If Men Got Pregnant...

...this wouldn't happen. Or this. Seems like we are all sat around watching the flow of horror stories from the US health care system - particularly thanks to Michael Moore's film Sicko - but we're letting our own heath care system go the same way. A friend of mine who is a lawyer recently had a baby and spent nearly £10,000 on private health care for the delivery (elective Caesarian because it's her right have her baby her way) because she said she's "seen too many malpractice suits and knows what can go wrong". And even then the food was pretty awful and had to be paid for separately and there were some holes in the care provided. If we believe in a free heath service for everyone, we need to be spending money making sure it does what it says on the tin. And how ironic that you can in some areas get IVF on the NHS. We'll pay to get you pregnant but then we'll leave you in agony to give birth on your own. It's what's called a trick, girls, don't let them catch you.

Match Made in Hell

I have just read this story about a guy who's been serially drugging and raping women he met on match.com. It comes with all the usual women-not-being-believed crap and it's taken forever to get a conviction but it comes hot on the heel of a friend of mine telling me a real horror story about a guy she met on an online dating site. I don't want to get into detail because of course she told me what had happened to her in confidence but trust me it was awful.

Years ago before I met Mr Cru I went on a few of these sites and dated a few guys. I think my batting record was:

1 I didn't fancy and didn't meet up with again.
1 I slept with and dated again but it petered out shortly.
3 I didn't fancy but became friends with (and still am).

So there's certainly a positive side to these sites, I met some cool people (then I went out and picked Mr Cru up in a late night bar. Ha!), but there are risks too. Now of course I'm not trying to write some patronising "women warned about dangers on online dating " piece. I neither think women should stay home nor that the Internet has mystical powers to corrupt your soul (from the woman who blogs ten times a day!). My point is that there are different ways to meet guys and the risks are different:

Through trusted friends is always the safest - because at very least they know it's going to get back to them if they don't respect you.
While out with friends is safer - because your friends are there to make sure you're ok.
On a late night two-person date after randomly meeting on a dating website is riskier, where possible better to meet in the daytime, or meet with a few others. Also better to meet for a meal/cinema/theatre trip rather than straight on to the alcoholic drinks.

Also safer to meet in a country where the police take rape victims seriously and attempt to prosecute cases wherever possible, and where public attitudes towards rape have left the middle ages, i.e. not here.

Maybe match.com and co. could introduce a "see other users ratings" section to their site so you could give jerks no stars!

Spot the Difference

The police are doing everything in their power to get the public to side with them over the shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes.

1) The police officer in charge of the operation cried in court. Which proves very little, except perhaps that he doesn't want to get in trouble for following orders from irresponsible seniors who are smart enough to cover the own backs and finger him when the shit hits the proverbial fan.

2) The same report tried to claim Menezes had taken cocaine, which caused him to act suspiciously. Take a look at these pictures and tell me who you think is acting oddly...

3) There have been claims that he was past end of his visa. Not, as far as I know, a crime punishable with seven bullets to the head. But again the claim is that this caused him to run away from police. The photos clearly show however (a) the police behaving weirdly - leaping barriers and running about with guns and (b) everybody else on the underground running away too.

4) Most ridiculous of all we're told that De Menezes looks similar to Hussein Osman - a 21st July suspect. Photos above (from The Age) for comparison and I can just about tell the difference. Anyone else? One of those guys is black! Considering how racist the police are reputed to be you'd think they would notice.

Thing is what are they going to do if they do find the police are totally in the wrong? Fine them money which only comes out of the national budget in the first place? Sack a few people and replace them with the sycophants next down the line?

What is needed of course is the whole "terrorist search" called off. They basically haven't found any, every time they claim to have "foiled another plot" it emerges three weeks later that actually the people involved were totally innocent and they're released without charge. And in the process they've caused untold anguish for individuals and incited rage from Muslim groups who feel they are being, well, shot at for no reason.

Doing Everything "Right"

This is just horrific reading, from Feministing. That women often do not report immediately is often held up as one of the many excuses for the pathetic rape prosecution and conviction rates. It reduces the chances of getting DNA evidence as well as blood samples if a date-rape drug is suspected to be involved and among ill-informed rape deniers, reduces the credibility of the victim. So when a woman goes straight to hospital and reports the case to the police too, to ensure DNA evidence is taken - what do they do? Refuse to help her. Three times.

Does Anybody Really Care?

What with all the fuss being made about the less than 200 a year late term abortions in the UK and about those awful 185 women (minus the ones with cancer or other fertility-threatening conditions) who have had a few eggs frozen you'd be forgiven for thinking there was a huge body of people out there who really cared deeply for the well-being of new-born babies and their mothers. If so why don't they go and do something about the 2.3million babies and 188,000 mothers a year dying as a result of poor obstetric care in South Asia?

Yet More Patronising "Advice for Women"

Do women need any more advice on having babies? Apparently so, the American Society For Reproductive Medicine has teamed up with Comment On Reproductive Ethics and the BBC to patronise us all a bit more.

They want to let us know that having your eggs frozen doesn't "guarantee" that women will be able to conceive with those eggs. Which is probably why only 185 women in the UK have had eggs frozen - many of them cancer patients eager to avoid the mess Natalie Evans got into by being unfortunate enough to be dating a complete wanker at the time she contracted cancer. Out of a UK female population of child-bearing age (15 to 44, I'm counting, assuming that a cancer-suffering 15-year-old might consider egg freezing and that by the age of 45 you're not likely to be freezing new eggs) of around 12million, that's tiny. So I can't help thinking it would be easier to ring the 185 personally than to insist on publishing your story in a national news source. I'm sure the 185 all know this and have had the risks explained to them.

So what is the story really about? Women's "lifestyles". Or in other words how us silly girlies have got it all wrong and should be sat home embroidering doilies and pinging out sprogs as soon as we're old enough to menstruate.

Firstly the BBC says quite matter-of-factly, this is not a quote from anybody, "An increasing number of women are choosing to freeze their eggs for social reasons in the hope they will be able to have a child when they are older." So by "an increasing number" the BBC means less than two thousandths of a percent? For any individual woman, a 0.000015 probability. And that's only if we are allowed to include being diagnosed with cancer as a social reason. When you take those women off the list, the number will be even lower, not to say negligible.

Secondly - still the BBC's words "Critics argue they are delaying motherhood for the wrong motives, such as climbing the career ladder or until they have more money." Sorry - who decides what the right and wrong motives for delaying motherhood are? If a woman decides she doesn't want to have children until she can afford to send them to a good school and raise them in a comfortable home who is the BBC to describe those as the "wrong motives"? And is it even true? A small survey on the Mothers 35-plus website gives the number one reason for delaying motherhood as "Lack of suitable partner".

In fact the evidence doesn't even suggest that women are delaying motherhood really. This chart of data from Scotland shows that older mothers are having slightly fewer children than they did in the 1950s and 60s. The difference is that younger mothers are having significantly less children.

