Politics

My worrying about politics has been brewing for quite some time.  I've not quite managed to put it all in to words, hence my lengthy radio silence, and actually for the last six months I have been the happiest I have been for the last few years.  But the time has come for me to stand up again on my internet soap box and worry publicly about something that is important to me, and this time it's important to all of us.

I called the doctor this week, suffering with what I assumed to be an ear infection.  The new process in my surgery is for all callers to be put on a list, prioritised by the GP in question and called back in order of life expectancy urgency.  My GP duly returned my call, listened to me explain my deafness and pain and wrote me a prescription for antibiotics.  It wasn't until I was reclining in my sick bed later that it struck me what had happened: I had self-diagnosed an infection and received prescription medication without ever being in the presence of a medical practitioner.  Now I can see two ways of looking at this: The Opportunist - "I could make this work in my favour, get some kind of racket going with black market medications" - and my natural fall back position: The Cynic.  The Cynic notices that her GP is paid a handsome sum by the NHS (read taxpayer) to be the primary care giver for non-emergency medical requirement.  I (one of the aforementioned taxpayers) just did his job for him, by telling him what was wrong with me.  He got paid for writing "amoxicillin" on a slip of paper and signing his name (actually they don't even write it anymore, they click a box on the computer and print it out). So, to whom shall I send my bill?  Why is the NHS under such strain that GPs can no longer do what they are employed to do viz. actually see patients and diagnose illness?

Bedroom Tax, which isn't a tax, is putting people into rent arrears and making people homeless when there is no other option for them.  I don't think that anyone should be entitled to council housing, or housing benefit, for more than the requisite number of bedrooms per head that the law permits.  But that doesn't make it reasonable to suddenly start charging people for the extra bedroom with no availability of smaller properties for them to move in to, or sensible period of time for them to make arrangements.  There must have been a better way to balance the system than the way the government decided to go. There is so much I want to say about this, it rattles around my head day after day, sometimes I get angry- for and on behalf of both sides of the Bedroom Tax debacle - but debacle it has been and continues to be, nonetheless. 

So the NHS is being torn apart, the lowest earners and poorest families are being squeezed the hardest, disability benefits are being cut, public sector pensions are being cut, more and more people are relying on food banks to survive, retirement age is continuing to rise, the country is only barely out of recession but MPs are being recommended an 11% pay rise to £74,000.  I know there are an awful lot of people earning an awful lot more than that, but the average UK salary is something in the region of 28k. Our MPs are earning more than double that already, and that is before their expenses claims and second home allowances come in. 

Russell Brand, in his usual showy and verbose manner, tried to incite revolution recently.  He said what so many of us feel: that we are disillusioned with politics; that we don't trust our politicians or our government to make the right decisions for the majority of the populace; that we don't think our politicians are in touch with the people of Great Britain.  But his answer to the problem was a silent, apathetic revolution, a revolution where  people show their disdain for the current way of things by removing themselves from it, by standing to one side and letting others make the decisions, in the hope that things will be forced into change by their refusal to be involved.

I'm not the first person to notice that this won't work.  I'm no great political strategist, I don't have the answer, but I know that even if 1,000,000 Britons decide not to vote in support of Brand's rhetoric, it won't make a blind bit of difference.  Of the 45,597,461 registered voters for the 2010 general election, only 29,991,471 actually voted.  We now have a coalition government that not even one of us voted for. No encouragement is needed from Russell Brand for people not to vote, what we need is encouragement for people to vote.  We need more people worth voting for, more politicians who we trust and believe in, who understand us and will represent us honestly in parliament.

I recently interviewed for a new job at the company where I currently work.  I really, really want this job. I worked hard in preparation for the interviews and I would be very disappointed not to get it. But if it doesn't go my way then maybe it won't all be bad.  I could become a politician, get paid more money than I would know what to do with (I'd learn), and lead the revolution.  Either that or cash in on my new found expertise as a GP.... K x

Me

Something strange has been happening over the past few weeks - I haven't been worrying about anything.  Or, at least, nothing important.  Work is toddling along, merrily wiping out my mental wellbeing on a daily basis.  The weather has been glorious, which suits me just perfectly as when I'm not tied to my desk drowning in misery I can bask in the hot sunshine and get a vitamin D hit.  My immune system hasn't thrown any nasty surprises my way, my spine is as painful and displaced as it has been for a while. 

