Reading Elliot Rodger's manifesto so you don't have to...

There are a couple of things that I can't see changing in the wake of Elliot Rodger stabbing, running over and shooting innocent people in California. One of them is gun control laws in the state of California (or indeed anywhere else in America) and the other is mental healthcare.

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of gun control, it's hard not to be moved by the tearful, angry speech made by Richard Martinez, the father of Christopher Martinez, one of the young men killed by Elliot Rodger. In any case, Californian gun laws were tightened up after the Sandy Hook shootings in Connecticut and Elliot Rodger still managed to obtain a gun and kill people. This latest incident is not likely to inspire other states to tighten up firearms legislation.

Rodger's family alerted the police prior to the killings about his mental health issues and, perhaps if these reports were taken more seriously and police were able to uncover his manifesto and three semi-automatic handguns, perhaps his victims might still be alive. Or perhaps Rodger would have found other ways to kill people. We will never know now that Rodger is also dead. Should he have been detained against his will in a psychiatric unit? Will any of this lead to changes in mental healthcare for California or anywhere else? Probably not. And there are plenty of mentally ill people who do not kill people and they do not deserve the stigma of being tarred with the same brush as a murderer.

But the big conversation that is happening is centred around the bitterness and hatred towards women that is expressed in Rodger's 137-page manifesto. This is good because misogyny - endemic, entrenched misogyny among many men - was central to his actions and this needs to be discussed. I have seen this important conversation happen with people across the political spectrum and it is heartening to see that Rodger's issues with women are horrifying plenty of people from the left, the right and the middle.

He was a 22-year-old virgin and this seemed like a fate worse than death. He resented young men who were getting laid, he was particularly vitriolic and racist towards sexually successful black men, and he was seething with rage at women who would not have sex with him. This is despite him not apparently making any real attempts to interact with women. He seemed to think his mere existence as a wealthy male with a BMW entitled him to sex. The way he dealt with his hatred of women by committing multiple murders was an anomaly, but his vile attitude is not uncommon.

Rodger had wealth, privilege and a comfortable, international childhood, but this came with an inflated sense of entitlement in relation to women's bodies. He was a classic case of a guy who was viewed by women as the geek who gets "friend-zoned" or is invisible to them. But while the notion of geeks missing out on sex is a well-worn comedy movie trope, it's also the public face of much darker notions and this is uncovered in his manifesto.

When Rodger's family moved to the US when he was five years old, his first friend was a girl. In the manifesto, he deems her to be the only female friend he ever had - it would seem she was the only female he was willing to befriend before he started to believe that women were out to get him by denying him sex. But he also describes other women in his life, such as a teacher and his step-grandmother, with much fondness. Despite his parents splitting up, he was not isolated from positive female role models.

His manifesto describes his childhood in great detail. He attended good schools, he had opportunities, he writes quite well and his words are sometimes even touching, especially when he writes about his teacher. But a thread of bitterness runs through his words and deepens as you read on. Being told he was too short for an amusement park ride, not quite fitting in with the cool kids and having to change schools are described as injustices. He resents his mother when she encourages him to get a job. As puberty kicked in and he was attracted to girls, his story gets darker and more disturbing, a horrible case of a kid discovering he could have anything he wanted apart from social cachet and sex.

Rodger pinpoints his last satisfying physical experiences with girls as school dances where he was taught to slow-dance in the seventh and eighth grades. He never moved on from this. He discovered masturbation and then he hated himself for masturbating. He became obsessed with the way girls would interact with him, reading way too much into unremarkable behaviour, and he resented that self-pleasure was the only sex he was getting. He deemed sex as well as women to be evil, especially when he realised that, thanks to artificial insemination, women could get pregnant without having sex. He dreamed of a world where nobody had sex or relationships as long as he remained a virgin. His words are those of a hate-ridden, self-involved narcissist.

And so the hatred of girls and women and the resentment of sexually active boys and men built up, unchecked, over the course of his life. Rodgers was not an idiot. He had great potential to be a success in life but all this was warped by perceived sexual rejection which turned into a certain kind of misogyny that has found its place in the world. It is not new for men to feel entitled to sex and rage-filled if they miss out, but it is a notion that has been not been questioned enough. Now is the time to do so.

To any man out there who is enraged by the fact that women are not having sex with them, I'm sorry but sex with whomever you want is not a right. Sexual rejection, or simply being ignored by women, is hurtful but it's not an injustice. Being a 22-year-old virgin may be frustrating and annoying but it is not an injustice. Are any of you even trying to form meaningful relationships with women? Men like you have got to stop looking at female friendship as being akin to tokens you put into a woman like she is a slot machine until sex comes out.

Women get friend-zoned or unnoticed by men too. Sure, it feels like you've been consigned to the unsexiest kingdom of it all, but it is not an excuse for violence or wholesale hatred. As a woman who likes things like cars, cricket and rugby, it has happened to me plenty of times - I have often been the woman a with whom a man wants to watch sport but not take to bed. Shit happens. I didn't walk away from those cringe-inducing "I just want to be friends" conversations feeling entitled to the man-in-question's penis. Friend-zoning and merely not being noticed are things that happen among gay and bisexual people as well. It is simply what happens when the sexual attraction just ain't there and it is something people need to be able to deal with maturely, regardless of who they are.

But, like lifting a rock and finding it crawling with spiders underneath, Elliot Rodger's story has revealed a deep vein of hatred among some young men (and it is pretty much exclusively young men, let's not be shy about this). It is a vein made up of feelings of entitlement to women's bodies, of viewing women as prey or targets, of assuming women are all shallow bitches who only want musclebound, wealthy athletes, of hero-worshipping Rodgers, of rape apologists, of stalker apologists, and, chillingly, of plotting manifestos and copycat attacks in online chat rooms. They are not just talking about guns or knives but about bombs, about using their intelligence to kill as many people as they can.

To pretend this isn't a problem is naive. The geek who isn't getting laid is not merely a pitiful caricature. In Elliot Rodger, we have an example of the deep, violent hatred of women that is real and encouraged by an awful underbelly of men. If this is left unchecked and not talked about openly, if sex education is either suppressed or merely talked about in terms of genital plumbing rather than the broader context of respect and relationships, more awful things will happen to innocent people.



