Women MPs must stop whingeing — and man up
single strivers, unmarried partners with few legal rights, and divorcees living in poverty in old age. She says the Lib Dems ought to be about social justice — that’s like saying we want everyone in the world to have clean water. You’d hardly say the bloody opposite.
She opposes the Government’s £26,000 cap on benefits, but isn’t getting better support f or all women the highest priority of all?
Teather has joined Louise Mensch in my slop bucket of females who’ve let the side down. Mensch, chick-lit author and wife of an American music
LiFe isn’t a level playing field. Women make up half t he el ectorate, but less than a quarter of the House of Commons, and a fifth of the House of Lords.
We desperately need more female MPs, but i want the 146 who have already clawed their way onto the green benches to man up, stop whingeing and to fight dirty.
each one carries the hopes of so many ordinary women who don’t have any power (other than a vote), or any ability to change the way the country is governed. Female MPs carry more responsibility than men, which is why i get furious when they bleat about how tough life is in Westminster.
The latest one to throw in the towel is Lib Dem Sarah Teather, the youngest MP when elected in 2003, overturning a Labour majority of 13,000 in Brent Central. Sarah was Minister for Children and Families, but lost her job in a reshuffle last year. She’s standing down at the next election, complaining that Nick Clegg’s plan to make immigrants pay a £1,000 deposit when applying for a visa left her feeling ‘catastrophically depressed’.
Statements like that make me suicidal. Modern politics is about wheeling and dealing, compromising and arriving at a consensus.
Once i t might have been about high ideals and lofty principles, but these days there’s little difference between the parties — leaving voters thoroughly disenchanted.
We want policies that relate to the real world. Sarah’s prime concern should be helping other women — those who work, stay- at- home mums, business millionaire, suddenly quit her job in the middle of a parliament to spend more time with her family on the other side of the Atlantic.
Sod her constituents, male or female. She now has a social networking site, newspaper columns, and is a regular on television — so much for helping the sisterhood. We will never attract more women to politics if the ones who get elected turn out to be so feeble.
Check out the current reality. in the Cabinet, there are only four women out of 22. Of the nine ministers who attend but don’t vote, only one is female. Women are woefully underrepresented at ministerial level in Whitehall. There are none in Defence, the Treasury, environment, Transport, and only one out of five in Justice, Health, and Work and Pensions.
Aren’t there female soldiers, bank managers, scientists and airline pilots? They can do these jobs, and yet they can’t create the laws surrounding them.
is the life of a female MP really that much tougher than a woman packing boxes in a factory, serving on a till or sewing shirts in a sweatshop? Sarah Teather, that’s what real women call work.