The Rights Of Man

FAWCETT SOCIETY AND OTHERS LAUNCH ANOTHER ANTI-MALE CAMPAIGN - WHEN WILL MEDIA LOOK AT THE FACTS

The ridiculous but dangerously credible (in the eyes of the elite) Fawcett Society have launched another plea for special treatment and anti-male measures.

The acting CEO, Anna Bird, who is obviously desperate to get the job states:

“Women have not faced a greater threat to their financial security and rights in living memory. Decades of steady, albeit slow, progress on equality for women is being dismantled, as cuts to women’s jobs and the benefits and services they rely on turn back time on women’s equality."

As seen recently, along with the fact she believes 'family issues' don't include men, the facts just don't stack up yet the Media and other lavish attention on this organisation. Why does no one apart from this site, nail the lies, myths and half truths of the Fawcett Society? You would at least expect the Daily Mail or Daily Telegraph to look at it.

Posted by Skimmington

Media coverage - Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Guardian 2

GOVERNMENT BELIEVES SUPPORTING MALE ENTREPRENEURS NOT IMPORTANT

So this week started off looking good for men with the first ever Conference for Men and Boys in Brighton and ended terribly with Norgrove's awful report and then the coup de grace was given by Theresa May (she believes in shared parenting as stated on BBC 1's Question Time) when she anniounced setting up an entrepreneurs fund for women and a Women's Business Council with mentors.

"The £700,000 over three year funding will provide 5,000 mentors for new and existing female entrepreneurs as research shows women are only half as likely as men to be engaged in entrepreneurial activity."

This is significant because of course everyone wants a successful economy and everyone be able to use their potential, whether a man or a woman but the genderisation of entrepreneurship is dangerously sexist. While there has been biased funding before and no doubt this continues, entrepreneurship is gender neutral.

We have argued before that this government endorsed sexism means that female entrepreneurs are not taken seriously because they 'only get their capital because they are female' and also it squeezes the opportunities for young male enrtrepreneurs - as if male entrepreneurs are second class.

This is even more damaging when you see the state of the economy and how desperate we are for unemployed men (currently 1.5 million and a rate of 75.4% as opposed to 1 million and a rate of 65.4% women)to get onto the employment ladder (and women of course).

So why are there are special schemes for female entrepreneurs and why is the government talking them up when the economy needs male and female entrepreneurs. Is May really saying, just like Harman before her, that a Rodean educated woman needs help to be an entrepreneur while a white/black working class boys from a Peckham council estate who went to a sink school doesn't. Its sexist.

This week we have the men being shut out of fatherhood and now we have them being shut on our the economy and being able to create jobs for themselves, their families and others.

Men are being deliberately crushed.

Posted by Skimmington

NORGROVE BETRAYS FATHERS AND CHILDREN - WILL THE COALITION GOVERNMENT?

As the report was announced yesterday and the coverage has been extensive, the betrayal by Norgrove of fathers, grandparents and children can be fully seen. Though some commentators are in shock this site did discuss that it was on the cards, however, it is worse because at least in the interim report there was to be some recognition of shared parenting - now there is none.

Why did Norgove make matters worse? He comes up with feeble excuses about definitions and irrelevances from Australia which made no sense.

Things Norgrove was clear on were:

• He does not believe that fathers and grandparents have any role or are relevant to the successful upbringing of children.
• He believes there is no anti-father bias in the courts
• He believes the people represented by by FnF, F4J and others groups are so small they are not wort worrying about (listen to his interview on Radio 4's Today Programme 2hr 32 min in - you need to click on the right hand side). He actually effectively says this.
• He believes there should be no link between child maintenance and access (what can a man do against a recalcitrant law breaking mother?), though he believes in tougher enforcement.

This is all wrong and it is clear he that while he says everything is in the interests of the child, he doesn't think it is in the interests of child to have contact with their father. It is almost the same issue about the IVF treatment in the news update on Wednesday where the law says it does not matter that a child born through IVF does not have a father around.

The only two straws of hope is that the coalition government said it believed in shared parenting, though, this seemed more around from pregnancy rather than the concept we are talking about. It did also say it wanted better access arrangements for separated couples and grandparents.

The last piece is that Iain Duncan Smith has waded in and will do all he can to persuade the government to reject Norgrove's view that shared parenting does not not matter. Let us hope this is a battle he wins.

Posted by Skimmington

Some of the media coverage (plus read comments)- BBC, Christine Odone (Telegraph), Daily Mail, Telegraph

Please add more links if there are other worthwhile articles

NEWS UPDATE

Quite a few from the last few weeks (let me know if the site has missed any?):

Daily Telegraph - Single women being offered IVF treatment on the NHS (Stephen Adams)

Daily Mail - Single women get priority over couples for IVF treatment (Sophie Borland)

Labour government's policy of allowing IVF to a woman who was not in a long term relationship with a man bears fruit - a deliberate policy to make men redundant.