Photography by Piotr Siedlecki

Conchita Wurst: A ray of light in a shower of shite

I love Conchita Wurst. I don't care if that makes me a politically correct, bandwagon-jumping, Eurovision-loving sap.

But Conchita only won because she is a bearded man in a dress!

So what? It is naive to suggest that Eurovision is purely about the song. It has never been purely about the song. The commercial music industry is never purely about the song. This is not fair but it's the way it is. Elvis would never have been idolised by millions if he was an obese, spotty geek with hips of lard rather than rubber. Kylie Minogue, by her own admission, is a "good all-round package" rather than being the best at anything. Nobody turned around for the overweight country and western singer with the competent-rather-than-soulful act on The Voice. But if he looked more like Brad Pitt than John Candy, the judges would have kicked themselves for missing out on a marketable opportunity.

Likewise, Austria's Conchita with the fabulous hair, lithe legs, elegant hands, glamorous dress sense, impeccable makeup, stunning bone structure and, yes, a beard and XY chromosomes, represents an intriguing prospect. Add to this a decent set of pipes and a song that has "future Bond theme" written all over it and you have something that will potentially make Conchita (also known as Thomas Neuwirth) and a record company plenty of money. Good for them. Lesser talents have gone on to make buckets of money without causing an outrage.

The song might not have won if it was sung by a beardless woman in a dress. Who knows and, seriously, who cares? Last year's dreary Danish song probably wouldn't have won if it was sung by a frumpy housewife in sensible elastic-waisted trousers and matching cardigan rather than a pretty, young Joss Stone-alike with no shoes on.

But more people in Britain voted for Poland! The judges just pandered to political correctness!

Oh, boo hoo hoo and cry me a freakin' river. People who are genuinely up in arms about the democracy of Eurovision but don't give a damn about the problems with a process that has resulted in a ridiculous coalition, an irrational fear of minority governments, a moronic ignorance as to why AV would have been a good thing for British democracy, the farce that is the House of Lords, out of control expense claims and an irrelevant monarchy, need to get a grip. Poland probably did well because of patriotic Poles living in the UK and because plenty of people like boobs. Move on and find something worth getting angry about.

This is just another example of gay people forcing their lifestyle on the heterosexual majority!

Good Lord. Answer these questions honestly if you are a heterosexual person who really feels oppressed by Conchita winning Eurovision.

1. Did anyone force you to watch Eurovision? Yes or no?

2. Has Conchita winning Eurovision forced you to become gay? Yes or no?

3. Has Conchita winning Eurovision forced anyone you know to become gay? Yes or no?

4. Will anyone force you to buy any album Conchita might make as a result of winning Eurovision? Yes or no?

5. Have you lost any rights or privileges as a result of Conchita winning Eurovision? Yes or no?

Let's move on, shall we?

The voting in Eurovision is just political!

No shit, Sherlock. And if this year's vote makes a political point about accepting people regardless of their sexuality, or helps people understand that there is a spectrum of sexuality, that's a good thing. If you're not interested in the politics of LGBT rights, that's your choice too. Nobody is forcing you to grab a rainbow flag and march anywhere.

The booing of Russia and support for the Russian act by its friends was as political as it was predictable. The Tolmachevy Sisters sang an entirely unmemorable song while see-sawing in negligees. They did not deserve to win. Given they are just 17, the booing was probably a bit harsh. We have no idea what their thoughts are on anything much because nobody has bothered to ask them. They probably just want to be famous. But booing and tweeting about the booing is easier than boycotting the Winter Olympics over concerns about Russia's LGBT rights or trying to help Ukraine and Russia come to a peaceful solution.

We're now faced with the unedifying spectacle of angry Russians, absorbed in a pitiful moral panic, calling for a boycott of Eurovision. Conchita's win has probably caused Vladimir Putin's head to explode. But like most bullies, he is also a coward. He silences critics, he censors, he does not tolerate dissent. 

If Russia boycotts Eurovision next year, it is no great loss. The values Putin promotes are not values that I associate with a peaceful Europe, a Europe that allows for freedom of expression and does not panic over a singing man resplendent in dress and beard. None of the politicking that went on over the weekend will sort out the situation in Ukraine, persuade Putin that his laws about homosexuality are ridiculous or get Greece out of debt. But Eurovision is a bit of fun. And, there is nothing wrong with fun. As a bonus, Austria, this year's winning country, can actually afford to host it next year.

Po-faced Conchita haters can sit around marinating in their own bile for all I care. It must be awful to be so joyless, to get properly angry over a singer in a cheesy contest. I'd rather have a dirty martini with Conchita. 

The UAE, women's rights and the dangers of simplistic league tables

It was the kind of startling headline that came as no surprise to anyone working in the media in the UAE. Gulf News proudly trumpeted that in the Global Social Progress Index, produced by a team at Harvard Business School as part of a World Economic Forum initiative, "UAE ranks first in world for respecting women". Except that wasn't entirely true. Or at all true.

The UAE came 37th overall in this rather curious league table and first for respecting women's rights out of the countries of the Middle East. This means the UAE fended off fierce competition from such bastions of feminism as Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

But it is easy for me to sit here in London, almost three-and-a-half years on from a five-year stint in the UAE and snark on the UAE's track record with women. Like most of these lists, the Global Social Progress Index makes for easy headlines, offers bragging rights for the nations who do well and is not particularly nuanced.

"Check your privilege" has become a cliche but it is one for which the UAE may have been invented. It is not as simple as "All men in the UAE have it much easier than all women." or "Everything is super-amazing for all women in the UAE.".

As a western expat woman who worked in well-paid jobs in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, my day-to-day life was more privileged than a man from India, Nepal, Bangladesh or Pakistan working for Dh500 a month on a construction site, living in awful dormitory-style accommodation unironically called a "labour camp" while being in debt to his employer for his visa, despite such arrangements being illegal under UAE law.

