Off Air... with Jane and Fi - A brioche operating in a dirty mac with a funny hat

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

It's the eve of International Women's Day and Jane and Fi are besides themselves! We hope you're feeling empowered... In this giddy episode, Fi runs off barefoot, there's another extract from Simon Bates' memoir and Jane and Fi navigate a cul de dac of wokeness. Plus, they're joined by CEO and founder of Mumsnet Justine Roberts. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfi Assistant Producer: Eve SalusburyTimes Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

you join us on the eve of international women's day after we've empowered women so we've had such a busy schedule we've empowered the women everyone's feeling so much better about themselves uh and now we're doing our other job yeah so we've done a little session upstairs at times towers on the same on the boardroom level i do find that boardroom very impressive jane it is impressive isn't it it's about the seating in that room for about i don't know 35 40 people around the table it's huge one day i'll be running this gaff very intimidating place a matter of time we've done a little kind of stage version of our lives, haven't we? We've performed as ourselves in front of a live studio audience.

A little journey through our careers with slides. They must have been riveted. I think they were. I did notice a few people scrolling, but we'll let them. We'll let them do it. No, but we gave them permission to scroll well yeah i suppose we did because everybody's very busy and you know it's good of people to take any time out uh so but thank you to the four men who did give up a bit of time to attend

they actually they weren't bad they did their job quite adequately but maybe we should just say if you have a view on international women's day and there is a piece in The Times today, isn't there, from Helen Rumbelow, who's a good writer, and I often agree with her, saying, you know, just get rid of the whole thing. Yeah, I agree. Do you?

You think we shouldn't have it at all? I don't know. I think when it focuses on women who really, really do need a bit of the light shined on them, then that's a good thing. But actually, when it focuses on women who are quite gobby and have a big platform anyway, I slightly wonder. And that's us.

I'm saying we're irrelevant to the conversation a little bit. No, I understand what you're saying. But if you are, because by the time you hear this, it'll be maybe the weekend, if you've been to a genuinely thrilling and invigorating international women's day event yeah then let us know um and if you actually do feel that it still has purpose that it maybe even has the ability to make change then then tell us yeah and it's obviously celebrated or marked in different ways all over the world isn't it yeah and and and and I do think that's what I mean, I suppose.

I think in places where there is less equality available to you, then having a day always focuses the mind. But I think there may be something about women talking to women now in this country at a certain level that is not achieving as much as it used to. That's what I'm saying. Well, it's all very topical for this podcast because our guest today is... It is Justine Roberts, who's the CEO of Mumsnet.

So I wonder what they do at Mumsnet HQ to celebrate International Women's Day. I'm just going to say that might be a question. Opening question. Yeah. Yep. Do you think? Yeah. We're post-budget, you see here.

I don't know. Our show was all fiscal. Wouldn't it be great if... So there were lovely women who came to our talk today and good on them for making room for that in their very busy daily schedule. But actually, you just need it to be all the men. Yeah, but they're not going to come for you.

And they didn't. Very true. Right. Anyway. I had a lovely egg you. And they didn't. Very true. Right, anyway. I had a lovely egg sandwich. Yes, there were sausages in rolls. There was a fried egg in a bun on a brioche bun. And somebody, well, you think that's too sweet, don't you? I'm not keen on brioche buns.

I've tried to get with the plan with brioche, but I'm sorry. To me, it's a carb that fails to deliver. I don't want sweetness from bread. I really don't. Well, you do because you like your cream buns, but you just don't want it pretending to be savoury. Exactly. I don't want...

It's like undercover. Do you know what I mean? It's like a spy. It's like operating in a dirty Mac with a funny hat. But you see, I don't really like, and then we'll leave it, I promise. Yeah, will we? Good. I don't like a burger of any variety just in a normal bap. I feel that that's just a bit one star.

Oh, I see what you mean there. I like the brioche for the burger. I know what you mean. Sometimes, yes, the bread that we used to call balm cakes in the north-west of England is not suitable to encase a burger. No, you don't want a flowery bap, as we say in the south. I went to the Kanaima at the weekend, and it was one of those ones where they serve stuff at your reclining chair.

Gosh, you're so right. I know, it was amazing, actually, really amazing. By the time we got to the end of the film, I was sure we should have arrived in Dubai, because it was very much that kind of... Would you ever go on a holiday to Dubai? No, I wouldn't

and I wouldn't be friends with someone who did. So don't you go going. Books flight to Dubai. No, I wouldn't go to Dubai either. But the reason for mentioning this as well as shoehorning in the fact that

I've been to the cinema too. Yes, okay, yes. It was See Wicked Little Letters which I think you'd enjoy. The reviews are bad but we loved it. It's just funny. I would say they were lukewarm, the reviews, although some people really liked it.

