Fucked up but still spinning - another week on Planet Earth.

Aren't you sometimes overwhelmed by how just plain good the world is sometimes?

No, me neither. Quick rundown as we kick off another week on planet Earth:

1. Nice story in the Sunday Times today about Papa Gaddafi's habits of abducting young girls to use for rape target practice. Liked to piss on them afterwards too, apparently. Hard not to feel uplifted about the direction of Humanity right there.

2. Boardroom quotas: Britain hopes it has enough support from other countries to stop EU plans to introduce quotas as a way of getting more women on Boards. I support quotas on the well argued basis that we may as well replace useless men with useless women, but the argument against quotas isn't wrong. Unless you change the culture towards women in the workplace, and changes to the pension and childcare frameworth, then quotas aren't going to produce any real advancement. So ladies, for the time being you can bin your CVs and get back to helping your male colleagues work the company printer.

3. I bet if the Monty Python team crafted that YouTube sketch of the Prophet - 'Life of Brian' style - the Muslim world would be laughing themselves to Mecca and back. Instead of killing people. They're just naughty little boys.

4. Regulators in Scotland won't allow a breast cancer health campaign that features images of bare breasts on telly before 9pm, possibly reducing the effectiveness of the campaign. Well, this definitely wouldn't be a problem in France. As long as the boobs were Kate's. But maybe in Scotland they could take this one step further and restrict booze, sex and fried food until after the watershed too.

5. A woman soldier has given birth to a child in Camp Bastian in Afghanistan - possibly the most useful contribution anyone has made to the War on Terror so far. Rumour has it the kid's got red hair and its first words were 'what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.'

On a more personal note my blog on women being asked to bake cakes at work has not gone down well at the office. I am undermining my own work  and position by circulating such tosh in addition to just being plain mean. But it's not all bad. It was suggested I just needed to pick my battles more wisely. Red flag and a hand grenade, anyone?

So, deep breath and on we go eh Comrades? Keeping writing. XX.

Why do women look dumb on telly? Clover and Robyn on Q&A

By Gabrielle Jackson

The two women on the panel of Monday night’s Q&A made about as valuable a contribution to the debate as Posh did to the Spice Girls. Which is to say, you never heard their voices.

I think Ben Pobjie summed it up on Twitter when he said, ‘Clover, Robyn, if you hang around, maybe you can sweep up afterwards.’

I’ve got to say, I agreed with him. Sweeping up would, after all, be more of a contribution to the show than either of them had thus far made.

Q&A is Australia’s version of Question Time. For those not familiar with either show, it’s a format in which politicians, journalists and others in the public eye are invited to sit on a panel to discuss current events. The panel is balanced with people from opposite ends of the political spectrum and the audience puts questions to them, mediated by a 'neutral' presenter.

In the summary round of this week’s Q&A, all the panellists were asked for their final word on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The writer Robyn Davidson declined to comment, saying something like, ‘I couldn’t say it any better than that,’ while not making it 100 per cent clear to which of the previous male speakers she was referring.

When it was Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore’s turn, her enlightened contribution was, ‘I think we should be looking for a solution.’ Really? I mean, I don’t know what Australia would have done without that kind of insight.

But hang on a minute. These are intelligent, thoughtful women. Clover Moore is a controversial figure in Sydney, but I don’t think there’s any doubt over whether she’s capable of a deeper thought than Israel and Palestine should look for a solution to their conflict. Robyn Davidson has written a best selling book and delivered lectures all over the world.

And yet, on Q&A, they looked like they’d been leased from Madame Tussaud’s. Although I have a sneaking suspicion a wax dummy may have looked more alive.

Which makes me think, maybe there’s a reason. Why do women almost always come across badly on these confrontational TV panel shows? I did wonder this on Twitter. I said:

‘These panels are very confrontational and macho. I’m sure the women aren’t dumb but this is not the natural way women communicate.’

The first response I got was:

‘hang on, I thought men and women were equal? If they want to play lumberjack they got to learn to carry there (sic) end of the log!’

