Perception of women in politics

People north of the border flew into a great tizzy when it was found that only 1 in 8 of the Liberal Democrat regional lists for the election next year was topped by a woman. There were cries of "institutional sexism". When the smoke had cleared, it became clear that the situation was more patchy than that.

Action is being taken by the party in Scotland. I am sure they are right to debate what is going wrong there, but I believe they should also examine where things are going right. There is rather better balance of the sexes in local government. In Wales, the party has achieved gender balance in parliament from the start with the same electoral system as in Scotland. Not only that, but we have a woman leader, woman party president and until recently a woman chief executive. One reason may be nothing to do with the party at all, but with the tone in which proceedings are conducted in the two parliaments. It is noticeable how much more intemperate is the language in Edinburgh as opposed to Cardiff. (Yes, I admit to watching the BBC Parliament coverage of the devolved parliaments when they are in session. Sad, isn't it?) So the Senedd is probably not so off-putting. Beyond that, I don't pretend to know the answer but the situation should repay research.

Research is certainly needed into the situation in the last Westminster election, where the first-past-the-post system militates against women and against minorities. Liberal Democrats must have had the largest proportion of women candidates in the party's history in 2015, yet not one was returned. In 2010, our female candidates suffered disproportionately. It may be that, other things being equal, other parties' women did less well than the men, but it was certainly noticeable in the case of LibDems. Preferential voting in multi-member constituencies would help, but there is no chance of that coming about with a conservative majority in the Commons likely for the foreseeable future.

Gender prejudice on the part of voters may be as sensitive an issue as colour prejudice. For that reason, the many sociology departments of our universities have not tackled it, as far as I can see. It may also be difficult to pin down, but research is surely needed and answers found or politics will continue to be unrepresentative not just as regards gender but in gender across political philosophies.

Have you ever been grunfled, missus?

A misprint in today's Independent chess column set me thinking about chess openings named after people. (The Independent reference should be to the Grünfeld defence, not to the Grunfled.)  Lo and behold, the estimable wikipedia has catalogued virtually (I cannot spot any omissions) all of them.

All I can add is that Leonard Barden, the veteran columnist and then a British international master, confessed in the 1960s to mis-attributing (quite innocently) the Robatsch Defence to Karl Robatsch, who did not in fact initiate it. The name nevertheless stuck for many years until being largely supplanted by Modern Defence.

Revenge porn

It had its faults - there were titillating flashes of the images in question, and the material was spread rather thin - but there was a useful, if overdue, documentary on the subject of revenge porn on Channel 4 last night.

True to its policy of not giving Liberal Democrats any credit, Channel 4 omitted the story of how the outlawing of revenge porn was forced into statute law in the first place.

Lariam - action overdue

A Conservative MP has today called for Roche's anti-malarial mefloquine hydrochloride (trade name Lariam) to cease to be routinely administered to British forces, because of its side-effects. But this is not the first time that parliament has been made aware of the dangers of the drug; there was an early-day motion raised a year ago.

Before that, HIGNFY's Paul Merton had gone public on the effect that Lariam, taken while on a tour abroad, had had on his career and personal relations. There is a list of the drug's drawbacks here.

Is there a rat problem in Neath?

There is a worrying article from the US capital. One paragraph stands out:

 I found that not only is it pretty easy for a rat to climb up a three-inch toilet drain pipe (most of the time there’s not even water in it), but I live in a part of D.C. with a combined sewer system, so the storm drains on the street and the pipes from the toilets run to the same place. A combined sewer is one big, happy, Rat Central Station. 

I do not suppose that American rats are any smarter than Welsh ones, and most of the old industrial centres of south Wales, thrown up in a hurry during the Industrial Revolution, have antiquated drains.

Return of an old Liberal name to mid-Wales politics

Brecon & Radnor Liberal Democrats are celebrating the capture of a former Conservative seat on Powys County Council. It also marks the return of the Gibson-Watt name to local politics. The farming Gibson-Watts, who are if memory serves me right collateral descendants of the great engineer James Watt, have moved between Conservatism and Liberalism over the years. It is good to see James Gibson-Watt back.

A brewster in Llansamlet

Traditionally, brewing beer has been as much a woman's game as a man's. It seems that only with the creation of the great brewing combines peaking in the twentieth century has it become a male-dominated industry. However, there is now a healthy trend towards small independent breweries and with that comes gender democracy, as evidenced by Boss Brewing in Llansamlet just across the county borough boundary.

Labour preventing entryism by socialists

The news today that Labour apparatchiks have barred long-standing socialist writers Mark Steel and Ken Loach from voting in the coming leadership election suggests that they have taken to heart Bertolt Brecht's 1953 sardonic advice to the DDR administration:

 “Would it not be easier/ In that case for the government/ To dissolve the people/ And elect another?” 


Clearly it is important to avoid the purity of New Labour being tainted by socialism.