'Calling women "ladies" belongs in the dark ages'

Is it ever OK to call women 'ladies'? No, it's demeaning, sexist and belongs in the dark ages

Claire Cohen for the i news site

After the former England football manager Kevin Keegan said he doesn't like listening to female pundits speaking about men's football, Claire Cohen said she doesn't like "listening to men talking about what women should or shouldn't do". Writing for the i news site, she objected to his use of the word "ladies", arguing that it is "the sort of outdated term that should be relegated to the same dusty filing cabinet as 'females' (gag) and 'the missus' (kill me now)". It's not "violent misogyny", but an "insidious sexist word that needs stamping out".

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EU's migrant-curbing agenda risks fuelling Sahel jihadists

Ole Sevrin Nydal for EU Observer

"In its desperate effort to curb migration, the EU has inadvertently bolstered jihadist groups in the Sahel, and now it may be too late," argues Ole Sevrin Nydal for EU Observer. "Given migrants' risk-willingness, the EU-imposed crackdown has inadvertently raised the profit for those willing to supply and govern increasingly dangerous journeys," he adds. Only by "promoting orderly and safe migration" can the EU "reduce jihadist groups' influence and contribute to regional stability".

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SNP's dominance of Scotland is under serious threat

John Curtice for The Times

The scale of Labour's victory in the Rutherglen by-election "suggests the SNP's decade-long dominance of Scotland's electoral politics is now under serious threat", argues John Curtice in The Times. "Any hopes" the SNP had that opinion polls were "exaggerating the threat that Labour poses" have been "firmly dispelled", he adds. Labour should not "count its chickens" but it "does now seemingly have a realistic chance of winning a significant haul of Scottish seats", adds the polling expert.

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Britain's pheasant shooting season has begun. And a year-round massacre makes it possible

George Monbiot for The Guardian

Pheasant shooting is "one of the bluntest expressions of class power in the United Kingdom", argues George Monbiot in The Guardian. The season began this week, he writes, "appropriately coinciding" with the Conservative Party conference. "Elite culture is killing culture", he says, because "what greater expression of power can there be than to decree and enact mass death?" But pheasant shooting is "part of the unmaking of both our ecosystems and our humanity", he writes.

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