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UK policies and politics

Politics: What Women Want?

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There are a lot of things not to like about Mel Gibson, but “What Women Want“, his 2000 movie also starring Helen Hunt and Marisa Tomei was actually quite funny.

                                             

Throughout the centuries men have been asking what women want, and while the answer from Mel (not to be taken for granted) differs slightly from the answer that Chaucer’s Wife of Bath gives ( “Wommen desiren to have sovereyntee. As wel over hir housbond as hir love, And for to been in maistrie hym above”) the core is the same.

But despite the fact that the answer has been out there for so long,  it seems that this is again being asked, this time in the context of politics.
While the newspapers wage the war between what they describe as “real women” and “ardent careerists who should be in the kitchen having babies” (although I might have misread this last point), the politicians are vying for the female vote.

Netmums, Mumsnet and other female-led online communities are the battleground.  Yesterday – Mothering Sunday – Gordon Brown appeared live on Netmums.

There are 16 pages of discussion to read, if you want, but it’s interesting to note that while Mumsnet was accused recently of being the internet home of middle class Boden wearers, Netmums was keen to point out that a quarter of members that had filled in a survey were on under £15000, and half on under £25000.

So what are mums interested in?  Well a quick scan reveals the following topics got time and attention: tax credits too complex, what’s happening with childcare vouchers, children centres, cost of childcare, maternity services, decline in maternity services, child internet safety, more support for stem jobs, new plans for improving maternity services, childminders early years training costs and tax breaks for looking after own kids, breastfeeding, benefits – v- working , marriage, public sector jobs, mums returning to work, nightmare neighbours, supporting mums to stay at home with their kids… ok I got bored after 4 pages.

 A lot of the time, comments were about the posters’ personal circumstances, and the Prime Minister did offer to put a few in touch with the right minister to get the the information they needed.  A lot of the time the answers looked like standard briefing text – and fair enough, personalising everything in the time necessary for an online debate is a real challenge – but if, for example someone complains about childcare provision in their area and the difficulties it causes the in their day to day lives, telling the that there’s more childcare than ever and some of it is now paid by the state doesn’t actually help them. 

But what the various leader’s debates have shown, bearing in mind that the people that actually coment in these discussions are only a small subset of mums, let alone of women, is that the interests and issues affecting women are incredibly diverse. 
And that “women’s issues” are not a simple box that can be ticked.

The National Equality Panel report showed that there is almost as much disparity between top and bottom earning women as there are between top and bottom earners overall. 
Contrary to what the Daily Mail tried to say this meant, it doesn’t mean that there is no gender pay gap or that it is not important in terms of sorting out the inequalities in this country (it does however mean with inequality on this scale it is not simply restricted to disadvantage by gender).  It also means that women may not all individually think that the top priority for them is addressing the barriers to women reaching the boardroom, or even have a view on the level of income at which tax credits apply.

Women’s interests are affected by their differing situations, just like the interests of men, but with added experience of using the NHS, schools, childcare and all the things that get pigeonholed as “women’s interests” when actually everything is a women’s issue (yep, even men’s health. You think if something happened to my husband it wouldn’t be a priority for me?)  

And while the audience of the discussion forums can suggest that women’s issues are special and selective, women can have views on the economy overall (some of us are perhaps more likely to admit that it is not immediately obvious how something so complex actually works- but then isn’t that the problem that the banks didn’t admit to, that they didn’t know either?), heavy industry, the appropriate structure of the labour market and all the things that apparently are “male” issues and keep these thoughts in their pretty little heads along with which shoes goes with which outfit, the state of the Beckhams’ marriage, which kid is doing which after school activity when just as well as a amn can keep football scores, engine capacities and recipes for his most impressive pasta dish in his (because we’re not into gender sterotyping, are we?)  

The women’s vote in 1997, the apparent fact that women changed from moderate conservatism to supporting Tony Blair’s New Labour, was instrumental in bringing about a change of government.  With all the courting of the women’s vote, the striving to appear a nice an as well as a leader who loves his family, and the talk of a hung parliament it is clear that it’s thought to be decisive again. 
But don’t patronise us. 
We don’t need to know that you are a loving husband and father – if you have a wife and kids we should jolly well expect you to be.  
Some people might want you to be “ordinary” and know the price of a pint of milk and what’s happening on Corrie, but others may not be convinced those are great indicators of leadership.  If you actually understand economics, the way in which our various relationships with other countries and international institutions functions and amplify each other, recognise the professionalism of people doing their jobs and treat the that way, then you might be worth voting for. 
Of course you could just mainstream equality: recognise the value of the contribution that women make to the world as well as men, talk about the things that affect our lives more than those of men as normal not an add-on or a luxury.  You don’t have to be a woman to recognise the value of that (though a few more in parliament challenging ideas through that filter might be a good idea). 
Listening to us, and enabling us to do some of the decision-making too. Enabling us to make the decisions about who we want to be without barriers that are there not through design but overlooking because someone that knows best didn’t take that consequence into account.  I could go on, but I won’t for now.

I don’t think that’s too far from what the Wife of Bath’s Tale set out, is it?

Why Mumsnet politics matters

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mum in boden
Oh dear – Janet Street Porter seems to be upset about having been invited to a party to celebrate Mumsnet’s anniversary.

I’m a member- but not a regular user- of Mumsnet. Also of Netmums, and a couple of other parenting websites.
It’s a legitimate forum for parents to come together and share common experiences.

I have a bit of Boden in my wardrobe (not too much – Johnny seems to imagine that yummy mummies have breastfed so long that they have lost any semblance of cleavage so I can’t buy the majority of the tops).  I thought the dresscode of “Boden” she mentioned was very funny, very knowing (as in that’s what they think of us shorthand irony).  Yep, I wear it both to work and socially, but never to “hubbie’s office dinner” because – do you know what?- in our working lives to date, it’s been my jobs that have generated all the out of hours socialising-as-business events.  And some of those have been black tie… ah, but those days are over now.
   