I replied:

‘Equality doesn’t mean we’re the same; just that we should have equal opportunity & I think #qanda is very blokey’

He went on to say that Germaine Greer manages to hold her own when she’s on and that he thought Moore and Davidson were bad choices for the topics covered. Maybe he’s right. The other response I got was perhaps more interesting. It read:

‘did you not see Catherine Deveny last week, maybe they learnt from her how not to be a loudmouth moron like she was’

Me:

‘see, when women try to communicate like men, they get called loud mouths and worse. It’s a no win for women to go on’

He didn’t respond. I’m not the first to have this thought. The debate rages in Britain about the lack of women on TV panel shows, particularly comedy panels. My feminist hero, Caitlin Moran, who writes a column for The Times and wrote the best-selling book How To Be A Woman, flatly refuses to appear on Question Time and other British panel shows. At a reading of hers I went to in London, somebody asked her why. She said it was because these formats were overly confrontational and male dominated. She doesn’t like competing for her voice to be heard and doesn’t like her chances of being given a fair hearing. She later said that these shows were set up to make it look like women don’t understand politics and don’t get political humour. It’s not always overt; sometimes it’s just the way a show is edited, or who gets to answer the question, or how long a mediator allows each guest to speak.

When British comedian Victoria Wood claimed that TV panel shows were ‘male-dominated, testerterone-fuelled and bearpit-ish in the extreme’, fellow comedian Jo Brand explained it to the Guardian.

‘Women don't want to go on panel shows for six reasons: 1) They won't get a word in edgeways. 2) They may be edited to look stupid. 3) They may get the piss taken out of them. 4) They may not be funny. 5) They don't like competing for airtime. 6) They may be patronised, marginalised or dismissed.’

Maybe it’s got something to do with men being more comfortable pushing their views than women tend to be. American author Rebecca Solnit recently updated an excellent article she’d written in 2008 for TomDispatch.com about how men explained things to her without letting facts get in the way. She talks of several instances in which she has been almost or fully silenced by confident men trying to explain something to her that was incorrect in a field in which she is an expert. Sometimes it’s easier just not to argue.

Let me just pick out two paragraphs of her excellent story for you to ponder:

‘Yes, guys like this pick on other men's books too, and people of both genders pop up at events to hold forth on irrelevant things and conspiracy theories, but the out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant is, in my experience, gendered. Men explain things to me, and other women, whether or not they know what they're talking about. Some men.

‘Every woman knows what I'm talking about. It's the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence.’

When smart women act dumb on TV, isn’t it time we started asking, ‘What’s wrong with this show?’ rather than ‘Why is that woman such an idiot?’

Dear London...

Dear Great Britain,

No, wait,

Dear London,

It was a grey, cold and drizzly day a decade ago I arrived on your shores to live. I spent my first few nights at St Christopher's Inn on Borough High Street and never left the Northern Line. The roll call of my 7 London residences reads Oval, Borough, Clapham, Elephant & Castle, Kings Cross, Islington and Shoreditch. I loved something about them all - yes, even you, Elephant.

Oval was owned by a lovely Polish taxi driver who lived somewhere in rural Yorkshire, having driven himself into a land owning dynasty. He owned most of our street, all the terraces divided (probably illegally) into flat shares. He gave Sam and I his own TV in acknowledgement that Poles and Australians both knew the meaning of hard work. We'd put a roast in the oven and head to the Fentiman Arms for a beer and plate of chips. Couldn't afford to eat out but did it matter? Not a jot. I will say, though, that walking back from the pub to our tiny room I would look with envy at the warm interiors of other people's terraces and wonder at the money they must earn to live in them. It was my first experience of being poor, but it's hard to say I've ever been happier...earning nothing, expecting nothing. What an adventure.

Borough SE1, was a lovely step up to our own flat - two incomes now! - and was owned by Minnie Driver's aunt. She bought the flat around 1997 for £59,000. She was a photograher who married to a dentist turned music producer and she took photos of all her tenants. I'll dig ours out and post it later. Our weekly shop was the market, and I ran and ran and ran along the Thames. I could hear Big Ben chime. I loved it and I know that whoever lives there now will love it too. First - and so far only - time I've been questioned at a witness to a minor stabbing. Sadly I didn't see anything.

