sacco, her tweet didn't come across as satire. It came across as ignorant and racist. Then again, nobody should require international fame as a comedian before attempting a joke on Twitter.

Sacco deserves kudos for an extensive apology in which she took responsibility for her actions instead of the usual excuses given in such circumstances: "I was hacked." "I was being ironic and nobody has a sense of humour anymore." or "I was tired/jetlagged and drunk/on meds at the time.".

Should IAC have fired her? Maybe not, but as someone who has dealt with PR companies and PR executives on a professional level for almost 20 years, I understand why she was. The best definition I have ever heard of the public relations profession is "reputation management." PRs love it when a client is doing great things but they have to pick up the pieces when the client does something scandalous. That is their business. That is how they make their money and, frequently, lots of it.

Like any business in the current world economy, IAC is probably terrified of losing business. IAC runs popular websites including OKCupid, match.com, Vimeo, The Daily Beast and Tinder. And Sacco was a public relations executive for the company. Her job was to play her part in managing the reputations of global brands. On her now-deleted Twitter account, she proudly named her employer in her bio. She didn't even offer the usual (if obvious...) "opinions here my own" line. It came across for all intents and purposes that she was representing her employer with her Twitter account.

The Twitter mob certainly made it clear to IAC that there was widespread, possibly brand-damaging outrage. And that's the thing about Twitter - it isn't always kind or constructive or sensible but it has rapidly become a means of exercising free speech that is loved by people across the social and political spectrum. If someone wants to call out Justine Sacco for making a bad joke, that freedom must exist just as Sacco is free to make a bad joke. Free speech isn't always pretty but freedom is more important than prettiness.

And, quite rightly, Congress has not made any laws restricting Twitter, just as it has not intervened in either the Robertson or the Sacco scandals. But both A&E and IAC have made business decisions in the way they have dealt with these two very different people. And now it is up to the court of public opinion and the free market to see if the suspension and the sacking will pay off.

____________________________

More reading...

Here is a piece from Padraig Reidy, senior writer at Index on Censorship about Sacco, Twitter and comedy.

And here is Camille Paglia's take on the Duck Dynasty story.


Photo courtesy of Anthony Quintano

The politics of beauty writing

I am delighted to announce that I have added a new string to my bow. Today is my debut as a guest ranter for Jossbox, a website run by a very good friend of mine. My first piece is a snark-filled rant about a ridiculous new advert Penelope Cruz has created to sell her line of lingerie. It is an advert full of unintentional comedy and, as such, it was an easy joy to disparage it mercilessly.

Beauty products are sold via Jossbox and it also runs articles about the wondrous world of beauty. So why is an avowed feminist like me writing for such a site? Surely I have become some sort of feminist Uncle Tom writing for a site that sells things that are used to make women attractive?

Oh, please.

Anyone who thinks that lipstick is the enemy needs to grow up and go fight some genuine oppression. If you don't want to wear make-up, that is your choice. If you do, that is also your choice. If you wear make-up some days but not others, that is fine too. Hell, in any given week, my face will range from unadorned-and-if-you-don't-like-my-uneven-skintones-then-you-can-bugger-off to more-red-lipstick-than-the-Joker-in-Batman. See? Choice. It's all about choice and respecting all choices.

Ages ago, a stupid row on Twitter broke out because somone objected to an article on the Jossbox site. The offending article was simply a vox pop of a group of women on whether or not they apply make-up in public. It's not a debate that will end up in Parliament, it was not meant to be a political statement for the ages, it was just a selection of views on the kind of subject that might pop up in casual conversation among women. Or it might not. Some women talk about nothing but politics. Or art. Or church architecture. Or cricket. Or whatever the hell they damn well please.

But some tweeter whose name I have forgotten and I can't be bothered to find out again singled out this one article as some sort of example of everything that is wrong with the world. Why anyone would be shocked to find an article about make-up on a website that sells beauty products should be a mystery to anyone with a functioning brain stem. A Twitter argument broke out and she blocked me, despite being the original troll who picked a moronic fight in the first place.

