The Breakfast Club

[LilyLangtrey]

Good afternoon, Clunkers!

Welcome to the Breakfast Club where the kettle is permanently on, the drinks flow and the snacks are both self-replenishing and calorie-free.

We start each day with a look at history and a tribute to a brave or inspiring woman. Mostly though, we just chat randomly about current affairs, recipes, life in lockdown, literature, music and anything else that comes into our heads.

Veteran Clunkers welcome. Anyone else who wants to join in the chat - sense of humour essential! - welcome.

Kettle's on

😁😁 at my mum. ❤️

The world is so different now, young girls have so much more opportunities than we ever did, there is a big wide world out there for them to explore, well not now as such because of COVID-19 but you get what I mean.

I look back now and do think my mum was ahead of her time and my dad also, who encouraged her to aim for what she wanted.

She also taught me the ins and out of a woman’s body much to the embarrassment of an 11 year old Nelly. 😁

John Redwood's Diary

How the EU sought to make us dependent

Posted: 16 Oct 2020 10:07 PM PDT

As we exit the EU fully we need to be aware of just how far the EU had got in seeking our integration and submission to their system. They were always bitterly disappointed that the UK avoided joining the Euro, the main mechanism by which a fully integrated EU economy is being created. Greece and Italy have discovered the hard way that there are many policy choices they can no longer make as they are committed to the disciplines of the Euro.

Despite this they sought to ensnare us with various common policies. The Common Fishing policy took more and more of our fish to foreign ports, leaving us with one of the richest seas in the world to become net importers. The common energy policy got us to depend more on imports through interconnectors, making a country with plenty of its own energy partly dependent on a continental EU short of energy and committed to Russian gas. The common state procurement policy meant we bought more and more goods that the UK is quite capable of making from EU suppliers with continental factories. The Common Agricultural Policy led to a sharp decline in the proportion of our food we grow and rear for ourselves. The trade policy made us impose high tariffs on food products from outside the EU we could not grow ourselves. The animal welfare policy fell short of what we wanted, but we had to accept live movement of cattle and the standards the EU would accept for everything from chicken cages to sow tethers.

In future blogs I will be examining the scope there now is to improve so many things. The annoyance is the way the last Parliament and much of the UK establishment blocked preparatory work to grasp these many opportunities to do better more quickly.

Here's another woman who achieved a place in history by her own efforts:

Self-taught palaeontologist Mary Anning was born on 21 May 1799 in Lyme Regis, Dorset. She had been one of 10 children but they were a poor family and eight of her nine siblings died before reaching adulthood.

As a child, she would help her father collect fossils that he sold in his seafront cabinetmaker's shop but in 1810, when Anning was 11, he died of tuberculosis. After his death, to help her mother make ends meet, Anning continued to collect fossils she would sell to tourists and collectors.

She regularly risked her life in her hunt for fossils, making discoveries that captured the attention of the scientific elite.
from the BBC

The reason Mary Anning is in the news is that a new film about her, starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, is premiering today.

Who was the real Mary Anning? is the headline to the BBC article. Well, not the one in the film. The film makers evidently thought her life isn't interesting enough on its own - they've tacked on a wholly fictional lesbian love affair.

(And contrary to what the article says, women could own property.)

It is so interesting, isn’t it that certain policies have a negative impact which wasn’t foreseen. The story about the morning after pill being implemented to help disadvantaged girls and resulting in them being pressured into sex.

This just drives it home even more how important it is to be able to discuss issues in detail, to have a public debate and to have public insight into decision making. A lack of proper discussion can have very bad, unintended consequences.

I forgot to mention, one of the points of the article was the girls were being pressured into unprotected sex because they could just get the morning after pill the next day. I really wish I could remember where I read it. I have a feeling it was a weekend supplement magazine article. From the days when newspapers would actively seek out opposing views and publish both of them side-by-side. Gosh, those days seem so long ago now!

