Nobody move or female workers get it!

Harriet Harman on (over the) top form in The Guardian:

Harriet Harman has claimed campaigners calling for Britain to leave the EU are more likely to associate with an old-fashioned view that a woman’s primary role is in the home.

The Labour MP made the claim in an interview with the Guardian in which she also argued that Brexit could derail the fight for women’s rights.

Harman, who has been a leading campaigner on gender equality for four decades, said she would not trust high-profile out campaigners such as Boris Johnson, Michael Gove or Nigel Farage “as far as I can throw them” on the issue... Harman argued that lurking behind the opposition was the idea that women should not be demanding rights in the workplace when they should really be at home.

“We still see occasionally the veil slips,” she said. “And actually there is quite a good match between the people who want to leave the EU and the people who actually want women to be back in the home. Why would we want them to be in charge of our rights? Why would we trust our rights to them?”

Perhaps Johnson, Gove or Farage are indeed old school male chauvinist pigs (there's no evidence for it, but hey), surely we are having a referendum on EU membership, not voting on whether those three form the next government?

'You're too ugly to be in politics'

From The Evening Standard:

Labour local councillor Karen Danczuk risked controversy today after allegedly suggesting only “pretty” people should go into politics.

She is said to have made the remark to Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman. She tweeted: “When I first met Harriet Harman I noticed how dowdy she looked.”

Ms Danczuk could not be contacted in time for comment and it was not clear whether she made the remark in a light-hearted way or at all.

But the claim threatened to cause fresh embarrassment to the senior Labour MP who is already facing criticism for touring the country in a giant pink phallus as part of a “woman-to-woman” campaign...

Harriet Harmann shot to fame by posting “frumpies” on Twitter and has 38 followers.

"Harriet Harman to tour the country in giant pink phallus"

From The Daily Mail:

Harriet Harman's giant pink phallus hit the skids today after she was told by an angry voter it was offensive to just about everybody apart from hen parties.

The bright pink women-only giant mobile dildo was unsheathed in Stevenage today, but appeared to have problems navigating a supermarket car park and at one point was pictured parked across a zebra crossing. In an Asda supermarket she was confronted by an angry Labour voter who told her it was 'patronising and wrong' to divide men and women.

In a bizarre twist in gender politics, Ms Harman revealed the party had been holding 'doctrinal discussions' about whether a man is allowed to drive the Woman to Woman oversized sex toy as it tours marginal seats. Today it had a woman driver and was involved in several minor scrapes and a slightly more serious rear end shunt before finally leaving the supermarket car park.

Ed Miliband's spokesman denied rumours that he plans to tour the country in a giant snatch. "He said 'Volvo', for crying out loud. V-O-L-V-O."

Arguing with the Daily Mail

One of the problems with people's perspective on the Daily Mail is that just because they disagree with them, they think the Daily Mail are liars. It's my experience that when reading a Mail article that they never lie. They might put more emphasis on certain things than others, they may base their reporting on sources that suit them and not the ones that they don't, but you'll rarely find a bare faced lie in the Daily Mail.

So, in many ways, the reporting of Harriet Harman at the NCCL is going to get pretty interesting because people on the left are defending her against the Mail's accusations, because their own biases are that the Mail are wrong 'uns and Harriet Harman is a good person. Harman is calling it a "smear campaign" despite the fact that a smear campaign describes spreading lies to distort someone's reputation, when in reality, there isn't as far as I can see, a single lie in the Mail's coverage.

I've read the Mail's accusations, and they've got evidence to back it all up. Damian Thompson in the Daily Telegraph wrote a less dramatic and more analytical article about Harriet Harman and the NCCL back in 2012 that certainly suggests that she had a rather different view on certain things back in the 1970s than she now suggests.

"Rude broadcasters accused of only promoting grey-haired men"

From The Daily Mail

Fewer than one in five TV presenters is a man under the age of 50, new research reveals. Broadcasters are accused of behaving as if viewers 'need to be protected' from younger men, while promoting younger women and grey-haired men.

It comes after popular presenters including Moira Stuart and Anna Ford were replaced with young women instead of young men to the fury of many female viewers.

The BBC, ITN, Channel 5 and Sky all come under fire for figures which showed around half of presenters under-50 were women and 82 per cent of older hosts were men. The study was carried out for Labour's Harriet Harman, who claimed young men are being 'airbrushed' of the nation's TV screens.

She wrote to the six main UK broadcasters asking them how many younger men they employ on screen and behind the camera. Men account for more than half the UK's under-50 population, but just 18 per cent of TV presenters who are under 50 are male.

