knighthood for the failures of Hector Sants. He is a member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Bloom was a co-author of Wolfson Prize Economics Submission with Pat Barron and Philipp Bagus. He warned that credit agencies would be "castrated" by too much regulation of the EU. Bloom claims that most MEPs have "little or no business experience" and do not understand the consequences of their actions. Women's rights A few weeks after being appointed to the European Parliament's Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality on 20 July 2004, Bloom told an interviewer that, "no self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age." Around the same time, he said that "I just don't think [women] clean behind the fridge enough" and that "I am here to represent Yorkshire women who always have dinner on the table when you get home." Bloom told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that his comments were "said for fun" to illustrate a more serious point, that equal-rights legislation was, he claimed, putting women out of work. Bloom confessed that he had visited brothels in Hong Kong. He claimed he never consummated the visits, and also claimed "terrified young women beaten into prostitution often from Eastern Europe [...] is only a very small aspect of the flesh trade", and concluded that "in short, most girls do it because they want to." After inviting students from the University of Cambridge Women's Rugby Club to Brussels in 2004, he was accused of sexual assault, making "sexist and misogynistic remarks" and using offensive language during a dinner party. One student handed a formal letter of protest to the President of the European Parliament, heavily criticising Bloom's behaviour. Bloom, who sponsored the club with £3,000 a year, admitted making misogynist comments, but denied sexual harassment. In a piece for politics.co.uk in August 2013, Bloom attempted to set the record straight about his earlier comments on gender equality. He argued against quotas for women in boardrooms, claimed that feminism was a "passing fashion" created by "shrill, bored, middle-class women of a certain physical genre" and that any men who supported feminism were "the slightly effete politically correct chaps who get sand kicked in their face on the beach." He said that women were better at "[finding] the mustard in the pantry" than driving a car. Climate change Bloom rejects anthropogenic