[Clogeroo]

Who is this?

[TattoodGirl]

Clogeroo Clogeroo:

Who is this?

its Hugh Grant the actor, he was busted for soliciting sex.

[BartSimpson]

TattoodGirl TattoodGirl:

$1:

So if some good may come from this then perhaps some young ladies will be dissuaded from this pursuit and maybe, just maybe, this may be the impetus for some others of them to quit.

I really do hope you are right.

I do, too.


It sounds as if you have some experience counseling women involved in this. If there's an agency you're linked with perhaps you could list a donation link on here and maybe raise a few bucks to help these girls out?

[TattoodGirl]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

TattoodGirl TattoodGirl:

$1:

So if some good may come from this then perhaps some young ladies will be dissuaded from this pursuit and maybe, just maybe, this may be the impetus for some others of them to quit.

I really do hope you are right.

I do, too.


It sounds as if you have some experience counseling women involved in this. If there's an agency you're linked with perhaps you could list a donation link on here and maybe raise a few bucks to help these girls out?

Hey Bart, that is a great idea.

Here is just some in the Vancouver area, but im sure people could find plenty in their hometowns.
http://www.wish-vancouver.net/
http://atira.bc.ca/
http://www.deyas.org/
http://www.covenanthouse.org/

Of course there is so many more, but these are some of them. Cheers

[GreatBriton]

Soldiers who had leg each blown off return to duty

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Two British soldiers won't let a small matter like having one leg prevent them from continuing to fight for their country....


Courage ... Aveuta and Andy
rejoin unit in Cyprus



EXCLUSIVE Army pals are fighting fit


From TOM NEWTON DUNN
Defence Editor, in Cyprus
December 13 2006

TWO Army pals who each had a leg blown off in different war zones defeated their disability yesterday — reporting back for duty together.

Fusilier Aveuta Tuila, 25, and Drummer Andy Barlow, 20, are on course to pass standard infantry tests and are even prepared to see battle again.

They were yesterday welcomed back as heroes at the Cyprus base of the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.

But the keen sportsmen — who played in the battalion rugby side together — were incredibly modest about their heroism and determination to get on with their careers.

Machine-gunner Andy said: “We just had a bad day at the office. As far as I’m concerned, none of it means I have to give up the life I want and the job I love.”

And Tuila — known as Big T — said: “So you get blown up. S**t happens. The leg isn’t going to grow back.


On duty ... Aveuta and Andy back at work


“You’ve got a choice. You mope around or you learn to live with it and get back on with the rest of your life.”

Big T’s left foot was shattered by a roadside bomb that tore through his thinly armoured Land Rover in Iraq in September last year.

He recalled: “Doctors gave me the choice of saving it, but they said it would leave me in pain for three years. I couldn’t be bothered with that, so I told them to take it off.”

Andy, from Bolton, Lancashire, was wounded in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province in September this year. A patrol that left his observation post walked into an old Soviet minefield.

Two paras were blown up. Andy sprinted to help and stepped on a mine himself.

He said: “There were a lot of other guys in trouble so I had to tie my own tourniquet just above the knee.”

Commanding Officer Lt Col Peter Merriman said: “They are two very brave men.”


thesun.co.uk

[GreatBriton]

Police ars shocked at the rate of the killings. The Yorkshire Ripper in the late 1970s killed five prostitutes in the space of six weeks (he went on to kill 13 women in total) whereas the current serial killer has killed at least five prostitutes in the space of six DAYS. He even surpasses the notorious Jack the Ripper, who took quite a bit longer to murder five prostitutes.




Times Online



December 13, 2006



Dr Nat Carey (centre) has been working with scene-of-crime officers today (Terry Bradford/AFP/Getty Images)



Pathologist prepares for Ipswich post-mortem

Elsa McLaren and Adam Fresco


A top Home Office pathologist was preparing tonight to carry out post-mortems on the bodies of the two latest victims of a Suffolk serial killer thought to have murdered five Ipswich prostitutes.

