Last autumn 1,070 women won undergraduate places at Oxford University, compared with 1,025 men. The news provoked a snippy article in the New York Times complaining both about how slow Oxford (“the oldest university in the English-speaking world” as they sniffily termed it) had been getting to more than parity of the genders, and about the lack of diversity.

Firstly, in my own college there has been a majority of women undergraduates for years. I recall a rowing dinner where I was seated at dinner as lone male on the girl rower’s table (they saw me as harmless grandad. Yes, well…). and had a stimulating evening among people who were not just good sportswomen but held stunningly witty and clever conversations.

Women grow up quicker than men and in consequence take studying more seriously. Indeed, they remain throughout life more grown-up than men. It has just taken a few centuries to sink in.

Personally, I cannot for the life of me understand why men want to run everything. Let the girls get all the best degrees and best jobs and let us chaps have nice, relaxed lives and live longer. I am really fed up with all the stress, and want to eat chocolate and have no onerous responsibilities, like washing dishes. Will anyone join my new Society for Utter Male Dependency”? Entry fee: two pints of beer and some really funny jokes about politicians.

What does it matter for a woman if she has one extra child, anyway?

“Changes to the climate are being felt in every region of the planet, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned.

“A newly published study by the UN body, which assesses the science related to climate change, found that many of these changes “are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years” – and that some are “irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years”.

“The 234 scientists behind the research calculate that global temperatures are likely to rise by 1.5C over the next 20 years, in breach of the 2015 Paris climate agreement. A total of 195 nations agreed to a goal to “hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2C”, and to pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels”, says the IPCC. (Holly Clemence, The Week UK, 10 Aug 2021)

My comment: Even without the climate warming deniers and science denigrators it will be very difficult to stop the warming, or even affect it at all. Covid has highlighted the selfishness and ignorance of swathes of people with big egos and little to justify them. It’s so easy and convenient to listen to the chorus of self-interested deniers, resist change and attack the people who know something useful and positive.

An eight-year-old Hindu boy is being held in protective custody after becoming the youngest person ever to be charged with blasphemy in Pakistan.
The child’s “family is in hiding” and many other members of the Hindu community in the deeply conservative Rahim Yar Khan district of Punjab “have fled their homes” amid an outbreak of violence following the boy’s release on bail last week,

Troops have been deployed and 20 people arrested after a Muslim mob attacked a local Hindu temple. Ahmed Nawaz, a police spokesperson for the district, said that “some 70 to 80 protesters” stormed the temple last Wednesday and “smashed the windows”. The mob also “burned down the temple’s main door and damaged statues”, and police are “searching for another 100 suspects” thought to have been involved in the violence.

The unnamed child is “accused of intentionally urinating on a carpet in the library of a madrassa, where religious books were kept”. The penalty for blasphemy in Pakistan can be death.

A member of the boy’s family told the paper that “he is not even aware of such blasphemy issues”, adding: “He still doesn’t understand what his crime was and why he was kept in jail for a week. We have left our shops and work, the entire community is scared and we fear backlash. We don’t want to return to this area. We don’t see any concrete and meaningful action will be taken against the culprits or to safeguard the minorities living here.”

Eastern Eye, which is London-based, says the storming of the temple is “the latest in a string of assaults on Hindu places of worship in recent years, including an attack late last year that saw around 1,500 people overrun and set fire to a temple in northwestern Pakistan”.

The stark “uptick in violence comes as leaders in Pakistan and India have been locked in an increasingly harsh war of words”, with both sides accusing the other of inflaming religious sentiments to target minorities in their respective countries”.

Blasphemy legislation in Pakistan has historically been “disproportionately used” to target religious minority groups, according to The Guardian. Muslims represent 97% of the country’s population, while Hindus make up around 2%.
No executions have taken place since the death penalty was introduced for the crime of blasphemy in 1986, but “suspects are often attacked and sometimes killed by mobs”, the paper adds.

Ramesh Kumar, head of the Pakistan Hindu Council, said: “The attack on the temple and blasphemy allegations against the eight-year-old minor boy have really shocked me. More than a hundred homes of the Hindu community have been emptied due to fear of attack.”

Kapil Dev, a human rights activist campaigning for equal citizenship for religious minorities, added: “I demand charges against the boy are immediately dropped, and urge the government to provide security for the family and those forced to flee. (The Guardian, 10 Aug 2021)

My comment: An eight year old boy? Out of all proportion. A good talking-to and a lecture on respect would have been quite enough. Now expect a further ratcheting up of inter-communal hatred. If this is organized religion give me unorganized humanism – and Epicureanism.

“In other centuries people wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But in our century they only want to be entertained”.

Novelist Michael Crichton, quoted in The American Interest