Monday, 20 November 2017

Brexit Banking and Passporting Blow to UK. The Laddish Victimisation of Women Today.

The Start of Chippolata Yorkshire Puddings
Three dissapointments today, for Frankfurt, Athens and the UK. Via a complex three rounds of votes, with 19 cities bidding to host the European Medicines Agency EMA and the European Banking Authority EBA. The final winners were Amsterdam, which will host the EMA, and Paris, to host the EBA. The harsh reality of Brexit already having an effect on the UK, with these agencies moving out of London.

This was compounded by the probably more serious impact of the comment by Michel Barnier's comment that UK banks will lose their Passporting rights on Brexit. These currently allow any bank in a particular EU location, such as the UK, to offer its services anywhere in the EU. This included overseas banks that have a branch in an EU country. After Brexit, 5,400 British firms could see a stark impact on their current £9bn in revenue every year into Britain, based on their passporting rights.

The cabinet has possibly agreed that the UK will double their financial offer to the EU financial settlement to £40bn - this includes hard brexiteers Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. The Express had warned that this would invoke 'public fury'.

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel is more willing to go into a new election than lead a minority Government after the proposed Jamaica Coalition has broken down, with the Free Democrats saying they won't join in. This has been seized by the Times as a chance for May to exploit Merkel's weakness, whilst the Guardian points out that Brexit is very low on the list of Germany's politics and that things are unlikely to change in the near future.

I gave three hours of IT assistance via the phone today to both the UK and Germany today - and survived relatively unscathed with success in both cases. It was therefore a pleasant relief to have S and L drop by in the afternoon and an evening meal. I thought that I would try to make a crispier toad in the hole by making lots of little Yorkshire puddings with a chippolata each. It sort of worked but the Yorkshires were more prone to stick in the molds, presumably doe to the additional liquid in the sausages.

Our discussions extended to acceptable behaviour versus harassment, arising from the continuing public disclosures of misdemeanors, accusations and possible resignations. There was a worry from the male side that it was becoming increasingly difficult to decide when behaviour and comments towards wom0en were simply humour between colleagues or sexual harassment. I think that ultimately those that worry about where boundaries lie are least likely to actually be offenders, precisely because they are capable of seeing things from a different perspective.

There is an interesting comparison of gender attitudes in 24 countries, conduced by YouGov back in 2015 https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/11/12/global-gender-equality-report/. More disturbing, however, were the results of the Fawcett Societey report "Sounds Familiar", revealing the way young women feel misrepresented and victimised by lad culture where more than 60% experienced that saying no to unwanted attention in pubs and bars could lead to abuse and violence. A significant hardcore of men (nearly 20%) held mysogenistic views towards women and both men (38%) and women (34%) felt that if a woman goes out late at night, wearing a short skirt, gets drunk and is then the victim of a sexual assault, she is totally or partly to blame. Ironically, it is amongst the young, 18 to 24 year old men, that attitudes are most polarised, with laddish attitudes on the one hand and a more sensitive attitudes on the other. Sadly, the indicators for equality had been declining in terms of the UK's global ranking.

There is a summary of the Fawcett Soceity Report here:
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