No doubt the government were told by expensive consultants that this could be done too, but whatever the background the bigger problem for me is the press and media which go out of their way to criticise anything this government does, even when it doesn’t warrant it.

As the author said, in their eyes the Uk government is uniquely incompetent. For example ITV news yesterday was reporting on the announcement of action to be taken to help education of kids with a large amount of money thrown in. Instead of it being presented as something positive they found and interviewed a family who were critical of it.

I hope the press and media are included in the inevitable enquiry into to response to the pandemic, but I doubt it.

Well in the vast majority of cases I suspect the electorate vote for a party rather than an individual, so they should support the party. If it’s the electorate, specifically which electorate do they support? The minority who wrote in or the majority who didn’t write in or don’t care?

But you could have it and be asymptotic therefore not in isolation. The mask isn’t to protect the wearer but others. If everybody wears one it will help stop the spread of droplets potentially with virus particles in them. Even if it’s a small benefit it will contribute to keeping R below 1 .

Could you explain specifically why you think women's rights are unequal to mens in both of these areas (and any others you think) As far as I can see women have exactly the same rights in law as men in both pay and opportunity, but there are many factors why the outcomes differ. Most of the differences are down to choices made by women rather than any systemic inequality of rights, or discrimination and indeed there is evidence that women get paid more than men until about the age of 30 when family takes over.

On the representation issue whilst I agree there are not as many women as men in top jobs they are not doing too bad in outcomes. There are gender gaps in educational attainment (across all education, including university and degrees), life expectancy, suicides, homelessness and rough sleeping, substance abuse, victims of violence, deaths and injuries at work, and criminal justice sentencing just for starters. All of these disadvantage men and boys but we hear precious little about them from the powers that be.

Just as an aside in my view you can equate the gender pay gap (given that it depends a lot on how much time is spent at work or furthering your career) to also being the gender "time with your family" gap, or gender "choice as to how you spend your day gap". For some strange reason it is never mentioned as such though!

Just as a point of interest why is it assumed only women like same sex spaces? I certainly don’t like uni sex toilets for example and I don’t know a single man who does. What’s good for the boss’s and all that......

You missed out the continual pushing of man made climate change but otherwise nail on the head in my opinion too.

Good article and I look forward to your future writings.

I am optimistic about Sunderland, last local election the sitting Labour Party lost 10 councillors (not all to conservatives) and at this general election I believe if the Brexit party had not split the vote the 3 sitting labour MPs would have been out.

Whilst of course Brexit will no longer be an issue A change in demographics is also at play here, if Boris does as promised in the north this pLace could fall.

It’s not just the actual permission to build that is the problem but the enforcement (or lack of it) of conditions of planning that follow.

Despite my council imposing quite tight conditions of planing around start times, noise, vibration and control of hgv”s they builder ignored them all from day one.

Despite significant evidence and many complaints the council turned a complete blind eye to their friends the developers and allowed them (and still do) to do what they want.

This is A very large development in a northern city, affecting many many existing communities.

More teeth is needed in this area as well I think, but mainly for the community to be able to force the council to take action where evidence exists.

The homeless crisis is in my view a national disgrace but not many votes in it. I can’t help thinking it’s because the vast majority of them are men. Had they been mainly women it’s far more likely something would have been done before now.

“But the hard truth, as going to the leadership hustings showed me, is that the Conservative Party is the party for men and by men ”

Perhaps you can tell that to all the men who are affected by the large gender gaps in suicide, homelessness, violent crime, sentencing, deaths at work, working in dirty and dangerous jobs, health spend, educational attainment at school, attendance at university, NEET, substance abuse and more.......

They are most certainly not a party for men. Are you conflating the word “family” with woman I wonder? Strange as it may seem families often have men in them, so not having a good family friendly policy affects men too.