Happy Friday!

I got up at ridiculous o’clock this morning to catch a train to Paris, which as a reason for getting up early is a pretty good one. I love that on a train I can read and chill. Here are this week’s links

A teacher on the education dept

Mayor conditionally backs the Garden Bridge. Well that’s disappointing. Also we don’t have money for housing or the NHS but the Treasury for £30m for the bridge. All in it together indeed!

Pope Francis is a master at playing to the crowd but there won’t be female deacons. Which was pretty much my reaction to hearing about this. Francis doesn’t think that refusing to ordain women is an injustice, so there will be no change…

Francis is the master of being all things to all people, using “off the cuff” remarks to sound progressive but changing nothing when it comes to actual church rules.

Remember Francis’ comment in 2013 about homosexual people: “who am I to judge?” Francis’ teaching on the family released last month did not remove the church’s judgement that homosexual people are disordered.

Poor people spend more time with family, rich people spend more time with friends. Interesting.

The case of the $629 plaster. This is what privatised health care looks like. I think it’s nuts that the leader of the free world doesn’t have an NHS but this is where the UK is going people!

Middle class accents. Sometimes I can’t read a Lynsey Hanley article without rolling my eyes. Because, I like my parents, have a nice middle class accent. My parents grew up on council estates, my dad was a plumber, neither of my parents have A levels or degrees. I’ve always sounded like this, my brother who grew up in the same house with the same family sounds more ‘London working class’. I was once punched in the face at school for talking ‘posh’, I was teased a lot about it. I understand the importance of sounding like you fit in because I didn’t when I was a child and I do now. There are some horrible sounding accents, Birmingham and Liverpool, I’m looking right at you but my issue is often not with accent but with pronunciation as my mother used to say ‘there are two t’s in butter’ and if I hear you on the radio and you drop letters then I will judge you!

If you are a woman, you must vote. Although I agree, universal suffrage in the UK is less than 100 years old (1929) basically younger than my grandparents! But I don’t think that this just applies to women. It’s an argument that has been raging more or less since the Civil War and yes people died so women could vote, but people also died so Catholics and working class men could vote in this country. Everyone must vote because democracy doesn’t work unless we do.

The BBC is axing recipes from its websites as part of the changes in the govt white paper. Who benefits?

On having too many condiments. Mmm in my fridge right now, orange marmalade, pink grapefruit marmalade, djion mustard, wholegrain mustard, tomato ketchup, mayonnaise, barbecue sauce. I need all of them!

We should be setting bedtimes for adults. I love to sleep but I am cursed with bad sleep. My fitbit records an average of 4 to 5 hours a night. I would love that to be more, I go to bed at 10pm and get up about 6am and 4 to 5 hours a night. The thing is that everybody says that being underslept is bad for you and I know that but I can’t change it.

Money can buy you happiness. Well it can buy you things that make you happy and prevent you having to do things that make you unhappy for money..

Tampons that tell you when they need to be changed. Call me a luddite if you want but no, no and hell no are my reactions to this!