Instead of raging about a post that fell squarely in the categeory of no-shit-Sherlock, it was pathetic that the angry dullard on Twitter sought to tear down Jossbox. The website is a business my friend has started from scratch. I am proud to support her in that endeavour and if my little rants help get a few more clicks and sales going her way, that would make me very happy indeed. She has worked incredibly hard to get it to where it is today and she continues to work hard. If that isn't an example of an empowered, determined woman, then I will eat my lipstick.


Image courtesy of courtney murray rhodes

Open season on young people with opinions

It's easy to get annoyed at young people. God, don't they just talk bollocks on public transport, listen to awful music that can still be heard even when they have earphones in, they spend all their time texting and sexting, they seldom form proper sentences, they have no idea how good they have it, bring back National Service and so on and so forth et cetera et cetera et cetera...

And in the light of this week's two big news stories -17-year-old Paris Brown quitting her post as Britain's first Youth Crimine Commissioner in Kent after a Twitter scandal; and the death of Margaret Thatcher - it has not been a great week for opinionated young people or their right to freedom of speech.

Sure, there are plenty of ill-informed young people out there who come out with half-baked opinions, especially when it comes to politics - but I'd rather young people express their views, whatever they may be, and for others to engage in discussion, than for young people to be silenced when speaking up or to be completely apathetic and have no opinions at all.

Regardless of what our political views are as adults, it's a rare person who doesn't look back on their teenaged self and laugh or cringe at some of the things they said or wrote.

It makes me a little bit relieved that there was no Twitter when I was a sometimes sanctimonious 15-year-old. But I stand by things I wrote for the school newspaper on topics such as abortion, smoking in restaurants and wearing school uniform. I was lucky to have that platform in the pre-internet era, where we would produce the Kelso Kronicle with Apple IIe computers and save stories on floppy disks. If 15-year-old me in 1991 had a Twitter account, there is every chance I might have tweeted something that would have bitten me on the bum as an adult.

And so we have the sorry situation of Paris Brown slammed without a trace of irony by the Daily Mail for "vile" racist and homophobic tweets as well as tweets about getting drunk, having sex and taking drugs (by "taking drugs", the pearl-clutchers are horrified at a tweet about how she wanted to bake hash brownies, it's not as if she was the Pablo Escobar of Kent...). The offending tweets were sent when she was aged between 14 and 16.

Naturally the Mail buried the bit about tweets where she complained about Direct Pizza phone staff having poor English skills and said that everyone on Made In Chelsea looks like a "fucking fag". These are the kind of sentiments that would result in the inevitable "Red arrow me all you like but she is only saying what the rest of are thinking" comments.

And so after a week in the £15,000-a-year job, Brown has quit her post. What a farce it all was. The post struck me as an attempt by the Kent police to appear all cool and down with da kidz. But nobody had the wit to check Brown's Twitter feed, something that has, for better or worse, become a pretty standard practice among many potential employers these days. The embarrassment was avoidable and now those stupid tweets will probably haunt her for years to come. At the time of writing, the police were looking into whether her tweets constitute a criminal offence. It's getting completely stupid now.

The whole "youth police czar" smacks of gimmickry which seems especially unnecessary give that Kent Police also has a youth panel made of up people aged 11 and over to give feedback to the police from an under-18s point of view.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the death of Margaret Thatcher, plenty of people who weren't born, or were very young when she was in power, have spoken out. Some young people are Thatcher fans, some are not, but the last 24 hours has been open season on anyone young having opinions on this defining period of British history. Instead of lazily saying: "What would you know? You weren't even born then!", it is surely more constructive to have discussions with young people who are clearly interested in politics.

If you start telling people their opinions are not valid and try to silence them, you're a hypocrite if you then bemoan low voter turnout and political apathy among young people.

Do you have opinions on Hitler or Stalin or Mao Tse Tung despite not living through any of their regimes? Most people do. This is because we can all research and learn from history (or simply watch the History Channel...). Give young people who are interested in politics a bit of credit. Bullying people off Twitter because you think they're too young to have an opinion is mindless. If you do that, you're the one who needs to grow up.

False rape accusations: perceptions, proportion, paranoia and problems

False accusations of rape ruin lives. Only an idiot would dispute this. Anyone who is a fan of justice is not a fan of false accusations for any crime, especially one that carries the stigma of a rape conviction or a rape charge which is later disproved in a court of law. As well as the great personal cost to the falsely accused, false accusations cost public money and waste court time. As such, it is appropriate that false accusers are punished within the boundaries of the law. None of this should be disputed.