But then I’m problably the suburban middle class mother that JSP would despise. 

The Mumsnet discussion of all this shows the diversity of the women involved.  The common thread is motherhood but age, job other than parenting, marital status, location, interests, and frankly spelling ability and ability to articulate are hugely varied.
Yes, as with all online forums there’s an element of bullying.  But I don’t find that there’s a received way of thinking – far from it (a debate with a politician felt like it got hijacked by the home-schoolers recently and while no one says why on earth would you do that, it was hardly a mainstream concern shared by all – but the questioners were about to make the points they wanted to and get a response on an issue that they could have spent years writing to DCSF about and not had anything as clear or direct).  
And Mumsnet can’t be said to speak for all mums.  My favourite stat is the if you had all the members together physically in one place, say a football stadium, rather than online no one could say that they should be overlooked- but of course the point is that you never could do all that and no one would expect them all to be friends or have a common view or purpose other than the specific one that’s brought them together. A bit like football fans actually.

But JSP is wrong to suggest that it’s the kiddie sick element of parenting that would form the main part of conversation at a party like that – if Mumsnet were inviting the sort of people that post it’d be so much more interesting than that. JSP herself says that it is likely to be “packed with high achieving women”.

And that’s the point.  Mumsnet and other online forums can’t easily be dismissed as JSP points out because it is expected that women will be the swing voters in the coming election.
Talking about being parents is not enough though – if the high achieving women of Mumsnet are intelligent too, they are unlikely to be impressed simply with an “I’ve got a family too and I love them” approach by politicians (although I have to say that unless you’ve been a parent or raised a sibling etc. you really don’t know what it’s like to be one!) unless we’d got evidence that they too had had childcare logistical arrangement trauma, needed both parents to work to meet the bills, fought to get into the right schools and all the other little day to day dramas that parents deal with everyday but which I could not have possibly anticipated would be so complicated until actually faced with handling it.
(As an aside, I once asked a schoolfriend of mine who had three children and was pregnant with her fourth whether she’d gone back to work.  Bless her, she didn’t actually cut of contact or shout at me but with just one I can now see how naive a question that was!) 

I would have thought that – if women are to be the battleground – vocabulary like “swingeing” public sector cuts would be dropped given that that is more likely to affect women than men as they are more likely to be working in the public sector. 
And far from calling it “smug”, why don’t we just acknowledge that women, whether SAHM (stay at home mums) or working like me, using their own little vocabs on the web like DH for darling husband (no worse than football fans, or car owner forums etc.), are a legitimate voting demographic?  
Yes, so are the “women over 40, single and divorced” - interestingly JSP’s own demographic on and off- both are valid.
But that dones’t mean mums are irrelevant.  And politicians
have found a direct way to talk with some of them, which both parties like (many politicians like to extrapolate from the specific to the general – Alan Johnson said on BBC4′s “The Great Offices of State” this week that he liked to get out and talk to policemen on the frontline rather than just read briefs compiled by civil servants, as if the specific expereinces of a few could be presumed to be similar to those of the whole – which is of course the basis behind sampling too).

But please, JSP, can you help celebrate that some women, and not just those working like men, or with lots of money, or for whom children didn’t happen and could focus wholeheartedly on careerbuilding at the crucial 20s-40s period and who have climbed the greasy poles are getting their voices heard too?  It’s shouldn’t be either/or, it should be “yes! And now let’s make sure the next group can also be heard! ”

Mums, whether working or at home are voters too, and the politicians are recognising it.  So the willingness of senior politicians to be participating in Mumsnet debates matters.
If it could be done in a non-patronising way that’d be great.

Can 2010 be a bit less complicated?

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Looking around the blogosphere, it seems that many bloggers stop at New Year to reflect on the year they’ve had, and their aspirations for the coming year.  I’ve decided I’m going to do the same, in the hope that writing down some thoughts will make everything a bit less complicated.
I’m going to make some predictions and comments on the coming year, some personal, some bigger picture.

So 2009.  According to the Facebook statuses of many of my friends, very few people seem to have enjoyed 2009.  I’ve had better, to be honest.  If you look at it objectively, there’s a list of the most stressful things you can do in life and over the last couple of years I’ve done most of them: starting from autumn 2007 I’ve had a baby, we had a death in the family, I had a car crash and resultant injury, had a serially ill child, supported my husband through a career change, returned to work after maternity leave, changed job, handled complex situations at work, moved house, worked outside work hours and without work paying for it towards a qualification… I think I can be forgiven feeling a little stressed…

There have been good things too.  I’ve met some really nice and interesting people, found a lovely house which we’ve helped design so it feels like it’s especially for us, my son  has grown into a lovely toddler, my husband and I have passed the three year anniversary happily, David Tennant was in just about every TV programme over Christmas and I’ve started writing this blog on my very own website which has brought me into contact with some people I’d never have met without it and with whom I’ve done weird things like the euroblogger’s Skype meet-up…

So what does 2010 hold?

1) I will move house.  Again.  Hopefully I’ll not need to do so again for 20 years.
We spent most of 2009 moving house. At least that’s what it’s felt like.  Hopefully in three weeks time I can log on from my own, new house.  It’s so exciting!

2) I will complete my CIPD Certificate in Training Practice.
Did you see my description of myself as “almost a trainer” in the “About Me” blurb? 
I started my professional training qualification in 2006, but had to take time out because of maternity leave – I now need to complete my assessed project by March this year – so that’s a clear deadline.
Wish me luck – and if you need a trainer with my expertise, please do get in touch…

3) There will be a General Election in the UK
There has to be, constitutionally, at least every 5 years, and that’s June this year at the latest.
You know the old joke “it doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always gets in“? 
There are some differences between the approaches of the main parties (of course if not enough people turn out to vote in each seat under the first-past-the-post system, it’s not just the views of the candidates of the main parties you need to look for…) but there are certainly some similarities, not least in what is being spoken of in terms of cutting public services.  
It’s not clear who is intended to deliver services or ensure that public money is being spent properly by the service deliverers if they are not public servants, but it is clear that no one in the public sector can be complacent that there will always be a job for them, and the pension’s probably not going to remain a golden asset either over the next 40-odd years. 
Elections offer a chance to redefine government-servant relationships, and I understnad that this thinking is underway so I really hope that the role of the civil service and public services are being properly thought out and not just seen as a wodge of public spending to be slashed.

