Friday comes around again! Happy reading..

1) I’m pro-choice but this is barbaric. In a small village in remote Guangdong, a contact took me to her local family planning centre, and told the director that I was a state reporter from Beijing. He took me to his office and we talked for hours. Backlit by a dusty window, he leaned over his desk and showed me the record book that meticulously charted the menstrual cycles and pelvic examination results of every woman of childbearing age in the village. He said 98% of the 280 women were fitted with IUDs. Every three months, he broadcasts an announcement through the village summoning every woman for a mandatory ultrasound to check that her IUD is still in place. 2) Because being unemployed and poor isn’t bad enough. The test is structured so that you select from a list of possible answers to a series of statements, from “very like me” to “very unlike me”, with three intermediate responses as well. Not only did I find that the test gave identical results whether you answered “very unlike me” or “very like me” to all questions, but it gave almost indistinguishable results if you clicked through the test without providing any answers at all (this can no longer be done as the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has changed it ). If you selected that you’d never go out of your way to visit a museum and were never curious about anything, the top result was still: “You are curious about everything.” 3) I understand where Giles Fraser is going with this, but what if the chances are that there won’t be anyone around to do that for you? I will provide whatever (hopefully very little) care that my mum needs but when I’m old and in need of it, my nearest relatives will be Oli (who has two parents of his own!) and my brother, who will be as old as me. I’m all for living as long as I possibly can but I don’t want to be at the ‘mercy’ of a care home! I do want to be a burden on my loved ones just as I want them to be a burden on me – it’s called looking after each other. Obviously, I know people are terrified of the indignity of dying and of being ill generally. Having someone wipe our bums, clean up our mess, put up with our incoherent ramblings and mood swings is a threat to our cherished sense of personal autonomy. 4) Maureen Johnson on gendered books. So, we’re thinking about boys and girls and what they read. The assumption, as I understand it, is that females are flexible and accepting creatures who can read absolutely anything. We’re like acrobats. We can tie our legs over our heads. Bring it on. There is nothing we cannot handle. Boys, on the other hand, are much more delicately balanced. To ask them to read “girl” stories (whatever those might be) will cause the whole venture to fall apart. They are finely tuned, like Formula One cars, which require preheated fluids and warmed tires in order to operate — as opposed to girls, who are like pickup trucks or big, family-style SUVs. We can go anywhere, through anything, on any old literary fuel you put in us.

5) The gender fliped covers that happened as a result.

6) Food practices banned in the EU but not in the US

I know that there are lots of practices we should still ban over here but I’m glad we ban some.

7) Rosamundi spends some time thinking about the consequences of cheap clothes and ventures into Primark without gin!