I visited some friends who I haven't seen in far too long - they've recently got married and I was so chuffed to have been invited and so gutted to have not been able to make it.  But a month or so afterwards, with a big bowl of moules marinieres, a large G&T and a few hours of reminiscing, I was 21 again, back at university with them, young and carefree, laughing at our drunken antics, promising not to leave it so long until the next time.  Without my friends I'd be half a person, and I'm so lucky to be blessed with a great bunch of them spread out across the country, and dotted around the world. 

So the world has kept on turning; The Royal Progeny is yet to be birthed (and we are all waiting with baited breath...), England are winning at cricket, some nutters are cycling a lot in France, the government are a bunch of idiots, the NHS appears to be being sold off piece by piece, Post Office workers are striking and most people in Britain are being wholly inconsiderate and buying a lot of drinks from outlets supplied by my company.  But, for once, none of this is touching me - my worrying days are on hold.  So keep it up, sunshine, because you're obviously doing me good.

K x

And yes, of course I'll be worrying about something again soon.  But in the meantime, check out some of my exercise blogs on www.fittamamma.com as they're pretty good too ;) x

Religion

I can hear the groans already even though I haven't even got going yet.  Yes, I know that worrying about religion isn't particularly new or exciting; a good proportion of the world are worrying about their neighbours' religions - Protestants and Catholics, Christians and Muslims, Christians and Jews, Muslims and Jews, the Westboro Baptist Church and everyone else.  Everyone seems to be at odds religiously with someone else and that causes quite significant amounts of worry for huge proportions of the world.  But what I have been worrying about isn't what all the rest of you are up to religiously-speaking, and is more about my own beliefs, or lack of them.

I think... gulp... that I may be an atheist.  There, I've said it now, it's committed to paper (sort of) and therefore true.  I have been reading* up on Richard Dawkins (*watching YouTube clips) and have come to the realisation that he and his atheist pals' way of thinking makes a hell of a lot of sense.  I don't believe in gravity because someone told me to, I believe in gravity because it has been scientifically shown to exist, and work in certain ways. I don't believe in Darwin's Theory of Evolution because that's what my Mum believed and therefore I shall carry on with these beliefs, but because evidence has been discovered, the theory has been tested and the hypothesis proved, just as I was taught to do in science lessons back in school.  (a brilliant interview with him here in full http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AS6rQtiEh8 . It is unfortunate that the interview is with an incapable fuckwit, but silently berating her idiocy makes it even more enjoyable).

Now might be a good time to bring up one of my very favourite people in the whole world - Tim Minchin.  First and foremost, he is a tremendous musician, comedian and performer; I feel perfectly comfortable using the word 'genius' in describing him.  He has also spoken very openly about his thoughts on religion and spirituality, and in between clutching my sides with laughter and wiping away the tears, I realised that there was nothing he was saying that I didn't agree with.  I can't begin to put these things into words in the incredible way that he does, so here is an example of one of his superb songs which puts things so succinctly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr1I3mBojc0 (he also has written a song about his love for cheese - a man truly after my own heart)

So millions of people worldwide choose to live their lives based on a book, which is entirely their right even if it is hundreds of pages of contradiction; a book about the horrifying cruelties committed for and on behalf of an allegedly benevolent God (who created everything), several thousand years ago in the Middle East.  Other millions of people worldwide choose to live their lives based on a different book, also their right, with slightly different rules and regulations, with a different God (who created everything).  Everywhere you look there is another God or Goddess or Gods (who created everything) and millions of people who choose to believe that their choice is the right one.  First of all, how could I possibly decide which one is the one to back?  And second of all, which of the religions can give me any kind of proof or evidence to suggest that their God is the right one, or that he or she or they even exist at all. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that none of them can.
Which reminds me of a quote from one of my favourite books on the "proof" of the non-existence of God:

"The Babel fish," said The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
"The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
"'But,' says Man, 'the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
"'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams.