4) International and EU issues will matter even more…
The outcome of the climate change talks in Copenhagen showed that acting big gets you a seat at the top table – the players in getting the deal that mattered were Obama for the USA (population 304,059,724) with the leaders of South Africa (pop 48,687,000), India (pop 1,139,964,932), Brazil (pop 191,971,506) and China (pop 1,325,639,982) . 
While the South Africans have a relatively low population to be part of this grouping, with South Africa and Brazil representing developing continents and growing populations, getting a deal meant having them there. 
But continent-wise, Europe is absent from the top table.
North America, South America, Asia, Africa but the fifth Olympic ring is completely absent. 
Now look at the Daily Mail’s reporting of the deal…

Copenhagen climate change summit delegates have recognised a US-backed agreement on climate change, passing a motion this morning.
The decision follows a US-led group of five nations – including China – tabling a last-minute proposal that US President Barack Obama called a ‘meaningful agreement’.
The fudged deal – backed by Britain, America, South Africa, India, Brazil and China – came after a day of bitter rows and divisions in which the United Nations talks came close to collapse.

Britain?  My understanding from the press was that Britain was not part of the deal, relucantly accepted it as better than no deal at all.  But we weren’t part of that deal. 
Now, no doubt some people here would look at the South African population size and say Britain has a bigger population than that and should have been at the table.  But we share policymaking decisions with neighbouring countries on subjects that affect how we can respond to climate change, and we’ve agreed with them ways in which we will act together – that’s via the European Union.  If we get our act together, in sheer numerical terms we’d warrant a place at the decision-making table, all 499,800,000 of us – third largest population bloc after China and India. 

Copenhagen should act as a real kick up the backside to those that don’t want us to act together as a European Union on the world stage – if we don’t, we don’t count. That’s it.  The Commonwealth’s not a real alternative – India was at that top table in its own right, not representing the Commonwealth.  In any case it’s hard to believe that the sort of people that advocate Commonwealth over EU would see India speaking for them in the international environment in any case, they probably imagine that the UK could successfully lead the way internationally without the need for a power bloc to back up our international standing.  
But Copenhagen showed a new set of powers – not the old cold war blocs any more but a multilateral world where being big matters.  The USA and India are not out to protect the UK’s interests, but the EU is, not least because a powerful Britain is a key market and a defence leader for the other Member States. 
So the choice is EU, or insignificance.
Somehow, I think I’m going to want to be involved in this.   

5) We’ll take some lifechanging decisions…
We gain more family down under this year, but lose family in the Midlands.   This changes our lives as well as theirs – not least because at least one holiday in four will now need to be on the other side of the world. 
As a minimum, I’m going to lose some weight.
But whether it’s jobs or the size of our family, given our ages (mine, my husband’s and our son’s) decisions we make now will affect us in the long run.  I just pray that God is with us as we make them.

6) And I’ll keep writing…
I’m enjoying having a public space in which to comment on things that interest me.  Hope you’ll keep reading.  And a very happy new year.

Giving Politics the X Factor…

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… or why we’ve got to get TV debates right.

 Debate clipartImage from rutlandherald.typepad.com/…/2009/02/index.html

So it sounds like this year we’ll get televised debates between the leaders of the three main political parties.
3 and a half quick thoughts:

1) I’m not clear which production company will be running the debates – we can only hope it’s not the one that makes Question Time - the last thing we need is baying mobs. According to the BBC website: 

ITV’s Alastair Stewart will host the first, Sky’s Adam Boulton the second and the BBC’s David Dimbleby will host the third debate.

And if it’s Simon Cowell’s company, he has said he wants to run the debates with a “bear pit atmosphere” . Think live audience, phone ins etc. etc.
What we need is sensible considered debate, with actual questioning of the different policies – the baying mob approach will just encourage politicians to play up the tribalist approach rather than subject each others policies to proper scrutiny.

2) We’ve got the wrong electoral system for this… 
We’re not voting for a prime minister, no matter what the focus of the debates, we’re voting for a Member of Parliament to represent us, and the leader of the party that wins the most seats will be invited by the Queen to form a government.
If I watch a debate between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg and I live in to take a place at random, Ashford, Kent, if I want to vote for them I can’t. 
I can vote for Chris Clark for Labour, sitting MP and shadow immigration minister Damian Green or Chris Took for the Lib Dems, plus anyone else who is standing.  They sign up to the same manifesto to stand as an MP for that party, but as I’ve set out before, I find it difficult to think that everyone signing up even as a candidate fully supports every last dot and cross of the manifesto for parties which are usually such a broad church in reality.  What if you want to vote green Tory but your constituency candidate is one of the climate change doubters?
It’s really hard to demonstrate a direct relationship between these leaders debates and the actual vote that you go into the school hall or wherever it may be to cast – here it is in plain numbers.  According to www.makemyvotecount.org.uk:

Over 70% of votes (over 19m) were wasted as they were cast either for a losing candidate or surplus to the winner’s requirements – a slight increase compared with 2001.

3) We’ve got devolution – and the party in government at Westminster is not in government in Scotland.  So should the SNP be involved in the general election debates?  Or Plaid Cymru?  What about Northern Ireland?  What about parties that have been democratically elected in a national vote – that would widen it out to the Greens, UKIP, BNP…? 

3.5) Are we going to be allowed to social media the debate and get answers?  I’d love a Twitter screen – but fear it’d be filled with “you’re all crap” or partisan rubbish rather than actual questions. 