What should be questioned is whether there is a plague of false accusations sweeping the nation. A study released this week would indicate this is not the case at all. The study, released by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), found that over a 17-month period in England and Wales, there were 5,651 prosecutions for rape and 111,891 prosecutions for domestic violence. Over the same period of time, there were just 35 prosecutions for false rape allegations, six for false domestic violence allegations, and three for false allegations involving both rape and domestic violence. So, in a country of more than 60 million people, there were 117,542 prosecutions for rape and domestic violence in total, compared to a grand total of 44 prosecutions relating to false accusations. Over the 17-month period of the study, 159 suspects were linked to allegedly false claims.

It would be lovely to live in a world where there were no false accusations of rape or domestic violence, but when the false allegations are massively outnumbered by the successful prosecutions, it is pretty clear that a sense of proportion is required.

It is certainly important to look at who makes false accusations and why they happen, but it is extremely important to focus on preventing rape and domestic violence from happening in the first place. The domestic violence figures, in particular, are shockingly high and a national conversation is required to find out why there has been an increase of 11% in cases reported to Citizens Advice in the last three months of 2012 compared with 2011.

It is heartening to see advertising campaigns here in Britain that focus on telling rapists not to rape rather than blaming the victim. The If You Could See Yourself television advertising campaign (TRIGGER WARNING) is a welcome step away from telling women what they already know about unattended drinks and walking home alone, or reinforcing the Taliban mentality that what you wear means you're asking for it. But what the government gives with one hand, it takes with the other with the privatisation of sexual assault referral centres. Inexplicably, the government has given a contract to manage some of these centres to G4S, a company best known for their incompetence in handling security at the 2012 London Olympics,  No private company should profit from handling sexual assault cases - that is completely immoral. Meanwhile, on Sky News, Lorna Dunkley interviewed the British woman who alleges a hotel manager attempted to sexually assault her before she escaped by jumping over the balcony of her room in the Indian city of Agra. It is a shame Dunkley felt the need to ask her if she felt there was anything she could have done differently to prevent the assault. Like what? Not travelled alone? Not requested a wake-up call to catch an early train?

And in the meantime, the "Bitches ruin men's lives!" cries from rape apologists just keep on coming. Let's look a little deeper into the figures, shall we?

Of the 159 people linked to allegedly false claims over the study's 17-month period, of which 44 were prosecuted, 92% were women, almost half were aged 21 or under and in 38% of these investigations, the initial complaint was made by someone other than the alleged suspect. None of this should come as a shock to anyone.

There is no one-size-fits-all profile of a false accuser any more than there is a one-size-fits-all profile of a rapist. False accusations are often a symptom of an immature person trying to deal with relationship issues in an immature way. False accusations can also happen as a result of mental illness. False accusations can happen when a vulnerable person is used by another who seeks vengeance. False accusations can happen when well-meaning but ultimately misguided parents mistake their offsprings' consensual sex lives as rape. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that for many false accusers, the situation raged out of control and they felt unable to stop the legal process. Then the waters are muddied further by cases of women who have been raped but then retract the rape claim and, as such, find themselves on the end of a false accusation charge. And so on and so forth...

So what is to be done? Of course, false accusers deserve punishment - it is a crime that destroys people and they make it harder for rape victims to come forward and report the awful crimes committed against their bodies. But this is largely because of the myth perpetuated by many rape apologists that false accusations are pandemic.

As a result, we end up with loud voices, such as the campaigners to free Ched Evans, a footballer convicted of rape and sentenced to five years in prison, adding to this myth. Leaving aside the issue of guilt, Evans' campaigners are obsessed with stereotyping women, especially women who sleep with footballers (not a crime last time I checked...), as a horde of greedy, lying harridans. One of them called me a slut, a slag, a libtard and a cunt via Twitter this week, which doesn't exactly help the credibility of the cause. The cause's website also hoists the campaigners by their own petard. It features a large section dedicated to unused witness statements. This is a catalogue of inadmissible evidence, such as a statement that the victim had left the club with other men on previous occasions. Having this information on the internet for all to see could seriously prejudice a fair retrial.  