It's early trolling. It taps into that desire in all of us to just sometimes spit out some shit. So these are anonymous letters, poison pen letters. In Littlehampton. Littlehampton? In a lovely little market town back in the old century. Anyway, Olivia Colman is fantastic in it.

We really enjoyed it. But sorry, the whole point of saying this was there was a menu for burgers and nachos and stuff that had all of the calories on. And the vegan burger was twice as many calories as the normal burger. I did not know this, Jane. All these sorts of weird processed bits that go into these fake meat. Twice.

Twice as much. I know, they're quite odd. They are quite odd. I think I used to buy them, but I don't buy them anymore for that reason. Not just, not the calorie thing, but we don't really know what's in these things. You might actually, if you are a meat eater, be better off eating something called meat.

Yeah. Which actually, if you're fortunate enough to be able to afford decent quality meat, I think there's quite compelling evidence that a bit of red meat isn't bad for you. I mean, obviously you shouldn't eat exclusively red meat, but, you know, by the way though, cows, carbon, I get it.

Should we stop talking about this now? We should. It's just too complicated we've got caught in a cul-de-sac of wokeness now on to the important part which is not we don't want to live on that cul-de-sac Hayley says

love the show, thank you Hayley highlight of my day along with Wordle Hayley sounds like my sort of person I just wanted to write in and correct you on the price of theatre tickets I often take my teenagers and occasionally my husband. And whilst I agree, it is expensive to go as a family. It's relatively easy to get cheap tickets, about 30 quid-ish, with a bit of good planning. My teenagers now believe the seats at the back are the best seats and by booking in advance and going on Wednesday nights, you can go super cheap. I still show off

at parties about my £15 Harry Potter tickets. I'd hate for people to be put off the theatre due to talk of elevated prices. It's still possible to find cheap tickets. Please read this out with a special shout-out to my lovely friend Chloe in Tunbridge Wells, who often refuses my calls as she's listening to you. OK, well, she sounds a piece of work does cleo in tunbridge

wells uh but cleo obviously has her priorities right and we are significantly more important than your old mucker hayley so well done but also that's a good find isn't it those cheap tickets uh dear jane just jane can i suggest that you do your listeners a favor and not share sophia lorenz recipe for lightly battered magnolia petals. Is that what you were going to do? Oh, God, I've forgotten to bring the book in. Yes, well, she does have this very funny book of recipes and I've got a feeling there is one for petals.

Shall we have fun with petals? Let's have fun with petals on Monday. Yeah. I haven't brought Symes' book back in. Do you want the you want the, the newsreader. You have got to read out an anecdote from that book.

I'll just finish this one and then I'll go and get it while you're doing the next one. Quite the thing at a royal court according to the book says Pauline. Deeply sceptical

but ever the scientist. I had a munch on a magnolia petal. Truly disgusting. Unspeakably bitter. All I can think is that either Sophia or her ghostwriter was having a lend of the reader. Or they have very different magnolia trees in Italy. Now, just on the ghostwriter thing, Baroness Aisha Hazarika, our colleague.

I'd like to say friend and colleague. Yep, our ennobled colleague. She did a fantastic interview on the station with Lorraine at the weekend about Lorraine's novel. Yeah, which is doing very well. Which is number two in the Sunday Times bestseller list. I think it's called The Island Swimmer. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's just a sign of the times that in her introduction, Aisha made the point that Lorraine had actually written the book herself. And we have come to a pretty pass, haven't we? When writers get special credit for writing. And I just thought it was, they didn't draw attention to it, really. It was just like, you know, here's a celebrity who's written a book and it's done very well and she has actually written the book.

So we're actually going to be able to talk about the book during this interview about the book. I thought it was just brilliant. Because you just can't you can't guarantee that can you these days no you can't and i i do remember one slightly toe-curling interview that i did some years ago now with a lady who's no longer with us but who had not only not written her book she clearly hadn't read it either and you know it is annoying it's annoying for the interviewer but it's even it's just taking the what's-it out of the public, isn't it? It's not on. It's not on.

Right, would you mind going to get Simon Bates? I'm going to go and get Simon. I'm going to have to put my shoes on. Hang on. Yeah, we should say... I'm going to go and... OK, right. Fee is being terribly brave.

