I guess it’s not a hard and fast rule but if a former government minister refers to your book in parliament I think you can count yourself an ‘expert’.

That’s what happened to me this week.

Tracey Crouch, a good ex-minister in the sense she resigned on principle – and a noble principle at that concerning keeping a promise on gambling machines rather than some contentious view about Brexit for example – rather than was sacked for a bungle, led a debate on fatherhood in Westminster this week.

I went along because, as author of a book on the topic, I was interested to hear what was said and to get an idea of how seriously politicians take it.

To my delight and surprise early in her opening remarks Tracey made reference to ‘an interesting book by James Millar’ and followed that up after a couple of interventions of varying quality by referring again to the book and calling it ‘excellent’.

Here’s the clip:

https://videoplayback.parliamentlive.tv/Player/Index/8a5e897b-92cc-41cc-ae24-72c001a4fced?in=2019-01-30T09%3A33%3A55%2B00%3A00&out=2019-01-30T09%3A37%3A20%2B00%3A00&audioOnly=False&autoStart=False&statsEnabled=True

And you can find the whole debate here. It’s well worth your time.

Whatever is said in parliament goes in the official record, called Hansard, and stays there forever. You need to have an ego to be a journalist, keep a blog, write a book – knowing your name will literally be in the history books doesn’t do that ego any harm!

The book she refers to is Dads Don’t Babysit. I co-wrote it, obviously I think it’s excellent. But it’s good to get that sort of recognition. It’s packed full of useful stats, enlightening anecdotes, cogent arguments and crucially concrete proposals.

The thrust of the whole book is that men want to be more engaged parents, if they are then that’s good for men, women, children and society as a whole. We look at why parenting is not equal now and, importantly, draw up a manifesto of measures that would help drive an increase in equal parenting.

If your company wants to get ahead it ought to aim for a more diverse workforce. My book can help you achieve that.

If you want a more productive workforce you need happy employees comfortable with their work life balance. My book can help you achieve that.

If you want me to explain the issues and the advantages of equal parenting for your company to you, your HR department or your workforce get in touch via this website or via LinkedIn or Twitter.

I can make your workforce fitter, happier and more productive. That’s quite a claim but I reckon I can back it up. Get in touch and let’s put it to the test!

Monday night I received a call from Lebanon, asking me to go on Turkish telly, to talk about an American advert, from London.

Globalisation is cool and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

I agreed.

The request came because I wrote something about the new Gillette advert and what it says about men and masculinity.

I can’t quite believe that a week on the alt-right characters in the so-called Men’s Rights Activist community who like to bait and bully anyone with a conscience are still being triggered about an advert for razors. But there we go. It’s almost as if they are just old-fashioned bullies and misogynists who don’t like having their out-of-date worldview challenged by anyone, even an advert.

Certainly that was the impression I got from the chap put up to ‘debate’ me on the programme, a show called Newsmakers on TBT, the Turkish version of BBC World.

I did a bit of due diligence, I’m aware of the Turkish government’s record on freedom of speech and their extremely bad habit of locking up journalists. But TBT seemed OK. (Please do correct me and share evidence if I’m wrong, I want to know).

My opposite number was a fellow called Michael Buchanan, founder of the Justice for Men and Boys party that garnered a total of 216 votes at the 2015 election, across two seats. His website reveals him to be an unpleasant character with unpleasant views. But by the end of the TV feature I just had to laugh at him as he claimed a conspiracy by radical feminists to take over every conceivable organisation he disagrees with from the American Psychological Association to the New Statesman. If he’d got more votes at the election, if I thought there was a bigger swell of support for his extremism out there I’d be worried. But he’s just a sad man and the very existence of the Gillette advert proves he’s on the wrong side of history. Men and masculinity are changing, that’s why Gillette have come up with an ad designed to tap into the new masculinity. They are in the business of making money, nothing more and nothing less. Talk of brand values and such is wide of the mark. We live in a capitalist system (for good or ill) and the only brand value any company truly sticks to is making cash.

Do watch the clip. I was particularly impressed with the show’s host who called out some of Buchanan’s patent nonsense. I’d like to see more of that on UK television when guests are so obviously talking toss.

Anyway, here’s the bit in question (there doesn’t appear to be a way of embedding the clip unfortunately). Feel free to share your thoughts on my presentation or on the issue at stake.

And if you think I’d be worth inviting on your TV/radio show to discuss the same please to get in touch!

https://www.pscp.tv/TheNewsmakers/1OwxWOAkednxQ?t=39m24s

 

 

 

The New Statesman needed something on the furore over Gillette’s latest advert. They came to me because, in the words of the commissioning editor, I’m  “really funny”. Make up your own mind if she’s right. This is the unedited version featuring some coarse (but funny) language that was cut from the published version.

So it looks like I’m going to have to shave for the first time in a decade.