So while I think that public debate of what the parties actually stand for, a chance to find out how, for example, they intend to put their policies into place while slashing the public service that would normally do this, or where third sector would get the capacity and funding to deliver services and how good value for money would be ensured and how exactly EU regulation of the City would be more constraining than what’s on offer at present, or how certain parts of public spending can be ringfenced, or why the we can’t get enough women into science careers because they don’t take science subjects but an international baccalaureat that would stop them accidentally narrowing their options but is not a good enough option to replace A-levels… to take 5 issues at random…
If I want to watch clever lines and shoutings down, I can watch PMQs. 
But televised debates need to actually allow critical examination of each party’s policies by the others on the grounds of what those policies are, and wider implications of the costs (financial and social, as well as the rest of PESTLE analysis actually…) – identifying places of agreement and cooperation.  Oh what’s the point?  We’re going to get the bearpit, aren’t we?

It can’t just be politics: the X Factor.
Surely the expenses scandal and fallout has shown that voters feel they should be shown more respect?
Well, if Rage Against the Machine can get Christmas number one as an act of rebellion against the assumed way of doing things, then those planning the debates should take note and not patronise in the approach.  Relevance might not mean what they think it does…

3 reasons why Copenhagen needs to succeed

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I’ve just read that progress at the Climate Change conference talks in Copenhagen are “too slow”. I’ve done some tricky negotiations in my time, but I can only imagine how complex and what interests need to be handled in this sort of event.
It’s not even that there’s a for and against argument – it’s not sceptics versus ecofundamentalists, it’s nations (and blocs such as the EU or G77-China) with a complex pattern of interests and views that need to be taken into account in reaching a conclusion that everyone can sign up to.  

Look, if you want the scientific analysis of climate change, this is not going to be the blog for you. 
I’ve no truck with the denier/ sceptics who always seem to be on the side of business that doesn’t want to change what it has already invested in even if it brings about the end of the world as we know it.
But nor do I feel it’s right that environmentalism has become a belief system. 
We can’t have zero impact on the earth in an industrialised or post-industrialised country – to have no impact, even an agrarian society would be a mistake.  What we can do is to try to minimise the impact that we are having.
But there’s no one right way of doing so.  Attacking Climate Change secretary Ed Milliband for being honest enough to admit that he and his partner use disposable rather than reusable cloth nappies without considering that the reusable ones don’t just spring into existence and there’s a remarkable absence of cotton fields here in the UK – it just shows that a greener-than-thou mentality is alive and well and living in yummy mummy England. Presumably not the same mums driving t5he kids to school in a 4×4 becuase “it’s safer” though…

But Copenhagen needs to succeed.
Here’a a quick top 3 of why…

1) As any parent knows, I don’t care who is responsible for this mess, I just want it cleared up NOW, otherwise no one will be getting any kind of treat at all for the forseeable future… 
Is climate change entirely man-made? A natural phenomenon? A mixture of the two?  
I’m inclined towards the mixture argument because the fact that there have been ice ages in the past indicate that the temperature of the planet does vary over time, but I gather that the vast speed and intensity of change is what appears to be being dictated by our actions and the science backs that.

But the point is that this is a sterile debate. 
It really doesn’t matter whether it was me or mother nature alone that got the environment to this state, someone’s got to sort it out and if we can see that CO2 emissions and our energy guzzling ways are having an impact then we need to sort that out. 
It’s all feeling a bit like those cigarette companies that go there’s no proven link between cigarette smoke and lung cancer while having to pay out compensation to smokers, while all the time seeking out new ways of getting new customers hooked (such as the dispicable practice of selling individual cigarettes for a few pennies to young people in Africa who would not be able to afford the price of a whole packet). 
Or people as fat as me or fatter who pretend its all genetic rather than accepting that appropriate exercise and a better diet with more fruit and veg and less processed food in it would make a difference.

Something is happening (at the very least the weather is getting more extreme) and we can’t just throw up our hands and say will of the gods these days, so we have a responsibility to try to do something about making the lives of the people on this planet easier as it happens.  Think of them as the potential consumers for the goods or services that you produce if you need to have some kind of economic rationale behind it.  Gordon Brown mentioned green technology in his response to a question about whether it was right to give the developing world money to combat climate change in the midst of our own recession – and he was right to do so because if you can’t get people to understand the moral case, show them how their wallets can be aided and you’ll get their attention…  

2) Explaning it to the kids
There’s an old proverb that we don’t own the earth, we’re looking after it for our children.  It may be trite, but there’s a truth behind it.
I’ve blogged at length on recycling (here, here), and also mentioned that greener living is presented as the norm on Cbeebies.

Ed Miliband has a child in nappies.  That means that he is part of the same generation as me. 
That means that at least some of the negotiators at Copenhagen are not wise sages of an older generation - they’re my generation. 
So it’s my generation’s responsibility to get it right, right now. 
We can’t be the generation that saw things happening but dismissed them as not our problem to handle – how on earth would we be able to look future generations in the eye and say:
“well, although we had scientific results that showed that there was a serious problem we were more bothered about leaked emails whether there was collusion to exaggerate the problem becuase that excused us from taking the problem seriously and… what’s that? Email?  That was an electronic communications system which we used on our personal computers.  We used to sit with electric lights on, listening to music on electrical devices all the time not just on wind-up radios, our big flatscrren TVs eating power while we talked with people not just here, or in the same town but right across the world through email, skype, IM, twitter, facebook etc.  Those were the days, eh?  Life without power cuts. Who’d've thought it, eh?”
The 21st century is the century wherw we’re learning to live online as well as in the real world.  I wouldn’t want to only be able to cope with the online world, and then only if the power was available.  
My parents’ generation are having a tough enough time explaining to mine how as baby boomers they afford to live in a house with more bedrooms than people, can retire at 60 and expect to live the rest of their lives with their needs taken care of by the working generation, but my generation struggles to afford a mortgage on ex-Council houses, looks set to work well beyond 70 and will need to make pension and health care provisions becuase while the NHS free-at-the-point-of-use is sacrosanct for politicians at present, with more people living longer something’s going to give at some point. 
Now skip to explaining to my child how we see cars to pop around in and aeroplance flights as a right, electronic goods as necessities, meat as something for more than one meal a day… and however selfish the babyboomer generation may seem, we’re just as bad, just differently…
Just occasionally we’ve a chance to not screw it up for them - can we really not take it?    