No, I'm not. I haven't really broken it, but it just hurts a bit. She may or may not have broken a toe. And it's a bit difficult with toes because I don't think there's any official way of telling whether they're broken slam goes to door whether they're broken or not and i think the official advice but you can contradict me of course is that you should just wait for the toe to mend itself but it can be quite a tricky couple of weeks while you

wait for that to happen um i can do an apology while fees out the room because she's not to blame here um i apologize for not remembering the exact phrase that you used, but when you commented today that you would be far more entertained, or was it amused, if Trump were elected president, I wonder if you're also amused by what he's done to women's healthcare in this country. This is a listener, Debbie, in the States. There is no entertainment value in Trump being re-elected. We are dealing with real

consequences to our freedoms and real lives lost we american women never thought that our daughters would have their basic rights over their health care taken away trump made it happen we're not laughing uh debbie uh totally take your point and um i said i that i hadn't been on my mind um when i made that rather flippant remark and i'm sorry because um it should be on all of our minds and um we take our rights in this country uh perhaps for granted and we shouldn't because i'm afraid we never know when they might be taken away from us uh so noted and thank you for making that point. At Jane and Fee... What is the address? Janeandfeeatthimes.radio.

Yeah, thank you very much. Now, my colleague has re-entered the chamber, being very brave on her... Is it hurting? It does hurt a little bit. The weird thing is it stopped hurting, and then it's gone back to hurting. It's just annoying me now,

because I thought I was on the mend. Anyway, that is another... It's a pet-related injury and I just can't be bothered to go there, but it's to do with Nancy. I can't find the bit because I didn't put the, I didn't put my sticker in. Right, while you get busy with it.

Your talk of International Women's Day, said Jacob, reminded me of a lovely story of a female colleague I used to work with. One afternoon after lunch, she casually walked back into the office and announced, it's International Women's Day today, so I've bought myself a brand new iPhone.

She was using the day as an excuse to make a frivolous purchase and it could be the way to go. At another office I worked at, all the men clubbed together, bought the ingredients and made a full cooked lunch for all the women of the office

and did the washing up. Maybe that was patronising, but our heart was in the right place. Thank you very much for that, Jacob. Yes, I would always take a dinner cooked by somebody else. Why not? Now, have we made any progress with isolating this anecdote? No, maybe sometimes. Why don't we... I'll look for it when we play the Justine Roberts thing out.

This is very important and it's very serious because it's about the police and how well or not the police conduct themselves in the UK when we need their help. And this is from an anonymous listener who says, I did want to give some positive feedback about my local police service when my daughter made a sexual abuse disclosure. Throughout the devastation that followed, I couldn't fault the service and support we received. I do feel that a large part of this was due to the fact that we were assigned female police officers, but in fairness, everyone I spoke to in the chaos of the following days and weeks, was incredibly supportive,

understanding and patient. They were clearly well trained and familiar with every emotion, stage and challenge that my daughter and I would face. I guess sadly because they see it over and over again, but they didn't make me feel like another statistic. Unfortunately, and this is the kicker fee, this phrase is rather let down by the fact that the perpetrator in question was a former police officer, but that was also dealt with extremely professionally and robustly. On the flip side, the service we received from social services and the CAMHS team over the following nine months with a child's mental health in free fall was beyond appalling but perhaps perhaps best not to get me started on that um well i wonder just by mentioning that anonymous listener that you will get other people started because i i do know that um the cams experience can be a

remarkably uh difficult and trying one because the resources are just not there um lots of stuff on peas uh nafisa regular correspondent hello um regarding the defrosted peas you could just use them to make a pea and ham soup or a pea risotto don't just throw them away she says i mean it's a fair point well you see that's my point actually that if you hadn't if you hadn't opened the bag so you hadn't let any air in then why would it make any difference that a pea had defrosted and then was re-frosted? Is that likely to cause some kind of terrible what's-it-ma-doodly? I don't know, but I'm keen never to suffer from what's-it-ma-doodly again because it was absolutely no fun.

Now, Julie challenged us to find somebody still having periods. Oh, my goodness. Now, Julie challenged us to find somebody still having periods. Oh, my goodness. Well, I mean, we're only 24 hours into the search for older women having periods, and we've been inundated, Jane. We have, but just with my health and safety head on. Obviously, if you have unexplained bleeding, you do need to get that checked out.

Yes. This is from Yvette. I finally hit official menopause three months after my 58th birthday. That was 12 months after my uterus triumphantly churned out one last period, 11 months after the previous one, resetting the clock. I started my periods three months after my 12th birthday and finally entered perimenopause in my early 40s. I am now 60 and adapting to life without oestrogen. Well done, you.

