Category Archives: Current Affairs

Women and voting

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Thankfully all of the electioneering is over now, it was a seven week long campaign in Scotland so there were quite a lot of party political broadcasts to dodge in that time. I count myself as being moderately interested in politics, if only to see what lies and excuses they can come up with for their nonsense. I’ve always used my vote, as my own mother did. Quite often my parents went to the poll station and basically cancelled out each other’s votes, but it was still important to them to do it.

So I was absolutely flabbergasted one day last week when I was watching the news and they asked a woman in Northern Ireland who she would be voting for and her reply was – I’ll ask my dad who I should vote for. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t actually heard her say it, she was probably in her late 20s or early 30s, although I have to say I’m rubbish at guessing peoples ages, anyway she wasn’t 18.

To make matters worse my husband told me that a male colleague of his tells his wife who to vote for, because she isn’t political, they are both about 26 years old.

I’m left wondering how common this is in the 21st century. My Granny was one of those women who had to wait until she was 30 before she got the vote and she never missed a chance to use hers. So are we going backwards now with young women taking everything so much for granted that they are quite happy to slip back into such a Victorian attitude?

When I started work it was accepted practice for woment to be given a lower wage for the same work as a man. Then when we went into the European Union things like that had to stop because we had the Equality of the Sexes laws. In the library which I worked in at the time we weren’t allowed to wear trousers, not even smart ones and it was a big thing for us to be able to say to out boss that HE couldn’t stop us from wearing trousers anymore.

It seems that when some women have things too easy they get complacent, but I don’t suppose they really know what it was like in the bad old days of getting treated like an inferior just because you were female. The Suffragettes will be birling in their graves!

The Royal Wedding

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Well I hadn’t really planned on watching the whole wedding because I was really only interested in seeing the dress, but I ended up seeing it all from when William was being driven to the Abbey. I get sort of mesmerised by it all and now I’m just waiting for the balcony scene! I didn’t like their choice of music at all, I believe we have the groom’s father to blame for that!

I thought the dress was lovely, a really elegant bridal gown, so I’m hoping that it will change the fashion which seems to have been around for about 15 years now, of brides falling out of the top of their dresses. I suspect that the lacy bodice and sleeves are removable. It would have been even better though if the colour had been creamier instead of such a Daz white. I’m not a fan of white.

Inevitably it all brings back memories of royal weddings from the past. The first one which I can remember is Princess Anne’s to Mark Phillips and like just about everybody in the country my parents bought their first colour TV for the occasion. Although I never thought of Anne as being particularly bonnie, she was a really beautiful bride.

After that it was the big one – Charles and Diana and by that time I was married and we went to my mum’s house to watch it with her, sadly my dad had died the year before. I had made a lemon meringue pie as my contribution to the feast and I think I must have had some sort of premonition because Diana’s dress did resemble a meringue! Frighteningly that kicked off the hideous bridal frock fashion which seemed to be around for years after that.

When Diana got married she had only seen Charles 13 times – and was still calling him SIR! – but we didn’t know that then, it was never going to work as she was under the impression that she was super special. Instead of which she was the only one daft enough to accept him; he is supposed to have asked at least 5 other women before her.

So all in all I have high hopes of this marriage actually lasting as they’ve known each other for so long and they seem to be good friends.

The scariest sight of the day was Beatrice and Eugenie who seemed to be under the impression that it was a fancy dress party and they had come dressed as pantomime dames. I don’t want to be bitchy about 2 young women, but you all know which panto I’m talking about! I think that an older female member of the royal family should take them in hand and teach them how to dress. It strikes me that they must all be saying to themselves – “I can’t wait to see what they’re wearing this time” – and laughing their heads off!

Well that’s it, I’ve just seen the balcony kiss (es)! AAhh!

If you’re interested in seeing royal wedding dresses from the past have a look at this interesting site.

From time to time the dresses are exhibited at various museums and it’s well worth a look if you get the chance.

Statistics

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I used to work in an Information and Statistics department in the National Health Service,so I’m well aware that things are often very different from what they would first appear.

Which would explain why the Scottish Government is claiming that the influenza rates are much lower than they were at this time last year. The young people in my own family have been hit badly by the flu this year, from my sister’s grandchildren aged 8 and 10 to my own sons who were ill at Christmas and they are in their 20s. As none of the older folks have succumbed we’re presuming that it is the swine flu.

Duncan got it really badly and by Hogmanay most of his friends had it too. They crawled out of their beds to celebrate the New Year at ‘the bells’ but they didn’t have any energy and Duncan ended up coming home not long afterwards, clutching a bit of coal to bring us good luck for the coming year.

Due to the fact that it all happened over the Christmas period nobody has been to see a doctor, so they won’t appear in any statistics. It can take two weeks to get an appointment anyway, unless they think that you might die, so people tend just to stay at home and cosset themselves until they feel better.

So unless Fife has been more badly hit than the rest of Scotland I think we can take the statistics with a pinch of salt.

I’m also annoyed by the weather statistics because the weather people keep telling us that it should be about 2 or 3 Celsius here but my garden is telling me something very different. It’s still frozen solid and it has been like that since November. It was -12 C in Dunfermline during the day not long ago but according to the weather report it wasn’t anything like that cold.