In punishing false accusers, just as in the case of punishing rapists, rehabilitation is as important as retribution. If there are mental health issues or evidence of past abuse experienced by false accusers, this should be dealt with compassionately. Equally, a sane justice system should offer its full support to those who have been falsely accused, and convicted rapists need rehabilitation to reduce the risk of re-offending and have them emerge from prison as better, more educated people.

False accusations ruin lives. Rape also ruins lives. If we lose sight of that, Steubenville-type incidents will keep on happening, victims will continue to be blamed, victims will continue to be too scared to come forward and the false reporting myth will be grotesquely inflated and this will continue to harm women.



Image courtesy of www.kozzi.com

The American right's failed attempt to slur Ashley Judd

I love observing American politics. It is important to be aware of what goes on in the most powerful nation on Earth, and it fascinates, amuses, frustrates, delights and angers me in equal measure.

Hilariously, if I engage in a discussion on Twitter about American politics, sometimes I am told to mind my own business. Freedom of speech is only for Americans within America, according to some idiots. It's sad to be so insecure when it comes to criticism or curiosity from people outside your own country.

So, this blog post will most likely infuriate some people. Well, pardon me for taking an interest in the wider world...

At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held in Washington DC last week, there was an attempt to manufacture outrage about Ashley Judd. Amid talk that the actress may be launching a political career representing the Democrats in the state of Kentucky, Steven Crowder, a conservative comedian, thought he had uncovered a Republican wet dream - a Democrat who said something stupid about rape. After the accident-prone Republican election campaign last year, this was just the sort of thing the American right could seize upon. A chance to say: "Hey, look! It's not just us! Liberals say dumb things about rape too! Why aren't the libtards calling out Ashley Judd for saying something stupid about rape?"

Except she didn't say anything stupid about rape.

Crowder launched into an attempt at comedy by referring to this tweet from Judd:

@AshleyJudd
Then over to eastern Congo for connection between conflict minerals used in our electronics, mass rape, & forcibly displaced persons.

Crowder said: "By the way, in breaking news, Ashley Judd just tweeted that buying Apple products, again, is akin to rape. From her iPhone. Rape - now she knows how my brain felt after watching Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Oh, she said it. What is this obsession with Ashley Judd and rape? It's pretty unnerving."

Except, quelle surprise, there is a predictable lack of nuance or context in Crowder's attempt to slag off Judd, a rape survivor. The tweet is part of many tweets, talks and writings by Judd on the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country she has visited to raise awareness of the country's ongoing troubles. They include the militarisation of the mines from which material for products such as iPhones are sourced, and the violence, exploitation and slavery that goes along with it, including rape used as a weapon of war.

Judd wrote a blog post on this very subject in which she admits she is as guilty as anyone else who avails themselves of iPhones, iPads and the like. For anyone who can concentrate for five minutes in one sitting, her points are clear. She admits the hypocrisy of her own and everyone else's reliance on technology sourced from places of conflict, she calls for transparency from companies such as Apple, and she doesn't flinch from chronicling the horrors of rape, especially on women suffering from fistulas.

Instead, of making a lame joke about brain rape, Crowder could have pointed out that Judd was doing it right when it comes to discussing rape and that perhaps it would behoove certain conservatives to do better. While trying to call out Ashley Judd for saying something stupid about rape, Crowder managed to say something stupid about rape. Genius!

The gaffes about rape during the 2012 election, the subsequent justification of these gaffes by some conservatives, and the despair publicly expressed by other conservatives indicates there is some shit that needs to be sorted out.

There is a difference between misspeaking and the exposure of awful views on rape and this stupidity isn't restricted to conservatives. Whoopi Goldberg deserved every condemnation for her ridiculous "rape-rape" explanation for Roman Polanski's behaviour and Joe Biden's "garden-variety slap across the face" gaffe was a bloody stupid thing to say. But the ongoing stream of stupid things said about rape has disproportionately plagued the American conservative movement.

Indeed, an American conservative I follow on Twitter, the forthright @rachelveronica told me she would happily give a "Don't say stupid things about rape" talk at CPAC 2014.

I realise that talking about how to discuss rape in a sensitive and sane manner doesn't sound like a golden opportunity for comedy, but in the case of Crowder, this is irrelevant because he is a man who is about as funny as a leaking fistula.


