Blasey Ford's after party

How did Christine Blasey Ford get home? She refers to a sexual "attack", allegedly at the hands of a teenage Brett Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge. She says she was pushed into a room, pinned down, groped and, most traumatically, prevented from screaming and almost of breathing by a hand over her mouth. This "attack" is now routinely described in commentaries as an 'attempted rape', even though the boys were, by her own admission, drunk and laughing, and it seems they gave up on her very easily after they all toppled off the bed and she made her escape. Victims of genuine attempted rapes, as opposed to drunken gropings, might not be convinced by this description of the alleged crime. But more importantly, if this 'attack' had been as traumatic as she claims, with lifelong repercussions, there would have been something to show for it afterwards. Fifteen year-old Christine Blasey would have been visibly shaken. She would have been dishevelled. Her clothes would have been a mess. Her face would bear the marks of the strong pressure from the assailant's hand. The person who drove her home would have noticed something very wrong, both in her physical appearance and in her demeanour. Her obvious distress would have prompted at least some discussion of what had just happened. And yet this mystery driver has not been named. No one has come forward claiming to be that driver. So far, all is silence. I don't doubt that something happened to Blasey Ford when she was younger, but her claim that, whatever it was, happened how and when she described it at the hearing is highly suspicious.

Bodyguard blokes

Finally, a scene I could thoroughly enjoy after the disappointing demise of Julia Montague in "Bodyguard". Without the interplay between Keeley Hawes and the titular bodyguard  David Budd (Richard Madden), there was hardly anything that rang true in episodes four to six until the scene where Budd, his boss Deepak Sharma and Expo expert Daniel Chung work together to defuse the bomb strapped to Budd's manly torso. Finally, blokes being blokes! And not a woman in sight! Finally, men being the best of what they can be, relying on each other and uttering things like "a man whose word is his bond"! This triggered an actual physical release of tension in me, humble viewer, catching up on iPlayer the day after the finale. "Bodyguard" has been irritating from the start in its insistence on casting women in every possible traditionally male occupation or career. Montague herself was compelling and played by Hawes with great aplomb, but the other high-ranking women, Craddock and Sampson, were unbelievable and terribly dull. The character of Anne Sampson was especially tedious, as portrayed with a bored drawl and an expression of permanent lemon-sucking distaste by Gina McKee, an otherwise good actress, I think, who was presumably either miscast or misdirected. Worse, most of the main women, from top brass to Budd's wife Vicky, were laden with the same huge blotches of rust-coloured blusher, for some reason. The white women, that is: Louise was exempted from the blush brush. Ominously, Nadia was spared any visible make-up at all. Maybe that was an important clue? That and the fact that the estranged but still caring Mrs Budd rejected her husband's attempt at intimacy after he'd performed an overwhelmingly heroic service to society, and saved their children in the process, at the start of episode 1. That's a bit harsh, I thought. But her instincts were clearly more refined. By the end of episode 6, when Nadia is truly defused, Vicky becomes all friendly again at last. And why not? Her husband is a hero, his face is back to normal, he's gorgeous, he loves her, he loves their children, and he's finally gelled his hair again. What's more, he's apparently well on the way to being healed mentally. This last point is an excellent advertisement for the power of Occupational Health, to which Budd is compassionately sent in the end by the McKee character. We see Budd entering the room (M18, perhaps a joke on MI5 and MI6?) and being greeted by the therapist: a woman, of course, with curly, indie locks and a flowing patterned scarf. Do we believe that this woman can help a man who has seen horrors in Afghanistan with his comrades and been through the further traumas of episodes 1 to 6? I don't. But I love happy endings, and if that's what it takes for the Budd family to drive off happily in a shiny Qashqai in the final scene, then I can try very hard to chalk up the therapist to merely the obtrusive feminism of the series as a whole.

Can it, Meghan

By virtue of her marriage to Prince Harry, Ms Megan Markle is now Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Sussex, also the Countess of Dumbarton and Baroness Kilkeel. Good for her, I'm all for it. Long live the monarchy and the patriarchy. But she needs to drop her battle cry of "I am proud to be a woman and a feminist", which takes pride of place on her new royal website page. (https://www.royal.uk/duchess-sussex) You can't have both the perks of patriarchy and the self-righteous claim to independence. It's either/or. She's chosen the patriarchy (hurrays all around) and should abide by her choice. She should also, by the bye, honour her marital vows this time. And as for the 'gender equality' she is apparently still committed to: could Prince Harry have a bold-letter quote on his page, declaring "I am proud to be a man and a Men's Rights Activist"? Of course not.

Gun control celebs

How about this: all of those actors who have ever made money - some of them truckloads of money - by playing someone who uses firearms don't get to lecture regular citizens about gun control. Or at least not until they give to charity all the income they've earned that way in the past, and pledge never again to portray a character who uses a firearm. As for politicians, journalists etc: anyone who has the privilege of personal or workplace armed protection doesn't get to lecture either.

