Baroness Nicholson 'cancelled' by Booker board

[BaronessSnippyPantsofCroneArmy]

They will not rest until every disobedient woman is purged from society.

www.thebookseller.com/news/booker-prize-nicholson-barr-1207926

@ScrimpshawTheSecond

Ah, sorry, wrong list, I think. This is the Trustees:

The trustees of The Booker Prize Foundation are:

Chaired by Mark Damazer
Nick Barley – Director of Edinburgh International Book Festival
Bidisha SK Mamata – writer, critic and broadcaster
Carol Lake – Managing Director, Philanthropy Executive at JPMorgan Chase
James Naughtie – broadcaster
Ben Okri - poet and author
Professor Louise Richardson – Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford
The Rt Hon. Lord David Willetts – writer, ex-minister and advocate of fairness between the generations</div></div>

So I guess the Booker Committee might want to sack David Willetts too...

1998 voted against lowering the age of consent for homosexuals to match that of heterosexuals
2002 voted against allowing gay people to adopt children

@bloodyhamabeads

Who sponsors the Booker Prize?

Originally it was set up to be financed by the royalties of best selling authors such as Ian Fleming and Agatha Christie. I'm not sure if that still holds good. Later on it was co-sponsored by a couple of businesses such as Iceland. But I just googled this:

"Silicon Valley billionaire, philanthropist and author Michael Moritz and his wife Harriet Heyman's charitable foundation has been announced as the new sponsor of the Booker prize, a month after the Man Group revealed it was ending its 18-year sponsorship of the prestigious award for literary fiction."

Methinks a billionaire sponsor from very woke Silicon Valley might have had a little word...

^^ should be, "the estates of best selling authors..."

OMG the stinking hypocrisy of them sacking her.
I am indebted to her for her action on this issue given the circles she moves in she can make a difference and the TRAs know that.
I don’t have to agree with her on everything and I don’t.

Same with ‘Two brains’ Willetts. Lots of ideas that you’d be a bit disappointed in someone with one brain having. But actually intergenerational fairness is a useful way to look at structural level society level problems like the economy, environment, education and he has served a public good by banging that drum in the Tories. I don’t care that he didn’t think it up.

Well, how feeble of them.
McCarthyism indeed.
Be very very careful what you facilitate with authoritarian behaviour like this!
I'm assuming that the Trustees have examined every decision, every vote, every tweet they have made in the last 10-20 years and are confident that they have always said and done the right thing for the pure and woke world of today. If not, I won't have much sympathy when they too get hauled over by the moral judgement of the minority and are 'cancelled' or made to abjectly apologise and pledge to 'do better'.

I assume that they will be reviewing the political and ideological views of all authors before considering who to give the ongoing prizes too. No authors with wrong think allowed. And also apply this retrospectively and remove awards for anyone who may have done or said anything in their past that the mob thinks they should be cancelled for.

The subject of gay marriage in the UK is complicated by the fact that Civil Partnerships have been legal since 2004, so when somebody says they are or were against 'same sex marriage', it's not clear what they mean or meant, and it probably can't be made clear in a tweet.

It's really not clear why this vote has suddenly become an issue now, or what the link is between having an opinion on marriage, and having an opinion on whether its possible to change sex.

If nothing else the people who organise the Booker Prize should be able to come up with a more intellectually rigorous explanation than 'somebody was guilty of wrong think on twitter'.

If they can't, they should be judging less challenging books.

Agree that this is an expression of the rage at being unable to cancel JK Rowling. They absolutely hate uppity women. Sacking Emma Nicholson is a message to the rest of us to stay in line.

The Kenan Malik article about Rushdie is very good, merrymouse - he's always worth reading.

Originally it was set up to be financed by the royalties of best selling authors such as Ian Fleming and Agatha Christie.

Financed by Fleming and Christie! Really its a wonder that any author admits to having won the Booker Prize!

There is so much to unpick here.

Firstly, more than a few MPs / Lords voted against same sex marriage. I don't agree with them - I was very pleased to see it introduced. But as I understand it was largely due to religious beliefs? It certainly seems to be in Baroness Nicholson's case.

Secondly, as one MP on twitter said - the matter is settled. It's no longer up for debate, and MPs/Lords voted in line with their conscience at the time. Nobody is leading a campaign to have same sex marriage cancelled!

So - why Baroness Nicholson, and why now?

Because she's spoken up for JK Rowling, and for women, and is actively campaigning for women/women's only spaces. And she's a woman with considerable power.

So they're punishing her.

Gay marriage hasnt even been legal that long and therfir must have had multiple people vote against it for years but now it's her that's a problem and only now?

How dare women have opinions hey. WE SEE YOU!!

I don't know the rationale behind the vote made by the Baroness, but I do know several gay people who were actually very unhappy about gay marriage. They considered it to be not such a good thing to ape heteronormativity. So, there will have been people who are gay/support gay rights who did not agree with legislating for this. Doesn't mean automatically that you are a bigoted meanie.