Image courtesy of www.kozzi.com

Updates on O2 and Hilary Mantel's excellent refusal to repent or recant

In the last couple of weeks, two of my blog posts have attracted a bit of attention. One was on my friend Briony's ongoing battles with the O2 phone company and another was on the misguided, ignorance-fuelled outrage over Hilary Mantel's 5,000-word essay on the bodies of royal women, including that of the Duchess of Cambridge (in case you didn't notice, she's having a baby...). Since then, there have been some developments.

Briony received unwanted marketing calls from O2 even though her preferences were set to "email contact only", she was baffled as to why personal details were required by unsolicited callers before she could be told about any special offers and, as a bonus, she discovered this very website was blocked by O2 as part of their nanny state-style filter for adult content, even on the phones of actual adults.

Now that Briony is in email and telephone contact with O2, she has still to hear about the amazing offers and can't seem to get an answer out of anyone as to what these were because it apparently changes on "what she wants to include in the scheme".  

She has received a number of spoken apologies and emails starting "We are really sorry" and "O2 takes these complaints seriously" and "we are speaking with the Social Media team about their lack of response/terminology" and "we are in contact with the customer service teams.."  But nothing really has changed.

Briony is now in contact with with Tracy and Carol from the "Escalation Team" - which makes me visualise women talking on the phone as they go up an escalator - and while both are "really very nice", Briony says neither "clearly can provide me with any answers as to why I was contacted/pestered when clearly I shouldn't have been." It would also appear that not much can be done to trace or find out why Briony received unwanted phonecalls in the first place.

On the upside, when Briony broached the subject of recompense for this two-week debacle, O2 asked her what she felt was a suitable remuneration for the day lost to O2 and Twitter, half a day lost to calls with the O2 Customer Service and half a day lost on emails/phone calls to the O2 Escalation Team.  Her response free upgrade and phone - after all, surely O2 were calling her about her upgrade in the first place, no?

So, she has received a couple of different offers, including O2 paying to end her current contract and not charge her for ending the contract early - but she'll have to pay for a new phone. The other offer includes more download capacity (but she'd better be careful not to try and download anything from any of the websites O2 blocks, even though she is an adult...) and no £6 monthly charge.

But for any recompense, Briony has to go into a shop, discuss the options, and tie herself into another O2 contract, when what she has really asked for is a 100% guarantee that her phone number will not be used in any further O2 marketing drives.  Alas, this could not be given, nor could a 95% guarantee, nor could an 80% or 70% guarantee be given... Briony gave up asking what kind of guarantee she could be assured at this time. What is the point of opting for email contact only if that isn't going to be respected by O2?

In conclusion, all of the deals on the table remain ambiguous and won't make a massive difference to her life. A better offer would surely involve stuff like a free upgrade (including handset) and a cheaper bill, so that Briony stays with O2 long term, thus everyone wins. 

This seems to be a struggle for O2, as even in compensation, they use the guise of giving with one hand, only to take a greater financial and contractual reward with the other.

In the meantime, I have just had the predictable "this is to protect the children" response from O2 when I called them out on their blocking of websites for adult customers. It's somewhat hilarious that my blog was blocked but it is also completely contrary to a free society. O2 offers parental controls so parents can ensure their kids can't access adult content on their phones so why they feel the need to restrict adult internet access is a mystery.

On the upside, Briony can vote with her money if she finds a better deal elsewhere. This is indeed a vast improvement on the government-run duopoly of the United Arab Emirates, where we both used to live. There you get the choice of two equally incompetent telecommunications companies, Etisalat and Du, and that is all.

As for Hilary Mantel, she has thankfully not apologised for her controversial 5,000-word essay, which she gave as a lecture two weeks before any of the newspapers noticed. Her unrepentant response is inspiring to anyone who has dared express an opinion only for it to be misunderstood by the moronic masses.

I will love her forever for this brilliant line: "I do think that the Duchess of Cambridge is an intelligent young woman, who, if she cares to read my essay, will see that I meant nothing but good to her."

If only O2 was as uncensored.


Image courtesy of www.kozzi.com

It's about time for another World of Stupid...

