So I get a call to go on the Politics Show, for this post budget debate thing with Clegg and Cameron.
This producer guy – we’ll call him “Ian”, because that’s his name – wants a “mum”, and I bite because I have some things to say about the budget, and this and that; plus I score high for both vanity and gullibility in personality tests.
I don’t make a fuss about the mum-in-inverted-commas thing. (more…)
The first thrust of the Coalition – their gauntlet on the flagstone – has been to bestow the right of anonymity on those accused of rape. Had I been a skipping, Pollyanna type, with a cheery ‘let’s see what they come up with first before passing judgment’ approach to this government – then this would have been my scales/eyes moment.
My first instinct was to blink rapidly and rifle through both parties’ manifestos for the paragraph I must have missed; then to shake the shoulders of those who Went Over, wailing “Look what you’ve done! They have chosen as their flagship policy one which declares that women lie about rape – and so easily and habitually that men accused of it need structural protection!”
So clunkingly inept is this policy that it’s tempting to imagine it has been pulled, at random, from the big LibCon lucky dip barrel. But to do so would be to underestimate the Clegg-Cameron endeavour. This ain’t no accident – it’s a marker, a line in the sand.
The reasons that rape victims have historically been protected by anonymity are so crashingly obvious that I’m embarrassed to rehearse them here. If you’ve ever given more than a passing thought to gender politics, do feel free to skip this next bit. (more…)
