Our Mo

RIP Mo Mowlam, a pioneering woman in politics.

I'm finding it hard to watch the rolling footage of her - both because of the contrast between the beautiful young woman who started out in politics and the patently-ill woman who left Parliament, and because of the sheer hypocrisy of that standing ovation during the leader's speech, when her friends stood to applaud as a sign of their support for her amid the briefings and whispering, and the briefers and whisperers stood to demonstrate they were doing nothing of the sort.

My favourite Mo moment?
Journalist to Mo as she leaves No. 10 the day after the 97 election: "So, what did you get?"
Mo, clearly still slightly confused by it all: "Shadow Northern Ireland. No, no, I mean Northern Ireland Secretary!"

Robin Cook and Mo Mowlam, inside a month.

33 degrees and counting

There's not a lot going on that I feel strongly enough or know enough about to blog on today, so you'll have to make so with some links. I think it's something to do with working in an office where the temperature never falls below 33 degrees and the collection of fans on my desk just circulate hot air. Oh, the joys of working in the voluntary sector. (I think Tom understands - that's the second post referencing Third Sector, quite the most boring trade journal ever, inside a month, mate - are you feeling okay?)

So, if you'd like to know what that coveted campaigning job holds when you finally get your greasy little mitts on it, here you are. Tomorrow I have a photo shoot in the morning on the lovely Blackbird Leys estate; clearly having been hot hot hot all week, it will pour rivulets straight onto the camera lens the minute we appear. That will be followed by an extended afternoon session of grappling with my designer, courier, electrics technician, set-up supplier, voice-over artists and furniture supplier, not to mention my valued colleagues. But never fear, all will be revealed in glory in Brighton, provided the natural caution of the voluntary sector (at least my bit of it) to pelt as fast as they can towards the middle of the road can be overcome.

I hate August - everyone else is on holiday and sending me those sodding out of office auto replies, and I'm choosing canapes and desperately trying to persuade the accommodation bureau that they want to find me just one more hotel room at triple the usual price for some over-rated seaside town in the middle of nowhere.

So, read these fine posts in lieu of a fine post from me:

I loved this, from World o'Crap, taking apart the advice given in the as yet unpublished book "How fathers can win child custody". The original article suggests a variety of ways to screw over your ex-wife, including taping her, collecting evidence of her mental instability, harassing her, and getting a child psychologist to ask your children leading questions to "prove" that she's not a suitable mother. It's snarky, bitchy and unrestrainedly feminist - I wish I'd written it.

This blog is one of the best refutations of the ex-gay movement I've seen, and touching with it, quite out of sympathy with my hard-bitten mood this evening. Yet how can the verdant symbolism of the garden fail to move the hardest of homophobe hearts?

And finally, over at the drink-soaked trots, Spirit of 1976 shows that leftwing sexism still exists by way of a photo of luscious Luciana, and then crowns his achievement by telling my objecting girlfriend that she's welcome to compile a list of top male political totty. That made me giggle, just a bit.

Open season on teenagers

Maybe this year you, like me, are waiting, in trepidation, for the A-level results of someone you care about. Maybe you're waiting for your own results. Maybe no-one you know is getting their results this time, but on Thursday you might just take a sneaky peek at the course you did at uni a few years ago in the clearing listings to see what they're asking for this year, feeling glad that you're out of it all.

The bunfight is well underway, with people queueing up on all sides to bash young people - nothing new there then, every newspaper every day is bemoaning the state of today's young people. But the difference with the annual lament about falling A-level standards that really winds me up is that they're bashing young people WHO'VE JUST DONE WHAT THEY'RE FUCKING SUPPOSED TO DO, worked hard and got good grades. Who'd be 18 again? They can't do anything right.

Clearly, though, there is crisis of confidence in A-levels and academic education in general. Plus, of course, there's the fact that no-one talks about, far more shameful for a Labour government than so-called "grade inflation", which is that 46% of young people leave school without the equivalent of 5 GCSEs - i.e. without the skills to get a good job, and we've only got three years left to get that down below 40% for the 2008 target. The system's crying out for change. I think Mike Tomlinson may have some ideas on that, Ms Kelly.

