SIR
I would like to express my horror and disgust at the section ‘Boot Room Banter’ published on the Wales Online website. This forum for those interested in football news and gossip also provides material for perverts to drool over the ‘bum of the week’ or the ’sexy, snowy launch of Cream Ibiza Dance Workout DVD’.
“Women’s football”, the site asks, ”a game played only by plain girls with big shoulders and tree trunk thighs? Think again people..Boot Room Banter has scoured the world for the finest the game has to offer and we’ve come up with some surprisingly positive results.” Cue pictures of scantily clad women and childish innuendo.
I’m sure the ‘writers’ who have to research the “nicest rear end in sport” enjoy their work but it’s time they were given a proper reporting job, particularly when others in the media are losing theirs.
For the company that publishes the ‘National Newspaper of Wales’ to condone this sort of chauvinism on its website is a disgrace. Women’s football and Wales Online’s female readers should be given more respect.
Please remove it.
Update: The links have now been removed from the ‘Boot Room Banter’ homepage. We seem to have touched a raw nerve – need to keep up the pressure

angela elniff-larsen 8:47 pm on 15 March, 2010 Permalink
Here ,here this is disgusting and denegrading
Who on earth is editing and allowing this
Where is the respect here ,have these people no idea of equality and diversity
Women are not objects and the pathetic stero typing is not fit to be called journalism
Michael Cridland 12:05 am on 16 March, 2010 Permalink
I suspect its run on auto pilot! rather like Welsh education!
Bethan Maeve Jenkins 10:18 pm on 17 March, 2010 Permalink
I’ve just looked at the story and I can’t believe the Western Mail has allowed this. Only today in the Assembly we are talking about the lack of news provision in Wales, and the Western Mail’s cut backs yet they have the resources to fund ‘journalists’ to report on this? Its shocking, sexist, and I am glad that you have written in to complain.
Christopher Wood 4:17 pm on 18 March, 2010 Permalink
Well, no suprises there – the Western Mail and especially the Echo are not publishing both sides of the argument (In re Llanishen Reservoir), the storage of over one million tons of water behind a vulnerable earth dam and above a local school.