This week, on the same day that the Scots decided - marginally - that they'd rather play it safe and remain part of the 'United' Kingdom, another important vote was taking place North of the Border.
The members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews were voting on whether to admit women as members.
Unsurprisingly, they bowed to public pressure and voted Yes, and with a far greater majority than the Better Together campaign enjoyed in the Independence Referendum.
A quick Google tells me that out of around 3,000 Golf Clubs in Britain today, less than 30 retain an all-male membership (as does Augusta National in the USA incidentally). Female-only Golf Clubs do also exist, such as Lundin Ladies Golf Club in Scotland, however it seems that men are allowed to join both Formby and Sunningdale Ladies Golf Clubs these days. Clearly the Sisterhood is far more open-minded and egalitarian having admitted men to its clubs for some time. Or were they lead to this generous opening to the stubblier sex by financial necessity? Perish the thought.
Anyway, returning to the 30-ish men only clubs. Is this really such a terrible thing? Is it really so awful that blokes prefer to go & play a round of Golf with their friends and retire to the club-house afterward, safe in the knowledge that their wife won't be there waiting anxiously to whisk them away for an afternoon at the garden centre? Why can't men have an oasis where they are safe from the distractions of the opposite sex?
There are plenty of health spas & beauticians parlours which are female-only zones. And it's not like there aren't almost 3000 other golf clubs around the country that the ladies can play at. Just leave the men alone, let them have their boys own time, let them bore each other with tales of how they got out of the bunker or what their latest power-tool acquisition is.
But no, the Royal & Ancient is one of the BEST golf clubs in the country and therefore the ladies want to play the course. Well, fine, just don't complain if next time you go for your Ayurvedic facial at the spa, your relaxation is spoiled by the screams of a bloke next door having his back, sack & crack waxed!
This kind of follows on from All Female Short-lists for parliamentary candidates. This is one of the things that - pardon the expression - boils my piss more than anything else (except Gloria Del Piero who we'll come to in a moment). It harks back to my previous blog entry - Feminist Misogynist -v- Positive Discrimination - and so I won't repeat it too much here. But why should be have a woman foisted on us as a parliamentary candidate when there might be a bloke far better suited to the job? Whatever next? Asian Only short-lists? LBGT Only short-lists? People-with-missing-limbs Only short-lists? I jest, but would it honestly surprise you?
And so the lovely Ms Del Piero. The Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities has said in a speech at the Labour Conference that Public Sector staff should be asked what their parents do for a living. If Labour win the next general election, starting with the public sector, the first step to increase social mobility would be to force employers to keep records on the social backgrounds of their staff to prove they were not all from privileged sections of society.
What. The. Actual. Hell?
How dare any government presume to ask me what my parents do or did for a living? It's none of their damn business! And at what point in their lives do I take my answer from? My Dad started out working as an office junior in the wages office a Denaby Main Colliery in South Yorkshire. When he retired he was a Claims Manager for a major national insurance company. My Father-in-Law was an apprentice engineer at 18 but a company director at retirement. They both started off decidedly working class and retired as what most people would certainly describe as middle class. Two perfect examples of Social Mobility if ever there were.
It seems to me that the very last thing that Labour want is to encourage Social Mobility, because as far as they are concerned it is only young people starting at the bottom today whose Social Mobility is of interest to them. How far the last couple of generations have come matters not a bit to the Labour party, because we've made our money and all they're interested in now is getting their hands on it so they can hand it out to the workless at the very bottom of the social scale. Well, in my view, it's my money, I've earned it the hard way and I want it to benefit MY family, not someone else's, especially not if that family are a bunch of bone idle wasters with a 3rd generation that have never had a job or a family of 11 migrants from Bulgaria!
If Labour are really so concerned with Social Mobility they will bring back Grammar Schools which admit pupils purely on academic ability. Every town will have 2 or 3 Grammar Schools so the 'postcode lottery' will disappear. Less academic kids will go to schools which teach them life skills which will enable them to get decent jobs, rather than teaching them the same subjects as the academically talented kids even though they have no aptitude for them. We could call them 'Secondary Moderns' (irony alert).
You can't discriminate against a person because of where they come from. This should apply as much to social background as it does to race or gender. If the kid applying for the job is a white, heterosexual male from a private school, middle class background and he is the best candidate for the job, why the hell would you employ someone less capable just to fill a quota?
Incidentally, Ms Del Piero grew up 'in a working class area of Bradford' (it was a decidedly nice upper working class suburb, but ok). Perhaps the spectre of the Grammar Schools of Halifax, just over the hill but denied to her by council boundaries haunts her still?
To Ms Del Piero and her cohorts, All Animals Are Equal - but some animals are more equal than others, and those are the animals which used to be less equal. This is the politics of envy - and they are the politics of extinction for Great Britain.
Feminist Misogynist -v- Orwellian Equality
(Again, no pictures, sorry. Most probably a tech-fail on my part but one which I frankly can't be arsed to fix)
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