Stuck in 1995

"What music do you like?" It's always a tough question. I remember the days when my entire being was ruled by what music I liked, when I couldn't imagine going out with someone who didn't get my music. That decision - love over music - ruined my social scene. Just imagine the dilemma about where to go on a Saturday night - the Rat and Parrot followed by the infamous Blue Orchid, advertised as the night out of choice for the London Broncos as if that were an inducement, with one's new and pristine beloved? Or the Ship followed by the Gun, full of the Croydon misfits because it was the only place where they didn't get beaten up, with the speccy Nick at the turntables and a 1am licence, the place that introduced me to a different type of music when all I'd previously owned was the best of Bon Jovi? I can still remember the classic set, ending with some admixture of the following: I am the resurrection, Lithium, The only one I know, Sympathy for the devil and Do you remember the first time?.

So, at one time, for maybe two years from 15 to 17, whilst inviting the scorn of "townies" (a word with apparent universal comprehension, yet which never applies to oneself...), I could answer with truthfulness and without embarassment "Blur, Pulp, Suede, Elastica, you know the sort of thing." However, I had a problem: the further I got from 1995, the less credible that answer became. It just about did when I went to university in 1998, though with so much new to do music soon became little more than background noise. By 2000, with the delights of the danceloving gay scene in front of me, and with the inescapable knowledge that being gay required one to know the moves to Steps, I started to deny my true feelings for the soundtrack of my teenage years. Faced in 2005 with a manager seven years older and immensely cooler than me (she went to see Goldie Lookin' Chain live! When everyone who'd heard of them knew they were a joke!), I resorted to admitting the time-warped nature of my CD collection and realising that whilst I appear to have the trappings of an outwardly well-adjusted 25 year-old, inside I'm dancing to the Boo Radleys. Still.

So imagine my surprise when, on my way home from work yesterday, I chanced across a copy of the NME, with its front page celebrating the ten-year anniversary of the Blur-Oasis feud for number 1. Ten years on, how can it be ten years since the first time popular music was worthy of discussion on the News at Ten and we all took sides? (Blur, always Blur - they were Londoners - well, sort-of anyway; Country House was not their best track but they just had to beat the excrable Roll with it). I sneaked a quick peek, recalling the "Blur by a nose!" front page from the week after and the heavyweight title front page of the week before, and then, coming to my senses, hurriedly picked up the New Statesman and left. Do we want to be reminded of our teenage years? Or just the best bits? Pulp at Glastonbury, but not Menswe@r?

At home, though, I realised that it was getting inescapable: John Harris, he who wrote the definitive account of Britpop (and an irritating tactical voting guide for May, but then he was nice about me so I'll let him be), had the front cover of the Guardian's arts pages celebrating the legacy of Britpop. I rarely read the arts pages - they're not a patch on the Media, Education or Society Guardians, or even on Thursday's perpetually underachieving Online, for this Guardian stalwart - but this drew me in. There's also an article over at the Times, though that's much more focussed on Damon Albarn. After all, I still have the taped-off-the-telly video of the BBC One special, Britpop Now, presented by Damon dressed as Sherlock Holmes, deerstalker and all, and all my homemade compilation tapes from the era, duitfully packed into boxes and moved with me every year. I suppose I should just give in to it, and wallow in the Britpop special airing on BBC4 all night on Tuesday:

8:30 pm The Britpop Story
John Harris charts the rise of Britpop, its brief romance with New Labour, the emergence of the 'new lad' culture, and the legacy Britpop has left behind. Part of BBC FOUR's Britpop Night.

