It is all fish and chip paper now, but this is one for the record, to look back in two or so years’ time, when Labour loses the next election, or, more hopefully, when there’s a hung parliament followed by a change to a system of proportional representation: Gordon Brown ‘would have won snap election’.
A study has found that household cleaning sprays and air fresheners are linked to a significantly higher risk of adult asthma. (It had already been shown that in industrial seetings the contents were dangerous. One of those “is that really very surprising” studies, but hopefully one that will lead to a few less horrible chemicals being produced and flung around the environment with gay abandon.
Marina Hyde in the Guardian today has an interesting piece on the beauty industry – and why we still spend money even without really believing – a sort of non-placebo effect.
But it was a snippet at the end that I really noticed: the brand Dove, which has got a host of good media coverage with its “real women” adverts (rather carefully selected real women, one has to say – gosh up to UK size 14) is owned by Unilever, which also owns “Fair & Lovely”, a “skin-whitener” marketed in India with distinctly racist overtones.
Was the subject of this week’s In Our Time and a particularly good example of a very fine programme it was. I was particularly taken by a contribution on why this took such hold in 17th-century England (at least in the mind of kings – but also the populace, given the sales of Charles I’s posthumous meditations), yet had little hold in Catholic states – his answer was that this was the “replacement pope”.
After the Royal College of Nurses and the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has now also come out and said the requirement for two doctors to approve an abortion in the first three months of pregnancy is “anachronistic”.
As the link above outlines, this is an issue that is going to get a lot of airing over the next few months, and it would be good to be promulgating the facts, and the medical opinion as widely as possible. Some will see the debate as a threat, but it is also a great opportunity to get an abortion law fit for the 21st century. (And one that fits public opinion – large numbers of people believe that we already have abortion on demand, and are shocked to learn just how restrictive the law is.)
And more on the facts: a study to be published in The Lancet finds that abortion rates are similar no matter what the law – the only difference is that where it is legal it is generally safe, where illegal, generally unsafe. So restrictive laws don’t stop abortions; all they do is kill and maim women. Of course we knew that before, but it is something that deserves to be repeated again and again.
What it further shows is that – surprise, surprise – when you provide contraception, abortion rates go down. (The world’s abortion rates are now going down because of better provision of contraceptives in eastern Europe.)
So why are all of the anti-abortion people not standing on street corners handing out condoms? And funding contraceptive clinics all over the third world?
Update added 14/10: The Royal College of Nurses has made a submission to MPs saying that they should be allowed to perform abortions – an excellent idea that should have a significant impact on waiting lists – five weeks! and more in some parts of the country.
If you received an email from me this evening and it was a bit scrambled, apologies. Competing rather over-vigorously on the squash court at lunchtime, I headbutted the wall while making a desperate attempt to retrieve my opponent’s drop shot.
And I think it is catching up with me.
So note to self: I must curb my competitive instincts, at least when I’ve really got no chance of winning…
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