Police believe the two women are the sex workers Paula Clennell, 24, and Annette Nicholls, 29, but their formal identification has been delayed as forensic teams painstakingly comb the wasteland where the bodies were found yesterday, 150 yards apart.

As darkness fell, a private ambulance removed the body of one of the women, taking it for examination at Ipswich hospital by Dr Nat Carey, who also performed post-mortems on Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, the two schoolgirls killed in Soham by Ian Huntley in 2002.

Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull, who is leading the inquiry, said that families of the two women had been "forewarned to expect the worst".

He said it was important that Dr Carey carry out the post-mortems since he also examined the bodies of the first three victims.

The Suffolk Police team today began sifting through a "vast volume of information" from more than 2,000 phone calls from members of the public.

All day today, the two bodies remained where they were found just yards from the A14, although they were covered by two white tents to protect them from the weather.

Several scenes-of-crime officers dressing in white forensic suits stood outside each tent inside a large police cordon.

Mr Gull said earlier today: "In some respects it seems callous to leave the bodies in the open like this. We are trying to provide as much evidence as possible. They need to remain there.

"We need to find out who is responsible and the best way we can do that is by taking our time."

Soil samples and vegetation were taken from the scene for forensic examination to see if they had come from another area, brought by the killer, as detectives tried to piece together possible clues.

Mr Gull used a press conference this morning to repeat his appeal for anyone with information to contact police.

He said that between 6am and 11pm yesterday, 2,199 phone calls were made to Suffolk Police as part of the largest murder investigation in its history.

"Our task is to sift through this vast volume of information, to prioritise our inquiries into these murders," Mr Gull said.

"In each of the three murder inquiries we have a significant gap between when the women were last seen and the discovery of their bodies. We need to find out where these women were between these times."

Last night three prostitutes were reported missing, but following police inquiries all have been traced and are safe and well.

The women's murders have happened at a rate unprecedented in modern British criminal history.

The first two victims, Gemma Adams, 25, and Tania Nichol, 19, disappeared from the Ipswich red-light district in October and November. Their naked bodies were found two miles apart in the same stream earlier this month.

Yesterday, it was confirmed that the naked body of a woman found in woods at nearby Nacton on Sunday was that of Anneli Alderton, 24.

Police have today released a new photograph of Ms Alderton, who came from Colchester, Essex, which they hope will unearth information about the days leading up to her death.

Though the victims have been killed in different ways – Ms Alderton was strangled but the bodies of Ms Adams and Ms Nichol show no signs of physical trauma – there is little doubt that a serial killer is at large.

The bodies have all been dumped close to the A12 and A14 to the south of Ipswich.

There was speculation last night that the killer may have held the bodies of the women before dumping them.

Mr Gull spoke today of the moment when he heard the two bodies were discovered yesterday.

"I was in a meeting with other commanders when I heard this breaking news," he said. "There was stunned silence. Tragic desperate news. I now fear the worst."

Mr Gull said that Suffolk Police was getting good support from the public, media and colleagues in other forces. He said that a reward of £25,000 [[$50,000]] has been offered by the News of the World newspaper.

Suffolk has a force of only 1,300 officers and more than 30 officers have been seconded through the national mutual aid agreement with many more on their way.

Mr Gull said the killer had so far only targeted prostitutes and there was no suggestion that other women might be at risk. But he added: "We are coming into the festive period and people are going to be out and about. We would advise them to take care."
********************************************



The TimesDecember 13, 2006
Suffolk murders

Sex worker killer matches toll of Victorian Jack the Ripper

Murders bear an eerie resemblance to those of Jack the Ripper (who also killed 5 prostitutes like the current murderer) and a 1960s killer known as Jack the Stripper (who dumped his prostitute victims' bodies naked, just like the current killer)

Stewart Tendler, Crime Correspondent


Jack the Ripper - whose killings remain unsolved - killed 5 prostitutes in the dark streets of Victorian London in 1888. Queen Victoria herself criticised the police's handling of the case


In little more than a month the Ipswich murderer has managed to equal the grisly record of Jack the Ripper more than a century ago.

Jack the Ripper, like his modern counterpart, struck in red light areas, picking up prostitutes who worked in the gaslit streets of East London in the 1880s.

