Here is a Daily Mail article picking up a Spanish media analysis rating … yes, the planet’s most gorgeous women politicians. Not exactly journalism at its most serious:

Oh boy, this is going to get me into terrible trouble with Harriet Harman and her sisterhood.

But how come the French have such knockout lovelies for their female politicians? And how come our Hon Lady Members are, well, a little more on the bookish side?

Christine Kelly, newly chosen as France’s Minister for Overseas Territories, was photographed today in a bikini. The 39-year-old looks like a model out of a lads’ mag. It’s not fair.

And here is Ruth Lewy in the Guardian duly attacking it:

What is so galling is that a British national newspaper can maintain an editorial policy that allows this humiliating rubbish to be spewed out. Why is it acceptable to openly bully both the women described and those that read the piece?

… The Mail has always catered to a large female readership, and it does so through persistent humiliation. The Femail section is often laughed off as a self-knowing bit of fun and fluff, home to light gossip, dodgy paparazzi photos and heartwarming stories, but pieces like this demonstrate a much darker side.

The Mail did not make the online poll of female MPs itself (a fact I’m sure it regrets), but it has grasped the opportunity to revel in its objectification. We can no longer allow this ill-informed writing to be given such a platform unchecked.

Hmm. All a bit predictable.

Let’s look at the numbers for UK newspaper readership in Q3 and Q4 2008 (in 000s):

Women reading the Guardian:

All Adults 1264 2.6 100
Men 789 3.3 62
Women 475 1.9 38

Women reading the Daily Mail:

All Adults 4839 9.9 100
Men 2311 9.7 48
Women 2528 10.0 52

According to my keyboard calculator, these figures mean that five times as many women read the Daily Mail every day as read the Guardian. So which is better placed to pronounce on what is humiliating and threatening and what is ‘allowed’ in respect of commenting on women in politics?

OK, OK. We know that Guardian readers in their small but perfectly formed numbers are the True Keepers of the Shrine of what is intelligent and decent and progressive when it comes to Women and Wimmin alike. But surely too numbers count for something in a democracy?

In fact the Daily Mail is on to something. Far too many people in British public life, men and women alike, take little pride in their appearance.

One of the most dispiriting things about being an Ambassador was watching Ministers and their accompanying official entourages arrive for consultations with their foreign opposite numbers. The group would troop in to the Residence with their battered official briefcases deploying (variously) uncleaned shoes, cheap suits, tired overcoats, polyester ties, ghastly haircuts, frumpy ill-fitting dresses, overweight/unfit bodies.

The contrast betwen how British politicians – men and women alike – present themselves does indeed contrast badly with almost every nationality I can think of, the more so since most other nationalities are paid less well anyway.

Why? Thus:

An undefinable but real enough collective sense of … tiredness. Some sort of inarticulated glum indifference. A crass pseudo-PoMo pride in not being proud, in having nothing to be proud about, even in dissing the very notion of pride as boring/irrelevant.

Gimmicks such as ‘dress down Friday’ make things worse. In the USA this means Smart Casual, with plenty of Smart. In the UK civil service it just means scruffy.

And it starts spreading to the rest of the week. Line managers these days are wary of hauling in a junior colleague to tell him/her to smarten up. Could such action lead to Floods of Tears? Procedures for harassment/bullying or somesuch?

Or merely a dreary ennervating unwinnable row about how an out-of-touch ‘establishment’ is once again trying to impose ‘old-fashioned values’?

So standards arising from pride – and pride arising from standards – drift forlornly down, desiccated leaves zig-zagging to earth in a chill autumn breeze.

So, oh Guardian, this is what over a decade of your post-modern cynicism has wrought.

Deal with it.

And don’t go whinging about the Daily Mail to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. This awesome song sums up the situation there rather well:

I’ve got wild, staring eyes.
And I got a strong urge to fly,
But I got nowhere to fly to (– fly to… fly to… fly to…).
Ooooo babe,
When I pick up the phone,
There’s still nobody home.