In my extensive research for this blog (ahem) I have been studying the writings (cartoons) of NonStampCollector - check out his YouTube page http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nonstampcollector&oq=NonStamp&gs_l=youtube.1.0.0l4j0i10l2j0l4.965.2194.0.3460.8.8.0.0.0.0.131.553.7j1.8.0...0.0...1ac.1.11.youtube.NoZEi-cBX5c .  I have come to the conclusion that a) he is right in pretty much everything that he says and b) being an atheist doesn't mean you are a 'hater' or an anti-religion protestor... just that you haven't seen the evidence to make you believe in any deity.  And as I haven't seen the evidence to make me believe in any deity, and am myself a generally rational, intelligent and sensible person, I must therefore reach the conclusion that I consider myself an atheist.

But coming to this conclusion hasn't changed me in any way - it's not like up until now I have been regularly attending the local Methodists and now suddenly I'm going to stop going and instead spend my Sunday mornings romping with heathens at al fresco sex orgies (although, now I've thought about it...).  It just wasn't until recently that I'd really put much thought to my beliefs, knowing that Christianity wasn't for me but not really thinking about it any further than that.  I'm comfortable with my atheism, I won't be shouting about it, or refusing to attend weddings, christenings or funerals.  I'll even sing along to the good hymns (but will draw the line at All Things Bright and Beautiful) for the simple joy of belting out a good tune.  I don't intend to start any hate campaigns, or anti-Religion crusades, your beliefs are your own and you are entitled to them, as am I.

But if anyone out there has that irrefutable proof, do let me know, just in case I'm wrong?

K x

P.S. I am aware that this entry relies heavily on external sources - this is largely due to the fact that I can't physically restrain myself from watching YouTube clips at the moment, and I thought perhaps that a glorious celebration of my favourites might be cathartic.  It is also true that I haven't the patience to do the research that NonStampCollector has done into the inconsistencies, idiocies and atrocities of the Bible, so I would be largely regurgitating his hard work if I were to start listing them here.  Also, Tim Minchin, that is all K x

Equal Marriage

Well, that was an angry rant wasn't it? Don't worry I don't intend to attack anyone I see carrying a bottle of said branded fizzy drink... but I may silently berate them.

A brief post today, as those fools we call our government are debating the ins and outs (so to speak) of gay marriage, I thought I would share my views.

1) What difference will legalising gay marriage make to me?  None whatsoever, I am not gay and therefore don't intend be indulging in any actual gay marriage myself.  I don't have a gay BFF or a large numbers of gay friends, but for those that I do have, I would be glad to see them happy and if getting hitched is what they want to do, then who am I to suggest that they shouldn't?

2) What difference will legalising gay marriage make to the rest of the straight population of the UK? None whatsoever.  It's not like legalising gay marriage is going to mean every home must have one...

3) What difference will legalising gay marriage make to the Church? None whatsoever.  If church leaders want to impose certain rules on who can or can't get married in their particular church then that's up to them, but they can't argue about who can or can't get married in someone else's church/synagogue/temple/prayer teepee.

4) What difference will legalising gay marriage make to currently married straight people? None whatsoever, it doesn't make their own bond any less important, or less recognised. 

5) What difference will legalising gay marriage make to gay people? Probably quite a bit, if you are gay and want to be formally attached to your partner in the same way straight couples are and at the moment you can't.  And if one is a real life gay person who doesn't want to get married, then that too is OK and affects no-one but oneself, but better for it to be a personal lifestyle choice, than an imposed regulation?

