I'm going to start off by saying that Labour's Clive Lewis did something really stupid. It doesn't matter that he said the word "bitch" to a man, any elected politician should be aware that gender specific insults are not fine.
It's important to note that Lewis has admitted his mistake, issued an unequivocal public apology and he certainly won't be making the same error of judgement again.
Now we get to some of the people kicking up a stink about Clive Lewis' use of the word "bitch".
I'm certainly not the first to point out that the right-wing slobs at the Guido Fawkes blog have built a castle on quicksand when it comes to manufacturing outrage about the use of the word "bitch". The Guido Twitter feed is absolutely littered with uses of that word, and they have a sickening track record of dishing out misogynistic abuse against women, including Paul Staines posting a picture of himself in bed with a cardboard cutout of Diane Abbott, attempts to ruin the lives of two very young female Labour Party activists (1 & 2), and an absolute tide of misogynistic abuse hurled at Dawn Foster by Guido acolytes just because she was sitting next to Clive Lewis at the time.
The synthetic outrage from the Tory benches is even more sickening than that of the hypocritical Guido Fawkes shit-slingers.
Tories don't actually give a damn about women and feminist issues, if they did they wouldn't have imposed 86% of the burden of their hard-right austerity dogma onto women. They wouldn't have introduced the vile "rape clause", and they certainly wouldn't be championing a misogynistic throwback who believes in forced pregnancy for the victims of rape and incest as one of their frontrunners to replace Theresa May when they finally decide to stop using her as a human bullet shield.
All the Tories care about is weaponising feminist language in order to smear their political opponents.
If they really care so much about use of the word "bitch" that they want an urgent debate on Clive Lewis for using the word at a man, where were all the calls from Tory MPs for an urgent debate on misogynistic language when the Scottish Tory MP David Mundell was filmed calling Yvette Cooper a bitch last year? Where were the calls for an urgent debate on misogyny when Theresa May decided to quote a vile misogynistic extreme-right Twitter troll in parliament in order to score cheap political points against Jeremy Corbyn?
Of course these opportunistic Tories don't care that one of their colleagues was filmed calling a woman a bitch, or that their leader thought it fine to quote a depraved extreme-right misogynist in parliament. Because to them countering misogyny isn't the point.
Of course the Tories don't care that Clive Lewis has already apologised. Because to them a man learning a lesson about the continued pervasiveness of sexism and sexist language in the 21st Century and apologising about it isn't the point.
Of course the Tories don't care that Clive Lewis has done more to try to actually improve women's lives than they ever have (or ever will) by consistently opposing their ideological obsession with misogynistic austerity dogma. Because to them actively working to improve the lives of ordinary women isn't the point.
They don't care because literally the only value feminist issues actually have to them is as an excuse to launch opportunistic political attacks on one of their opponents before they immediately get back to their day job of actively and consciously impoverishing millions of ordinary women through their obsession with austerity dogma, and forcing rape victims to recount their trauma or face financial punishment.
Hopefully this desperately cynical opportunism backfires on them. Firstly because feminism is the kind of "social justice warrior" stuff that sickens the regressive tabloid-reading hard-right Blue-kipper demographic (which makes up a significant proportion of their voter base these days). And secondly because any remotely sensible feminist knows that a Labour politician using the word "bitch" at a man and then apologising for it is absolutely outweighed by the disgraceful Tory track record of spending seven punishing years actively discriminating against millions of ordinary women with their sexist austerity policies.
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When the Scottish parliament debated the despicable Tory rape clause the Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson advised the UK public to vote against the Tories if they find the rape clause abhorrent.
To get an idea of how abhorrent the Tory rape clause is, consider the fact that it even managed to unite the Scottish Labour Party and the SNP in opposition to it (getting Scottish Labour to agree with the SNP on anything is no mean feat). The Scottish Greens and the Lib-Dems also strongly opposed it.
During the debate the Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said "no woman anywhere should have to prove she's been raped in order to get tax credits for their child. I can't believe in 2017 that I'm having to stand up in the Scottish Parliament and make that argument".
The Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale called the rape clause "an absolutely sickening state of affairs" and quoted from an email from a rape victim in her condemnation of the policy.
The Lib-Dem MSP Alex Cole-Hamilton said that the policy of compelling women to provide evidence that they have been raped in order to obtain Tax Credits for their children "has no place in a civilised society".
The Green MSP Ross Greer said that "when you cut through the tank-riding, bagpipe-playing bravado, Ruth Davidson is just another cruel member of a cruel party".
The whole idea of limiting Tax Credits is abhorrent in itself, especially given the severe wage repression that UK workers have suffered since the Tories came to power in 2010. The majority families receiving tax credits these days are working families, not the unemployed.
The Tory welfare cuts that the abhorrent rape clause relates to will end up driving another 250,000 UK kids into poverty, and that's on top of the 400,000 extra kids growing up in poverty since 2010.
When the issue was voted on the only MSPs to vote against the motion to condemn the rape clause were the Tories. All of the other parties voted in favour. The motion to condemn the rape clause was passed by 91 votes to 31.
During her evasive defence of the rape clause policy (in which she evaded using the word rape) the Scottish Tory leader said that "if people across the UK do not support it, then there is an option on June the 8th to ask someone else to have a go".
In other words, if you find the rape clause abhorrent, you should vote against the Tories.
So take it from Ruth Davidson. If you have a shred of human decency, then make sure to vote against the Tories on June 8th no matter where you live.
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Just look at the state of this bar chart from the Scottish Tories. Just imagine how thick you must imagine your target audience to be in order to try to pull off such a brazen misrepresentation.
The bar chart features on a remarkably pathetic Tory party leaflet that only mentions their own party 6 times and details precisely no policies from the Tory Westminster government whatever (the General Election is about picking MPs to sit in Westminster isn't it?).
Conversely this absurd piece of propaganda mentions the Scottish National Party and their leader Nicola Sturgeon an incredible 19 times.
What is more is that the Scottish Tories actually accuse the SNP of being "obsessed" with the idea of an independence referendum in a leaflet that is 100% dedicated to the subject of opposing an independence referendum and mentions it 7 times!
With no irony at all the leaflet demands that the SNP concentrate on stuff like better "public services" and "safer streets" without mentioning any of their own Westminster government's policies on these issues such as ... err ... cutting public services to the bone all over the UK and ... errr ... destroying 17,000 frontline police jobs between 2010-2015!
Maybe Ruth Davidson would be more honest if she stuck to defending the policies being imposed on Scotland against their will by the Westminster Tories like the hated "Bedroom Tax", the impoverishment of hundreds of thousands of children (not just in Scotland, all over the UK), Theresa May's reckless hard-Brexit posturing, and the absolutely sickening Tory rape clause?
The idiocy of the leaflet is exacerbated by the fact that the Scottish Tories are clearly trying to turn Theresa May's opportunistic self-serving snap election into an unofficial referendum on Scottish independence!
Instead of attempting to persuade unionists that it's their duty to fight for the union that they support in a second independence referendum, they're basically admitting that they know that they've lost before the date has even been set, and that their only chance of stopping it is to try to obstruct the democratic will of the Scottish Parliament (a hubristic "do as you're told" tactic that can only end in eventual defeat).
Imagine how thick you'd have to be in order to swallow this self-contradictory and brazenly misleading drivel from the Scottish Tories, especially in light of the appalling track record the Tories have in Scotland.
From using Scotland as a testing ground for their hated Poll Tax experiment to relegating Scottish constituencies to second class status in Westminster so they can't vote on English laws, but retaining the right of English Tory MPs to vote on Scottish laws like the Scotland Act (from which every amendment by Scottish MPs was removed by English Tory MPs), the Tories have done more to turn the Scottish electorate away from Westminster rule than the SNP ever have.
It beggars belief that Scottish unionists are so blinded by their hatred of the concept of Scottish independence that they're willing to actually embrace the toxic Tories who are actually the ones to have done more to promote the cause of Scottish independence through their misrule over Scotland than the SNP ever did, but it certainly seems to be the case if the polling figures in the woefully misleading Tory bar chart are anything to go by.
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