There was a horrible intersection of privilege one night in Dubai in December 2006 when, for the first and only time in my life, I was sexually assaulted. Thanks to a physically unfit attacker, judicious use of my right elbow and the smashing of my Burger King into his chest, I got away with a cat-like scratch on my decolletage and a ladder in my tights but it was not fun. Based on the circumstances of this event, I can ascertain that my attacker was probably a low income earner whose pitiful wage did not allow him, if he had a wife, to sponsor her residency visa. His probable enforced celibacy in no way excuses what he tried to do to me. It was his attempt to exercise power over me, as all sexual assaults are, regardless of the genders involved.

The UAE loves to promote its low rate of sexual assault but I suspect the rates are higher than the official police statistics indicate because of a culture of fear surrounding the reporting of such crimes. After all, where is the incentive to report a rape when, if it is disproved in a court of law, the victim risks being charged with adultery?

When I reported my attack, I encountered an amateur Perry Mason on the phone. He accused me of making it up, demanded to know why I was walking alone at night and asked me what I was wearing. It was only when I was fortunate enough to be put in touch with a very senior member of the Dubai police force, the well-educated and respectful Major Najeeb, that I was taken seriously. Of course by then it was too late to catch the attacker but I was glad that the awful incident was on the record as a reported sexual assault.

Then there was the horrendous case of being tried for adultery in the emirate of Fujairah after my boyfriend was killed in a swimming accident.

But on the flipside, I had plenty of positive experiences as a woman living in the UAE. It was here that I got a couple of amazing breaks as a motoring journalist and men's magazine editor that probably wouldn't have happened if I stayed in Australia. Despite premarital sex being illegal, it was startlingly easy to obtain cheap birth control. I made amazing friends among the local women because of a shared love of motor sport and fast cars. My work in the UAE offered me travel opportunities that would be impossible or expensive from Australia. And for many women, both local and expatriate, the UAE has offered them a great place to start businesses.

Unlike unmarried Emirati women, I could live alone without arousing suspicions of being a harlot, date whoever I liked without family interference, and, as long as I was discreet, lived with my now-husband for more than a year before we got married. The frustrations I encountered in everyday life, such as absurd bureaucracy, a pathetic postal service, expensive internet and cable TV, shops that don't ever seem to have enough change, incompetent signposting, media censorship and life-threateningly bad driving, were encountered by everyone, not just women.

And then there are the aspects of life in the UAE which seem sexist but can often work in favour of women. For example, I had no issue with being served in record time in banks, government departments and post offices because of the "ladies' queue". Waiting in line for any sort of bureaucracy to happen is a monumental waste of time. I was always delighted to not squander entire lunchbreaks in queues, would merrily sail past a line of despondent-looking men and then get on with my life.

Similarly, the system of working men sponsoring their wives on housewife visas wasn't necessarily a ticket to the 1950s. This worked well for many women who accompanied well-paid husbands to the UAE. With no income tax to worry about, a certain freedom could be had on your husband's visa allowing women to work part-time, to freelance without HMRC-related headaches, or to simply have a nice life. If my husband got a well-paid job in the UAE, I'd have no qualms about being on a housewife visa and working from home/in More Cafe as a freelance journalist. (This would involve the farcical situation of my husband having to authorise the paperwork for my UAE driving licence so I could freelance, inevitably as a motoring writer, but hey-ho...) However, with the Dubai government raising the salary for working men to sponsor their wives' visas from Dh4,000 a month to Dh10,000, this becomes a privilege based on wealth and will negatively affect many men and women.

But what about local women? There are plenty of positives for Emirati women, which makes the patriotism of my Emirati female friends entirely understandable. While the UAE is a long way from universal adult suffrage, 17% of government ministers are women. In the UK, just four of 32 ministers are women - a dismal 12.5%. Emirati women have educational and career opportunities like never before. Women outnumber men in UAE's universities and there will be an inevitable rise in their power and influence as a result. Emirati women, like Emirati men, benefit from free education and healthcare courtesy of a government that looks after its own.

But the evil spectre of female genital mutilation is present for some Emirati women. Like sexual assault in the UAE, it is hard to get accurate statistics. A survey of 200 Emiratis of both sexes found that 34% of the women surveyed had been cut. Of these, 40% said they would circumcise their daughters and, overall, 82% of female respondents and 99% of the male respondents opposed the practice. A survey of 200 people is not enormous but it gives a clue as to what might be happening to many Emirati women. Who is going to speak out on their behalf? I am guessing not a bunch of academics in the US putting together a glib index.

And, at the other end of the socio-economic spectrum, life for many of the women employed in domestic service in the UAE is no picnic either. While Emirati women and western expat women generally enjoy many privileges, the same cannot be said for many housemaids who generally hail from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Phillippines. Reports of physical abuse, poor working conditions and massive curbs on freedom of movement for domestic staff are not uncommon. Indeed, sometimes the abuse is legitimised on forums such as Expat Woman, where it is not uncommon for discussions about denying maids time off, use of a mobile phone or healthcare to erupt among those who can afford to employ them.

This week, the horrific news broke that an Asian housemaid has been sentenced in an Abu Dhabi court to be stoned to death after falling pregnant to a man to whom she is not married. Details are, so far, scant - we have no information about the man involved. Was he a boyfriend? Was she raped by her employer? All we know is that she must be Muslim because under UAE law only Muslims can be sentenced to death. If there is enough international outrage over this case, her life may well be saved because of the Abu Dhabi government's very real fear of bad PR. But it is appalling that anyone can sentence a woman to be stoned to death in any country in 2014. In a perversion of the country's "prolife" stance (as in abortion is completely illegal...), the execution would not take place until after the baby is born but that's no victory for anyone.

My personal experience of life in the UAE was unique and in many ways, completely off the wall. Horrible things happened to me, happy things happened to me and, to this day, I get bouts of Middle East-homesickness. For every woman who is living the dream in the UAE, there is another who is suffering enormously. The satisfied Emirati career woman's life is a world away from the woman who was trafficked into the UAE to work as a prostitute. My struggles were different to those of the amazing Sri Lankan woman who cleaned my apartment and from those of the sad-eyed men who work for a pittance on construction sites.

