International Womens Day, an open letter to Jess Phillips

Image credit Belfast City Council

Op-ed: International Women’s Day is a worldwide event that has been observed since the early 1900s and is now recognised each year on March 8.

Equality of the sexes is still a mixed bag and if you look at many countries is non-existent.

This year's theme is Pledge For Parity and you can check it out and 'sign the pledge' by following this link.

Until fairly recently this day had pretty much passed this writer by. That was for a range of reasons not least because she was busy getting on with life and all the trials and tribulations that can bring. Before you say 'ah that shows she is a downtrodden woman' think again.

When I read a piece for Progress Online, one faction of the Labour party, and one for the Huff Post written by Jess Phillips MP, a response is needed.

Why you may ask and I will explain.

Ms Phillips has been busying herself writing damning pieces about the Labour party's chances of election success in 2020. She claims to use the negativity she hears campaigning on the doorstep to criticise the party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn.

However MPs are part of the fight to win hearts, minds and votes and feeding the MSM a constant stream of negativity and me, me, me news is not productive or necessary.

If Ms Phillips is not kept busy enough as a working MP perhaps she could write more supportive articles; so many within Labour who oppose Jeremy Corbyn cite his opposition to various PMs down the years and with more than a ring of the schoolyard claim 'he did it'. But Corbyn was always a man of principles and his record is not bad to say the least.

Monday as MSM reports concentrated on a possible upcoming coup within the Labour Party Phillips petty weekend articles in the same MSM looked like an additional knife in his back to most of us. Mr Corbyn addressed the parliamentary Labour party, PLP, later Monday calling for dissident MPs to end the ‘back-biting and public attacks’.

But Ms Phillips is tweeting Tuesday her International Women's Day article in the Huffington Post UK so surely she has taken note.

Well actually no she has not.

In one tweet Tuesday to promote the article she tweeted "For people who want to read about unity in the Labour Party here you go" which is yet more sniping.

She ends the first paragraph of her report with the sentence "There is one thing I think that we women have that our brothers should envy and replicate - we have each other." But when I sent her a tweet after being appalled at her divisive articles appearing constantly online she promptly blocked me and I reciprocated.

I had read her article and picked up on common ground between us and tweeted accordingly. She writes "My mom died when I was in my twenties. There is no one, nor will there ever be anyone, who inspires me as much."

I tweeted I was not her sister but that I had lost my dad when I was 17 and Mum when I was aged 23 but I was blocked.

She may decide to class me as a troll as I disagree with her and that is up to her. But if you read her tweets today as she blathers on about women and International Women’s Day bear in mind she is apparently a hypocrite.

I choose not to share my personal childhood details other than to say it was tough at times living in a two-up two-down with no bathroom and an outside loo, playing on bombsites and with a Dad suffering unrecognised PTSD treat as a nut case but life was and is tough for many to this day. It was just as tough for my brother although the challenges were probably different.

There is a time for being a professional and there is a time for chatting as friends and to my mind "My mates are wet-your-knickers hilarious" is an inappropriate line in a Labour MPS online writing.

She has to decide if she is one of the gals or an MP just like a boss has to sometimes step away from former colleagues.

And in her International Women’s Day post the snide remarks are there if you want to see them. "Yes we still don't have hardly any of the top jobs and get paid less" is her comment on the Labour Party and parliament.

She has been an elected MP for less than one year. Two senior female MPs refused to work in Corbyn's cabinet.

Unlike Phillips I do not see all women as great for politics. I use Maggie Thatcher as a shining example of what can go wrong. The same is true of male politicians. We are all after all members of the human race and people.

Barbara Castle who features in Made In Dagenham, a movie about women working in the car industry and fighting for basic rights, was a very different kettle of fish.

I could of course go on and on but hopefully the point is made.

Now I am not sure about Phillips but this writer has some reports in the offing attacking the Tories and I need to get on with them.

Courtesy of the Huff Post again:

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MPs will get a taste of their own medicine on Tuesday when a group of sixth form girls will take over the seats on the Commons women and equalities committee.

To mark International Women’s Day, forty teenage girls from across the country will visit parliament and ten of them will be given the chance to grill MPs from the committee.

Labour’s Jess Phillips and Ruth Cadbury, Conservative Mims Davies and SNP MP Angela Crawley, who are used to asking the questions, will appear as witnesses.

Me I just wonder who the ones taking part are?

[I am still awaiting a reply to an email sent to Phillips earlier this week]

[I did not vote for Mr Corbyn for party leader and like all campaigning for their chosen candidate opted to tweet all sorts ahead of the leadership election-now we have a leader my loyalty is a given]