Monthly Archives: July 2007

Blogging/IT Environmental politics Feminism

Coupla links

July 14, 2007 – 10:47 pm

The Green Party leadership debate has finally hit the MSM, with a thoughtful piece in the New Statesman by Mark Lynas. Now all we’ve got to do is get him back in the party…

Six new feminist magazines in the UK – well this article might be stretching most people’s understanding of magazine a little, but nevertheless it does help to give lie to the claim that the upcoming generation is anti-feminist or agnostic on the subject of women’s rights. (And thanks for giving the Carnival of Feminists a plug!)

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Cycling

The start of a revolution?

July 14, 2007 – 10:40 am

In Paris last week I kept falling across construction sites with bike racks – lots of fancy bike racks, for the “Vélib” – an enormous scheme that starts tomorrow placing 10,600 bicycles for short-term hire at Metro stations.

For a 29 euro annual fee you can use a bicycle for up to a half-hour (long enough to get most places in Paris) for no further charge.

I’ve just been looking up the tourist options, and you’ll be able to get a seven-day licence for five euros – excellent value.

Wouldn’t it be great to see this in London?

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Politics

The dodgy Olympics

July 14, 2007 – 10:28 am

There are many things about the Olympics that are deeply dodgy, among them the composition and actions of its governing committee, but interesting to note that just 16 of the 115 IOC members are female.

It is to be applauded that the ratio of female athletes in Beijing is likely to reach 45%, but there’s still a lot of bias in the sports open to them, and it feels like the IOC has been dragged kicking and screaming to this point.

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Media

Reaping what you sow

July 14, 2007 – 10:10 am

Some of the reaction of the media mandarins to the BBC’s latest “ethics” row, over falsely representing the Queen storming out in a huff, just reeks of hypocrisy.

You develop a hugely competitive industry, in which to get in and get ahead entrants know they have to push everything much further – get the sexiest headline, find the strongest angle in a story (even if it is a big dodgy), then complain that the “youth of today” just don’t have the ethics:

Former BBC chairman Michael Grade, who now runs ITV, told the Today programme he saw a wider problem in broadcasting because an influx of young, inexperienced people. “We are in an age today where there has been a huge influx of young talent into the industry as it expands. They have not been trained properly, they don’t understand that you do not lie to audiences at any time, in any show – whether it’s news or whether it’s a quiz show …

This is the industry you shaped – your choices helped to make it this way. Take responsibility!

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Books Politics

The end of social democracy

July 12, 2007 – 10:28 pm

Definitely going on the summer reading list is Social democracy and the making of Europe’s twentieth century, which looks to be that rare thing, a piece about (relatively) contemporary history offering original thought and original thesis, as reviewed in the TLS:

….the social democratic era is over. It corresponded, just as liberalism had done, to a particular phase of European history. Like its mortal enemy, Fascism, it rested on the primacy of the nation state. It finds it difficult to survive the advent of globalization and the EU. That, perhaps, is why Norway has not joined the EU, why Sweden remains a distinctly sceptical member, and why Gordon Brown is sceptical about the euro. For social democrats fear, and rightly fear, that the European Union deprives member states of the policy instruments which they need to construct a social-democratic society.

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History

Not at all pants – well maybe a little

July 12, 2007 – 10:23 pm

Forgive me a touch of scepticism, but I can’t resist pointing to the story around today just about everywhere that discarded pants helped to boost literacy: claiming that it was when urbanisation led people to more widely adopt underwear, unlike those uninsulated peasant farmers, that there were lots of rags around from which to make paper.

As someone on the medieval list pointed out, lots of that underwear would have been made from wool, and thence useless for papermaking, and I’d like to point out that in Caxton’s time (contrary to the story’s claim), paper was not at all cheap – making up half or more of the cost of a book – and imported into Britain right until the end of the 16th century.

But hey, why spoil a nice tale?

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