His five attacks took place through the summer and autumn of 1888. Despite his appearances on the streets of Whitechapel the women continued to ply for trade.

Each of the girls was killed and eviscerated. In one frenzied night in September 1888, the Ripper struck twice.

He taunted Scotland Yard but he was never caught. Criticism of the police failure was even voiced by Queen Victoria and the commissioner of the day was forced to retire.

In the early 1960s, Scotland Yard failed to track down another killer, named Jack the Stripper, who attacked prostitutes in West London and who may have killed at least seven. All were picked up in red light areas, murdered, stripped and stored possibly in a garage before being left in the Thames or alleyways.

The struggle to catch Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, who struck in red-light areas in the 1970s and early 1980s was also dogged by police failures. Sutcliffe killed 13 women, often striking them with a hammer and gouging or stabbing them.

Almost all were prostitutes working in Bradford, Leeds, Manchester and Huddersfield. Police repeatedly blundered and in the aftermath of the capture of Sutcliffe, now in Broadmoor, a highly critical report led to a national overhaul of major investigations.

In 2003 Tony Hardy, the Bin Bag Killer, was caught after luring three prostitutes to his council flat. He was also nicknamed the Camden Ripper and was eventually jailed.

John Haigh, the Acid Bath Killer, horrified Britain in the post-war 1940s. He admitted killing nine times, often to steal cash. Victims' bodies were dissolved in a bath of acid.

Twenty years later the Moors Murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, killed five. In the 1970s homosesxual killer Dennis Nilsen killed 15 young men after luring them to his homes in North London.

dailymail.co.uk
***************************************

Suffolk Ripper: global reaction




Borneo Bulletin ... news has spread globally



By LACHLAN CARTWRIGHT and ALI MARTIN
December 13, 2006



THE Suffolk ripper has fuelled a huge response from media around the world.

In Australia The Sydney Morning Herald said:

"British police hunting a possible serial killer targeting prostitutes said they found two more bodies and that they believed five sex workers had now been found dead in the last ten days."

Melbourne's Herald Sun reported: "Women were yesterday warned not to walk alone after dark as the hunt for a Ripper-style serial killer took another sinister turn.

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation said: "British police have discovered two more bodies as they hunt for a serial killer who preys on prostitutes.

The latest bodies bring the total number to five, police said Tuesday."

American news network CNN reported that Paula Clennell had voiced her fears in a televised interview just days before she vanished in Ipswich.

South African news website IOL said the killings carry grisly echoes of the horrors of Jack the Ripper, the infamous 19th-century murderer of east London prostitutes.



iAfrica.com highlighted the rich football heritage of the area where the prostitutes were taken from saying: "In the red light district around the Portman Road stadium, where Sir Bobby Robson and Sir Alf Ramsey once led Ipswich Town to footballing glory, there was no sign of working girls on the street on Tuesday night."

The news has even been reported in such places as Borneo (The Borneo Bulletin), Israel (Jerusalem Post), Czech Republic (ABS-CBNNEWS.com), United Arab Emirates (Khaleej Times), Lebanon (terra.net), China (China Business Weekly), Qatar (The Peninsula), Japan (Japan Today), Turkey (TurkishPress.com) and India (Calcutta Telegraph).

thesun.co.uk

[Clogeroo]

$1:

And played in the '98 Super Bowl.....

[SprCForr]

Drive on, Troop!

Inspiring.

[Regina]

You are and can still discuss them. How is that an abuse. Any of his cut and pastes that have no relevance to anything but Great Britain are put here. You seem to have found it alright.

[Regina]

Whatever.........

[GreatBriton]

Aldermaston, in Berkshire, is a gigantic factory - with around 1,100 buildings - where Britain designs, tests and builds its nuclear bombs. And the biggest construction project in Britain is underway as this huge place is getting bigger. And, like America's Area 51, the base is highly Top Secret and not much is known about some of the things that are done there.

It is now illegal for countries to test nuclear bombs, but Aldermaston has Orion, one of the world's most advanced and most powerful lasers which, when fired at a piece of material just 1 millimetre across, mimics the conditions that exist in a nuclear detonation.

