Interesting news in today’s Oxford Mail: apparently eighty percent of terminations for Oxfordshire women are carried out in London and Reading at Marie Stopes clinics rather than in the JR hospital. Obviously, it would be better if they were all available at the JR without women having to travel, but as they’re all state-funded (can’t find the stats right now, but last time I looked about 90 per cent of abortions to local women were funded on the NHS) I suppose it’s okay.

What really fascinated me, though, were the comments following the article on the Oxford Mail’s site. The lack of provision in Oxfordshire is caused by the JR being a teaching hospital where a new set of medical students come to gynae every six months: the hospital can’t plan consistent services when they don’t know whether they’ll have conscientious objectors on the staff or not. As I write, there are 14 comments on the Oxford Mail’s site, and far from being the usual rants of pro-lifers, there’s a good mix, including some thoughtful contributions. Several go further than I think I would in limiting the right of doctors to opt out of procedures - I think that the crucial point is that doctors must be honest and open with patients seeking abortion provision, not attempt to sway their decisions and swiftly refer them on. I suppose we haven’t had to tackle before the problem of a shortage of doctors willing to perform abortions before, though this has long been a real concern for pro-choice advocates in the States.

People shouldn’t become doctors if there are certain procedures they don’t approve of [...] It’s not the doctors’ job to let their moral judgement cloud how they treat their patients

The sooner doctors realize that they are there to serve ALL people (whether they agree with them or not) the better.

They should be required to participate in procedures when it is tax payers money that keeps them in their jobs and tax payers money that has enabled them to train to do those jobs

DOCTORS ARE NOT THERE TO DECIDE WHAT OUR MORALS SHOULD BE BUT TO DO THE JOB THEY ARE WELL PAID FOR.

Surely, if they are agreeing to work for the NHS, paid by tax-payers money, then they should be required to perform all procedures offered by the NHS? There are many reasons why a woman might require an abortion, and the moralising of individuals within a publicly funded organisation is repugnant and misogynistic in the extreme.

Wanted to note with thanks the Labour members (and a few odds and sods) who turned out to support extending employment rights to temporary and agency workers last week - including my MP, Andrew Smith.

Prize for best contribution to the debate goes to Ian McCartney, for the following exchange. Don would probably describe him as a Good Old Boy:

Pat McFadden (the minister responding to the backbench bill): “[...] Much has been said about the Government’s commitments and what we said before the last election, so I shall be clear with both sides of the House about what we said [quotes Warwick agreement made at the Labour party's national policy forum in 2005]”

Ian McCartney: “[...] I had not intended to take part in the debate, but I remember well the words that he quoted, having written them at 4 o’clock in the morning as part of the Warwick agreement. It is certainly true, as he said, that there was no guarantee about the directive, which was deficient in many ways, including its lack of protection for pensions. However, we signed up in good faith with the intention that if we did not reach agreement, we would tackle those abuses. The fact that we have not done that so far has led to the Bill. I hope that after today, we will get some serious negotiation done, and that those words will become a reality for thousands of workers.”

The Oxford Mail has long shown a huge interest in beauty queens. Over the last couple of years, those of us who are regular readers have been treated to the ongoing saga of Eleanor Glynn - first Miss Oxford; then Miss England; then tragically loses her suitcase on the way to Miss World, and, without her dresses, loses; on her return gives advice to aspiring young women dot dot dot. The fact that I didn’t have to look up her name shows you with what monotonous regularity the pronouncements of Ms Glynn (accompanied, always, by a shiny shiny photo) have appeared in my local rag.

Anyway, now they are looking for the next Miss Oxford - and here are the rules of the game:

Qualifications for eligibility are that each contestant:
Shall not be less than 17 years of age nor more than 24 years of age on September 30 of the year of the Miss England final.
Shall live or work in the Oxford Mail circulation area.
Shall be of good character and possessed of charm poise personality and have beauty of face and figure.
Shall be a person whose background is not likely to bring into disrepute The Miss England Contest or the Oxford Mail or any person associated with them.
Shall be a person:
- Who usually uses the prefix ‘Miss’ (or equivalent) before her name and is not married.
- Who has never given birth to a child.
- Who has never previously won The Miss England Contest.

I am speechless. “Charm poise personality”? “Of good character”? “Disrepute”? Unfortunately, I doubt they’ll have a shortage of candidates: after all, three years ago 63% of the thousand young women surveyed said their ideal occupation was to be a glamour model. Sigh.

