Nic Dempsey

Happy Friday! I’m really glad to get to the end of this week because tonight I’m going to see Old Crow Medicine Show at the Roundhouse. I’m so excited I might actually burst with it…

There are quite a few links this week and lots of political stuff for you to get your teeth into. It’s pretty clear from a lot of my posts where I stand politically and if you don’t agree that’s fine, I think it’s always good to get the view from the other side (or at least know what the enemy is up to!) so I would encourage you to read them, however, if you are easily offended, please skip 1, 3, 4, 8 and 9!

One thing everyone should look at this week is the Underground signs, they are genius!

1) Abortion is good for society, don’t be afraid to say it.

2) Jay Rayner’s review of Beast, is as ever, brilliant.

3) I have a lot of time for the Children’s and Families Minister and I’m glad that he’s trying to do something different. However, I fear the bitter truth about the care system, is that to make it work, it takes lots of money and time and lots joined up thinking – housing and work and benefits and schools and health, and despite the outrage when a child is harmed or killed, no-one is truly wants to spend the money and no politician is prepared to tell the truth.

4) And this is one of the projects that’s getting funding.

5) The rise of the paupers funeral. My granddad told us there would be just enough money left to bury him and for some reason (probably his shock at how much Granddad’s funeral cost and maybe that I kept threatening him with ‘the council tip’) had funeral insurance. Ma told me on Tuesday that she had at least 30 years to save up for hers! but the cost of funerals is excessive..

6) Nothing’s wrong with Renee Zellweger, there’s something wrong with us. Ok yes, she changed how she looked, significantly but it’s her right to do so. Why would a perfectly good looking 44 year old woman in Hollywood would have surgery or treatments to look younger? It’s not a huge mystery. I expect the Daily Mail to have some sort of ridiculous and horrified article about it. However, the amount of people who claim to be feminists who feel the need to comment on it, not talking about the pressures on women to look younger and change themselves to be considered attractive but who have made comments about a missing persons enquiry for Zelleweger’s face, need to sit down and think HARD about their actions and about how we subject women in the public eye to this kind of scruntiny. From comments on Nicola Sturgeon’s haircut to how well Helen Mirren is ageing. All of these comments and judgements are part of the same continuum of judging womens worthiness by how they look, not how they do their job. Apparently, the comments about Zellweger have really pissed me off…

7) Someone has been changing the signs on the Underground. This is genuis..

8) Proper sex education works. What I’ve been saying for years!

9) Low pay is damaging the country.