In Celebration of the News

Some time ago, a friend of mine went on her travels and asked me if I could keep an eye over the newspapers whilst she was away. In actual fact, what I thought would be a bit of a chore turned into an exceptionally interesting journey through the newspaper and became a self-inflicted discipline for myself to ensure that I regularly scoured and commented on the news that I thought she (and I) would find interesting.
Sadly, life has since taken over and I have not been as disciplined in my ritual reading or indeed buying of the paper. I regularly visit the website but it doesn’t have the sensual pleasure of actually holding, felling and even smelling the scent of ink on paper that buying the paper does.

As with all starts of years or completion of previous ones, I tend to be full of hopelessly optimistic intentions. One of these is to see if I can keep abreast of local, national and international news more frequently. I would hope that I could keep this up and am now endeavouring to buy the newspaper as frequently as possible.
Being on holiday is a good starting point but sadly, I am already behind with my commentaries. Also, it is now nearly midday on Sunday and I haven’t even been to the shops to buy my Observer.

Still, there was plenty in the newspaper on Friday that warrants a comment so here I go.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/22/london-bus-female-ordination-pope

2005 was the year that the Pope was elected. I remember it well as my Dad and I got up each morning during the Easter break and asked one another if Karol had died yet. I went off to my next holiday destination in Dorset before the “Polish Previous” finally lost his battle for life and slowly slipped away.
Joseph Ratzinger was always going to be a controversial choice, mainly because many thought that the crown should pass back to an Italian after being usurped by the Pole in recent years.
And this was even before they got to the issue of his slightly dubious Nazi past.

So for some reason, despite his distinct lack of apology for the appalling behaviour of paedophilic priests and his own disgraceful annulment of responsibility, our glorious nation has decided to invite Ratzo to our shores as we have not been visited by a Pope since Karol Wojtyla in 1982.
That in itself, I would have thought, would be enough to protest about. Quite frankly, that would seem to be the most important issue to raise with the Pope.
Catholics would say that he has been appointed by God and therefore cannot be sacked from the job. I say, firstly, that it is actually people who make the appointment. Whether they choose to consider their decision as being influenced by a higher order is up to them. I say, secondly, that there is a first time for everything. Look at what happened to the Speaker of the House of Commons last year.

But as is peculiar to Britain, we apparently cannot be as forthright as we would like. We seem incapable of actually showing our feelings in a demonstrable yet calm manner. It is beyond our comprehension to actually say what we feel. As a nation, as individuals we skirt around issues hoping that the subject of concern will arise by default.
It won’t.
So instead of having a go at Ratzinger about the Paedophile issue, we are going to take umbrage at the lack of enlightenment regarding women’s ordination.
The two issues though, according to the Catholic Church, are not unrelated. They have, in fact, joined them together in new statements.
A new document, providing stricter and swifter action on paedophile priests, also mentioned that the attempted ordination of women to the priesthood was one of the most serious crimes in church law.
Can you imagine how a person who has endured perpetual abuse from one of these so-called men of the cloth would feel on reading such a thing? It goes beyond despicable.

As for me, this whole non-event will pass me by. I am relatively indifferent to the ordination of women. There is nothing theologically problematic for me. Jesus had twelve male disciples because of the time that he lived in. I’m sure that had he been around today he might have popped at least one Mary into his troop of happy followers.

Talking of women, and equality and all such things, there was an article stating the bleeding obvious yesterday about the disparity between teenage conception rates.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jul/22/teenage-pregnancy-government-study

There are numerous statistics in the article but some tend to stick out more than most. 83% of 18 year old girls say that they were having sex. Of those 18% had been pregnant at least once. This figure ran higher in, guess what, deprived communities where parents did not have A-levels or employment or decent housing etc. Amongst the girls who got pregnant, 21% of them did so more than once. Now this little figure in itself tells you more than people are prepared to see.
If 21% of them got pregnant again, then clearly it is not because they do not know how they got pregnant.
There is this absurd naivety in some parts that these girls only get pregnant because they don’t know how they actually get pregnant. The answer, according to these naive people, is to give them factual information about penetrative sex.

Let me tell the world a little secret. Girls know how babies are made. They’ve usually known it for a long time before they have the chance to find out. What they are not doing is linking that knowledge with behavioural change. They are not taught in schools about the wonderment of sex. They are not taught about the emotional brilliance of sex. They are not taught about the alternatives to penetrative sex.
Things need to change.

These young women need some support and some people cannot see the irony of the statements linking inequality to conception rates as though there it is a shock.
It is no shock.
Working on young women’s aspiration, keeping them physically and emotionally fit would be a start.

And at the end of the article there is a statement from the Department of Education stating that there is an “encouraging decline” in the figures (no mention of a feasible increase in the 14-16 year old conception rates then?) but that there was “clearly still much more to be done to encourage young people to make safe and healthy choices”. This from a government department who wants to banish all personal, social and health education away from the very children and young people who need it.

Still talking about women, I am forever humbled by the incredible work done by so many women in countries and times where the female opinion is seen as second class or irrelevant.

There was a full page spread on the three princesses of Burma, that is the three daughters of former prime ministers., who are doggedly determined to get democracy into the country whilst recognising that this is going to take some time.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/22/burma-three-princesses-electoral-fight

Along with Aung San Suu Kyi, these really are remarkable women.
We do tend to take our own flawed democracy for granted. Even to be able to write as I am about to regarding the impending referendum on electoral reform is unimaginable in some quarters. Doing it as a woman is even more so.
Perhaps it is worth hanging onto such thoughts when we feel our democracy is slipping by whilst simultaneously vehemently protecting what should be rightfully ours, i.e. the right to speak and demonstrate an opinion that may well be different from those in power.