9:00 pm Britpop Now
Damon Albarn presents a compilation of live performances from Britpop acts originally recorded on 16 August 1995, including Blur, Supergrass, Elastica and Menswear. Part of BBC FOUR's Britpop Night. (As I remember, Blur do Country House, Elastica do LineUp, Menswe@r do Daydreamer, Dodgy Staying out for the summer, Sleeper do Inbetweener, Echobelly and possibly Shampoo also feature, Supergrass are scarcely older than me and the whole thing ends with a magisterial Common People with Jarvis making moon eyes at the camera. )

9:45 pm Live Forever: Storyville
Live Forever charts the sounds that defined the real mood of the 90s, offering an alternative history of the period and a more intriguing vision of Britain and its music. Strong language. [S]

11:10 pm Pulp: No Sleep Till Sheffield
In 1995, the BBC followed Jarvis Cocker and Pulp as they charmed their way around Britain, having finally become popular after many years of trying. Part of BBC FOUR's Britpop Night.

So that's my Tuesday night sorted then, even if it's called Britpop night, when any fan would know that the term speedily became pejorative. We knew it as "indie", as a commenter over at DoctorVee's points out. Now, where are those tapes?

UPDATE:

There are interesting and far more reflective blogs on this topic by Assistant and No rock and roll fun.

Women can't stop rape

I started to write a reply to Tamanou's comment below, but it grew and grew, so better to post it here:

He asked:

"... what can be done to make it less unpleasant for young women to report these atrocities, to provide a more supportive environment for those who have been violated like this, and to make it more likely that bastards like these will be caught?"

What a question! Where to start?

Firstly, similarly to how the Government has invested millions in making sure that there is a national 24 hour domestic violence helpline (0808 2000 247, by the way), we need to make sure that there's a national rape crisis helpline. At the moment, there's a patchwork of local provision with massively unstable funding run by dedicated volunteers who are really prone to burnout after a few years. Many areas have local lines, but London Rape Crisis closed in 2001 after they lost all their funding, and in 2003 the national Rape Crisis Federation folded after the Home Office withdrew their financial support. Even where there are existing lines, they often open for very short periods only - a few hours on specified nights a week, which, given the nature of the issue, isn't ideal. I'm not underestimating the enormous dedication and commitment of the volunteers - I know I couldn't do their job - but I think it's time for a more national response, an always-on resource, ready to give information and provide a listening ear immediately.

(picture by Jackie Fleming for the Truth about Rape)

Secondly, the first point of contact with the police needs to be improved. I'd use the model of the Sexual Abuse Referral Centre - SARC, which is a building furnished like a house with medical suite and examination rooms, and specially-trained officers ready to take statements from women and others who have experienced rape or sexual abuse. There are a handful (just 13) in the UK at the moment, but only a very few women live near enough one for it to be their first point of contact.

Thirdly, we need a recognition that the woman who has been raped is more than just a witness to a crime, which is often how she is treated. Whilst a defendant will (rightly) be prepared for court by his lawyer, the woman will often have little support or prewarning about what the experience will be like, how the court process works or when things happen. This is getting better - there are some great pilots around, and Victim Support have some great schemes to support women, but again, it's a patchwork.

Fourth, we need specialist prosecutors who understand rape cases and are prepared to go the extra mile and understand the detail of forensic evidence. Specialist rape prosecutors have overseen a huge rise in the conviction rate in the US.

Fifth, judges must stop allowing defendants' lawyers to bring up a woman's past sexual history or allow defendants to cross-examine rape survivors. This was supposed to have been outlawed a few years ago, but lawyers are still getting away with playing on the prejudices of juries, the resentment of judges for a prohibition of what they see as relevant lines of enquiry and the lack of expertise of non-specialist prosecutors.

Sixth, women who have been raped need to have access to counselling and support, on the NHS or otherwise free of charge, straightaway and for the long term. This is where rape crisis centres come into their own - for woman-centred formal and informal emotional support. Their families may also need some help, particularly the partners of women who have been raped, who often end up absorbing the misery as they try to support their loved one.

