Revolutionary Rants

What a big surprise… Not. The UK has the worst female/male pay gap in Europe, the Guardian informs us, women continue to be paid a horrific 17% less than men do for the same full-time job (don’t even get me started on p/t), but this is hardly news, is it?

However much the law may enshrine pay equality there will always be groups isolated out of the biggest pay-outs (women chief amongst these). Only last week I read an article suggesting that older workers are being systematically axed off now, before new legislation comes in later in the year. The same sort of discrimination has always happened to women: she’ll be off soon to have a baby, she’s too emotional, blah blah blah. On top of this, those persons (female or male) who choose to “stay at home” (evil phrase…) and “look after young children” are stigmatised for not pursuing a career. But , then, women who chose the career are also stigmatised. How can you win?!

Furthermore, this morning on the news women were being encouraged to become tilers and plasterers, as recommended by this report (encouraging women in to ‘non-traditional’ careers – like doctors or brain surgeons, maybe?). Now, i am sure this is a perfectly good job, but somehow it stinks of the fact that now males won’t go in to these traditional ‘labouring’ professions they are trying to get women to fill the gap created by the ‘you can do anything you want’ society of post-Thatcherite Britain. Women, who are now almost systematically out performing men at school (and university?) should become brickies… Great, just another way of keeping women in low pay and filling a gap in the market, just what we need!

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I got the Guardian yesterday (it had ‘The Wicker Man’ on DVD free in it!!!) and one article that really stood out for me was this.

Once again, in the post-Irving weekend quiet, the words ‘free speech’ rear their ugly heads… I can’t get away from them at the moment, and this case, as with a great many others recently, highlights the great difficulties we have with ‘granting’ complete liberties in this huge, global, plural world of ours [America's].

First off, don’t get me wrong, I think people that hurt or threaten other people because of the (however awful and disgusting) things they do to animals is akin to pro-lifers killing people in abortion clinics – i.e. it seems to stamp out any point they had in the first place – and I think this kid should be free to say what he wants. However, it is amusing – at best – and creepy -generally -that Professors and pharmaceutical companies are hiding behind a 16-year-old high school drop out (it was ‘too boring’, he apparently wants a fast track to neurosurgery via his blog…) rather than defending their Oxford lab themselves.

Well, typical, really, isn’t it?

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I was just faffing around on the BBC West Yorkshire website and found this interesting article on Huddersfield’s best spot, Castle Hill.

Should you ever be in Huddersfield, do try to get up there: the views are stunning (I remember winning my Dad over to the charms of ‘the Hudd’, when he came to visit me in my first year, with a walk up to the top!). It was my favourite place to go to chill out when I was stressed in the first and second year by University or bloody idiots!!! In fact, I think I might go up there for a walk again sometime soon.

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WE WON!

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OK, prepare for a rant now! After the nice woodpecker incident I am annoyed. I just went in to the my former University to get out some books for my essays, and I picked up a copy of the student paper ‘Huddersfield Student’.

Not only was I mildly irritated to find how utterly rubbish it has become (the lead story is something to do with how people with ginger hair should be represented in the NUS elections more, the lay-out is awful, with several headlines not ended or with words printed twice, you can’t read some bits as the words trail off or are on too similar colour backgrounds, and so forth) but also – and this is worse – that it contained a half page advert for a lap dancing club (‘only £2 with student ID!’).

Only two years ago I was writing about feminism in that paper. Whilst the Union may be taking time to included ‘gingers’ in its election process it is a shame it didn’t think about the alienation women might feel on looking at a union-jack-bikini clad lap dancer, isn’t it?

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It is funny how tiny little things can make your day: today my day was just made by seeing a black and white, red-crested woodpecker (whilst doing the washing up, which usually annoys the hell out of me) in my student houses back garden!

Glorious.

Chicken now has the bug, which is not glorious, and I am just off to the library to get some more essay books prior to tonight’s massive game… Which will probably ruin my day, and my week…

(P.S. Happy birthday James Dean Bradfield)

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Today, for the first time since I was quite a small child (if I could ever be classed as ’small’…) I woke up with one of my eyes glued shut. It was not nice. After thinking I had passed relatively pain free through “the bug” it has come back to haunt me with a very chesty cough (via a very pained throat) and a eye that feels like it has been squashed…

Not nice.

Today my friend Andrew and I went for lunch at the Fenay Bridge pub just outside Huddersfield. It was only OK food-wise, but we liked the bargain 2 for 1 offer on all meals.

Manchester United are out of the FA Cup, how amusing. Sadly, they were beaten by Liverpool, who I hate almost as much.

Time to read some more about Freedom of Expression, and complain about my eye hurting to Mr C…

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Things are, as I said, very hectic, but I felt compelled to post about the hilarious snowboarding today. It was the first women’s final in this class of snowboarding, and – in between reading a long and rather obtuse Scanlon article – the course was so twisting and tight that half the competitors were being knocked out or down in massive crashes (usually involving one boarder falling and pulling the rest with them) .

Then came the final medal race: two Yanks and two Canadians set off down the hill. One slipped, but got back up; another poor woman flew through a peripheral fence! One American took what looked like a unbeatable lead until she decided to ’showboat’ off the last jump and… fell over!!!!!!!!! The other American scooped the Gold as the fallen show off could only just limp back on track in time to finish second!

Hilarious! And absolutely exciting! I love the Olympics.

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Reading has been very hectic lately, as I seem to have more and more that I need to do. I may not post a lot for the next few weeks as I have to:

Read for my seminars weekly

Read for my essay in Marxist Theory

Read for my essay in Contemporary Issues in Toleration

Finish and present a presentation in Contemporary Issues in Toleration

Go in to York three times next week

Form some sort of coherent PhD application

And a AHRC application

Spend plenty of time with chicken

Ditto with Sandra and the PM

Play Pacman

Watch the telly

And read some more.

Oh a less moaning note: I have just started watching ‘Our Friends in the North’ on BBC4 (Wednesday night, annoyingly clashing with the end of ‘Desperate Housewives’). I have always wanted to see it, as it is supposed to be one of those ‘gritty left-wing dramas’ and it has a (mostly – sadly there is also Gina McKee) good cast. We shall see how it progresses.

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The Guardian is this morning reporting that the dashing leader of the opposition wants to remove some of the Queen’s powers!

Now, this is a little bit scary for me, as – since I was old enough to talk, almost – I have felt that there should be a complete removal of the money leaching Royals al la ‘The Queen and I’. Mr Cameron does not want this, he wants (and I quote the Guardian once again) to remove the Queen’s powers in a limited field, containing the Queen’s right to:

· declare war and send troops abroad;

· to make international and European treaties;

· to make appointments and award honours;

· to make major changes to the structure of government.

OK, this is small fry to the average anarchist on the street, but even so, coming from a Tory it is quite big news! What does this mean? In a decade or two’s time will I be a Tory for the same reasons my parents were Labour? Are the Tories under Cameron more left wing than bleeping Blair?! Will I be telling future generations how ‘it used to be in my day’ as they attempt to break the latest strike brought on by the tyrannical New Labour government?!?!

One of my old lecturers has a ‘Private Eye’ cover on his door, suggesting that Blair had a face transplant and became Cameron; but it is worst than that. Is it as I suspected as a teenager – that politics is all one big circle with left and right meeting? Or are we just so controlled by the media now that any politician has to fake it like a suited and booted porn star?

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