And now some patronising advice from Comment On Reproductive Ethics: "The best solution to lifestyle problems is to change one's lifestyle. Have babies naturally at the time nature intended..." Got that ladies? Magically make the right bloke/financial security/feeling of broodiness come along at your fertility peak.

Now the second worst thing about the article is that it totally focuses on WHEN in their lives women SHOULD have babies. It doesn't say anything about the option of NOT HAVING BABIES! Globally we really don't need extra babies. And a very real alternative for older women who regret not starting a family earlier is adopting an older child in need, there are plenty out there desperate for help. And besides, if you don't want kids at 25, maybe you won't want kids at 35 either, as the chart shows the main trend is that women are really choosing to have less children, not the same number later in life.

But the very worst thing about the article is that it addresses itself 100% to women. What about men? Should we be warning men that if they want kids they should settle down with their woman before she hits 32? I have several women friends who are keen to start a family but are waiting until their partner feels ready too. It takes two to make babies.

And if there's any truth in the idea that women delay motherhood because they feel they can't have a career and a family while they're young then we should be warning employers that they're breaking the law by discriminating against pregnant women and working mothers and failing to offer flexible working hours to those with young children!

Funny of the Day

From Shakesville.

Abandoned To Fanatics

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been let down on the promises of protection offered to her by the Dutch government. Sam Harris (author of Letter To A Christian Nation) and Salman Rushdie (who has much experience of being in hiding from Islamic fanatics) have written this deeply moving and very frightening article.

As If By Magic

Someone else has noticed the contradiction in the Unilever Dove campaign and the other campaigns it runs. Step forward Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. And in general, what a great concept. I have mentioned it before back in the very VERY early days of Cru-blog. I believe some Scandinavian countries have laws that forbid advertising aimed at the under-12s. It's a great idea, makes complete sense, don't bombard kids with media messages when they're too young to know what's going on. Anyway if you're of a mind to, you can mail the company via the CCFC website and air your views on their marketing strategies.

Good news for Mr Cru

Feminists do it better. Yes, scientists have proved feminists have better relationships. A discussion of the report in Science Daily says "They found that having a feminist partner was linked to healthier heterosexual relationships for women. Men with feminist partners also reported both more stable relationships and greater sexual satisfaction." And the whole thing about us being unattractive and unshaggable is crap too, in fact "feminist women were more likely to be in a heterosexual romantic relationship than non-feminist women."

That is not Mr Cru pictured by the way. You can go congratulate him on the good news here.

Does This Seem To Happen Every Month?

We are apparently caught in the middle of yet another move to change the UK abortion law (i.e. so that less women have access to abortion). Another BBC article with everything wrong with it. Firstly "see how a baby develops to full term over 40 weeks". Not a baby, an embryo, then a foetus. Secondly they speak to several MPs and people from anti-abortion groups. They don't however discuss what the public thinks, relevant information one would imagine, given that we are supposed to live in a democracy. 77% of the British public believe a woman should have the right to an abortion on demand.

They also obtain views from three men and one woman, which gives me a chilling feeling. Why are men involved in the decision over what happens to women's bodies?

Meanwhile for a reminder of the "big success" that anti-abortion activists are aiming for - look at Nicaragua - where abortion is now illegal even if for instance, like Raquel in this article, you've been raped by your own uncle at the age of eleven...

The thing is if you really believe abortion is a sin or whatever, the way to cut the number of abortions is to back efforts to provide contraception to women, support benefits and assistance to single mothers and campaign against the lax prosecution of rape cases. But no-ones doing THAT of course.

Which Planet Is This?

I don't understand. It's not April 1st is it? Well if you've got some money that's just getting in the way and it just seems like such hard work to flush it down the loo - here's a handy alternative.

Let me add the following: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Oh and this: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

What exactly are they proposing Bush would win it for? Services to reduce global warming by killing off hundreds of thousands of CO2-producing poor people in the Middle East? Services to global peace from using up all the dangerous weapons before anybody else can get their hands on them? Services to citizens of aggressive dictatorships for showing them that the promise of modern democracy isn't really worth fighting for?

That said of course Kissinger won it once so I guess they do issue it ironically from time to time...

Still The Truth, However Inconvenient

As expected the UK court case against An Inconvenient Truth is now being discussed on Fox News as if it totally discredited the film. Meanwhile, according to some unresearched right wing blog I have been "brainwashed by Al Gore". They've really taken the time to understand the issues and have hit hard with an insightful piece calling me a moron. Thanks guys, next time just send flowers. Anyway they claim that I need to go through the points raised by the court case and address them. I would do but as it happens Mr Cru has just done the job for me. Good job.

But here's the real rub. The Fox News people, the right wing bloggers, the Exxon-sponsored think tanks, Stewart Dimmock, all the other global warming nay-sayers have one thing in common:

None of them actually think global warming isn't happening.

Some think it's happening slower than it is. Some think it's happening but that it's not yet 100% clear that it's our fault. The court case argued that some of the evident effects of global warming might also be explainable by other means.

It's like being in a car speeding towards a cliff and going "I think the cliff's only 100 foot high, not 300 foot...", "well I think some of our speed might be down to the angle of the road, not our acceleration". You're still going off the cliff, the rest doesn't matter and the time spent arguing is wasted time that puts people's lives at risk. Time that needs to be spent stopping the car or turning it round.

No-one thinks global warming isn't going to destroy the planet eventually. The focus therefore needs to be on what we can do to cut emissions and recapture carbon. And the focus needs to be on doing those things NOW!

He Won It

The Nobel Peace Prize. Al Gore. Now is he going to run for president?

Dove Hurts

Dove Update Alert: Dove "real beauty" manufacturers Unilever have been spreading this advert for their Sunsilk shampoo. Forget the campaign for real beauty, where is the campaign for more women being tortured in advertising?

By The Way...

...if you're a fan of Cru-blog (and if not you'll be needing your back button shortly!) you can vote for me in the blogger's choice awards. The categories I'm in are: Best Blog of All Time, Best Blog About Stuff, Best Political Blog and Best Religion Blog - which is cool, since the secular voice does seem to be missing from these lists sometimes.

Should we ignore 32,000 abused children?

According to this report from the Guardian, the FGM "at-risk" population in the UK is now 21,000. And there are a likely 11,000 existing victims. Is the government's policy of funding more faith schools including Muslim ones going to help? I don't see why we don't just provide annual health screenings to all children which include checking for evidence of FGM as standard. But if protecting the health of our children is too much to ask, why not just screen those from at-risk communities. It's a shame to have to single people out, but not as much of a shame as going away on holiday only to discover Granny's going to have your clitoris removed.

This Would Be Funny If...

