Lady Gaga and the slut walkers

Let's assume that I've made a pie, and I stick it on the window sill to cool. Some nefarious so-and-so comes along and pinches it. Now, it's wrong to steal, and the thief shouldn't have done it, but I also am an idiot for leaving it outside.

What has this to do with the Canadian police officer who said that women should "avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised"? This man has unsurprisingly been taking some flak for his remarks, thus reigniting an issue that has been filling column inches about once a decade for the last thirty years or so and provoking "slut-walking" demonstrations across America.

Let me explain about the pies. There are two separate issues here - one is the conduct of the pie thief, the other the conduct of the baker. Calling the baker foolish is not to diminish the maleficence of the thief; and neither is counselling bakers to cool their pies out of reach giving thieves licence to roam freely.

Applying that logic to the slut-walkers, women should of course be able to wear whatever they like in public without being molested or attacked; men who attack them are doing something wrong. On the other hand women are inevitably more likely to be attacked if they dress provocatively, and you might think it was uncontroversial for the police officer to suggest they could minimise that risk.

The organiser of a "slut-walk" in Boston, Mass., 20 year old Siobhan Connors explained to the Associated Press, "The event is in protest of a culture that we think is too permissive when it comes to rape and sexual assault. It's to bring awareness to the shame and degradation women still face for expressing their sexuality... essentially for behaving in a healthy and sexual way".

Ms Connors doesn't get it, and aged 20 could perhaps could hardly be expected to. Sex is mens' achilles heel - it flicks a switch that bypasses our brains and diverts our energies, well, elsewhere. We see the signs that nature or nurture have implanted in us, and from then on we really are thinking about only one thing. Thinking may not actually be the right word. For millenia this weakness has acted as a cruel double-edged sword. While women have youth and beauty, the world is theirs to command. Women who exploit it draw men towards them, and some of that attention will be unwelcome. When those attractions have gone, society pushes women to the margins. Most women, the unlucky majority, do not make it beyond the margins in the first place.

That is the cruel law of sexual attraction, and most women who have lived a little longer than Ms Connors understand it only too well. Rather than criticising the policeman, Ms Connors should be saying, "Fine, let's be aware that showing a bit of leg could get us into trouble, but now let's make sure that our streets are properly policed and that sexual assaults - which happen to people modestly dressed too - are properly investigated and prosecuted."

Last night I watched with my daughters bits of Radio 1's big weekend (in Carlisle - someone at the BBC has a sense of humour). The headline act was Lady Gaga. The New York chanteuse did three or four anonymous Euro-disco numbers in rubber leggings; an incongruous trumpet solo followed while she changed costume, emerging in a rubber mini-dress and fishnets to sing an incongruous jazzy torch song (surprisingly well); she went to the piano (an instrument with which she showed prior acquaintance, even while standing on it in her spike heels) and sang something slow and passionate; she went off stage and emerged in a rubber crop top and hot pants with a crucifix on the front. More disco. We yawned, switched off and went to bed.

There was less sexual content to the material than I'd thought there would be. The fetish stylings were an add on. Ms Gaga came across as a Madonna for the new century, only more talented and more vulnerable (she threw herself into it with an uncontrolled passion which is unfakeable). But Gaga knows that sex sells, and of course I wondered what my daughters made of it and whether they should be watching at all. But the reality is that this stuff is out there on the internet, and short of shutting them in the house without computers and TV, there is nothing you can do to stop them watching it, or stop them coming to the conclusion that this is how women should be.

I think of myself as a feminist (my wife laughs a bitter laugh when I say it), but I sometimes think that all sexual liberation has done for women is to free them to be more like the way men would like them to be.

The slut-walkers of America, parading along in their bra and knickers, are marching to a man's tune that apparently they can't hear.

Paying for Mr Pappano

In the wake of Arts Council cuts, it was no surprise to read press reports the other day that the BBC is willing to talk to other beleaguered arts bodies about orchestral funding. Whilst inherently sympathetic to their plight, I was reminded of another story last week about the salary earned by Antonio Pappano, MD at Covent Garden. I forget the exact figure commanded by Mr Pappano, but the sum which has stuck in my mind is £690,000. Now Pappano is no doubt a fine musician, but is he really worth the best part of £700k? To put it another way, could another musician, perhaps equally fine, have been found to do the job for, oh I don't know, £500k? £300k? Might not Pappano himself have been prepared to do the job for a lower sum?

For my work on the day of a concert an amateur orchestra generally pays me about £250 (yes, that's £250, not£250k). I am not suggesting that I could do as good a job as Mr Pappano (although I'd be willing to give it a shot), but one thing I have learned since I started conducting is that there are, even in amateur music circles, an awful lot of very fine conductors out there. And that's just in NW England. The idea that there is only a small group of people in the world who are capable of leading a top opera company (or a professional symphony orchestra, whose conductors are paid comparable sums), and that salaries like Mr Pappano's have to be awarded to secure their services, is pure tosh. The reality is that in every country there are dozens and dozens of terrific musicians who would do the job for less. Some of them would do it for next to nothing. If I did not have to eat, I would organise, rehearse and conduct great music free of charge. In fact if I had to, I would crawl over broken glass to do it. The experience is its own reward.

Why does any of this matter? Surely it's up to the ROH to decide how much it pays its Music Director? Well no. Firstly, Pappano's salary is obscene when compared with the wages of the players, which will be less than a tenth of the amount (extras at one of Manchester's professional orchestras are paid about £100 per day, and I believe it's among the most generous). Secondly, there's something rather horrible about anyone earning this kind of money when many ordinary people, who couldn't afford to go to the Royal Opera even during the good times, are losing their jobs.

And thirdly, the ROH receives public money. Yes, you and I are paying taxes in order to help the Royal Opera pay Mr Pappano £690k p.a. That makes me feel quite bad.

Should any organisation which has so little idea how to run a tight financial ship that it pays its chief the best part of a million quid a year really be getting a penny from the public purse?