Claire Black: The Middletons do not deserve a badge, even if it’s only one between two

I WONDER if you get a badge for making it on to Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World list? Maybe a dainty little enamel number with “Under the Influence” written on it. Or “I am a compelling force”. Catchy, don’t you think?

If they did give badges out then this year actors Kristen Wiig would have one (yay!) and Viola Davis (yay!) would too. Yani Tseng, the 23-year-old Chinese female golfer would have one, as would genius footballer Lionel Messi. Samira Ibrahim, the young woman who sued the Egyptian military for subjecting her to a “virginity test”, would have one and Maryam Durani, the Afghan owner and operator of a radio station in Kandahar that focuses on women’s issues and who has survived several assassination attempts, would too.

On the latest annual list, there are economists and entrepreneurs, politicians and pioneers.

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There is also Adele, who got in there presumably by dint of ubiquitous airplay at a level that might be considered a play for global domination. And Rihanna is in there too, presumably for having used her influence to deprive a whole generation of young girls – and boys – of a role model who uses her own brutal and very public experience of domestic abuse to state unequivocally that biting on the face is not something your boyfriend should do to you. Ever.

And unfortunately it gets worse.

I can only imagine that it is because they are too slight (this applies physically as well as in every other way) to count as two distinct people, that Catherine and Pippa Middleton occupy one spot in the 100. Yes, that’s right, one woman famous only for being married to the prematurely balding future king and her sister famous mainly for having a bottom can now proudly state that they were deemed worthy of a place in the top 100 most influential people in the world in the year of 2012, while Oprah Winfrey, who has been in every list since the list started, was not.

I know influence is a difficult thing to define, never mind judge, but I would like to use my influence here and now to say that those Middletons do not deserve a badge, even if it’s only one between two.

HAS anyone come to your door canvassing for the forthcoming local elections? No-one has come to mine. It’s a pity because I’d like a chance to talk about the report by Dr Meryl Kenny and Dr Fiona Mackay of Edinburgh University which reveals that fewer than one candidate in four at the 3 May elections will be female. Some wards will have none at all. The parties might not think it matters, but voters should. As Kenny and Mackay state: gender-balanced parliaments and councils make a difference, not just to women, but to all of us.

IN A conversion of apparently Damascene proportions, Hunter Moore, the man dubbed “the most hated man on the internet”, appears to have developed a conscience. Moore was the man behind IsAnyoneUp.com a website that encouraged people to submit pornographic pictures of ex-partners in order that they could be savaged in comments shown below and linked to the person’s other social network profiles. Nasty. But he’s now shut down the site and has written on anti-bullying site www.bullyville.com about putting his web talents to more positive uses. Credit where it’s due.

• Last week Claire... watched ‘When I Die’, a short film about Philip Gould dying of cancer. It was extraordinary