Experts believe that Britain and the U.S. are both looking at new kinds of nuclear bombs, with smaller payloads, which could more easily be used as battlefield "tactical nukes", an option that both governments officially deny considering.

Aldermaston has just installed Blue Oak, a supercomputer capable of three trillion calculations per second.

This year an order was placed for the Larch computer which, if it is now in operation, would be the most powerful computing device in Western Europe.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
See where Britain designs and builds its nuclear bombs

By EDWARD HEATHCOAT AMORY

13th December 2006


War Games: Britain's secret nuclear weapons factory in west Berkshire is the size of a village - and getting larger




Most people, if they were going to pick a spot to build the instruments of Armageddon, probably wouldn't choose suburban west Berkshire.

But that is where Britain designs and builds its nuclear bombs.

Aldermaston is currently the scene of what its owners describe as the largest building programme in Britain, equivalent to the construction of Heathrow's Terminal Five.

Already vast - there are more than 1,100 buildings at Aldermaston alone - it's becoming far larger.

But although the taxpayer is funding this massive project, we have no clear idea of exactly what they are doing there, or how much it is costing.

What we do know, despite official denials, is that the only plausible explanation for this hive of activity is the creation of a new generation of British nuclear bombs.

And this is interesting because the Prime Minister has assured Parliament that, in advance of the national debate that he says he wants on the successor to our Trident missile system, no decision has yet been taken on the future of our nuclear deterrent.

What evidence it is possible to deduce about the activities inside Aldermaston's closely guarded 700 acres would suggest that this Prime Ministerial declaration, like so many others before it, is misleading at best and an outright lie at worst.

Ministers say all the activity is about maintaining the current Trident warheads, but that excuse doesn't stand up to even a brief exposure to the facts.

What are they building at Aldermaston? First, they have started the construction of one of the world's most advanced lasers, the Orion project.

This will allow scientists to fire a laser, from ten different angles, at a fragment of material one millimetre across.

It will heat the fragment to three million degrees Celsius, and is 1,000 times more powerful than Aldermaston's current 'Helen' laser.

A Ministry Of Defence spokesman says: "This replicates on a very small scale conditions that would exist at the heart of a nuclear detonation."

Our bomb-builders need this piece of equipment because we have signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

We can no longer do real tests on new nuclear bombs, so scientists have to find other ways to try out new ideas in bomb-making.

The second piece of equipment required is a hydrodynamic testing facility.

This looks at the behaviour of plutonium and other such material under the impact of massive blasts of high explosives, and replicates the information that would in the past have been gathered from underground tests.

The Atomic Weapons Establishment, the private company which operates Aldermaston, says that it plans the "construction of a new hydrodynamics research facility, known as the Core Punch Facility".

This, according to a leading American nuclear scientist, Greg Mello, is really useful only if you are trying to design a new nuclear bomb.

Next, our bomb-makers need computers, so that they can simulate the effects of their new nuclear bombs in virtual reality, now that they are no longer allowed to test them for real.

Aldermaston has just installed Blue Oak, a supercomputer capable of three trillion calculations per second.

This year an order was placed for the Larch computer which, if it is now in operation, would be the most powerful computing device in Western Europe.

And if that isn't enough, then consider that Aldermaston, which already employs 4,000 people, has within the past year recruited 90 scientists, 250 engineers and numerous technicians.

And it plans to recruit another 700 staff in the next two years.

These new people are being told clearly what they are coming to Berkshire to do: build a bomb.

Clive Marsh, AWE's chief scientist, says that he and his colleagues work to give Britain "the ability to provide a new nuclear warhead...most of our research is conducted in this capability area".

On top of all this, AWE is also building - or planning to build - office blocks to accommodate all the new recruits, a new facility for uranium component manufacturing and further manufacturing facilities for the non-nuclear parts of the bomb.

It is also planning an entire new complex for handling the high explosives that set off the plutonium in the bomb, and a new facility for extracting tritium, a vital radioactive material of which are stocks are gradually diminishing.