Apparently it was the coldest December in Scotland since records began 100 years ago. I definitely believe that statistic!

Catching up

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I’ve been busy this week trying to catch up with all the things around the house and garden which are neglected during the school holidays. So I’ve been hard at it cutting back a lot of growth in the garden which is mainly the result of the amount of rain which we’ve had recently. This time last year I ended up with a frozen shoulder because I overdid it in the garden and by Christmastime I could hardly move my arm at all, so I’ve stuck to using the pruners and steered well clear of the saws.

I didn’t even get around to reading The Guardian so this morning I did some catching up. We always buy The Guardian but you can get most of it on-line I think. Unfortunately they don’t put the cryptic crossword on the site and we both love doing the crossword, it’s a bit of an addiction really.

There was an interesting article about biofuel. They are experimenting with by-products of the whisky making industry at Edinburgh Napier University. Apparently it can be used in cars without having to adapt their engines. Sounds good. I’m wondering what it smells like. It would be fine if it smells like the finished product, but some of the smells created by distilling whisky aren’t so good.

I was brought up in a distillery town where they made Ballantines, J&B and many more, but the smell could be pretty nasty at times.

I’ve heard that if you adapt your car to run on old cooking oil from fish and chip shops then the exhaust fumes have that distinctive chippy aroma. Very confusing if you’re in need of a fish supper and you don’t know where your nearest chippy is. You used to be able to rely on your nose to sniff one out!

Take Back Parliament Demonstration

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It has taken me 50 years to take part in a demonstration and I didn’t really know what to expect. We all gathered at St. Giles Cathedral on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile as you can see in this photograph.

The turnout wasn’t bad really, probably about 300 people. I’m sure there would have been far more people if we had had more notice of the thing, but that couldn’t be helped, I’m sure. I know folks who couldn’t make it but would have liked to have taken part.

Eventually the purple flag holders moved to the front and we set off up the Royal Mile and round into The Mound and along to New College. I wouldn’t call it a march, more of an amiable amble really.

We were a motley mob, aged from babes in arms to elderly gents in kilts. Nearly everyone was wearing or holding something purple to signify justice/equality.

So it wasn’t a long amble and when we reached our destination there was some speechifying from about five different people, including one Edinburgh M.P.

The organiser seemed to be pleased with the turnout. But we can only hope that the whole thing will gather momentum, we were asked to try to get five people that we know to join in the campaign. I’m not a fan of chain letter type things but in this case it’s the only way to go forward.

So if anyone reading this post is, like me, fed up with my vote never counting and completely scunnered with the terrible system of voting that we have in Britain – please sign up to Take Back Parliament. Oak trees from little acorns grow and all that!

Fair Votes Now.

The Election

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I’ve spent my time this week plodding around the place with Liberal Democrat leaflets – a lot of those letterboxes are lethal but amazingly I do still have all of my fingers and thumbs.

I didn’t expect the Lib Dems to win in Kirkcaldy, I doubt if it will ever be anything other than Labour and of course it is Gordon Brown’s constituency, but you’ve got to give it a try.

I’m disappointed beyond belief at the outcome of the Dunfermline and West Fife vote though. Duncan was an intern for the Lib Dem M.P. Willie Rennie there before getting his job at St Andrews. But he continued to help out at the constituency office in his spare time. What with Willie being a really great M.P. plus the surge in Lib Dem support recently, we really thought that Willie would be re-elected. They all worked their socks off too, but to no avail.

Apparently, on the day before the election it was noticeable that people who had been supporters were taking fright, mainly because of the tabloid newspapers reporting that it would be an outright win for the Conservatives.

Why they thought that they then had to ditch the Lib Dems and vote for Labour is a mystery to me. I hope they are all feeling thoroughly ashamed of themselves for voting in a complete stranger to the area, whose only interest is getting into the House of Commons.

So I’m feeling very fed up with the whole thing and the only thing that is cheering me up is that I know that some time in the near future they will regret voting him in. Hell mend them – as we say!

Too late for poor Willie Rennie though, and the workers in his constituency office who are now unemployed.

If I weren’t a bit of a lady – I’d spit.

And another thing. We had helicopters circling around our house for hours during the night, because we live near where the count was taking place. They were tracking Gordon Brown’s car as he left his house for the count. On T.V. all you could see was a black screen and a teeny wee dot of light, it was completely unnecessary, a terrible waste of fuel, and it must have woken people up. Not everyone feels the need to watch the election programmes.

Some good news.

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The firstborn son got the job that he really wanted yesterday. He will be starting as the website editor of a very old university soon. This has been a long time coming as he graduated over a year ago and there has been absolutely nothing coming up in the jobs market for graduates.

So, we are all thrilled to bits. I’m hoping that things are looking up for everybody else now as this recession is getting beyond a joke. It is so depressing, especially for young people who have spent years studying only to find nothing for them at the end of it all.

I wish that everyone who is arguing over how much student tuition fees should be would just remember that they got their education for free and they had student grants too.

The younger generation is going to have a hard enough time ahead of them what with paying for the mess that the irresponsible bankers have got us all into. And they probably won’t even have any sort of old age pension to look forward to at all.