I expanded on my post below about Mike Newell’s sexist comments on Comment is Free this morning, then donned my hard hat in anticipation.
But I don’t know if it is getting more civil over there, or it is just my lucky day, but there’s quite a decent discussion going on, and only the odd bit of invective being thrown my way.
If you were there and got put off by the atmosphere, it might be worth giving it another go.
The assistant referee makes what you think is a bad decision about a penalty kick (although by no means is there unanimity on that point).
What do you blame? Of course it must be the referee’s gender that is at fault. Well, if she’s female: that’s the conclusion of the Luton football manager Mike Newell.
Funnily enough, I’ve never heard the same explanation for a male official – might be that you claim he needs glasses, that he can’t run fast enough, that he doesn’t really understand the game – but I’ve never heard a male’s gender blamed.
Newell said: “She should not be here. I know that sounds sexist, but I am sexist, so I am not going to be anything other than that.
“We have a problem in this country with political correctness, and bringing women into the game is not the way to improve refereeing and officialdom.
“It is absolutely beyond belief. When do we reach a stage when all officials are women, because then we are in trouble?
“It is bad enough with the incapable referees and linesmen we have, but if you start bringing in women, you have big problems.
“This is Championship football. This is not park football, so what are women doing here? It is tokenism, for the politically-correct idiots.”
Will be interesting to see the reaction to this. Just imagine what the reaction would be if he had said the same things about race. He’d be out on his ear in a second. Somehow, however, I’m not expecting that result when gender is the issue.
If you force budget airlines to pay the real environmental cost of their flights, the poor will be disadvantaged – unable to make that one trip to the sun that makes the rest of the year bearable: so the story goes.
But new research puts lie to that one – because as we all know it costs plenty to travel, even if the flight costs nothing.
So says a definitive survey:
The CAA will announce that the social profile of air passengers has hardly changed in the past ten years, during which Ryanair and easyJet have grown from tiny operations to become two of the biggest airlines in Europe.
The survey will strengthen the case made by David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, for imposing green taxes on flights.
The CAA wants to dispel the belief that budget airlines have made air travel more inclusive and that raising taxes on flights would disproportionately affect people on low incomes.
Ryanair sells millions of return tickets costing less than £40, but the poor still cannot afford all the other costs of a foreign trip, such as hotels and meals, the survey says.
… next one is coming up fast on body impolitic. No particular theme – just great feminist posts. Get your favourites in now through the blog carnival form, or by email to kith at spicejar dot org.
… the New England Journal of Medicine has proved it. It was applied to a selection of regular accounts of “tricky diagnoses” in the journal, and came up with the right answer in 58 per cent of cases – probably rather better than your average GP.
Which when you think about it says something about the wisdom of crowds – they put value on the links, and Google judges that value, at least in part.
A bit of good history – the man who watered the milk, and how the court dealt with it in 1822.
But that seems a nice way to introduce a call for submissions, for the Carnival of Bad History, which will be here on November 21. So what’s the Carnival? Going to the source, what’s included are:
* Bad presentations of history – This is the easy one. Review bad historical movies, books and teevee. How anachronistic are those uniforms? How improbable is that alternate history novel? Did kindly frontier doctors really talk like that?
* Bad uses of history – When pundits, politicians, and talking heads get hold of history they often twist it beyond all recognition or justification. Tell us about the mangaled metaphors, unjustified parallels, or outright lies you find in the public sphere.
* Historians behaving badly – Historians manage their share of embarassing talking head appearances, plagiarism scandals, and corporate sell-outs. We don’t want mere unpleasant gossip. Contributions in this category should be of historians behaving badly in their professional capacity as historians.
Should be fun! So send in your posts like that – or take this as an invitation to really vent your spleen, then pass on the link. Please email natalieben AT gmail DOT com.
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