On a separate site, at Burghfield, seven miles away from Aldermaston, AWE is planning yet another complex, this time to assemble the new bombs.

The Government continues to insist that all of this work is necessary merely to maintain the current Trident warheads, but no one believes it.

What we do know is that the warheads of nuclear bombs gradually decay, as the plutonium 'pits' at their core get helium bubbles in them and become brittle.

No one really knows what happens when the pits become corrupted in this way, and a former chief scientific adviser to the Government wrote: "Plutonium, as metal, wasn't known to mankind until 50-odd years ago. So we only have 50 years of data."

As an extra twist, experts believe that Britain and the U.S. are both looking at new kinds of nuclear bombs, with smaller payloads, which could more easily be used as battlefield "tactical nukes", an option that both governments officially deny considering.

In America, the Bush administration has concluded that new bombs are required, and within the next few weeks Congress is due to decide between two possible designs for a Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW).

Once America switches to a new system, Britain will be effectively obliged to do so as well, as our nuclear programme is almost entirely dependent on the U.S.

But because of international nuclear treaties, we can't simply buy the new bombs from the U.S. - we have to make our own.

Which would explain why British and American scientists are collaborating on 16 joint working groups, and why, in 2004 alone, AWE staff made 180 visits to 29 U.S. nuclear establishments, while U.S. scientists made 128 visits to Aldermaston.

The Berkshire facility is actually run by Don Cook, an American nuclear scientist. So, given that Aldermaston is now the site of a secret and massive project to build a new British nuclear warhead, what will it cost us?

A senior Whitehall source told me that over time, the most expensive bit of an independent British nuclear deterrent is maintaining the capability to manufacture our own warheads.

But since 1992, the Government hasn't published figures revealing even the annual cost of the nuclear deterrent, let alone its component parts. We can see that spending on Aldermaston is rising.

Last year, the Government announced a £1 billion three-year boost to its funding.

In 2003, it had committed 5.3 billion over 25 years.

The White Paper on our nuclear future, which came out last month, claimed that Aldermaston would cost up to 3 per cent of the defence budget, which works out at about £100million a year.

But no one is seriously pretending that this will even begin to cover all the costs associated with its huge expansion programme.

Costain, the construction giant currently doing some work for AWE in Berkshire, recently told City analysts that the building programme alone at Aldermaston will cost £12 billion over 12 years.

One way of working out what it will really cost is to look at what the U.S., which is more open about such matters, spends on similar facilities.

Its equivalent to our laser system has cost £2 billion and rising.

Its computer facilities cost £300 million a year.

Its uranium production line costs £500 million, and its material science facility another £500million.

Whatever the exact numbers, there is little doubt that reproducing all this in Berkshire is going to be extremely expensive, and that the Government would prefer the facts are never made public.

Given the vast costs, and complex moral considerations, of a replacement for Trident, all this needs the kind of public debate that the Government has promised but clearly doesn't plan to deliver.

Nuclear bombs are different, and in a democratic country we deserve a proper discussion about their construction and use.

And at the centre of that discussion must be the giant construction project in Berkshire that the Government is attempting to conceal from public scrutiny.

dailymail.co.uk

[FuzzyLogic]

Wow! I wonder if new research into pulse weapons isn't driving research at this facility. There are a number of things that nukes are used for besides just making big explosions.

[GreatBriton]

Brian Ashton who, under coach Sir Clive Woodward, made England the most potent attacking team in the world during the 2001 Six Nations Championship (28 tries in four consecutive matches against Wales, Italy, Scotland and France which has never been equalled by anyone) will become the World Champions' new coach probably as early as next week. Can the most innovative attacking coach in English rugby wake up the sleeping giant?

England set to make Ashton the main man
By PETER JACKSON

13th December 2006





Planning ahead: Ashton with England director of rugby Rob Andrew



England plan to install Brian Ashton as their new head coach next week and put their creaking World Cup defence in his hands.

His promotion to the vacancy left by Andy Robinson’s dismissal is expected to be ratified by the RFU’s 13-member management board. The appointment of a team manager may be deferred until after the World Cup in 10 months.

