Reasons to Support the Miss Great Britain Party

Reasons to Support the Miss Great Britain Party

If I was one of the good people of Haltemprice and Howden I would be thinking very hard before I voted next month. With both the Liberal Democrats and the government failing to put up candidates it would appear the best chance tactical voters have of removing a right wing Tory is probably to support the Miss Great Britain Party. That Davis’s recent resignation was an ego trip is beyond question, however the question of whether or not it was a principled move is somewhat harder to answer.

The notion that Davis has become an overnight libertarian is simply nonsense. It is worth remembering that Davis has failed to ever support a single piece of gay rights legislation and even voted against the repealing of Section 28. Regarding other Tory fetishes Davis is a supporter of the death penalty, zero tolerance policing and curbing immigration. The fact he has the support of lefties like Benn and Bob Marshall Andrews is frankly bizzare.

Regarding the question of detention without charge it is worth remembering that Davis was an enthusiastic supporter of the 28 day detention law so it seems to me that it’s not the principle of the proposal he’s campaigning against it’s the degree of it. While one could regard this as noble do we really believe that it’s really the thought of the extra 14 days that has prompted him in to action.

It is known that Davis is on the traditionally right wing side of the Tories and it is known that he’s a potential threat to Cameron as we already know he has run for the Tory leadership twice. Having now defined himself as a political maverick Davis now has the potential to prove a thorn in any future governments side and has now attained an element of bargaining power against any future Prime Minister.

The greatest tragedy of this drama is that civil liberties are now becoming the ideological domain of the right wing. There is a strong case to be made against I.D cards, CCTV and the erosion of civil liberties, however I would rather that this case was being made by a candidate who doesn’t oppose gay rights, trade union rights and a minimum wage for Britain’s poorest workers. If we want to keep out another right wing Tory then it seems the best way to do so is to vote for the right honourable Gemma Dawn Garrett of the Miss Great Britain Party.

Lesbians of the world come out!

Lesbians of the world come out!


“Some women can’t say the word lesbian… even when their mouth is full of one”

For anybody living under the impression that the gay community in Britain is any less patriarchal than wider society the results of the Independent on Sunday’s 2008 Pink List must have been an eye-opener. The list of Britain’s 101 most ‘influential’ gays and lesbians was unlikely to be ground-breaking but the fact that the list was made up of 83 men and only 18 women suggests a wide disparity in the mainstream gay hierarchy, having said this I could confidently predict that if the list had been a gay rich list the gender balance would probably have been equally skewed. Bisexuals and transgender people however fared even worse with out a single mention.

What the list reveals though is a far wider problem in the LGBT community; there is not a single significant lesbian role model for young people. While one could turn on the television any night of the week and see reasonably realistic depictions of gay males can we say the same about lesbians? When was the last time a mainstream publication was launched with a lesbian target market? Gay men have Attitude, GT and all sorts of other alternative FHM magazines but what about lesbians? This poverty of lesbians in the public eye is epitomised by the inclusion of 1980s pop diva Samantha Fox on the pink list: the reason being because of an appearance on Celebrity Wife Swap.

One of the great problems with the depiction of lesbians in the media is that so much of it feels targeted at men, be it the lesbian antics of TATU or soft porno movies along the lines of Bound or even the gruesome spectacle that was Cruel Intensions. Even the great majority of lesbian porn is aimed at men. As I write this I’m trying to wrack my brain for a single high profile lesbian writer in a single daily newspaper or a single lesbian pop star or entertainer… who would have ever thought Alex Parks had the potential to be revolutionary? Other media omissions have included the recent Channel 4 gay season which was almost entirely dedicated to the plight of gay men, in fact arguably the centrepiece of the season was a drama called Clapham Junction which on one hand insinuated that every man in London as a closeted homosexual but on the other hand didn’t have a single lesbian character. Similarly Bad Girls insinuated that the only place in society one can find lesbians is in prison.

One could justify this sexist whitewash by saying that the media is reflective of viewer demands. In some ways the problems I have outlined are problems of a wider society in which all of the media institutions and the majority of the worlds money in the hands of men. Nevertheless there have always been and are today a number of brave and inspiring lesbians and I can only conclude that if the media and wider society do not change their outlook soon then young lesbians across the country can look forward to yet another few years of having Samantha Fox as their best public face and after hundreds of years of being overlooked by British law and whitewashed by our media then that would be tragic.

Cheer Up Stephen Frail

Following the news that Stephen Frail is being kept on by Hearts throughout the pre-season period I thought I would give my prediction about what will happen at Tynecastle over the next couple of years.Personally I take what Romanov says at face value, I believe that he honestly wants hearts to be a Euro power, I believe that he sees himself as a Roman Abramavich figure that likes the glamour of a football team. However I don’t think Romanov cares whether or not that team is Hearts, in fact he offered his money to other clubs first.

Anyway now that hearts have finished a lowly 8th and there is no sign of Euro football and the best players have all gone I think he cant help but lose interest, we already know that next season is likely to be the last one at Tynecastle but if and when Hearts fail to reach the UEFA cup next year I cant see Romanov maintaining any interest in the Hearts project.Another bottom 6 performance and Hearts fans may actually take action, if they boycott season tickets then the club loses its main lifeblood at a point when they are moving to a stadium of 40,000+ which would mean effectively you could turn up at Murrayfield and get your own wing of the stadium with no need to book, the atmosphere will be non-existent and the turnout will be dire.

Romanov is no footballing tactician, his interventions are personal, he didn’t intervene to get rid of Presley, Hartley, Webster and Gordon because they were bad players, he did it for personal reasons, similarly we know he effectively disposed of Burley, Rix etc for the same reasons.

On the topic of management and playing staff I think it’s reasonable to assume that any club known to be run and bankrolled by a controlling dynasty are going to find it very hard to attract either strong independent management or players of the calibre that Hearts have lost over the last few years. What self-respecting well-known player/manager would want to tarnish their own image with a stint at the ‘circus club’? On a similar point as HFC are paying the highest wages in the country outside Glasgow it means that in the long run wages will have to be capped and cut in order to try to balance the books, which will further repel any careerist players who are considering playing for Scotland’s 8th best team.

My prediction is that Romanov will keep running the circus until the end of next season, I don’t think he will bring in an independent manager because I think he likes the control, however my prediction is that hostility from fans and poor economics will eventually make him pull out, there's no need for him to try and own a euro footballing power if they don’t get in to Europe.

At the end of next season I predict Romanov will pull out and leave them with Murrayfield, a huge debt and a shattered fan base. Even from a Hibs perspective this is bad news, the hilarity and novelty of the ‘big team’ being bankrupted will have worn off long before the end of the first season without a derby. In short, unless there are big changes then Hearts are fucked…