Julie was our original correspondent, and here's another Julie, who says, I was just listening as I was scooping some peanut butter out of the jar with my fingers. To you talking about the odd eating times of the Spanish, and I chuckled. But that's perhaps not for me to question. Well, no, not if you're eating peanut butter that way although we all do it however on the following subject perhaps it's in the name because I'm also Julie but I'm a 57 year old still having regular monthly periods yes it's quite a

thing but I'm not sure how common my gynae pal did comment that it may not be that common as lots of women of our age have the coil and just don't know when their periods have stopped. Anyway, there you go, she says. Incidentally, I was £10.13 at birth. That's big, isn't it? It's quite large. So do you think that there will come a time when periods, if you want them to be disappeared through medicine,

can be disappeared through medicine. Well, it kind of is, isn't it? Because you can just take the pill all the time and you won't get periods. But I don't think that's a... I think, yes, some people are doing that, but I don't think it's a kind of whole generation that's choosing to do that.

Well, no, because a lot of young women these days will not go on the pill. We have some very spirited conversations in our house about that. Yeah, and actually my daughter has shown me some fantastic TikTok reels where clever young women have made T-shirts out of the side effects leaflet inside the box. And a whole, you know, small origami town and some skirts. And that gets the point across very nicely, doesn't it?

It does, but I always counter when we, because we're having exactly the same conversations in my house, I always say, yes, there were side effects. One of the side effects I endured was that I didn't get pregnant when I didn't want to. And that was quite an important side effect. The revolutionary arrival of the pill, really, the impact of it should never, ever be decried, because it did set people free. I have been leafing through Symes' tome.

I pitched it up for £5.60. What? You paid £5.60 for that? Fee? leafing through uh symes's tome i pitched up for five pounds sixty what you paid five pounds sixty for that fee you are a generous woman but i do think that is quite extraordinary so that was in a secondhand bookshop when it would have been i don't know because for a while i just bought i bought lots of radio books i've got some really very odd ones by dave lee travers and by steve wright well you must bring in DLTs. Yeah, I will, I will. Anyway, I can't find the passage that I was reading to you yesterday,

so we can save that for next week. But why don't you just randomly, this is a book of 297 pages. Oh, my goodness. Just give me a page and a paragraph, and I'll just read you that paragraph. Okay, page 181, paragraph... Well, let's go for two. Yeah. 181.

Yeah, it's quite specific. This is why we've won awards, this sort of thing. Louise says, I share Jane's consternation at West Ham fans getting on her train. My experience is when I travelled from Cornwall to Bristol via Plymouth, which is where the so-called Green Army P Plymouth Argyle fans, got on. All they could chant was, Green Army, Green Army.

There were far too many people on the train and the refreshment trolley couldn't get through. I was desperate for a caffeine fix. And they continually pressed the call button so the guard had to keep asking them to stop. When we got to Bristol, there were many police officers waiting and videoing them with some arrests.

I find it baffling, says Louise, that this football culture is just accepted by our society. And I'm completely with you there, Louise, because policing professional men's football costs a packet and we just seem to assume that there's nothing the rest of us can do about it and we just have to live with it. And I don't see why we should and i like football okay having to say that what have you got for me

well i mean we've we've hit upon a seminal turning point in the career of sims simon bates yes master simon bates so the decision this must have been at Radio 1, is being taken to move Tony Blackburn to an afternoon show. Goodness me. Here we go. Sadly, Blackburn has always believed that I had in some way manoeuvred myself to take the programme away from him. I try... Stop it.

I tried... I've got to be able to get through this without... Come on, come on, pull yourself together. I tried once to explain that this was a ridiculous notion but tony was never the best of listeners that's outrageous it's a little bit bitchy times it was all very such a happy ship radio one back in the day it certainly was mate when it came to accepting that there might be another point of view and wouldn't be persuaded i've always regretted that I wasn't able to communicate with him on any level.

No, there's more. And I suspect that I should have tried harder, but time and patience ran out, I'm afraid. Normally, everyday radio is an endless belt churning out stuff. It's the music, news and voices that crowd the airwaves. It's this ordinary, average, voices that crowd the airwaves. It's this ordinary, average, everyday stuff that makes it possible to recognise the good

and the really great material that appears every now and then. The dross is essential, without which no-one could recognise the broadcasting jewels, and it can be great fun providing the dross and aspiring to the jewels. There is a downside, though, and that is that whoever provides the dross is em to the jewels there is a downside though and that is that whoever provides the dross is eminently replaceable it's not sure i really get that um is he is he hinting that

mr t blackburn was providing the dross and that he mr s bates was providing the jewel The Jewel. This is an epic book. Why that didn't win major prizes, I do not know. More to come. We're just going to pointlessly read from male memoirs. Well, this one's from Chris who says, are you going to read out some of Beefy's autobiography? I'm looking forward to you trying not to laugh as you read it. I think it's brilliant to read out some of these dreadful passages.