Dean Richards remains the outstanding candidate but any immediate move for the Harlequins director of rugby would involve the RFU in compensation of up to £500,000 and almost certainly the demand of a five-year contract through to the World Cup in 2011. The magnitude of such a decision is difficult to overstate.

In a pre-emptive strike, Quins chief executive Mark Evans said: ‘Dean is under contract and we have no wish to lose his services. We have had no approach and I would confidently expect that before any is made, the other party would, as a matter of courtesy, speak to his current employers.

‘If the phone call comes and I hope it doesn’t, I am not going to negotiate in the public domain by putting any figure on what we would require. There is a difference between severance payment when someone has been sacked and compensation for someone who has been head-hunted. The length of the contract involved is by no means the only factor.’


England's Jason Robinson leaves Wales's Gareth Thomas flat on his face


Richards, therefore, may be seen as more of a long-term solution, even if that increases the pressure on Rob Andrew to manage team affairs in a caretaker capacity, something which he has understandably dismissed as outside his terms of reference as director of rugby.

Andrew said: ‘This is not a straightforward exercise in terms of plucking someone out of the air. We cannot be held to any timescale over any complex negotiations which take place.’

Having identified the need for a managerial figure rather than another coach in addition to the three in situ, Andrew refused to say whether any ‘complex negotiations’ related to a prospective team manager.

Ashton’s appointment, by contrast, ought to be relatively uncomplicated despite two England coaches, believed to be John Wells and Mike Ford, failing to sign revised contracts.

Unless an alternative miraculously materialises, Andrew’s recommendation to next week’s board meeting will be that England pin their faith in Ashton’s ability to persevere with the ‘challenging’ multi-dimensional strategy which clearly proved too challenging for too many players last month.

Ashton will hope to last rather longer than in his previous guise as an international coach. Ireland, then flushed by Jack Charlton’s success with the Republic’s football team, put him in charge almost exactly 10 years ago in the belief that another English north-countryman would work similar wonders.

He made such a favourable impression that within three months Ireland put him under a six-year contract, the longest in Test history. Less than a year later, in February 1998 following a home defeat by Scotland, he had resigned.

‘I don’t know whose game plan that was but it wasn’t mine,’ said Ashton immediately after the match, but the writing had been on the wall before then. Friends on both sides of the Irish Sea claimed he had been consistently undermined by the man he was supposed to be working with — Ireland manager Pat Whelan.

Asked before he quit about their differences behind a troubled relationship, Ashton said: ‘I’m English, Pat’s Irish. I’m a professional, he’s an amateur. So there are going to be differences.’

At Twickenham, Sir Clive Woodward, or plain Clive as he was then, watched and waited over the fate of an opponent in that season’s Five Nations. By the end of that season, Woodward had got Ashton, ‘an exceptional coach and a joy to work with.’

Ashton’s influence turned England into a supreme attacking force best reflected by 28 tries in four consecutive matches against Wales, Italy, Scotland and France during the 2001 Six Nations — a strike power not matched by any team in the world before or since.

Woodward duly acknowledged England’s debt to Ashton, that ‘nobody deserves more credit for opening up the players’ and coaches’ minds as to how the game could be played.’

The Lancastrian stood down the following year, for what Woodward called ‘personal reasons,’ but by then nobody was going to stop England’s World Cup chariot. Their style enhanced a reputation earned in the glory days at Bath and made him the most innovative attacking coach in the English game.

Now he is close to being placed in overall charge of his greatest coaching challenge, putting the chariot together again. Despite last month’s wreckage, the 60-year-old will relish the chance to make England competitive.

Mark Mapletoft, the former Gloucester, Saracens, Harlequins and London Irish fly half who played once for England, is to join the RFU’s staff of national academy coaches.

dailymail.co.uk

[GreatBriton]

Liberté, egalité, fraternité - but less so for women

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the Gender Gap Report of 2006, France ranks just SEVENTIETH in the world when it comes to the rights and the freedom that women have in their. In Britain, women got the vote in 1918 but in France they didn't get the vote until as recently as 1944 (so much for Republics, then). And when feminists known as the Suffragettes were fighting for women's rights in Britain right at the start of the 20th century a similar movement of feminists didn't appear in France until the 1970s.