But as a pregnant housemaid faces the prospect of being stoned to death in Abu Dhabi, I really hope that as well as an international outcry, women from all backgrounds in the UAE speak out on her behalf. As it stands, this shameful situation makes a mockery of claims to gender equality that a government-owned newspaper is making in the UAE based on an index created miles away in the ivory towers of Harvard University.


Image courtesy of Nemo

Josie Cunningham and the challenge to prochoicers...

Here is a hypothetical for all prochoice people...

Miranda is a single mother of two kids. She worked hard at law school and she is a newly qualified solicitor with great prospects. It hasn't always been easy but now she is looking forward to earning enough money to support herself and her kids. But she has an unplanned third pregnancy and she is not sure who the father is. The father might be Mike, a man she has been casually dating but it's not particularly serious. Or it might be Colin, a client at the law firm where she is working as a junior. They had a one night stand. Whoever the father is, Miranda doesn't look at either man as a long-term prospect and her boss would not be delighted if he found out about Colin. On top of all this, her boss just offered her a promotion - it will involve more work but also more money. The timing of this third pregnancy is terrible. She will be heavily pregnant just as she will be making her debut in court with an important case and her childcare arrangements are already expensive and cumbersome with two children. She has an abortion.

Prochoicers, are you OK with Miranda's choice?

But are you also one of the many prochoicers who howled with derision at Josie Cunningham? Josie Cunningham, a mother of two works as a glamour model and an escort. She is currently 18 weeks pregnant - so within the legal limits for an elective abortion in England - and the father is either a Premier League footballer or an escort agency client. Over the weekend, she caused an outcry after telling the Sunday Mirror newspaper that she might have an abortion because being pregnant could interfere with an opportunity to earn wads of cash appearing on reality TV show Big Brother.

The latest media reports on this story suggest she won't be appearing on Big Brother because of the ethical minefield it has created for the producers (and nobody would be surprised if conservative advertisers got cold feet over the whole situation and threatened to take their money elsewhere). And, as far as we know, Josie is still pregnant.

But if she does have an abortion, that really is her choice. It's no different to the hypothetical Miranda's situation apart from the occupation of the pregnant woman. A swathe of women have exposed themselves as snobs - Josie is mostly famous for having a breast enlargement on the NHS - she was born without breast tissue -it was after this operation that she took up a career as a glamour model. This, along with being an escort, is how she earns her living. Just like being a junior at a law firm, it is still work.

Here's the thing about being prochoice - it means you support women's choices, even if they are not choices you'd make for yourself. It's a bit like supporting free speech - it means you support all speech, not just the bits you like.

Perhaps Channel 5 could have let Josie appear on Big Brother while pregnant. After all, there are probably more stressful environments for a pregnant woman than lolling about in a house on the telly. Channel 5 would have a duty of care to allow her access to a doctor. Just as the hypothetical Miranda panicked about juggling her career and a third pregnancy, the real Josie is also in a situation where she feels she has to choose between carrying to term and working. And it is the nature of her work that has caused people to get all outraged. It is not a common work-versus-motherhood situation but Josie has clearly played up to the controversy with talk of being able to afford a pink Range Rover if she puts her career first. She has trolled everyone brilliantly and the mass pearl-clutching has been hysterical to watch.

We are living in a world where "reality TV star" is seen as a valid career choice by many, a path to easy riches, so this situation was inevitable. Josie, I am quite sure, knew she'd create a fauxrage. She knew she'd get attention and, even if Channel 5 runs a mile at the prospect of her appearing in the Big Brother house, other media outlets will want a piece of her. Hell, Channel 5's owner Richard Desmond also owns OK! magazine - I wouldn't bat an eyelid if he did a deal with her if she has the baby. It could be easily packaged as a good news story, a prolife triumph to keep conservative advertisers happy.

By telling the Sunday Mirror her story, Josie has exposed a rich vein of class-based hypocrisy among British prochoicers. If she has an abortion, that's her choice. But this whole spectacle becomes ammunition for the likes of Nadine Dorries, Jeremy Hunt and Frank Field to limit access to abortion in the UK. Josie's story feeds into the myth that abortion clinics are full of women who are close to 24 weeks pregnant having abortions on a whim. And as soon as hitherto prochoice people jump on the bandwagon to call her a slut, it makes sweeping changes to abortion laws more acceptable. Think before you declare: "I am prochoice but...".


Picture courtesy of the National Science Foundation

It's open season on parents

Judging parents, in particular mothers, has become a global sport. And the way we pour scorn on celebrity mothers is merely a pitiful reflection of the way we judge mothers we come across in our own lives.*

Lily Allen caused significant horror when she admitted that she got bored with staying home with her children and that's why she made another album. She didn't say she hates her kids, as far as we know she doesn't starve or beat her kids, and they seem to be perfectly healthy. But she was honest enough to admit that being a mother wasn't 100% fulfilling and, as such, she wanted to do other things with her life.

If a mother goes back to work after having a baby and she is looking forward to it, good for her. While economic necessity is a big reason for many women to return to work after having a baby, for many others, the reasons include spending time with grown-ups, taking on challenges that are not related to being a mother, relieving the cabin fever of staying at home with the kid, and simply reminding herself that she is not solely defined by her offspring. How any of this is anyone else's damn business is a mystery to me.

Meanwhile, the Duchess of Cambridge was criticised for the way she carried her baby off a plane and for taking a kid-free holiday with her husband when the baby was seven months old. It's not as if Prince George would have been left chained to a radiator for a week. Good Lord! Personally, I am no fan of any monarchy but equally I don't think the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are terrible parents either.

Among the parents I know, there are massive variations in the age of their kids when they decided to take a holiday without them - or even leave them overnight with a babysitter. What works for one family might not work for another. Again, how any of this is anyone else's damn business is a mystery to me.

Then ex-Neighbours star Jane Hall felt the need to tell her listeners on Sydney radio that model Miranda Kerr "repulsed" her for having the temerity to talk about sex in an interview with GQ magazine. According to Hall, Kerr talking about sex was repulsive because she is "a young girl" (er, she's 30...) and "someone's mother" (which one can only assume happened because of sex). Clearly, Kerr never got the memo about how women must shut off their sexuality like a light switch the instant they give birth.

