Gareth Mead Interview

As you might have noticed,   my piece a while about Gareth Mead – the social housing manager suspended and humiliated over his  sex life – has been getting quite a few comments lately. The reason being is that it was the piece I wrote was mentioned in Inside Housing – the social housing trade [...]

Last minute plea to the Chancellor: Cut the smoking tax now

It’s well known that Allistair Darling is a regular visitor to The Third Estate, and with Labour’s budget due tomorrow I thought I would hit him with a last minute plea. For the sake of millions of low earners, cut the smoking tax now.
It does not need repeating that the tax raised by smoking far [...]

A hideous little witch hunt and a personal catastrophe: Defend Gareth Mead

Tonight a man’s life and livelihood hangs in the balance. He has been savagely denigrated in the national press, and the most personal details of his life laid bare. And tonight he is suspended by his employer and looks set to be sacked. His crime? To engage in the wrong kind of sexual role play [...]

Pub Landlord Nick Hogan Jailed over Smoking Ban

A collection has been set up by Old Holborn to help Hogan who is jail for non-payment of a huge fine. To donate click here.
Pub landlord Nick Hogan has been jailed  for 6 months over the smoking ban. Basically he was lumped with costs and fines totalling more than 10k after several breaches – including [...]

Meanwhile, the government mandates and demands sexual discrimination

The proposed equality bill has generated much debate – in particular the question of whether churches should be banned from discriminating on grounds of sexual orientation. Yet what strikes me is the sheer hypocrisy of these measures, from a government which has actively institutionalised such discrimination.
Under laws that went into force last year, the new [...]

Tab Houses: A Case of Unintended Consequence

OK I will admit it. The study I cited a few days ago – investigating the social costs of “passive non-smoking” – was not entirely factual. In fact you could go as far as to say that it did not exist and there is in fact no Professor Wyfman. What has however been recently released [...]

A Sledgehammer to Crack a Nutt

This government is not fond of people who disagree with them. Witness the Serious Organised Crime Act (Socpa), the swingeing restrictions on protesting within audible distance of parliament. The government do not like to hear voices of dissent, and especially when those voices join together in a chorus. So with the growing consensus of outrage [...]

Too Ready To Follow Orders?

If you have ever wondered why it is that the British people – unlike many others - have not managed to have a revolution in the past three centuries, then some  pictures I took yesterday might go some way to explaining.
It was a Sunday afternoon and I was outside Waterloo station. The word outside is emphasised for a [...]

Skinny celebrities, ‘real women’ and misogynist vitriol

Well apparently September is fashion season in London. This is probably not common knowledge in the left blogosphere. In fact, as somebody who invariably dresses in bad leather jackets and beanies, catwalk events barely registered on my radar until the shitstorm kicked up a few years ago about so-called ’size zero’ models. It was a strange moment [...]

Birth, pain, and why we still need feminist obstetrics

Today the Observer published an extremely alarming report that Dr Denis Walsh, “one of the countries most influential midwives,” has argued that women should be receiving less pain relief in child-birth, in favour of “yoga, hypnosis, massage, support from their partners, hydrotherapy and birthing pools as natural ways of alleviating their pain.” Walsh mixes up [...]