Election 2010: Dear Radio 1...

Dear Radio 1,

Thank you for your A Glamour Model's Guide to Voting. It was really helpful for me. The pretty girl was lovely to look at and explained things so well. I never would have realised that a big sign saying "Polling Station" was where I needed to go in. Now I will be looking out for them. 

I thought it was a great idea to use a glamour model for this piece. Personally, I liked it because I looked at her and just wanted to be her. My brother liked it too, because he looked at her and just wanted to f*ck her. My 10 year old niece even liked it because now she knows what to do when she grows up and it's her turn. 

I'm looking forward to the other professions you'll be covering too. I wonder what a vet's guide will be like? It was nice to know what Peta's job was because it was really important to the piece of reporting. 

Covering the basics was great. I could have been so confused, what with having to give my address, go in the little booth, put a cross on the paper... Now I'm sure it will be plain sailing. And I'm so grateful you didn't include any of that political mumbo-jumbo, with the long words and complicated policies. That's really hard to understand. I'll just follow your advice and cross the party I want to win. I wouldn't engage in anything as complicated as tactical voting or looking at my local politicians' policies.

So thanks again, this has really helped me get into politics more.

Frank

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Election 2010

Janet Street Porter appeared on Question Time last night. Sat amongst the suits she raised the issue of women in the election. There's a clip here or the full version here. I'm not a fan of Porter, but I admire her for getting stuck in the political debate. The PM debates have been great, but have cut out women in a dramatic way from the public view. No TV channel was even prepared to allow a women to host it: boys and their (new) toys.

Lisa Hallgarten, Director of Education for Choice, blogs over at the F Word about reproductive rights and how the election may affect them. 

Election 2010: Where are the women and where are the feminists?

There has been some discussion of the upcoming UK Election in the feminist blogosphere, but not as much as I expected. If you are posting about it or know of some good posts that I've missed, please leave a link in the comments. Perhaps as we enter the final week things will hot up! 

In the meantime, here are a few links where I've found feminists commenting on the election...

Fawcett's all women hustings (27th April) featuring Harriet  Harman (Labour), Lynne Featherstone (Lib Dems) and Theresa May (Conservatives) has been a central talking point. You can re-live the experience with the podcast. Or read about what feminists are making of it all at Girl Brain and the F-Word.

I've seen a few pieces supporting all-women shortlists. There is a great article over at the F-Word by Ros Ball. And I never thought I'd find myself agreeing with Janet Street Porter over at the Mail. 

Amelia Gentleman over at the Guardian takes stock of the lack of women MP's prominence in the election campaigns of all the parties. She says:

"The increasingly presidential style of the UK general election campaign has edged senior women politicians out of the forefront of the political debate, shifting focus instead on to the wives of the three party leaders, a number of prominent female Labour MPs conceded today." 

Natasha Walter adds here voice to the debate about the invisibility of women in politics in her article Women have gone missing, and new sexists are dusting off old theories.

The Centre for Women and Democracy are putting on a positive front celebrating Main parties field record number of women candidates, but my blood is boiling at the stat tagged on the end of the piece... 

"There are 11 constituencies where the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates are all women, and 262 in which they are all men."

Holly Dustin over at The New Statesman is asking why violence against women is being left out of the TV debate?

Ruth Sunderland at the Guardian is asking what female voters want beyond the mother/wife stereotype?

Finally Jess McCabe highlights the Campaign against Tory plans for marriage tax breaks. 

So there we have it. Again, please leave a link for any posts you're writing about the election or any good ones you've read.

Election 2010: St. Gillian?

Mrs Gillian Duffy. What do you think? She's everywhere. The fall-out from Gordon Brown's comments about her has dominated the election debate all day, not to mention the Prime Minister's every waking thought, and who knows how it will affect the big day. You can watch the full exchange here. For what it's worth here are my 2 moments of feminist clarity about the row.

Thought number 1... I'm gutted that Gordon Brown made the comments, calling her a bigoted woman was BAD, but if you take a look at the conversation he had with her, she's no saint either. "All these Eastern Europeans what are coming in... Where are they flocking from?" If a shaven-haired pierced young man had made the comments I'm not sure the national outrage would have quite been the same. Just because she's a granny, doesn't mean she can't also be bigoted in her opinions. 

Thought number 2... Seeing two male reporters harangue her afterwards, when she clearly wanted to walk away (it can't be easy to process that Gordon Brown has just called you a bigot), was a taste of things to come. She's at the centre of a media storm and all I seem to hear are men trying to use her to make a political point one way or another. Andrew Sparrow's General Election Live Blog makes a couple of choice remarks:

3.27pm... Men in suits are hanging around outside like expectant fathers. It's either going really well in Duffy's front room, or really badly. I bet it's the former. An apology goes a long way to mending hurt feelings.

4.37pm... I've just heard my colleague Jackie Ashley, on the BBC, suggest this would never have happened if Sarah Brown had been with her husband. And what does Sarah think of it all? Heaven knows. 

Will it cost Brown the election? Who knows.