Given that I have friends with more than one child, I am pretty sure that despite the inevitable tiredness and time pressures of parenthood, it is not the death knell for sex either. And while I don't monitor my friends' bedroom activities, I can confirm that parents do still talk about sex, often in explicit detail.

Neither Allen, the Duchess or Kerr are bad parents. Obviously, having wealth and privilege helps make their lives easier, despite Gwyneth Paltrow's moronic comments about how simple life is for mothers who work in offices rather than on film sets. But I wouldn't even describe her as a bad mother, just a daft one with no idea what it's like outside her organic lentil bubble. And there is no law against daftness.

But the culture of judging parents has created a maelstrom of loud voices calling for such things as making drinking alcohol in pregnancy a criminal offence (absurd when there is no medical consensus on alcohol consumption in pregnancy), banning smoking in cars with children (which is surely commonsense - not even the most committed smoker I know would smoke in a car with kids and, as a bonus, it's hard to police) and now the Cinderella Law that will be mentioned in the Queen's speech at the next opening of Parliament.This would make emotional cruelty towards children a criminal offence.

We really need a lot more detail on definitions for the Cinderella Law before we can form a clear view. While there are certainly horrific cases of children being damaged by neglectful parents, the law's main cheerleader, Robert Buckland, a Conservative MP, made this sweeping statement about it on BBC Radio 5 Live: "You can look at a range of behaviours from ignoring a child's presence, failing to stimulate a child, right through to acts of in fact terrorising a child where the child is frightened to disclose what is happening to them."

It's not hard to see how such a law could be open to abuse and time-wasting false reports. Is the mother who needs to take a moment in the garden to compose herself because her kids are behaving horribly an emotional abuser? What about when a parent is tired and plonks a child in front of the TV for a couple of hours just to get some peace and quiet or the washing done? How about when a child is older and savvier - but still legally a child - and tries to criminalise his or her own parents in a fit of teenage vengeance? If you think an adolescent would never do that to a parent, you haven't met many adolescents. After all, we are living in an era where childhood is longer than ever.

Will there be some sort of state-sanctioned quota on hugs and kisses that will mean a child is being loved enough? What if there are too many hugs and kisses and the pendulum swings from neglect to sexual abuse?

As things currently stand, too many kids do slip through the net and end up abused and, equally, there are ridiculous cases of false accusations given a life of their own by over-zealous social workers. A commonsense-driven balance between parental responsibility and state intervention when required needs to be struck.

Whether more laws are required or just better application of existing laws, I am not sure. But I am sure we are living in an era of extreme judgement of parents. Eleanor Roosevelt nailed it when she said: "Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people." Perhaps we could all benefit from less talk about the scandalous mother who got bored by her kids/took a holiday/talked about sex. We could do with more talk about how we can create a society where we deal effectively with genuine abusers while accepting that parenting is not a one-size-fits-all occupation where there is only one way to do it right.

* Disclaimer: It is perfectly acceptable to judge parents who don't vaccinate their kids. They do not understand science or herd immunity and their actions harm others.

L'Wren Scott and the inevitable grim spectacle

L'Wren Scott was a fashion designer who died a tragic death in New York City, aged just 49. That's no age, as they say. But in today's papers, she was, above all else, the girlfriend of Mick Jagger who committed suicide yesterday, who happened to be a fashion designer and, hey, what better way to sell a few more copies than to run a poster cover purporting to show a gigantic photo of the moment the ageing rocker heard the awful news.

I get it. As a believer in the free press and a free market economy for the media with minimal government interference, I support the right of any newspaper to report on this story however they damn well please. And the Mick Jagger angle is going to attract clicks galore. Obviously. It's Mick freakin' Jagger. Don't like the coverage? Don't buy it or click on the website.

But a free press must be open to criticism. I find it sad that a 49-year-old woman with accomplishments of her own is reduced in death to a "girlfriend". Even the way the relationship is described is reductive and juvenile. L'Wren and Mick were together for 13 years. At their age and after a relationship that lasted longer than a lot of marriages, "girlfriend" can be upgraded to "partner". Yes, I know plenty of people find the word "partner" to be utterly naff but at least it is grown up. With the exception of Dennis Thatcher, dead men are seldom identified first and foremost by their relationship, but for dead women, it is often the preface to her other achievements.

From a cold and cynical free marketeer point of view, the three words that are "suicide" and "fashion designer" will attract interest and will drive traffic to websites and subsequently lead to newspapers being sold too. People are complete and utter ghouls. Those three words will lead people to ask themselves who committed suicide and click on the link and, hey presto, the media outlets get what they want.  We have the additional story of Mick Jagger understandably putting his Australian tour on hold. There's plenty of mileage in this beast yet.

Armchair psychologists will also have their own grim field day with this story. The earliest news on the inevitable question of "Why?" points to financial problems. Cue people asking why she simply didn't ask Mick for some cash, or claiming that financial problems are a lame reason to commit suicide despite not knowing L'Wren Scott personally, or trotting out the trite "but she had so much going for her" line.

But just as Fred Nile reduced Charlotte Dawson's suicide to an abortion she had 15 years ago, nobody will ever truly know what the final moments were like for L'Wren Scott. Instead, there is a morbid rabble out there tweeting nonsense and none of this will advance our understanding of suicide or depression.

And none of this noise, none of this crude speculation over an unspeakably sad situation, none of the awful pictures of Mick Jagger in a state of utter shock and heartbreak, none of this predictable ghoulishness will bring a talented, interesting woman back.

Mind The Gap. Part Two: Still lame

Old Street, where agglomeration happens...

After last week's disappointingly thin first episode of Mind The Gap: London vs The Rest, I naively had high hopes for the second episode. Maybe there'd be more analysis, less kissing of Boris Johnson's arse and perhaps some interesting ideas about how the British economy does not need to rely quite so heavily on the capital. Hell, was I wrong!