I'll go to sleep with a chuckle. Thanks, says Chris. In brackets, bloke 64. Thank you, bloke 64. Well, we will... I will return to Beefy's book, actually. Let me read about his sentence. When he had terrible tummy trouble on a tour of India.

You wouldn't fancy being an Indian lentil making your way through that digestive system, would you? No. No, no, no, no, no. Right, there was a lovely one that I wanted to... Oh, Spanish... European exchanges. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Did you do one? I did, I did. I went to Germany. And she came back? She came back. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

That's very good. She did come back, yeah. Well, see, that's the weird thing. I went to France and my French exchange? She came back. Okay. Yeah. That's very good. She did come back, yeah. Well, see, that's the weird thing. I went to France and my French exchange didn't come back. Because she didn't like you? I think we were such a mismatch and it was rural France and by the time I went on a French exchange, I mean, she was a lovely girl,

but I was already smoking and, you know, the light bulbs had gone on. And we just didn't have anything in common at all. And we'd had to share a bed together really weirdly. I do think exchanges is probably a good topic. So we'll invite your memories or perhaps somebody in your family has been on one or you've had an exchange student recently. I just remember thinking, she was lovely, I should say.

I was very fortunate. I went to stay with a very nice family near Düsseldorf, was where we flew to. But the issue with me was that my gran lived with us and obviously she was a woman who, this was 1980 that I did the German exchange. So my nan was 80 in 1980, and she did have, obviously, memories of the war,

something that she talked about quite often and would often talk about German bombing raids on Liverpool. I mean, it was horrible. And, yes, we were slightly dreading my lovely pen pal exchange person, Anna, coming back to the house. But actually, at the end of the fortnight, my grandmother had come round to the observation that Anna was actually a lovely girl.

But in the weeks leading up to it, there were some issues with her referring, shall we say, using colloquial terms for Germans. Ouch, yeah. Which my mother had to say to her, you cannot say that when this girl comes here. She has nothing to do with the war. So please don't say that when she's here.

And she didn't. But it's such a bold thing to do, isn't it? Oh, very. So I remember just flying on a plane on my own, you know, going off to this family that I didn't. And they didn't speak any English at all. And my French was really bad. So, and I think I was there for 10 days.

And it was very lonely. It was really weird. And, you know, we'd go ala pasin every day, and usually that's quite a kind of, you know, bonding thing, you know, like we were talking about yesterday, loads of people, swimming pool, that kind of stuff. But we just didn't have anything in common. We were those teenagers who were just in different phases,

and when you're in different phases of teenagerdom you just got no patience for the other phase so she was absolutely right not to come back and stay but you know she was a very nice girl but did you sort of brazen it out when um she didn't come back did you tell people oh well it wasn't arranged through the school um it was because my aunt is french so it's arranged through her no don't say i didn't know that you've never mentioned your french your taunt my favorite taunt yeah you never even mentioned it yeah i think i have but you may not have concentrated on every word but uh that i've said over the years i think if we were to do a mr and mrs oh no how would that go in the badly

go very badly anyway look this all comes from katrina who sent an email in saying my exhausting spanish exchange trip your spanish chat reminded me of the exchange i did when i was 14 we got up at around 6 a.m walked for what seemed like hours to school walk back again at lunchtime to have lunch in the apartment with the family by the time we got there we had 10 minutes to eat, then the walk back to school. After school, we'd walk home, then walk to meet the other exchange students,

eating at 10 or 11pm before walking back and being asleep at 1am. At 14, I was regularly sleeping nine hours a night at home and by day three of the trip, I'd begun taking involuntary naps after school while the family went about their lives around me before my awkward exchange partner would awkwardly wake me up before dragging me off to walk somewhere else i lost half a stone because i never had time to eat i always chose to nap you see katrina that just sounds terrible it does sound really terrible the most challenging thing i faced in germany genuinely was that was breakfasts, because at home I would always have just Frosty.

I mean, the world's most unhealthy. Frosties with the top of the milk. So I'd have the cream of the top of the milk and then a big bowl of Frosties, then I'd be ready for school. But there were all these plates of cheese and spicy meats. Actually, the kind of thing I love now in a hotel buffet, but couldn't face at 15. I just did not know what to do with this stuff. And also my penpal's father would sit at the breakfast table in a hotel buffet but couldn't face it at 15. I just did not know what to do with this stuff.