I was delighted to be described by one of my favourite tweeters, @MoronWatch, as a "freelance moron watcher". I do wish I was paid my usual freelance rate for watching morons - there are so many of them out there that it could be a fulltime job. But I digress... Here is the latest swag of morons from around the globe:

1. A US company, Solid Gold Bomb, came under fire this week for selling some rather awful T-shirts. In possibly the worst variation on the tiresome "Keep calm and carry on" genre, the T-shirts were printed with the slogans "Keep calm and rape a lot", "Keep calm and hit her", "Keep calm and grope a lot" and "Keep calm and knife her." Just as terrible as the T-shirts was Solid Gold Bomb's attempt at an apology:

The company claimed it had been "informed of the fact that we were selling an offensive T-shirt primarily in the UK" and said: "This has been immediately deleted as it was and had been automatically generated using a scripted computer process running against hundreds of thousands of dictionary words."

Really? A computer error just so happened to generate four moronic slogans and nobody noticed. Did the computer also post the T-shirts as being for sale on Amazon with no human noticing this at any stage of the process? What about when orders started coming in? Did anyone say: "Hang on, why are we selling rape T-shirts?" Here is some interesting stuff on blaming rape-apologist algorithms for all this. It is indeed a convenient way to not take any responsibility.

Or maybe someone at Solid Gold Bomb accidentally hit the "Create T-shirts for douchebags" button.

2. Hilary Mantel was again proven right this week. Her claim that society and the media are obsessed with royal women's bodies was strengthened by the vulture-like reporters hovering around London's King Edward VII Hospital where the Queen was recovering from a bout of gastroenteritis. Everyone seems to have forgotten how badly that all ended last time a royal woman was at King Edward VII  - the obsession with the Duchess of Cambridge's severe morning sickness took a dark turn with a prank call and a nurse committing suicide.

But royal gastrointestinal systems are clearly as newsworthy as royal wombs and the reporters gathered outside the hospital in case of, er, I dunno... In case the Queen's doctor was going to emerge with full details of Her Majesty's bowels? It was boring, stupid television and to waste hours of time hovering around an expensive hospital when the NHS is being undermined at every opportunity is rather obscene.

3. Speaking of which, the Huffington Post's UK outpost has developed a creepy obsession with the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge and other knocked-up celebs. "Baby bump" has become their equivalent of the Daily Mail's "all grown up". As well as Kate Middleton, Kim Kardashian, Imogen Thomas, Fergie from the Blackeyed Peas, Rochelle Humes from The Saturdays and a Chinese woman known only as "Zhang" all come up on a "baby bump" search of the website.

It's gross and what was extra-stupid was the headline: "Kate Middleton Pregnant: Duchess and 'Bump' Visit National Portrait Gallery." As if she could simply take it off! I know there are madder elements of the prolife movement who'd disagree with me, but I'm pretty sure the foetus isn't going to remember this trip to the art gallery.

Whoever managed their Twitter account thought "Kate Middleton takes her baby bump to a wedding" was a sane thing to say and that moronic sentence leads the article that was linked to the tweet. Again, it's not as if she really has a choice in that matter. But I am sure the bump had a tremendous time at the nuptials.

4. Just in case anyone out there is labouring under the misapprehension that human rights laws are a bad thing, we have sickening news from Saudi Arabia that transcends mere stupidity and drives straight into completely vile territory. Seven men convicted of armed robbery face execution by crucifixion and firing squad. Yes, crucifixion. Six have been sentenced to death by firing squad and the main defendant is scheduled to be executed by crucifixion. For three days.

The condemned men claim they have had no access to lawyers, confessions were extracted under torture and most of them were juveniles at the time of the offences. If you are OK with any of this, you are seriously not well.

5. The Merriam-Webster dictionary continues its murder of the English language by letting the moronic use of "literally" creep into its pages. Every day, people claim they are literally on fire, that they literally have work coming out of their arses and that they would literally die if something non-lethal happened. These people do not need to be encouraged by dictionaries. It literally has to stop.

6. I've spotted some insane sex advice from Cosmopolitan's UK website but I may save that for later...


Image courtesy of www.kozzi.com

Fifty shades of yellow

I had an interesting Twitter conversation last night. It all started when I retweeted the fabulous Freya, who tweets as @FuzzCookies. Reflecting on yesterday's awkward Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition mid-term review press conference, she observed: "When Nick Clegg needs the toilet at work, he usually has to raise his hand for permission. Not today on Coalition Birthday as a treat."

