Work, damn you!

‘Work damn you’ says Jane Shilling in her article in The Times of 22nd July 2005. “What I can’t understand is why no one seems able to make a computer that you can take out of its box, plug in and use” she whines.
One day I hope the attitude behind this sort of article will be understood for what it is; a cry of unearned entitlement. “Its someone else’s job to do what I want”.
When you hear women say they’ll put in all the hard yakka to sort a problem rather than just whine about it then you’ll know we’ve reached some sort of gender equality. Unfortunately, you’ll also know there isn’t a man left standing on the planet for them to whine at.

Like an old fool

There was a letter recently in the Sunday Times from an 80 year old woman complaining that the 5 year guaranteed equity bond she purchased at the height of the stock market had only paid out what she put in.
Her letter appealed, pleading age and gender, for her to be given the inflated profits she had been promised by the original salesman and to receive interest income for the few days her matured capital would take to clear the banking system.
The fact that there are stupid people out there, old women amongst them, is nothing remarkable. What is remarkable is the newspaper’s decision to print the letter without adding that she should be rejoicing at her good fortune and explaining that cleared funds are not the same thing as interest earning funds.
But no, by publishing her letter they present her case as if it was justified. Is this because the editors are fools or because they have a deceitful agenda?
If it is the latter it is also the former too, of course. The consequences of endorsing this old fool’s entitlement psychology is the eventual removal of freedom of choice from all.

Prove it!

Some facts for you. Take them on trust - none are seriously disputed - or research them yourself:

- Women live significantly longer than men.
- Men commit suicide more.
- Men die in combat more.
- Women are not drafted and do not have to register. Society never demands their sacrifice.
- Men are disabled by, and die in, employment more.
- Men are the majority of victims of violence.
- Men suffer longer prison sentences for the same crime.
- Little is done to stop male rape, even for men in state care.
- Men are the majority of the homeless.
- Men are the majority of state incarcerations.
- Most Western education systems now serve women significantly better than they do men.
- Women have control over all significant reproductive, marital and custody options.
- Women commit paternity fraud on something between 5-30% of all children, although it causes great suffering and is a significant factor in domestic violence this is the one fraud the state does not define as a crime.
- Women are seldom sanctioned for false rape allegations.
- Men suffer domestic violence but have little support or refuge.
- Women are legally protected from childhood genital mutilation, men are not.
- Women have more votes and exercise more voting power in all western democracies.
- This has been the case for over 75 years.
- Women have more disposable purchasing influence, an ultimate factor in economic influence.
- Women have substantially more state expenditure dedicated to their health & issues.

At this point, if facts hold any sway with you, you might be having trouble breathing. Take it slowly.

Having regained their breath women often say ‘Well its all men’s own fault and men are in charge so men should correct it’. This is a common fallacy. Men do not act like women. Men are always in competition with each other for resources and ultimately sex. The fact that a relatively few men hold many of the top public and private posts does not mean, as it would perhaps if they were women, that they look out for their gender. In fact the reverse is true. Men’s instinct is to act against other men to protect women. This is obvious when you look at other primate societies, or the data on human society, but very few women have shown a willingness to understand this difference in behaviour. In amongst the vast collection of badly integrated mental tools that is the human brain is this bit missing in the female, after all would there ever have been a need for it in the ancestral environment? The best way for women to prove it isn’t missing, of course, is to wake up to the situation and help do something about it

Women decide elections – there are more of them – and women have controlled democracies for a very long time now. Every significant political party in the West thoroughly researches women’s intentions and targets women’s votes. Every political manifesto addresses women’s perceived requirements. Every major corporation researches women’s buying preferences and adjusts their products and services accordingly.

Women have substantial political, social and economic power and are capable of influencing these issues but are choosing not to do so. Instead they are increasingly focussing on the minutiae of their own condition. That makes women just as responsible as men, more so being in the democratic majority. That’s part of what it means to be the majority. A society is judged by its treatment of its minorities and women are failing in their duty. They can no longer pretend they didn’t know and that it isn’t their fault. Wake up, and wake up your sisters! Prove women are up to the job they have demanded.

Respect?

Whatever occupation any significant quantity of women pursue will never have the prestige and respect that they really seek. This is because, by definition, such an occupation has to be rare, difficult and dangerous so that only a few people can or want to do it and, bearing in mind the statistical distribution of most skills and talents by gender, these people will mostly be men.

In a century’s time the average doctor, lawyer and accountant are likely to be much more poorly rewarded, if only through a surplus of supply.

Will plumbing, construction work and soccer become the new aspiration for young girls and what laws will then be needed to ensure the rainbow’s end of women’s equality?

Motivating Civilisation

Have we forgotten a significant force in creating and maintaining civilisation: the inclusion and motivation of men?

