Wimmins' Rights, But Only For The Approved

Labour's most monumentally ridiculous MEP has been pronouncing on wimmins' rights again. Well, sort of. Compare and contrast the attitude in consecutive articles, because I'm buggered if I can square the two.

Let's start with the latter, a barb at Michael O'Leary of Ryanair fame, with whom Hairy Moneyball is rather pissed off owing to a calendar he produces for charidee.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the history of this tale, last year I criticised the mindless objectification of women in this article for the Guardian’s Comment is Free after he published a calendar for charity which contained his ’sexiest airline stewards’ in which they ’bared all’.

Do I care that O’Leary labels me as anti-fun?

I hear sniggering. Please stop, this is serious.

Not a bit, because there is a serious point to be made here.

See? Told ya'.

My concern is the message that charities, which align themselves with this calendar, are sending to their supporters.

The charity is inadvertently aligning itself with a linear one dimensional idea of beauty that objectifies women in the most nauseating way.

The inference, one presumes, is that they were forced into posing. Because if 800 of them enthusiastically applied to be included, which they did, I would have thought that an advocate of the rights of women would be right behind them. Yet Hairy doesn't like this perfectly cosy relationship between management and staff. Hmmm.

OK. She doesn't like women desperately clawing each other's eyes out to be merely eye candy, however much they would like to be so. I suppose that's consistent with her previous misandrist guff.

What she would really like to see is women trying to better themselves. You know, like instead of being viewed as merely decoration, perhaps doing something more worthwhile. Aspiring to a higher station. That's what Hairy would like to see.

Or, as she illustrated today, perhaps not.

It would appear that Mr. Berlusconi is not choosing these female candidates for their knowledge of and commitment to politics. His selection of women parliamentarians accurately matches his choice of women companions outside his marriage. Although I am sure these young women are fine, upstanding citizens, by no stretch of the imagination are they suited for high political office.

Because they are pretty, you see, and that just won't do. They should stick to their previous jobs as TV actresses and topless models. Oh hold on, Hairy doesn't like objectification of women, she wants them to aspire to higher things, doesn't she? Or, oh I don't know ... Jeez, I'm confused now.

Hairy then goes on to list a few female MEPs she does like. All of whom have done nothing more in their lives than be wedded to politics ... leftist politics at that.

According to Hairy, only professional politicians should be afforded a seat at the EU, even if democratically elected. And her denouement is even more scathing, and a disgrace to the democratic history of not only British politics, but also the roots of her own party.

It is quite simply disgraceful for the likes of Berlusconi to put forward women who have neither the experience or qualifications to be successful in politics. It undermines all women when some, even a very few, female colleagues are not up to the job.

One can imagine the same kind of accusations being directed at early Labour parliamentarians, by Tories and Liberals, at the turn of the 20th century.

But then, Hairy has never been one to promote women at all really. Just those who she, personally, deems worthy.