Harriet Harman is a disgrace

Harriet Harman represents everything about tokenistic, sectionalised politics that I utterly detest. Her entire political raison d’etre has been and continues to be to be the field marshall of the womens side in a spiteful and unnecessary gender war. Her whole career has been to play to tokenism and to advance the cause of women not in and of itself as a good thing but at the expense of men.

Now it seems that Harriet was spearheading a whipping operation against the proposed change to the abortion laws. It also appears from a certain quote that the bulk of their rationale wasn’t any scientific evidence related to the foetus but was simply to do with one twisted version of feminism. When someone is quoted as screaming “Vote against us and the sisterhood will never let you forget it” it is fairly clear that rational and dispassionate analysis of science has been booted out of consideration. I am personally agnostic about whether a change in time limits is necessary but I certainly wouldn’t pitch it as the latest divide in a gender war, to do so is in my view utterly and totally reprehensible and acually rather sinister.

Harriet Harman also claims she wasn’t whipping, the quote she gave to the Mail on Sunday tells a different story. She states that “It was a free vote and I worked with others to ensure that as many MPs as possible voted for the status quo”. That to me sounds like whipping. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.

The thing is that Harman and others of her ilk on all sides of the equality debate see the whole thing as some extensive zero-sum gain. If womens rights are advanced it can only be at the expense of men’s rights. If Gay rights are advanced it must be at the expense of Straight people. This is really unneccessary and is a deliberate ploy to advance a martyr complex when opinion is unconvinced and a victor and vanquished commentary. It is entirely possible that womens rights can be advanced without prejudicing men in fact that would be the default scenario. If Harriet could see the consummate damage that her us against them mentality does to her cause she would desist. The trouble is that as too often the reality is that in terms of equality struggles, people like Harriet Harman prefer favours to fairness.

Home Office - Gay people not routinely persecuted in Iran

The Home Office sometimes makes you want to scream, it is involved in a case involving an Iranian teenager who professes to be homosexual. Now I don’t know the entire details of the case so will refrain from commenting on that however if what CNN is claiming as being a statement from the Home Office is accurate then it is a pretty breathtaking assertion. Basically CNN states that:-

“Britain’s Home Office said that even though homosexuality is illegal in Iran and homosexuals do experience discrimination, it does not believe that homosexuals are routinely persecuted purely on the basis of their sexuality”

I would say that that statement is ludicrous considering the number of reports of homosexuals being killed in Iran. To say in effect that the situation in Iran is ‘not that bad’ is ridiculous. It is that bad!

Bigotry - Is it an overused term?

Often nowadays within a debate on contentious issues the moment someone mentions a non-mainstream viewpoint, no matter how moderately or cautiously it is advanced out comes the great big red-card and the person is labelled a bigot. Sometimes I think that calling someone bigoted is justified, however I think that the label is being overused and is a means of closing down debate. I think that we should be careful how we deploy the use of the term bigot, it should be reserved to a very specific form of unpleasantness. I don’t agree that a person who expresses moderate religious difference with secular society’s direction should be labelled a bigot, nor do I think that anyone who wishes to engage in a debate about future developments in a rational way should be either. I think that people can make legitimate points without being nasty or prejudiced and no-one should be dissuaded from exercising their right to a different point of view. I just think that replacing one form of moral absolutism with another is a bit crazy, if we want to create a truly tolerant society then everyone needs to be tolerant. We cannot say that X has to be tolerant of Y, but Y doesn’t have to tolerate the moderately expressed views of Z. I recognise I am probably a bit quirky on this score, but I genuinely think that labelling someone as a bigot should be the exception and it often feels like the norm.