...it wasn't so frightening. Some idiot called Stewart Dimmock has decided schools can't show An Inconvenient Truth to kids because it doesn't present "both sides of the argument". What argument? Anybody with half a brain can see human activity is heating the planet up. The humour though is in this BBC story on the subject, titled "Gore Climate Film's 'Nine Errors'". Scroll down to the bottom and there's a link to another story "Flood Legacy: the devastating effects of this summer's flooding"

The Guerrilla News Network has done the leg-work on this one. What I can't seem to find out though are which of the mega-polluters are paying for his campaign. Anyone got any idea? Both funding groups - Scientific Alliance and Straight Teaching say they accept corporate donations but they don't list major donors. I'd like to know who exactly is paying to set the agenda our kids are taught, and I bet we'd be horrified if we knew.

Speaking of Al Gore though I really hope he gets the Nobel Prize and then decides he will run for US president after all. I suspect the world may genuinely end quite soon if he doesn't...

It Must Be Dove, Dove, Dove...

I'm sure the marketing team at Dove think they're on the brink of saving the world. They're not. The latest advert shows a (very pretty) young girl with wide "innocent" eyes, then a stream of "negative" media images and messages - thin models, dodgy diet pills, cosmetic surgery - then has the slogan "Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does". And then the link to the Dove "campaign for real beauty" website.

Now I suppose you could argue we should be grateful that they haven't just gone for Lily Cole lying in a puddle with an axe in her head, which as we all know is what really sells moisturiser. "Treat your corpse to softer, suppler, younger-looking skin ... before rigor mortis sets in." Media recruitment agencies need not call.

But I just refuse to participate in the "campaign for real beauty". I'm rather preoccupied with the campaign-for-women-not-to-be
-judged-on-their-appearances-in-the-first-place. The campaign
-for-the-public-unimportance-of-unattractiveness-in-women. The campaign-for -appreciation-of -women's-intellect,-strength
-of-character,-compassion,-enthusiasm-and-sense-of-humour.

Secondly the whole "talk to your daughter" - and tell her what? "Listen sweetie, there is a massive multi-billion pound global industry out there trying to tell you that you're unattractive and trying to sell you products on that basis, but you don't need to buy face cream cos Mummy loves you anyway..." That'll make all the difference. Wouldn't we be better off if Mummy didn't have to tell her kids that, if instead the beauty industry just backed off a bit, now it's impact is starting to be so frighteningly obvious? And how is a quick chat with (uncool) Mum going to balance against the hundreds of negative images kids see every day?

Anyhow their images of "real" beauty might include a nominal amount of slightly larger, slightly older and (shock-horror) non-caucasian women but actually they show mostly really very attractive women. OK, they're not models but they're not over 300lbs, there's no-one with a disfiguring disability, and I don't see anyone who looks over about 60. They're a lot better looking than if you went out in the street and just stopped the first women you saw.

The website itself doesn't seem to be much help. On the kids (girls, of course) page it suggests inviting your friends round and holding a fashion show - because only your best friends will tell you those white boots might be "mod" but they're just not "you". Yes have your friends come round and criticise your dress sense! Then you get to print out the self-esteem certificate... Seriously!

A beauty product company - and one which in the past has offered such "confidence boosting" products as “Intensive Firming Gel-Cream: for specific problem areas like thighs" - simply isn't the one to be telling us all how to manage our self-esteem issues. If they believe a word of what they say they would close down and re-open as a women-only go-karting and dry-slope skiing centre. In any case Dove is simply one of hundreds of products made by Unilever. How many of the following Unilever-owned brands have signed up for the "campaign for real beauty":

Slim Fast (yes, the fast-diet milkshake crap)
Lynx (spray more, get more nubile semi-naked bikini-clad models chasing after you)
Sunsilk (website quote: Want hair like Paris Hilton, Nicole Kidman or Posh Spice? )
Pond's (website quote: If you're worried that your face isn't as firm as it used to be, then you don't have to just grin and bear it)
Timotei (advertised by gorgeous super-thin young-looking models in white dresses wandering about a meadow)
Sure (advertised by super-athletic muscular semi-naked models)
Lux (website quote: We all like to look gorgeous and enjoy that confidence which makes us feel like anything’s possible)
Axe (Men's body spray, website boast: Our award-winning ads and marketing are equally adventurous. In Colombia, for instance, a female Axe Patrol visits bars and clubs, frisking guys and applying body spray ... How good will I feel about my "real beauty" while my boyfriend is being frisked by glamorous models in a Columbian nightclub?)

And Unilever are so keen for you to celebrate your naturally beautiful body that here's what they want you to rub on it (this is the Extra-Sensitive Cream Bar):

Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate, Stearic Acid, Sodium Isethionate, Aqua (that's water btw), Coconut Acid, Sodium Stearate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Sodium Palm Kernelate, Glycerin, Sodium Chloride, Zinc Oxide, Tetrasodium EDTA, Tetrasodium Etidronate, CI 77891.

Mmmm, mmmm, just reading that's making me feel beautiful already huh? Some of those are just posh words for products derived from palm oil and coconut, others are a little more sinister like: Tetrasodium EDTA - Synthetic preservative - can be irritating to the eyes/mucous membranes. And Cocamidopropyl Betaine which has been claimed to cause allergic reactions in some users.

The truth is advertisers don't give a stuff about little girl's self-esteem or older women's real beauty. They care about getting products off the shelf. Here's what Unilever's website says about Dove:

Paragraph one: "Dove is committed to widening the definition of beauty for women because we believe real beauty comes in all ages, shapes and sizes. To help you enjoy your own brand of beauty, Dove provides an extensive range of cleansing and personal care products that make a genuine difference to the condition and feel of your skin and hair."

Paragraph two: "Dove is now the UK’s top cleansing brand with an amazing 35% of the population having bought a Dove product in 2004. And it doesn’t end there: 7.2 million women use Dove every week in the UK."

Are we all really THAT stupid?

(The image up top by the way is not the Dove advert - it's a copy-cat by Bigmoves - a larger dance troupe appearing near you - if that's New York, Boston, Montreal or San Francisco - soon...)

Why Are We Sending the VICTIMS of Crime to Prison?

Another horror story about the UK immigration system's treatment of trafficked women. The story itself is disgusting:

"She tells of a time early on in her abuse when she was with one customer who had asked for two girls.

The other girl was showing her what to do but Anna started to cry when she saw the customer lying on the bed - it was the first time she had seen a naked man."

So a man went in to visit a brothel and one of the girls started crying, and yet evidently he didn't go to the police or report the incident, or if he did the police did nothing. Is that the kind of society we live in now? Of course the treatment from the pimps themselves is the most horrific:

"she was forced to have sex and faced ice-cold baths, starvation and beatings if she did not do as she was told"

So when at long long last she was rescued from this horrific life, from a life of being raped by different men up 15 to 20 times a day (oh and up to 30 around Christmas - cos all those devoutly religious people know the best way to celebrate the birth of the Lord is with a trip to a cheap brothel...), and frequent violent abuse too, how does Britain respond? We lock her up in Yarl's Wood detention centre.