On to Clapham, a single girl now, and it was two summers of bikes, parties and living with blokey flatmates. It was like living on a TV show...people dropping in, stumbling home from discos and getting invited out to places all around that manor. I was 26 years old and getting younger by the month. It was the very best of times, and the very worst of times. It was my home during the 7/7 bombings and I was mugged within site of my front door. By girls on bikes. The lady who called the police told me she didn't think I'd get up but it must have looked worse than it was.

Onto Elephant then, for a short stay. It was a mistaken move but it did host a wonderful girls-only Christmas Lunch in 2005  - seating 17 around the table. Soon after that I ditched the boys and, for the first time, moved in with a friend, Sarah. Muriel Street, Kings Cross, wasn't a pretty location, but with Islington 20 yards up the road and the canal to take us to Camden it was heaven. From there I discovered the Ladies Pond at Hampstead in the summer. I trained for my first and only marathon along that canal stretch, which I could see from my window. Sarah studied for entrance into medicine using our Ikea coffee table and I studied for my financial exams using the ironing board. That address the home to the height of my insomnia which marked it darkly as far as being a good flatmate, I'm afraid. If only I knew then what I know now.

Residence no. 6 was Liverpool Road with Simon and my introduction to Living With Kids. Harry threw up on me on the sofa there, peed in his sleep in the corridor, and we read stories to the boys in bed. It still holds the record for being my longest running address, but still no sleep. Miserable years at work. But Islington I loved - its pubs, its farmers' market, its blossom trees, its squares, our friends, still in London, still nearby. Whenever I think of it, it is spring or autumn I recall. We tried to buy our own patch there, but it wasn't meant to be.

Which brings us to Shoreditch - an experiment with City living. We live above a tex mex restaurant in a building with just a few other invisible souls. There are no light switches in our bedroom, it is daylight 24/7, and if you run the kitchen tap you are rewarded with a brief but powerful sewage smell in the bathroom. An exhaust fan runs through the height of the building which provides a reassuring hum throughout the night in the spare room. Isn't this typical London living? Nothing is ever as it seems. The wall of windows provides a nightly array of entertainment from midnight photo shoots and rappers filming video clips, to raves in the empty car park opposite and parachute regiments jumping from Chinooks over the Artillery Barracks. This is the beating heart of London now - East is best. I live where I work where I eat where I shop where I volunteer - the lastest experience.

There is a whole other letter I could write to Britain, but it is to London that this last decade belongs. The tube, the lidos, the parks, the markets, the vintage stores, the terrible coffees, now the flat whites - that other Aussie invasion. Some money, more money, less money. Exams, learning again. A boom, a bust. Bikes, the canal, walking. Lots of travel, no travel. The Heathrow Express. Seasons. Dancing. Theatre. Visas, visas, visas. A whole new career. And always, brilliant graffiti.

Where to next? Who knows. London Fields maybe, closer to the pool because I can't swim enough. It will be something bijou to buy, I think, to be sure when I'm old I can visit. Maybe to pass on to nieces. If London is still a place to be. I'll start looking this week, I think. Always moving on.

With much affection,
Your newest citizen.
Monday 17 Sept. 2012.

Why does it always come back to baking?

Do you remember how, earlier this year, I wrote here that I thought City sexism was on the last slow train from Waterloo - waving us farewell as it downed its last G&T, and lit up its last cigar?

You do? Really?

What's that?

Oh, that's so nice of you to say!

Well, anyway, it turns out I was wrong. Yes, I'm afraid so. Very wrong. To put it bluntly I was as wrong as a rat up an S-bend. Like a frog in a toaster. Wrong.

What do I mean? Well, yesterday at work (an investment bank) I received this email:

Sent: 10th September 2012 11.21am

Dear Ladies of <my bank>

Do any of you think you will have the time/energy to whizz up some cakes for our (charity) Foundation bake sale this Wednesday & Thursday?

