Author Archives: Natalie Bennett

Over to you Mr Blair…

December 29, 2006 – 12:39 am

President-elect Rafael Correa appointed seven women to his Cabinet on Wednesday, including Ecuador’s first female defense minister, saying he wanted to promote gender equality in his South American nation.
In other appointments to his 17-member Cabinet, Correa named women to head the foreign, health, housing, and social welfare ministries. He said he would keep outgoing President Alfredo Palacio’s ministers of tourism and the environment, the only women in the current Cabinet.
Correa, who takes office Jan. 15, said he would “try to achieve gender equality.” He acknowledged it was “something we are not going to reach, but at least we will get close.”

Makes the number of British female senior ministers look pretty paltry, doesn’t it? As a writer on Comment is Free today noted, women are still notable only for their tiny numbers in so many areas of public life.

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Before the age of “gentility”

December 29, 2006 – 12:10 am

Queen Elizabeth … a studious intellectual who would spend three hours a day reading history books if she could … she could also spit and swear ’round, mouth-filling oaths’ as was the habit of most great ladies of the age. Cecil once spirited away a book presented to the Queen by a Puritan, Mr Fuller, in which ‘Her Gracious Majesty’ was censured for sreading ‘sometimes by that abdominable idol, the mass, and often and grievously by God and by Christ, and by many parts of His glorified body, or by saints, faith and other forbidden things, and by Your Majesty’s evil example and sufferencance, the most part of your subjects do commonly swear and blaspheme…”

Yeah, go Liz!

So what happened? As so often, Cecil fixed things… “Elizabeth demanded to see the book, but with the connivance of one of her ladies it had fortunately been ‘lost’.”

Possibly very luckily for Mr Fuller…

(From Elizabeth the Queen, by Alison Weir, Jonathan Cape, London 1998, p. 229)

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When the red ‘internet’ light appears on your router

December 28, 2006 – 11:29 pm

You shouldn’t curse your ISP, as I spent most of this evening doing – you should instead be resetting your router – or so I’ve now learnt. Apparently occasionally for no apparent reason their settings disappear and you have to do this. Which requires a minor act of contortion to press a button for which purposes you really wouldn’t want to suffer from arthritis or some other fine motor skill problem.

Grr – don’t you love computers…

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America’s ill health

December 27, 2006 – 10:55 am

In 1950 America’s life expectancy was in the world’s top ten; it is now 30th.

On average, Chileans can expect to live longer than the average American, even though GDP per person is about a quarter of America’s. A Cuban male has a better chance of surviving until 65 than an American male, even though GDP per capita in the US is about eight times Cuba’s.
The figures suggest Americans have, on average, traded longevity for higher incomes over the past 50 years.

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Men’s safety

December 27, 2006 – 10:50 am

This story about young men being vulnerable to random attacks reminded me of a discussion I had during a recent cycle ride. I learnt of an off-road route of which I was previously unaware, the Greenway, which would help me to construct a circular half-day route around London – Greenwich, Woolwich, along the Greenway to the Regent’s Canal, then Islington and home. Not a quick route, but pleasantly off-road.

But someone I was discussing this with said “that’s not a route for a woman on her own”. And it is through some dodgy areas of London, and a woman cyclist overhearing commented she’d done it but been spooked by the burnt-out cars.

I said, however, that as a woman I was quite likely safer on that sort of route – a woman is much less likely to be seen as a challenge, perhaps a territorial challenge – to the local youths.

Not to say that it is absolutely safe, of course, but why do these warnings only get given to women, and not to the men who are at least as much at risk of harm?

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Playing at understanding CSS

December 27, 2006 – 10:40 am

I’ve now semi-completed a long overdue redesign for My London Your London. So I got to spend a few hours yesterday pretending that I understand CSS and PHP (by the time-honoured method of changing one thing at a time, then looking at the results, saying “oops, didn’t mean to make that column over-write the one next to it” then having another go.)

I think it works in Firefox and IE, but I’d particularly appreciate anyone using another browser checking it out. I’ll also appreciate any design comments and suggestions – I know I’ve got some readers with strong ideas about web design! It is not now fixed width. I know the last time I did this that was considered best; is that still the case?

For the (semi-)techies, it uses the Hemingway Bright template, and I found the discussion of the original Hemingway theme here very useful.

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