She was 12 when she was trafficked out of Albania. She's 20 years old now. She fears she'll be forced back in to prostitution if she goes back to Albania. So we're deporting her straight back there.

Moo To Virgin Trains

I had a great night in Manchester last night performing at the Laughing Cows Comedy night. So hello to everyone from there.

Trying to arrange travel and accommodation was a little less fun. I may well post later on the horrors of National Express and Hotels.com, I'll wait until they reply (if they do) to my complaints. In the meantime I discovered yet another reason why privatising the rail service was an unforgivable error.

The two most popular flight destinations from London are Manchester and Paris. It should be easy to cut CO2 emissions by converting those flights into train journeys. With airports being out of town and the time required to check in, it is easier to do either of those journeys city centre to city centre by rail in 2hrs (Manchester) and 3hrs (Paris).

Except on a Sunday when the Virgin-run trains to Manchester don't take two hours - they take 4 hours. That's because they send all the trains via Birmingham, not direct, to pick up extra passengers and make them more profitable. Really. So people who want to save the planet have to waste an extra two hours of their lives. And of course the tickets aren't any cheaper for the extra two hours of inconvenience. Isn't it obvious we should tax airline fuel and make it a condition of the rail contract that full-speed trains run every day?

Apocalypse Now!

Imagine this - people who aren't really doctors are going round the country performing unnecessary intrusive surgical procedures, ones requiring anaesthetic, cutting people open. The media, instead of being outraged, conspires with these people to promote the procedures to people who have no interest in them. Stories about how these procedures enhanced peoples lives fill the media both as features and as advertisements. Little or no mention is made of the risks. The government does nothing even when children are being operated on. Sound ridiculous? Welcome to the post-apocalyptic future world of your nightmares... Correction: Welcome to now.

Role Models

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this. It's an ad for an Italian clothing brand. They claim at least that they're trying to combat the problem of fashion industries promoting an anorexic look, by showing the true horrors of anorexia. It's pretty grim. And certainly if I think back to when I was anorexic (almost 15 years ago now) it's a realistic portrayal (although the model pictured is much thinner than I ever got - apparently she's 4st12lbs - 76lbs, I never really went below 7st - 112lbs).

The thing is - I'm not sure that frightening women is going to prevent anorexia. I mean it now seems that the message is - don't be fat but don't be too thin either. I think women already have more than enough messages about what they shouldn't look like and what they should find disgusting about themselves. I think the approach that would really help is if fashion houses showed a real range of women, old, young, fat, thin, etc. And I mean a REAL range - not one token super-photogenic black woman and one stick-thin white 40-year-old alongside half a dozen Kate Moss-alikes.

Actually I have a theory on this. I think if your advert is going to use the term "all" or "everyone" - like the GAP ads - "everyone in khaki" or even the "we all love clover" adverts for that, err, butter-style spread (? mmmm...) then for every two models put forward by the advertiser an independent board (me) will provide a third model. And I'm REALLY going to push the envelope. So if you say "everyone in khaki" and your size range only goes up to a 16, I'll be sending a size 28 model along and then we'll see if your products look good on everyone.

The other advantage to my plan is that it will provide an extra source of income for that weird relative you always try to avoid inviting to parties. Creepy Uncle Neville? No he won't be able to come to Jenny's wedding - he's off on a £1000-a-day modeling contract for butter-style spread in the south of France.

Lunchbreak Boob Jobs?

For some reason The London Paper (one of the free-bees that litter our buses and trains, no internet links though) is rerunning an old story about women being able to have a boob job "in their lunch hour". It was in the Metro a couple of months ago so I don't see how it's news. Still.

Now one thing that bugs me about the story is - why would you want to have surgery in your lunch hour. I know modern women are supposed to be busy. Hence the need for all that "juggling" but how busy do you need to be that you can't have a little lie down after surgery. It's all a part of the on-going push to make women forget that this is an operation, not a suitable gift for a mate's birthday... As usual there is no mention that surgery can reduce the sensitivity of your breasts (in some cases to zero), that the operation can go wrong, that it can affect your ability to breast-feed your children, or that anaesthetic can kill you.

On top of this they quote John Tebbetts, the surgeon behind this particularly vile publicity drive as saying "Women have got to get out of the mindset that they are going to be ill after this procedure". Yes, that's a direct quote. How patronising is that? Silly, silly women, eh? Getting all worked up thinking that being knifed in the tits might sting a bit.

If there's a mindset women need to get out of it's putting up with patronising twats like Tebbetts. Bear in mind this man wants to be allowed near your naked unconscious body with a range of sharp instruments. Shudder.

Excuse Me While I Bang My Head Against This Handy Wall

In all seriousness, I've just seen Gordon Brown's speech to the Labour Party conference. He didn't mention Iraq. At all. But he did quote the bible. Oh great.

Calling All Top Bloggers

Just updating the blog-roll, let me know if you'd like to be included. Criteria for inclusion include being very fucking cool. Trolls need not apply.

Also please please post the Cru-blog link on your site, this will schmooze me no end...

Don't Get Older Girls!

How is this "news"? Apparently women are "unaware" that getting older is a risk factor for breast cancer... Now I'm sure I'm aware that as you get older your risk of pretty much anything going wrong with your body increases. I can understand encouraging women to quit smoking and drinking and eat healthily. What are we supposed to do to combat this risk factor? Cease aging at once?

Surely the experts will know "Experts said many young women can worry unnecessarily while older women do not realise they are at risk." So are they saying older women SHOULD worry about breast cancer? And their concern that women over 70 don't demand screening as often as they could? How many of those women are unable to get to the doctors? If doctors standardly offered screening - preferably via a less unpleasant method than the mammogram that I certainly avoid (ultra-sound would actually be a safer way to check breasts, but more expensive) then take-up might be a bit better.

And maybe older women have enough else to worry about with pathetic pension provisions, unheated housing, loneliness and isolation all big issues.

Stopping at Red Lights

An article on the BBC website reports that a decent chunk of Amsterdam's red light district is being closed down. Which very much begs the question: Do legalised "red light districts" work?

The argument for legalising prostitution is generally that it's going to happen anyway and by legalising it you bring it out into the open and thus make it possible to regulate it and to protect the women involved. That may be true at one level - as the union De Rode Draad points out "If the windows close down, women who are being exploited will be hidden somewhere else where union representatives and health workers can't make contact with them"

But re-read that again - they're talking about health workers being unable to reach women who are being exploited - they're not talking about women who are not being exploited. And while prostitution is legal it must also be harder to get hold of and prosecute those who are exploiting women. At the same time one would hope that legalising prostitution broke the ties between sex work and other criminal activities - human trafficking, drugs and money laundering. Clearly not - Job Cohen, mayor of Amsterdam says "the trade involved exploitation and trafficking of women, and other kinds of criminal activity".

