1. “Myself” as in “You’ve been speaking with myself.”
2. “Yourself” or “yourselves” as in “We’ve been speaking with yourselves.”
3. “Obviously” as in [me] “What is this regarding?” [them] “Obviously we’re just trying to follow up with yourselves…”
4. “You see” as in “Obviously, you see, we’ve been trying to talk with yourselves from when my colleague passed this query on to myself.”

RAGE.

I am not unsympathetic to the fact that times are tough and it’s difficult to find a job that pays a living wage, so sometimes working in a call centre is the only job around. I don’t have a problem with call centres, my mobile phone customer service is always great (I understand I’ve been very lucky with o2), but it’s the phrasing that seems to be particular to those who work in call centres. When did it start? Who’s idea was it? Who made these (probably lovely) people talk like this for work?

In the interests of openness, I did get caught out by the BF using the words “Going Forward” in an otherwise normal conversation the other day in place of “Next Time”. Eek.

Du du du du doooo doo-dah du du doo dooo....... Tsh tsh tsh!

Here’s my little breakdown of what David Cameron said earlier, nicked from the Guardian:

What Peter Cruddas said was completely unacceptable and wrong …

First you distance yourself from the person who said the thing what it was that people got miffed by.

We have a robust and sensible system for raising money in the Conservative party. All donations to the party centrally above £7,500 are declared to the Electoral Commission and must comply with electoral law. No donation is accepted before going through very thorough compliance procedures …

Then you define your current practices in unmeasurable terms: “robust”, “sensible”, “donations to the party centrally above £7,500″, “very thorough”. Complying with electoral law is an interesting one. Who wrote the law, and what loopholes (if any) did they leave in it?

There has been much speculation about dinners in my flat in Number 10 Downing Street. The position is this; in the two years I have been prime minister there have been three occasions on which significant donors have come to my flat. In addition, there was a further post-election dinner which included donors in Downing Street itself shortly after the general election. We will be publishing full details of all these todays.

Next you belittle the enquiry by calling it “speculation”, and add more unmeasurable (is that a word? immeasurable?) qualities framed in specific-sounding language. “Three occasions on which significant donors have come to my flat” – again, what counts as significant, and just because they’ve been in your flat, it doesn’t mean they haven’t been entertained elsewhere.

None of these dinners were fundraising dinners. None of these dinners were paid for by the taxpayer. I have known most of those attending for many years.

Let me add that Peter Cruddas has never recommended anyone to come to dinner in my flat, nor has he been to dinner there himself.

If you didn’t get it the first time, he’s distanced himself from Petey again here.

I already publish details of my external meetings as prime minister – the first prime minister to do so – and I also publish all meetings that I have with media editors and proprietors. From now on the Conservative party will published details every quarter of any meals attended by any major donors, whether they take place at Downing Street, Chequers or any official residence.

And we’re very proud of you for doing so. Even if the reason you had to start doing so was because of predecessors taking liberties with your status as PM. What counts as “major”, and does that extend to meetings that take place in non-government buildings (eg private conference rooms, restaurants etc)? I’ve held meetings in the chocolate department at Harrods before (and NEVER disclosed with whom).

The Conservative party is funded by private citizens. I inherited a party that was tens of millions of pounds in debt and dependent on a tiny number of big donors. Since I have been leader we have significantly broadened the Conservative party’s funding base and many more significant donors …

I like this bit. It almost sounds as if he’s complaining about money. If I was practising ‘active listening’, I’d rephrase it back to him in order to better understand it as “You were struggling financially because you only had a few millionaires giving you money, but since you took over, you have a lot more millionaires giving you money?” So what? You’ve successfully brought the Conservatives into the mainstream, but into a public (and media?) which demands fair play and transparency of government goings-on.

From now on, the Conservative party will in addition publish a register of those major donors who actually attend these fundraising dinners.

All this transparency sucks. Think of the admin fees! But good for you.

On policy, let me make clear no one in the Number 10 policy unit has met anyone at Peter Cruddas’s request. Peter Cruddas spoke about passing requests to a policy committee at Number 10 Downing Street. There is no such committee. However, to avoid any perception of undue influence, from now on we will put in place new procedures in which if any ministerial contact with a party donor prompts a request for policy advice, the minister wil refer this to his or her private office who can then seek guidance from the permanent secretary.

What is the difference between “Number 10 policy unit” and “policy committee at Number 10″? When will these procedures be put in place? Who will write them? Who will ensure they are maintained?