'Peoplekind': they couldn't agree more

Everyone has been mocking Justin Trudeau for interrupting a young woman at an event in Edmonton by telling her to say 'peoplekind' rather than 'mankind'. He's trying to get out of this spot of bother by claiming his comment was a joke. Fine, let's say it was a joke. Donald Trump says lots of jokes that people get all upset about because they misunderstand his sense of humour. However, the big difference here is that the young woman herself was very happy with Trudeau's correction, as were all the young people surrounding her. They cheered! They clapped! They thanked him! Arguably, Trudeau could have resorted to interrupting the young woman because her question was so long-winded and had by then veered into nutcase territory, with her claim that: 'maternal love is the love that's going to change the future of mankind.' And Trudeau might have been intent, also, on avoiding or delaying having to answer the question, which was about restrictions against religious organisations - and that would have been a good question. But the organisation the young woman was speaking for is crackpot in itself. It calls itself the World Mission Society Church of God and aims to be 'Spreading the love of the Mother' i.e. God the Mother (wmscog.com). It claims that the plural 'Elohim' in the Old Testament refers to God as Father and Mother. It proclaims the new name of Jesus, necessary for salvation, as Christ Ahnsahnghong, with reference, apparently, to someone in South Korea who founded the church in 1964. In short, it's full of heresies. As the video clip shows, the young missionary advocates of this church are fully on board with Trudeau's woke agenda in terms of eradicating maleness. That is a far more disturbing snapshot of Canada at the moment that any of the stupidities Trudeau regularly utters.

Misgendering and authority

A local incident here in Oxford has caught the attention of the world. Joshua Sutcliffe, a maths teacher at the state secondary school just down the road, has been suspended and faces disciplinary action for 'misgendering' a pupil - a 'student', as they are now called, apparently. Calling schoolchildren 'students' as if they were at University and of majority age confuses the fact that they are still minors. This is not a trivial point, in context. For essentially, the context is one of authority. Here we have a biologically female minor who is offended by being referred to as a girl by a teacher ("Well done, girls!", as the poor chap merely said) and this turns into a parental complaint several weeks later. The minor is then given the authority by the school's action on the complaint to utterly rule over the teacher, a responsible adult, who should by the nature of his position be in authority over the minor. This is a very strange state of affairs. The case has made waves, yet the reality is that it's  only a small manifestation of a rampaging problem: the destabilising effect the push for transgender children is already causing, and will increasingly cause, to the social fabric. How about we regain some sense and proportion by using this simple method: minors, school-children, those who are not yet legally adult and who participate in whatever way in primary and secondary level education, do not get to dictate to adults on the subject of their sexual identity. That's it. And here's why: for one thing, it's unfair to the teachers, who have too many social engineering burdens to deal with already. For another, it's just rude. Kids are not entitled to boss grown-ups around, let alone get them disciplined or possibly fired for not blinding themselves to the scientific reality of sex differentiation. Once out of school, at university, in work: knock yourselves out. Until then, where adults and children interact on daily basis, where the rational education of minors is at stake, the adults are in charge. If parents rebel against this they can educate their children at home and stop tripping up the teachers who are trying to do their best for all the pupils in their care.

Are you Charlie?

The response from French weekly magazine "Charlie Hebdo" to hurricane Harvey's devastation in Houston and elsewhere in Texas: a cover, portraying a bunch of Nazi flags and saluting hands going down in the flood, with the caption: "God exists! He has drowned all the neo nazis of Texas!" Sweet.  Last week the magazine published this cover in response to the murderous attack in Barcelona.

The caption reads: "Islam, religion of peace...eternal" a pun on 'peace eternal' as a way of referring to the after-life. This got them into all sorts of trouble for daring to equate the actions of the jihadis with their avowed motive i.e. Islam's call to jihad against infidels (us) and hypocrites (insufficiently Islamic muslims). They got into trouble for making fun of the truth about the perpetrators. The Texas cover, on the other hand, is an outright slur. And it's a slur against the victims of a natural disaster. Worse, it's a rejoicing over the deaths of the victims of a natural disaster, with a damnable slur thrown on top of it. I wonder if that's the kind of joy the magazine describes itself as having on its website. "Charlie Hebdo", it tells us, is a magazine that is "satirical, secular, political and joyous". But then , in English, it also says it is "a punch in the face" and "an angry magazine"; that life is too short to not be "laughing it up a storm", because "very nearly everything" is "ridiculous", "absurd or preposterous". Well, I'm going to stick my neck out here and say "Charlie Hebdo", shame on you for not sticking to your own motives. There is nothing satirical, secular, political and certainly nothing joyous about the Texas cover because there is no truth in it. And there has to be at least a drop of truth in a provocative stance to make it interesting.