The current controversy is whether ‘toxic masculinity’ is really the cause of most car accidents…
1 Like
Clearly haven’t driven around south london the similar toxic foul mouthed femininity also causes quite a few
2 Likes
Poignant video.
I am not up on the current controversy but just want to say that in our area down south, aside from many sad floral tributes along the mountain roads, it is more often than not women drivers careering through the village at speed, or pulling out at unmarked crossings without checking.
I suspect, without checking official statistics, that a great many of the accidents are motorcyclists. At speed and without a metal cover, they are extremely physically vulnerable. And sadly, often young. I ask my husband to stop so I can get out and read the memorial plaques. I may not have known them in life but somehow I think they might like a prayer.
I was a motorcyclist for many years, and was lucky to survive some of the really, really stupid things I did - and I do think ‘toxic masculinity’ was, and is a factor in such behaviours.
(Indeed, I fear I recently upset one of my neighbours, before I knew he had a fancy sports car, by saying I found it impossible to understand how anybody could find driving any car exciting after riding motorbikes as a youth.)
I suspect men are generally less risk averse than women, and that this will be quite resistant to change. I suspect this is a factor in most very high achievers, but also most utter failures, being male (though not the main factor) - and in more male deaths in car accidents.
Yet I think most men would say their risk aversion increases as they get older - and as the video perhaps suggests, having children may be involved in this - so it’s definitely not immutable. What we leave behind in our youths, perhaps, are the ‘bravado’ and ‘macho’ posing elements - which are more clearly socialised into boys, I think.
I just looked out the window but there were no pigs flying😀
Maybe, but clearly not all. That chap next door to you with the sports car, I’m guessing no spring chicken?
All, and I mean all except the Ferrari BCSDs I see motoring through our area, with or without top down and be-scarfed wife looking miserable in the passenger seat, are grey haired grand dads. If not hairless grand dads. I imagine each thinks of himself as a ‘silver fox’. No mirrors at home.
No match whatsoever for a big, shiny, impossibly fast solo motorbike!
Rather impressive Mr Brennan.
Of course there was also this
Just heard another egregious example of how the BBC frames presentation of economics/politics in a misleading way (not sure who was involved as I only overheard it while doing something else).
Talking about the latest figures showing zero growth in the UK economy, the reporter asked (rhetorically) ‘what does this mean?’ and proceeded to ‘explain’ that there was no increase in economic activity, for example in construction, people buying things, etc… and therefore less revenue for the government to spend on public services.
This perpetuates the impression - even after the BBC was recently criticised for it by economists - that the private sector generates wealth and the public sector spends it. Not true! The fact is that much of the wealth in any modern economy is generated in the public sector (and often then used to subsidise the private sector) - indeed, much of the most important generation of real wealth is concentrated in the public sector - in education, health, policing, rubbish collection, etc…
2 Likes
Just came across this (in a 2017 report*) - in the UK, other than medicine, the profession most closed to working-class people is… journalism. We see women, black people, hear regional accents on the BBC - but we hardly ever see any reporters whose parents were not upper or middle class.
*Warning - link is direct to a .pdf download: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/596945/The_class_pay_gap_and_intergenerational_worklessness.pdf
And now for something completely different
This letter from Dr Russell Jackson, senior lecturer in communication and public relations at Sheffield Hallam University, to the BBC about Question Time blows apart any lingering notion of impartiality by the presenter or the producers.
2 Likes
Just looked again at the graphic I posted (thanks for reminding me of this thread @Susannah ) - the only ‘media’ speakers were the Mirror and Guardian. Set aside the huge weight on numbers on the right - these newspapers are not really on the left anyway, are they? The Guardian is very clearly editorially aligned with the right of the Labour Party, and has in the past supported the LibDems - it’s only just left of centre by any rational analysis - whereas on the right there are way out extremists. Where is The Morning Star, Novara Media, Double Down News, etc, etc…?
Good point. They very occasionally used to have Ash Sarkar from Novara Media on, but I’m not sure how long it’s been since even she was invited to be on the panel. I genuinely can’t recall anyone from any other leftwing organisation being on.
BBC = Bogus Bunkum & Corrupt at the moment as far as I’m concerned. Certainly the “news” output.
Compare & contrast this report into fruit & veg shortages in the UK
With this analysis by Jay Raynor
The issues are structural and because we have failed to actually support our farming industry for decades and, yes, Brexit throws this into sharp relief.
1 Like
BBC Chairman Richard Sharp’s resignation statement in full.
Going before he is pushed 
3 Likes
Not unconnected with next month’s elections, I imagine.
2 Likes
Bit of good news on the BBC for once 
1 Like
3 Likes
I think that’s it: if you go too near tar, you become stained (or whatever the saying is).
BUT the fact that Sharp (pretended?) that he couldn’t see something which might look like a conflict of interest, when it must have been clear to an independent observer that, whether or not there was a conflict (and therefore the appointment was corrupt), there was the appearance of one, means the Augean stables still stink.
1 Like