Another remarkable woman is Edna Healey, wife of the Labour politician Denis. She died this week, aged 92 which isn’t a bad innings. She started her working life as a teacher and also worked for the English Speaking Union (see previous blog to see the difference between remarkable women and one Ms. Palin). She didn’t have her first book published until she was into her 60s so there is hope for us forty, fifty and sixty something’s yet.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/22/edna-healey-obituary

Totally unrelated, I caught an article that mentioned the demise of the great hotel in Venice where Thomas Mann’s tragic tale of unrequited love and destructive deaths was set.
Oh how I howled at that film!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jul/22/venice-italy-hotel-des-bains
The Hotel des Bains is finally closing its doors for the last time, only to be reopened as what I can only assume to be highly expensive apartments.
This is the way of the world nowadays, even in small towns in Wales, where the large and successful hotels of the 70s and 80s even, are making way for apartments that only the very wealthy can afford.
That is not good for the local economy. It means that more properties will remain dormant in the winter months without the need to employ local residents to “serve”. It is such a tragedy when people cannot look at things holistically and see the knock – on effect of actions taken.
In my previous blog, I mentioned Barry Island. Everyone knew, despite their protestations to the contrary, that communities would be smashed apart by the demise of the collieries but nobody thought about the effects on once thriving businesses such as Barry Island. Whilst it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, one can see how it appealed to many who just needed a short release from the mundane.

On the next page there was a picture of loveliness with a display of lavender in a field, not in my beloved France, but in the western parts of this very country. When I am down in Somerset in the up and coming weeks I will venture out to see if I can find this field of purple.

So I move rather unflowingly into the article about the wording of the referendum question. The wording that is being suggested right now is “ Do you want the United Kingdom to adopt the ‘alternative vote’ system instead of the current ‘first past the post’ system for electing members of parliament to the House of Commons?”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/22/voting-reform-coalition

In my ever optimistic hope for the new government, I was hoping that some party political bollocks was going to be put aside and the parties could all work together, debating well and deciding for the good of the nation rather than their own political interests. I fear that this issue will see all parties voting with political tact rather than a genuinely effective and helpful move forward. Of course, the real choice is not there in the question but it appears that Labour may not support the Liberal Democrats, possibly out of petty stroppiness that they wouldn’t play their ball game in the early days of May this year.

It is going to be an interesting time. Will the left of the Liberal Democrats be vociferous in their reluctance to play ball because this bill does not contain the very thing that they wanted, i.e. proportional representation? Will the Tories not vote for the Bill despite the fact that they have boundary changes included in it that will effectively give their lot the advantage in subsequent elections? Will Labour swallow their swollen pride and back the party that hints at a left of centre stance?

We shall see.

My final comment is short. There is little to say other than applaud an interesting piece of writing from Simon Jenkins.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/22/clegg-truth-iraq
In this article, he explains some of the phoniness of governance. He explains how there is so much pretence and affectation in foreign policy, that Clegg spoke the truth about the ridiculous nature of war and the fact that the one with Iraq was illegal and that it is about time that Cameron backs his deputy up with some genuine and thoughtful dialogue with leaders of the Muslim world.
His summary is succinct.

“The prize for these two leaders (Obama and Cameron) is now great, of bringing the mendacious bravado of the past decade into line with the reality on the ground. It is to end two unnecessary wars and rebuild trust with a Muslim world that has no more interest in the pestilence of terror than does the west. It is to accept that the world is not a place of blocs but of individual states, each with divergent interests and fears. It is to realise colossal savings in defence spending and to shift the emphasis of foreign policy from state-sponsored paranoia to global trade and prosperity.”

It is comments such as these that prevent an idealistic visionary with a sense of hope from going completely insane. There is a possibility of world peace and harmony between people if only someone would stop playing silly buggers and listen as well as talk.
This world is not just about the self. That is merely one element.
Considering the needs of others even if there is little that can be personally done about it, has to be one of the things that differentiates humans from other species. We have a mind. We have a soul. We have a functional and thoughtful brain if we choose to use it in such a manner.
Honesty and integrity is what we should do on an individual and collective level. If we are fed up with our friends, then we can say so politely and carefully. If we cannot see the commonalities with our so-called enemies then we should open up some means of communication to discover whether there is an essence of affinity somewhere.

Pretence is a nasty, insipid disease that has been carefully imbedded into our international political thinking. Blair lied. Bush didn’t even care if he was lying or not. Countries inflate their importance. People don’t tell the truth.
Jenkins is telling the two leaders here to do something; to think, to listen, to bury the hatchet, to make a choice that may have to include a back-track.

That is one thing that I also love about politics. It is ultimately about relationships and management of people. The world is far more connected and straight forward than some of us would like to think.
As Jenkins states with reference to Greek mythology, poor leaders are “always stirring up some war or other in order that the people may require a leader”.
Poor unenlightened people with no control over their emotions do the same.

It’s time to stop now but I do hope that over the next couple of weeks I will keep some sort of comment via this blog.
The intention is real even if the actual may be different.
Sounds like a politician’s mantra.