So I was happily sitting in front of the Channel 4 news with the Guardian, being a little happy because the rain meant I couldn’t go canvassing tonight, and periodically jumping up to give some of the neighbourhood darlings pieces of flapjack and chocolate santas, casually reading my Media Guardian, when I saw this article:

Beware brands: never deal dirty with a blogger

But not all advertiser activity is surreptitious. Some bloggers engage in a commercial contract to carry banners; Google’s AdSense program gives advice to bloggers about carrying ads or becoming a recognised affiliate so that links to commercial sites will earn you cash. Not all readers are happy to see advertising on a blog. Many bloggers feel commerce should be kept right out of their world. But at least banners are transparent and shouldn’t undermine the culture of openness that infuses blogging. Affiliate schemes are different.

Bloggers might even be earning money from their recommendations. James Henry (jamesandthebluecat.blogspot.com) links to Amazon and Lego, Pashmina (thegrammaticalpuss.blogspot.com) to Furla handbags and the Labour party, Wyndham (wyndhamtriffid.blogspot.com) to film releases and Aston Martin, and Patroclus (www.quinquireme.blogspot.com) to music albums and venues, Apple and Mibo lampshades. But I don’t think so. Their recommendations are authentic passions. I don’t care if they do earn something, and it would be a small tradeoff for the free entertainment I get from them day after day.

And then I thought about it, and went back and read it again, and then I chuckled at the idea that the Labour party would pay bloggers to click through to their site (or, given the state of said site, even know that it was possible)…

Well folks, this is it. Bush has nominated a firebreathing conservative to the US Supreme Court, just like we all feared. His name is Samuel Alito, and guess what? He was the lone dissenting voice on the court that struck down a law in Pennsylvania requiring women to tell their husbands before they could get an abortion.

And he’s no better on any other issue. His decisions have protected racist employers discriminating against black staff; allowed disability discrimination to continue; struck down the right to maternity leave and sick leave; and authorised the strip searching of a ten-year-old.

So Happy Hallow’een. You’d better be frightened. (A year ago, it could have been so different).

Over 200 people packed into a committee room in the House of Lords to hear a huge number and variety of speakers all defending a woman’s right to choose last Wednesday. It was hot, humid and very very packed, with women (and some men) perched on every available surface to be part of resurrecting the UK’s pro-choice campaign, Abortion Rights.

The speakers that moved me most were Melody Drnach, the Vice President Action (what wonderful job title!) from the National Organisation of Women in the US, and the words of an older sister who spoke from the floor about her mother who was forced to have an illegal abortion before 1967.

There were about twenty MPs there too - Linda Waltho, Emily Thornberry, Katy Clark, Laura Moffat, Chris McCafferty, Diana Johnson and many more, not to mention Baroness Gould. And the funny thing was, they were all, without exception, Labour.

On a related note, a study published in the British Medical Journal today has found that having an abortion does not increase a woman’s risk of depression:

Researchers can find “no credible evidence” to support the idea that termination poses a threat to a woman’s mental health. [...]

“This suggests that if the goal is to reduce women’s risk for depression, research should focus on how to prevent and ameliorate the effect of unwanted childbearing, particularly for younger women,” the researchers say in the online version of the British Medical Journal.

From Third Sector:

Fathers 4 Justice has expressed concern that a 15 month ITV investigation into the organisation may misrepresent its activities.
Matt O’Connor, founder of Fathers 4 Justice, said that ITV had conducted an undercover investigation using ex-security staff who were paid to infiltrate the organisation.
The men claimed to have gathered filmed evidence of alleged members of Fathers 4 Justice engaged in acts of violence and intimidation, according to O’Connor.

That’ll be a good (though disturbing) night’s viewing, then. F4J activists and supporters engaging in “acts of violence and intimidation”, though. Who’d a thought it?

PS: posting this made me finally get off my backside and do something which I have been meaning to for weeks - give the fathers 4 justice posts their own category, which I have now done. Given that these posts account for 178 of my comments and a vast number of search hits, it seemed like the least I could do was make them easier to find.

On average, male trainees receive a take home pay of £153 per week compared to female trainees who earn £113 per week. This £40 pay gap can largely be explained by the high level of gender segregation in many of the sectors. Men dominate in the traditionally highly paid sectors and women in the lower paid sectors.

From DfES’ report (pdf) Apprenticeship Pay: A Survey of Earnings by Sector, published yesterday.

Isn’t it great to know that a new system, established less than a decade ago, mirrors the inequalities in the job market as a whole? A 26% pay gap, no less.

Courtesy of the living pen of Rosie Brooks. This is posted in celebration of my new job, and consequent rise in salary, which I have achieved without having to a) move to London or b) commute to London. Hurrah!

Today was a good day.

I’m a workplace representative, and today was our annual salary negotiations with management. In a friendly, co-operative atmosphere, we worked through a series of meetings, modifying our positions to end up with a final settlement of 5 days’ extra leave per year for our staff, taking their annual entitlement to 30 days, an agreement to have a joint working group to look at regional weighting (though not the immediate Oxford weighting I was asking for), and a 3% raise from April.

Trade unions representing their members and getting them a better deal? All in a day’s work. What’s your excuse for not having joined a union yet?

Dan and Jo have been quicker off the mark on this than me on this one.

I won’t add much except to say that if you announce the creation and thus the location of a managed zone for prostitution, you advertise the services provided there, increasing demand and thus provision. This seems to me to be a key consideration for a city like Oxford where the problem is relatively small. Having a toleration zone or legalising brothels is a (not very effective) last resort for cities with huge prostitution problems like Liverpool and Glasgow, not small ones like Oxford.

Oh, and I was glad to see the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police opposing the proposal in today’s paper.

I guess if you persevere with my blog, you might have an interest in teenage pregnancy issues (or maybe reading my blog has forced one upon you). In either case, you may be interested in this post at Alas, a blog about whether teenage pregnancy is a rational choice for young black American women.

Just came across this very (well, comparatively) old photo of me on the (woefully-rarely updated) OUSU site. It’s the student women’s committee protesting against the Miss World beauty contest held at the Millennium Dome in 2001. Proving that being a feminist doesn’t mean neglecting the womanly arts, the banner behind us was one I made earlier.

From left to right, they are:

?Nadine, possibly American JYA
Jess, Keble College, theologian (and one of my exes, of whom Jo thinks there are too many). Very into Star Trek, now I believe running a craft business.
Megan, JYA from a Midwestern college, then studying at St Hilda’s
Helen Salmon, no relation of my girlfriend, then and now SWP organiser (for a useful primer on telling Helen and Jo apart, see here.)
Me, complete with paper tiara and sash reading something like “Miss Represented” or Miss Ogynist”
Francesca, then graduate student at Wadham
Jo, graduate student (half-obscured)
Leah Zeto, Balliol and unsuccessful VP(Women) candidate the year before me
Unknown
Anneliese Dodds, St Hilda’s and former OUSU president, now finishing a D.Phil at the LSE and enjoying not being the parliamentary candidate for Billericay.
Unknown

Can anyone fill in any of the blanks?