Outrageous Excuses 6

Boris writes his column very fast. (That must be why he said women in niqabs looked like "letterboxes".)

Sorry for the racist tweet, I’d taken a sleeping pill. Roseanne Barr, paraphrase

He’s not the person he was then, he’s turned his life around.

Distressed children in detention centres are all “child actors”, says Ann Coulter.


He’s a good person so that must have been his shadow side.

Men do not abuse women because of drink, drugs, stress, narcissist personality disorder, sex addiction, low self-esteem, ADHD, OCD, jealousy, broken hearts, overwork, unemployment or any other b*ll*xology excuses. (@FreedomProgramm. “I don’t care if his pregnant mother was frightened by a two-headed goat.” Daniel Mallory Ortberg, slate.com)

Bravissimo make underwear for larger women, but use average women in their advertising. They say ““We would love to use a wider range of models but this can be a real challenge due to the difficulties in finding models with bigger boobs that are comfortable and confident in front of the camera especially when wearing underwear.” The original complainer says “Other lingerie brands... routinely feature models of a variety of sizes in their marketing, and agencies specifically for plus models exist.” Bravissimo responded: “We are not a plus-sized brand... we don’t make clothes above a size 18.” (Huffington Post)

Australian former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce has written a memoir (Weatherboard and Iron) detailing past affairs that happened while he was married. He claims he was depressed, and self-medicated with “alcohol and carousing in bars”. A psychiatrist told him he needed “structure” in his life so he had an affair, and a child, with a colleague, though at one point he denied paternity. “Somehow I thought that creating doubt by not having all the details might switch this [media] frenzy off. You are not logical when under pressure for weeks,” he said. Finally he said that he wrote the book to “draw attention to poor, rural white Australians who struggled and felt ignored by wider society,” reports the Times. (Aug 2018)

Christopher Chope talked out a bill banning upskirting. He is pro capital punishment and conscription, and against same-sex marriage etc. But “it’s about lack of discussion of private members’ bills”. He has introduced several pointless PMBs himself with the aim of blocking others.

“We are very good pastorally" is one of the first excuses you hear in schools failing working-class kids. Also loads of references to ‘our type of kid’, and a constant reference to differentiation for the less able. (Ros McMullen @RosMcM)


A group of FTSE 350 chairs and chief executives were asked why they didn't appoint more women to boards: 

"I don't think women fit comfortably into the board environment"

"There aren't that many women with the right credentials and depth of experience to sit on the board — the issues covered are extremely complex"

"Most women don't want the hassle or pressure of sitting on a board"
"Shareholders just aren't interested in the make-up of the board, so why should we be?"
"My other board colleagues wouldn't want to appoint a woman on our board"
"All the 'good' women have already been snapped up"
"We have one woman already on the board, so we are done — it is someone else's turn"
"There aren't any vacancies at the moment — if there were I would think about appointing a woman"

"We need to build the pipeline from the bottom — there just aren't enough senior women in this sector"

"I can't just appoint a woman because I want to."(May 2018)

The Flemish highways agency this week admitted it was cutting down trees to stop migrants hiding behind them. (April 2018)

Jeremy Hunt says he “forgot” to declare the purchase of 7 luxury flats, in an “honest mistake”.

The Kennel Club says it doesn’t want to bring in stricter rules (on dog breeding) in case they deter people from registering.

Alexander Nix, boss of Cambridge Analytica, caught on camera explaining how to entrap politicians with prostitutes: “There’s an English thing about being slightly embarrassed when someone starts going off on one like this and you humour him a bit and then you leave.” (March 2018)


Biographer: Norman Mailer was never accused of hurting any women.

Interviewer: He stabbed his wife!

Biographer: Oh, he stabbed his wife, yeah. He... had a complex relationship with women, and he regretted many of the things he said about them. ... His point of view was, well, “I am doing this to create a debate”.


Interviewer: I've been told Dinsdale Piranha nailed your head to the floor.
Stig: No. Never. He was a smashing bloke. He used to buy his mother flowers and that. He was like a brother to me.
Interviewer: But the police have film of Dinsdale actually nailing your head to the floor.
Stig: (pause) Oh yeah, he did that.
Interviewer: Why?
Stig: Well he had to, didn't he? I mean there was nothing else he could do, be fair. I had transgressed the unwritten law.

BREXITWe voted Leave because we hated David Cameron.

We have an obesity crisis so it might be a good thing to have a bit less food. (Aug 2018, on a no-deal Brexit and food shortages.)

Apr 25 Conversation with Brexit voting Brit yesterday.
Him: I voted Brexit to shake things up. 
Me: But you export from the UK all over the EU, won't Brexit impact your business?
Him: No, the govt will cancel Brexit at the last minute, they're just teaching the EU a lesson.
(‏@petertimmins3)

More here, and links to the rest.

It Ends with Revelations

It Ends with Revelations is a 1967 novel by Dodie Smith, author of I Capture the Castle and 101 Dalmatians. It has been reviewed by Clothes in Books, but look out for spoilers!

Smith was always interested in clothes. The heroine, Jill dresses older than her age in "off-black or gunmetal". The two teenage girls she befriends wear miniskirts, white boots and a home-made felt Modigliani shift. The elder has "veils" of long blonde hair, the younger a dark elfin crop that makes her look like a cat. There is a good scene in a coffee bar full of youths who all seem rather dirty or at least "sickly and pale". Angela Carter pointed out that beatniks and hippies stopped wearing the currently fashionable heavy, vividly coloured make-up, and to someone who hadn't seen a naked face since the 30s they did look "dirty and pale".

Jill is married to a famous actor, Miles. After her rough childhood and early life, Miles's money cushions her from unpleasantness. Their marriage is sexless, but loving. They are in "Spa Town" for an out-of-town tryout when Jill meets a handsome widower, Geoffrey, and his two teenage daughters. The girls immediately latch on to her in a somewhat overpowering way. They seem "precocious" and annoying, but it transpires that they grew up without a mother and have clearly educated themselves from books (probably Pelican paperbacks). There is another precocious child - Cyril, the boy actor in the play who seems unsure of his real age.

Apart from the convoluted plot, which reads like a compendium of problem pages, the interest for me was the light shed on pop psychology of the day.

The younger girl is sure she’ll turn out to be “frigid”, the other has feelings, but represses them in case she turns into a “nymphomaniac” like her mother, who was also a “dipsomaniac”. (She was an alcoholic and had many affairs.) They don't hold back when discussing all this with Jill. People can be "sex mad" or "thoroughly repressed".

Eventually Geoffrey tells her the story of his wife's alcoholism. “Her doctor said a psychiatrist would upset her and she just needed patience.”  She periodically “pulled herself together” (presumably "sobered up"), but “she wouldn’t cooperate, see doctors or psychiatrists”. Perhaps I “drove her to drink”, he wonders.

Miles's opinion of Cyril? "The boy’s just a drooling mass of self-pity."

The following year, homosexuality was legalised. Read the book to find out who ends up with whom.