Basically, just legalise it already and shut up and go away. Ta.
K x

Prescription Charges

I wrote to my MP, Conservative Damian Green last week (I know! How grown up am I?!) about the spiralling cost of prescriptions on the NHS.  I didn't do this entirely off my own back, you understand, but on the suggestion of the Presciption Charges Coalition (http://www.prescriptionchargescoalition.org.uk/) for whom I had signed a petition several months ago on the subject.  I have a lot of prescriptions; I take five daily medicines, two weekly medicines and various painkillers as and when required.  My repeat prescription sheet has 11 items on it.  At the current rate of £7.85 per prescription, that would cost me £86.35 every time I need my prescriptions to be re-filled.  Now, anybody can agree that that is an unholy amount of money to spend on prescriptions on a regular basis; multiply that by the rest of my life and it becomes astronomical.   I have a prescription pre-payment certificate, which means I pay just over £10 a month for 10 months by direct debit and this covers any prescriptions that I need in a 12 month period. But that is still over £100 per year, which the rest of the tax-paying nation don't have to spend.  And that is my argument, because I will be taking these (or similar) medications for the rest of my life, unless they find a cure in the meantime.  £7.85 is not a large sum to cough up once in a while if you get an infection, which is the only time the average person needs a prescription.  If I were unemployed my prescriptions would be free, so why not when I am diagnosed with a chronic incurable disease? 

Here's my letter, minus my address (don't want the paps round ;)

Mr Damian Green MP

Ashford
House of Commons
London SW1A0AA

Dear Mr Green,

As your constituent, I am writing to ask if you will pledge your support to phase out prescription charges for people with long term conditions.

The Prescription Charges Coalition has just published a report called ‘Paying the Price’, which makes the case for reform to the current system. It uncovers the shocking decisions people with conditions like asthma, heart disease, arthritis, HIV, Crohn's Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, Parkinson's, mental health conditions, cystic fibrosis, auto-immune disease and many others are being forced to make because of the added financial burdens associated with prescription charges. It is wrong that people are forced to choose between food, clothing, bills or their prescriptions. I myself have Rheumatoid Arthritis and Vasculitis, and at age 29 I have eleven prescriptions to buy each time, and I will be needing these prescriptions for the rest of my life.

The prescription charge has again been increased to £7.85 from this April. The current regime of charges seems to actively undermine good health and costs the NHS more. As people are rationing their prescriptions or foregoing them altogether, this is resulting in poorer health or, in extreme cases, hospitalisation. This is clearly unacceptable.

A high proportion of people are already exempt from prescription charges because of their financial circumstances, their age, or the fact that they have certain other medical conditions. It is inconsistent and unfair to deny people with long term conditions the same assistance. People develop a long term condition down to a complex combination of hereditary, environmental or other lifestyle factors. Once diagnosed, many will have their condition for the rest of their lives and if we want them to stay in work and continue to be productive members of society, then the Government needs to address this problem. The present approach to charging is little more than an additional health tax on the sick.

I would therefore be grateful if you would write to the Health Secretary and the Chancellor to call on the Government to reform this arbitrary, outdated and inequitable system, and make it fairer for people with long term conditions. I would appreciate you asking them to commit to phasing out prescription charges for people with long term conditions through staged reductions to the Prescription Prepayment Certificate.

Yours sincerely

Katherine Evans

I am lucky enough to have never had to ration my dosages, or make a decision not to take my medications based on the cost, but I can't deny that it has been a close call at times.  And what I cannot understand is why certain illnesses are exempt, and others aren't.  Now, I am absolutely not suggesting that diabetics should have their exemption revoked, but why is it that diabetes medicines are free, but my rheumatoid arthritis medicines are not?  If I were to not have my medicines I couldn't go to work, and would have to be entirely financially supported by the state through disability benefits.  Surely that would cost a lot more to the government than my prescriptions do?  And the ultimate paradox is that if the medicines I am currently on stop working for me, or my disease gets worse and my rheumatologist can show that I need them, I could have injections of new biologic therapies sent directly to my house by the healthcare companies at no cost to myself.  Now where is the logic there?  So, if the stuff that the NHS currently charges me for turns out not to help, then we'll give in and give you better stuff for free?

I was disappointed by the reply from Damian Green, in that it didnt seem to even acknowledge the request that I put forward, that being that I wanted him to support the phasing out of prescription charges for people with long term conditions via staged reduction of the cost of the Prepayment Certificate.  He wrote me a letter explaining that I could get a Prepayment Certificate if I wanted to (what a complete idiot...)

Rt Hon Damian Green MP
HOUSE OF COMMONS
LONDON SW1A 0AA

25th March 2013
Dear Ms Evans,

Thank you for your e-mail of 15th March about the Prescription Charges Coalition reprt Paying the Price.
I realise that this issue raises some strong feelings, particularly for those with long-term conditions who are not exempt from charges. The Government has no plans for a further review of the list of medical conditions that confer exemption.