Ms Harman said for men 'grey hair denotes wisdom, experience, authority', and added: 'Broadcasters behave as though the viewing public have to be protected from the sight of a younger man and that's just rude. There is nothing wrong with being a younger man.'

"Stop ignoring me, says older woman"

From The Daily Mail:

One of those former Labour Ministers, either Tessa Jowell or Harriet Harman, has hit out at discrimination against herself, warning it was leading to a generation of ‘passive participants’ in public life. Ms Jowman, who is either shadow Olympics or culture secretary, said that she was a female of a certain age who ‘doesn’t want to be written out of the public domain’.

Speaking to an empty room at the Edinburgh Television Festival at the weekend she said it was ‘offensive and wrong’ that she was made invisible ‘because she is past her reproductive age’. Ms Harwell said the treatment of Ann Widdecombe, the former Strictly Come Dancing contestant, who was dumped off the show in 2010 after ten weeks, was ‘symbolic’, adding ‘something needs to be done about it’.

The Labour MP said the ‘discrimination’ against herself did not apply to older men, such as her husband - either David Mills or Jack Dromey - who kept working and were treated as ‘venerable, experienced, sage and coriander’.

The BBC has been the focus of controversy about the treatment of older women in broadcasting in recent years, with former TV chef Fanny Craddock winning a posthumous ageism case against the corporation last year and the earlier row over ditching Ms Widdecombe from Strictly.

Like a cross between Margaret Thatcher and Polly Toynbee, but without the sense of humour.

Ginger Rodent

Who says size isn't everything?

From The Soaraway Sun: Harman fave for Rear of the Year

Everyone's a winner with Dave Cameron

From a delightfully garbled article in The Soaraway Sun:

DAVID Cameron yesterday denied he was out to clobber single mums by offering tax breaks to married couples. The Tory leader was heckled as he outlined his plans to supporters of lone parents' charity Gingerbread.

Angry mums accused him of discriminating against 4.5million kids. Mr Cameron vowed that a future Tory government would never ignore problems faced by single parents. But he insisted his party was not "neutral" on the issue and wants to encourage marriage by loading the tax system in favour of couples.

So with typical Nulabour gusto, he's going to "do more" for married couples and "do more" for single parents at the same time. Hooray! The irony in all this is that:

1. Even the Tories suggested tax-break will amount to about ten pounds a week, once you do the maths, nowhere near enough to combat the £200-per-week couple penalty embedded in the tax/benefits system. See e.g. Shannon Matthew's mum's former partner's sister's benefit fraud.

2. The real villains of the piece are single-mothers-on-welfare, and not single mothers in work, but as they don't pay income tax, they won't be affected by changes to the tax system; the largest single group who'd lose out will be single, working adults who don't have children, and cohabiting couples will lose twice as much.

But the best bit is this, perhaps somebody can explain it to me:

Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman has branded his idea a "philanderer's charter", allowing men who walk out on their wives to benefit from pro-marriage tax reforms.

PS, Gingerbread is a fakecharity, of course.

More Harriet-Harman-crashing-car-while-using-mobile-phone-hilarity

From The Evening Standard:

Harriet Harman was given strong backing by Gordon Brown today after she denied breaking the law by crashing her car while using a mobile.

The Prime Minister rang her last night to express his support...

Another jolly bash at the IPPR

Announced here:

07 December 2009, 10:00am - 11:30am

30-32 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7RA

Speakers:
Harriet Harman, MP, Minister for Women and Equality
Dr Dalia Ben-Galim, ippr
Samantha Smethers, Grandparents Plus*

Demographic changes mean that more and more people are taking on caring responsibilities. Carers are a diverse bunch who have a variety of different needs that depend on a range of factors that include the needs of the care recipient, gender, age, labour market position and family status. As four generation families are becoming more common and many more of us becoming carers, innovative policy reform is needed if we are going to meet the future demand for care... [yadda yadda, blah, waffle].

Interestingly, they don't say that Harriet will be attending via video-link from HMP Holloway, so presumably she's expecting a non-custodial sentence?

* In 2007, Grandparents Plus received half its funding from the Basic Skills Agency which appears to be part of the Department of Education (or whatever it's called this week); they appear to have received only private donations in 2008 (see Note 9 in their 2008 accounts) but are back on the Big Lottery drip again by now.

The Wit & Wisdom of Harriet Harman

From The Times:

“The assumption is that men find the recession worse, but women are worried not only about their own job but about the family’s finances, they are worried about whether their kids are going to get jobs.”