And also my pen pal's father would sit at the breakfast table in a vest. Gosh, that's challenging. And we went past a lovely dam once. I think they took me there. Maybe they took me there deliberately. I don't know. And we went past this dam and I said, oh, it looks very modern or something. And

the father turned round and said, yes, well, we had to rebuild it because you bombed it. Oh, i think right well there we go um anyway um so yes exchange your memories of your exchange yes we'd love those yeah absolutely i'll take them yeah i wanted to mention andrew who has been brave enough to write in as a man who has seen a birth which as i said yesterday andrew don't be hard on yourself it's more than I've ever seen. So I think it must be genuinely quite difficult for men. It feels weird sending this because, well, it's not really about me in terms of trauma, he says.

But 24 years ago, after going through five midwives and a badly directed transition leading to needing the top doc to come in to decide if a caesarean was needed, my wife, who wanted a natural birth, took the threat of a C-section and mustered her last ounces of energy to sit up like the child in The Exorcist and scream. I won't repeat what she screamed. So with an episiotomy, forceps, and the very last ounces of her power, our son was born. Bruised from the forceps, my wife white with blue lips and slipping from consciousness blood everywhere honestly it was horrendous I stayed at her face

all the way as I felt that my words in her ear and my lips to her face were the encouragement she needed to succeed but my leg went just looking at her face and seeing how much it took. I felt like I'd been in a car crash. God alone knows how she felt. Again, not about me, but you did ask. No, I did ask. And Andrew, you've been there. And I do not doubt that it was incredibly traumatic for you. And don't you think that men who are going to accompany their partners to the birth,

they just need quite a lot more information, don't they? Because they can be really useful. They can, you know, have some kind of helpful knowledge. But often they're completely unprepared for what's about to happen. And I know a lot of dads who've just felt incredibly in the way. And that must be really weird. You know, if you want men to be included in everything, don't make them feel excluded from the start of life.

They can be doing something useful. Yeah. If they're there. Like water. So I think, A, I think it's great if you're not with someone who's so shocked they can't speak, which I think is quite a familiar thing. I think it's great if you're not with someone who's so shocked they can't speak, which I think is quite a familiar thing. I think it is helpful, it would be helpful if they could be told what to do

by the other medical operatives in the room and feel confident doing it. I think quite often they're ignored or told to wait outside if things get completely tricky or they faint. I think they just need knowledge. Knowledge is power. But they're a kind of bit in the room that I'm not sure there's a plan for them. I've been talking to a man recently

whose daughter has just given birth and I could tell that he was still very, very... She had a hard time and basically she had a baby. It's a popular theme on the podcast this week. Her baby was larger than anticipated. She hadn't scanned it she the baby came out in the end but god it was difficult and not only was she deeply traumatized her partner certainly was and her mum and dad were sitting outside and they're not over it either um so you know this this it's i'm afraid it's a very very common experience, but by no means do I underestimate the impact that it has on everybody involved.

There's quite a big ripple effect here, isn't there? Huge. It's not just the woman who's at the sharp end. And if you imagine that you have witnessed a car crash on the M25 where people have nearly lost their lives, God forbid somebody has lost their life, you wouldn't expect that person never to talk about that. you wouldn't and just to crack on uh so it's a bit it's a bit weird we're uncovering something not uncovering it because other people have talked about it before but

maybe we could have more stories and we can talk about it a bit more ourselves we can talk now to justine roberts who's the founder and chief executive of mumsnet now you underestimate the power of mumsnetters at your peril. It is this country's biggest network for parents. There are around 8 million unique visitors to the site every single month, and party leaders will surely be queuing up to appear on the platform in the run-up to the general election. Politicians have got some work to do, some rather more than others. In a recent survey, 51% of Mumsnet users said they'd vote Labour and 12% went for the Conservatives. Now, perhaps very tellingly, less than half of those who went for the Tories last time said they were planning to do so again. And the three issues that matter most to people who use Mumsnet, well, why don't we ask Justine.

Hello, Justine. Good afternoon to you. Hi there. So tell us, what do your Mumsnetters care most about? What's in position number one? Well, what they tell us they care most about is health first, education second, and the environment third. All, you know, things that probably if you polled the general population, they'd say Labour were ahead on. So not surprising, really, our polling numbers, I think. Yeah. And what's very interesting, of course, are the issues that actually they don't consider that important. And it is worth saying that just 14% of Mumsnet users ranked immigration in their top three most important issues. And you have real influence.