There is already an extensive system of prescription charge exemptions in England. This includes provision for people on low incomes who can apply for free prescriptions through the NHS Low Income Scheme, or who get free prescriptions due to the receipt of certain benefits. This system of exemptions means around 90 per cent of prescription items are dispensed without charge.

There is also provision for people who have to pay prescription charges and need them regularly, or need a lot of prescription items. A Prescription Prepayment Certificate (PPC) can be obtained and PPC holders pay no further charge at the point of dispensing, with no limit to the number of items the holder may obtain via the certificate.

As part of the most recent announcement on prescription charges, I am pleased that the Government has not changed the cost of a PPC. The cost of a three-month PPC will remain at £29.10. This will save people money if they need four or more items in three months. A 12-month certificate costs £104 and will save money if 14 or more items are needed in 12 months.

Yours sincerely,

Gee, thanks Damo, if you had actually read my email in the first place you would have known that I am aware of the PPC and what it is, but what I asked was for you to commit to something that I, one of your constituents, has asked for.  And yes, people on low incomes or who get certain benefits can claim free prescriptions, but what about us people on not quite low enough incomes?  The people who forever and always get stuck in the middle, not quite poor enough to be entitled to anything, but not quite earning enough not to need help.

Remind me, when I'm filthy rich and living in a golden house, eating caviar and foie gras for breakfast and having all my pain magically removed by some technological wonder, and the polling card lands on my doormat, just how much help he and his government have given to the chronically sick recently.

Oh, and keep your eyes open for that cure - there's still 11 months on my current PPC so you've got a bit of time

K x
  

Mental Health

And no, before you say it, I don't mean my own (although it is questionable at times).  I struggle with other people's mental health issues, because what I want to say is 'Come on, you know you're nuts, right? You don't really believe what you're saying, do you?'.  I know that this is not a healthy, compassionate, supportive response and so I don't say it.  What I say is 'everything will be OK I promise' and then cry about it.  Which rather elongates the chain of mental health misery by becoming borderline depressed myself.
But when someone very close to you suffers from a mental health issue - and someone very close to me currently is and has had episodes of deep anxiety induced depression for many years - it affects everything, and there's almost nothing you can do.  Of course, I can alleviate as much stress or strain or worrying for that person as I possibly can; but the problem is that the sufferer can very easily replace those anxieties with a whole new set of completely irrational ones.  And the more irrational the worries or fears, the more difficult it is for me to help alleviate them.  So, bit of a vicious circle really, but I can't justify 'completely ignoring the entire problem' as an effective aid to rehabilitation.
The stigma attached to mental health is astounding and I don't just mean the obvious disabilities - ones which make a visual difference to the sufferer and cause people to point in the street.  But the secret, private miseries which can cause people to lead seriously limited lives and experience such debilitating problems are compounded by a general lack of understanding or even mild disinterest on the part of the rest of us. 
We can all do more, learn more, understand and accept more about mental illness; and just watching "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" does not count.
K x

P.S. 23/03/13  The above post was shorter than my usual fare, partly because I found myself getting angry and upset about the situation as I wrote it and also partly because I was exhausted and was losing my train of thought.  It's frustrating dealing with someone who is going through mental health issues because their understanding of the situation is fundamentally flawed by their illness.  You can't tell someone they are being irrational because the irrationality is part of the problem.  It makes it very hard to talk about, and very hard to write about because I want to justify every sentence with an example and I don't think that's fair on the person in question. Off to search for my magic wand now...
K x

Writing about Exercise

Believe it or not (and I'm not entirely sure that I do myself), I am going to be blogging about fitness.  Me. Yes, honestly. I, and all my curves, are going to be test-wearing a specially designed supportive exercise clothing range and writing about it. 