Instead, we got to see Evan Davis (and more of Evan Davis than I really needed to see in tight lycra shorts) as he messed about on a bike at a velodrome in Manchester, we had the word "agglomeration" beaten into our heads until we lapsed into a collective coma, there were a couple of women whining in the street where Ringo Starr used to live, and we had the example of one cute village as a model for anywhere north of Watford.

Certainly, it is good that Manchester is managing to thrive with a vibrant cultural scene, drawcard facilities such as the training centre for cyclists and a hub for media businesses (that'd be the agglomeration Davis is unquestioningly evangelical about). But Davis seemed to then reduce the rest of "the north" into a homogenous blur that was never going to compete with the might of London.

Bizarrely, Davis mourned the demise of ports in the north of England, blaming the rise and rise of air travel. It is indeed true that most of us jump on a plane rather than sail for months when we take a holiday or travel for work. But in the previous episode, he gleefully skipped around the enormous new DP World port in London without challenging anything in relation to its Dubai Government ownership and generally proclaimed it as a good thing. So there is still a need for ports. There are still plenty of things that need to be transported to and from Britain by ship. And many cities of the north used to have busy ports and the related infrastructure so why was that not continuously developed and updated? Britain is not a big place - it is not an impossible transport challenge to get goods from, say, Liverpool to London any more than it is to get goods from London to Liverpool.

Liverpool was reduced by Davis to the street where Ringo Starr lived until the age of four. The street is a depressing row of terraced houses, mostly abandoned, save for Ringo's old house where Beatles fans inexplicably go to write on the boarded-up window and a few residents who'd like the street demolished to make way for new houses. It was unclear from (yet another) lame interview whether the pro-demolition women owned the houses or not or who was meant to pay for the demolition and rebuilding.

Ironically, disused places such as this row of terraces could be used for agglomeration, which seems to be Davis's favourite thing. He waxed lyrical about London's Old Street, where IT/wannabe Silicone Valley types are prone to hanging out together, setting up IT start-ups and the like. Why not encourage businesses to get the hell out of London and set up shop elsewhere if there is no real need for them to operate specifically from the capital? Tax breaks for businesses that decentralise, perhaps? Hell, it is the very technology the agglomerating Old Streeters are so fond of that makes it easy for businesses to get out of Dodge City and still communicate with the rest of the world.

Then there was a pointless segue to a funky but failed arts centre in Bromwich. All that did was disprove the adage "If you build it, they will come." Sometimes you've got to build something people actually want to use. Crazy, I know...

And then Hebden Bridge, the charming little town favoured by well-heeled professionals who work in cities like Leeds and Manchester but would rather live elsewhere, was put forward as an example of how it could be. Davis said that while places like Leeds and Manchester are hubs, somewhere like Hebden Bridge is a spoke, a desirable place to live with a buzzing economy of quaint small businesses all of its own. Which is fine if you can afford the property as well as the season ticket for the train, but it's not the panacea for the north.

Davis completely ignored the north-east and the potential of places such as Newcastle and Durham, and Scotland didn't really rate a mention. Examination of what an independent Scotland would mean for the rest of the British economy was clearly not in the remit for this one, which is a shame because that would have been a chance for some interesting analysis. Equally, there was no discussion of how to revive manufacturing, how to finally reverse the damage done by inevitable but poorly managed coal mine closures, and no mention of the importance of high education standards in creating strong economies.

But none of that would be as fun as pissing about in a velodrome or having a chuckle with Boris Johnson. In short, Mind The Gap was a massive let-down.

Is Mind The Gap: London vs The Rest the lamest thing on TV this week?

Look at me, there I am, loving London...

First, a disclaimer: I bloody love London. I have loved London since I first lived in the UK as a three-year-old, I loved it when I made return visits and I love living here now. I love the noise, the chaos, the people-watching, the museums and galleries, and I even love the weather. But Britain does not and should not begin and end with one city. I, for one, would happily work in another part of the country. Indeed, I almost ended up as a lecturer at Sunderland University.

While London's economy goes from strength to strength, the rest of the country is lagging behind, aside from a few notable pockets of affluence outside the capital. The effects of the decline of manufacturing and industry in the north continue to be felt until this day and politicians with clear, meaningful policies and ideas on how to develop the regions are sadly lacking. In Germany, for example, the economy is not just Berlin - places such as Munich, Stuttgart, Bonn, Hamburg, Hanover, Leipzig, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Dortmund and Bremen are all doing well in a way that many cities outside of London are not.

So with that in mind, Mind The Gap: London vs The Rest should have been a powerful two-part TV series, a challenge to government, to businesses and indeed to the millions of us who cling stubbornly to London to think about the rest of the country, to be aware that Britain does not end with the M25.

The first episode was completely lame. A fawning blow job to the capital. Evan Davis, an economist, proved to be an interviewer who was about as hard-hitting as a knitted hammer. Even when he did express concerns about the implications of London getting too big and succeeding at the expense of the rest of the country, his attitude seemed to be one of "Oh well, it might be a bit crap elsewhere but it'll be fine because London just can't fail!". Up to a point, Davis is right. London probably is too big to fail. But that should not have stopped him from challenging the status quo. He had ample opportunity to do so in a series of interviews but he just didn't manage this.

Unsurprisingly, his interview in the Shard with Boris Johnson was especially embarrassing. BoJo's dubious charms worked their floppy haired magic on Davis. Only a starstruck interviewer would let the Mayor of London get away with explaining why everything will be all right with a nonsensical jam-on-Ryvita analogy. Boris bumbled his way through an explanation that was along the lines of "London isn't sucking the jam (as a metaphor for money) out of the rest of Britain, London is helping the jam spread across the entire Ryvita (as a metaphor for the rest of Britain) because the jam will spread more evenly the more you pile on." It seems to be a food-based corruption of the theory of trickle-down economics and it went unchallenged by Davis.

Davis also had golden opportunities to ask serious questions about foreign investment and how much it actually benefits London and, in turn, the rest of the country, how much it benefits foreign investors (who, let's be honest, don't invest here for the good of their health...) and why we're not getting the same investment within Britain by British companies. At London Gateway port, you could not miss the DP World signs. There was even one on Davis' high-vis vest. There was talk about how this project creates jobs and maintains London's status as a port city, but no questions about the ethics of a partnership with a Dubai Government-owned company, what Dubai gets out of this, and whether taxes are being paid to HMRC. But Davis got to load a container with a big Chinese crane so that's OK then.