The other problem with legalising prostitution is that when you announce to the world that prostitution is legal in your city, you invite sexual tourists to visit your city seeking prostitutes, increasing the demand for sex workers and thus drawing pimps and human-traffickers to your city. This earlier run of basically the same story says that De Rode Draad (The Red Thread in English), the Amsterdam sex workers union, has 20,000 members. Now Amsterdam's population is only 743,027 (needlessly precise data from Wikipedia!) so 2.7% of the population is involved in sex work - and that's just the ones who are in the union.*

I'm sure that illegalising prostitution in a way that punishes the women participating is pretty ineffective, since the kind of people who are comfortable trafficking people into the UK and forcing them into prostitution are hardly going to worry about their subsequent well-being. In the UK it is effectively legal to be a prostitute. Running a brothel, soliciting on the streets and kerb-crawling are illegal. I'm not saying the UK has got it right, far from it, and I particularly think the way we throw trafficked women out of the country without so much as a cursory health check is disgusting.

Where I think both here and Amsterdam miss the point though is in taking the problem seriously - and that applies to a range of sex crimes, not just prostitution. It takes me only a few minutes on the internet to find evidence of illegal sexual behaviour. But the enthusiasm for pursuing these criminals - rapists, kerb-crawlers, pimps and human traffickers - is sorely lacking.

*Further note - assuming a prostitute needs an average of five clients, five nights a week to survive, that would require the men of Amsterdam - all of them, including children - to visit once to twice per week. Clearly that isn't happening - proof that the industry is being supported by sexual tourism.

Hello Bunny

It may not have escaped everyone's attention that Playboy is opening a store on Oxford Street. Not just any old store either - the biggest Playboy store ever. I worry that Britain is getting to be known as a pro-porn society. Now I know the store itself is mostly going to sell clothes and gifts, but I think we're all familiar with the brand and what it stands for. If not here's a little quiz for you (click to enlarge), from the lovely people at Bin The Bunny.

Spitting for Allah...

So this afternoon I'm sat on the sofa in the front room engaging in my very own sacred sabbath ritual - watching low-quality television and eating cheese on toast - when a big old people carrier pulls up in the parking space outside my house. Out of the front gets a boy of about twelve or thirteen and he walks over to the edge of the pavement, less than a metre from where I'm sat, and spits on the edge of the pavement. Now bear in mind the curtains are open, the TV is flickering, he can clearly see me, I have a really close-up view on the action, I'm a bit disgusted by it.

There are a lot of kids who hang about in my street and I'm pretty used to shoeing them off climbing on my fence, playing knock-down ginger (ringing doorbells and running away), hassling cats and fighting with each other. So I fling open the front door and shout "Oi! Don't spit in the street! That's disgusting!", to which he replies "I'm fasting, I'm not allowed to swallow anything".

"I don't care, carry a bag with you and spit in that if you must, don't spit in the street"

Then his Dad gets out of the car and shouts at me, "It's not your street, he didn't spit in your garden"

"It's everybody's street, no-one wants to walk in his spit"

"Exactly it's everybody's street, he can do what he likes"

At this point I thought about asking for his address so I could go and defecate in the end of his driveway, but I thought better of it and was about to try to explain something about communal responsibility when a total stranger to the whole situation came across the street to join in, announcing "Yeah exactly, it's everybody's street, spit where you like mate."

By this stage Mum and, ten to eleven year-old, sister, both dressed in full headscarves and floor-length robes, heads bowed, had climbed out of the back of the car. Everybody headed off in their separate directions and I went back indoors feeling a bit like I'd become the new Mary Whitehouse of the anti-gobbing-in-the-street movement.

And the thing is, it's still bugging me. For a number of reasons:

1) Normally the kids I see being a nuisance in the street know they're doing something wrong. Usually when I stick my head out the door they apologise and skulk off, or at very least look guilty and run away. This kid actually believed he was being "righteous" spitting in the street. He had his Dad backing him up, encouraging him to behave that way.

2) Is it really fair to insist that your young teenage children fast, just when they're really growing? Is that a healthy thing for a boy around puberty to do? While we're on the subject is it fair to insist that your daughter and wife sit in the back seat, dress like ghosts and don't speak in public?

3) Is it safe to drive a car when you haven't eaten anything, nor even drunk so much as a sip of water since sunrise? Which affects your concentration more - two pints of lager or ten hours without any food or liquid? It's against the law to drive after two pints of lager.

This brings me back to an old point really. Religious tolerance is often lumped in with tolerance for people from diverse ethnic backgrounds, women, gay people and disabled people. It's not the same. Human beings, all of us, have rights, human rights. One of those rights is not the right to gob on the pavement because your imaginary friend told you to.

In Your Face-Book

I'm not even sure why I started reading this article - about people who decided to close their Facebook accounts - but what a weird find when I did. I can well understand people deciding they spend too much time online, that social networking sites, online games and blogging can be highly addictive. Whether they distract you from your work or leave you with too little time to do other things, fair enough. The author however has quit Facebook for a totally different reason - her jealous partner!

"it ... made my boyfriend Danny ... incredibly insecure. As one of my friends, he could view my profile page, my friends’ list and my ‘wall’"

"Reading my ex’s flirty messages, however innocent, made him insanely jealous. He hated the fact that I was in touch with men I’d once slept with and that some of them had posted up old pictures of us together which I had no power to remove."

Hold on - that's not internet addiction - that's having an unreasonable, controlling partner. How insecure is this guy that he can't bear to look at a picture of his girlfriend with an old flame? And of course he doesn't HAVE to look at these pictures if he doesn't want to - he only looks at them because he's snooping through her site, digging for dirt. And it's quite frightening that the article totally glosses over that, acting as though that sort of behaviour is normal.

Makes you realise how lucky you are - at the end of last year Mr Cru and I went away to a music festival with an old flame of mine and his new partner and, err, we all got along great. In fact I know she reads this blog, Hi Abi!

Will Shag For Laundry?

Feministing has picked up on this rather worrisome article on CBS apparently the author is advising men that doing more housework will get them laid more often.

Over on Feministing there's lots of discussion of what share of the housework is a fair share. I'm sure that 50% is the obvious answer assuming that both partners have a balanced relationship in other areas. And also on whether men should get extra praise for doing housework since it constitutes a break-out from traditional gender roles. Well I'm happy to give them extra praise but I want it right back for me when I get a job, wind up as primary breadwinner and manage to unscrew tight jar lids on my own.

What bugs me more though is the other end of the deal... the idea that women will (sub-consciously mind) trade sex for housework. This rather assumes:

1) The woman doesn't actually want sex.

2) The woman, despite not wanting sex, is prepared (sub-consciously anyway) to do it in return for other things.

3) The man wants sex all the time.

4) The man wants sex with the woman even if the woman doesn't want sex and presumably therefore even if the woman isn't enjoying it.