The Mary Anning story is fascinating. I can't decide if I want to watch the film or not. Otoh it looks gorgeous. On the other, it's giving me flashbacks to The Piano, for some reason, and I hated that film.

Mary Anning - 'The Fossil Girl", I bought GavSprog a book as a 6 year old which helped to inspire her on her history journey.

We then spent several summers on digs and/or in the NHM (where we quickly became members to avoid the queues)!

The fact that she achieved what she did as a working class woman in those times was incredible.

We are very excited for the film at Gavlar Hall.

Tracy Chevalier's novel Remarkable Creatures features Mary Anning and is a good read for anyone who's interested in a fictional take on her.

@MoreHippoThanPenguin

It is so interesting, isn’t it that certain policies have a negative impact which wasn’t foreseen. The story about the morning after pill being implemented to help disadvantaged girls and resulting in them being pressured into sex.

This just drives it home even more how important it is to be able to discuss issues in detail, to have a public debate and to have public insight into decision making. A lack of proper discussion can have very bad, unintended consequences.

Indeed it is Hippo, and indeed it does.

One issue that is rarely mentioned is that oral contraception does not provide any protection for the female cervix; people do seem to understand that barrier methods are more effective in preventing STDs but they also protect the immature cervix from penile contact that may contribute to cervical cancer.

May not be as much of an issue now with HPV vaccine, but when I was teaching girls about 'women's' health it was something I always pointed out because almost all of them had not considered this (and neither had the teachers who sat in on the lessons).

Sometimes providing girls with a good excuse not to have sex is better than facilitating it. Not to frighten them, but yet again to enable them to make an informed choice.

I forgot to mention, one of the points of the article was the girls were being pressured into unprotected sex because they could just get the morning after pill the next day.

Yes, I had dealings with girls aged 15 and upwards who had that pressure applied to them. The women-only space of a women's prison was in many ways a blessing and a haven to many who could finally have some time without that kind of pressure, including working girls.

There was a similar sort of effect behind the decision to give prisoners the freedom to use pin phones on the landing to ring home. A lovely way of helping prisoners to keep in touch with family and friends and maintain a network of support for when they are released, no?

No. I have lost count of the number of times that harassed and desperate girlfriends, wives, mothers and even grandmothers contacted me in despair because they couldn't deal with the demanding phone calls (including ones pressuring them to bring in drugs or mobile phones on visits). One mother was terrified and in distress because her manipulative son had rung her to demand she bring in drugs or he would kill himself. She cried all night and then took a chance - I had met and spoken to her kindly when she visited her son previously and she remembered my name - and she rang me the next morning, sobbing. I sorted it. But you might be surprised by the number of women who moved house and left no forwarding address when their other halves or their adult sons were in prison.

Women take the brunt. Fact.

www.thebulletin.be/coronavirus-belgium-information-covid-19-questions-answers

Interesting - Belgium is tightening up massively.
I hope db is reconsidering his Christmas plans, and just stays there.

I know some people who have paid for their sons to have the HPV vaccine .

I have not done a lot today. I have had a garden centre visit , a farm shop , and a potter in the garden.

I'll just wander to the buffet and see if I fancy a nibble.

you might be surprised by the number of women who moved house and left no forwarding address when their other halves or their adult sons were in prison.

Another instance of how policy changes can have wider implications. There are demands to abolish short prison sentences. A short sentence might not make any difference to the criminal in question, but it might make all the difference to a woman who thereby has the time and space to get herself away from him.

I've been for a walk. Going to catch up on e-mails to friends now, then I've got a choice between two pieces of work, then my bedtime reading is the most recent Shardlake novel by CJ Sansom, which I'm part way through.

You must witness so much desperation in prisons and their visitors Lily.
Every initiative has a down side to it, just waiting to be exploited.