Similarly, when Davis interviewed Tan Sri Liew Kee Sin, CEO of SP Setia Berhard, the Malaysian consortium that is developing the prime Battersea Power Station site, they had a giggle when he was asked if he was interested in building housing in other parts of Britain. He wasn't asked why he didn't want to invest in, say, Manchester, a place with a growing media industry and education sector, an international airport, good transport to other parts of Britain and a thriving cultural scene. Surely that would be an opportunity to not only create jobs outside of London but be ahead of other foreign property investors in spotting a new up-and-comer?

But given SP Setia Berhard paid £400 million for the Battersea site, more than 800 flats have already been sold for £675 million, prices start at £388,000 for a studio, and details are sketchy on how many flats have been bought by foreign owners, it's pretty clear places outside of London are not going to attract this large-scale level of investment, foreign or otherwise, any time soon. It was just a chance to marvel at overpriced studios, along with the tour through an enormous £40 million Mayfair apartment that came with its own hideous, gold bespoke crockery. It was property porn with no analysis.

And then there was his depressing schlep through Elephant and Castle's currently deserted Heygate Estate, where people who owned ex-council properties were forced out with not enough money to buy somewhere comparable, and where a redevelopment probably won't do a damn thing to solve London's housing crisis. His interview with a woman from the local authority was, again, weak and came across like an advertisement for the development. There'll be places for kids to play and cafes and stuff. No talk of how many more people this will bring into an already crammed part of London, no talk of things like the schools and hospitals that will be required, and no talk of why London's property market is so completely obsessed by the crowded and expensive inner city areas Zones One and Two. Three-bed flats at the Heygate redevelopment are now being advertised to overseas buyers before the demolition of the old estate is finished. The price? £700,000. It's another Battersea Power Station. There had to be a better way to improve this part of London but we'll never know.

I can relate to the "If you're tired of London, you're tired of life" adage. But even if you are not a homelessness or unemployment statistic, if you are on an endless waiting list for a council flat, if you cannot see yourself ever owning your own place, if you fear you will be an eternal renter in the land where mortgages are a badge of honour and people treat home ownership as a get-rich-quick-scheme rather than somewhere to live, it can be a tiresome city indeed. The first episode of Mind The Gap briefly visited Yorkshire for some fresh air and talked a bit about the Tour de France. It would appear that the second episode will focus on areas outside of London. But the first episode was a massive disappointment. There were so many missed opportunities to ask hard questions and do a bit of analysis beyond the whizzy map graphics.

 Episode One was a largely uncritical advert for London. Here's hoping for something meatier in the second episode. Christ knows, someone needs to make the issue of regional development sexy and interesting to the wider population because right now, our political leaders sure as hell can't manage it.

An open letter to Fred Nile

Dear Fred,

Congratulations on your marriage last December. I'm sure you had a lovely wedding day and, as someone who is also happily married, we can both agree that finding someone you love to share your life is a wonderful thing. It's just a shame that in your perfect world, you would not extend the right to such joy to same-sex couples.

Whoops! Sorry! That was a bit crass of me, wasn't it? Did see what I so thoughtlessly did there? I used the example of your personal life to make a political point. I've never actually met you, save for the time I was on Sydney's Oxford Street with my family watching the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras back in 1992 and across the road, I spotted you and a few supporters trying to pray the gay away, but I figured I'd still use your personal situation to share my views on marriage equality.

It's as rude as, oh, I dunno, using the suicide of Charlotte Dawson to hammer out an anti-abortion message, as you did, Fred. Perhaps obituary writers did not feel the need to mention the abortion she had in 1999 because she had already shared this story in her autobiography, or because her privacy had already been stripped away, partly by herself and partly by the media, or because of editorial word limits, or because, maybe, just maybe, the writers figured that an obituary might be a distasteful place to mention pregnancy termination.

Oh dear, sorry, I got distracted again. I was writing to congratulate you on your marriage. Er, where was I? Oh yes, that's right, it is indeed marvellous to fall in love and share your life with someone. It is such a shame that you didn't have the full support of your family on your wedding day. From what I've read in assorted newspapers and gossip columns, I understand that your daughter and one of your three sons didn't attend your wedding. Something to do with them not being comfortable with you remarrying so soon after Elaine, your first wife, passed away? Is that correct? How awful for you. I can't imagine my own wedding day without my family being there.

Whoops! There I go again! I don't know what has come over me today. What was I thinking in bringing up details of your family dramas when I've never met you or your family, I wasn't invited to your wedding, I am not privy to what goes on behind closed doors in your family, and I do not have access to all the facts.

That's bit like pulling out a quote about an abortion from a recently dead woman's autobiography and posting it on your Facebook page with a comment about the lack of abortion mentions in her obituaries the day after she was found dead in her apartment. The quote from her autobiography - "I felt a shift, I felt the early tinges of what I can now identify as my first experience with depression" - do indeed refer to the "total turmoil" she felt on the day she had an abortion after falling pregnant to her ex-husband, Scott Miller.

From her account, it would appear that she felt pressured into terminating the pregnancy at the behest of her ex-husband. But you didn't feel the need to think about this side of the story before posting on Facebook, did you, Fred?

The circumstances surrounding her abortion include a failing and troubled relationship that was being played out in the public eye. Charlotte's writings on the subject do not paint Scott in a flattering light. And nobody who is truly prochoice is OK about any abortion that happens in an environment of coercion. Prochoice is about supporting all choices women make, giving them the information to make educated choices, and the resources to ensure that all choices are available to them, including carrying unplanned pregnancies to term.

