Go Greens: Kerry Nettle, one of the Australian Green Senators, has upset John Howard, which can only be a good thing, by wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Mr Abbott get your rosaries off my ovaries”. This speaks to the political interference in what should be the medical decision about RU486.

Ms Nettle said: “It’s not the T-shirt that needs changing, it’s the prime minister’s attitude, which we are seeing increasingly is about bringing fundamentalist religious views into the parliament.
“Religion has no place in politics, and religion has no place in a decision for a women about what drug is safe for her to use.”
… The T-shirt was sponsored by the Young Women’s Christian Association.

Here, here. Lots of things the Pope says grossly offend me, and lots of other people, but we do still have free speech, just, in most of the West.
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Oxford University Press, America, has a blog – excellent idea. There is information about book tours, about new books – it is definitely going on my blogroll.
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You’d think tidal power would come into the “no-brainer” category really – but a British invention is being towed off to Portugal, for lack of government support.

The Department of Trade and Industry, which some years ago put in place a £50 million development fund for marine energy, has decided that the money will not be accessed until some time in 2007. It will release it slowly, over a seven-year period. It will look at three or four alternative systems. And then it will decide, in its own good time, to act. Or not as the case may be. In the meantime, it has announced a long-term consultation process to inquire into sources of alternative energy. Did you hear the sound of another iceberg breaking off the Arctic glacier and sliding into the sea?

Serious middle-class types wanting to rescue prostitutes is a social phenomenon probably as old as the “oldest profession” itself. William Gladstone and Charles Dickens are two of the most famous practitioner of this dubious endeavour, but they had many forebears, and have many followers.

Observers are prone – with good reason – to scoff at the motives of the rescuers – and the more self-aware will question these themselves. And that’s what Marc, the studious, thoughtful music transposer who takes on that role in John W Lowell’s Taken In, which opened last night at the Barons Court Theatre, does, when he finds himself irresistibly drawn to Danny, the rent boy who he meets on Hampstead Heath.

To describe the Barons Court Theatre as “intimate” is no exaggeration, and you might think you don’t want to watch a gay relationship at such close quarters. But this is, by and large, subtly done, and Danny’s early attempts at seduction are so abrupt and obvious that only the coyest could be embarrassed. And as the relationship moves on to a more intimate but, on Marc’s decision, distinctly non-sexual, frame there’s nothing more to worry about.

Marc wants to rescue Danny – to set his dysfunctional life in order, to get him writing to his Mum, to get him a “proper”, safe job, to turn him into something he’s not. He’s well aware of the likelihood of failure – we hear, as he offers asides delivered as much as to himself as to the audience – his understanding of his own mixed motives, yet also his desperate desire to succeed in this non-relationship, where all of his previous relationships have foundered. READ MORE

Politicians are often accused of being a bad example to children; the brawling at Prime Minister’s Questions has frequently been compared to the quarrels of the schoolyard. No doubt the same complaints are made about US politicians.

The American Eric Henry Sanders, in writing The Prince Among Men, now at the Union Theatre, has turned these observations through 180 degrees and set the American presidential election of 2000 in a posh boys’ boarding school, where the contest is for the position of Head Boy.

This makes for an entertaining ride, as the thuggish, drug-abusing, dim Bozo (played with verve by Jonathan Baker) is groomed for his run at leadership by the would-be power-behind-the-throne, the smart but curiously rat-like Dickie (Warren Rusher). The motivation here is the right to occupy his father’s farmhouse for Half Term – and no doubt to get into all sorts of mischief.

As with the historical parallel, his father is a former Head Boy, and has thrown huge amounts of cash at the school, which ensures the acquiescence to all sorts of skullduggery by the unsubtly named deputy head, Professor Renfield, a DTs-afflicted, obviously inept man past his prime. (Nicely done by Anthony Wise).

Subtlety is not a big feature of the script. Dicky gets his tips from Machiavelli, and proclaims: “People will do anything if you frame it right.” Bozo struggles with the Renaissance courtier’s name, then wonders if it is a form of latte, before concluding that since he’s going to be Head Boy, that proves he’s smarter than his opponent. It is eerily familiar. READ MORE

A politically brave revelation? Possibly, or perhaps huge numbers of women will respect her for it .. The leader of the Australian Democrats, Lyn Allison, said:

“An estimated one in three women have had an abortion, and I am one of them.
“Women are fully human,” she said. “It is galling listening to the men, and it is mostly men, who have such contempt for women who terminate unwanted pregnancies, who have neither the compassion nor the understanding of the huge and, for many, daunting task of taking an embryo the size of a grain of rice to adulthood.”
Senator Allison told the Herald: “There are plenty of blokes around this place who don’t understand why women would do this. There are complex reasons why women need to make this decision … I wanted to send a message to all those women to say I’m one of them.”