On the other hand Britain, the world's oldest surviving democracy, does very well. It is in 9th place for women's rights and freedom and British women have more freedom and rights than Canadian and American women who rank 14th and 22nd in the world respectively.

Needless to say the Scandinavian nations are in the 1st to 4th places.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Liberté, egalité, fraternité - but less so for women

Most French women still find themselves less than equal in politics and the corporate world.

By Susan Sachs | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor


PARIS – When Catherine Bailhache was running for a regional council seat in the Atlantic coast area of Brittany earlier this month, she asked for help from the party bosses. But the men - and the kingpins of her center-right party were men - suddenly had other things to do.

She blames the macho streak in French politics.


UNPRECEDENTED: Last month, Ségolène Royal (r.) became France's first female major-party presidential candidate. Germany got its first female Chancellor last year and Britain got its first female Prime Minister way back in 1979.

CHARLES PLATIAU/REUTERS




"There's a certain political culture that believes women should not get involved in politics because they have to take care of their homes and families," says Ms. Bailhache.

The national symbol of France is the bare-breasted warrior-mother, Marianne, who is said to represent liberty, reason, and homeland.

But, despite Ségolène Royal's recent nomination as the country's first female major-party presidential candidate, most real-life French women still find themselves on the sidelines of the political battlefield and less than equal in the corporate world.

A new study by the World Economic Forum, released last month, ranked France in 70th place in terms of parity between men and women in public and economic life, out of a field of 115 countries representing 90 percent of the world's population.

France was beaten by, among others, China, Peru, Russia, Poland, Sri Lanka, and South Africa. The ranking of the United States was 22, Canada was 14th, and the United Kingdom was ninth best in overall success in closing the gender gap.

The Forum, a nonprofit organization based in Switzerland, is best known for its annual gatherings of world political and business leaders. Its rankings were based on comparisons of men's and women's salaries, their presence in high-level jobs, access to higher education, representation in political decisionmaking, and life expectancy.

The report's authors said it is "a snapshot of where men and women stand" on fundamental rights, and measures how close countries have come to closing the gender gap.

On average, most of the surveyed countries have nearly closed the gap in education and health and have made progress in the leveling the economic playing field, said Saadia Zahidi , an economist and director of the Forum's women leadership program. The biggest disparities, she said, were in political life empowerment.

The study's conclusions about France tallied with French research.

Women represent 46 percent of the working population but only one-quarter of the managerial jobs in the private sector, according to the national antidiscrimination agency.

Their salaries, on average, are 21 percent lower than the salaries of men in comparable jobs. Also, only 12 percent of the deputies in the National Assembly - and only 17 percent in the Senate - are women.

Many reasons have been offered for the dearth of women in elective office. Some commentators have said it has to do with the fact that the French were ruled by a queen only a handful of times in their history. The newspaper, Le Monde, said it is because women were excluded so long from "citizenship" and only got the right to vote in 1944.

Others point to the French feminist movement that flourished in the 1970s and focused more on social legislation, such as the right to free contraception and legal abortions, than on breaking into male-dominated political party cliques.

Even now, some French feminists bridle at the notion that French women need to fight for their place in a male-dominated political world.

Clara Dupont-Monod, a writer and activist, for example, has criticized Ms. Royal's description of her candidacy as a revolution.

"You make your gender an electoral argument," she wrote last week in the magazine Marianne. "I distrust that because it raises the argument of a battle of the sexes ... and the idea was to make a revolution with men, not against them."

Other French women, however, credit Royal with taking a new tack by making an end-run around the hidebound party establishment and appealing directly to party members to win the Socialist primary last month.

"She defeated those boys and it was extraordinary, because the Socialist Party, like all parties, is very male," says Odile Hellier, the French owner of the Village Voice bookstore in Paris. "But it was painful for them to accept that she was chosen by popular demand."

