David Cameron’s absurd medical policies + Bangalore MHRAs hold legal seminar for men

David Cameron: How do you see the moon – is it through a telescope, or a microscope?
By Mike Buchanan: Justice for men & boys (and the women who love them) has reported at length about the disastrous impact on the National Health Service of the decades-old policy to increase the proportion of doctors who are women. Today, 70% of medical students in the UK are women.
Dr Vernon Coleman, a veteran campaigner and writer, was pointing out in his books 30+ years ago that the policy would in time create chaos, and he’s been proven right. Female doctors are far more likely than male doctors to:

- quit the profession altogether (very few male doctors have partners willing to finance this option)

- work part-time rather than full-time, whether or not they have children

- refuse to work unsocial hours, including weekends

- refuse to work in the most demanding environments, including Accident and Emergency

It’s widely accepted that large parts of the NHS is in crisis, and spending out of control. The government knows that the prime cause of the problem has been the feminisation of the service, but cannot admit as much publicly. The  government’s strategy to ‘solve’ the crisis is to train more doctors, and doubtless 70% of them will be women. It costs £250,000 to train a doctor. British men collectively pay 72% of the income tax collected in the UK, and women only 28%. To borrow a phrase once memorably employed by Janet Bloomfield, the strategy is batshit insane.

And what of another field in which female representation has been increasing for decades, education? It’s widely accepted that the standard of state education has been in decline for decades, despite ‘grade inflation’ being used to hide the stark reality. One of the few occasions I’ve cheered a statement made by David Cameron during Prime Minister’s Questions was on 27 June 2012. Liz Kendall, a Labour MP, had asked him if he planned to bring back O-levels and CSE-style exams, the forerunners to the more recent GCSE exams, generally taken when pupils are 16 years old. He replied:

What my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary explained in great detail in yesterday’s debate is that we want to have in our country an absolute gold standard of exams that are about rigour and high standards. The tragedy is that we inherited from the previous Government a system that was being progressively dumbed down, where Britain was falling down the league tables and GCSE questions included things such as, ‘How do you see the moon – is it through a telescope, or a microscope?’ Government Members think we need a rigorous system, and that is what we are going to put in place.

Time will tell whether a rigorous system is put in place. I won’t hold my breath.
There’s been a considerable debate over many years with respect to the impact of increasing the proportion of female teachers in the education system. The consensus appears to be that female teachers focus more effort on girls than boys, as do male teachers, albeit to a lesser degree. They mark them more highly when given the opportunity to do so. They also make greater efforts to stoke the ambitions of girls, and the assessment systems – with more of an emphasis on continuous assessment, less of an emphasis on formal exams – tend to play to girls’ strengths rather than boys’ strengths. It’s clear that many female teachers struggle to cope with the natural boisterousness of boys, as evidenced by the relentless increase in the number of boys diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (‘ADHD’) and medicated accordingly. These and a host of other factors have led to a situation where for every two men in tertiary education today, there are three women.
I recently submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department for Education concerning the gender balance of the teacher population since 1970. The following tables have been created from the data received today:

(Click to enlarge)

The picture is one of a steady decline in the proportion of male teachers. Men now constitute about a quarter of all teachers in the UK – one in eight primary school teachers, and three in eight secondary school teachers. In parallel with the increase in the proportion of teachers who are women, we’ve witnessed the mass introduction of classroom assistants – overwhelmingly female, it need hardly be said. Classroom assistants were unheard of when I attended school (1964 – 1975).
The field of education has strong parallels with the field of medicine over the past few decades:

- increasing female representation (although four out of seven unemployed people are men)

- declining standards

- increasing burden on the taxpayer

Channel 4 has recently been running a fascinating series about a state school, Educating Yorkshire. The differential treatment of the boys and girls has to be seen to be believed. In one programme the focus was on two pupils – a very volatile girl of about 16, and a generally mild-mannered boy of about the same age. The two of them had a fight one lunchtime, and their treatment at the hands of the teachers couldn’t have been more different. When describing the girl, the teachers would say she was ‘a character’, she was ‘feisty’ etc. She received no punishment with respect to the incident, while the boy was sent to an ‘anger management class’ which consisted of a 1:1 session with a female teacher. His spirit had clearly been broken by the incident, and yet he blamed himself entirely. The female teacher appeared happy to let him carry on doing so.
A small anecdote. The civil servant at the Department of Education who processed my inquiry happened to be of the female persuasion (they usually are). As is my custom, I emailed her to thank her for supplying the information. She replied:

‘Your very welcome.’

