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Letter to the editor "The Times"                                                                             London EC4          25th May 2086

Madam,
 With reference to your article last week on the question whether women should help their husbands with the housework, I should like to remind you of the facts: A Gallup investigation on 12th May 2086 proved that only 4% of all British women have ever helped with cleaning the lavatory; only 8.5% know how to boil an egg; and 91% do not know how to program a washing machine.
I would like to say to all those many British working wives who have never changed a nappy in their lives and do not know one end of a vacuum cleaner from the other that they have exploited us men for long enough. Now the 15-hour-week has been introduced and our wives spend most of their time at the office-sauna or in the factory manicure salon,
the time has finally come when we men must fight for equal rights.
It is simply ridiculous that we should have only 11 out of 650 members of Parliament. Do we realise that there has not been a male Prime minister or foreign secretary since 1997? And that now all university professors and judges are women? And little chance have we men got of changing this situation. After all, only 13 per cent of all university students are male! Behind this is, of course, this silly prejudice that men have not got intuition and creative thoughts; that all they are good for is using the home computer for shopping and the helicopter for fetching the children from the computer centre. I appeal to the last man in Britain with some power, King Charles IV. to call for at least some pocket money for us housemen. Why should I have to worry and save for weeks to buy myself a bottle of After-Shave out of the housekeeping money, with not a Euro to call my own? Some women even say that most men are only interested in new clothes and new hair-styles. If they would only try to talk to men about something other than recipes and the latest teeny video star, they would discover that many men long to leave the prison of home and get a fair share of that exciting world of real work. I know myself am much too old at 24 to have a career now that pension age has been dropped to 39; but for my three sons I am informing you that I am starting a Housemen's Liberation Movement. Housemen of Britain! Burn your aprons and join me!
I am, Madam, Yours faithfully,
T. M. Peacock (Mr)
P.S. It is high time you dropped the Houseman's Page from your paper. In future men and women should be interested equally in the problems and techniques of home-making.

(Aus HOW DO YOU DO RS 5 p.151, Schöningh Paderborn)

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go on to Functions "setting": At the doctor's