Cameron and Auschwitz

There is a lot of nonsense being made about the fact that a Conservative press release associated trips to Auschwitz and the word ‘Gimmick’. Admittedly this was not an ideal thing to happen, and is more likely a case of bad proof-reading than bad intentions. It is an unfortunate thing to have happened, but the hysterical reaction of Ed Balls is just way over the top. I think it shows the hole that Labour knows it is in when something like this is blown way out of proportion. The simulated outrage on the left when accusations of racism, sexism, or anti-semitism are involved is breathtaking to behold. Often the accusations originate from the left themselves. Ultimately what Balls is trying to achieve is to paint David Cameron as a bigot, a racist, an anti-semite or as just arrogantly over-confident and crassly insensitive. Ultimately this will simply not wash as most people looking at Cameron know he is not a bigot, a racist or anti-semitic, they also know that he is unlikely to have got as far in politics as he has if he were crassly insensitive or overtly arrogant. Ed Balls is trying to pull a fast one on the electorate, because he has very poor material here and most people will know that. All it will do is make the electorate less likely to believe the protestations if they get more grounds later on.

My thoughts on Derek Conway.

I will confine myself here to the following:-

He did wrong. He got caught. He is being punished. His career is over. His reputation is in tatters. Let us leave the man alone.

Also there has been in certain newspapers an utterly hideous set of exposes regarding Derek Conway’s eldest son. Yes it appears he was in receipt of money as a researcher for his father, that much is in the public interest, but to rake over his lifestyle, his friends and his sexuality is beneath contempt. The journalists responsible should be ashamed of themselves, their reporting of Henry Conway was out of order and certain aspects should be out of bounds. Also there is a whiff of blatant prejudice in the manner of the reporting that is reprehensible. I think we should demand more from our newspapers than this!

Joseph Boulogne: A tragically unknown composer

I have made it a rule to pepper posts of music into my more political observations. I shall continue to do so as music is an enormous passion of mine. I want today to write about a virtually unknown composer, Joesph Boulogne sometimes referred to as Chevalier de Saint-Georges. There is a reason he is unknown which I shall get to in a little. Boulogne was a contemporary of Mozart and wrote many fine Concerti for violin, he wrote opera and symphonies as well. That was not the limit of his talent, he was music teacher to the Queen of France, conductor, a military man and a master of fencing. He was also a bit of a ladies man which got him in a little trouble throughout his life. However the extraordinary thing about Joseph Boulogne is not the compass of his talents but that he ever got as far as he did.

Jospeh Boulogne was born in 1745 in Guadeloupe, the bastard son of a former slave and a sugar plantation owner. Joseph was black, it doesn’t need emphasising that Britain didn’t abolish slavery until 1807 and that attitudes to non-white people were filtered through the prism of the slave trade. So for a black man to become a conductor, to school Marie-Antoinette and to be both a composer of prodigious talent and a highly skilled swordsman was a feat of almost super-human accomplishment. Even today in the more enlightened 21st Century non-white people face barriers to success and achievement, but in the heady days of the mid 18th century the barriers were usually a literal chain to subservience.

I listen a lot to a Boulogne’s Violin concerto’s, they are exquisite pieces in their own right. I once had them playing and a friend was convinced that they were Mozart. No wonder that one of the epithet’s attached to Boulogne is ‘Le Mozart Noir‘, Boulogne is stylistically similar to Mozart, but then in any period the prevailing trend usually leads to the use of similar techniques and motifs within music. However that is not to diminish the intense beauty of the pieces that Boulogne presents, they are in a league of their own. I have often listened to them and thought that they are in many respects better than Mozart’s Violin Concerto’s. I think it is high time that Boulogne’s music was more widely available, I have struggled to find more than a handful of recordings.

I also think that for everyone to see that here was a truly remarkable composer in the middle of a time where racism was de rigeur, where the transatlantic slave trade was in full swing, who despite the major disadvantage of his colour achieved more success than many of his white contemporaries would be both inspirational and instructive. The achievements of this man should go unrecognised no more.

Equal Pay at Wimbledon

So Wimbledon prize money will be equal for both men and women this year. I have mixed views on this, whilst on the surface, unequal prize money looks unfair and unjust it can not be avoided that the men do play best of 5 sets and women best of 3. So consequently the women are getting paid the same as men for less work. It is however prize money rather than a salary so in that respect it doesnt matter how much ‘work’ is done for the reward. I do think that with the fitness levels displayed by women in the modern era and the speed of the game that maybe it is time to look at having womens grand slam tennis as best of 5 sets.