5) The man is comfortable (consciously to his mind) trading other things for sex.

If any one of those things was true of my relationship, I would be seriously worried.

Bully For You

Homophobic bullying is rife in Britain's schools. The government response is non-existent and the expansion of the faith school system is exacerbating the problem - presumably because religious teachers aren't doing anything about it. Johann Hari, as usual, is bang on the money.

I only knew one gay student at my school (although there may of course have been others who weren't "out" - either because they were afraid of the response or because they weren't yet sure about their sexuality). We were good friends - I'll call him Jim, not his real name, in case he doesn't want to be identified whatever he's doing now. Jim was definitely on the receiving end of some homophobic nastiness. And I think his parents more or less threw him out too, certainly I remember he lived with an aunt or granny, who I believe had taken him in sympathetically.

I suppose I was bullied at school too. Though I find it hard to really see what was and wasn't bullying when I was at school. I was being bullied and abused so aggressively at home that whatever happened at school paled into insignificance. I was certainly called a lot of names (various people), kicked a lot (Tim), punched a lot (Julia) and pushed into dog muck once (Bradley) but all I ever thought about was how much trouble I would get into if/when Dad found out (usually a couple of hours of being shouted at for having "handled the situation wrongly" - apparently I was expected to fight off my bigger, stronger assailants with some weird martial-art-style super-powers and of course I shouldn't have brought it upon myself by being so horrible/weak/lacking in confidence)!

Now I know not everyone has parents as horrid as myself and Jim but then I know some people whose parents were much worse. Here's my point - when we see bullying in schools we are rightly horrified, we insist on intervening. If bullying from our peers is so unacceptable how much worse for a child to be bullied by their own parents - who they look up to, trust and hope to be protected by. Yet we almost never intervene in families home lives. We don't even go in to observe the scale of the problem, we assume it would never happen.

Yesterday Mr Cru and I went for a walk along the New River in Islington. Along came a guy with his (presumably) young daughter. He was teaching her to ride a bike. His teaching method was to be angry and exasperated. The girl appeared to be trying her best, her fingers almost too small to reach the brakes, clearly terrified of him more than of crashing her bike into the road. "Hold the brakes", he screeched, "The brakes, yes hold the brakes. Come on now, HOLD THE BRAKES." And then he concluded, disgusted, "You're just like your mother."

If I saw kids treating each other that way in a school I'd be straight in to the headmaster/mistresses office making sure the situation was tackled. But who do I report this guy to? As Mr Cru pointed out, unless you saw him hit her, you can't really call the police. Parents in our society report to no-one, but they are themselves the worst abusers of our children. I have discussed before what I think could be done. I also think if we give kids the supportive home-life they deserve, we reduce the impact that bullying has on them, and also the likelihood of them becoming bullies themselves.

What Happens In Vegas...

...Stays In Vegas. Or so the slogan(?) goes. Personally I've always found that a bit creepy. I mean who exactly are we keeping the details of our Vegas holiday a secret from and why do we need to? Maybe there are some people for whom it means not telling your parents about gambling but when I read that phrase all I can think is that it means not telling your wife or partner about your visit to a sex worker/strip club* or your affair with another woman (or arguably as a woman, your affair with another man). That's not the kind of secret I'm really comfortable with. I have no problem with people who have multiple partners but I think honesty in relationships is a minimum requirement. What if the slogan was "COME TO VEGAS AND CHEAT ON YOUR PARTNER!".

Anyway there is a great article about the trouble with Vegas over on Alternet. Have a read.

*And if anyone thinks it's unfair of me to group sex workers and strip clubs together - I would point out the evidence from YouPorn and PornTube that suggests plenty of strip clubs are effectively offering sexual services. The line is VERY blurred. Furthermore for all the insistence by those making official statements about Vegas strip club policies, the mayor himself has been going on about how good it would be to open a load of brothels. So it hardly seems likely that the existing policy is heavily enforced...

Holy Crap!

I guess this is what the internet's for - letting me dig up websites like this one on "CDD". CDD if you're new to the subject is Christian Domestic Discipline - church-condoned domestic violence against women. Or to put it in their own euphemistic language "It is the husband loving the wife enough to guide and teach her, and the wife loving the husband enough to follow his leadership." Puke! But good news girls - God made us specially so we'd like being the victims of violence: "...we will not seek to deny the erotic nature of some CDD marriages as we believe it is a natural consequence of following God's plan. After all, He created eroticism to be enjoyed inside a Christian marriage."

And of course they don't condone the wife spanking the husband - even if God made some of them such that they'd like it too. "The wife does not have authority to spank her husband.", which strikes me as odd when you consider that Jesus told us all to "turn the other cheek". Hmmm.

My other two favourite quotes from the site are:
"Welcome to Christian Domestic Discipline. Grab yourself a cup of coffee and make yourself at home!"
and "Loving Wife Spanking in a Christian Marriage"

Your Civil Liberties, Their Hands

Can someone explain to be exactly why this much security is needed for a meeting of Asian political economic leaders? Because, lets be honest, the threat of a "terrorist" attack isn't exactly keeping me awake at night.

The trouble with suicide bombing is that it's a profoundly anti-Darwinian exercise. The most successful suicide bombers die. So there aren't very many around and the ones there are aren't very good at it (Mr Cru refers to the Tiger Tiger and Glasgow Airport events as "attack of the knuckleheads"!). Despite the events of 7th July here in London the tube and buses are running normally. No bags are searched on the way in and I regularly see people riding the transport system in full Islamic dress, carrying bags and ruck-sacks. If anybody wanted to repeat 7th July, there is nothing whatsoever stopping them.

If this is who the police are trying to stop in Sydney, a simple bag search and a careful ID check on everyone going to the conference and staffing the building would be more than sufficient.

Or could it be that this isn't the reason half of Sydney now encompassed by a huge metal wall? Could it be that what they're actually doing is keeping away the protesters. The public who have voted for officials who no longer listen to their voices, politicians so afraid of and so in the pockets of these giant corporations that they allow human rights and the environment to be destroyed in the quest for greater profits.

They should change the entry policy for the conference (or "summit" as they like to call it), let the protesters through the gates and keep the corporate lobbyists out.

Lad Mags and the Mainstream

Didn't I say the other day that Lad Mags were trying to take over the comedy industry? Oh look now the BBC is reporting on the Loaded comedy awards... I know they've been running comedy awards for a while now but last year or the year before under "best female act" their options included Lily Savage, another drag act and the option "none of them". Why would we take these kind of things seriously?

(Pictured, one of the funniest women in reverse drag - Janette Tough).

Impartiality, My Arse...

The BBC has canceled a planned "Planet Relief" show - raising awareness about global warming because of concerns about impartiality. Grrr. Global warming is a fact, it's happening and it's our fault. You can claim to have doubts about anything "Is grass really green? Or does it refract blue light through a filter?" but the overwhelming weight of scientific research points to global warming. To claim it is a "theory" is to ignore that and suggest to the public that there is some credible doubt about the causes and effects of the greenhouse effect.