Not because I’m inspired by the new Gillette advert urging men to be the best they can be. But because if all the men’s rights activists, misogynists and sillies like Piers Morgan follow through on their threat to boycott Gillette anyone sporting facial fuzz may immediately mark themselves out as a member of that gang. The gang that remarkably seem to be saying that men shouldn’t be the best they can be.

Oh well apparently beards aren’t cool anymore anyway.

According to the ad being a dick isn’t cool anymore either. That message has proved too much for some men who will fight for the right to be a dick, and are demonstrating that with their reaction to Gillette’s short film.

The advert, titled We Believe, was created by the director Kim Gehrig who was behind the brilliant This Girl Can campaign for Sport England that encouraged nearly 3 million more women to get more active. One hopes her next step will be to combine the two in a film that shows women punching sexists and running away from Piers Morgan.

It plays on Gillette’s legendary slogan ‘The Best a Man Can Get’ and instead asks ‘Is this the best a man can get?’ as men look moodily in the mirror accompanied by news reports of sexual assault, clips of sexist comedy and outrageously cheesy sections in which boys bully each other and scuffle.

The answer coming back loud and clear from the meninists is: “Yes, yes, fighting, cat-calling and barbecuing is basically all we’ve got.”

It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so serious.

Just last week the American Psychological Association (APA) defined traditional masculinity as “A particular constellation of standards that have held sway over large segments of the population, including: anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence” and found that it is a bad thing leading to negative outcomes such as suicide, addiction, violence and early death.

To be clear, the APA wasn’t talking about masculinity per se, rather the strict definition of it that places a straitjacket on males basically from birth.

I know how young it starts, I co-wrote a book about it. The Gender Agenda started out as a project driven by feminism, to record the unfair limits put on my daughter because of her sex. It ended with the realisation that my son is also constricted by expectations placed upon him by the random accident of his chromosomes.

This led me to the same places the Gillette advert goes – role models, popular media and societal expectations that write off bad behaviour with the phrase ‘boys will be boys’ while controlling the female sex with the words ‘there’s a good girl’.

Weirdly the same men who hoist the Men’s Rights Activist (MRA) banner and march forth for the worthy aims of reducing male suicide and improving male mental health don’t like being told a huge part of the solution is rethinking masculinity – ie it’s up to them to do something about it. Unsurprisingly it’s other people who need to change their behaviour. Women mainly. Particularly feminists who don’t think about men and boys enough when they are campaigning for women. It’s almost as if the MRAs are actually old school misogynists using serious issues as cover for a campaign that seeks to control women by telling them what they should be thinking and doing instead of that silly feminism.

And it’s women who suffer from toxic masculinity. The two women a week who die due to domestic abuse, the many more who must live with domestic violence. The girls who don’t speak up in class because teachers unwittingly ask boys for answers. The pupils who actually do worse in their exams when they see an advert conveying negative stereotypes about women on their way to school.

But it’s men who have the power to make it better. That’s not fair. But as long as the balance of power favours men – and it does whether your metric is number of MPs or number of business board members or average salary – then it’s up to men to make it better.

The Gillette ad hones in on that message. (Further reading on the same theme can be found in my latest book Dads Don’t Babysit).

Unfortunately Gillette will now go bust because of their apparent mis-step, in the same way as Lynx did when they turned their back on their traditional advertising approach that saw nearly naked women clamour for spotty youths that smelled of ‘Africa’ (whatever the smell of Africa is – elephant poo? subjugation by the west based on deep seated racism?) in favour of something more thoughtful. The ‘is it OK for guys..’ campaign looked at what teenage boys really do on the internet – look for support and affirmation rather than just looking at porn.

And who remembers Nike? They were big in sports stuff before also piling into politics with their Colin Kaepernick campaign that saw the alt right burn their shoes.

Weirdly the same right wing voices who insist newspapers are above democratic oversight because they answer to a higher and more urgent master – the market, if folk don’t like what they print they won’t sell goes the mantra – are triggered by an ad campaign that surely stands or falls by the same standard. If people are outraged by the idea that men – yes, all men – could be better then they won’t buy Gillette razors and we’ll have our answer as to whether this is really is the best that men can get.

But perhaps what the meninists are really upset about is the knowledge that won’t happen.

Gillette just played them for tons of free publicity.

And ultimately Proctor and Gamble, owners of the Gillette brand are gigantic capitalists like Nike and Unilever who own Lynx.

They aren’t really bothered about values and attitudes, they are only interested in one thing – the bottom line.

And there’s more cash to be made from men who buy into feminism and want to be better fathers than there is from daft dinosaurs who fear a future in which men and women benefit from true equality.

Men’s attitudes and masculinity itself are changing to be more flexible, more healthy, more satisfying.

The reaction to the Gillette ad shows we’re a long way from achieving the best a man can get, but the very existence of the campaign proves men are getting better.

 

 

Photo by Matt Collamer on Unsplash

This was orginally published on Total Politics. But edited slightly for reasons of space. Here’s the full unexpurgated version!:

In years to come this whole Brexit palaver will be taught in Bubbleology 101 – the study of Westminster by Westminster to the exclusion of all else.