Please do let me know...thanks,

<sender name withheld>

I'm tempted to stop writing here. You can see what I mean.

What's that?

No!

I'm not having you on. That's an actual, real email.  I'm protecting the identity of the sender. I don't mean to single them out for this, this...de-vancement of our status, shall we say. I'm just...distressed.

See, women actually died fighting for the vote in England. Oh I know you know that, but I wonder if enough people know that. I'm not sure they do. Or maybe they learned it, but have forgotten. I'm not sure what's worse!

You know, we only got that vote on equal age terms in 1928.

What?

No, no. The 1918 legislation gave us the vote at 30. Our vote was only lowered to the same age as men in 1928 - in those days 21 years of age. Campaigning for women's rights was a crime. Many suffragettes went to prison. Yes, jailed! I think the best you could hope as a campaigner was suffering only ridicule. And total social exclusion.

I know. It's bizaare to think of it now, isn't it? I mean it's so long ago (well, not that long really, but seems like it).  So...yes. I'm just a bit distressed, that's all. I wasn't expecting it. I mean, I was at work. In 2012. The thought that someone is here, looking around, thinking of women as the lone resource for...baking...well, it's got me worried.

Why does it always come back to baking, do you think? Baking for kids' schools. Baking for the village fete. Baking in films...even that great film Bridesmaids which showed women's conversations about cocks as they actually are (you know, in the cafe scene early on, when she makes some bollocks with her arms and closes one eye?). Yeah, even in that film the main character, Annie, finds love and resurrection through...baking! But at work too? Really?

What's that? Bigger picture?

Huh. You know what, you are totally right. That's how I should be thinking about it.
So by putting the 'women = always = baking' thing aside, as you suggest, this is actually about the economics of charity. It would be better to try and get as many cakes as possible to sell, right? I mean, I like cooking (of which baking is a sub-set), but Gordon 'WTF' Ramsey likes cooking too, doesn't he? And other men do too. So, well, why not ask everyone in the office if they would like to contribute to the charity day by baking cakes for sale. Because, and here's the clincher to your argument, us women like eating them! So if both men and women get the opportunity to bake, buy and eat then we're making more cakes and more money. And, this is the City - we like making money. After all, thanks to slow-but-wonderful laws I get to keep the money I earn too. I can spend it how I like (which wasn't always the case). I can spend my own money on cakes, on charity, on...whatever.

What? I'm still too serious you think?

Oh. I know. Yes it is funny. And it does make me laugh, I promise. Or it will tomorrow. Maybe.

If you don't laugh you cry, right?

What?

Who sent it?

Oh, someone in HR.

If this is a House Husbands, I don’t want one

By Gabrielle Jackson

House Husbands

 

I was so looking forward to House Husbands. I thought it might be the sounding of the death knell for the Aussie male that is expected to call women cows and slags and demand chiko rolls after dud roots.

I mean, times have changed. Nobody eats chiko rolls anymore.

And if Puberty Blues,a drama about two school girls who try to make it into the cool gang by sitting a little bit further up the back of the bus, can be as good as it is, I had high hopes for a drama about blokes looking after the tin lids.

But my hopes were destroyed pretty quickly. The opening episode of House Husbands was depressingly bad. It had a clumsy plot, implausible scenarios, and laborious character development. If the writers think four blokes dropping their kids off at school is about as believable as five-year-olds hijacking a bus then I’m afraid this drama is just as sad as our prime minister being compared to a barren old cow. No matter what you think of Julia Gillard, one should at least muster up some wit if one wants to make a political joke. But wit is largely lacking in this drama too. Unless you think the idea of having a gay dad is so hilarious that you also think it’s funny he pretends to bake pies which he actually buys from an anonymous woman.

Oh my, can’t you just hear the ripples of laughter reverberating through the red brick houses of suburban Australia. That’s not to say it wasn’t funny. I mean, had I read the script and not seen it, I would have thought it was supposed to be a comedy farce.

