Harmania

We have been accustomed to pygmy politicians with pigmy brains - and I should apologize to pigmies at this point - so it is with a certain weariness that i listen to the reports of Haeeiet Harman's self-inflating comments over the past few days. You could always respect, even if you didn't agree with, the assertions of a Germaine Greer or Betty Friedan, because there was an intellectual force behind their thoughts and writings.

Sadly, Harman doesn't even come close.

It would be an advance in our belief system if we acknowledged that just as individuals exercise different preferences, so do people from different cultures, so do people of different gender. We accept that North American born athletes are more likely to end up playing baseball or basketball, and that European athletes express a preference for soccer and Indian athletes re more likely to play hockey or cricket. I don't recall any move by the politically correct to campaign for quotas for American kids who might otherwise be denied the opportunity to play cricket.

And while we are on the subject of cricket, how about gender equality in this country. Is it not scandalous that women are not selected to plau against the Aussies? And if we are to aspire to true equality should we not expect each side to be made up by 5 1/2 men and 5 1/2 women.

Harriet Harman is like Don Quixote tilting at windmills. The battles have been fought long ago and largely won. Women have achieved high positions in areas where they choose to compete. But I would bet, for example, that you are more likely to find a woman as CEO of a successful company manufacturing lingerie than carburettors.

Politics is an arena where there are no good measures for competence. Arguments can always be made that it is someone else's fault and that one's mediocrity had no bearing on a disastrous outcome. So it is possible, for example, for people like John Prescott and Harriet Harman (was the office of Deputy Labour leader made for them?) to carry on for years without achieving anything or managing anything with competence.

Harman failed as a minister and was sacked by Blair. She then contrived to get a number of jobs which did not require any special accountability or competence. We can see a similar pattern with Prescott. He was given a significant ministry at the start of the Blair government. He screwed up and was thereafter given various non-jobs with important-sounding titles and the opportunity to play croquet at Dorneywood.

One wonders why these pople ar listened to at all.