.. a rare piece of good news, or at least sanity. From today’s Guardian:

“Europe, led by the UK, last night signalled a major split with the United States over curbing the Aids pandemic in a statement that tacitly urged African governments not to heed the abstinence-focused agenda of the Bush administration.
The statement, released for World Aids Day today, emphasises the fundamental importance of condoms, sex education and access to reproductive health services. “We are profoundly concerned about the resurgence of partial or incomplete messages on HIV prevention which are not grounded in evidence and have limited effectiveness,” it says.”

I’m now reading Margaret Oliphant’s Hester, published 1883. It is a classic three-volume novel – we might call it a family saga – of strong women and weak and hopeless men. (At least so far … I’m at the end of Volume I, but I get the feeling it is going to continue that way.) Catherine Vernon, the family matriarch, saves the family bank at the beginning of the book, and her niece, Hester, a strong-minded young woman, is shaping up as her replacement.

But I was particularly taken with its view of the Victorian era: “Mrs John Vernon” is Hester’s mother, the wife of the man who almost destroyed the bank. and obviously not admired by the author.

“Mrs. John Vernon was considered very refined and elegant according to the language of the day, a young lady with many accomplishments. But it was the fashion of the time to be unpractical, just as it is the fashion of our time that women should understand business and be ready for any emergency.”

Not a customary view of the 1880s …