Meanwhile sat at the laundromat today I saw a BBC presenter (on the TV, not fishing socks and boxer shorts out of the spinner) boldly state that "military service veterans deserve more care and more facilities". Of course there are specific medical and social problems associated with military service and there may be those who believe that insufficient is being done to deal with them. On the other hand there may be those who believe that killing people in whatever cause is wrong and that special treatment for those who have done so is inappropriate. Either way it is an OPINION, not a "fact". It was given as a fact on the BBC One 6 O'Clock news tonight.

Just Doing The Irony, Dear

The Independent online edition front page today has two stories almost directly next to each other with the respective tag-lines " How to beat the market come boom or bust" and then " The 'too good to be true' website reviews". Bless.

Meanwhile The Sun, I notice still STILL has a whole seperate drop-down page on their website under the heading "Maddie". Please!

Post Festival Blog Part 3 - The Awards

Now I know in writing this I am opening myself up to a slew of "you're just jealous" comments but seriously with thousands of comedy shows in Edinburgh and basically one main award, it's not something that I spend a lot of time worrying about. Yes I'd love an award, maybe not this one.

The main comedy awards are the If.comeddies. They used to be known as the Perrier(s). There are essentially three awards, a main award, a best newcomer award and an award for "spirit of the fringe".

The "spirit of the fringe" goes to someone who's doing something very new and exciting, not a straightforward comedy show. This year it went to an art exhibition of works by comedians, last year it went to Mark Watson who broke the world record for the longest ever comedy show.
Best newcomer is for someone doing their first show - I don't know the guy who won the best newcomer, so I won't comment, good luck to him.

The guy who won the main award was Brendon Burns. His show "So I Suppose This Is Offensive Now?" was advertised with a poster which featured him "blacked up" with a grass skirt and a bone through his nose, then in a wheelchair, mouth open and arms curled up, then on a cross and in a dress (I don't really see what's offensive about a man wearing a dress, and I'm not that bothered by him on a cross either, anyhow tired of trying to describe it I've just put it up at the top of the post).

I've seen Brendon before and I find his material offensive. Nasty, aggressive and offensive. Here's a typical joke (from a video on YouTube so I assume not one he is bothered about keeping for his set any more) "Why do gay guys have so much more money than lesbians? Because they don't have girlfriends! ...see you thought I was going to be homophobic, but I wasn't, I was being sexist".

This year's show I didn't see, but some friends of mine did and reliably inform me that the first 45 minutes were plain unadulterated offensive stuff, attacking racial groups, disabled people, gay people and women. The last part of the show is a "clever twist" where he announces he's not really racist, homophobic or sexist at all and that it's all a big joke. The show also features semi-naked women dancing on stage.

To me that feels like those terrible "documentaries about the porn industry" shown on late night channels that aren't really supposed to be showing porn but know full well that no-one is watching for educational reasons. It doesn't really matter to me what the silly justification for the show is, the fact remains that the first 45 minutes are a frenzy of hate-mongering. Surely this isn't the cutting edge of modern comedy? One commenter on the Chortle website - who had loved the show said "...you get to see slutty dancers and not feel guilty". Why not just give the award to Jim Davidson - at least he has the guts to admit he hates women, disabled people, gay people, ethnic minorities...

All of which left me wondering how an awards system which should be there to highlight the great and the good, the ground-breaking, the innovative and truly funny could end up promoting this sort of thing. And the answer, thanks to painstaking hours of research over here at Cru-blog is (at least partly) - the judges! One of the judges is the programming director of Nuts TV.

Let me say that again in case you thought you were hallucinating...

ONE OF THE JUDGES (for a comedy award) IS THE PROGRAMMING DIRECTOR OF NUTS TV.

Nuts TV, which launches in a few days is the TV spin-off of Nuts magazine and the channel promises to offer: topless model Lucy Pinder reading a Book at Bedtime, a daily Rude New digest of ‘the least important global stories’ and a hunt for Britain's Fittest Barmaid.

In fact the channel has also recruited two circuit comics to be it's new presenters.

I feel as though MY industry is being co-opted in to the lad mags market. Soon people will be asking why I don't perform naked (sorry - I have already been asked that live on Sky Travel TV) and offered radio work only if I show up to the studio naked (that has happened too actually - no thanks, James Whale).

Well comedy doesn't have to be part of the "lad" scene, there is another way... watch this space for a gig list soon and hopefully a DVD coming out!

Post Festival Blog Part 2 - The Guests

The other thing we did with our show in Edinburgh was to invite a special guest every day to join us for a song called The Threesome Song! The guests were picked from all over the festival and invited to come up with inappropriate things to say during a threesome. Here were some of our favourites (warning, some are in what might be considered bad taste, don't read them if you're easily offended):

Previews:
Paul Kerensa (pictured) - "Menage a trois? No - I ordered a Stella Artois"
"Just updating my facebook status: Paul Kerensa is having a threesome"
Carey Marx - "Sorry guys the drugs have worn off, I'm going"
Chris Coltrane - "Six across, nine letters, german persecution of the Jews"
"Oh of course - holocaust, how stupid of me"

Edinburgh:
4th - Nikki from the Dirty Yanks - "Advert? What advert? I came round to read the meter"
5th - Mike Belgrade - "When do we start drinking blood?"
6th - Karl Edrick - "Surely at least one of us should be a girl?"
7th - Leanne Stott - "Who's dick is this and how did it get there?"
8th - Helen Terry - "Can we hurry up? My mum'll be here in a minute"
9th - Brian Lacey - "Can we hurry up? I need to get back to Madelaine"
10th - Luke McQueen - "Good news guys, my AIDS test results were positive..."
11th - Liane Ross - "Next time we do this can I bring my friend John Prescott"
13th - Debra Francis-White - "Oh you're David and Kate, I wanted David and Victoria"
14th - Lenny Peters - "Move over little fella, my turn now"
15th - Tomi Walamies - "Sorry David, for a minute there I thought you were the girl"
16th - Liz Carr - "Is it ok if my carer watches?"
"Can I go on top, I hope you don't mind tyre tracks"
17th - Jane Bostock - "Is it ok if MY carer watches?"
18th - Rob Tarbuck - "NOOO! I said G diminished seventh"
20th - Yianni - "You know you two look the same from behind"
21st - David Whitney - "Didn't we go to school together?"
22nd - poor Phil Buckley was ill so the job was filled by Andy the random audience member who managed to improvise the line "I knew you had a brazilian Kate, but David..." impressive!
23rd - PBH - "Is there a rota, I think it's my turn"
24th - David Meech - "Kate you can either hold the camera or you can go and make us some tea"
25th - Andrew Watts - "ok, why don't I show you how it's done?"

