If there’s one thing that brings out the worst in every ‘élite’, it’s somebody suggesting a debate

There’s yet another excellent piece from Frances Coppola at Forbes, this time deconstructing the acres of misleading quotes out of context and ill-informed rumour currently being dumped onto Syrisa’s leaders Varoufakis and Tsipras. Some of the misreporting is just the usual sloppy journalism one takes for granted these days, but some of it feels willful to me. It bears all the hallmarks of black arts being applied – at one minute to suggest that they’re being devious and backsliding…then at another to suggest they’re being aggressive ingénus who keep contradicting themselves. I’d imagine the idea is to try and rain on their parade before the next rebranded Troika meeting takes place.

Someone resident in Greece made an interesting point to me yesterday about not “swooning” over politicians. She’s right of course: the memory of Tony Blair lingers on. But we all need to be aware of the myriad robots out there who desperately need the Syriza leadership to fail.

They need them to fail because Tsipras and Varoufakis want change, because they both puncture bollocks with clinical accuracy, and because they have better, alternative suggestions than anything Geli, Draghi or Weidemann can manage. They may be ingénus in some respects, but let’s not lose sight of the etymology of that word: ingenuity – taking a radically different, creative perspective in order to solve a problem. The EU is chiefly a mess because it is devoid of any creative ingenuity at all, beyond the surreal series of “reasons” we keep being given as to why black is really white and Tuesday comes immediately after Saturday.

The classic banker-driven ‘QE’ attempts serve my point well: QE has never worked as an economic stimulant, but Draghi wishes us to believe it will now. Suddenly. No really, one more heave. Another is the myth that the way to get out of debt is to take on more of it. Long ago, I devoted an entire piece to very simply giving mathematical proof that Greece could never repay its debt, because the interest eventually would balloon the principal. Three years after the Greek debt was 125%, it is now 170%: QED. The Troika’s model is nothing more than a plan to produce perpetual serfdom; and Berlin’s austerity codswallop blocked the one unlikely escape route there was – dynamic economic growth.

Yanis Varoufakis understands all this very well, and he has a quiet, assertive style in unpicking the drivel put out by Greece’s lenders. That’s why he is a massive danger: they’d like us to think he’s a loose cannon, whereas in reality, he is an über-sophisticated ballistic missile.

But deranged belief systems exist far beyond the borders of the European Union and the boardrooms of investment banks. Across the Pond (but only a stone’s-throw from Wall Street) sits the City University of New York (CUNY) where the decision has now been taken by the Gender Agenda that I, as a bloke, am no longer fit, worthy or allowed to be identified as a man. Yes, the girls who gave us Ms and smashed every urinal in Sweden have finally come out and admitted that henceforth no gender-prefix will be allowed in CUNY meetings, correspondence, notices or publications. Mr is no more, as is Ms “as part of an ongoing effort to ensure a respectful, welcoming, and gender-inclusive learning environment”.

I object to Feminazi madness per se, but this is another small step towards that cuckoo-land where life is beautiful all the time. We’ve had 40 years of Ms, 25 years of equality commissions, and 14 years of illiberal quotas designed to bash through the glass ceiling. But in terms of the way some blokes think about (and relate to) women, it has not made one iota of difference. Personally, I think the liberation of women from male bigotry has gone backwards at the same time as Wimmin have been claiming success for the aims of feminism.

Ultimately, it leads to backlash from boneheads. This was demonstrated by an unintentionally hysterical hissy-fit on Twitter last week because some woman making an idiotic misandrist observation (strangulated by the usual pc gobbledygook) suddenly found herself the victim of a misogynist troll-swarm. The insults were truly appalling and universally foul, and were then of course retweeted under the banner of Uomini fan tutti. The problem with those who have hijacked feminism is that this ridiculous assumption is the only thing upon which their Wall of What Wimmin Want is founded. It can never be underpinned by facts – any more than neoliberalism, Islamism or Communism can be – which is, let’s face it, in the nature of all superstitious religious tripe.

And now, having alienated pretty much everyone on the planet, I must go and make lunch.

Last night at The Slog: Balls & Miliband – the Men in the Iron Masks