Clearly there is still an urgent need for party funding reform in this country. I have consistently argued this over the last six years. No party is immune from these problems. Indeed, the leader of the Labour party has himself encountered some controversy in recent days. That is why the government has invited Labour to restart the cross-party talks on reforming the current rules.

Ah! The “Yeah but Labour…” defence. Me and my brother could teach Cameron a thing or two about how to successfully blame someone else for something you were supposed to be doing.

But today I make this offer once again to the Labour party. I’m ready to impose a cap on individual political donations of £50,000 without any further need for state funding. But to be fair this must apply equally to trade unions as well as to private citizens or businesses.

It IS really unfair, isn’t it, that Labour is funded by supporting trade unions, but the Conservative party is only funded by capitalists. (Sarcasm implied.)

Internet Trolls: Just don't feed 'em.

It is with some interest that I have been following the general discussions online about the misogynistic abuse that many female bloggers have received. The first thing I’d like to mention is that I’ve never received any misogynistic abuse online via my blog or Twitter (perhaps because my blog has a readership of about 7 people per day, usually through googling “sexy vegetables”). And the second thing is that I think internet misogyny is part of the much bigger problem of internet abuse in general.

The disturbing accounts of many female bloggers and tweeters who have spoken about the different forms of abuse online are not to be taken lightly. Some of the bloggers who have shared their experiences are good friends of mine, and it makes me angry that a complete stranger would threaten those that I love and care about, but this isn’t limited to my female blogger mates. My male blogging friends have also been at the receiving end of some pretty nasty trolling, and I think it diminishes the wider problem of trolling to a certain extent by focusing on one aspect of it.

Hate speech in any form, be it sexist, racist, homophobic, or just irritating ad hominem attacks need not be a necessary part of internet culture. My worry is that by zoning in on the sexist side of it, not only do we diminish other kinds of abuse that writers receive, but it could also polarise the debate by ignoring and alienating some of the men who have also received violent hatemail. Yes, this misogyny is a feminist issue, but by emphasising this, it can de-emphasise that internet abuse is an issue that affects men too, who also fear for their own safety and that of their families when their full names, addresses and places of work have been posted online (be it via hatemail or on someone else’s blog).

What would be great, and I think this is entirely possible, is if the debate could be framed to include all kinds of abuse online. To create a culture where trashing someone because of something unrelated to what the writer is writing about is a waste of pixels. To say “Wow, that was your profound opinion, that the writer deserves “to die at the rusty scissors of a backstreet abortionist” is what you took the time out of your busy day to communicate? Well done you.” Push all the trolls down to the status of the embarrassing hanger-on down the pub who feels the need to comment on things they don’t understand.

Dawn Foster wrote:

In the end, I discovered the best way to combat the abuse was to ignore it. If someone writes a derailing comment, delete it. Someone wishes rape upon you on Twitter, block them. Someone emails you self-righteous bile, don’t reply: forward it on to your friends to amuse them during their coffee break. Nobody’s entitled to a reply, contrary to what the trolls may think.

Unfortunately, we still live in a society where this advice can apply to all bloggers, not just women.

I read somewhere a few days ago (citation badly needed, I’m writing this in bed, prior to braving the Tuesday) that due to quantitative easing, we’ve printed out the equivalent of about £3,000 per man, woman and child in the UK. If it’s true, I’d be interested to know how that would have affected spending and public confidence had it just been handed to every man, woman and child in an envelope. What was it spent on instead? Was it worth it?

Desperately trying to follow financial news as I am, I get the impression that it’s being deliberately obfuscated because the reality is that nobody knows what’s going on. We blame that small minority of bankers, buy-to-let-ters, job stealing immigrants, sperm stealing feminists, blue Labour and the like, but does anyone actually know what’s going on?

Ed: A friend of mine responded on my Facebook wall:

The banks had lent lots of money to the government to fund its spending with a promise to get interest over a fixed number of years. The Bank of England used newly printed money to buy the government debt back off the banks now. This means the banks now have cash in hand instead of money being tied up.

The idea is that this allows the banks to lend more money to people who want to start their own business hence boosting the creation of jobs.

Thanks Craig!

Liz Jones: Childless but has a cat, who seems to have ripped her trousers to shreds.

