On Ruth Padel’s attempted academic nobbling of Derek Wolcott as potential Professor of Poetry:
it’s like dynasty with cardigans!
Women
No Use Crying For Mother
Usually the big reveal’s at the end of the post, not at the start. Here it is. I admit it, I’ll be 50 later this year.
Such is my ingrained cultural conditioning that this is the first time I’ve had the courage to publicly admit to no longer being a perennial 42 (I had my children young so I could get away with it for quite a long time). When age discrimination against women starts at around 30, why would I? Having a much younger partner than you makes the pressure even more intense.
But dammit, I don’t want to be 42 any more: trying to keep up a front that insists on sagging and being its age despite your best, most time-consuming and expensive efforts is just too much damn work, and life’s too bloody short as it is. Who am I competing with anyway? Under-fifties? Teenagers? What for, exactly?
I’ve come to the conclusion that I just don’t care any more, even though admitting to being 50 and someone’s mother, for a woman, is tantamount to declaring that you’re just another perimenopausal, invisible has-been. But I’m 50 – well, not quite, I’ll be 49 for a while yet – and to hell with it.
That said you’d think that this frivolous filler piece lauding the overfifties female from G2 would have struck a chord with me:
They blazed in like a hockey team: gung-ho, no-nonsense, determined to win. First came Joanna Lumley (63), campaigning for the Gurkhas; hot on her heels was Gloria Hunniford (69), lobbying for grandparents’ rights to see their grandchildren. And then came Esther Rantzen (68), speaking out about dry rot and corruption, and contemplating the idea of standing for parliament. Behind her stood Helen Alexander (52), the first female chair of the CBI.
Clearly, the opinions of women who have strayed over the age of 50 have been overlooked for too long. At a time when our TV shows are presented by silver foxes and buxom young blondes, when we’ve no Moira Stuart, no Anna Ford, when we don’t hear enough from Joan Bakewell or Kate Adie, there is something glorious about the arrival on the political scene of these women. They have caught the national mood, underlining the feeling that we have had quite enough of all those silly little boys running the show, ballsing up the banks and pratting about in politics. “Right!” they seem to say, rolling up their sleeves, getting out some elbow grease (and perhaps a bottle of gin). “Let’s do this properly, shall we?”
But no chord struck. For a start, Lumley, Hunniford and Rantzen, haven’t just strayed over fifty – they’re all well into their sixties. That’s not just straying, that’s invading and taking possession. I get the impression the author was in a hurry, Alexander’s name happened to be on the news and it fit. She’s just over 50, true, but she’s only the chair of the CBI, not the chief executive, and she’s female, which are distinctions much more likely to affect her potential power than her age might.
But that’s just sloppiness; more to the point, what utter crap. Or to put it more politely, I disagree with the author’s entire premise. You only have to look at prominent women who are actually over fifty to immediately refute the idea that women over fifty innately have more sense. Take politicians – Condoleeza Rice is 55; Hazel Blears, 53. They’re wise? Or political pundits – Maureen Dowd is 58 or thereabouts, Melanie Phillips is 59. We should listen to them more, just because they’re over 50? I don’t think so. Just because you’ve done a lot or seen a lot or have a platform to spout from doesn’t mean you learned anything at all from anything.
So many journalists recently seem to be unconsciously or even consciously wisting for 1940, when the Women’s Institute was the last redoubt against fascism and capable, strongarmed women in floury pinnies kept the nation going while simultaneously riveting, breastfeeding baby, stirring the porridge and aiming the antiaircraft batteries.
Maybe it’s just another facet of the general nostalgia for the war, this desire for someone capable to to take stern measures and lay down some rules and some discipline. The Americans call for the Cavalry, we want to give the reins of power to the Women’s Institute and have Ann Widdecombe for Speaker. Ooh, strict Nanny…
But even if they were willing, the women who survived the War are mostly now in their eighties and nineties and increasingly fewer in number, and they’d probably deny they were special anyway. The women named in the article grew up in the sixties; the mothers of this current generation of journalists will have been brought up the seventies. The mythical women they’re yearning for don’t exist any more, if they ever did. Sorry, guys – she’s not coming to make it all all right and kiss the nasty booboo better so it’s no use crying for Mummy. There are no eggy soldiers for tea.
We can argue all day about responsibility for the current political chaos and as conscience-relieving and satisfying as it might be for women to put the blame entirely on men, we all of us messed up, if only from inaction. Equally everyone, of whatever gender, whether under fifty or well over, must have input into the shape of any new economic and political realities that result.
Easy to say, but much harder to do. For the time being we women will have to muddle through, frowning at our wrinkles, being capable, making the best of things and finding what little scraps of peace and contentment wherever and however we can. None of us is getting any younger, after all.