Ah yes, us blokes, wouldn't dream of spending a penny of our wages on family expenditure like mortgages or utilities or giving the wife housekeeping money or anything like that; and we don't give a toss whether our other halves lose their jobs or our kids never get one.

Also from that edition:

Two women who work part-time for the same company have been told that they cannot care for each other’s child unless they register as childminders and undergo Ofsted inspections.

The women, who wish to remain anonymous, gave birth to girls at similar times. They set up a job share, with both working half a week in the same post. They are also close friends, so when one was at work the other cared for both children.

Ofsted, however, has put an end to the arrangement. It said that, according to legislation, caring for another person’s child “for reward” was classed as childminding. This means that both mothers will have to register with Ofsted and follow the same regulations as normal childminders. The financial “reward” they receive is free care for their daughters.

Blind leading the blind ...

From The Metro:

Businesses could be banned from claiming back tax on corporate entertainment visits to lap-dancing clubs, after Equalities Minister Harriet Harman denounced the practice... At present, companies can claim back VAT at 15% on money spent taking staff out for the evening for team-building purposes (1), as well as offsetting the cost of entertaining clients against corporation tax (2). But Ms Harman said that going to lap-dancing clubs should not be regarded as a legitimate business expense (3).

She told a meeting on Thursday ... "Why should you be able to get tax relief for a night out at a lap-dancing club where effectively you are discriminating against women employees (4) in doing so?"

Hey! Let's make complete tits of ourselves by trying to change the rules without knowing what the rules are in the first place! From Taxation Web:

DON’T claim the VAT on entertaining clients and prospective clients, including that on the staff doing the entertaining (but DO claim the VAT paid on entertaining your staff, such as a summer barbecue or Christmas party)

So to summarise:

(1) You can indeed reclaim VAT on staff outings, but you cannot reclaim VAT on the expense of entertaining clients anyway, so that statement is misleading.

(2) You cannot deduct the cost of entertaining clients from the profits for corporation tax (s577 ICTA 1988), so that statement is a lie. Conversely, the employer can deduct the cost of staff outings, but any expenses above a de minimis then go on the employees' forms P11D, so it's six of one and half a dozen of the other (the PAYE and NIC are roughly equal to the corporation tax deduction and VAT reclaim - there is no overall tax relief).

(3) Firstly, she used the s-word, thus invalidating her own argument under the usual rules. Secondly, a business expense is something which the owner of the business thinks will further the interests of his business, however strange that may seem to others.

(4) What about female employees in lap-dancing clubs? The changes are clearly intended to harm their employment prospects.

This has got to be up there with Harriet's suggestion that witnesses in domestic violence cases be given anonymity.

Harriet Harman Sucks*

Emailed in by Randy Walk:

Harriet Harman has spent many years of her political life stirring up hatred towards men in order to enrage women and to make them feel antagonistic towards men.

The idea behind this is to rally the support of women so that she can pursue her own ambitions - which have got nothing to do with gender "equality" and nothing to do with any genuine concern about "women".

Her persistent hate-stirring is just a callous, calculating, well tried and tested mechanism through which feminists the world over have gained enormous power.

More at www.harrietharmansucks.com

* I assume that's intransitive rather than transitive.

Harriet Harman

Harriet Harman

Here's a guest caricature by The Lass (aged 6):

Harman: Strictly Come Dancing guilty of 'racism'

From The Metro:

Equality Minister Harriet Harman today hit out at the axing of performer Alesha Dixon from Strictly Come Dancing, saying she was a victim of "race discrimination". Ms Harman urged the BBC to bring the 30-year-old, whose father was Jamaican, back to the hit celebrity talent show.

Dixon will be replaced on the judging panel by white British choreographer Arlene Phillips, who judged the competition in 2007 and 2008, when the show returns in the autumn.

During Commons questions on upcoming business, Ms Harman, who is also Commons Leader, told MPs: "I think it's absolutely shocking that Alesha Dixon is not going to be a judge on Strictly Come Dancing. And as equality minister, I am suspicious that there is race discrimination there. So I'd like to take the opportunity of asking the BBC - it is not too late, we want Alesha Dixon in the next edition of Strictly Come Dancing."

I shit ye not.

