Monday 12 August 2019

Brexit Gallows Humour #47: The Cabinet of Women

When something quite as serious as Brexit begins to loom large, there's a strong temptation to look for solutions guided by one's basic prejudices, and/or use the crisis as a pretext for the same.   So Marxists will reach for the Revolution as both the solution to the woes that resulted in the Brexit vote, and/or what they can opportunistically promote during no-deal chaos; and Greens will say Europe needs to be reinvented as the *European Sustainable Union* (I'm not making that up).

Taking the biscuit, though, must surely be Caroline Lucas with her call for a *Cabinet of Women*.
Why women? Because I believe women have shown they can bring a different perspective to crises
She's the one who needs to have a bit of perspective here.  What do we know about Women In Charge?  Well, on the one hand we have Elizabeth I, Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir ... oh, not the examples you had in mind?  Well, how about Mary Tudor, Christine Lagarde, or Theresa May, or some of those chairs of health trusts that have overseen ghastly disasters befalling their patients?  Or Arlene Foster?  Maybe Diane Abbbottt?  Or Aung San Suu Kyi ..?

No - it turns out Lucas has in mind just ten carefully selected women of her own choosing.  With herself as PM, I'm guessing, in this ultra-democratic set-up.  (Hilariously, she's now having to back-pedal because ... she didn't include any BAME women!  So - not Diane Abbbottt after all...)

What we know about Women In Charge is that they are just as likely to be successes or failures, strong or weak, inspiring or disappointing, natural leaders or careerist hacks as anyone else.   No special guarantees of exceptional wisdom, superior humanity or a magic touch. 

It's always telling, when the Graun doesn't allow BTL comments on a piece like Lucas's.  And they don't.  We may imagine they knew what the response would have been.

ND

18 comments:

  1. Bill Quango MP10:08 pm

    If Caroline was an employer she would be facing a tribunal.
    Not only has she discriminated against race, but also against gender.

    It is illegal to advertise a post that discriminates against a person for sexual preference. Race. Gender. Disability or religion.
    The old Green whistle zest must know these laws. She voted to bring them into existence.


    On 16 Apr 2013:
    Caroline Lucas voted in favour of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights having a duty to support the development of a society where people's ability to achieve their potential is not limited by prejudice or discrimination and there is respect for human rightsI


    The compensation for discrimination against gender, for a senior post such as a cabinet minister, would be, a starting point of £45,000.
    That’s for each overlooked male. Loss of earnings. I’ll will. Hurty feelz all add to the final settlement.

    Compensation payable for discrimination for race or religious reasons, is unlimited.

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  2. Gender isn't a protected characteristic. Sex is, and "gender reassignment" is. Lucas is such an embarrassment to her sex. She presides over a party that decided to call women "non-men" so as not to offend trans. It would be more consistent of her to call for a government of "non-men".

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  3. Anonymous11:07 pm

    Placing or publishing a discriminatory advert is unlawful under the Equality Act 2010. The Act protects individuals from discrimination because of sex, race, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, marriage and civil partnership, religion or belief, sexual orientation and age.

    It’s an ECHR bit of law. Even more delicious.

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  4. Anonymous8:31 am

    I recently received a brochure-type thing from my old uni, the headline of which was "Promoting diversity and minorities". All the students pictured on the cover were women.

    But women are in the majority at that instituton!

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  5. Charlie9:22 am

    Of course, what they mean by "Promoting diversity and minorities" is "Promoting bias against white men".

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  6. Anonymous11:29 am

    The Greens have always been 99% white. Probably 99.9% in fact.
    And achingly middleclass, natch.

    It is certainly funny to have Lucas display her instincts quite as publicly as this. Does she have any advisers at all? Then again they will all be white middleclass with the same instincts too.

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  7. I think she's lost the plot.........

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  8. Anonymous1:43 pm

    I look a lot like a man but *ahem* I am definitely a woman and hereby claim my seat in the Lucas Cabinet.

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  9. If i self identify my summer hol to greece as carbon neutral, will that help stop global warming?

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  10. I didn't expect the cracks to show so soon.

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  11. Anonymous4:54 pm

    @andrew

    Well I don't see why not: Greta self identifies as saviour of the world & everybody believes her.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Holy Poo of St, Greta may be available soon. Dig deep, comrades

    https://order-order.com/2019/08/13/bbc-shows-world-gretas-poo-bucket/

    FUBAR is where we are. Such a wonderful acronym.

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  13. Someone else said it better than me

    How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg.

    Abraham Lincoln

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  14. Hippy politics is ruining this country.

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  15. E-K: Not s sure Greens are real hippy politics,

    True hippies are closer to self organising anarchists. The official flavour of greenness of Lucas et al and promoted by the new estabishment, are autocratic authoritarians, plus ca change.

    Not that is unepected as mentioned here many times before we have a Conservative party that does not conserve, but is corporate-globalist, a Labour party thats doenst represent the labouring classes and the Liberal democrats ...

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  16. Wrong EK! As a fully paid up hippy of the time, we wanted nothing to do with politics (all ny idiot peers joined International Socialists, IMG, etc. - not me). Small state libertarians would perhaps best describe us. Very much a small state man myself still!

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  17. Yep - What Elby said

    Strange, my views were formed as a barefoot youngster in flares and cheesecloth shirt in the '70s and haven't changed that much since. Free enterprise, unconstrained markets, low tax, small state and we were Eco even then - Richard Mabey's 'Food for Free' (along with, erm, Dr Alex Comfort) was on all our shelves and not only was I a keen mushroomer, I kept hens, made beer, cider from my own apples and one year succesfully grew a monumental volume of Virginia tobacco ...

    Oh yeah. I think we invented BTL as well - at 19 I got a mortgage based on a temp summer job and bought a 2-up 2-down flint rubble cottage with 1/4 acre for £5,250 and when it was time to go up to University rented it out to the USAF - they guaranteed both the rent and the tenant's behaviour. None of which was incompatible with hippyness.

    What we mainly wanted from politicians was silence and to be left alone.

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  18. Blair, Branson and Bercow are all hippies.

    ReplyDelete