But all of this is a sticking plaster compared to the enormous changes we need to make to people's attitudes about rape, to stop it in the first place. Think of all the ways in which accepted thinking about rape, women and sexual activity disadvantages her and makes the attack possible, legitimising it in the mind of what is probably a very outwardly-normal young man:

• Firstly, she's lucky that anyone believed her, as she'd been having underage sex, making her a slapper at risk of teenage pregnancy and him a wide boy, doing well for getting his end away so young; already her status is lower than his.
• She broke up with him, and then insulted him, diminishing him in the eyes of his peers; many would find his reaction understandable, even if they didn't condone it, because rape is about asserting power, not about sex.
• They'd already been having sex for a period of time, so even though she had broken up with him and even though she didn't want it, many might think that it didn't make much difference, once more didn't matter.
• She was 15, out on her own; it might be argued that she shouldn't have been.
• Having sex with a woman while one's mates look on has been popularised by "roasting" sessions involving footballers and female fans, whether they consent or not, and where there have been allegations of abuse, no-one has been prosecuted; again, this normalises the situation in a society obsessed with celebrity, and makes it clear that rape is a low-risk activity.
• The popularisation of "date rape" as opposed to normal rape also sends this message that the act isn't really rape, and the media furore about the naming of men accused of rape sends the message that many women make up accusations of rape, thus making it less likely that she will be believed, causing her to exercise self-censorship and not report, and thus diminishing the possibility of negative consequences for him.
• Even were he to end up in trouble, he could rely on at least some of the police, the CPS, the judge, the jury and the lawyers holding attitudes that disadvantage her and privilege that nice young man, coached and scrubbed up well, in the interview room or (unlikely, but it does happen) in the dock.
• No doubt, many members of his community and perhaps his own parents would consider the incident a "youthful indiscretion", which shouldn't derail his prospects of university and a happy life.
• And if he cared to look at the record of reporting and prosecuting rape, he comes to the conclusion that society doesn't consider it important enough a crime to put resources into combatting.

So it's all stacked against her from the start.

So how do we tackle this? I wish there were a neat answer, something tick-box that we could do, a one-hour year nine lesson we could send our young men to that would weed out the possibility that one day they might rape their girlfriend. There isn't. It's the same hard old slog, instilling respect for women in our young men, making it clear that just because you can, doesn't mean that you should. I'm not convinced that pornography per se has anything to do with it; I think it's more to do with a culture of disrespect for women's autonomy, embodied across our society - the slapper culture, the idea that my mum and my sister are special, but all other women are just up for it and fair game. Maybe it's the final frontier for feminism - we've shown that we can do men's jobs and earn our own money, make political decisions and lead the country, but as of yet we haven't found a way to prevent men showing their power over our bodies through rape.

I have a hunch that intensive developmental group work with young men, giving them a space to talk, building their confidence, self esteem, and the ability to sustain healthy relationships, might be worth a try. There's some great work out there for perpetrators of domestic violence that is successful in changing their behaviour, and some of that might be adapted to a universal programme with young men, maybe.

In the meantime, what to do? How effective can a parent or a teacher or a youth worker be against the arrayed forces of the mainstream media, newspapers, men's magazines and street culture? We need a national campaign challenging accepted views about what constitutes "rape"; it is a disgrace that there is no national campaigning voice on rape. The Truth about Rape show us what needs to be done, but on an immense scale - every bus stop, every local radio station, every doctor's surgery, every school, every pub, every betting shop, every young man.

This is what rape looks like

Horrifying:

Tonight I rang a friend of mine to check she was ok after a split with her boyfriend of one year. She’s 15, and was smitten with the guy. Yesterday night he raped her.
The story plays like too many I’ve heard before; boy meets girl, girl splits with boy, boy takes revenge for being humiliated. She argued with him in the street, whilst out in the evening with a female friend. The boy and his group of friends, all 15, appeared to leave, but showed up again as the girls walked home in the semi-light, following them and shouting taunts. Eventually they caught up, dragging my friend into the bushes surrounding the local cemetery. She was told she wanted it really, and that she’d “better give it up”. She was frightened, humiliated, as a group of boys watched while her ex took off some of her clothes, and proceeded to rape her.
The telling of it was also like too many retellings I’ve heard before. She didn’t call it rape. She said he was “mean” to her because she “pissed him off”. She said she “had to let him do it”. I didn’t push her, but tried to suggest he had done something abhorrent, illegal, greatly wrong. She was adamant it was “just one of those things”.