Yes, it's lavatorial humour but an apt analogy for the toothlessness of the Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister. It's in the same vein as Private Eye magazine's The New Coalition Academy satire which portrays the government as a dysfunctional school with David Cameron as the headmaster.

But Baroness Meral Husseine-Ece, a Liberal Democrat peer who tweets as @meralhece, didn't find Freya's tweet nearly as amusing as I did and responded to Freya and I with: "Really unfunny."

Being berated by a Baroness for sharing "potty jokes" certainly appeals to the naughty schoolgirl side of my nature, and soon a lively discussion ensued as to whether or not Freya's original tweet was funny. Then Tara Hewitt, who tweets as @Tara_Hewitt, weighed into the chat. Tara describes herself as a "Blue Blairite" in her blog - a Tony Blair supporter and NHS diversity consultant who has since joined the Conservative Party. Tara commented that she supports the coalition and pointed out that it was good policy on the part of the Lib-Dems to raise the tax threshold.

Yes, that was a good policy but, as Freya pointed out in her inimitable style, it was "like finding a tiny diamond in a football pitch-sized flurry of shit." Yep.

The simple fact is that the coalition is not really working. It was a flawed idea from the start because the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats are just too different. In Australia, there is a long-standing coalition that is currently in opposition. But it is a coalition of the Liberal Party, a conservative party despite the name, and the National Party, a conservative party with a strong focus on the interests of rural Australia - as such, regardless of what you might think of Australian Tories, it is a coalition that makes ideological sense.

In the last general election, it was obvious plenty of people were dissatisfied with Gordon Brown's Labour government but the outcome was intriguing. Plenty of seats went to the Conservatives - which was understandable and not surprising - but a big chunk of votes also went to the Liberal Democrats. It wasn't enough to form a Lib-Dem government in its own right, but it was enough to send a message that many people in Britain didn't feel as if a more conservative pathway was the answer either.

Fear of a minority government reigned supreme and a coalition was formed. It was like being at a wedding where all the guests know it isn't going to work out, but nobody is able to stop it from happening.

It is clear the coalition is at odds on welfare reform, unity on marriage equality is proving difficult despite David Cameron's support, there are schisms over Britain's role in the European Union and issues such as the tuition fees debacle led to Nick Clegg broadcasting a apology. The apology then went viral on YouTube as an wobbly auto-tune song - when you go global via a really unfunny form of comedy, it's time to reassess your life.

In yesterday's press conference, Cameron and Clegg vowed to hold it together until the next election in 2015. But this is going to make for a bizarre election campaign for the Lib-Dems when the time comes. Over the next two years, will they continue to compromise the values of their party and support Conservative-led policies but then offer a new raft of policies for the election which will be at odds with Tory policy? If they do that, will any left- and centre-left-leaning voters trust them enough to support them for another term? If they don't do that, however, the Lib-Dems may as well join the Conservative party and be done with it.

Will this mess lead to the rise of UKIP as the third major political party in Britain? My tip is that it won't, despite the outcome of some recent opinion polls and Labour may just squeak into office. I can't see the Lib-Dems performing brilliantly at the next general election - local government elections are an indication of that (although, frankly, it'd be great to see party politics removed from local government but that's another rant for another day, suffice to say I wish Siobhan Benita was the mayor of London.).

UKIP is currently attracting kneejerkers who feel David Cameron isn't being conservative enough, but the party holds limited appeal for younger voters. UKIP leader Nigel Farage is valiantly claiming to be an eccentric, but I can't see him becoming a serious force in British politics as long as enough people see him as an anachronism, a racist or just a lunatic.

The Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times" could well apply to the next two years in Britain. By 2015, we will know if the welfare reforms actually got more people off benefits and back in the workforce. Whatever the case, we will still have potty jokes to amuse us. Whether we will have a pot to piss in remains to be seen.

Why Caitlin Moran and Lena Dunham can't win

This weekend's Twitter brouhaha centres around Caitlin Moran's response to a question about a question she didn't ask Lena Dunham. "I literally couldn't give a shit about it." was Moran's answer when asked on Twitter why she didn't ask Lena Dunham about the lack of people of colour in her new sitcom Girls.