Post Festival Blog Part 1 - The Reviews

Long Time No Blog. Sorry about that, been away at the Edinburgh festival doing anything up to 6 or 7 shows a day so not really had time to do much. Got quite a few things to say about our experiences up there. Firstly- the reviews for our show Sing-Along-A-The-Joy-Of-Sex - we had some great audiences, some people came three times! These were the reviews:

ThreeWeeks:

"When you're given a song sheet at the start of the show, you kind of expect the titles of said songs to be themed around God, Jesus and tales of yore, and not threesomes, chat-up lines and sex accidents. Which means watching merry men have such a good time singing about the naughty business will make you either a, sing along, or b, crawl under your seat and die. Though if the latter is the case you probably shouldn't have gone to this show in the first place - the clue is kind of in the title. If the former is you, then you'll find this show good fun. It's a great hour to pass the time with, if you know what I mean - wink wink."

Fresh Air FM (The festival radio station):

"Comedians Kate Smurthwaite and David Mulholland present an hour of songs and laughs about sex, relationships and err..sex! David and Kate tell their tales and sing songs about cheesy chat up lines, things learned about sex after you leave school, threesomes and other such practices in a way that leaves you wanting more.

The songs are actually funny and truthful, and Kate’s ability to speak fast yet clearly (she does voiceovers for banks, insurance etc) is put to the test on the final song when they cram in everything they couldn’t fit into the show proper! Song sheets are provided for the audience and singing is actively encouraged: you’ll be singing along in no time.

Wonderful laugh out loud and sing-along fun. Go and see them and discover the song they cut out from ‘My Fair Lady’, you’ll never look at Audrey Hepburn in the same light again!****"

And the public (on edfringe.com, everyone who reviewed us gave us 5 stars, these were a couple of the ones I liked best):

Best thing I've seen and it's free! 25 Aug 2007 reviewer: Karen Richards, United Kingdom

I've paid good money to watch shows with a lot let professionalism and a lot less laughs than this. We were singing along in no time - when we could manage it between laughing our heads off. The music is great too, Kate has an exceptional voice.

Great start to the night 15 Aug 2007 reviewer: Dot , Australia This is a brilliant show, better than a lot you'll pay to see. It's funny, relaxed and personal and even has lyric sheets so you can join in. What more could you want? What a brilliant show and its FREE!!! 14 Aug 2007 reviewer: Nicola Smith, United Kingdom Took a gamble with the title and was plesantly surprised. This show was FAB!!! Two people singing dodgy songs they'd written about sex and at certian points getting us to join in with them - it was a great start to our evening and went very well with our drinks!!! Go see it, it would be a crime to miss it!!!

Door-to-door Atheism

http://view.break.com/185806 - Watch more free videos

Return of the Fuckwits

They're back! The guys who think good parenting starts with disturbing the peace.

So time maybe for a recap on their aims and what is so horribly wrong with them.

(from their own site)

"AIMS:

Early Interventions & Mandatory Mediation
Before couples seek legal recourse, the government must recognise that ALL couples should be bound to enter into mandatory mediation, with appropriately trained mediators."

This is what we would all commonly call bullying. Mediation is and always has been available to those who wish to make use of it. Making it compulsory means that women who have been victims of physical or psychological abuse during their relationships are forced to either accept the demands of the father of their children or face intimidation and a risk of further abuse in the mediation process. Everybody and anybody in a legal situation has the right to take the matter directly to court. Anyway who are these mediators and who is going to train them?

"Presumption of Contact & Shared Parenting
The best parent is both parents. The starting point after separation should be to maintain where possible what the status quo was before separation. Children currently have no right in law to see their parents. The principle of shared parenting creates a level playing field where conflict can be reduced, as opposed to the current "winner takes all" scenario which generates maximum conflict."

The advantages of raising a child in a two-parent family are more than 80% explained financially. So if F4J really cared about children they would be campaigning to force absent fathers to contribute more to their child's maintenance.

Maintaining the status quo after separation is obviously not possible when one partner has moved out. The principle of shared parenting would mean that most children in separated families would spend 3 nights per week at one house and 4 at another. Evidence suggests this is hugely destructive to children's well-being.

One in four women in the UK is a victim of domestic violence at some point in her life. Of course some men are also victims of domestic violence, although the numbers are much lower. No parent should be expected to hand their children over to someone who is or has been violent towards them.

Raising children is hard work. Very few women would refuse genuine well-intended help from someone they considered trust-worthy with their children. By the time you get to courts, you have already fallen at that hurdle.

Last time around in the UK Fiona Bruce did a great job of tackling them head on and actually got them to close down for a while after it was revealed that a large number of their key spokespeople had convictions for domestic violence. At the time Matt O'Connor insisted that he did not encourage his members to intimidate court officials and legal professionals. This time around doing so is one of their stated aims!

Apes Like Me

Thanks very much to everyone who came to see my one-off solo show Apes Like Me. We were rammed!! I really enjoyed doing the show. I discovered afterwards we had an evolutionary biologist in the second row who complimented me on my factual accuracy which was very flattering and we saw lots of people leaving the venue still labeled up as chimps and orang-utans (you would need to have been there to understand why!) so hopefully they got some funny looks later.

Something for Free

Ricky Gervais is apparently charging £37.50 for tickets to his Edinburgh show. Some people think this is too much. If you're one of them try this for price-range instead: FREE! Absolutely free. Sing-Along-A-The-Joy-Of-Sex, 7.20 pm nightly (not Sundays) at the Mercat Bar (Venue 282 in the guide). Third show today went really well - some of the audience told us they're going to come again! And the barman said we were the best show in the venue (sorry everyone else at the Mercat!).

Another Reason To Come To Our Show!

Abstinence doesn't work! This comes as a big surprise to those of us who've seen the way it's been promoted.

Sunny, Sexy Edinburgh

Mr Cru and I are now settled in Edinburgh for the duration of the festival. This is what we will be doing for the next month...

1) Performing our musical comedy show Sing-Along-A-The-Joy-Of-Sex daily (4th - 25th, not 12th or 19th) at 7.20pm at The Mercat Bar, (Venue 282) FREE!

2) Sketches and improv as part of FREE Comedy Cocktail at Hillside, daily 2.15pm (4th - 19th, not 8th or 15th)

3) I'll be performing my latest solo show Apes Like Me at The Outhouse - one show only 5.15pm on 10th.

4) I'll be compering The F-Show - the FREE fringe late night show 11pm Sun - Weds at the Mercat Bar.

5) I'll be compering the Studio tent at The Meadows on Fringe Sunday (12th) from 11am - 2pm.

6) Loads more!

Let me know if you're in town and you'll be welcome to come and see us all day every day.

Since You-all Had So Much Fun Last Time...

I thought I would let you know the 42nd Carnival of the Feminists is now up at Un-Cool. It's a bumper one too - I thought mine was pretty comprehensive, this is a real extravaganza!