Historically this was achieved through many inter-related structures, an important one of which was confidence in paternity. Without this fatherhood process, and without some system that rewards men in the short term for their contribution to society, a substantial proportion of men become feral. At a certain tipping point civilized development then becomes impossible. There are many countries in the third world and communities (or more accurately ghettoes) in the first where this process can be seen in action.

Societies in which women, voluntarily or involuntarily, exchanged their natural desire for total reproductive choice for men’s commitment were the ones that civilized and succeeded. Societies like this are known as patriarchies. They usually include some specialization (or ‘liberty stomping’ as it is now known); the women towards the family, the men towards work.

When society becomes obsessed with women’s workplace equality does it unwittingly create the seeds of its own destruction through its aversion to risk, its problems motivating men and/or the number of feral men that result?

Shame!

You probably read the story of the lawyer who spilt ketchup over a clerk’s trousers and then tried to deflect the request to pay the dry cleaning bill by telling a story of family tragedy. How the community ostracised the lawyer when the clerk decided to email the story to the world in an deliberate effort to shame the lawyer.

Oh no, wait, I think I got that wrong. The clerk was married to a millionaire and the lawyer was in the middle of a ruinous divorce, in fact hadn’t he just been evicted from the family home?

Or was it all the other way round? Oh dear, I seem to have got rather confused.

One thing is for certain, though. The idea of anyone paying for deliberately ruining something (trousers, career, whatever) of someone else’s is shameful, isn’t it?

Lock up the incompetent

A contributor to the London Times reports today that one of the two key ideas taught at the school of military intelligence (yes, I know!) was that 'Locks stop only honest people'. That should be 'honest or incompetent people'.

Another contributor reports the delight of a seasoned criminal at the idea of ID cards. What a bonanza for the professional criminal and well funded terrorist!

But never mind, nanny will feel so much better if she's got a new card to show that nice policeman.

Alice in GordonLand

I can immediately think of a lot of things a pretty, bespectacled girl called Alice might be good for. I like the name. It has nice associations. One of the things includes writing articles in girls’ magazines. But when Alice writes in a respected national newspaper about improvements in the bureaucracy of tax returns, whilst admitting she can’t handle complicated things like that, well my patience runs thin.

My patience is runny these days.

Well Alice admits she isn’t good at tax, or even at sums, because when she wanted to pay a nanny she worked out Nanny took home to the nursery 3p for every pound Alice had to earn to pay for her.

Now she knows she’s not good at sums because that can’t be right, can it? And of course it isn’t. But it got me thinking. How much does Mean Gordon take from us? The simplest measure is the Tax Take as a percentage of National Income. This is usually quoted at about 37% currently, rising to over 40% shortly now that we’ve re-elected the little ray of sunshine to No 11. But this doesn’t really tell the important story. The story of motivation.

Little Alice, remember, isn’t only pretty, she also writes quite prettily (despite having no idea what she’s talking about, or perhaps because of it, I can’t say), and nowadays these attributes mean she makes a very good income thank you.

So I got thinking about an illustration. Something that Alice might be able to understand. Imagine then, mighty Alice, that you do proper work; dig coal out of the ground, say, then sell it to people to cook with. Something your mother set up before she handed the company on to you. Being equally muscular and industrious and experienced and worldly and dusty (gotcha - you’d never catch Alice dusty, but this is fantasy, remember) Alice makes a decent living at this. Suppose then that she takes a moment to decide whether or not to do a little late digging one night, to dig out another £100 worth of coal, retail value. How much is the government’s tax take on that? How much of that money would be Alice’s to spend?

Alice would get £33.87. That’s how much. Out of the £100 the old age pensioner pays her for that coal Gordon Brown would take home £66.13 through VAT, Income Tax, National Insurance, excise duty, community charge and all the other excuses he has for stealing from her. Tax might average 40% across the whole economy but because Alice is making a marginal decision at the top of the tax scale (and that’s not far off the ground) on this lump of coal it works out that Gordon gets £66.13 if all taxes are taken into account.

And what does Alice get for all the £66.13s Gordon takes? Very little indeed if she is typical of a moderately high earner. The roads she uses, her rubbish collection and a notional police presence. That and a simplified tax return of course.

So after the flush of community spirit has worn off and her back and lungs ache from years of bone crunching effort, she decides to pack in early.

That’s what’s called the enterprise economy.

Feminist Bigots

Take a look, if you will, at Jonathan Gornall’s article on Oona King in Monday’s London Times, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,170-1620810,00.html.

We learn that Oona King (ex MP) stereotypes men at work as ‘slimy bum-pinchers’ and that she claimed in the Daily Mirror that George Galloway MP had sexually harassed her. A claim she was forced to withdraw and for which, after legal writs flew, she paid damages and legal costs and had to apologise publicly.