I just had an app notification to say I had possible covid exposure, but not to worry as I am not considered high risk . Neither MrT or DD have had a notification and they are the only ones I've been anywhere with and they both left their details. I haven't left my details anywhere. The notification disappeared before I could click on it.

But the problem is, Tracy, is how would you know it wasn't a scam? This whole track and trace thing worries me. My smartphone is not connected to WiFi because I am not the sort of person who has their mobile glued to their eyes. Out of range of the household WiFi, it's a dumb phone. And I wouldn't trust anyone not to give away my details anyway. Even Google thinks I am only 37 because I didn't want it to know my real date of birth. This might explain the ads I get. Nightmare.

sarah There is a series on Kindle by Deryn Lake set in Georgian London, about the Blind Beak. The 16 books are on for about £18.

I unpacked a book box today, and found my copy of The Woolpack by Cynthia Harnett in its paper cover. I have another one in the same series somewhere. I loved that book, and the ones by Geoffrey Trease.

DD said there is a known bug in the system that can give false notifications. A scam usually requires you to click on a link doesn't it? I barely had time to read the notification before it disappeared.

I'm actually surprised how many people have downloaded it. Think it's around 60+% isn't it? 2 friends I've spoken to this week haven't downloaded it because they don't want to isolate for 2 weeks. One is a hairdresser. She said she doesn't sign in to any cafes either, but insists her friends do it instead, as she's already had a 2 week quarantine from being with a family member with a positive result. I really can't see the point in it. It can't possibly work.

I am a happy bunny 🐰🐰🐰 Strictly is back. 💃🏽🕺💃🏽🕺💃🏽🕺😁❤️👍🏻

Tracy Your DD is right their is a bug in the app, very well widely known, I think there is at least 3 threads here about it. iirc it is something like a test signal to check the apps working. Its definitely not a scam.

gcat What difference do you think an RE class would have made in this situation? These were Chechen refugees with links to IS, they do not support free speech.

Maybe you mean it would make a difference to 'future' generation? I am not sure you you will be able to teach these children that we have a right to offend, and you do not have a right to murder.

So, I was so tired today after surviving on about 5 hours per night for the last week. I realised two things today....

1. I must look awful. Face ID (which my oldest daughter set up for me) hasn’t worked for three days.

2. it has made me confused. I failed miserably to scan my train ticket today (those tickets on your phone). Then I had a long discussion with the train guard how I couldn’t understand that it didn’t work. Turned out...It was an old ticket, it had already been used and...drum roll...it was a child ticket (DDs). I then managed to find the actual ticket on my phone. The train guard must have thought me absolutely crazy.

The train guard must have thought me absolutely crazy. blush

I wouldn't worry. (Should I call you Hippo or Penguin?)

I used to need to keep my train tickets for expenses claims, BZ (Before Zoom). I just used to chuck the used tickets in the back pocket of my bag and might have several weeks' worth in there. I often used to keep the conductor waiting while I shuffled through them looking for the current one.

Hippo is great .

I can understand the looking through old tickets... Although I guess the conductor’s eyes bulged at the big pack you were looking through .

Although I guess the conductor’s eyes bulged at the big pack you were looking through

I could feel their eyes rolling sometimes, even if I wasn't actually looking at them!

There is a series on Kindle by Deryn Lake set in Georgian London, about the Blind Beak. The 16 books are on for about £18.

Oh, I see my local library has quite a few of them as e-books. Have downloaded the first one.

Night

@AnneKipanki

Night

Night Anne. ❤️

I don't feel comfortable to have the track and trace yet.
Too many anomalies with it.
The gcat, there was a bbc, I think document ary on fishing ports and one was shown, they couldn't go-ahead with an expansion due to a euro grant that fell through.

It was presented to the class it was shown as a reason why we shouldn't have left the eu.. Ie. Look at how much money they give us.

I've never understood why we are so fish poor here.
As an island we should all have access to cheap healthy fish.

I find its expensive, not handled well, not compared to our eu neighbours... Eg fish counters etc.