A friend, based in Beijing, reports that not only is she currently unable to reach international news websites, as often happens, but that Youtube is knocked out and CNN, ex-pat window on the world, is blacked out (she deduces) during any coverage of the Chinese crackdown in Lhasa.
Rather than calling for a international political boycott of the Olympics, as some journalists have, why don't they organise an international journalists' boycott? We would be spared interviews with monosyllabic athletes. Equally happily, it would be a very powerful symbol of international solidarity for free speech. But will they put their own money and jobs on the line? A redundant question mark were ever one typed.
Monday, 17 March 2008
Friday, 14 March 2008
Why Labour should ban Marmite
The Conservatives have cheered me up by proposing to allow parents to decide how to divide their parental leave, something I've been banging on about for years.
Currently, a woman faces a choice between her taking leave or neither parent spending more than two weeks with their newborn.
Even in a world where men and women were equally interested in rearing children, this would create a situation where women were pressured to give up work and stay at home, dropping off the career ladder and falling behind on pay equality.
But the government, fresh from denying reports that our children are the most miserable in the world, have come up with an ingenious defence:
1) only some people will benefit;
2) no people will lose out;
therefore 3) we shouldn't do it.
BBC news: Business Secretary John Hutton said: "Whether it is the mother or the father staying at home, the majority of families still need one parent going out to work to pay the bills. The Tory big idea on the family shows how out of touch they are with hardworking people."
He said very few families would be able to take advantage of offering paternity leave to both parents at the same time, "because this implies a major drop in family income at the critical moment in a newborn baby's life."
Genius. The majority of hardworking families do not eat marmite. Why should the government allow me that choice? I'm out of touch. Ban Marmite! Ban Marmite!
Currently, a woman faces a choice between her taking leave or neither parent spending more than two weeks with their newborn.
Even in a world where men and women were equally interested in rearing children, this would create a situation where women were pressured to give up work and stay at home, dropping off the career ladder and falling behind on pay equality.
But the government, fresh from denying reports that our children are the most miserable in the world, have come up with an ingenious defence:
1) only some people will benefit;
2) no people will lose out;
therefore 3) we shouldn't do it.
BBC news: Business Secretary John Hutton said: "Whether it is the mother or the father staying at home, the majority of families still need one parent going out to work to pay the bills. The Tory big idea on the family shows how out of touch they are with hardworking people."
He said very few families would be able to take advantage of offering paternity leave to both parents at the same time, "because this implies a major drop in family income at the critical moment in a newborn baby's life."
Genius. The majority of hardworking families do not eat marmite. Why should the government allow me that choice? I'm out of touch. Ban Marmite! Ban Marmite!
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