There is a not quite up to date article in the Times but I can't seem to get a share token at the moment:

www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/booker-boss-baroness-nicholson-of-winterbourne-attacked-as-homophobic-37h3ttvwk

"We have today decided that these titles and roles should, with immediate effect, cease to exist. Those holding them have been informed and thanked for their longstanding interest."

I'd like to see the list of all the other's who've also lost their honorary positions. Anyone have any ideas?

David Willetts has got a cheek, he's dodgy fecker. He had to resign a govt post for being found to have fudged evidence in the Cash for Questions inquiry.

THE Paymaster General, David Willetts, yesterday resigned from the Government following scathing criticism of his conduct by the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee.

Last night Quentin Davies, a Conservative member of the committee, said that his evidence to them was ``either obfuscation or avoidance'' and he was sorry that the former Minister was continuing to insist that he had told the truth.

The committee found that when a Government Whip, Mr Willetts - a rising star of the Tory party - had sought to influence an investigation into cash for questions involving former Minister Neil Hamilton by another committee of the House.

Even more damningly, the committee said that he had ``substantially aggravated the original offence'' by giving evidence to them which they could not accept as accurate.

And in the past he blamed feminism for preventing social mobility: In June 2011, Willetts said during the launch of the Government's social mobility strategy that movement between the classes had "stagnated" over the past 40 years, and Willetts attributed this partly to the entry of women into the workplace and universities for the lack of progress for men. "Feminism trumped egalitarianism", he said, adding that women who would otherwise have been housewives had taken university places and well-paid jobs that could have gone to ambitious working-class men.

She's been quite clear on her view of marriage equality and why she voted against. She voted against for religious reasons because as many religious people do still believes in the eyes of God marriage is one man/one woman.

I disagree with her because I'm not religious so it doesn't matter to me what God or the bible might think.

I think it's a mistake to assume everyone who takes this stance has hatred for gay people because I don't think she does. She's experienced many countries and cultures in her life (her CV is quite extraordinary) and I believe capable of taking a nuanced stance in recognising marriage equality is a settled issue even though her personal opinion doesn't line up.

The last para of the Times article:

The former Booker winner Marlon James, who took the prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, criticised its response. He said: “There’s a certain kind of supposed liberal/moderate who still thinks that speech calling for my erasure deserves as much rights as speech call for my survival. Don’t be those people.”

I'm not quite sure what he is saying here; it sounds contradictory at first glance. Can somebody interpret?

She's been quite clear on her view of marriage equality and why she voted against.

And the work to create an institution that was equivalent to marriage, and which some people prefer to marriage, had already been done by the Labour government in 2004.

I don't understand what her tweet about marriage and girls and women meant, but I think that just shows the limits of twitter.

I don't understand what her tweet about marriage and girls and women meant, but I think that just shows the limits of twitter.

I haven't seen that tweet. My interpretation of her reasons is based on some tweets she made a few weeks back.

This really is getting ridiculous. So what if she once voted in a way I don't agree with? I assume that's true of many other politicians also, some of whom share my interest in literature. Unless she's been actively promoting homophobic books it's just not relevant.

This Year Zero shit really does need to stop.

From the Times article:

"revealing on Twitter that she had voted against the same-sex marriage bill in 2013 because she believed that it would “lead to degrading the status of women and of girls”."

Agreed Jemima. Also sounds like they're getting rid of everyone with that position just to cover their own asses so they can't be accused of targeting just her, although they clearly are, because she works with and stands with JK Rowling, who the TRAs can't do a thing about; so the next best thing is they target her allies. Not any allies though. Just the women.

Arseholes.

The more I think and read about this, the angrier I get.

The last thing I am aware of the Baroness achieving (on a very long list of quite extraordinary lifetime achievements) is having ASDA withdraw materials that could be seen to damage safeguarding (at best) and promote pedophilia (at worst).

What was the reason behind the campaign to get her 'cancelled'? For voting on gay marriage? She has been cancelled for exercising her democratic right. I would probably disagree with her on this topic, but disagreement doesn't mean she has to be purged, for goodness sake. Voting against a motion that passed doesn't mean one is suddenly a pariah.

By this logic, anyone who voted to remain in Europe should be excommunicated forthwith.

This is the full quote from Marlon James

"Former winner Marlon James, who took the prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, also slammed the Booker’s response. “While we’re at it, as a Booker prize winner myself, lets talk about your shitty response to having a hate monger on your board,” he said on Facebook. “It’s not enough to distance yourself from her views, you have to distance yourself from her and condemn HER. There’s certain kind of supposed liberal/moderate who still thinks that speech calling for my erasure deserves as much rights as speech call for my survival. Don’t be those people.”"

It's not clear how Baronness Nicholson is calling for anyone's erasure.