5) Basically Copenhagen needs to succeed because we all need a bit of a kick up the arse on this stuff…

`In a world of market economics, if there’s enough consumer pressure, the market shall provide.  We’re starting to see this a bit but at the moment it’s still a bit of a niche – still, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk has gone free trade, so may be just may be…  But we’re not there yet and while simpler, cheaper but non-environmentally friendly alternatives persist, there’s little chance that we’ll switch.

We are encouraged to focus on what we CAN do, but while few of us consider the Prius as first car choice at present (price and space for child car seat and boot space for buggy tend to dictate our choice along with fuel economy and emissions rating) we need to be aware that shipping it over to where we are is a source of carbon emissions. 

I mentioned the nightmare of disposable nappies which take thousands of years to rot down – but while society requires working parents, buckets of napisan and constant loads of washing are not appealing, and the (expensive) nappy collection services don’t seem to operate outside London.  Besides my son got appalling nappy rash which is not aided by reusables.     You can get unbleached, biodegradable disposable nappies - they were better, but still not as absorbant as the planet-killers…

We could eat less meat and dairy – cows in particular produce methane and contribute to global warning but if we’re still doing so in the full knowledge that we greatly increase our risk of bowel cancer through ham, sausages and other processed meats I suspect militant vegetarianism to save the planet is on a hiding to nothing.

Even when it’s made easy, we don’t do it – the fuss about changing over to more sustainable lightbulbs shows that even simple changes that can make a big difference still don’t have full public support – although we’ve been using them for years in my house and have got used to the idea of them “warming up”.

As for planning and land use, local councils need to sort out their recycling policy to cover plastics (not good enough to say that its uneconomical to recycle plastics because oil is a finite resource and if we don’t start reusing we’ll run out) and while I know new-build environmental standards are high, rainwater harvesting and solar panels ought to be mandatory just like decent insulation… more on this soon.

So we need Copenhagen to succeed because deep down, most people are inherently small “c” conservative and won’t change unless they’re persuaded that there’s something wrong with what they were doing before that is now unpalatable to them.  Bottom up does sometimes need the support of top down.

What’s the politics equivalent of CofE?

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When the census was published in 2001, the big story was the religion box and the internet rumours about how if enough people put Jedi as their religion it had to be “officially recognised”. Absolute rubbish of course, but nevertheless 390,000 people said that they were Jedi’s leading to this rather fab report title on the ONS website…
37.3 million of the 53 million respondents to the census gave their religion as “Christian”.  Individual denominations were not specified, nor was there any breakdown between practising and non-practising because the census records the label that people choose for themselves.

Just about anyone you ask will tell you that practically no one goes to church on a Sunday (actually it’s more people than go to football matches each week, but no one’s saying that football’s on it’s way out and the stadiums should be converted into bijou residences, are they?) 
And indeed speculation at the time was that many people that had said that had done so out of habit or tradition - that they were not really Christian other than for hatches, matches and dispatches, and that many people would’ve preferred to put ”C of E” rather than Christian in any case becuase it conveys a sort of equivocal, half-hearted, keeping the door ajar approach rather than a total immersion.

I suspect that actually there’s something very British about this sort of attitude.  Andrew Marr pointed out in his excellent series “The Making of Modern Britain” that what probably saved the UK from Oswald Mosely’s fascism was the British sense of humour, that we don’t commit too lightly or take things too seriously (look how long Jedward managed to stay in the X Factor if you need a more trivial example). 
CofE means: of all the faiths that I’m not currently practising, this is the one whose service I didn’t go to on Sunday… 
If that’s true, I guess they were the people that would’ve found my last three churches (TBT at Christchurch Mayfair, Holy Trinity Brussels and St Mark’s Battersea) a bit “too much”, not CofE in the sense they mean it. But I digress.

So I’ve just found this excellent post over at Sharpe’s Opinion, which sets out in a short, neat way something I’ve thought a bit about for some time. 

Political party membership is falling in the UK, and I think that part of the problem is that to join a political party, you need to feel that you subscribe to all of a diverse range of policies (and pay for the privelege of saying that you do so).
Actually I remember my politics teacher at school saying exactly that- that she had never signed up to a political party because she could not support the whole message of any of them. And she was one of the cleverest people I knew (Miss Pickles, you were a legend!  But as she was a sit-up-and-beg-bicycling, bun-wearing non-TV watcher I’m not honestly expecting to be able to find anything online from her to hyperlink to other than this link to the school…)

So you might be someone that thinks marriage is the best thing for encouraging families to stay together and that there should be tax breaks to encourage this, but pro-European. 
Or you might favour positive action in recruitment for women, disabled people and minority groups, but strongly in favour of grammar schools as the best way to help bright children from disadvantaged backgrounds be socially mobile. 
Or you might be in favour of local income tax but own a house worth over £2 million.
(Just to clarify this is not me we’re talking about in these examples - I don’t even own a house!). 
In each case, your two interests would conflict with two of the few clear policies espoused by a major political party.

So – assuming that there’s no one policy area on which you are intending to be a single issue activist – how would you be able to “commit” enough to actually “do” something in politics to make the world a better place?
  