And the worst of it is, he'll get away with it. Less than 5% of women who report rape see their attacker convicted. Odds are this young woman won't report it at all - and why would you, if that means sitting in a striplit room talking to at best a well-meaning police constable who can't promise anything because it's your word against his and he's such a nice young man, and at worst a sceptical police officer who wants to know what you were doing out on your own at that time and raises his eyebrows just so when you say that you'd had a drink / slept with the guy in the past...

Don't mess with Ana!

Pootergeek's post parodying the bespectacled one was pretty funny in the first place, but the comments after the enraged fans of Anastacia got hold of it there and here are priceless.

Sad to be gay - mark II

Follows on from my previous post.

Well, after bracing myself for an hour of horrible telly, I watched it, and was really left with the feeling, "so what?" The subject of the programme, David Akinsanya, clearly wasn't happy with his life, despite appearing to have a profession he enjoyed, somewhere nice to live on a canal boat on the Thames, and a loving circle of friends. I just don't understand why he thought going to Love in Action was going to sort out the problems he was having, particularly as he wasn't coming from a faith background.

Weirdly, the staff at LIA seemed very nice and reasonable, albeit with their religion worn on their sleeve - not the monsters I'd been expecting. It was a very subtle form of homophobia, designed to create and reinforce shame as a tool to change behaviours - nothing I saw looked as if it could change orientation. The fact that so many staff had been participants and so many participants had stayed longer than their original 28 days gave the impression that LIA was a comfort blanket - that the effect was to change behaviour within a controlled environment with the support of others, but that it wasn't replicable or continuable in the outside world.

I did want to scream when he talked about a well-meaning therapist he had visited when he first came out, who said there was no such thing as bisexuality. I hope, however gay positive and enthusiastic to affirm gay lifestyles they are, therapists nowadays would recognise that statements like that are unethical and surely not helpful. Certainly, without support from a family or gay peer support group and without the tools to build healthy relationships from an education system that wasn't and still isn't willing to discuss heterosexual relationships in any depth, let alone gay relationships, I can see how you can end up on the scene night after night looking for fulfillment and envying the settled relationships of your straight peers. There is a problem with "the gay community" that too often it's about drinking, clubbing and sex, and those of us that are "non-scene" or in relationships are far less visible, simply because you won't find us in the Jolly Farmers propping up the bar every night.

Throughout, I couldn't help feeling sorry for David, who seemed to get little but pain and shame from the experience. In the end, the sole benefit of the course to him was the realisation that although he couldn't change from being gay to straight, he could change his behaviour and go for a period of celibacy to allow time for self-reflection; surely he could have got to that point by working with a reputable therapist or self-help group?

I'm also having mixed feelings about the role of the BBC in commissioning the show. It was a challenging hour of viewing, even if the journey didn't really lead anywhere, but I felt it the premise was insufficiently explored. Okay, David, so you're sad to be gay. Why is that? What have you done to change the way you live and what you do that might have an effect on that? Why do you keep insisting that being gay means you can't have a family or children? I'd have like the BBC to film him up with a gay family for an afternoon, perhaps. It just didn't seem balanced to me. (But then, if I had my way, we'd send in an undercover reporter to an ex-gay ministry to film, in the manner of The Secret Policeman.)

I also hate the implied statement in the title: "Sad to be gay". There must be people who are sad because they're gay, but admitting it makes me feel really uncomfortable. Is that because doing so challenges my sexuality? Is it because gay people have had to struggle so hard to get past the obstacles thrown up by a heterosexist society that to admit weakness, that to admit something isn't right in the beautiful garden of gay, undermines us all? A few years ago we could have dismissed that feeling, saying that it's homophobia that makes people sad to be gay. For many (vast numbers, too many) people it still does ruin their lives, but David wasn't experiencing visible homophobia, so there must be something else going on.

It's all the fault of Fathers4Justice!

Seriously. They're a front group, destabilising society as a precursor to a coup in the UK. And there was me thinking that it was just their obvious views that made them odious. (Thanks Tom).