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Bangalore MHRAs hold legal seminar for men
By Anil Kumar: Bangalore is known as silicon valley of India. Within couple of miles from my house, there are numerous multinational software companies starting from IBM, Microsoft, Oracle to Intel and Accenture. The guys working in these companies earn a lot of foreign exchange for India, which keeps this predominantly poor country running and helps it buy crude oil. Recently, the Indian Rupee crashed 30% against US dollar creating panic all around and then recovered slightly. Bangalore contributes to 33% of India’s software exports or 22 Billion US dollars. In spite of this, the Indian Government loves to harass and torture the young men working in these multinational companies by using false dowry cases. The police often goes to these companies to arrest the men, on a mere complaint by wife without conducting any investigation or collecting any evidences.
Till now, the Indian men’s rights movement runs predominantly by the steam provided by the men facing abuse and false cases by wives, though a few men anticipating false rape cases from their girlfriends have also started approaching us now. The Indian legal system is almost dysfunctional which takes couple years for the trial to start mostly due to huge number of pending cases. The Indian lawyers rarely provide reliable service to men. So, many men decide to learn the laws themselves so that their lawyers can not take them for a ride. Many of these men prepare their own legal strategies, as lawyers almost always use fixed templates, which often damage cases of litigants.

Last month, the Confidare Men’s Rights Community Center at Bangalore conducted a legal seminar for Men facing marital disputes. 15 men participated and it was conducted by noted men’s activist Virag Dhulia. The topics included the various laws related to marriage, the domestic violence laws and the criminal laws like dowry laws and section 498a of Indian Penal Code. A few details about criminal procedure Codes and civil procedure codes were also covered. The behaviour of the courts and police in different scenarios were explained. A reputed lawyer from Bangalore High Court (equivalent to Supreme Court of a State in USA) was also invited to answer a few queries of the participants. The fees for the seminar were 498 India Rupees, which is about 8 USD. If we use purchase power parity, it can be a fee about 30 USD in USA. The figure of 498 was used instead of 500, because 498 is synonymous with India’s notorious law Section 498a or the law against cruelty to wives. Any man, his parents and siblings accused of this cruelty are presumed guilty until proven innocent. This law is actually an addition to India’s law against dowry demand by husbands and husband’s parents. Last year, more than 120,000 cases of section 498a were filed in India. This law is designed specifically for facilitating blackmail and extortion of husbands and their parents.
As India is a predominantly conservative country, when a marriage breaks the society almost always blames the man. The angry parents of the woman then try to file a couple of false cases on him, which we MRAs call as “The Package”. A typical package consists of criminal cases of cruelty against wife or section 498a dowry harassment case under dowry prohibition act. This is followed by similar allegations with demands for compensation and restraining orders under the civil domestic violence act. Then, the woman goes to a family court to seek maintenance or alimony. So, a typical package contains 3 cases in three different courts. The man and his family have to apply for bails in the criminal cases. Often, the trial of criminal cases and also family court cases take 5 to 6 years. The men lose a lot of money and time running around courts for all these days. They mainly have to go to each court date just for showing their attendance to the judges. It gets worse if the wife moves to a different city or a city where her parents live and files the cases there.
One way men can escape from these long drawn court battles is by negotiating an out of court settlement with wife. However, most women seek pound of flesh here. Its not surprising to see a woman demanding huge alimony, which is many times more than the income of the husband for the duration of marriage. Often, women also expect money or property from in-laws, as culturally the family of the husband is expected to be responsible for providing for the woman. So, if the parents of a man have 2 houses and 10 acres of agricultural land, the wife may demand one house for herself or half of the agricultural property, even when the duration of marriage is just 2 or 3 years. If the husband and his parents do not comply to these extortionist demands, then they risk criminal cases of cruelty to woman and false dowry harassment cases.
The lawyers and police often seek a piece of the pie for themselves in that out of court settlement amount, as the entire system is highly corrupt and insensitive. So, either men and their parents give in to extortion or they choose to get ready to fight a bitter court battle. The MHRAs generally suggest men to fight their way out rather than surrendering to the extortion process facilitated by law enforcement and the court system. So, the men who learn about the laws, and read citations and judgments, get empowered to fight back in the court system. Then, the slow dysfunctional system extracts a price from the women as well.
Nowadays, a lot of men are suing their wives for perjury, often defying the advice of their own lawyers. The lawyers generally do not try to fight aggressively for their male clients, as they do not wish to annoy the judges by being pro-male. In Indian family courts, a man can represent himself without employing a lawyer.
The legal awareness seminars help men learn the whole life cycle of marital problems and court battles that last from a year to almost a decade. If a man has high Legal Quotient, he will most likely reduce his lawyer fees, his financial losses, any risks to his health, and is likely to be much more peaceful being free from all confusion and uncertainties. He is also less likely to panic and he will not give in to all the stress that he is subjected to by police or courts during his marital problems.
Recently in Bangalore, a Software Engineer stabbed his wife 49 times killing her, and then committed suicide by jumping from 13th floor of his apartment. If such men approach MHRAs, these unfortunate incidents could have been avoided. Sadly, men themselves live in denial of men’s issues in India and most do not seek help until it is too late. Bangalore has a population of 9 million people who live in about 500 square miles of area, which tells us there are potentially hundreds of thousands of men in need of help.

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