Belated Friday Funny: The Farrah Fawcett Society

As we know, the lefties, in particular Harriet Harman and The Fawcett Society, constantly whine on about "the gender pay gap", and even David Cameron jumped on board a couple of years ago (whether he has jumped off board again is unknown). They salivate at the prospect of having compulsory gender pay audits and the like, which will generate thousands more jobs for taxpayer-funded meddlers and burden businesses with yet more red tape.

Now, as anybody who knows anything about anything knows, it isn't a gender pay gap as such, it is a mother-versus-everybody else pay-gap. And if your own observations aren't enough evidence, the ONS published detailed tables that confirm this assumption, which Tim W picked up on and used in a recent article in The Guardian.

I therefore nearly fell off my seat when I read the following article in Friday's London Paper, of which an abbreviated version was published in The Metro:

Research (1) for campaign group (2) the Fawcett Society showed that childbirth marked the start of a "great divide" on earnings (3), which continued even after children left home. Before becoming parents, men and women were equally likely to be employed but, after having children, 57% of mothers of under fives were in paid work, compared with 90% of fathers (4)...

Dr Katherine Rake, director of the Fawcett Society, said: "The choice of whether and when to return to employment is, of course, a very personal one. However, it is critical that those mothers who choose or need to be in paid work should (5) be able to do so without suffering a pay penalty (6)."

(1) It's not 'research' as such, by their own admission, it "is a new survey of existing research, drawing together the most recent data from academic and government sources.", i.e. they used the same ONS figures as I did, which I will assume to be reliable.

(2) "Campaign group"? Nope, it's a prime example of a FakeCharity. The Society's entry at fakecharities.org woefully understates the extent to which it is government funded.

(3) So they've finally admitted that it's a mothers-pay-gap, not a gender pay gap, which is a bit of a breakthrough, really. Now all I have to do is explain why having additional rights for pregnant women makes it harder for young women to get jobs ...

(4) Which is another way of saying that 43% of mothers choose to take time off to stay at home with their young children, and that 90% of fathers are in work. What on earth is wrong with that?

(5) Ah ... the s-word ... which usually invalidates whatever it is that the person is trying to say.

(6) OK, this is the key to all this. As we know, couples tend to pool income and expenditure, so the gap between fathers' and mother's pay is not that important either. But as a moderate feminist, I do ask myself, is there perhaps a simple way of sorting all this out without all the bureaucracy and crap and in a way that is fiscally neutral for the taxpayer?*

Anyways, I do wonder why The Fawcett Society named themselves after Farrah Fawcett, who's hardly a leftie-feminist icon, which reminds me of a joke I heard on Friday:

Farrah Fawcett went to Heaven and St Peter told her that as she had led such a blameless life, she would be allowed one wish. After giving it some thought, she replied "I would like all children in the world to be safe". A few hours later Michael Jackson was dead.

* Ah yes ... there is. We scrap Child Tax Credits (which are primarily a straight bung of £42 per week per child for unemployed single mothers); we scrap the Child Trust Fund nonsense and increase Child Benefit (currently £20 per week for the first child and £13.20 for subsequent children) into an enhanced flat-rate, non-means tested, non-taxable Child Benefit of (about) £30 per week (or whatever is fiscally neutral).

In the longer version of the article, it was said that women earn 22% less than men (which is a red herring, of course - the proper comparison is between mothers and women who have never had children), but let's go with 22% for now...

If an average mother with two children would have been earning an average gross salary of £25,000 (£19,174 after tax), but now only has a gross salary of £19,500 (£15,379 after tax) she's out of pocket by £3,795. But she'd also get 2 x 52 x £30 a week Child Benefit = £3,120. So overall, her family unit would be £784 a year worse off, which is hardly worth worrying about, is it?

Or you could say, mothers do an average of twenty hours paid work per week, so that £3,120 equates to extra pay of £3.25 per hour, tax free.

I love a good conspiracy theory

Fausty, among others no doubt, has linked to this short clip, which clearly appears to show that the host (David Dimbleby) of a programme on a state-controlled TV station interrupts opposition MP (Iain Duncan Smith) on the orders of a government Minister (Harriet Harman).



Being of a suspicious nature, I did wonder whether it was just clever editing by some cunning YouTube conspiracist, so I watched the full-length broadcast on the BBC's iPlayer, and that is, in fact, exactly what happened (fast forward to 14 minutes 14 seconds).

Being fair though, if you start a few seconds earlier (at about 14 minutes 0 seconds), David Dimbleby cuts off Harriet Harman in mid waffle to give Iain Duncan Smith a chance to speak, and Iain Duncan Smith does manage to finish off what he wanted to say, despite the best efforts of the host to shout him down.