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Joan Smith: How can religion not have played a part?

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

When Marx described religion as the opium of the people, he was expressing a 19th-century view of the effects of Christianity on the working class. Like many secularists, Marx believed that turning to religion for consolation was both an expression of real suffering and a self-defeating protest against it: hence his analogy with a sedative. In the 21st century, religion is having anything but a sedative effect on people who consider themselves oppressed, and last week's massacre at a US army base highlights the dilemmas posed by militant forms of faith in societies with secular institutions.

Joan Smith: After Marlon King, kick sexism out of football

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Until last week, Marlon King was just another overpaid Premier League footballer. Now he's in prison after being found guilty of a brutal assault on a student, and he's been sacked by his club, Wigan Athletic. The footballer is 6ft 1in, his victim just over 5ft, and she's still recovering from her encounter with a man who clearly can't control himself around women.

Joan Smith: Make no mistake: sex trafficking is real

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Earlier this week, the FBI released the results of a nationwide operation against child sex traffickers. After identifying children who were being sold for sex on the internet, in casinos, on the streets and at truck stops, they arrested 642 people and rescued 47 victims. The operation was carried out over three days last week, just as British journalists, academics and cheerleaders for legalised prostitution were arguing that sex trafficking in this country is mostly a myth.

Joan Smith: First Blair's babes, now it's Dave's dolls

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

There is a famous photograph, taken on 2 May 1997, of Tony Blair surrounded by all but a handful of the 101 women elected as Labour MPs in the previous day's landslide victory. Even at the time it struck me as a little cheesy, but it's one of a series of pictures, including a sleepy Cherie Blair opening the front door in her nightclothes, which sum up the heady atmosphere of Labour's extraordinary first week in power.

Joan Smith: Our 'don't ask' policy on torture demands some answers

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Shortly after the suicide bombings on the East Coast in the autumn of 2001, a debate began in the US about whether it could ever be right to use torture to thwart further terrorist attacks. Most Western liberals were horrified, but we should have been quicker to realise where it might lead: excessive eagerness by some Western security agencies to accept information obtained under torture, and a hard-right American administration signing off on rendition, water-boarding and internment at Guantanamo Bay. It's clear now that one of the unforeseen consequences of 9/11 was a degree of moral confusion at the very top about torture, and a reluctance to be open about it which continues to this day.

Joan Smith: Who benefits from hearing interviews with a paedophile?

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Earlier this week, excerpts from a series of extraordinary tape recordings were played on BBC TV and radio. They were clips from four police interviews with Vanessa George, the nursery worker convicted a couple of weeks ago of horrific offences against young children, and George could be heard initially appearing to co-operate with detectives. As the interviews progressed, George gradually became sullen, refusing pleas from detectives to reveal the identities of the infants she abused. She sounded cold and uncaring, but that's hardly surprising, given the nature of her crimes.

Joan Smith: French sexual tolerance is wearing thin

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Turning on the television news in Paris one evening last week, I was astonished to find the presenters discussing excerpts from a book: "I got into the habit of paying for boys.... All these rituals of the market for youths, of the slave market, excited me enormously.... The abundance of very attractive and immediately available boys put me in a state of desire which I no longer needed to restrain or hide." It was jaw-dropping stuff, even more so when I discovered that the author was the recently-appointed culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand, who is also a nephew of the Socialist former president.

Joan Smith: We stereotype sexual predators, and we get it wrong

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Vanessa, Colin and Angela: they sound like inoffensive neighbours whom you might invite round for a drink. In fact, they're three of the worst paedophiles ever convicted in this country.