Liz Jones in:

The craving for a baby that drives women to the ultimate deception

Anyone who meets me, or reads what I write, would think I don’t like children and never wanted to be a mother. Indeed, for most of my adult life, having a child was the furthest thing from my mind.

I wanted a career, freedom, a nice house and to keep my figure. As a feminist, I looked down on mumsy types.

Yes, because us feminists judge the choices that women make, that’s what equal rights is all about.

But when I was in my late 30s, I decided that if I didn’t get pregnant soon then it might never happen. I had also reached a point in my life where I wanted to settle down with a man, and though my boyfriend at that time was wildly unsuitable, I thought that I could change him.

If he was unsuitable, why bother? Oh never mind, it gets better:

Shall I list the ways in which we were a mismatch?

Yes, please do!

He lived with his parents before he moved in with me, and earned very little money. I was working on a newspaper and was fiercely ambitious. He was laid-back, I am not. I was ready for a baby, he wasn’t.

So he was poor, laid back, and honest about what he wanted out of life? What a prick.

And yet I wanted to hang on to Trevor. I thought that if we split up I might not get a replacement boyfriend in time to use my rapidly dwindling egg supply.
Trevor had never given me what I wanted from a relationship. At first, he wouldn’t even have sex with me. Then, finally, when he moved into my flat (probably more out of a desire to be able to walk to work than any real love for me) we started a physical relationship.

What? Hold on. What? Worried about your rapidly dwindling egg supply but only started a physical relationship after moving in together? Isn’t sex usually an integral part of being boyfriend and girlfriend for most people before you get to the commitment stage of moving in together?

He was still very cautious, though. He refused to believe I was on the Pill, and insisted we use a condom for every moment of our intimate contact.
‘I don’t trust you,’ he said, muttering something about women claiming to want a career, but underneath wanting to start a family.

Sounds like a sensible man. I have visions of him putting condoms on all his fingers and doing ‘jazz hands’ and then affectionately referring to it in a sleazy voice as “intimate contact, mmm”.

I called his bluff and told him there was no way I would want a baby with him, given he didn’t earn any money.

Liz, that’s not a very nice thing to say to someone.

Yet the truth was, I had hatched a plan that many will doubtless find shocking.
Because he wouldn’t give me what I wanted, I decided to steal it from him. I resolved to steal his sperm from him in the middle of the night. I thought it was my right, given that he was living with me and I had bought him many, many M&S ready meals.

Ed: Upon re-reading, I can’t believe I’ve only just missed this bit. I know SO MANY PEOPLE who would happily trade in their sperm for M&S ready meals, those things don’t come cheap, so to speak.

The ‘theft’ itself was alarmingly easy to carry out. One night, after sex, I took the used condom and, in the privacy of the bathroom, I did what I had to do. Bingo.

EUW STEP AWAY FROM THE TURKEY BASTER! I think my favourite part of this paragraph is “I did what I had to do” because right now my brain is racing thinking of all the possible things she did with the used condom. I can think of seven things, all of them gross. Eight things. Euw.

I don’t understand why more men aren’t wise to this risk — maybe sex addles their brain. So let me offer a warning to men wishing to avoid any chance of unwanted fatherhood: if a woman disappears to the loo immediately after sex, I suggest you find out exactly what she is up to.

Oh man. This is great stuff. Is she doing a wee to flush the internal piping to mitigate the risk of cystitis, a big poo, or is she stealing recently ejaculated sperm to impregnate herself? You will never trust your ‘feminist’ girlfriend again. Why aren’t men more wise to this risk?

As it turned out, my attempts to get pregnant by Trevor failed, and shortly afterwards he and I split up.

Obviously, I’m no expert, but I think she was doing it wrong.

But my dreams of motherhood persisted, and I resorted to similarly secretive methods to conceive in my next relationship. And given that I was in my early 40s by then, this was an even more urgent situation.
At least on this occasion we were married, which you might think would — should — give a woman every right to want to start a family. But my husband was 14 years younger than me, and he had told me he was not ready for children.

But I didn’t listen. All I heard was my own ticking clock, not his reasonable desire to be allowed to grow up himself first.

Of course, not every woman in my position would resort to extreme measures. But I do believe that any man who moves in with a woman in her late 30s or early 40s should take it as read that she will want to use them to procreate, by fair means or foul, no matter how much she protests otherwise.

Seriously. No. Let’s everyone just calm the fuck down.

A 2001 survey revealed that 42 per cent of women would lie about using contraception in order to get pregnant in spite of their partners’ wishes.