Moran was crucified, left, right and centre as if she was the new poster girl for the English Defence League. And all over an interview for The Times that Moran herself hardly touted as hard-hitting journalism when she plugged it in a tweet thus: "Girls starts in Britain this week, and I went to talk to Lena Dunahm about why I love her face so much."

There has already been plenty of criticism of Girls for the all-white lead characters. Would Moran asking the same question have added anything at all to the discourse? Was she under any obligation to ask a question that is already out there? It reminds me of the time, as a 21-year-old journalist, that I asked a recently separated politician in Australia about her break-up. She didn't want to talk about it. She was perfectly polite about not wanting to go into details and I felt like a bit of a dick for asking the question. It wasn't relevant to the interview and it was a topic that had already been given plenty of airplay in the media at the time.

Dunham telegraphed why she didn't include any women of colour among her main characters when she told NPR: "I am half-Jew, half-WASP, and I wrote two Jews and two WASPs."

It is not unusual for any writer, regardless of race or religion, to write fictional pieces about stuff they know about. If Dunham didn't feel qualified to write authentically about the experiences of people of colour, she could perhaps be accused of lack of imagination. Or accused of not getting in some ethnically diverse co-writers to help her out. But what if she did include a non-white character and it didn't ring true? Would this cause the same people who have jumped down Moran's throat this weekend to then accuse Dunham of tokenism?

I'm a journalist and an editor, I deal in non-fiction day in, day out. As such, I'd be perfectly confident in interviewing a woman of colour about her life experiences for a journalistic article, but I'm not so sure I'd be as confident writing a work of fiction from her point of view. I am not about to write a novel or a TV series about a woman of colour but that's no reason why anyone else, with a better imagination than I have, or with that particular life experience, or anyone more confident than I am, shouldn't give it a go.

Maeve Binchy, the late and lovely Irish writer, was frequently quoted as saying that her books didn't include explicit sex because it was something that was not part of her experience. She was worried that if she invented elaborate sex scenes, they would be unconvincing. That was a wise move and it saved her from winning The Literary Review's annual bad sex awards. There was no backlash from the bondage and discipline community, who felt Maeve ignored their experiences.

Of course, I am being churlish in comparing public misunderstanding of the B&D scene with the absence of ethnically diverse characters in a TV series. But while it is important for the media, for TV producers, film-makers and book publishers to be mindful of diversity and to try and give voice to as many people as possible, it is ridiculous to try and force every single writer to include every single group in the community in every work of fiction.

It is important for the people who commission TV series, who decide what books get published, who produce movies to think outside the square, to seek out stories that might not otherwise get told. Fear of bad box office stifles the diversity of movies and fear of poor ratings stifles the diversity of TV scripts. Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show have been criticised for not having a diverse enough bunch of people in their respective writing teams. Yet nobody ever really questions the lack of diversity in, say, the films of Judd Apatow. (And he is the executive producer of Girls...) Why do some writers get a free ride while others are put under scrutiny?

My mum would have said Moran could have been more polite in her response to the question. But the 140-character world of Twitter doesn't lend itself to nuanced responses on serious issues. It was an honest response and it doesn't make her an instant Klanswoman. Moran pointed out that other issues, such as sexuality and class diversity, are also poorly represented. Hell, perhaps she also should have asked Dunham about lack of a B&D storyline or why Girls doesn't feature regular outings to Cannery Row...

The situation, as these things tend to do in the online world, snowballed and suddenly people were criticising Moran for blocking people, for not apologising, for the tone of her responses (in a format where tone is often sadly lacking except for excessive use of exclamation marks and emoticons). Then there were the accusations of "privilege". It was odd that the "privileged!" accusation was levelled at someone who came from a poor background, worked hard to get to where she is today and writes extensively on the misconceptions of poverty in Britain based on her own experiences.

And what is truly sad is that this whole Twitter shitstorm has seen women, all of whom identify as feminists, turn on each other to the point where the original race issue has become secondary. That is always an unedifying spectacle. When that happens, it means plenty of people literally won't give a shit - about feminism.  

(Photo courtesy of Chris Scott)