This is that same woman who has refused to name the MEP she claims offered her £10,000 for sex some years ago, a fact she hadn’t mentioned in the intervening 13 years. So we don’t know if this MEP was the same person she accused of being an ‘average mediocre white man who couldn’t do the job’? No question of stereotyping bigotry there, then.

On King’s last accusation JG says ‘lets not even go into the questionable nature of that ‘white man’ comment. Why not JG? Is it because, if you did, you’d never get anything published ever again by the feminist controlled media?

But if you are Sue Tibballs of the Fawcett Society you can accuse parliament of suffering from PMS – by which she means being Pale Male and Stale – in the Times letters page with nary a qualm.

ROTFL chaps, as least until the revolution.
At which point neither woman’s names should be forgotten.

Rape is....

…complicated. A simple issue wouldn’t need to be so misrepresented, would it?

Take the production, "Rape is..." for example (http://www.cambridgedocumentaryfilms.org).
30% of the film’s discussion guide is about prostitution and the sex trade.

Not ‘prostitution and rape’ but ‘prostitution and the sex trade’. So what is the link to rape you ask? Well, the guide makes only two links:
1. Vednita Carter’s “perspective” we are told “is that prostitution and rape are profoundly related. She thinks prostitution contributes to a climate in which rape is tolerated”.
2. “In Nevada, where prostitution has been legalized, the rape rates are the 4th highest in the country”.

We are offered nothing more in support of Vednita’s contention than anecdotes. She has worked with lots of prostitutes. We also gather that she was a prostitute herself once, forced into it by being driven to distant bars and given no money to get home, apparently. Would you trust someone who told you that story, and nothing else, to be a reliable source of behavioural science theory? You would? You are over 16 aren’t you? I know a really great bar we could go to, it’s only a few minutes drive from here.

But hold on, what’s going on in Nevada? That looks like evidence, doesn’t it? Well no, probably not.

For starters three other states, where prostitution is illegal, have a higher rate of rape. That needs an explanation, but gets none.

Prostitution has always been legal in Nevada, not in all counties all the time but in many counties most of the time. Now the rate of forcible rape in Nevada was very similar to that in the rest of the USA until 1970. Within 5 years it then rose to over 70% more than the USA average. While the average in the USA in 1975 was 26.3 forcible rapes per 100,000 of the population, in Nevada it had become 47.1 (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs). Since 1975 this rate has fallen 10% in Nevada to 42.7 in 2002 while overall in the USA on average it has risen by 25% to 33.0.

Nevada’s other violent crime rate rose by 67% in the 5 years between 1970 and 1975. So it isn’t hard to see that something else went on over these 5 years. Who knows what it is? But it is clear that the idea that a straightforward link between prostitution and rape is established by these two factlets, an idea the film makers appear to want us to adopt, is plainly absurd. In truth the only connection most could draw from this guide is that the film makers think they are appealing to some seriously gullible people.

Rape is… complicated, if you look at it from all sides. Simplistic workshops that misrepresent the facts will be as likely to make the problem worse than better. Rape won’t be resolved until we start being rational and objective and truthful about sex and start treating the problem with a mindset free from political correctness in order to give it the depth of objective enquiry it deserves.

Understanding a complex issue rather than simply demonising men might also mean that we find ways to reduce the impact of rape. But maybe some influential people don’t really want that to happen at all.

A chicken or an omelette?

The front of a Christian Aid pamphlet asks "Would you give Judith a chicken or an omelette?". From her picture Judith is, at most, 11 years old. We are told she lives in the Congo. If you haven't seen the pamphlet, and even if you have, think about the question for a moment. Decide your answer.

Did you come up with 'neither' or, maybe, 'what she really needs is a culture that is capable of nourishing the congolese in ways that are appropriate to their environment'? The answer isn't a chicken. In fact no-one has any no idea what the practical answer is. We have not a smidgeon of a jot of a Mus Minutoides of an inkling. To imagine that we have is to demonstrate an Argentinosaurus of a conceit. To pretend that carrying on 'doing something' is better than doing nothing when we know that it makes things worse is selfish conscience salving.

Would you give Judith a Sony Memory Stick or an Amazon voucher?

Equality?

"HALF of all girls born in Britain this year, and many of their brothers, will live to see the 22nd century." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2770-1621874,00.html
Where is the uproar about men's health and longevity?

Child rapist weds victim: "Fualaau was only 12 at the time. Letourneau was arrested in 1997.... a night of [rape] that “didn’t stop".... and, after six months in jail, was freed on probation..." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1622518,00.html
Where is the uproar about unequal treatment?