Love and Marriage

As Frank Sinatra knew, they go together like a horse and carriage. He went further, putting forward the notion that you can't have one without the other.

Well, times have certainly changed since then and many people do have one without the other. Many many people love without marriage, some because they want it that way and some because due to an accident of birth coupled with some even more outdated opinions, they're not allowed to marry.
Today I completed an online survey that contributes to the (UK) Government's consultation on Gay Marriage. You can do the same from here -  http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/about-us/consultations/equal-civil-marriage/

I find the arguments against marriage for gay people bewildering. I've read the argument that marriage is something between a man and a woman to make babies, that the bible says so and that's that. Well, I've never read the bible so I can't tell you if it does but marriage existed before Christianity and if memory serves... was often as much about property rights and making the right alliances than it was about procreation. Marriage told everyone who owns what and whose side they were on and babies made certain of an heir to continue owning it and being owed allegiance. Roughly speaking anyway.

The world has moved on, now marriage is supposed to be about love. Seems to me the only people who can deny that gay people love each other as much as straight people are people who're too consumed by hate to recognise love when they see it. There is no debasement of the institution of marriage, no dumb, fickle, shallow reason for walking down the aisle a gay person can make that isn't made by straight people every damn week. It isn't better for a child to be raised by a mother and a father who're married, it's better that a child is raised by two people who love that child and are committed to putting that child before themselves for the rest of their lives.
I don't agree that the law should state no religious gay marriages can take place. I think the law shouldn't recognise the difference between any marriage that's between two human beings both over the age of consent. I'm fairly sure the wording could be found so that clerics could marry anyone they wanted to but also couldn't be compelled to marry a couple they didn't want to, be that because the couple are gay or because they were straight but have no religious leanings and just want a pretty building.

It's not up to me though, and I'm probably part of the slow deterioration of the fabric of our society that can safely be ignored. If I am though, and the fabric of society is something that wants equality only if it can make some more equal than others, then I'm all for it crumbling down around my ears.

I shout at the TV.

I do. I know, I know, it's futile and silly and it doesn't make a damn bit of difference and I probably should get some perspective but I do. Big is quite accustomed to me going from barely paying attention to the actual programme we're watching to suddenly launching verbal attack of some proportions during an ad break.

I mostly shout at adverts, although the news (mainly when Tory politicians are talking) and shows like The Big Questions are known to get good rise out of me too. Actually, I don't watch Big Questions much any more. Partly because it's awful and repetitive and just an hour of various people always including Nicky Campbell desperately begging to be punched in the face but mostly because Small prefers Cbeebies.

Just tonight I was getting well cross at the new BT ads. I'm not sure why Kris Marshall got dumped, perhaps he was tired of doing it, perhaps not enough people gave enough of a damn about the wedding/baby but whatever it was, now we've just got Adam's stepson and his two University flatmates. The stepson, I forget his name (I'm not that invested, sheesh) is hardly in them anyway, so far they revolve around the horrible bloke trying to gain the upper hand in a contest for the female flatmate's affections that may be entirely in his head. They only last 20-30 seconds but it's enough. Why is this girl's sole function to be the object of clumsy, unsolicited advances and to be clueless about technology? Seriously, she has no other purpose and it's infuriating.
For balance, a source of ad break blood pressure ascent for many years was a recurring Co-Op ad where a smug middle aged woman sends her middle aged husband off to fetch something then scolds him for what he's brought, condescendingly turning to the cashier to roll her eyes and enquire 'what're they like?' You know what love, go get it yourself!
There are many ads I like, Compare the Meerkat for one. But there seems to be a default setting in advertising these days that you must include the viewer in a superior social group and then invite them to look down on another group. No, not seems, there is. There always has been, that's how advertising works of course. It just depresses me. It makes misogyny and discrimination acceptable by drip feeding it into homes in a playful little ways, after all it's only an advert. You sometimes hear of someone complaining against the huge raft of 'Men are useless aren't they girls' nod and a wink adverts and they'll say that you wouldn't get away with that if the gender roles were reversed. Five minutes research will show that the gender roles only just quite recently switched to where they are now but at the same time, ads like the BT one would suggest that while you can't advertise a product by showing a male actor patronising a female actor you absolutely can achieve much the same effect by more subtle means.
I used to complete the odd marketing survey and one time it was testing a new ad campaign for men's toiletries where they had research to show that most men's toiletries were bought for them by women so they were going to target the ads to women.
They covered the ads in pictures of shoes.
I was not complimentary.

Oh but it's not that sort of ad that gets to me. How I howled fury at the stupid Dettol handwash ad for the automatic dispenser! "You'll never touch a germy handwash pump again"
WHY THE HELL SHOULD I CARE HOW "GERMY" IT IS, I'M ABOUT TO WASH MY FRICKIN HANDS!
Ahem.


But there is hope. This year saw the wonderful advert for The Guardian, a full two minute short film really. It brilliantly conveyed the modern media age by presenting the nursery tale of The Little Pigs as it would be covered today. Look it up.

Fail.

Just been reading this on the BBC website - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18032390

It's about this photo -

Not the article it accompanies, just the photo. The Time article is about attachment parenting but I don't subscribe to Time so can't read it to see if it's positive, negative or ambivalent but the photo, in my opinion at least, is negative.