It’s not that easy at the moment.
If – as it seems from my paddling in the UK and EU political blogospheres- one of the main ways of getting your voice hear is through the team/ brand loyalty of a political party.  This guarantees you a pool of potential readers who will click onto or link to your blog just because you’ve got a little bird or tree or rose emblem just like theirs (or indeed a different one to theirs).  There will be lists that you can get onto, bringing more readers to debate with in the comments section and share ideas and build your knowledge. 
But these of course are the hardcore supporters, and while bloggers like Iain Dale are clear that they are not official party mouthpieces, they do tend to take a my-party-right-or-no-actually-we’re-always-right type of attitude (unless on an issue where they’re personally affected in which case they try to justify both views).
And what happens if, like Charlotte Gore, you fall out of love with your party over bits of what they stand for? 
It’s a bit like a religion isn’t it?  But while exegesis or midrash are “allowed” in some religious circles, and small group discussion is thought to help you understand and deepen your faith, there will always be some people who are happy with the simple faith version, looking for an easy label and willing to say “C of E” and get back to mowing the lawn without trying to go into what it means and why.  And indeed there will always be some people within the faith that don’t want you to do more than parrot back received wisdom – could that be said to be the case for political parties too, as in “we have clever people to do the thinking and they’ve come up with this, take it or leave it?”

So can anything be done to make this better?
Not clear.  Experiments like Jury Team tried to overcome the political party system, but the polling at the 2009 European elections for their independent candidates was hardly spectacular. 
Esther Rantzen might be trying to use her celebrity in a Martin Bell-like manner to stand against a politician whose morals she disagrees with, but she’s not exactly standing on a platform of anything that people can sign up to positively, merely that she’s been known in the past as a consumer champion and is not the sitting candidate.
I suspect that actually a different electoral system allowing for coalition politics might be part of the solution. 
Then, I don’t know, pro-European Tories could be free to praise the benefits of the EU to the rooftops, Labour supporters that think that an insurance-based healthcare system might actually be better than the current NHS, and Lib Dems who think that students should pay tuition fees would all be free to say what they think without fear of losing the whip or never getting on in their party and therefore never making it to the front benches/ government. 
Maybe the way to avoid groupthink and to really stimulate new ideas is to have lots of different groups suggesting them.  And while I guess there’s a Pythonesque risk of ending up with the Judean People’s Front/ People’s Front of Judea, at least it would be debate out in the open rather than manifestos out the front but little black books and the like behind the scenes.

Of course which ever party forms a government via which ever political system, I’m sure they’ll do their best to be a good govenment.  But as the old saying goes, it doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always gets in. 
I guess there might be a lot of people out there wondering which is the “C of E” option on the ballot papers…

Eurobloggers United…

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Well, it actually happened and I was there.

What was this momentous event?

It was the first get together of eurobloggers.  At Joe Litobarski’s instigation we met online – initally via twitter, Google wave, IM etc. but actually in the end via Skype’s IM system after a conference call for more than 20 proved unwieldy (and my microphone wouldn’t turn off, meaning everyone could hear my toddler enjoying the Sarah Jane Adventures).

We discussed overcoming language issues in EU blogging – en anglais English, evidemment (something that makes me as a native English speaker both grateful and a bit guilty) – and the solution to better linking up and boosting the readership of EU blogs and conversations between bloggers is likely to be a bit linguistic, a bit techie, and reliant on the willingness and goodwill of all those involved.
I couldn’t stay for it all – evening events tend to end up clashing with toddler bed time although he did very well and his fathe’s arrival home meant I wasn’t too neglectful, but eventually bedtime had to come.

Congratulations, Joe, on a great initiative.  And it was lovely to meet everyone.
Now let’s see where we can go from here!

Enlightened Euroscepticism requires the enlightenment bit…

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eu with light

Henry Porter in the Observer yesterday talked about enlightened Euroscepticism.
His argument would be easier to accept if he hadn’t confused the European Court of Human Rights and its ruling on the display of crucifixes in Italian schools with the EU and standardisation.
He says “the crucifix is none of the EU’s business” and he is right.  It isn’t and wasn’t.
(Even if the EU is about the accede to ECHR).

He talks about the the appointment of a President of the Council in these terms: “the point is that the coronation will take place without the involvement of the people at the very moment when Europe marks the most significant and peaceful revolution in history”.  This makes me feel unspeakably angry for a number of reasons:
i) appointing a Council President is not a coronation – Henry Porter has either bought the lie or has not actually bothered to do more that read the UK press coverage of the role;
ii)  there’s a number of Presidents in the European context (Commission and European Parliament Presidents already exist).  Each heads an EU institution, each has a specific role in the overall EU institutional and decision-making process.  It seems unlikely that they would respond positively to a huge swing of power and influence towards the role of the Council (one of the EP’s favourite experssions is “inter-institutional balance”).  So I would expect that the postholders would go some way towards keeping a new “upstart” President in his or her place if they start seeing themselves in a more monarchistic light;
iii) Electing a President of the Council would be rather like directly electing a Nancy Pelosi type figure – charismatic, known internationally but more influential than powerful so how many people would bother to turn out.  As far as I can see, a directly elected by the EU populace President could not be simply a President of the Council.
iv) to invoke the anniversary of being 20 years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall to imbue the declaration that it is a coronation with added significance as if it is the installation of an absolutist monarchy over all EU Member States, with echoes of totalitarianism is insulting to the reader, to common sense and to the memory of that incredible event.  

