GETTY Good for Theresa May! Her choice of holiday is to get some exercise in the pure mountain air

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Why the uproar, girls? He’s only telling the truth. Certainly some of the pronouncements of J4MB are pretty off the wall. For example it says parents should be able to send their sons to schools with male-only teachers because female teachers discriminate against boys. So far, so daft, but Mr Davies is not a member of nor a spokesman for this group – he was simply addressing it. In the course of my political life I addressed meetings of CND and the Young Fabians.

David Owen came and addressed the Bow Group, an organisation of young Conservatives, while he was a Labour foreign secretary. It is called engaging in debate. Therefore an MP deserves to be judged by his own remarks, not the pronouncements of whatever organisation he is addressing. He said, if reports are correct, that there has been a deafening silence over the discrimination against men in custody cases.

Theresa May's most fashionable shoes Thu, August 4, 2016 Theresa May is set to become Britain's new Prime Minister on Wednesday July 13th. We take a look at her most fashionable and at times eccentric collection of footwear Play slideshow 1 of 22

Angela Rayner, Labour’s shadow women and equalities secretary, says he should “become a figure of fun”. That is how seriously she takes family life. Davies went on to say that women want equality but only on terms that suit them. He is right. The drive for positive discrimination is not a drive for equality, it is a campaign for favourable treatment. That was not what feminists such as Germaine Greer were campaigning for in the 1970s. That was not my aim when I campaigned for the Equal Opportunities Act as a student. I wanted only a level playing field, not one tilted in my favour. For years men had to work five years longer than women to qualify for the state pension despite dying younger. Yet when pension age was finally equalised did women cheer?

GETTY Angela Rayner, Labour’s shadow women and equalities secretary, says be a 'figure of fun'

No, they moaned about loss of “rights”. Too many scheme to thwart separated fathers seeing children and regularly get away with it. They commit crime and escape jail because they have children. ­Aspiring parliamentarians have all-women shortlists (which is another way of saying all men excluded shortlists).And now there seems to be a flood of false sexual allegations against men, with women protected by anonymity and seemingly secure from prosecution no matter how gross the lie. Yet, as Davies observes, the men do not fight back but instead pander to it all in the name of political correctness. Feeble fools! When will they wake up?

Responsible pet owners will despair Responsible owners microchip their pets, believing that if they become lost they will be identified and returned. This theory was blown apart a few years ago when a dog called Scamp was re-homed by a shelter despite having been chipped. The new “owners” refused to reunite him with the real ones. Now in an even sillier case Petlog, the microchipping firm, has identified a beloved cat but refused to pass on details to the owners of its whereabouts because of “data-protection”. Happily common sense prevailed and the cat has now been returned. I once had an unfortunate constituent who bought a car in good faith which then proved to have been stolen.

GETTY Responsible owners microchip their pets, believing that if they become lost they will be identified

It was taken and returned to its rightful owner but what we do for a lump of metal we do not do for a living, loved creature. Keeping an animal which has been genuinely identified as someone else’s is an act of theft. However Petlog says “a microchip registration should not be taken as proof of ownership but rather it is a record of ‘keepership’, ie where a pet normally resides”. I reckon they must have had a chip in their brains.

NHS treatments must be rationed The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) has called upon Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, pictured, to ban the rationing of cataract operations in hospitals. In 1998 when I was shadowing that very post I pointed out that the NHS had rationed since its earliest years with the introduction of prescription charges by Bevan, himself the first example. I also said that rationing would get worse if we did not have a “mature debate” about delivering healthcare rather than just sticking our heads in the sand and clinging to the disproved theory that the NHS was always going to be able to provide healthcare free, immediately and meet every last demand. That was 18 years ago and, with a record four million people waiting for various operations, still our heads are in the sand.

GETTY The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) has called upon Jeremy Hunt

I don’t like bad language but I applaud the judge who swore back at the racist I hate bad language and especially when it emanates from those sufficiently educated to be able to call upon a more extensive vocabulary but I find myself defending an instance of it for the second time on this page. The first was when the Oxford cox turned the Thames blue during a boat race and I gently asked what else you could expect if you park a microphone in a boat filled with men sweating and striving under intense pressure. Today I applaud judge Patricia Lynch, who swore back at a nasty, foul-mouthed racist who was ranting obscene abuse at her as she sentenced him.