I see today that the Organic Delivery Company (who are pretty good, BTW, I get my weekly fruit and veg box from them), are now refilling the bottles of at least some of the Ecover products, such as the laundry liquid. Reuse: so much better than recycling.
An interesting piece from the Boston Globe about how animal interests are starting to be considered in US law. It is the sort of thing about which it is easy to mock, but there’s no doubt that dogs and cats do have feelings and emotions, and if it is reasonably possible to find out, and I suspect that it is at least some of the time, which partner they’d like to be with in a divorce, then why not do it?
Back from conference, and thanks to Sue for the tip, I learnt that this blog has been named by Iain Dale as one of the Top Ten Underrated Blogs – that was on Wednesday – so I picked a great time, it would seem, to disappear into the wifi-less depths of Liverpool Hope University for the Green Party conference.
But I do have some good excuses for going quiet here – I think I can say without being unduly immodest that one of the highlights of the conference was the panel that I organised on Women Left Behind, which focused on women suffering from double disadvantages – of gender, and of being from ethnic minority communities, being asylum-seekers and refugees, and of being sex workers. The three speakers did a spectacular job, and held the hall spellbound – and Matt did a fine job of writing that report, so I won’t rehearse it here – do go over and check out the link.
But getting together three speakers, from Maidstone, London and Sheffield respectively, and assembling them all for a noon session was fraught with tension… might do it again in the autumn – the memories of the stress level will have faded a bit by then.
My other main policy contribution was on women’s income, pensions, savings and debt. I had been hoping to get a Fawcett Society speaker on that, but it didn’t work out, so instead I used its extensive research for a presentation within a fringe meeting on basic income, which actually worked out as a very good blend. Basic income – Green Party policy that everyone should be automatically paid an income sufficient on which to live, if frugally – has fascinating possibilities, but as I was thinking about the contribution it drove home how income is only a part of our financial position – all of those other things are important.
And a contribution from the floor raised an interesting question. Basic income would also be paid to children, but to whom would it be paid? Giving it to mothers would do what the current benefits system does – reinforce traditional gender stereotypes. But worldwide research shows that women tend to spend household income on their children, rather than themselves, far more than do men. It is a tricky question, and one that demonstrates the value of such informal discussions in working through policy.
Just back from the Liverpool Green Party conference, and looking forward, very much, to sleep. That’s after four nights in what I’d like to put up as possibly the worst £50 a night hotel in Britain, and possibly Europe, The Lord Nelson. It’s basically the rooms above the pub, given a rough coat of paint, some very dirty cream carpet, and a location right over a very bad nightclub. And that’s without mentioning the beds, which managed to be both saggy and incredibly hard and uncomfortable.
If you’d paid £25 for that in Paris you’d think you’d done badly – and you’d still be in Paris.
I know all of the arguments about why British hotels are so expensive – wages, land costs etc, but really, why do they have to be quite so just awfully bad as well?
In the accounts of the Stratford Corporation of 1576, “Mother Margaret†is recorded as having been paid three pence for “making clean before the chapelâ€. That may be the first record of a woman who later appears as Margaret Smith, in 1578 doing the same job, the pay having risen to 20 pence in 1580, with an extra pence for “sweeping the street after the tilerâ€. In 1582 she was paid 16 pence, the following year the same, but she has become “old Margaretâ€.
By 1585 she is “lame Margaretâ€, but obviously still doing a good enough job, being paid again 16 pence. Her will was written on April 11 1586. She had to give one coffer, a brass pot and the corn in her bag to one Richard Holmes, another coffer to her son, and to John Johnston and Isabel Barrymore a kerchief each. Five shillings was to be bestowed on the day of her funeral to the poor, probably for a feast.
This from Germaine Greer’s Shakespeare’s Wife, on which more after the Green Party conference, but a short note that it contains many such lovely tales that create a vivid picture of the life, particularly the female life, of Stratford. Greer says:
“Margaret’s will … is a dignified little document, a fitting epilogue to an ordered, frugal and useful life.†(p. 160-161)
I was planning to buy a cucumber in your Bloomsbury store today, but didn’t, since every since variety was sealed in a plastic bag or wrap – including the organic ones.
Cucumbers have their own wrapping – their outside skin. They certainly don’t need a extra plastic one. (And you sell courgettes – which I did buy – loose, so it is certainly possible.)
Although I will give you marks for the strawberries in the corrugated cardboard carton – a great improvement on plastic.
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