Mumsnet has huge influence. Are politicians in touch with you all the time? Have they already asked to come on and do something with your members? Yeah, well, we tend to get constant sort of really requests to post their thoughts about things. But in particular, I think, just before an election, I would say probably my guess is that there will not be an April or a May election because I think from the Conservative side, we haven't seen that ramp up quite yet. So it tends to be in the run up, the sort of two or three months before an election, we will get absolutely swamped with requests from politicians of all sides. Yeah, who all, of course, are desperately anxious to come across as very normal and just like the rest of us. And they think they can do so through the

prism of Mumsnet. But Fi and I were talking earlier about the Gordon Brown biscuit episode. And it's just it's actually to be normal. Isn't that easy to do? You can get found out very easily. Yeah, I think, well, part of it is politicians being really willing to engage and not just try and get their messages across. And then, of course, you've come across a lot of politicians, as I have. I mean, they tend to be quite friendly, they're also like often on the sort of slightly weird scale of the spectrum so them trying to be very jolly and um and you know very pally and treat uh you know all these women as their best mates can often be quite cringy actually

who has put in the best performance um I think it's people, as I say, who are really willing to engage and, as I say, show a bit of leg. So if they can do the humour thing, then that's really helpful. So I think Nick Clegg did that quite well. Michael Gove, actually, strangely, quite self-deprecating and quite funny. Yeah. So, yeah, but really, it's really who does badly badly and who does badly is when they've just got their message and they will repeat it over and over again.

A bit like, you know, they're trying to get their soundbite on telly. And that is just that really doesn't work. I remember Liz Truss coming on actually when she was an education minister. when she was an education minister. And I think she had her point of view, which she kept repeating. Roughly 500 people strongly disagreed with her. And afterwards, she seemed to think she'd won them all over, which only Liz Truss could have done, I think. Yes, she is.

She's truly a remarkable figure in British public life. Let's talk about the budget. I mean, what are Mumsnetters talking about today? There must be some appreciation of the child benefit threshold being raised. Yeah, that's been something our users have thought has been unfair for a while. So there is appreciation that it's being looked at and raised initially,

but looked at in future to be something that's judged per parent rather than over a household, which was felt to be very, very unfair on single parents. However, it is pointed out that this rise from 50, the threshold from 50 to 60,000, pretty much just is an inflationary rise over the years. It hasn't gone up for a few years. And also that they promised to look at it by 2026.

Most of our users rather cynically say, well, that's not going to be their problem, is it? So it's easy for them to make that promise. So yes, I don't want to sound too sour about it. Generally, it's been met well, but it's not going to be a game changer for anyone okay and coming up on coming up on us really quite soon are these new hours of child care um but um there's a lot of discussion about whether or not this provision

is actually there whether people there are people to staff these childcare places. What are they saying? Well, it's very clear that there is a real shortage of childcare provision. I think what they've done in this budget to try and link rises to, you know, the amount that's given to providers to inflation is definitely a good move and a very sensible move because the problem is the reason there's not capacity is because over the years it has fallen behind quite markedly, the amount of the funding compared to the costs of the providers. So that is a good move. I think people would have also wanted an increase in the rates. That hasn't happened. But again, broadly, it's sensible. It's not going to be a

game changer because ultimately there's a massive shortage of providers and they haven't really addressed that. But they have sorted the mechanism out for the future, which is good. I know you can't really generalise, but I'm going to ask you anyway. Are users feeling well off or are there a mass of people out there who, even those in really quite decently paid jobs, just feel that life is a struggle and they can't actually see much light at the end of the tunnel? Three quarters of them say they're struggling with the cost of living. And, you know, roughly half that number say that it's getting truly painful and they're going into debt or having to make very serious cutbacks. So we're not talking about, you know, cutting out the second holiday here. This is about making choices about food. So I think people are really struggling.

And that's why I think the cut in national insurance was met in a very muted way. I think people are saying that this is this is only making up for inflation. It's not doing anything else for us. And actually, we're desperately crying out for improvements in public services, which is where the frontline of our users, they really are the frontline when it comes to using health and education. Also, they work in nursing and teaching, so they see the absolute carnage going on in the public services and I don't think anyone thinks that a small cut in national insurance that it benefits the rich as much as the poor is the way to be spending that extra money the government seems to find in the budget. So that 51% of regular users who say they're going to vote Labour at the next election, they are doing so, what would you say, just in the spirit of, well, it just can't be any worse?

say just in the spirit of well it just can't be any worse i think there's quite a lot of you've had you know your time's up you've made a mess of it um but but it is true that um half of the users who said they're going to vote conservative don't say they really identify i'm sorry say they're going to vote labor don't say they fully identify with the views of the Labour Party. It does seem to be that it's, you know, the least worst option, as opposed to Keir Starmer has won over hearts and minds of everyone. But I think the prevailing view is we've had enough of the lot that are in at the moment, frankly. Right. Okay. So whether people vote enthusiastically for Labour or just vote for Labour, in the end, it won't make any difference, will it? The chances are that they're likely to win.