In the past year I have changed my lifestyle beyond recognition: I do now exercise regularly and find a weekend of idleness makes me feel lethargic and unhappy; I would far rather go swimming for an hour than sit and do nothing, as not only will I sleep better but the swimming will totally counteract the cake intake, right?  But as a lady who has been a comfy, squishy size 18 for as long as I can remember, the thought of being taken even slightly seriously as a writer of a fitness blog seems hilariously unlikely.
But there is an explanation to all this which I shall now divulge, following this important note:  I am not pregnant and I do not intend to be any time soon.

www.fittamamma.com is a brilliant website, designed to be educational and informative for pregnant women who want to know how to stay fit and healthy through their pregnancy, as well as those who want to lose the baby weight afterwards.  I was glad to be involved when the site was being put together with researching recipes and nutritional information, due to the fact that the company's founder-owner is my buddy Alex McCabe. She, along with her business partner Deb Hazeldean, have designed and made a range of fitness clothing designed especially for pregnant women, with special stretchy fabrics and hidden supportive structures as well as, of course, super stretch bump bits that grow with your bump so you can wear them all through the 9 months of hell joy while you wait for your little darling to arrive.  They can tell it so much better than I can http://www.fittamamma.com/section.php/2/1/fittawear , and yes this is shameless plugging but its my blog and I'll do what I want. 

So, picture the scene:  a young lady erring on the wrong side of the 'healthy BMI' line, with an evil immune system that is destroying her joints and an as yet undiagnosed seriously painful back problem really wants to exercise and get fitter and try and limbo under the BMI boundary.  Her friend has designed a range of extra-supportive fitness clothing designed for women who are carrying a little extra weight (usually around 6 to 8 pounds of human child) and have certain restrictions on what exercise is possible.  It was inevitable really.

And today I have worn, for the first time, my High Support Top and Leggings while pottering around the house and doing useful things looking at twitter.  Sure, the stretchy maternity tummy part is a little redundant (and hopefully, if this exercising malarkey works, will become even more redundant as we go along!) but my back feels supported for the first time in months, and my lady lumps are firmly held in the right place, not likely to try and jump out if I tried a gentle jog.  Much as I love to swim, I really hope that this supportive gear will make it easier for me to get a proper workout at the gym, to give my weekly routine a bit of variety.  But I am also going to be wearing it to do normal things like, say, the hoovering, to see if a bit of extra support means that I can do it without wincing at every step. 

I will definitely post bits on here, but I will also write directly to FittaMamma's blog, so if you're interested please do find them on twitter @fittamamma or facebook, to see how I get on.

And yes, I have been shameless with my links and plugs, normal service will be resumed soon, but for now let me bask in the moment of being taken even slightly seriously as a writer with some semblance of talent that an actual real-life company want me to write stuff for them and feel free to have plenty of lolz at the idea of me writing intelligently about exercise.  It's cool, I am.

K x

Skyfall

I should preface this blog post by pointing out that I did really enjoy Skyfall - the new James Bond film.  Daniel Craig is hot, Javier Bardem was an awesomely camp bad guy and in general it was full of happy James Bond-y feel-good action excitement.
And I  can cope with the playful misogny that goes hand in hand with the James Bond ethos - shagging indiscrimanately, making sexist jokes, shrugging off the death of the Bond Girl - all these things are naturally occuring Bondisms which, although perhaps damagingly sexist, we have come to expect from the franchise.

What bothered me in an angry feminist kind of way was the total and complete degradation of any strong female role in the film.  Judi Dench's 'M' has been an awesome cinematic role to encourage young women that positions of power and responsibility (and ultimately the top job in the man-centric world of espionage) are not something that is beyond their means.  M is female, in control (mostly), authoritative, responsible and undoubtedly earning top civil service wages, all the things that young women should be able to aspire to.  In Skyfall, she is beginning to fail the service, and gets a grilling from a government committee.  Yes, the MP in charge of the enquiry is female, but when she starts to get a bit 'naggy' one of the 'boys' just tells her to shut up - good that she can be put in her place by the entirely male committee right?  Thankfully, poor old M has a strong male agent (Bond) to take her to safety and hide from the nasty bad guys.  OK, so she has incredible skill at making lightbulb nail bombs, but without the presence of some masculine types she would just be dribbling in the corner, unable to take care of herself, or dead already.  And, of course, as the head of MI6, with years and years of experience in counter-terrorism and espionage, she would be completely unprepared for actually defending herself, right?  She wouldn't be so stupid as to use a torch in the pitch dark when trying to escape from the baddies... oh no wait, that's exactly what she did, with all her years of training and experience.  Come on, Ms Broccoli, you can do better than that - killing off a strong female character via a series of her own ineptitudes, allowing a good old-fashioned man to take the helm, sort out all her silly mistakes (no doubt caused by those pesky hormones) and get the service back to its former strength (round about the Stone Age, it seems).