Some analysts have suggested that Royal's presidential run could have the spin-off effect of political parties nominating more women for next year's parliamentary elections.

A 2000 law only encourages the parties to put forward as many women as men for national office, although it requires them to do so for nominations for the European Parliament and city and regional elections.
The parity law has increased women's representation on local bodies in France. But once elected, they are often relegated to the sidelines again.

"The law is being applied and often there is the same number of women as men on the town councils," said Ms. Bailhache, who lost her bid for a seat on the regional council but has kept her city council seat in Guerande. "But the deputy mayors are all men. Those jobs are appointed by the mayors and almost all of them are still men."

Gender Gap Report 2006 (Freedom of women in each country)

Overall ranking and score (1=equality):

1. Sweden .8133
2. Norway .7994
3. Finland .7958
4. Iceland .7813
5. Germany .7524
6. Philippines .7516
7. New Zealand .7509
8. Denmark .7462
9. United Kingdom .7365
10. Ireland .7335
----------------------------------------------------------
14. Canada .7165
22. United States .7042
46. Romania .6797
63. China .6560
70. France .6520
98. India .6010
115. Yemen .4762

Source: World Economic Forum


csmonitor.com

[GreatBriton]

The French were destroyed by the English - and they are an embarrassment to the Heineken Cup.


French farce is a disgrace

Matthew Pryor



Leicester Tigers 57 Bourgoin 3



Leicester Tigers celebrate another try as the English team record their biggest ever victory in the Heineken Cup




Bourgoin are an annoying embarrassment to the Heineken Cup. They are like the desultory relative at Christmas who has to be invited because they qualify as family and then sits silently in the best chair with a face like thunder.

Bourgoin are interested only in the French Championship, in which they have been excellent and keep qualifying for the Heineken Cup, in which they do not appear to care and have lost 19 of their 22 matches in the past four seasons.

Their preoccupation with domestic matters is perhaps understandable. Bourgoin is an unfashionable town in the Rhône-Alpes region, with a population of only 23,000, and the rugby team have a small squad. They have an important match away to Montauban, who are place behind them in seventh, this weekend.

That is why their France players — including Julien Bonnaire, the captain — were not playing. Forget the stories about them being injured.

Leicester, whose day of reckoning will be away to Munster next month, were good, but it was difficult to get too excited when the first half resembled a training day.

Bourgoin waved them through on the blindside enthusiastically, Lewis Moody hurtling that way to score the opening try of his first hat-trick since he was a schoolboy, after only 29 seconds of action.England need to have him like this at blindside flanker — clear and roving — and stop trying to fit a square peg in a round hole by asking him to be the chief recycler on the openside.

Scorers:Leicester: Tries: Moody 3 (1min, 59, 61), Ellis (7), Jennings 2 (17, 77), Gibson (31), Varndell (51). Conversions: Goode 7. Penalty goal: Goode (6). Bourgoin: Penalty goal: Laloo (55).

Scoring sequence (Leicester first) 7-0, 10-0, 15-0, 22-0, 29-0 (half-time) 36-0, 36-3, 43-3, 50-3, 57-3.


Leicester: S Vesty (rep: T Varndell, 48 ); G Murphy, D Hipkiss (rep: J Murphy, 64), D Gibson, L Lloyd; A Goode, H Ellis (rep: S Bemand, 44); A Moreno, J Buckland, M Castrogiovanni (rep: J White, 48 ), L Deacon (rep: J Hamilton, 55), B Kay, L Moody (rep: B Deacon, 62), S Jennings, M Corry.


Bourgoin: F Denos; G Davis, G Bousses (rep: B Boyet, 77), R Coetzee (rep: M Nicolas, 60), J-F Coux; S Laloo, M Prendergast (rep: M Parra, 60); D Khinchagishvili, B Cabello (rep: R Vigneaux, 42), P Cardanali (rep: O Sourgens 42), D Fevre, C Del Fava, J Frier (rep: A Diotallevi, 35; rep: B Williams, 68 ), M Rennie, B Monzeglio.

Referee: A Rolland (Ireland).

Attendance: 16,000.

www.timesonline.co.uk . . .