Sad to be gay

On Tuesday, BBC Two's running a documentary about a guy who wants to find out if he can "unlearn" being gay, so he goes to one of the American "ex-gay" ministries:

David Akinsanya hates being gay. He has been living as a gay man for 20 years but if he could take a pill to make him heterosexual he'd pop it without a second thought. In Sad to be Gay, David sees if it's possible to go straight. David believes his homosexuality is learned behaviour, but will it be something he can unlearn?

David decides to attend a controversial treatment centre in America that promises "freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ". Many of the centre's staff and its clients are also "struggling with same sex attraction".

David makes a revealing and tearful admission about his unhappy past to the group - yet he starts to doubt the centre's methods, and begins to question whether its prayers and support will succeed in making him straight.

The documentary follows the ups and downs of David's turbulent journey and asks whether being gay is something you can change.

Now, I'm obviously uncomfortable with the premise (which I believe false) that it is possible to change one's sexuality, but I can see that this may well be an interesting documentary. The interesting thing is that the programme that David attends, Love in Action, has been the subject of recent controversy in the US, above and beyond that which attaches to these programmes in principle from their stalwart detractors in the gay and religious communities.

For a start, they are particularly heinous: the Director of Love in Action, John Smid, has said:

"I would rather you commit suicide than have you leave Love In Action wanting to return to the gay lifestyle. In a physical death you could still have a spiritual resurrection; whereas, returning to homosexuality you are yielding yourself to a spiritual death from which there is no recovery."

And then, in one of those happy accidents of timing (serendipity?), the founder of "Love in Action", has said, in a public letter, that it doesn't work.

But most of the controversy has arisen earlier this year, when a young 16-year old blogger called Zach was sent there by his parents to get the the homosexuality religiously cleansed out of him. Zach's visibility ignited fury in the LGBT community in the US - there's more information at the Queer Action Coalition, and a rundown of the incident is at the Wikipedia page.

So, all in all, I will be watching BBC Two on Tuesday night with interest.

He's dead

Robin Cook's dead. Fucking hell.

UPDATE: 18:57 - It's just this moment come up on the BBC.

UPDATE 19:12: Sorry for that bald post. I was sat at the computer when it came over news 24. I'm sat here feeling enormously sad this man, who we all hoped would be brought back into the Cabinet as a sign that those of us who opposed the war from inside the party were right and principled to do so, has died. And I'm remembering a man sat, just three months ago, in Sabir's front room, surrounded by leaders of Oxford's Muslim community, making the argument that despite their anger, a Labour vote was the right one.

Tired of the pro-war left?

This post is an interesting take on the debate. Thanks Tom for pointing me to it.

Were you gay before 1935?

Or did you take off your shoes and socks to get on a bouncy castle before 1986?

The Beeb and the Oxford English Dictionary need our help to come up with the first written uses of a whole range of words (first recorded use in brackets):

back to square one [1960]
balti [1984]
Beeb [1967]
boffin [1941]
bog-standard [1983]
bomber jacket [1973]
bonk (sexual intercourse) [1975]
bouncy castle [1986]
chattering classes [1985]
codswallop [1963]
Crimble [1963]
cyberspace [1982]
cyborg [1960]
ditsy [1978]
dosh [1953]
full monty [1985]
gas mark [1963]
gay (homosexual sense) [1935]
handbags (at dawn) [1987]
her indoors [1979]
jaffa (cricketing term)
Mackem [1991]
made-up [1980]
minger [1995]
minted [1995]
moony, moonie [1990]
muller [1993]
mullet (hairstyle) [1994]
mushy peas [1975]
naff [1966]
nerd [1951]
nip and tuck [1980]
nit nurse [1985]
nutmeg (football use) [1979]
Old Bill (police) [1958]
on the pull [1988]
pass the parcel [1967]
pear-shaped [1983]
phwoar [1980]
pick'n'mix [1959]
ploughman's lunch [1970]
pop one's clogs [1977]
porky [1985]
posh [1915]
ska [1964]
smart casual [1945]
snazzy [1932]
something for the weekend [1990]
throw one's toys out of the pram (or cot) [1989]
tikka masala [1975]

What a fascinating idea! There's more information about the individual words here, although some of the suggested derivations seem a bit odd to me. For example, for handbags at dawn:

Wanted: Printed evidence before 1987.
When did people start to brandish handbags ('at dawn', 'at three paces') instead of pistols? Was it before 1987 - and does it have anything to do with Margaret Thatcher? Like 'sick as a parrot' it's often associated with football matches.