Is Smith Doing A Tessa Jowell?
Comment of The Day, on New Labour’s champion snout-trougher, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith:
nothappy
31 Mar 09, 12:22am (about 8 hours ago)
There is a theory that this is Jaqui’s exit strategy. And a sly one it is.
Possibly and most likely, if there is any justice or common sense left in the UK, the inquiries into her ‘second home’ scam aren’t going too well for her and the lawyers have informed her that she may well be open to criminal fraud charges being brought against her at the end of them…
. Either
So Labour wonks have cooked up this ’embarrassment’ (not her fault, you understand — her husband’s) so she does the decent thing and resigns asap… £116,000 + salary, perks and pension better off, with her reputation as the poor little wronged woman a la Tessa Jowell more or less intact. Far better for all concerned than the first criminal trial of a Home Secretary for the misuse of public funds scenario.
Either way, it’s not going to die down or go away, so get it over with and go, girlfriend.
It’s an ingenious theory, it fits the facts, and it’s certainly neatly Mandelsonian, but if so I don’t think he’s reckoned with Smith’s sense of entitlement to office.
On previous form Our Lady of The Embonpoint is beyond embarassment; she seems convinced that, having reached her level of incompetence, her mere holding of the office somehow then dignifies all she does, no matter how sleazy or dishonest. According to Polly Toynbee she’s even a victim of a new wave of puritanism. Oh, please.
No, I really doubt that the Home Secretary’d go even if her kids were to be dragged in – not that they’re not already. Imagine the crap those poor kids’re taking at school; everyone knows their Dad’s a wanker, even though most Dads are, if truth be told. But most Dads’ little pecadilloes aren’t front-page fodder.
Most parents, however hatefully self-righteous and grasping, would naturally want such an ordeal over as soon as possible – or at least you’d think so; yet Smith still refuses to resign, although it would seem the quickest way out of what must be excruciating for her children.
How is it humanly possible for a woman to be so placidly, stupidly bovine and yet so selfishly hard-faced and brazen at the same time?
I doubt she’d go even if it were to turn out it was one or both of the Smith-Timney offspring who actually watched the movies, and that Timney Sr.’d been taking the rap for one or both; something that might even seem a little noble, until you remember he’s her admin assistant and paid 40,000 pounds a year out of the public purse, in addition to her own annual 300,000 in salary and allowances – and he was responsible for processing the expenses claim. Duh.
What would be mildly amusing is if the diary evidence that Smith’s reportedly convinced will clear her of dishonestly fiddling the second home allowance to pay off her sister’s mortgage were to show she was actually at at home, for certain values of ‘home’, at the time the pron was rented, or even if the avowed antiporn campaigner turns out to have watched it herself.
But no, even then, even if the tabloids were to go totally paparazzi on the past sexual behaviour (there’s a lot happens at party conferences) of a woman who wants to police everyone else’s, and that of her family too, I still doubt she’d go.
She has no shame. If this is Mandelson’s exit strategy I think he’s got it wrong.
Comment of the Day: Moose edition
From news in the NY Post that Bristol Palin and erstwhile fiance Levi Johnson, the father of her illegitimate son Tripp, have split (because she described his criminally-accused family as ‘white trash’) comes this comment epitomising the female wingnut’s gymnastic ability to backflip midthought and blame their own gobsmacking hypocrisy on liberals:
LimoBarbie Mar 12, 2009 8:10:18 AM fault
I wouldn’t let my baby go to the house of a drug dealer either–I don’t blame Bristol a bit for that. White trash is a compliment compared to “accused felon drug dealer” and I’m surprised they didn’t split up when she was originally arrested–which probably was the case. The governor of Alaska cannot associate with drug dealers–she’s a Republican. Only the Obamasiah can get away with associating with known felons like Ayres and Rezko–the communist biased media would crucify a Republican for the behavior they ignore in the Obamasiah.
Ooh, a Tsukahara with a twist! 0 for style, but full marks for execution.
If anyone I almost feel sorry for Johnson. He never hid who he is, apart from his missing qualifications for the apprenticeship he was given so that Sarah Palin wouldn’t be shamed by having a high school dropout son-in-law; and he did describe himself as a redneck, after all.
But I don’t feel sorry a bit. Condoms are cheap.
Untitled
[Image via Beau Bo D’Or]
When unswerving loyalty to the Labour party line, blank-faced botoxed arrogance and breathtaking cynicism is desperately required, who can an embattled PM call? Hazel Blears, obviously:
We need people standing for office, not carping on the sidelines
These playground taunts and placard-waving add to the cynicism surrounding politics, says Hazel Blears
Perhaps public opinion is finally getting through to No 10 and the penny is beginning to drop that people aren’t exactly what you’d call happy.