What survey? 42 per cent of women from what demographics? From which mental institutions?

Perhaps my husband should never have married me if he didn’t feel ready for a family. Perhaps I should never have married him. There are always two sides to every dispute, but I think the words I flung at him when we eventually broke up were: ‘You stole my last child-bearing years from me! ’

Perhaps if she’d been honest about wanting children from the get-go, she wouldn’t have had a string of relationships with people who are quite open about the fact they do not want children.

My own attempts at being a ‘sperm stealer’ failed. But there are plenty more like me who are willing to give it a try.
Among my circle, many girlfriends have told me how they have tricked their boyfriend or fiancé or husband. One found herself childless in her 40s, so she lied to a very new boyfriend that she was on the Pill. He is now in a new relationship having to pay support for a child he never sees.
Another friend was engaged but her fiancé walked out on her. She is 39, and told me she was hoping she was pregnant ‘so he would have to come back’. Yet men remain in blissful ignorance of such tactics.

Eek! Her friends sound like horrible selfish self-centred arseholes!

I spoke to several men before writing this article. One, in his mid-30s, has just got engaged to a woman who is 39. He told me he is not yet thinking about starting a family, as he is self-employed and worried about the recession. They also live 45 miles apart, each in their own flat.
He told me he wants to wait until they have a house together, and for his business to become established.
I bet his fiancée will be pregnant within the year.

Bitter, much?

That’s why I believe men should be much more wary. Too many of them underestimate women; too many of them muddle along, swept up in the beady-eyed focus of the prospective middle-aged mum.
And the lengths these women are willing to go to make my half-baked attempts seem amateur. One tells me she used secret hormone injections to make herself more fertile; another uses a clandestine ovulating chart kept in the tea towel drawer (a place she knows her husband never looks in).

There is an app for this. It’s not clandestine, it’s fascinating. It shows your fertility cycle in a useful graph and has flowers on the days that you’re most fertile. It’s great.

I spoke to another friend over the summer who told me she was trying to get pregnant with her fiancé. She said: ‘I really want a year off work. I might even go part-time after that, maybe two days a week. He will just have to work harder.’

Liz Jones’ friends sound like morons.

It reminded me of the time when I asked my now ex-husband whether he was dating again. ‘No, not really,’ he replied. ‘I don’t want to get some woman pregnant, find out she’s a cow, and spend the rest of my life shackled to her.’
Callous? Yes, but given the way some women behave in their quest for motherhood, not totally unjustified.

Err… not ‘some women’ dear, that was you, that was.

So when is a woman most likely to become a sperm-snatcher? If her career is not panning out exactly as she thought it would. If she is 37 or over and childless. If she worries the man might walk out on her. I believe these are the women who are most likely to be panicked into making the decision to get pregnant in whatever way they can.

No, I think you just described yourself and assumed that everyone else is the same. We’re not.

Women today are used to getting what they want; they believe that ‘having it all’ is their right, not a privilege. Women no longer think merely being ‘married’ to their work is in any way satisfactory. Life without a child is seen as a failure.

Umm…. no it really isn’t. It’s a choice, and for some women it’s a choice they’re pretty happy about.

‘Neither of the men knew about my subterfuge. I imagine both will be furious when they read this piece. I still have days now when I wished the sperm-theft had worked; that I had a daughter or son my husband felt compelled to visit’

Argh! This is probably the scariest thing I’ve ever read. Fuck having children because of the joy they bring, the cups of tea they can make, the entertainment factor at Christmas parties, use them to keep a leash on your exes, yes. NO LIZ JONES, NO.

I am resigned to my own childless state now I am in my 50s. What I have learned, though, is that it would have been better to have been honest with my exes about my desire to be a mother.

And therein lies the rub.

Not, I’m ashamed to say, because I think I’d be a particularly good mum, but because our relationship would not have been a complete waste of time, with nothing to show for it but bad memories and a shared cat.

Good, I don’t agree you’d make a particularly good mum either. Fact is I’m glad you never had a child.

Of course, I realise not all women are willing to take such drastic action as me, but I suspect many resort to more subtle means.
A friend in the U.S., who is six months pregnant, has just responded via email with her thoughts on the subject.
I know her relationship with her boyfriend is volatile, so I asked her whether the pregnancy was a joint decision.
‘Well, it was joint, yes. I think so. You have to remember that no man will ever think he is ready for a family. Sometimes you have to push.’
‘Did you steal his sperm?’ I asked.
‘Not in the way you described, no, that’s disgusting. But I stopped taking the Pill, mainly because it was making me fat and moody.’