Look – there was a chance, in the Constitutional Treaty and then in the Lisbon Treaty to have a directly-elected President of the EU.  But the Member State governments, who agree a text and then seek ratification in their own countries depending on the system that they use for this sort of process (parliamentary approval or public referendum), didn’t go for that.  They agreed to a lesser role, in one of the three main institutions rather than sitting above them all and hardly a symbol of superstatehood. 
The constant assertion that the role is the supreme leader role needs to be challenged whenever it is made – that is an argument that has already been overcome. 
Why can’t sceptics accept that what they’ve got is already a victory? Oh yes. Because we’ve forgotten what scepticism means!
As Julien Frisch said in his tongue-in-cheek guide to becoming a successful Euroblogger, it seems to be generally assumed that the world is divided into “Federalists” that are pro-European, and sceptics/ realists that are anti-EU. 
I would argue – as would Julien, Jon Worth, Nosemonkey and a host of other Eurobloggers that enlightened scepticism is actually the position that we all seem to hold: we support the concept of the EU but don’t believe it necessarily operates in the ideal way. 
We may not have a shared view over how and what it should do things differently, but the sooner we in the UK come to terms with the idea that being sceptical about something is not the same as being hostile to it, and that you can be broadly favouable towards something in cencept as well as sceptical about its execeution then the more measured, sensible and ulitimately effective and constructive a debate we can have.
So Henry Porter is right: “scepticism is not about being a little England Tory or any of the other nonsense spouted by French Euro-enthusiasts last week; it is sounding a note of caution, reserving judgement and not being in the interests of the common good”. 
The behaviours the French Europe Minister described would certainly not be “sceptical” behaviours if we are using the word properly.
I would add that a decent dash of scepticism is vital to get an approach to life verging on “everything in moderation”. 
Henry Porter is also right that people have to take responsibility and that the role of the people in a democracy is something that should not ignored.

But detail matters too.  And how can the people take informed decsions when they’re given distorted pictures on which to form their views?
So please – journalists, subs, editors, proprietors.  We understand that your first job is to write stories that sell papers or get ratings.  This is not always completely compatible with accuracy.  
And sometimes, as I would hope is the case with Henry Porter’s article, it may be uninformed error rather than deliberate innacuracy that leds to this sort of rant from bloggers.
But democracy itself is affected by what you say, what you publish (you’ve even boasted about this in the past e.g. “It was the Sun wot won it”).  You owe it to your readers to act responsibly. And the occasional full article correction, rather than burying corrections away near the letters page or just not bothering would really be a start.        

Update: excellent guide to the various Councils now available on Nosemonkey’s EUtopia blog. Fab stuff indeed.

Why we need Wandsworth’s services here too…

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You know that expression “you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone“?
It’s beginning to feel a bit like that since moving out of Wandsworth.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad we don’t live in London any more. Yes I miss my lovely church, the playgroup friends my son and I had both made, the common on which we walked through the seasons, the proximity to gastronome’s delight Northcote Road and the copious and regular buses that eased the morning commute.
But we barely used facilities after 8pm (you don’t when you have to be home with a baby) so access to the West End, concerts, restaurant deals etc. had started not to matter.  And everything’s so expensive in London! 
I like the feeling of cleaner air in my lungs, having a garden, being nearer to my family, neighbours that say “hello” even if they’ve not met you before, a much bigger selection of shops nearby, proximity to the sea etc. etc.
Life is not all fab in the provinces. Much will be improved when we’re not renting but living in our own house – I didn’t believe I’d have got as used to owning as I have. Needing a car offends my greener sensibilities, And even with the new trains, the trebling of my commute is a bit of a bugger. But I’ve great hopes for the new bus system that’s proposed and fully intend to get involved in the consultation on that and anything else to help this town handling taking on another 29,000 houses in the next 20 years.

But the big thing I miss is the efficiency of Wandsworth Council.
I know it sounds daft. 
There may be readers in London falling off their chairs in disbelief.  May be it’s just that we’d got used to how they do things there.  May be it seems better in retrospect – but may be it really is good? 

We’ve moved into a beacon council area and I’m finding contact to let the local district council know we’ve done so incredibly frustrating. Phonelines that allegedly open at 8.30 but are still not open at 9.30, very long response periods following email contact (having tried by phone, I emailed – got an autoreply but who knows when I’ll get a proper response).

And just don’t get me started on the rubbish – we’ve got the weirdest recycling policy here: Wandsworth gets you to bung everything in one bag (delivering endless rolls of orange bags to your door) and collecting weekly, with a very extensive range of things that are accepted for recycling. My town gives you a medium-sized blue crate and a very restrictive policy (newspaper but not paper, no envelopes, no plastics, no tetrapaks, no shredding…), only collects every other Friday (and even then it’s only if you’re actually in the town centre) telling you that the rest can be handled at supermarkets and the local dump (sorry, recycling centre).  And the dump is tiny – the queues there at the weekend are unbelievable, the parking access is crazy and it barely seems to be able to handle the waste from the town the size it is.  Somewhere else is definitely going to be needed when the town expands.

I’m not at all bothered about the political complexion of the Councils – actually I think they’re broadly similar. 
But we’re paying about twice as much in Council tax for a property in the same band. 
I’m sure the Council does try to keep costs down and to soend money wisely.  It’s just that I really don’t think the services are twice as good here as they are in Wandsworth. (Yes, I know that services that I benefit from directly are not everything that the council tax charge covers but even so that’s one hell of a difference!)

I guess this bothers me because I want to feel confident as a resident that the decisions around the huge expansion of the town will take into account everything I would want them to.
I’m not sure quite sure what that would be yet but off the top of my head (and my husband’s, in between watching the X Factor) decent, affordable, regular public transport; communities with soul meaning things like light, spacious common gathering places not just shops and roundabouts; decent primary schools with enough places in communities and within walking distance; high quality childcare that enables rail commuters to get back to do the child pick-up without having to leave the office before 5pm; more department store being tempted into town; serious waste recycling with weekly collections of both normal waste and recycling (which should be allowed to be as much as a household produces not just one box-full); compulsory eco features in any new building developments (solar panels, rainwater harvesting etc.); green spaces… and achieving some of that will need to be about judicious spending of public money.
At some point I’ll put a bit more thought into that list.  

I think the main point for me is that the local government initiatives that are getting the headlines are the ones in Hammersmith and Fulham, or in Barnet.  Some seem so obvious you wonder why they’re not a normal part of planning deals, like the linking of provision of transport services and local facilities such as a library to the building of a massive new shopping centre – others I must need to read more about because what I’ve seen so far sounded like a policy of allowing people to pay more to shift themselves up the planning queue?
But while Wandsworth hasn’t really got huge shiny initatives like that, what it does have is the lowest concil tax in the country.  How?
I guess it might have is stonkingly good procurement contracts that mean that the services get delivered, and low levels of corruption (which a former councillor friend tells me can be an issue in local politics).  Of the two, the contracts seem to be key.