Here's the thing, Fred: Just as I have no real clue about the details of your family life, your wedding day, or your relationship with your sons and daughter, you have no real idea about what Charlotte was going through 15 years ago - or last week. Equally, neither you or I have a time machine that we could set to 1999 and change the course of Charlotte's life so that she chose to carry the pregnancy to term. We will never know what sort of a mother she might have been, whether having a baby would have saved her, how she might have coped with pregnancy and childbirth, whether she would have been felled by the horrors of post-natal depression, whether her marriage would have survived, or whether she would have gone on to be a successful and happy single mother. These scenarios are all in the realm of the ghoulishly hypothetical.

Given that nothing anyone can say or do can bring Charlotte back, given that her friends and family are going through the terrible process of grieving for a woman who felt so desperate that, despite her many advantages, she took her own life at the age of 47, and given that depression is a complex condition that cannot be summarised in a Facebook post, it is appalling that you'd give a troubled woman one last agenda-loaded kick when she was as low as any person can possibly be.

Like I said, Fred, congratulations on your marriage. May you and your new wife have many happy years together. May you recognise that such joy isn't as forthcoming to everyone. And next time you feel the need to make a point about abortion, consider whether using the early death of a woman who was in enormous pain really is the best way to push that particular barrow.

Kind regards,

Georgia

Censorship, censorship everywhere and not a chance to think...

You think you can say what you like? Think again. This blog has been routinely blocked by O2 and EE using stupid internet filters that treat adult consumers like children. O2 regularly makes Barry Butler, a freelance ESOL teacher from the Midlands, jump through absurd hoops every time he tries to read this blog and finds it has been blocked. 

EE has also been guilty of preventing adult customers from accessing this blog - this is especially ridiculous given that EE sponsored the BAFTA awards the other week. Let me see if I understand. We have a phone company that has prevented adults from accessing the internet in its entirety putting its name to a celebration of the British film industry. That would be an industry which over the years has given the world some of the most brilliant, subversive and controversial contributions to the cultural landscape. 

Corporations are already doing the work of the government whose plans for internet filtering are anti-free speech in the extreme. There is an alarming dearth of opposition to these plans in the House of Commons or the House of Lords. If that doesn't strike you as the start of an ominous future of restricted speech and expression, we need to sit down and have a little chat.

And then we have the mob mentality which seeks to silence anything offensive. Personally, I think Katie Hopkins is an attention-seeking professional troll. I don't tune in when she is on TV, I don't follow her on Twitter, I simply cannot be bothered with her nonsense. But she has every right to spout whatever it is that she says. The same goes for lads' mags, Frankie Boyle, Seth McFarlane, Sarah Silverman and anyone or anything else that people have sought to ban.

Campaigning website change.org wasted bandwidth with an e-petition to remove Katie Hopkins from ITV and Channel 5 after she she tweeted something tasteless after the helicopter crash in Scotland late last year. And, by jingo, it worked! Hopkins was indeed dropped from ITV's This Morning programme. Seriously, it is far saner to just not watch her if you don't like her. Frankly, I'd be happy if Keith Lemon, Citizen Khan, Mrs Brown's Boys or Chris Lilley never appeared on TV again because they're all about as funny as burning orphans but starting up an e-petition is childish and misses the point. 

Once you seek to ban something just because you don't like it, there is no reason why something you do like cannot be banned too.

We also have problematic discussions when it comes to banning hate speech. The thing is we don't actually need any more laws on hate speech. The UK already has laws against verbal abuse as well as physical abuse. If you yell something awful at someone and it causes distress or upset, you have broken the law and the judge will have to consider the hate speech aspect of it when sentencing. Similarly, if someone is beaten up for whatever reason, this is against the law and the judge again has to take into account whether there is any hateful motivation, such as racism or homophobia, when passing sentence. The impact of such abuse should be pretty obvious - I don't want to live in a society where it is acceptable to beat someone up for any reason - and in the case of assaults, either verbal or physical, that are motivated by hate, education is just as important as harsh sentences.

But this does not mean someone should not be allowed to speak out against issues such as same sex marriage or further immigration. I may find the views of someone opposed to marriage equality or immigration from certain nations absurd, illogical, unconstructive, unpleasant or just plain moronic - but if their views are silenced as "hate speech" there is nothing to stop other opinions also being shut down. If you start cutting down the right to express opinions, even ones with which you violently disagree, you automatically restrict your right to refute it.

And then there are more insidious ways that we are censored. 

The "gagging law" passed through Parliament, albeit with a few minor amendments and there was no mass outrage because, basically, people didn't take the time to understand it or think about how it might affect them. It imposes ridiculous requirements on lobbying groups (but not corporations...) in the run-up to elections and is essentially aimed at silencing groups such as trade unions and the implications go beyond silencing some rowdy unionists. Hint: If a law is opposed by various groups across the political spectrum, groups who typically disagree with each other, it's probably a bad law. The bureaucracy that will be involved in monitoring the membership lists and campaign spending of lobby groups flies in the face of government claims that they are all about spending less public money and being a libertarian party of small government. 

And just today I was tweeting in my other guise at the @Save_St_Helier account, whereby I am part of a campaign to try and retain vital services at my local hospital, such as A&E, maternity, renal and kids' intensive care. A few of us asked faceless bureaucrats in the Twitterverse for some transparency in relation to a process which has so far cost taxpayers £8.2 million. How the hell was a review of local healthcare services costing us so much money? 

We finally found out that £1.874 million of our money was paid to 2020 Delivery, one of those vague consultancies whereby a peruse of their website leaves you none the wiser about what they actually do. All we were told by the bureaucrats was that the £1.874 million was spent on "finance and activity monitoring and travel and transport analysis". But we can't really find out a whole lot more because Freedom of Information legislation does not apply to private companies, only public bodies. It's just another way to stop the free flow of information, to drive people who are using their freedom to publicly ask questions into a brick wall and to keep us passive and quiet.

I'm exhausted. I apologise for this blog post rambling all over the place but once you start looking at the ways in which we are censored, the ways in which the flow of information is restricted, the ways in which we seek to ban that which we dislike without thinking through the consequences, you soon discover a multi-headed hydra of anti-freedom bullshit has grown before your very eyes. Now, who wants to help me slay the hydra? It's a big job but it's one of the most important jobs we will ever do.   

Image: "Resurrection de la Censure", JJ Grandville