Giles Coren – star of food history programme The Supersizers, posh food critic, winner of an award for writing the shittest sex scene of any novel in 2005, “Fuck the Poles” racist and general snobby bastard (see his twitter at any one given time for evidence) – has authored an article for the Daily Mail today. About the sexist comments made by Sky sports presenters Richard Keys and Andy Gray (and his caught-on-camera sexual harassment), two old misogynists unable to accept that women are real people with the ability to work competently, and their subsequent sacking/resignation. Coren starts from the ever-promising position of ‘I’m not sexist, but…’ and from there on blunders into a horrifying public display of loathing for women that would shock even Tommy Sheridan.
The article is actually so offensive it makes the rest of the Mail’s content look like it’s been written by the Teletubbies loved up out their bins on MDMA. I can practically see the eternally offensive Jan Moir, Bel Mooney and Richard Littlejohn hugging each other and intently discussing how they totally now really get why hate and fear is just a media ploy to keep us from joining together in happiness and song. Coren’s article is THAT bad. Yes, I know it’s in the Daily Mail, so I shouldn’t expect better. That doesn’t make it okay for something this sexist to be published, especially as Giles Coren often presents himself as some kind of average liberal middle class guy whose opinions educated people should listen to. It’s like he’s tried to pack every offensive trope out there into the one piece. How bad the article is really can’t be explained adequately second hand, so we’ll just have to show you exactly what he said. And demolish his pish line by line.
When the Budget was announced this Summer, one facet of the backlash came from women’s rights campaigning group The Fawcett Society, who initiated a legal challenge against the Budget, on the grounds that it was unfair to women, who would bear the brunt of the majority of the cuts.
As we reported at the time, a gender audit of the budget showed that more than 70% of the revenue raised from direct tax and benefit changes would come from female taxpayers.This audit was initiated by the opposition, and took place only after the budget had been announced.
The Treasury are legally obliged to carry out a pre-budget audit to check any disproportionate impact on women, ethnic minorities , LGBT and disabled people. But they didn’t.
Theresa May, InEqualities Minister, even wrote to the Chancellor at them time warning him about the necessity of these audits (not to protect communities in need, of course – but to prevent them from suing the government).
This week, the Fawcett women were finally allowed to present their case in an initial hearing. A high court judge heard that the budget cuts were having a “grossly disproportionate and devastating” impact on women, as the group sought a declaration that the government had acted unlawfully by formulating the budget without paying due regard to gender equality laws.
Despite the government admitting that they hadn’t carried out any assessment on how the budget might unduly affect women, and that these assessments should have taken place, the judge dismissed the case, calling it “unarguable and academic”.
Well, alright then. So long as the Con Dems are willing to say that they ‘regret’ breaking the law and fucking over women (and potentially many other under represented groups), they can just do what they like? Thanks for clearing that up for us, Lord Fuckface.
But as well as the royal fucking over that we’re getting from the government this week, they’re also going to make it much easier for our employers to fuck us over, too. Yay!
Plans to force companies to disclose how much they pay men and women, and therefore embarrass them into paying women a fair wage, are to be scrapped. Instead, companies will be gently encouraged to narrow the pay gap – one of the worst in Europe – you know, if they can be bothered.
Well, as socialists are now groaning and rolling up their sleeves for years of struggle as the Tories and the Liberals prepare to attack living standards and services, and with Labour and the SNP mouthing opposition but doing nothing to stop them (and passing them on through local parliaments and councils), there is another aspect which adds to the farce which is the current state of politics and society in this country.
That is, the wishes of the population, including which type of coalition government, which type of electoral system, and which type of policies people want to see have barely had a look-in in our ‘democracy’ since our election in an already crap electoral system. Rather, we all seem to be slaves to the will of this omniscient presence called ‘the market’.
Now I am no economist, but the way the political elites and journalists have been discussing the needs of ‘the market’ in terms of the desirable form of government (i.e. a Tory-Liberal coalition) that needed to come from this election, makes our financial system sound like some kind of all-powerful supernatural presence. Indeed, so encapsulating and overwhelming is ‘the market’, that we have no choice but to bow down and prostrate ourselves to its will, which right now is that ‘it’ (or he or she, who knows?) wants a strong government to push through brutal cuts. Anyone that thinks otherwise just isn’t a properly trained economist, like all those ones who astutely spotted the financial crisis way before if happened (whoops!) and pushed the deregulation of the financial markets which led to the crisis in the first place.
Thus, ‘the market’ demanded a strong coalition government that could ‘tackle the deficit’ i.e. make the poor pay for capitalism’s crisis, rather than city financiers losing money because shares may go down a little due to uncertainty over the next government. However, hearing the coverage of the hung parliament, you’d have thought we’d all be cast back into the stone age if the desired Tory-Liberal coalition wasn’t agreed sharpish, as you can see in this BBC coverage here.
This is just another reminder of why capitalism, most of all deregulated finance capitalism, can fuck off as far as I’m concerned. The market is not our god, and its servants -- Labour, Tories, Liberals and the SNP -- are not our rulers. Their attempts to make us pay for the current crisis in capitalism may give them a sharp wake-up call on that count.
If humanity is to have a future, we need real participatory democracy, and for political and economic power to be in the hands of the population, not ‘the market’, ‘the city’, or any other representations of the shitty, ailing capitalist system that politicians are desperately trying to prop up. In other words, we need socialism.
Who’d have thunk it eh, not only is Gordon Brown a closet Marxist but it turns out the ideas of Socialism have now penetrated the Tory opposition as well. As soon as Maggie took her eye off the ball, we managed to plant our people in the Conservative party and convince them that they had got it all wrong.
At least that’s the only way I can interpret David Cameron’s theft of Socialist policies, as he calls for a maximum wage in the public sector,
A Tory government would establish a fair pay review to ensure that no senior manager in the public sector can earn more than 20 times more than the lowest- paid person in their organisation.
The scheme could mean that up to 200 senior public sector executives would face pay cuts. Public sector chiefs whose salaries would be cut include Ed Richards, the chief executive of Ofcom, whose £392,056 salary is 22 times higher than the estimated lowest full-time salary in his quango, £18,000.
Well done Dave, the SSP has always thought it was ridiculous quango chiefs and council bosses could earn so much more than many of their low paid employees do as civil servants, cleaners, nurses, clerical staff etc – particularly when they try to sack them.
With any luck we should have an announcement from Tory party central office within the hour that, in the spirit of fairness and being in it all together what goes for the public sector must also go for the private sector – which means no private sector CEO should earn more than 20 times any of their workers.
When the Budget was announced this Summer, one facet of the backlash came from women’s rights campaigning group 
Well, alright then. So long as the Con Dems are willing to say that they ‘regret’ breaking the law and fucking over women (and potentially many other under represented groups), they can just do what they like? Thanks for clearing that up for us, Lord Fuckface.
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