It’s never going to be a winning electoral slogan (“vote for me and I’ll revolutionise council procurement policy”) but if it could mean lower taxes people could be won over, I reckon.  Or leave more money available for doing all the good things you want done locally.  Or both.
And for a town with a big future ahead of it, doing what you do well, and using decent contracting to keep a handle on the things you get others to do for you – hmmm. 
I wonder if the Council here’s considered a trip to Wandsworth to see how it can be done?

A few thoughts on feminism…

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MotherhoodImage(Image from the brilliant http://www.womensmediacenter.com/ex/101408.html)

I’ve joined the British Mummy Bloggers social network. While the new blog hasn’t covered much parenting yet, it will do.
I was struck by the categories used as forums on the site, and joined the foodie, writing and feminist groups immediately.

Feminist?
Yes, I feel a bit uncomfortable with the word.
Here’s my comment on the forum in all its glory…

For me, feminism is not about being and acting like men, but about gaining respect for things that are important to me as a woman.
The dungaree-wearing, man-hating, bra-burning stereotype seems to me to be fading away, but feminism still seems to be a dirty word.
It tends to be used rather than in the equality sense as a way of portraying strong women as being in relentless pursuit of men to put them at a disadvantage, or used by usually younger women that take their clothes off in public to justify what is essentially titillation as something that makes them feel less uncomfortable ethically about something that’s earning them a lot of money…
I feel inherently uncomfortable with the term – having gone to a girls school and having had it thrown at us as an insult and often used as if it were a synonym for lesbian as opposed to a political position.

The most obvious issue on which I feel feminist is work – while of course my workplace is pretty good, why does it continue to be acceptable in the main to require parents (or others with caring responsibilities) to fit to a working pattern than causes stress and complication in their lives?
Surely you’d get the best out of people by acknowledging that they are in fact people and have lives outside the office?
Why isn’t there more term-time working/ work patterns that fit with school or nursery hours?
Do workers that work flexibly and/or part-time get taken as seriously?
Is working long hours a prerequisite for good annual reports and/or promotion prospects?
And is enough being done to help younger women focus onprofessional jobs with prospects and a future rather than just hairdressing, childcare, etc.? I hope so these days, but this is in itself complicated because in order to work I need some people providing childcare that doesn’t cost so much that it’s not worth me working…
These are the issues that I feel are what the modern feminist should focus on.

I also think that feminists need to be making the case that having children is not a “lifestyle choice” but an essential part of the continuation of the human race, and raising them is as valid a way of spending time as pursuing a “career” (I say this as someone attempting to do both, of course) but that we have the right to do both to the best of our abilities.
Women are our own worst critics – we seem to trumpet the superiority of our personal situation over those of our sisters (older women saying that younger shouldn’t have it easy because they didn’t, the constant SAHM – v- working mum rivalry, the look our best -v- accept us as we are arguments…)

But it’s more complicated than that, of course. I don’t think that being taken for fools by fashion that’s designed with an eye on women changing their bodies to fit an unattainable flat shape rather than the curves we’re meant to have (size zero? The UK average is a 16 – who are we kidding?) is something that we could or should accept – fat is a feminist issue as it used to be said.

And to continue on from that, I think that feminism has lost its way a bit.
It’s not about a right to be near naked in public or to sleep with as many men as possible and not be called a slag when theres no real male equivalent term.
It’s not about telling Muslim women not to wear a headscarf (more about listening to each woman’s reasons for choosing to do so or not, and being supportive either way).
It’s not about championing abortion as if it is a consequence-free event, ignoring the support that women need if they choose to end a pregnancy (which is a lifechanging event).
It’s not about coveting the next designer bag, latest clothes, perfect hair and grooming – we should be valuing women no matter what model of beauty they do or don’t conform to.  (I myself am Reubenesque and so a few centuries out of date…)
For me, it’s about championing the idea that women, collectively and individually have as much right to do things their way and develop as individuals and members of families and society as men do and to be encouraged, supportedand taken as seriously as men are while doing it.

I simply cannot understand why we have fewer women in politics than some in some developing countries (and was horrified by the comments from one man that only pretty women would make it past selection procedures), and so few women in very senior management roles etc. unless timeserving counts more than anything else (such as decision-making ability, leadership) and unfair selection procedures are in play somewhere in the process.  Of course a good way of doing something about this would be to incentivise men’s flexible and/or part-time working so that there was a more equal balance of men and women taking on caring roles so that this element could not be built into decisions on employing a woman as opposed to a man so easily as there would be a much more even “risk” of them needing not to work all the hours God sends…

I think feminism will either get a bit of a shot in the arm – or will be susumed into a wider set of issues of a similar nature - once you get more Generation Y in the workplace… bear with me on this.
There seems to be an expectation amongst employers that the current attitude that is perceived in GenY will eventually be replaced and that they’ll knuckle down and conform, as if thinking they can have it all their own way is youthful naiveity.
I disagree – I think that in a world where there’s no job for life, no final salary pension etc., the attraction of being a corporate drone is much less than it was say a decade ago.
This is a generation used to downloading what it wants to, instant communication with friends, mixing the personal and professional with confidence.  They’re a product of the 1980s and 1990s in which they grew up – consumerist but green, individualist and (perhaps because of having spent more time in educational or childcare environments?) more used to being indulged by working parents.  They do no easily accept being told “no”.
The only downside if you like is the constant exposure to rap music with its objectification of women and the risk that this passes over into the generational attitude… but then my husband points out that “Skins” is not actually a documentary…

So let’s hope in particular that GenY women kick up one hell of a stink if they feel they’re being treated unfairly in the workplace, or in life.  And let’s hope the men do too – after all a fight ofr recognition of the needs and diversity of the individual applies to them as much as to women.
And as the generation before them, let’s be helpful, supportive feminists to help them get there.