Gender politics

Hear hear to Rosemary Behan who has today managed to put into words my feelings towards the incessant stream of drivel being spouted by government ministers on the Today program each morning.

The most woeful thing about all this from my point of view is it seems to be the women who are the worst offenders (Hewitt, Primarolo, Smith, Blears, Jowell, Harman).

If I believed in the conspiracy theories peddled by our more strident feminist writers, it would almost seem as though these women were being deliberately thrust in the limelight by our dominant male hegemony as part of a covert mission to maintain the current gender power imbalance by *proving* that women make dreadful politicians and should get back in the kitchen, but then that would just be silly, and would belie the real reason, which is Gordon Brown's astonishing track record in nipping in the bud any sign of real talent (a.k.a. potential threats to his increasingly tenuous position) and instead surrounding himself with incompetent yes-men of either sex.