Category Archives: Politics

Feminism

The first female Beefeater

January 3, 2007 – 1:56 pm

Well, OK, it might not be the most significant post in the world in the overall scheme of things, but it is nice to know that the first female Beafeater (the formal guards at the Tower of London) has been appointed. (Or to give her the full title, she is to be made a Yeoman Warder of Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London, and Members of the Sovereign’s Body Guard of the Yeoman Guard Extraordinary.)

Among her duties she will, of course, be looking after the ravens… (and yes, The Times has repeated the old Charles II line.)

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Environmental politics

Healthy architecture

January 3, 2007 – 1:53 pm

I got into trouble last time I got into this, but nontheless I’m going to applaud a piece in today’s Guardian urging architects to plan to encourage, rather than discourage exercise.

“Using the stairs is not seen as normal,” says Amelia Lake, a research fellow who works with Townshend. “In most [new] buildings it’s very difficult to find a staircase. The focal point when you enter tends to be the lift. In certain buildings, you’ll even find that using the stairs will set off the fire alarm.”

And it provides some stats on the well-known fact of how sprawling suburbs encourage slobbish, car-filled lives.

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Feminism

Here here

January 2, 2007 – 2:11 pm

In today’s Times – Why getting hitched is the real hitch for women:

Politicians of every stripe profess to despair of the decline of marriage, even though we know they would be bereft without such a convenient — if wholly unproven — scapegoat for all ill. I suspect that they need not worry; that the decline will continue with or without their help. The scale of the exodus of young women from orthodox union, along with their reasons for it, are such that it will take an awful lot more than a tax break here or there to change their minds.

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Politics

Quite …

December 31, 2006 – 11:39 am

… if not in the manner intended.

Margaret Beckett interviewed in the New Statesman:

She has no illusion as to how Blair will be remembered. “When he goes, people will say that Iraq’s his only legacy, and that it’s a terrible one. I don’t think it’s true at all.” She has settled on a different epitaph. “I don’t believe Iraq is his legacy. I think climate change will be his legacy.“

So as Canary Wharf disappears beneath the Thames, you can thank Tony Blair.

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Politics

From the inbox

December 31, 2006 – 11:08 am

A new group blog on Burma, the Burma Review. Apparently the issue might make it to Security Council attention in February or March.

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Environmental politics

We might save the Amazon

December 30, 2006 – 9:13 pm

Might.

“The worst case scenario sees temperatures rise by five to eight degrees by 2100, while rainfall will decrease between 15 and 20 per cent,” Mr Marengo said. “This setting will transform the Amazon rainforest into a savanna-like landscape.”
The more optimistic scenario supposes governments take more aggressive action to halt global warming, but would still have temperatures rising in the Amazon region by three to five degrees and rainfall dropping by 5 to 15 per cent, Mr Marengo said.

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