Summer arrived to day with knobs on and we’re only in the middle of May. Not unbearably hot but quite hot enough thank you. The animals all flaked out on the cool tiles and not wanting to move. Each evening it comes over cloudy and I hope for a drop of rain for the garden but it passes. Not that the weeds need watering. They seem to thrive come what may. (No pun intended). The steps from the road down to the house are in desperate need of a good clean up.
I wonder if the Tories threatened sort lists came to anything eventually. I’ve always felt this idea of positive discrimination in favour of any minority a complete waste of time; condescending, patronising, in some instances downright harmful and a cause of great resentment. I wouldn’t mind in the least (though it no longer effects me) if the whole of the house was nothing but women MPs. When Labour tried to gain my vote back in Hebden Bridge days, they simply could not understand my reasoning when I said that no way would I vote for someone on an all woman short list. Who was to say there was not a male candidate better qualified to represent me? I see in today’s Mail that Jan Moir is in total agreement and I hope she doesn’t mind my quoting her – ‘Poor Jacqui Smith always had the air of a woman promoted beyond her abilities, pitched into the fray of a political gender war. In a way she was a victim too. For in the last government, hot-housed female candidates and women only shortlists resulted in nothing but pain and defeat for all. Some second-raters who were not quite up to the job were promoted over others who were, just because they were female. And in the end their lack of success tainted women everywhere with the dark bloom of failure. Indeed the whole area of gender politics has become a toxic one; a big, self-serving mess used and abused by all involved.
Even at the dying of the New Labour light, Harriet Harman was still raging about getting the gender balance right, while parachuting her husband into a safe seat over women candidates. It’s a scandalette.
Good on you, Jan Moir. Not only a very readable journalist whose column I always look forward to and enjoy but a bloody sensible one to boot.