Incompetent older dad makes joke to competent kid about driving herself to school.

Kid encourages other five-year-olds being dropped off by dads to steal the school bus. One sits on the accelerator while another steers.

Disgraced football hero chases down bus in super hero fashion and saves the day. But only after the school principal breaks her arm.

Gay dad is supposed to drop principal- who was treated in hospital by one of thieving kid’s mums - home but loses her while picking up secret pies.

They’re all related or work together or something equally as silly and over complicated.

If it had been played like a farce it might have had some hope of being funny.

I suppose I could have looked at the casts in each drama to decide which one I’d like the best. In Puberty Blues we have Claudia Karvan, Dan Wyllie and Susie Porter, whose stable includes some of the greatest Australian films and television dramas ever made, including Love My Way (all of them), Chopper (Wyllie), The Heartbreak Kid (Karvan) and Little Fish (Porter).

In House Husbands we have Gary Sweet whose brought us such winners as Rescue Special Ops. I know that’s not fair. I didn’t want it to be a competition – I wanted to like both new Australian television shows. And there are some great actors in House Husbands. I mean Rhys Muldoon has been in a lot of fine shows on the ABC. And let’s face it, there’s not that much work for Aussie actors so they may have to take anything they can get. Even scripts with holes as big as the ozone layer. I mean, if the writers wanted, I could introduce them to some of my male friends who actually do look after their kids without doing an excruciating impersonation of Mr Bean. Then again, maybe it’s really for kids and I’ve just got the wrong end of the remote.

I could write more, but then I’d just continue to bore you. I’ve already bored myself so much that I’ve fallen asleep and dribbled out a half digested mint slice on my keyboard while writing this.

It’s an hour you won’t get back. Think about that before watching the next episode.

In, Out, Sent - a week on email.

Asian shares were under pressure
Did I reply to this? Sorry, my life is a bit of a living hell
revenues around £348k
Congrats to Wayne on swimming the North Channel
STOXX600 Trades -0.4%
bravely via a new route, adding extra difficulty
Telco's Flat, all others down, led by Tech & Miners
Hurricane Isaac makes landfall
Did I reply to this? Sorry, my life is a bit of a living hell
there are a number of roadshows we are joint broking
Please take careful note of alphabetic splits

There are two bundles of fresh beans in the crisper
investors remained cautious
if you want them
Romney anointed by Republicans
The long wait for the Fed update is nearly over
Did I reply to this? Sorry, my life is a bit of a living hell

I would vote for a president who made it illegal
for people
prepare a presentation
Agreed and people
to ask questions
Fyi
about your weekend
and who stand in the door of the lift and wonder it’s not moving
we would like you to spend 30 minutes with them
We are completing essential maintenance work

If Romney wins it’ll be thanks to Ann
Dear Katherine, Please find attached the latest Broker Review
I'm kind of like Psyduck mixed with Wednesday Addams, awkward, morbid, and usually confused
Morning folks
London Mining down 6% on v light vol
can’t find a story
Quick US Trip Summary
See you tomorrow 12.30
That’s confirmed for next week
Did I reply to this? Sorry, my life is a bit of a living hell

we are making decent progress
heavy users of our research
Can't wait to bring Evie to visit one day
Last comment. Will look for other stuff
Lotte reminds you it’s her fifth birthday today
Capital Drilling is may react negatively to Boart’s update

Draghi rebuffs Germans over euro plans
I've got a date tomorrow night
As a reminder, the UK team now operates out of a dual centre of London and Glasgow
he asked me out
despite what a maniac I was
If you're using a mobile device please click on this link
A new take on iron ore weakness
I love a man who cycles
Who brings a bike helmet to a party?
A man who cycled to it!
Good morning New York

A new take on iron ore weakness
FYI
No not yet
I’m objective
judgy wudgy comments
divorced from a total creep
Two way business we cannot get together
Attached is the message you retrieved from the archive
Hi All
FYI
Many thanks
Do you want coffee?
Did I reply to this? Sorry, my life is a bit of a living hell