This week some random thoughts from the past couple of weeks…
Tone-Deaf Coronation
We're getting used to the commercial world and even the celebrity universe being more in-touch with the public mood than establishment figures hence brands often moving away from toxic situations before politicians/figures of state have got their ducks in a row.
So, it will be interesting now that big names Adele, Sheeran (and a growing list of other glitterati) have reportedly turned down the 'honour' of performing at the inappropriately lavish coronation.
Sounds like it will be as literally tone deaf as it
is socially tone deaf.
Tony
Blair and the Amnesia Aftershave
Does Tony Blair's aftershave contain an amnesia inducing chemical?
When Putin illegally invaded Ukraine - a few brave souls pointed out the similarities between Putin's invasion and the horrific Blair/Bush Iraq adventure.
A year on in Putin's nightmare and Blair is schmoozing comfortably in top circles and having his utterances on multiple subjects reported like a normal person by the mainstream UK media
Why?
Sunak Sans Boussole
As two spectacularly disastrous, failed ex-prime
ministers haunt the dark corners of the Tory Party one thing is clear, Rishi
Sunak is a nobody PM leading a nothing party and taking the country nowhere...
This week our desperate school prefect is seeking a pat on the head for shaping the turd his party dumped with his 'Windsor Protocol' attempting tidy the Boris NIP mess.
Tawdry Tories
It’s a tired and wearying kind of fun – even at
Christmas – the ubiquitous pantomime. All that ‘oh yes you did’ and ‘he/she’s
behind you’. But its February and the tawdry Tory pantomime is refusing to leave town.
Johnson the clown and the hideous panto dame Truss are still hanging about in the wings not realising their season is over. Gurning like lunatics behind Sunak’s
lifeless principle boy, they screech inappropriately, completely unaware that
their bad blonde toxic presence is way past its sell-by date.
The audience have left the building. The props are
looking tatty in the daylight. There is rubbish everywhere and we’re well into
the new dark reality they’ve not yet accepted.
Is there anything left to add except – gerroff and
BOOOOOOOOH!
Why is Britain only interested in sex equality when it’s detrimental to women?
In just over a year’s time I will qualify for my bus
pas here in Scotland. If retirement ages had remained as they were while I was growing
up – I would also be due to retire. Not that I have anything to retire from
being what we euphemistically call a ‘struggling writer’ with no pension.
But years ago that rug was pulled from under women’s
feet. That sense of a little bit back for the low pay and the taking the
domestic strain and lack of promotion and remuneration which never seems to have evened out.
Long gone are my dreams that Britain would be so
civilised that we’d all work a 4 day week (something recently heralded as
hugely successful but unlikely to become mainstream). I imagined retirement
ages would fall for all. I especially treasured this idea when my dad died 5 months
to the day after he retired having been one of those ‘never a sick day’ kind of
guys.
But I digress
The UK retirement age for women was raised on the basis of equality… Really?
Somehow all the other stuff that would make things
more equal for women are still lagging far far behind.
According
to TUC general secretary, Paul Nowak - “Working women deserve equal pay. But at
current rates of progress, it will take more than 20 years to close the gender
pay gap.
ANOTHER two decades!!!
Then of course there is childcare and promotion barriers in
the work place, sexism in the workplace.
On a possibly more trivial note but nevertheless interesting – I was hugely entertained a few years ago when it was ruled that insurance companies could no longer distinguish between male and female drivers when it came to offering discounted premiums.
Suddenly the judges were all over
equality. That the insurance industry is based entirely on risk assessment
seems to have been ignored. That women were statistically safer
drivers and therefore earned the discount was ignored. We must have equality
said the law – and women's premiums went up.
If you don’t see a pattern here I’ll spell it
out.
Society can move to equality very sharply if it feeds money into the system and does away with historic rights. We can
move to equality if its women whose benefits are withdrawn.
When it comes to equal pay or any of the things that women have been fighting for for decades – don’t hold your breath…
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