Fawcett MK: Keeping Up

  Nourishing our minds Welcome to (L)egoland, where cruel and pompous men are strutting their stuff and playing with countries as if they were little plastic bricks. In this global playpen for billionaires, the President of the United States, having played a leisurely round of golf, feels he can in all seriousness quote Napoleon: ‘celui qui sauve sa patrie ne viole aucune loi’, (he who saves his country violates no law). So, for this president, laws don’t apply, people are fired from their jobs, lying has become the norm, women scarcely feature, and war ravaged countries are eyed up as potential holiday resorts.  Is switching off the answer? Elsewhere in the world…well….where to start? Misery, violence, racism, misogyny, poverty, abuse? Levels of awfulness so great that for some of us the only answer is to switch off completely. How many people have you heard saying ‘I can’t watch the news anymore, it’s too upsetting, I can’t face it’ .  But if we don’t face it, what then...

The Darkling Plain A new year begins Well, here we are. About a couple of weeks into 2025. As we reached the Quarter Century out came the fireworks. Hurray! Auld Lang Syne, Peace and Goodwill, ring out the bells and all that. An opportunity to listen calmly to wise words from highly regarded world leaders offering us hope and optimism for the future and reassuring us that we are safe under their watch. Oh, sorry. No chance of any of that. Whatever were you thinking? Racing to the bottom Listen instead to the grating sound of people yelling and screaming and twittering at each other. Look at the rich, entitled and powerful who are taking offence at the smallest perceived slight as they desperately seek attention. Watch as people leap onto bandwagons and make pompous and abusive statements about things that they know nothing about and care even less. And notice how addressing the suffering in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Sudan and elsewhere is now much less important than the priorities of vario...

The Seeping Stench of Violence November 25th is White Ribbon Day. Each year this date signals the start of 16 days of international activism to combat violence against women and girls. Its profile has grown during recent years and many organisations are gaining White Ribbon accreditation. Politicians are more involved; the media are reporting White Ribbon events, and and people are increasingly standing together to campaign against the insidious rise of violence. But the scale of it is almost impossible to absorb. Look at this dreadful statistic. EVERY ELEVEN MINUTES, ACROSS THE WORLD, A WOMAN OR GIRL IS KILLED IN HER OWN HOME. Unfortunately, much of this month’s blog makes grim reading. But it is so important to keep remembering that women are not safe, and that violence and domestic abuse are a terrible stain on humanity. Attention must be paid. So, before the Christmas jollifications begin, and before waves of sentimentality obscure and distort the reality, please, please, pause for...

Drama Queen, Moaning Minnie, Jailbait? What's in a label? Shockingly, but also intriguingly, a body part of the mountaineer Sandy Irvine has been found on Mount Everest. He disappeared in 1924, and the find consisted of a boot and a sock containing the remains of his foot. We only know his name because of the embroidered name label neatly sewn into his sock. Those of us of a certain age will have mixed memories of name labels. Schools frequently demanded that they be attached to all garments, including those compulsory and terrible navy-blue knickers required for girls’ PE lessons. Shoes also had to be identifiable, and regular inspections ensured compliance. Name labels were as much a part of school life as textbooks covered in wallpaper and tiny bottles of tepid milk at break time. And of course, they are still quite useful for schools and other institutions, although now they are more likely to be adhesive and come in a variety of colours with added images of footballs, unicorns...

SHUT UP! ‘But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence’ As a starting point, and for a bit of a change, let’s begin on a pious note, with a biblical quotation. The ponderous words above are allegedly those of St Paul writing to his follower Timothy, a missionary. In fact, we may actually be looking at an early example of fake news as there is some debate about the authenticity of the epistle. But hey, when did a questionable piece of information ever stop anyone for relaying it (and in this case literally) as gospel truth? Ways of silencing women have persisted since the year dot. In Women and Power  Mary Beard describes what she calls the first example in Western literature of a man telling a woman to shut up. In The Odyssey , when Penelope enters a public area of the palace to make a complaint, her son, Telemachus, tells her to be silent, return to her own rooms and do women’s work, reminding her that public life is the exclusive re...

  August Reflections The Dog Days In late July and August, Sirius (known as the Dog Star), appears to rise at the same time as the sun. In Ancient Greece and Rome, the belief was that the combined heat of the two stars led to intolerable blazing hot weather, which in turn resulted in thunderstorms, fires, drought, high fever, and madness – a period known as the dog days. Today the phrase tends to evoke the hot, lazy days of summer, and until recently this time of year has been known as the ‘silly season’, described by the Cambridge Dictionary as a time:  ‘usually in the summer, when newspapers are full of stories that are not important because there is no important, especially political, news’.  The silly season, if it ever really existed, is now in the past, and today’s news bulletins are more likely to lead to despair. Wars are raging around the world with scant hopes for peaceful resolutions. The climate emergency is terrifying. In Britain, dreadful harms have been inf...