Brit blog round up ‘Women in Politics’ edition, 225

For those unfamiliar with the Brit Blog Round up, its something I have been doing over at the Telegraph for the last year or so. Since my role there is changing, I’m bringing it out over to Slugger for the first time (don’t panic we’ll be bringing an Irish blog round up focused on the elections out in the next day or so. To regular BBR readers, my apologies for its late arrival…

First up is Diamond Geezer, who is worried about a lot of things, mostly around the quality of politics and representative democracy…

Much of the electorate has only the haziest idea about what politicians have pledged to do, except what their over-simplified newspaper has spoonfed them. Voters will put their cross next to anyone if they look clean and trustworthy, without a thought to the longer-term consequences for their future finances and freedom. Some people are so easily led.

– Penny however is just plain hacked off with the indigity and self serving character of the Smith and Blears resignations last week… and, worse perhaps, it turns out they did not have the desired effect..

– And the Heresy Corner with a skit on Caroline Flint’s resignation letter… Yep that Caroline Flint… The one that claimed sexist treatment weeks after she said she’d suffered none

– And His Grace, with his customary acuity, gets to the heart of a political conceit that may also point to the unintended consequences of Labour’s efforts to bring women into the heart of Government:

Ms Flint’s error of judgment (and it is a considerable one) is that her emotional outburst, pettiness and inconsistency (not to mention posing for this sort of photograph) will simply be taken as corroboration that she was never qualified to be any more than ‘window dressing’ in the first place: her feminist quest to join the male-dominated ‘inner circle’ was the superficial pursuit of gender, not of merit. By resigning from the Cabinet, she can no longer be a critical voice within it, but is reduced to being just another feminist revolt against it. Hers is now the ‘advocacy stance’ adopted by all liberation theologies which favour the oppressed. Her desire was to join the male-dominated ‘inner circle’ in order to realise the full equality of male and female: by removing herself from it she has just set back by years the struggle for the political liberation of women.

– Natalie has been reading an academic monograph which poses the question is there such a thing as women’s political thought?

– James works at the Scottish Parliament for its two Green MEP’s and runs a slightly insider-ish eye over the Jacqui Smith resignation gives us his view of the incoherent politics of resignation in the Brownite Cabinet

– David Hadley has a skit on the whole sorry mess centred around a leftist retraction email that throws the whole fleet Street into a blind panic… An homage, no doubt, Paulie’s stroke of genius last Autumn on Never Trust a Hippie…

Good news for the Greens in East Anglia according to Jim. But he puts the Government party’s performance as well as I have seen it described anywhere:

Labour chose this election to stop campaigning and go into full on crisis mode so it’s no surprise they did so poorly.

– And sliding away from politics but keeping with the Green theme, Alice invokes shoe event theory to illustrate why we should all be a bit more careful before throwing things out… See also Mark’s pontification on the virtues of Freecycle

– Longrider waxes against the imposition of compulsory gathering of DNA from ordinary citizens:

The cry of the totalitarian. Life is a risk. We cannot be safe all the time. People will commit crimes. That is life. The police are required to conduct investigations and gather evidence to prosecute in the aftermath. It is not up to them – and should never be – to seek to presume criminal intent on the part of innocent people and prevent crime by treating us all as suspects. There lies the road to dystopia

– Turning to sexual politics now, Monkeh has a short blog essay on the commodisation of breasts:

…the only thing we’re not told to do is question: who really has the right to make us all, big busted or small busted, feel bad about the way we were born? Why do we continue to accept this almost fascist attitude to our bodies, to the point where we can’t wear what we choose in fear of being judged or ridiculed? Why do we lay ourselves on the surgeon’s slab and have bags pushed into our breasts because other people have decided we aren’t good enough?

– And the F-Word has been mapping global instances of violence against transexuals

– And finally two architecture blogs, one from Jonathan who’s got a short piece on the Leicestershire village of Church Langton..

– And the other, by coincidence is my own customary haunt (if you are an Irish-based Fellow, drop me a line and let me know what you’re up to?) when I’m working in London. It’s the Durham House Street end of the RSA building, just off the Strand in London… For what it’s worth, I’d add that they recently renovated the basement, bring up huge red bricked vaults and in one part you can see the old 17th century street setts…

Next This week’s Roundup will be in the care of Charles Crawford. Send your nominations, as ever, to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com

Categories Uncategorised

We are reader supported. Donate to keep Slugger lit!

For over 20 years, Slugger has been an independent place for debate and new ideas. We have published over 40,000 posts and over one and a half million comments on the site. Each month we have over 70,000 readers. All this we have accomplished with only volunteers we have never had any paid staff.

Slugger does not receive any funding, and we respect our readers, so we will never run intrusive ads or sponsored posts. Instead, we are reader-supported. Help us keep Slugger independent by becoming a friend of Slugger. While we run a tight ship and no one gets paid to write, we need money to help us cover our costs.

If you like what we do, we are asking you to consider giving a monthly donation of any amount, or you can give a one-off donation. Any amount is appreciated.