At least that’s the thesis of a production called simply Bloody Mess that Jonathan enjoyed, as he reports on My London Your London.
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Monthly Archives: June 2007
Theatre Books Women's historyBring on Margery Allingham
June 21, 2007 – 11:04 pm
… the good news is that most of her oeuvre is being reprinted. This is the TLS verdict:
whereas Allingham’s earlier works swelter under concert-party lights, rarely deviating, even at their most bloodthirsty, from a jaunty Cluedo-ish idiom – could it be “Poppy in the middle of the night in a cornfield with a dagger†(The Case of the Late Pig)? Was the weapon “a length of lead pipe, possibly stocking covered†(Traitor’s Purse)? “Surely Uncle Andrew didn’t go to church with a coil of rope, a revolver and a clock weight concealed upon him?†(Police at the Funeral) – the later novels revolve around recognizably modern, even prosaic, concerns. Indeed, they have some very twenty-first-century preoccupations: pensions, tax allowances, inheritance law and the fate of the “New Useless†– the “generation which would die of want and neglect†because “the young would be too overworked to look after them†(The Beckoning Lady).
Remember, they are still the Tories
June 20, 2007 – 9:18 am
Where 59 per cent of Labour MPs think Britain a united country, only 22 per cent of Conservative MPs do. Where 98 per cent of Labour MPs consider Britain a better country to live than it was 20 years ago, only 41 per cent of Tories do.
The starkest gaps were on racial diversity. More than nine out of ten Labour MPs agreed that “the diverse mix of races, cultures and religions now found in our society has improved Britainâ€, but nearly a half of Conservatives disagreed. A call for people to be more tolerant of different ethnic groups and cultures found support from 94 per cent of Labour MPs but just two thirds of Conservatives. How can you oppose greater tolerance? And multiculturalism was backed by eight out of ten Labour backbenchers but rejected by the same proportion of Conservatives. Oh, and on gay rights, you have 83 per cent backing for equality from Labour compared with less than half of the Tories.
From Alice Miles
How to stir a political controversy in India
June 20, 2007 – 9:13 am
… and lots of other places: advocate the advancement of women. The president-nominee of India (a much less powerful post than it sounds), Pratabha Patil, said:
“Women have always been respected in the Indian culture. The purdah system was introduced to protect them from the Muslim invaders. However, times have changed. India is now independent and hence, the systems should also change,†she said.
“Now that women are progressing in every field, we should morally support and encourage them by leaving such practices behind.â€
Now her history might be a bit ropey (if entirely traditional), but not a lot there, you would have thought, to cause a huge row. But it has.
How much power does it use? A useful website
June 19, 2007 – 11:05 pm
The website compares energy use for lots of the obvious appliances, fridges, washing machines, etc, among different brands and models. And some of the differences are enormous.
Who’s selfish?
June 19, 2007 – 9:59 pm
These are Australian figures, but they probably broadly hold in most Western countries, at least outside America:
…the people who get most out of our tax and benefits system are the almost 20 per cent of households that are elderly, thanks to pensions and health care.
The third of households with dependent children are roughly square because, though they pay a lot of tax, they get back a lot in family tax benefits, education and health care. (Sole parents, however, are well ahead.) So who does that leave to pick up the tab? At one level, the people at the rich end in each of those life-stage categories.
At another level, however, it leaves the 40 per cent of households composed of singles or childless couples of working age. They pay a lot of tax but get back nothing in family benefits and not much in education and health care benefits.
So next time someone tells you that you are being “selfish” if you decide not to have children…
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