Daily Mail - The Hattie cabinet: no men allowed (Abul Taher) Is there no end to the anti-male war in the Labour party. When will they have the balls to stop it?

Hull Daily Mail - Ex-nurse attacks men with croquet mallet : An old story from this year but look at the ridiculously weak sentence

Hull Daily Mail - More supoport for male victims needed

BBC Kent - Positive discrimination needed for male teachers

Barnet Today - Sexist charge over gym hours : Another case of institutional sexism and the pathetic justification for it by the council

Daily Mail -Women must get more top jobs says Cameron (Kirsty Walker)

BBC Scotland - Domestic abuse against men rises

Daily Telegraph - Woman bites off boyfriend's testicles

Sunday Business Pot (Ireland) - 9% of rape allegations are false (John Burke)

The Guardian - Feminism is so tiny, so niche (Tanya Gold) Pure Orwell

The Guardian - Has the new man triumphed at last (William Leith)

The Observer - Why women in radio are talking back (Miranda Sawyer) A new anti-meritocratic group pleading for special treatment

The Guardian - Rise of the stay at home dads (Mark King)

Posted by Skimmington

LEGAL AID REFORMS GIVE MORE OPPORTUNITY FOR DESTROYING FATHERS

There has been a steady drip drip campaign against legal aid reforms that will mean far more restrictions being placed on access to legal aid. This is mainly to do with dealing with a lack of government funding. Funding restrictions on family disputes will mean that only on cases of domestic violence, child marriage or forced marriage will legal aid still be available.

Entitled a Manifesto for Family Justice , a manifesto that only mentions women and has no groups representing male victims included (probably because they were not asked as unsurprisngly according to the press release domestic abuse only happens to women - usual story of institutional sexism), raises a number of points of concern and interest. One potentially positive for men and two potentially negative based on the law of unintended consequences and unequal justice.

Without going into the why's or wherefore's in detail, but restrictions on legal aid will in the main help fathers as it evens up the playing field. As we know vast numbers, who despite going through mediation, face the entrenched legal aid funded (ex) wives/partners who want to fight and sometimes lie to stop their children being able to have regular contact with their father. 

The man goes bankrupt paying legal fees while the ex racks up the fees on legal aid, and still there are the demands for CSA payments.

So the changes could be a good thing as it will stop the insidious practice of women deliberately going to court because of her hatred of the father of her children.

However, and this is a point picked up before by the Chairman of the Bar Council, Peter Lodder QC, in January. If legal aid is restricted to a certain defined area in family law cases then the law of unintended consequences and human nature means that any unscrupulous and greedy solicitor will advise people to try to steer their case that way so it becomes eligible for legal aid. 

So some women, because they want legal aid, will be steered towards making false allegations of domestic abuse against men. Even more so then those that already do in the family courts.

The Manifesto also picks up the effect of restricting legal aid to just the alleged victims of domestic abuse meaning they will be then cross-examined by the perpetrators. This is an importnat yet secondary point as this does not get round the central point of actually encouraging false allegations in the first place - a scourge of the family courts and domestic abuse generally.

The main point on the restriction and this is the real double whammy for men is that not only will the restrictions encourage false allegations, men if they are the ones accused will not be elgible for legal aid (see answer 80 in Parliament here). This is why they would be undertaking the cross examination because they cannot afford a lawyer and cannot get the legal aid.

As Peter Lodder QC says in Parliament: "In court, someone who may be facing a false allegation will have to defend himself—it will probably be himself—and will risk losing everything: children, liberty, home, you name it. They will have to defend themselves in that circumstance. We do not see how that can possibly advance access to justice." 

Even if he does have the opportunity for cross-examining his ex, he is unlikely to be as good as a solicitor or barrister trained in this. Men will lose.

One point that is strange and shows how people or an organisation may be influenced and lobbied to change or soften a view is about the manifesto. It is created by the Bar Council whose Chairman is Brian Lodder QC but he is the one who made the perfectly reasonable comments to the Standard in January and in Parliament. Why is the issue about encouraging false allegations not in the manifesto nor the fact that men on the end of a false allegation will not have access to legal aid (it mentions this indirectly on the cross examination issue but why not directly)? Why the sudden silence?? 

Why was this not included - we know Women's Aid and CAADA who signed up to the manifesto would not be pleased to sign up to document that suggested false allegations even existed as that does not fit with their women=good, men=bad school of thought. So they did they have influence on it and wanted those issues dropped before agreeing to sign up?

While the legal aid reforms on the one hand seem to be advantageous to fathers as it evens up the playing field when arranging custody and access arrangements, the scourge of the false allegation and the lack of support for men to defend themselves show these are dangerous and are likely to damage men further.

Posted by Skimmington

Media coverage - Guardian, Guardian 2, Guardian 3