George Osborne was the prick that burst the bubble for me.

One of his infamous, and invariably expensive, Budget quips made it very plain to me that neither he nor David Cameron had been paying attention during the Scottish independence referendum. The pair were too indolent to carry out any post-match analysis on that particular vote and too arrogant to listen to anyone who had.

It’s that attitude that has put us where we are now with MPs scared to walk to work and the general public phoning in to the Jeremy Vine show claiming they’ve some sort of Brexit induced anxiety disorder (I didn’t stick around for the item on gout but that’s probably got something to do with Brexit too as people drink to forget what’s going on in Westminster).

Few will remember the joke that accompanied the 2015 budget announcement of £1 million to mark the anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt. Even fewer will remember those commemorations so that was money well spent. But it was made to entertain the Cameroon acolytes at the expense of the greater good. And that illustrates why we find ourselves four years later on the verge of crashing out of the EU.

Back then Osborne jibed: “The battle of Agincourt is, of course, celebrated by Shakespeare as a victory secured by a ‘band of brothers’. It is also when a strong leader defeated an ill-judged alliance between the champion of a united Europe and a renegade force of Scottish nationalists.”

He should’ve spent the £1 million on more of those ‘Ed Miliband in Alex Salmond’s pocket’ billboards.

For Agincourt was an English victory while Osborne was the UK’s chancellor. The ‘joke’ was essentially ‘Ha ha ha, some English killed some Scots and although I’ve been telling you for five years there’s no money I do have money to celebrate that,’ with the added implication that the English had beaten the Scots again in September 2014.

It seemed to set up Tory England against Scotland where 45% of the population had just voted for independence. By implication nearly half of Scots were ‘renegades’ in Osborne’s eyes.

It seemed poorly judged to my ears as someone who had covered the independence referendum six months previously and who knew the wounds of that contest – which was both glorious and grisly, democratic and divisive – had not yet healed.

And as someone of mixed parentage (one English, one Scottish) I was very aware that the Scots don’t take kindly to any Englishman lauding it over them no matter how far back in history the slight might go. And they are particularly ill disposed towards posh boy Eton Tories.

It also seemed unlikely to win over Scots voters to the Tory cause at a time when the party had just one MP.

It was as politically unintelligent as it was comedically unfunny.

It was a throwaway line little remarked on at the time.

But events would prove my political antennae correct. And how.

The following day I had an audience with the then PM David Cameron and I put it to him that the joke signalled the Tories had given up on trying to win any seats in Scotland.

His face went a little redder than usual, he put his hands behind his head and leaned right back, “Do you really think that?” he thundered. “Do you really think that?”

I replied that since he’d visited Scotland quite a bit before, during and after the referendum he ought to know that jokes about it aren’t terribly well received.

He said he thought the Scots could take a joke. Six weeks later the Scots returned 56 SNP MPs and the sole Scottish Tory hung on after a recount.

Those 50 new MPs ought to have turned up for their first day at work with a banner reading “Mac-Ha ha ha”.

It’s not that Cameron didn’t understand post-referendum politics. He didn’t care. As far as he was concerned he won, purred at the Queen and started doing evel – English Votes for English Laws.

If he’d paid attention or had better advisors (Craig Oliver would be in my face before I left the room after the above exchange hissing ‘Are you saying you can’t make jokes in Scotland, is that what you’re saying?’ A little less aggression and a little more listening and Rory Kinnear might’ve been the star of the recent Brexit drama on Channel 4) he would have seen the damage done to Scotland and Scottish politics.

Appalled at the division engendered by the EU referendum? In Scotland friends and family may have patched up relationships that buckled under the strain of the independence debate but many still avoid talking politics.

Isn’t it awful that Anna Soubry and Owen Jones are getting abuse? Jim Murphy had to suspend his campaigning tour of Scotland for his own safety in 2014 and the SNP – the ruling party – lampooned Scotland’s foremost political commentator David Torrance in one of their political ads contributing to his decision to quit journalism, and to leave Scotland. Can you imagine the Tories hiring an Owen Jones lookalike (any 14-year-old boy would do) for a PPB aimed squarely at taking the piss out of him?

Scottish politics is not about left and right but Yes and No. (Which is why Labour have been squeezed out of the national conversation, that and a succession of leaders that look like a de-evolution of political ability; on current trends a balloon on a stick will replace Richard Leonard some time in the next 12 months).

And still Westminster pays no heed. Commentators that talk of a single issue general election focussed on Brexit are way wide of the mark. Any general election in Scotland will still be characterised by a choice between unionist and nationalist candidates, Brexit will be a secondary consideration.

UK politics is now cleft along Leave and Remain lines and the example of Scotland shows that will remain so for the foreseeable future.

We are in an era of post-referendum politics characterised by poor quality and uncivil discourse, a shallow pool of political talent and a media that has muddled news, opinion and gossip.  And Scotland got there first.

The PM talks of moving on. Ain’t going to happen. No matter what happens on March 29.