Women's Jobs (13/12/14)



I imagine Labour MP Frank Doran considers himself to be a much more 'progressive' person, politically speaking, that the nation's favourite Petrolhead, Jeremy Clarkson.

But after this ridiculous comment by Frank Doran in the House of Commons, I have to say my money's on Jeremy because he doesn't seem as blinkered and hidebound about the kinds of jobs that women can do.

Fisheries minister is not 'a job for a woman', Labour MP suggests

Aberdeen MP Frank Doran triggers audible gasps in Commons with throwaway comment, adding that he knows the fishing industry 'very well'

Palace of Westminster Photo: GETTY



By Ben Riley-Smith - The Telegraph

The Government's minister for fisheries is not "a job for a woman", a Labour MP has controversially suggested.

Frank Doran denied the throwaway comment was sexist and followed up by saying he knew the fishing industry "very well".

The remark triggered audible gasps when made by Mr Doran, Labour's former energy and climate change, during a debate in the Commons.

Sheryll Murray, the Conservative MP for South East Cornwall, intervened to say there had not, "but we have had former female secretaries of state".

Mr Doran, the Aberdeen North MP, acknowledged she was right but said there was "no dedicated fisheries minister".

"I'm not sure it is a job for a woman, although the honourable lady might reach that," he said.

Hearing groans from other MPs around the chamber, Mr Doran added: "That was not a sexist remark. I know the fishing industry very well."

Anna Soubry later said: “Frank Doran is talking nonsense and insulting women. Ed Miliband should make it absolutely clear he doesn’t agree with Doran’s ridiculous remarks.”

Nicky Morgan, Education Secretary, said: "Frank Doran’s comments are outrageous and deeply offensive and seriously undermine our work to raise aspiration among young women and girls.

"He should apologise immediately. Labour are very good at throwing stones but they are too quick to ignore blatant sexism within their own ranks – Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman cannot ignore this."


What Feminism Looks Like (14 November 2014)



Jeremy Clarkson comes in for a lot of stick from people on the left of politics, but if you ask me he's straight to the point in this article with his rather acute observation that in other countries, such as Australia, it's quite normal to see women in roles and jobs traditionally done by men.

Now I've travelled quite a bit myself and my experience is very similar to that of the nation's favourite 'petrolhead': in Spain, for example, it's quite common to see women working as part of Barcelona's refuse, clean-up team in the city centre and in America no one bats an eyelid at seeing a woman in a hard hat on a construction site.

Yet in Scotland and the rest of the UK the sight of women working in the traditionally higher paid council jobs - refuse and gardening, for example - are about as common as unicorns.  

And don't tell me it's because women workers have not been prepared to take up these higher paid jobs; the fact is that women never realised they were all getting a much higher rate of pay that Home Carers, Classroom Assistants, Catering Workers, Clerical Workers and School Cleaners.    


Strewth, down under, feminists don’t wear T-shirts, they carry rifles 


By Jeremy Clarkson - The Sunday Times
The voice of Jeremy Clarkson will be featuring on TomTom’s new sat nav series



So I was in a helicopter. The doors were off, I had a rifle and the pilot was hovering 100ft from the ground so I could shoot a wild pig. Later we butchered it and over a few beers fed it to his pet crocodile. This is the all-male, rough-and-tumble image we have of life in Australia. But it’s wrong.

The following morning, all I wanted was a cigarette and a cup of coffee in the morning sunshine, but down under, this is no longer really possible.

I made the short 300-yard walk from the restaurant to what was billed as the smoking terrace. But a waiter sprinted over to say that the actual smoking terrace was even further away, in a cave by the bins. And that, yes, he could bring me a coffee, but only in a paper cup.

This is because he’d have to walk past the swimming pool. Never mind that it was completely fenced off, and accessible through a gate so complicated that only a child could possibly work the latch, there was a chance that he would trip over one of the signs advising visitors that it was 0.2 metres deep, that diving was banned, that no lifeguard was on duty and that the water may contain traces of diarrhoea.

I’m not sure there’s a country on earth where the global perception is as far removed from the reality as Australia. We see it as a land of spiders and snakes, where you are born drunk and with an ability to barbecue yourself. But it’s not like that at all.

Today the unholy alliance of the nanny state and the trade union movement has created a culture of health and safety so all-consuming that no one is allowed to die, or even fall over. Cigarettes are sold in packets made from the diseased lungs of dead babies, drinking outside is not allowed and there are speed limits on roads where there is literally nothing to hit. You could have a crash lasting two hours and you’d still be fine.

The last fatality from a spider bite was in 1979, and every single river in the outback is garnished with floats. If the daily checks reveal they are riddled with teeth marks, the rangers know that an inquisitive crocodile is around and the entire area is then sealed off to the public, until it has been captured, humanely, and transported in sumptuous comfort to an area where there are no people.

And it’s not just in the area of safety that Australia is different from the global perception. There’s also the question of feminism. When we think of women in Australia, nothing springs to mind at all. We think of their rugby, and their cricket and their pick-up trucks and their beer and their barbecues and their Crocodile Dundee. And in all of that, there are no women at all.

I’ve racked my brains and the only well-known Aussie women I can think of are Germaine Greer, Elle Macpherson and Kathy Lette. And they all either live, or have until recently lived, in Britain. Australia then, we imagine, is a misogynistic nightmare where a woman can only get a job if she has ginormous breasts.

Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth. I first noticed this at a remote iron ore mine in the Northern Territory. I was there, in a hard hat and a hi-vis jacket, watching the approach of a tipper truck. It was as big as a block of flats, it was carrying 50 tons of rock and it was about as manly as anything I’ve ever seen in my whole life. It even said Territory Iron on the cab. There was a danger that if I’d looked at it for any longer, I’d have made myself pregnant. But it was being driven by a woman. And so was the digger that had loaded it.

Later, at a nearby airfield, I was mooching about when an extremely attractive girl emerged from the engine bay of a light aircraft. She was wearing vaguely unbuttoned overalls, carrying a spanner and had oil streaks on her face. And I’m ashamed to say I thought that maybe I’d stumbled into some kind of soft-porn calendar shoot. But no. She was an aircraft engineer.

This went on and on. The pilot who flew missions to a remote farm was a woman. And here one of the sun-hardened cowboys was actually a 14-year-old cowgirl. In a Darwin newspaper there was a story on the back page about a seven-a-side football match. The accompanying photograph showed a player tackling another player. It looked normal, but one was a bloke and the other wasn’t.

We think we have feminism worked out in Britain. All BBC panel shows must now feature at least one woman, Ed Miliband is to be seen in a T-shirt declaring his love for women’s rights and there are many women bosses. But compared with Australia, we are miles off the pace.

If you went to a quarry in Britain and found that the 50-ton trucks were being driven by women, you wouldn’t mind. But you’d notice. It’d be the same story if a woman came to mend your lavatory, or fix your roof. And if your light aircraft had been serviced by someone who looked like Katie Price you’d certainly make a few jokes about that at the next lodge meeting.

You could argue that in Australia’s Northern Territory they have to use women to drive trucks and make up the numbers in football teams as the population density is 0.4 people per square mile. And that here in the UK where there are more than 650 people per square mile it’s a different story.

But is it? We are forever being told that we need migrants to come to Britain to drive our buses and do our plumbing. But how can that be so when half the indigenous population think they’ve broken through the glass ceiling just because their website selling second-hand children’s clothes has 14 followers?

Australia can keep its ludicrous attitude to health and safety, but we should look long and hard at how it has created an environment where the person in the back of the helicopter on the pig-shooting mission is a teenage girl. And she’s got a rifle as well.

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