Harriet Harman misinformed as usual

The ever excellent Alex Masterley has a great spot today:

"Harriet Harman thought she had a catchy little bon mot when she told the world that the financial crisis probably wouldn't have happened if Lehman Brothers had been called Lehman Sisters. In Ms. Harman's reassuring world view, it is those arrogant and assertive Y-chromosomes that cause all the trouble and the ever-suffering females who clean up the mess the men leave behind. Which just goes to show that there is no finer feeling than speaking volubly from a position of ignorance.

If Ms. Harman had done her research, she would have discovered that the systemic disaster that is the credit default swap originated from the derivatives team run by the ever so definitely female Blythe Masters (great name for a senior swaps dealer: you couldn't make it up, sheer nominative determinism). Indeed, during the boom years, the lefty feminist press made a great song and dance about the fact that her team booked $4 trillion of the things every year.

We could have said the credit crunch was started by a woman, but we didn't want to make it a gender issue."

Harriet Harman misinformed, who would have thought it. Is there a rule that Labour deputy leaders have to be irritating and incompetent or is it just coincidence? The last six people to hold this post were going backwards (like their thought processes) Harriet Harman, John Prescott, Margaret Beckett, Roy Hattersley, Dennis Healey and Michael Foot. What a glittering cavalcade of the mediocre (at best) and the incompetent; some of them falling into both camps.

Wimmins bollocks

I can think of no other heading for this story. From the ever excellent England Expects comes the story of the "Third Global Congress of Women in Politics and Governance which will be held on October 19-22, 2008 at the Dusit Hotel, Makati City, Metro Manila, Philippines. The theme of the congress is "Gender and Climate Change"."

Here's a flavour of the whys and whats:

"Women and environment experts have raised concern over the absence of women in the discourse and debate on climate change, a global mainstream issue that is currently impacting the entire world. The involvement of women in areas of environmental management and governance should not be perceived as an afterthought. Women's roles are of considerable importance in the promotion of environmental ethics.

The current imperative is for women to understand the phenomenon of climate change and its impacts and implications at the individual, household, community and national levels. Studies show that women have a definite information deficit on climate politics and climate protection. Only with this information can women take their proper, significant and strategic role in the issue of climate change.

Invited to this congress are women parliamentarians, women in decision - making and governance, environment organizations, youth Leaders and Media Practitioners"


So that's around $2,000 each plus airfares and non-included meals and a lot of CO2 emissions to attend a four day whinge. Well why worry? After all the taxpayer one way or another will fund the trip.


I had to follow the link to the Congress Home Page, I could read and "fisk" this for hours but I have work to do...So here's just a few choice extracts.


1. "The CENTER FOR ASIA-PACIFIC WOMEN IN POLITICS (CAPWIP) is a non-partisan, non-profit and non-governmental regional organization dedicated to promoting equal participation of women in politics, governance and decision-making. CAPWIP was established in 1992 by a group of women from the Asia-Pacific region who have defined their paradigm for change as:



Politics that is both TRANSFORMED and TRANSFORMATIONAL.


TRANSFORMED because...

it uses power to create change, to develop people,
and to build communities;
it is non-hierarchical and participatory in its
structures and processes; and
it accords priority to the disadvantaged sectors,
such as the poor grassroots women in rural and
urban areas and indigenous women;


TRANSFORMATIONAL because...

it is development-oriented, issue-based,
and gender-responsive;
it seeks economic, social, and political equity between sexes
and among sectors; and
it builds a society that is just and humane and
a way of life that is sustainable."



2. "Why Gender and Climate Change?

Differential impact on men and women: The Gender and Climate Change website states: "Climate change is not a neutral process; first of all, women are in general more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, not least because they represent the majority of the world's poor and because they are more than proportionally dependent on natural resources that are threatened. The technological change and instruments that are being proposed to mitigate carbon emissions, which are implicity presented as gender-neutral, are in fact quite gender based and may negatively affect women or bypass them."


Presumably it would be sexist of me to point out that there is no such word as "implicity", I presume they mean "implicitly". However why should women have to restrict themselves to the male decided spellings of words? If wimmin want to spell implicitly as implicity then they can, they can spell it zzxxhh if they want - they are wimmin, hear them roar!



3. "Expected Outputs:

· Gender Responsive Legislative Agenda on Climate change"



looks like a worthwhile event, maybe I could declare myself a woman and attend, surely it is my right as a man to be a woman if I want.