Isn't this more likely to be homophobic in origin rather than about Maggie? Handbags at dawn is a comment on two men falling out, without settling it with fisticuffs, which clearly makes them poofs. Seems an ideal insult for the all-male environment of a football match, reinforcing the heterosexuality of the speaker despite his presence at an male bonding session whilst casting doubt on that of a pair of other men!

Thanks to Grammar Puss for the tip.

Hijab

This morning I was listening to Dr Zaki Badawi on Radio 5 Live advising Muslim women to remove their hijab if it made them feel vulnerable or exposed them to harassment. His argument was that as hijab is supposed to protect women from harassment, if it was no longer doing so, then it was better to take it off.

Now on the one hand, this seems like an eminently sensible piece of advice. And it has a PR payoff, that, at a time when Muslims are perceived as being inflexible and intolerant of difference and incapable of change, a prominent Muslim leader is able to display flexibility to a changing climate. But on the other hand, isn't it a bit rich to blame women for harassment because of their clothing decisions? We've accepted that the argument "she was wearing a short skirt, so she was asking for it" is nonsense, so why should this be any different?

Another thought, on a less serious note: one of those moments when I wish I had had a camera with me happened just recently. I was walking through Greater Leys when I saw a young girl (probably eleven or twelve) in a karate outfit and hijab. Just struck me as unlikely, is all. I mean, we're all used to London hijab - beautiful highly-fashionable young women with well-cut jeans, heels and a brightly-coloured sparkly-pinned veil - but karate hijab?! Clearly she needs to pay a visit to the Hijab Shop's sports hijab page!

New blogs on the blogroll

I've added a bunch of new blogs to the blogroll. These are ones that I enjoy reading when the bloglines notifier goes.

Some feminist blogs - Echidne, Feministe and Pandagon from the US, and GenderGeek from Scotland. This post of hers about young people and abortion is particularly worth reading.

And also some politics blogs - Dirty Leftie, Drink soaked trots for war and qwghlm.

Finally, two bloggers who I know in the real world: Mike's little red page and Trees for Labour.

Is it me...

... or has a post from last night entitled "Books and Grammars" disappeared entirely?

Here it is again, in case you can't see it:

So yesterday's post has been linked pretty widely for anything I write. Rob's talking about the Labour party, socialism and why he's still new Labour, Neil's talking about PR (sigh!) and Talk Politics is talking Stephen Pollard's politics. So that's satisfying. Meanwhile, Peter Wilby has been commenting on Nick Cohen moving from left to right, apparently. I don't quite see it, although the grammar schools stuff is disappointing, and neither does Norm.

Thank you to everyone who recommended books to me. I've got a lovely pile awaiting me. Plus what is suggested below, Dan has lent me "The vote: how it was won and how it was undermined" by Paul Foot, "Bush's brain: how Karl Rove made George W. Bush presidential" by Moore and Slater, and Rebecca Solnit's "Hope in the dark: the untold history of people power", which he assures me is great, despite the front cover quote from George Monbiot. I've also been recommended "Death and the Penguin" by Andrey Kurkov via email from Jo's friend in Aberystwyth. Thanks for the dykey suggestions, Stamp - the first two I've read (my thesis back in the day was on lesbian and female same-sex sexualities in the twentieth century, and whether sexuality could be considered a constant, so you'd worry if I hadn't), but I'll definitely look up the other. Jo is beginning to create a bookshelf for us over at her place, if you're interested, though I don't share her taste for odd cod-Arthurian mysticism.

Before I go anywhere, I've been meaning to link to Mike's post on the IWCA for a while. If you don't know the Independent Working Class Association, be thankful, but have a read anyway.