Brendan O’Neil is worse than Topman Tshirts, and Topman Tshirts are shit.

Rather typically, anger has inspired  me to once again put fingers to keyboards after a quiet spell on tumblr.

I’m about to be one of those moaning internet bloggers for five minutes. I’ll try to post something artsy-fartsy afterwards, or something astoundingly hilarious. Failing that i’ll just reblog a mildly amusing meme like everyone does….

In a piece about ‘feminist’ reaction to the two awful Topman Tshirts, (you know the ones, the really misogynistic ones, the one’s full of ‘LAD’ banter, you know, Oh wait you’re right, that’s ALL of them, but remember the two that likened women to dogs and might have suggested that there’s always an excuse for domestic violence, well we’re talking about those ones) Brendan O’Neil (telegraph) named his article ‘Why are feminists getting their knickers in a twist about Topman T-shirts?’. I hoped, upon stumbling across this title, that the article which followed would rightly explain why these T-shirts caused such a stir -namely that it made such derogatory ‘banter’ a worrying part of normal day-to-day life, thus making his title rather witty- directly drawing attention to the danger of a casual sexist behavior developing.

But no. Brandon was not being witty or ironic. He instead went on to claim that the reason feminists were angry was because feminists

are driven by the elitist belief that there are some people out there (whisper it: working-class lads) who cannot distinguish right from wrong and therefore must have their eyes and ears protected from poisonous words”. 

How a man can get so confused as to honestly suggest the feminist movement is secretly about class, and not gender at all, is quite ridiculous.

It’s more worrying that Brendon doesn’t realise that he himself, evidently middle class from his profession, doesn’t realise that he might be the feminists problem, since it’s just those ‘working class’ men the feminists don’t like. It says far more about Brandon’s own ideas of social classes than it ever does about the feminist.

He hasn’t realised that his commentary is exactly why feminists are angry.

What a posh, snobbish, sexist git. 

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Deputy PM’s office ineffective

The deputy prime minister’s office is ineffective, Liberal Democrat junior ministers are spread too thinly, and many policy decisions are made in regular evening phone calls between Nick Clegg and David Cameron, according to one of the most thorough studies of the coalition’s workings so far undertaken…

And it singled out the home office as a department in which the Liberal Democrat minister Lynn Featherstone has little influence partly due to ideological differences with the home secretary, Theresa May.

The report found: “The Lib Dems are still reeling from the loss of their state funding, given only to opposition parties. This has led to the loss of many of their staff. It may help explain their under-powered performance, particularly with the media.

“By going for breadth over depth, and seeking to place a minister in every department, the Lib Dems have spread themselves too thinly.

“Their objective was to influence every aspect of government policy. They may have achieved this, but it is very difficult to demonstrate to the public.”

In some of its harshest criticism, the report found: “The deputy PM’s office has not established recognisable priorities for the Lib Dems; Lib Dem junior ministers struggle to play the cross-departmental role envisaged for them; special advisers do little to help, because (outside Cabinet Office and No 10) they do not have the confidence or experience to operate as coalition brokers.”

"

It’s simultaneously hilarious, sad and worrying that this is how the coaltion is ‘working’.

Source.

"I don’t have kids, but I know enough about parenting to state the following with confidence: any parent who is genuinely concerned that their child’s worldview might be hopelessly altered by the unruly behaviour of a footballer has failed as a parent."

Charlie Brooker

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/30/why-idolise-footballers

(via offensive-monkey)