Monthly Archives: July 2006

Feminism

A real hero…

July 8, 2006 – 9:39 am

If a 38-year-old single mother from South Africa can do this, it is our duty to try to ensure that Tesco is kept to its word:

Ms Baartman took on the might of the UK retailing world when she highlighted the plight of farm workers at Tesco’s annual shareholders’ meeting in London.
In front of more than 500 onlookers the fruit packer, who is paid 46 rand (£3.49) per day, made an impassioned plea to one of the best-paid executives in the City, Tesco’s chief executive Sir Terry Leahy. Her wages just scrape the legal minimum set by the South African government earlier this year, but are less than a man would earn for the same work.
Ms Baartman confessed she was risking her job by speaking out. She works on a farm in the western Cape that supplies Tesco with fruit during the country’s four-month growing season.
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David Reid, Tesco’s chairman, said the supermarket’s ethical trading team had visited South Africa but had found no proof to back up the allegations made because both ActionAid and Women on Farms, a South African pressure group, will not name and shame the farms concerned. He promised to “personally guarantee” to protect Ms Baartman from any backlash from her employer if it managed to “expose any bad practice”.

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Politics

The Blair government in one easy lesson

July 8, 2006 – 9:14 am

The case of the “Natwest Three” perfectly sums up the bumbling, well-meaning but intellectually inadequate, knee-jerk reaction Blair government. Here goes the thinking…

Terrorist panic after 9/11 – let’s bring in some law to make sure those terrible judges don’t let human rights interfere with our friends, the Americans’, attempts to punish people – because George Bush says of course his justice system is fair.

Oops, didn’t notice that we’ve broken the centuries-old principle of reciprocity in extradition.

Oh well, never mind, the Americans are good chaps, they’ll only use it for the purposes intended.

Oh, now they are using it for three blokes who the Serious Fraud Office thinks have done nothing wrong. Never mind, US justice will sort it out eventually.

If the men have to spend two years in chains, away from their families, facing enormous legal tests with a lottery at the end to see if they’ll be free for another decade …

… well it is all in a good cause.

Four prominent law professors are the latest to speak out:
Keith Patchett, the emeritus professor of law at the University of Wales, said that issues in the NatWest Three case “raise basic questions about the preparedness of the [UK] Government, demonstrated in other matters too, to compromise vital legal protections honed over generations”.

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Feminism

Working on ‘the personal is political’

July 7, 2006 – 10:59 pm

You’ll find me again over on the Guardian’s CommentisFree, presenting an argument for a broad definition of “politics” in the blogosphere, and indeed more broadly. I doubt it will say anything particularly startling to most of my readers, but I’ve already been dueling with the first troll, so if you feel like offering a supportive comment I wouldn’t complain. I have to be in the mood to bother, but then it is fun…!

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Friday Femmes Fatales

Friday Femmes Fatales No 62

July 7, 2006 – 10:53 pm

Ten great posts from 10 new (to me) women bloggers. It is here every Friday (more or less ..)

Starting political, Comebacknikki on Starfish and Coffee is setting out why she has a little crush on Barack Obama. On Solidly Average, Nio is meanwhile considering the hot US issue of public prayer.

Now I know I’ve pointed to this blog before, but not, I think, particularly to Patricia Lee Sharp, so check out this nuanced view on the current state of Afghanistan, with a brief but informative note on the history of international relations in the region.

Here across the pond, Jane Henry on Maniac Mum has been reflecting on her experience of 7/7 and The Huntress is giving up Grazia magazine. It won’t be much of a wrench: “on every other page I’m faced with something irritating to my feminist viewpoint”.

Churchgal is contemplating issues of contraception and personal autonomy and on Reverend Mommy’s Random Musings, there’s an a fascinating account of church history. This is “where in 1844 the slavewoman Kitty ownership was debated — and the place where the Methodist church split in two over her”.

Now you won’t often find three “religious” bloggers here, but I’m giving myself an extra tick (since I try to range widely) for adding in a post not just about the church, but music as well (another under-represented area), from Steeples & Peoples, about Christian music and the 90/10 rule.

On the personal side: Moving house – you’ve read the stress figures, so sympathise with Aayor, for whom the stresses are stacking up. Weightloss is another huge stress area — which is bigger? perhaps the latter, since house-moving at least usually has a finite timeframe — and Beckie on Becks Challenge sets out her journey.

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If you missed the last edition, it is here. (If you’d like to see all of them as a list, click on the category “Friday Femmes Fatales” in the righthand sidebar. That will take you to a collection of 600 (and counting) women bloggers.)

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Please: In the next week if you read, or write, a post by a woman blogger and think “that deserves a wider audience” (particularly someone who doesn’t yet get many hits), drop a comment. It really does make my life easier.

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Environmental politics Science

Water for whom, or what…

July 7, 2006 – 8:39 am

One of those “only in America” stories – “Americans will spend $22bn (£11.9bn) on luxury bathrooms this year“. It is, says one designer, “a mini-living room now”. Except in most living rooms there’s not lots of water being used, water heated usually by non-renewable energy sources.

It fits rather neatly with another story from the Guardian today – a third of the world’s species of amphibians are threatened:

Fifty of the world’s leading conservation experts are calling for an urgent rescue mission to save frogs, newts and other amphibians from extinction. They believe fast action is needed to save the planet’s 5,743 amphibian species after research showing that 32.5% are threatened. Up to 122 amphibian species have become extinct since 1980.

Not a perfect equation, but less water, and money, on bathrooms, and more in natural environments, certainly couldn’t hurt.

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Cycling

Note to London’s foreign visitors

July 6, 2006 – 10:21 pm

Don’t drive into central London. Just don’t do it. Cycling through Soho this evening I was asked three! times by bewildered foreigners how to get to places that were utterly impossible to describe, given one-way streets and all. And in weaving all over the road and dithering you’re a danger to yourself and everyone else. Catch the bus, or Tube. It is what locals with any sense do.

And note to myself: don’t come back from South London over the Waterloo Bridge at night, even if the alternative is the deadly bicycle lane on Blackfriars Bridge. (Remember when Ken was going to fix that?) Pedestrians in Soho seem to lose whatever little brains they started with after the light goes.

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