And what about Moneypenny?  A cool, exciting field agent zipping round the world taking on interesting missions and shooting people; "Cool" my 15-year old self yells "I want to be an MI6 agent and go around shagging catching bad guys!". She misses that vital shot and gets recalled to London where she spends the rest of the film (invisibly) at a desk job.  Sure, she doesn't succumb to Bond's wily charms and manages to remain chaste in such trying circumstances, but any semblance of equality is shattered.  By the end of the film 15-year old me is sighing and saying to myself "Oh, she gets to be a secretary after all... err... ace..?"

I was angry by the end: angry that the film-makers had two relatively good opportunities to promote a bit of sexual equality and general female awesomeness and both were dashed to bits on the chiselled torso of the patriarchy.  M ends up as a withering incompetent and Moneypenny is only fit to be a secretary in the gentlemens' club MI6 headquarters. 

Shame, 'cause otherwise it was a stonker. K x

Market Research Telephonists

To celebrate my unemployment, I decided to take a low-paid part time market research telephonist job to while away the empty hours.  In my naivety, I thought that doing some kind of paid work would make me feel more useful and fulfilled than spending the days in my dressing gown, eating left-over Christmas chocolate and watching Jeremy Kyle.  Oh, how I have regretted that decision.

For five hours at a stretch I have sat in a small three sided booth on an old, uncomfortable office chair (which has done WONDERS for my back) and made hundreds and hundreds of phone calls on behalf of various companies to unprepared and mostly unwilling recipients.  A stream of constant rejections, general disinterest and mild disdain has come my way, only to be broken by the few who were willing to take part in my survey.  A few brief moments of amusement were to be had, specifically during the Friday evening shift when one respondent decided to err from my carefully worded script and tell me just how "satisfied on a scale of 1 to 10" he was with me personally and bemoaned the fact that I had his phone number but that he didn't have mine.

Never again will I angrily hang up the phone on a market researcher - partly through a feeling of solidarity, though mainly because I now know that by not responding, my phone number will simply be thrust back into the swirling mist of numbers, waiting to be randomly plucked again by the computer and re-dialled.  The computer will continue to dial my number again and again until I politely explain to a caller that I would prefer not to be recontacted.  It is the only way.

A friend of mine who has worked for the same company described the work as being 'the closest thing to being lobotomised' and I have to say that I agree with her.  I would not have been surprised to find a trail of saliva hanging from my mouth by the end of a shift, or to be informed that I had been talking to the plant.  In all the years that I have been working I have never yet done any job so mind-numbingly dull and ultimately so completely unrewarding.

All the supervisory and management staff were lovely: kind; helpful; genuinely complimentary of  my telephone manner and capabilities.  I had to bite my tongue during quality control meetings (where a supervisor had listened in on one of my calls and made comments on how I was performing) to stop myself from pointing out that a basic level of literacy and a small amount of common sense was all the job required.  Instead I smiled sweetly at the comments I was given and went back to my box cubicle. 

Thankfully, I have found a full-time day job which will start in a week's time.  I have given myself the gift of sanity and decided not to return to the call centre this week, but to enjoy a week of real rest and relaxation before getting back into the 9-to-5 world.  I can understand now why some people would prefer to stay on benefits than to do a mindless job, however I still believe that were I to find myself unemployed again, I would rather be working doing anything, even market research, than languishing in self pity and benefit forms.

But in the meantime, spare a thought for the poor people at the end of the phone who want to ask for ten minutes of your time to complete a survey - they are doing a very boring, repetitive job for which they are not being paid much, and the only way to pass the time is to speak to you.  Decline if you wish, but please do so politely :)

K x