Finally, one of her mates talks some sense: “No, that’s disgusting.” Yes!

I didn’t reply that I wonder how her boyfriend will feel in a year’s time, when she is fatter and moodier. No matter how urgent that yearning for a child, deception is surely no way to embark on parenthood.

Ooh would you like a saucer of milk to go with that?

We are always debating a woman’s right to her own body and her own destiny, but what about a man’s right to his body, and to his future?
If there are any men out there even contemplating getting close to a woman in her late 30s or early 40s, I suggest you tread very carefully.
She might be the woman for you; she might be totally honest if she says she doesn’t want to rush into motherhood But she might also be a duplicitous creature willing to go to any lengths to fulfil her dreams of having a family.

So there it is in all its gory wonderment. If she was so wealthy and wanted kids so bad, why didn’t she just go to a sperm bank? That way she wouldn’t have to lie to the boyfriend who didn’t trust her or want to have sex with her. I don’t really understand stuff like this, perhaps because I’m 25 and that biological clock isn’t ticking for me at the moment. Maybe one day it will, I’ve got the next 10-20 years to find out, but in the mean time I’m always going to be really honest with the people I form relationships with. Not that I’m an expert or anything, but as a rule of thumb, I tend to be honest and open with the people I like and respect enough in order to form relationships with them.

And I also wouldn’t consider moving in with someone I hadn’t already had sex with, but that might just be me.

Today I got paid. The amount brought me £73 short of £0. Then I paid back some friends who had supported me through tougher times, bringing myself down to -£323. Then I sat and worked out how much I have left of my overdraft for the rest of the month. It’s not pretty. After all my bills and payments have gone out, I have £193 of an overdraft to play with until the next payday. From that money, I want to take Izabela to the small claims court for the deposit she refused to return to me over a year ago (despite asking me to leave the flat, long story). Maybe that will have to wait until next month.

Being in debt is like being strangled by a clever monster. If there’s no chance of a prince coming to rescue you, you can either wriggle free by starving yourself or contort yourself into uncomfortable places until his grip loosens and you can run away. I’ve been in his grip so long that I don’t know anything else. Who cares if someone owes me money, isn’t that all I deserve? Any piece of happiness that shines on me, and it feels exactly like sunshine, the monster knows it and tightens his grip. That’s not for you Carmen, that’s fun, that is. Everything is pain. Every time something good happens, you know you have to pay for it either in money or tears, recently both. After several years, you associate the smallest of kindnesses with having to pay it back later. Friendships turn sour, and suddenly you realise you’d rather be strangled than accept help from anyone ever again.

The monster laughs. He’s got you. He’ll keep you for a lot longer. You’ll be nearly 30 by the time you can even think about touching the floor with the tips of your toes. He’s not done with you yet.

I’ve got to the point where I don’t know if I want things to look up, I just want them to stop looking down. Fuck your holidays and your time off work. Fuck your shoes and your £400 jewellery. You learn to appreciate simple pleasures. Peppermint tea and someone else’s child learning to ride a bike. You’re grateful for abortions, free condoms and the boobs you grew yourself. You pray they’ll hold off heading south for as long as possible.

Still, you try and convince yourself that you’ll get that emergency tax back and that the student loans company won’t arbitrarily decide to fine you £150, that Izabela will have to pay you back. Otherwise I’m stuck here for a very long time.

A child going mad on a computer.

No, neither did I.

I’d like to disseminate inseminate debunk this entire article because it’s easy to do, even without a clever degree or background in science:

Millions of children’s brains could left damaged by computer games a top scientist has warned.

1) Note the “could” not “are” – this is not stating anything. Drinking wine often could lead you to discover the answer to life, the universe, and everything; Learning to knit could make you more sexually appealing to the opposite sex; Eating the crusts could make your hair curly.

2) “Top scientist” – really? This is the woman who damn near bankrupted the RI with unnecessary refurbishments, who repeatedly claims without evidence that children are being damaged by too much media.

Neurologist Baroness Greenfield said yesterday that spending time playing computer games and browsing internet sites such as Facebook could lead to temporary ‘dementia’.

She told attendees at a Dorset conference that an unhealthy addiction to technology could disable connections in the brain, literally ‘blowing the mind.’