Joan Smith: The soldiers who can't help bringing their work home

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The American army has various names for it: it's called "spousal aggression" or "intimate partner violence". These are posh terms for wife-beating, and it's a huge problem in the US military. In the year 2000, after three soldiers at Fort Campbell in Kentucky were charged with murdering their wives or girlfriends, Congress set up a task force to investigate domestic violence on military bases and make recommendations. One of the first places it visited was Fort Bragg in North Carolina, which became notorious only two years later when four army wives were killed by their husbands or ex-husbands in a six-week period; three of the cases involved Special Operations soldiers who had been in Afghanistan, and two of the perpetrators killed themselves as well. In all, there were 832 victims of domestic violence at the base between 2002 and 2004, according to the army's own figures.

Joan Smith: Another expenses scandal – in lap-dancing clubs

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Here's an expenses scandal, if ever there was one: taxpayers are subsidising companies which entertain their employees in lap-dancing clubs.

Joan Smith: Semenya's violation is sport's shame

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

One of the hazards for women in the public eye is an unrelenting inspection of their bodies. On a slow week, the condition of Madonna's upper arms is a favourite topic and then there's always the fascinating subject of breasts. Helen Mirren, who at 64 thrilled the world with her red bikini last summer, was under scrutiny again last week after switching to an all-in-one swimsuit.

Joan Smith: One thing is certain with sharia... men make the rules

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

It's no surprise that Lubna Hussein has been convicted by a Sudanese court. Sudan's President, Omar al-Bashir, came to power in an Islamist-backed coup, and holds the distinction of being the first head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This is not a state where anyone's human rights are respected, and women in particular are subject to arbitrary rulings of the local version of sharia law.

Joan Smith: Unsociable truth behind social networks

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Could Neville Chamberlain have declared war on Germany using Twitter? I don't see why not. Seventy years later, Downing Street tweets. So does the Prime Minister's wife, Sarah, and Gordon Brown himself is on YouTube. Admitting that you don't tweet or endlessly update your social networking site is tantamount to declaring yourself a dinosaur. It got Matthew Parris invited on to the Today programme one morning last week after he mentioned in a column that he'd refused an invitation to contribute to a live Twitter feed (whatever that is) during a lunch to judge a student journalism award.

Joan Smith: Men like Ted Kennedy got feminism off the ground

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

When the American feminist Betty Freidan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963, the book offered startling insights into the discontent of a generation of women who appeared to have made "good" marriages. Jackie Kennedy, widowed only three months earlier, was one of them and her dignity after the assassination of John F Kennedy unified the nation; another was her sister-in-law Joan, whose husband, Ted Kennedy, had taken over JFK's old Senate seat in Massachusetts a few days before his murder. By the time Joan's marriage ended in divorce in 1982, some of the shine had come off the Kennedy clan, as a less deferential media revealed the scale of the private sleaze that made those ideal marriages a sham.

Joan Smith: Women and children are defying the Taliban

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The results from Afghanistan are fantastic. I'm not talking about last week's elections, obviously, but the interim results of a survey on the number of Afghan children who are now attending school. Published last month by Unicef, they show a "massive return" of boys and girls to schools around the country, with the number of female pupils going up by more than 90 per cent.

Joan Smith: This shameful gender segregation

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Two countries, two weddings, two outcomes. In the first instance, a minister in the British government has been accused of bad manners for leaving a Muslim wedding in east London when he was asked to sit in a separate room from his wife. In the second, 41 women and children died when fire broke out in the women's marquee at a wedding party in Kuwait.

Joan Smith: After Baby P – in defence of social workers

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

A shocking revelation turned up in the Daily Mail last month. "Contrary to public perception, social workers appear, on the whole, remarkably good at safeguarding children – once they are on child protection registers," admitted one of the paper's star columnists. Around the country, social workers must have been at risk of cardiac arrest as one of their chief media tormentors (along with The Sun) acknowledged that they sometimes get something right.

Joan Smith: Put your pecs away, Mr Putin – relax and read a book

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

He's been swimming in lakes, riding in mountains, camping in Siberia – and that was just one day of Vlad-imir Putin's summer break. A few days earlier, finding himself at a loose end, he dived in a mini-submarine and attached a transmitter to a whale.