The debate was over the drug RU486, the approval of which should be a purely medical issue, but has been hijacked by the anti-abortion lobby.

And the good news is that the Senate, at least, has voted to give the medical decision to doctors.
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Thailand is by constitution a democracy, and is indeed in the sense that more or less fair votes are held. Where things fall down is after that, since the main aim of virtually all politicians is to be in office – where the rewards are – so after the election nearly everyone scrambles to line up with the winning side. But what happens when a man with a huge majority totally loses the support of the public, or at least the Bangkok public? We are about to find out.
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Then the perfect historian’s moment. A vital original document from the history of the Royal Society has been found in a dusty cupboard.

The discovery was made by chance during a routine evaluation at the house by Bonhams, the auctioneers. The manuscript had been kept in a cupboard for 50 years and was only shown to the valuer as he was leaving. “I thought it must be too good to be true. The first page I saw was headed: ‘President Sir Christopher Wren in the chair’ and I knew I was looking at the vanished minutes of the Royal Society,” said Felix Pryor, manuscript consultant for Bonhams. “Then there were all these names: Wren, Leibniz, Aubrey, Evelyn, Newton. Then I began to recognise the handwriting of Robert Hooke. It was a magical moment.”
The delight of scientists and historians has quickly turned to anxiety, however. The manuscript is to be put up for auction in London on March 28 and is expected to sell for more than £1m, prompting Lord Rees of Ludlow, the president of the Royal Society to appeal for a “white knight” to buy the papers so they can be returned to the society’s archive.

So if you’ve got a spare million …

The Carnvial of Feminists No 8 is up on Gendergeek, and once again it holds hours of entertainment. There’s everything from an interview with a female funeral director, to a lament about the covers of “chick-lit” novels (here, here), and a female US president (sadly only in a television drama).

There are lots of blog names there I don’t recognise, which is always great to see – one of the main ideas of the carnival is that it highlights new names, and puts in contact people previously unaware of each other.

So go and check it out now!

All else that needs to be said is that Carnival No 9 will will on Mind the Gap on February 22. That’s not far away … Please send nominations to mindthegapcardiff AT yahoo DOT co DOT uk, to arrive no later than 19th February.

(By the way, MtG is having a “Body Image Week”, and at present at the top of the blog really has to be seen to be believed.)

In a company full of young people doing dull office jobs, the staff are all trying to establish their lives, to get ahead, and to get into each other’s pants. It’s a situation as old as the shorthand/typist, but these days, as first-time playwright Jason Charles has grasped, there are potential new twists.

Gay workers are increasingly likely to be “out” at work, and their colleagues are going to have to come to terms to working, and socialising, and even getting changed in the same dressing room, as them.

That’s the situation at the start of Steam, which opened last night at the White Bear Theatre in Kennington. Matt (Oscar Wild), the self-proclaimed office alpha male, who treats his girlfriend Vanessa (Lusia McAnespie) with scant respect, is horrified to find that for a football match against their deadly rivals in the crate-hire business, she’s enlisted a quiet, serious, and gay, member of staff, Luke (a finely judged, subtle performance from Daniel Kanaber). One of Matt’s more repeatable names for him is “fairy-cakes”.

The team grows by one with the arrival of Chris (Glynn Doggett), who’s also straight. He seems young, and vulnerable, and you wonder what he might be dragged into by this dominating character until the numbers are evened up with the final member of the “team”, Billy (Jonathan Gibson), the office junior. He’s as camp and over-the-top as could be imagined, and has a fine line in sexy song-and-dance routines.

There’s time for a few nice one-liners: “I had a promotion but it is not a lobotomy”, says Matt. “I don’t usually associate loving with Ronnie Kray,” says Luke, after walking in on some of Matt’s “rough wooing” of Vanessa. But the play is a bit slow to get started. Will there be an all-in brawl? you wonder.

No. Instead, a curious sport develops – the telling of what Matt identifies as NQEs (Near Queer Experiences). For a homophobe, Matt is curiously keen to talk about gay sex and gay life. And he seems curiously keen to touch, even if it is often a punch, the apparently vulnerable Billy.

But what about the football? Well, there is no game – at least not of that sort, for, it emerges, there’s a lot more to this Friday after-work gathering than that. And there’s a lot more to this apparently prosaic locker-room than meets the eye.
READ MORE