3) Again, “could”, not actually claiming anything. Here, let me try another example: “Feeding Carmen lots of Jaffa Cakes could make her more awesome than she already is.” See how easy it is?

4) “Blowing the mind” is a bit vague. I’m currently working my way through Nabokov’s back catalogue. Halfway into Lolita, it’d be fair to say it was “blowing my mind.” I nearly missed my train stop this morning when I got to that bit where the wife dies. <– Spoiler alert.

With children spending around 2,000 hours a year starring at computer screens the health effects have been widely debated.

5) Well, yes. She says one thing, the medical and scientific establishment ask for her evidence. She doesn’t provide any evidence, just repeats the same thing again. People ask for some evidence. Is that a debate? It sounds like an argument with a 5 year old.

Baroness Greenfield – a former director at the Royal Institution, the oldest independent research body in the world – took the opportunity to outline the dangers at the opening of a £2.5 million science center at Sherbourne Girls’ school.

DEMENTIA FACTS
Dementia is a syndrome associated with an ongoing decline of the brain and its abilities
Memory, thinking, language, understanding, judgement can be affected
In England there are currently 570,000 people living with dementia – that number is expected to double over the next 30 years
Usually dementia occurs in people who are 65 or over
There is no cure and symptoms usually get worse over time
Find out more at www.nhs.uk

6) No link between dementia and children here. Why is that number expected to double? Is that because people are typically living longer?

Although she acknowledged that certain technologies can encourage creativity the baroness said the overall effects are negative.
‘Screen technologies cause high arousal which in turn activates the brain system’s underlying addiction. This results in the attraction of yet more screen-based activity.
She revealed that connections in the brain ‘can be temporarily disabled by activities with a strong sensory content – ‘blowing the mind’.
‘Or they can be inactivated permanently by degeneration – i.e.dementia.’

7) “High arousal” -really? Screen based activity, as opposed to reading a squarely formatted alternative form of media that has been around for centuries. Ummm… books? Which, incidentally, made me need to wear glasses from the age of 7. I spent my entire childhood with my nose buried in books, I didn’t need flickering screens to damage my health. I spend a large part of my day glued to various screens, the computer at work, my smartphone, I tend to watch a film when I get in from work while I’m cooking dinner, and I consider myself to be more articulate, more aware of the world around me etc as a result. If I get dementia when I’m older, please remind me to eat my hat.

As well as ‘dementia’ she said other symptoms could include shortened attention span and a tendency for reckless behaviour.

8) When have children ever had long attention spans? They’re children! They are meant to have short attention spans and be hyper and throw tantrums and do things that would be considered reckless as an adult, like fall over whilst running, or play kiss-chase, or eat all the sweets that Granny gives you in one go, even though you told them no. That’s what children do. This is not a new phenomenon.

The baroness also warned that many people are now living their lives through applications such as Facebook.

9) WHERE’S THE EVIDENCE? I’d be really interested to see some stats on social media vs real life social interactions, because I use social media to supplement my real life social interactions, and I’m pretty sure most of my friends do as well. I find out about interesting art shows, gigs, conferences, meetups, parties, and protests all through Facebook. Hashtags on Twitter give fast, up to date information on news and events going on around the world. And if I’m at a loss for what to do of a weekend, OK Cupid now lets me see the profiles of complete strangers in my local area in case I need a date. I haven’t had the need to use that last one yet, but it’s nice to know about.

She added: ‘What does it say about their identity if they are defining themselves by how others see them?

10) As opposed to wearing nice clothes and high heels and getting your photo in glossy magazines?

“As the first woman appointed to the role, Lady Greenfield was credited with lightening up the “fuddy duddy” RI.

With a love of designer clothes, she became a regular feature on television, radio and in print, even posing in Vogue and Hello.”

Lifted from an article in The Telegraph

Again, there seems to be nothing to back up this claim that people define themselves by how others see them. I define myself in my head and then act in a way that gives other people an impression of me, and it seems to closely tie in with the way I see myself in my head. I love live music, I go out to gigs a lot, other people get the impression of me that I love live music. I am in control of how they see me because I communicate in real life and on the internet about the gigs I go to sometimes. She seems to be making a bold statement about how people use the internet and then passing judgement on the people in her statement without realising that she’s made it up.

‘There is a need to be outside, to climb trees and feel the grass under you feet and in your face.’