Can we just talk a little bit about women's safety? Because people who dismiss Mumsnet as a place where, you know, let's be honest, because you'll know what people say, silly middle class women discuss potty training 24 hours a day. There's much more to it than that. And I was quite struck by the number of people who seek out the place or seek out the platform as a place to talk about abuse in the home and to talk about whether or not they could or should get out of abusive relationships. Yeah, it has become a destination for that. We've got about a thousand people a year helped out of domestic violence situations by posting on Mumsnet, getting really handheld support from other users who've been there and done that and escaped these violent relationships. dealing with bereavement and, you know, serious violence matters and mental health issues. And there are pockets of communities who are really able to help in the spirit of why we were set up, really, which is you want to find someone who's been there, done that and survived, really,

who can empathise with you. So, yeah, a lot of that is going on. And I think the sort of general prejudice about Mumsnet being sort of middle class women sipping their Prosecco couldn't really be more wrong. At what point would you moderate a thread that contained that kind of discussion about somebody's personal safety? So we well, we're always I mean, one of the big things about Mumsnet is it's anonymous. They're always, I mean, one of the big things about Mumsnet is it's anonymous. So in that sense, we very much encourage people not to share private details that could leave them identifiable. And if they did, we often will get in touch and ask them to repost. But in terms of, you know, we moderate aggressively.

We have a full time team and on average respond respond to reported posts in under an hour so it's very different sort of we've always had this philosophy very different from the other big platforms frankly where you know they sort of say they're a dumb pipe uh and it's not up to them and only latterly have they invested in moderation um we do take that quite seriously. And we also moderate on values. We literally will say at the end of the day, if this is not making parents' lives easier, we're going to take it down. And if people persist on starting threads

that don't make people's lives easier and are deliberately disruptive, we will ban them. And we invest quite a lot of time and effort in that. Isn't that interesting, Justine? I mean, just that comparison, as you said, you know, to the big other social media platforms in particular who don't see their role as being one of moderating behaviour or reporting bad behaviour or steering bad behaviour. I think something has changed, don't you, in that we call we want to call that out more. Yeah, well, I think a lot of pressure has been put on them, and they're having to invest resource in it. But I think the other thing that's

striking about Mum's Dad is it's the only one of the top 10 social platforms in this country that is dominated by women. So actually, probably, I mean, I don't want to generalise, but I will generalise. I think it is a more civilized place because of that. And I think probably our moderation job is a little bit easier. And, you know, you will know as well as I probably Mumsnet can be feisty, but it doesn't have these very, very abusive, dominant players who make everyone else feel bad. And there was recently an academic study that said women are increasingly turning to Mumsnet for their news and to comment about news

because they just feel the rest of, including news sites, by the way, but also the platforms are so misogynistic and so aggressive that they're not comfortable commenting in those places. So I think it is something else that Mumsnet does that perhaps people don't realise. Justine Roberts, the CEO of Mumsnet.

I think for a lot of people, it's hard to imagine that there never was a Mumsnet because it's actually been woven into the fabric of a certain type of parent in this country for a very long time. But, you know, as a place to go to meet online other people, to start talking about all the things that we've been talking about on the podcast over the last couple of weeks, it did a really remarkable thing, didn't it? Oh, it's become incredibly influential and important. And it's a place where I imagine all the big party political

leaders will want to be. Yeah, they wield a lot of power. So Justine was on the programme primarily to talk about some of the political heft of the Mumsnet. What would a collective noun be? Community. I think it is a community. It is a community, but what would the collective noun for Mumsnet be? I'm not going to go there, Fi. More than my life's worth.

So plenty to look forward to on the podcast next week. There's going to be more from Beefy Botham's autobiography. Jane's going to read out some recipes from Sophia Loren. I've got another little nugget from Symes. We're taking all of your emails. We'd love to hear from Dad's experiences of birth too and exchanges. Yeah.

Ehon, ehon. Au revoir. What? Au revoir. What? Au revoir. No, I was going to do a bit of German. Oh, okay. Auf Wiedersehen. Auf Wiedersehen.

Pet. Well, not pet. Well done for getting to the end of another episode of Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. And don't forget, there is even more of us every afternoon on Times Radio. It's Monday to Thursday, three till five.

You can pop us on when you're pottering around the house or heading out in the car on the school run. Or running a bank. Thank you for joining us. And we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon. Don't be so silly. Running a bank? I know ladies don't do that.

A lady listener. I know, sorry.