There’s no more loyal attack dog than fanatical ginger terrier Blears, who’s been set on eco-campaigner George Monbiot in today’s Guardian, accusing him and other bloggers of political cynicism:
“…he turns his fire on consultations (which he claims are rigged) and citizens’ juries (which he says “are used to lend a sheen of retrospective legitimacy to decisions already taken”). Rigged consultations and faked citizens’ juries? Surely this would be the stuff of front-page exclusives, if only there was any evidence to back it up. But in the absence of evidence, we must assume this is simply prejudice dressed up as assertion. Imagine if cabinet ministers voiced their opinions without any evidence base.”
Oh my. “Imagine if cabinet ministers voiced their opinions without any evidence base.” Where to start with that one? Iraq? The dodgy dossier? ID cards?
I’ve always felt a certain sick fascination for the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, and it’s not just our physical resemblance; those who know me will also know that I could so easily have become her, which is a horrible thing to have to face about oneself.
There’re some women I’ve met in life that I automatically felt like taking a running punch at; usually they’ve been minor civil servants -‘computer says no’ – or bossy jobsworth admin droids; not that I’ve ever actually punched anyone, but the urge is there, as it is every time I see or hear Blears.
(Turns out Blears was yet another a local authority solicitor before being in government. There’s a surprise.)
Blears is robotically loyal, rigidly self-righteous, endlessly on message, teeth-clenchingly perky and, most of all, smug; an overpromoted local functionary, but with posher handbags, a damned sight more power and even more self regard than your usual local authority Queen Bee. But a democrat she is not, for all her carefully demotic YouTube videos and vlogs.
‘Labour is about winning elections’ says Blears. Here she is grinning away at the Fabian Society while laying out her plan for achieving New Labour’s thousand year reich, which is to throw money at southern marginal seats like South Thanet and Hove and allow a few thousand voters in unrepresentative areas decide who runs the government, entirely in order that she and her party stay in power, as she says in the video, ‘for years to come’:
Sounds pretty damned cynical to me, not to mention profoundly undemocratic .
First seeing that video and then reading Blears’ article again the depth of denial and mendacity and the sheer political corruption expressed by Blears in her attack on Monbiot leaves me almost speechless.
The paper’s commenters are well up to the task of responding though so I’ll let one do it for me:
chekhov
simonw
06 Feb 09, 1:12am (about 9 hours ago)
The reality is that people don’t get elected unless they sell their soul to a political party. Toadying to the loathsome and swallowing your principles only comes easily to the chosen few. For every Morris or Short or Cook, there’s a Mandelson, and we all now know which ones survive. Guts are not principles.
True, the ends may justify the means, but look what ends they are. The Iraq War, the 10p tax band, the routine fingerprinting of children, RIPA, collusion with torturers, the BAe scandal, ‘loans’ for peerages, the greedy, irresponsible madness of PFI (viz. Metronet), the Civil Contingencies Act, and the Met’s shoot-to-kill policy. And they’re just the highlights. Twelve years in power and just a few more foxes to show for it.
I can, oddly enough, imagine what happens if cabinet ministers voiced their opinions without any evidence base. I was in Hyde Park to demonstrate against the consequences of the dodgy dossier, along with a million or so others. We peacefully reminded you that war was wrong. You ignored us. And responded with the smokescreen of collective cabinet responsibility and the tenuous approval of your legal advisers. All very convenient. Monbiot, on the other hand, has no such smokescreen, and still people seem to want to read what he writes.
You want practical ideas? How about a reformed House of Lords? How about funding for after-school activities? How about 3 million new houses? How about progressive taxation (and, while we’re at it, not advising town halls to rack up council tax by three times the rate of inflation while pensioners’ incomes are falling)? How about a strategic transport plan that doesn’t change when an airline chief sneezes? How about an ethical foreign policy that doesn’t involve selling weapons to bad people? How about an education system that doesn’t force children to choose their careers when they’re 12? How about a joined-up government that doesn’t both open pubs all day and try to abolish happy hour? How about running the country instead of outsourcing it to tax-haven multinationals?
I may be sceptical, but I’m not a cynic. Or not enough of a cynic to suggest the even more practical idea of buying a sack of cement and making yourself an overcoat. I’m no trade unionist, either. I don’t rely for power on a political party that relies on me for money. But I vote, I engage and I’m angry. Like millions of other voters. Who are continually told they are wrong and irrelevant and cynical.
Shame on you, Blears.!
Quite, and let’s not forget the complicity in and the condoning of torture while we’re at it.
I shudder even to consider I might’ve become like that odious woman had I stayed in the law and in the Labour party.