11) I don’t particularly want to feel grass in my face. As far back as I remember, if grass was in my face it was generally considered to be A Bad Thing.

All in all, this is a ridiculous article. I’ve written about it a couple of times, about how technology etc is corrupting our youth. I don’t think it is. I have no evidence to suggest either way, but at least I’m saying quite candidly that I have no evidence. Why is the tiny matter of providing evidence to backup outrageous claims not given more weight? It’s pretty simple.

40 Days for Life wrote about a mistake I made on the Internet – click on that if you want to see the 40 Days for Life blog, which is pretty interesting reading if you have all the patience of a piece of rock. I don’t, so meh. They rightly point out that these were not, in fact, images of aborted foetuses. They are what your potentially aborted foetus might already look like, in case you were thinking of aborting it. I suppose the inference is that if only you were aware that terminating a pregnancy would end the life of your unborn child, then you might reconsider, based on a book written in the Bronze Age when times were simpler and you could kill children for any of these reasons here.

Praying for an end to offering hope? Sickos.

I’m no expert on comedy, so I’m not really sure what these guys are getting at, other than pointing out that I can’t tell the difference between an aborted foetus and a model of a foetus, perhaps because I’ve never seen an aborted foetus. Is that funny? I have seen foetuses in jars at different stages of development at the Hunterian Museum in Holborn, and can vouch that those look approximately the same as the models this nun was standing next to. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing amusing in there, but then I’m no Michael McIntyre.

Just in case they were angling for me to make a public apology though, here it is:

Dear 40 Days for Life (who is the best person to address my apology to? You seem to comment as ‘Anonymous’ on other people’s blogs, are you embarrassed of your views?), I am really sorry I mistook your plastic foetuses as a graphic representation of aborted foetuses while you were standing outside a pregnancy advice centre handing out leaflets with irrelevant and misleading information on abortions (and what BPAS actually do in the building you’re standing outside of, which is not abortions). I am really sorry you don’t have the inclination to differentiate facts from your own personal interpretation of a holy book. But most of all, I’m really sorry that it takes two godless atheists on the Internet to show compassion and love towards others like what Jesus taught.

Me mistaking plastic foetuses for aborted foetuses was my mistake and I own up to it here. Using guilt, intimidation, misinformation, and dodgy statistics as a campaign strategy, however, is even worse.

And FYI,

1. I’m not “supporting” 40 Days of Treats, I helped start it.
2. Yes, I do have problems with my eyesight, hence the glasses (as you can see from my Twitter profile picture).
3. There was no blood on the hands of anyone in the BPAS office in Central London, they don’t do abortions there.
4. Yes, your ridiculous blog post made me laugh.

Carmen xx

PS: Everyone loves Cake!

It actually took me 4 1/2 hours to finish that last sentence.

Right, here we go.  A few days ago on my way into work I noticed some people protesting. Ever the protest enthusiast, I thought I’d take a quick look. Imagine, then, my shock and horror to discover these were anti-choice so-called “pro lifers” protesting about a woman’s right to choose! I know right? In the 21st Century and everything. FALE.

I posted some kind of rage on my Facebook that a couple of people responded to. The lovely Jim Turner said:

Carmen, do ’40 days of treating the staff of BPAS’, and get people to chip in. I’m good for a Chupa Chups tree.

And then the marvellous Liz said:

Also, I’m up for giving the BPAS staff treats

And so a mini campaign was born.

The first day, I took round some Jaffa Cakes (my personal favourite). The receptionist I spoke to on the phone (before I went out for confection) thought it was hilarious and absolutely had no problem with me buying them sweets. When I dropped them round, Marguerite, their lovely office manager came out to thank me and we had a right old natter about it.

Then, yesterday, I received an email from the commissioning editor of G2 Magazine. Having been misquoth’d by the Grauniad before, I was pretty careful in wording my email to her, and consequently wasn’t at all surprised when they didn’t use anything I’d said, as it was pretty bloody boring:

So there you have it, my side of the story.

You can read the Grauniad’s take here.

My mate Tessa posted a rather good write up here too.

Please do follow @40daysoftreats on Twitter and send us messages of support that we can pass on to BPAS. The work these people and others do is so important, it doesn’t take much to show our appreciation!

Incidentally, if anyone would like to buy ME some Jaffa Cakes, I am all up for that.

The title of this blog post relates to this video here, which some viewers may find offensive. Enjoy!

Carmen x x x