Joan Smith: Men, power and a reality check

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Thirty years after Margaret Thatcher became prime minister, the position of women in British politics could hardly be more dire. David Cameron, William Hague, George Osborne and Chris Grayling hold the top jobs in the shadow Cabinet. Nick Clegg, Vince Cable, Chris Huhne and Edward Davey lead the Liberal Democrats. Only Labour has a woman in one of the very top jobs – Harriet Harman, who was elected deputy leader of the party two years ago – but even she has been denied the deputy prime ministership enjoyed by her predecessor, John Prescott.

Joan Smith: Dave has fallen in with the wrong crowd

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

I doubt whether many people would hesitate if they were offered the choice of an evening with Edward McMillan-Scott, until last week a Conservative MEP, or the right-wing Polish politician Michal Kaminski. McMillan-Scott is by all accounts urbane, popular and committed to mainstream conservative ideas. Kaminski is a fan of General Pinochet, believes that gay men should be called "poofs" and has accused migrant workers from the East of taking Polish jobs.

Joan Smith: If Jamie Oliver can't change our eating habits, who can?

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

It's the story with everything: food, health, class and one of the country's biggest celebrities. Four years ago, Jamie Oliver launched a hugely popular campaign to banish junk food from school dinners; out went burgers, chips and fizzy drinks, and in came jacket potatoes, fresh fruit and yogurt. Oliver's television series Jamie's School Dinners was widely praised, and the Government came up with a £627m healthy-eating initiative for schools. Take-up of school dinners, which fell below half the nation's schoolchildren as long ago as 1984, was expected to rise as parents seized the opportunity to improve their kids' health.

Joan Smith: Nothing 'great' about Biggs's train robbery crime

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

I don't know whether Bruce Reynolds or Ronnie Biggs ever came across WH Auden's poem "Night Mail". In rattling stanzas, Auden evoked the rhythm and romance of a mail train hurrying across the country at night, carrying "letters for the rich, letters for the poor". Unfortunately for the driver of just such a train in August 1963, his coaches were also loaded with a huge quantity of banknotes, which Reynolds and his gang had their eye on. As the train approached a set of signals in Buckinghamshire which were usually green, the driver – Jack Mills, 58, who had taken over the controls at Crewe – was surprised to see first amber and then a red "stop" light. The signals had been changed by the robbers, who swarmed aboard in ski masks when the train halted.

Joan Smith: Just who does Prince Charles think he is?

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Last week, during one of this country's periodic fits of morality, a story emerged about a public figure shamelessly exploiting his privileged position. The man in question is wealthy, well-connected and has been accused on many occasions of avoiding paying huge amounts of tax on his estates and business interests. He's never had a job, does very little work and recently used his influence to stop a development in London which would have created 5,000 much-needed jobs.

Joan Smith: Frumpy outsmarts elegant in our warped politics

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

It was red! It was shiny! It was short! Listening to the chorus of outrage about Caroline Flint's fashion shoot in a women's magazine, I began to wonder if the former Europe minister had posed looking as sultry as Dita von Teese. In fact, as someone sniffily pointed out, she wore chain-store clothing for the photographs, which were taken some time before she resigned, to accompany an interview about her life as a politician.

Joan Smith: We don't do female sacrifice any more, Prime Minister

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

It was a bloodbath. Last week, like a wounded warrior trying to appease vengeful gods, Gordon Brown sacrificed one woman after another in a desperate attempt to save his own skin. By Friday evening, the stench of burning female flesh rose over Westminster as Margaret Beckett and Caroline Flint were added to the pyre, joining Jacqui Smith, Hazel Blears and Beverley Hughes. The cull was drastic, reducing the number of women in the Cabinet from eight, when Tony Blair left office two years ago, to a feeble four. There are now more peers (seven) than women round the cabinet table and Brown need lose only one more to be in the same position as John Major in 1997. So much for a Prime Minister who portrays himself, morning, noon and night, as a politician committed to fairness and equal rights. I mean, pull the other one, mate.