Rather than this being my inabiity to think of things to post about, my webhosts have been having a week-long brain fart. Apologies and hello again.

I appear (oddly) to have been nominated for “best blog by a woman non-Liberal Democrat” in the Lib Dems’ women’s section’s blog awards. Many thanks to Mary Reid for the nomination, possibly for this post, but how strange… Especially as my expressed hope for this year is to kick out a failing Lib Dem administration running down our beautiful city.

Here’s the Sunday Times’ eminently confusing and confused article on Harriet Harman’s plans for getting more black and Asian people into Parliament. A sample:

A report commissioned by Harriet Harman, the equalities minister, recommends a change to the race discrimination laws. It proposes introducing the shortlists for four consecutive general elections to redress the underrepresentation of ethnic minorities at Westminster. [...]
Under the plans, which would enable all political parties to discriminate in favour of ethnic minorities, white candidates would be barred from standing in about 10 winnable seats at each election.

Now, I’m in favour of all-black shortlists; that shouldn’t surprise you. So the element of shock! horror! that the Sunday Times inserts into their coverage (it may lead to Roma MPs!) doesn’t bother me. But one thing does about this article: I’m sure the admirable folk over at Operation Black Vote, who wrote the report for HH, are not proposing the abolition of the party system in British elections. In which case, Marie Woolf, the Sunday Times’ Whitehall Editor no less, has missed an important point: HH is proposing to change the law to make possible *the consideration by political parties* of adopting all-black shortlists. No white candidates will be barred from standing anywhere and there will still be white people on every ballot paper in every area, I’ll wager. No, these proposals will make all-black shortlists legally possible to enable a discussion by all political parties about whether this mechanism would work for them.

OBV think about ten ABS would be needed per election; I’ll defer to their greater knowledge on this, but the crucial point is that we only get all-black shortlists if one or more parties agree that this is how they will choose some of their parliamentary candidates. And, realistically, only one party is anywhere near thinking about this: while Liberals and Tories pay lip service to women’s representation in Parliament, only Labour has worked out how to actually increase it at any speed. Why would increasing black and Asian representation be any different?

I last blogged on 18 January - that’s several weeks with no posts, the longest I’ve gone in years. My blog is my home page (well, one of them; I use Firefox so have several homepages at once), and for weeks now my face has looked accusingly at me from the screen as I hastily click the tab closed and go elsewhere.

Partly, it’s lack of inspiration: I’m still interested in the same things I was ever interested in, but don’t really see the need to write another post on abortion, another on equal pay, another on rape convictions, another on why the fathers’ rights movement are mainly misogynists - I’ve written all those posts, many times. Partly it’s not really feeling that I have anything unique to say: what is there to say on Hillary v Obama, MPs’ expenses, the Archbishop of Canterbury and sharia law that hasn’t already been said? Partly it’s because many of the things I want to say are said well by others - don paskini most often makes me think “I wish I’d written that!”, but there are others too. It’s also because what I can say on this blog is a little self-censored, because of what I do for a job, because of the experience of being ridiculed in the local paper just once too often, and because I feel like blogging less about my life (as opposed to my opinions) than I used to. Perhaps that’s about Facebook’s impact on me: I love having access to a constantly-updated feed of one-liners from my friends, and using Facebook status in that way reduces the need to blog about life.

So, I’m seriously re-evaluating the role of the blog. I still don’t want to write a councillor-blog - though that’s not because there isn’t anything going on in Rose Hill and Iffley at the moment! There is: the building work on the 200-odd new houses has started and the re-development will bring £500k into our community for facilities and services; our primary school is about to be fresh-started, hopefully with new buildings; our secondary is about to become an academy (the last set of school results there showed a really disappointing 11% of children getting five good GCSEs); we’re in the middle of an unexpected move of fifteen elderly couples and single people from council bungalows which are deteriorating faster than expected; we’re fighting to keep our local leisure centre open in the teeth of Lib Dem plans to close it. Maybe I’m not blogging because, as a councillor, I’ve never been this busy before. And we’ve local elections in less than three months, so blogging is competing with increasing canvassing and leafletting (not that that ever really stops), my full-time job, councillor duties and trying to get to the gym - no wonder it loses sometimes.