In Britain, Australia and the US laws have been brought in to deal with “terrorists”, sweeping away civil liberties in the process. But these were only for terrorists, we were told.

So who’s been caught?

The latest, in Britain, is an an “over-enthusiastic” A-level chemistry student.

In Australia this week, it was entirely innocent, indeed random, bus passengers and car drivers, on routes heading towards Sydney beaches where there have been racist clashes that no one has suggested have anything to do with “terrorism”. Police were confiscating their mobile phones and reading through the text messages. So much for privacy.

And of course there’s is the US, where the situation is even worse, since George Bush is not even bothering to try to get a law or legal backing for wire taps, instead employing the Louis XIV-style of government.

Finally, however, I get the feeling that the pendulum is swinging. It is not just those who pay reasonably close attention to issues such as human rights who are starting to get concerned, but the general public. Of course the problem is that it is a lot harder to get rid of laws than bring them in.

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Elsewhere, while I don’t believe in the death penalty, it is hard not to give a little cheer at the end of a Japanese “groper”, chased by a group of men after his woman victim had the courage to speak up. (He had a heart attack and died in hospital.)

I doubt there’s a woman – at least a woman who’s lived or visited a city – who hasn’t suffered from this sort of assault. It is the sort of thing that makes women feel they are living in perpetually hostile, male, spaces.

And hopefully this event will empower more Japanese women to speak up and protest.

Aspiring writers are usually told “write about what you know”, and that is what first-time playwright Sam Peter Jackson has done in portraying 20-something actors coming to terms with the difficulties of their profession and personal lives. But if he is really writing about what he knows, then all of the stereotypes about self-obsession, ridiculous angst and general luvviness are also true.

These are both the strength and the weakness of his Minor Irritations, on at the White Bear Theatre in Kennington until January 8. The audience is ready to laugh at his characters, and when Jackson gives them a succession of delightful one-liners, to really laugh. But this sits rather oddly with the angst-ridden moments of quarter-life crisis that the characters are apparently suffering. Jackson has a real talent for word-play and the comic scene, but needs to lighten up and keep that mood throughout; perhaps what is needed is just a bit more growing up – something that could definitely be said of his characters.

The author plays the central figure of Minor Irritations, Ben, a “resting” actor who’s working in a call centre, auditioning for a chicken burger commercial and yet to get over his ex-boyfriend, Jay (Luke Evans), who’s living in New York and succeeding. Ben’s best friend/fag hag is Harriet (Dulcie Lewis), who cheerfully hams up her role as an air-headed part-time air hostess and Jewish princess who arrives on stage obsessing about her recent purchase of The Big Issue. She says of her interaction with the vendor “I always want to say, ‘Don’t you have Vogue or Vanity Fair?” READ MORE

No V is up now on Scribbling Woman, and it is another stunning selection, with the added bonus of Christmas cheer – BYO eggnog, however.

You can travel around the world, learn why your Christmas wardrobe doesn’t fit, and have great sex. (Or at least read about it.)

More seriously, don’t miss every post in the “institutionalized violence” category. Something to think about for your activist New Year’s reolutions.

And it’s guaranteed to contain no calories whatsoever. Definitely better than eating that extra mince pie.

Please help to spread the word!

And don’t forget, in the festive haze, that the next carnival will be on Reappropriate on January 4. So if some inspiration strikes amid the festivities, don’t forget to write it and nominate it in time, to jenn AT reappropriate DOT com.

Technorati tags: Feminist; Carnival of Feminists

I’ve said before that the chilled manner in which Britain has taken civil partnerships for gays and lesbians in its stride has been an illustration of what I love about the place, and there was a further example this morning.

I woke to Radio Four, and an only slightly tongue in cheek discussion about what you should call the civil partner of someone with a title. Laddy, for the male partner of a lord, was one of the better suggestions. (Doesn’t seem to be on the web unfortunately, although you can find Today here.)

Somehow it seems, wherever and whenever you visit a place, you’ve just missed a golden age. You always should have found this Thai island 10 years ago, “when it was paradise”. And when you read 84, Charing Cross Road, it seems as though just after the Second World War was a paradisiacal age of bookselling, when dedicated experts spent their days sifting through classy hardback editions of obscure classics, just waiting to fill the orders of a New York woman – Helene Hanff, who describes herself as “a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books”.

She complained, in a letter of October 5, 1949, to Marks & Co Booksellers at 84, Charing Cross Road, that decent editions were impossible to obtain in America. That was the start of a beautiful, long-distance friendship between herself and the staff of the shop, and, finally, their relatives, that continued into 1969. Together the collection of the correspondence forms one of the finest epistolary books I’ve ever read.

In such few words, a lasting bond was form, cemented with American food parcels that Hanff sent to obviously hungry post-war Britain. She’s certainly the strongest personality in the book. You can only imagine the reaction in “proper” London of 1949 to the epistle that started: “Kindly inform the Church of England they have loused up the most beautiful prose ever written, whoever told them to tinker with the Vulgate Latin? They’ll burn for it, you mark my words.”

Frank Doel is the chief correspondent from the bookshop side. He starts out all proper, professional English gentleman, but gradually unwinds, while Cecily Farr steps into an immediately friendly relationship and is soon sending detailed instructions for the proper preparation of Yorkshire pudding, to someone who has never seen and tasted it.

It is one of those books that should be on anyone’s must-read list, but perhaps it would be better to read it after visiting the modern Charing Cross Road. While it is still one of the primary clusters of bookshops in London – rivalled only by the group of second-hand/specialist stores around the British Museum, just to the north-east, it has fallen prey to the untender grasp of commercialism and development. READ MORE

The London Evening Standard has outdone itself this evening. Its splash is just what the headline says. Of course the barrister in question happens to be the wife of the PM, but there’s no suggestion there’s anything else unusual about it.

Wonder if it was the husband of the PM, would it get the same attention?

Story not on the web – perhaps they were too embarrassed. No, I didn’t buy a copy – I refuse to these days, since it has become Daily Mail-lite – but read it going past the newstand.

But she’s certainly lost the turkey vote, with the No 10 Christmas photo op.