I am not an attachment parent per se. Small was prem and spent his first 3 months in hospital, at first on a respirator. What with one thing and an other, he never got the hang of breastfeeding and although I expressed for him at first, by four months I couldn't keep up my supply and switched him to formula. Co-sleeping, no by the time he came home he was used to sleeping alone in his own space so slept in a moses basket by my bedside until he was 9m and grown into his cot. Once he was off oxygen we did do a bit of babywearing and it was wonderful, much better than pushchairs and we continued that way until he was too big for me to carry comfortably in a mei tai. I don't agree with everything AT parenting suggests but I do like the central idea of allowing your child to set his own agenda. It just so happens that the things that Small likes are more... conventional.
Anyway.
Despite my own experiences, and I could write at some length about my experiences, I do completely support breastfeeding. I'm not sure any child really needs to keep doing it once they're a year old and eating all their meals and snacks in solid form but I don't think it's wrong to keep going either. Why I wish the above photo was different is that it's provocative. It seems to set out to get a negative reaction from people. Not only does the child look a good bit older than his 3 years and his mother look like a hired model but there is nothing maternal about the pose. Neither person is paying the other much attention, there is nothing to demonstrate a bond, it's so cold the two could almost have been photoshopped together and never met. Anyone viewing that as their first exposure to extended breastfeeding is not going to see much good about it.   It makes extended breastfeeding a freak show and therefore puts more pressure on breastfeeding mothers. Now they not only have to deal with the difficulty of the first weeks, the mix of attitudes, the whole issue of public feeding but now you have to start thinking about when you're going to stop in case people start equating you with those 'weird, nutjob extended breastfeeders'. For crying out loud, just let parents make the decisions that suit their own, individual child without any more meddling from the media.

So it doesn't matter actually what the Time article says, what slant it takes. Far more people are going to see this photo than read the article anyway. And people being people, they'll draw their own conclusions from that photo too.
Great job Time.

Idealism

I keep up with the Leveson Inquiry. I watched Rebekah Brooks's evidence today and it's set me off.

In my world, journalists should report the news. They shouldn't make it. They shouldn't try to direct the actions of politicians or the public mood. Gods know there isn't a shortage of news out there, perhaps if papers reported more about the lives of people living on 50p a day in Indonesia rather than footballers who barely get out of bed (or someone else's bed) for the millions they earn then the world would be a different place. Oh but no one would buy the papers then would they? It's down to the money, not the job well done.

But then I also think politicians should be more concerned with doing the right thing than the thing that will bring them power, money and/or career prospects. I think there's a point in the salary scale where you're earning more than you could ever need so at that point you absolutely should pay your taxes the way lower paid people do, without the aid of accountants and tax avoidance schemes. I think that at that level of salary, your primary focus should be doing your job well rather than keeping an eye on what your peers are earning and high tailing it off to another company if they promise to give you even more money than you could possibly need.

I think that brown field sites should be developed completely before another field is built on. By the same token, I think we should accept that the resources we have are all we're going to have and stop spending billions on space exploration which, whatever the good intentions of physicists, is only going to be used to harvest more resources from other planets.

I also think I should have a really large win on the lottery, but only so that I be largely altruistic and set a good example ;)

From here you can smell summer

It was a very seasonal day today, it rained a little early on but by late morning it was sunny, warm and with a warm breeze. The last day I remember being this warm was back in the freakishly warm days we had at the end of March. It's been a long wait through some trying times.
This week in particular has been no fun at all what with my insolent ribs (seriously, you don't realise how much you move your ribs until they start telling you loudly if you so much as disturb them by breathing) and Small has been getting bothered by his molars so it's a pantomime at bedtime then wakefulness every hour through the night when he decides he wants a cuddle culminating in him joining us in bed at 5am and proceeding to alternately snuggle for 5 minutes then start yelling and complaining and trying to kick us in the head. Or in my case, because he's EVIL, kick me in the ribs. And then I had to go to work. Bleah.

But today... it was warm, D slept with only two wakings and didn't get us up til after 6am. I felt good enough to try leaving off the codeine and after Big was done with his Thing this morning a little of his personal black cloud lifted a bit too. Back in the days when we had no child and a smaller mortgage, Big and I got our weekly food from a lovely farm shop over Wakey way. In the intervening years they've developed the site a bit and now sport a restaurant too so we went over for lunch. They have a great children's menu too so Small got a picnic platter of crudite, thick cut ham, chargrilled chicken, cheese and bread while me and Big had a burger. Small charmed the surrounding diners and waitresses, ate (fairly) nicely and we went down to the shop to pick up a few snacky bits to have for tea tonight. Also got some stuff for a friend who lives nearby and has had an even worse week than us and dropped them off.

The threatened showers never happened so we went on to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park which is a wonderful place on a nice day. Rolling fields filled with grazing sheep, the odd migrating flock of canada geese, rabbits and  Henry Moore sculpture. Not just Henry Moore, but those are the stand out pieces. Small was in his tiny blonde element, exercising his 2 year old's right to say hello to everyone he met, from humans to ladybirds and including every single sheep. The only slight issue with this is that he expects a reply and prepared to wait for it.

Wonderful day, just wonderful. Small even went to bed without a fuss for the first time in about a week. I'm not one to moan about rain. I'm from Aberdeen, if I was raised to moan about bad weather when it happened I'd never be doing anything else ever. I do like the warm though and I like the serendipity of everything coming together when the warm sun comes out. Perhaps it's just my perspective that changes but while I have no problem with the rain, things just roll better when you're not shivering.

It's Panda Wednesday!

Every Wednesday, because it's a work day and I'm generally too tired to think, we shall celebrate the awesomeness of the panda. A more general cute/funny animal pic will feature on my other workday.

So without further ado -

His name is Tunnock, apparently.