Introducing Sea Trek III
Jen and I are about to embark on another sailing journey on our new yacht Sea Trek III, a Savage 46 commonly known as an Oceanic 46. This this time we are heading north to the tropics, in other words a left turn out of Sydney Harbour, I’ll double check that with Jen, as last time we went north we ended up landing in Hobart, perhaps I installed the chart-plotter upside down!
It Seems As If Anything I Like Is Either Illegal, Immoral, or Fattening |.
Alexander Woollcott? W. C. Fields? Frank Rand of St. Louis? Anonymous?
Dear Quote Investigator: The candor of my favorite saying makes it wonderfully humorous. Here are three versions I have seen:
The backlash to the Federal Government’s single parent welfare cuts is a sign of the public’s softening attitude towards sole parents, writes Adele Horin.
The latest blow against sole parents executed by the Labor Government is part of a long tradition of punishing and stigmatising single mothers that goes back to colonial times.
A single woman’s pregnancy has historically been regarded as a social catastrophe. Right up to the 1970s hysterical parents shipped their pregnant daughters off to distant relatives or to institutions called asylums, refuges or mother and baby homes.
Even after feminism, higher divorce rates, and changing sexual mores, single mothers continued to be the butt of hostile public attitudes and punitive government policies. Their status merely changed from fallen woman to welfare bludger.
But in the summer of 2013, tentative signs of a softening of public attitude towards sole parents emerged that may have taken the Gillard Government by surprise.
The Government has found itself on the defensive in its policy that will eventually shift around 110,000 sole parents from the Parenting Payment to the poverty-level Newstart Allowance once their youngest child turns eight.
For a start, the Government has not been able to rely on the usual allies in the episodic wars against sole mothers – the tabloid television media. Both a barometer and shaper of public attitudes, programs such as A Current Affair and Today Tonight have come round to a more balanced representation of sole parents.
Typical of A Current Affair’s past coverage of sole parents were its 2010 programs, Cosmetic Mum, about an 18-year-old single mother who hoped to go to Malaysia for nip-and-tuck surgery to get her body back in shape; and Cashing In With Centrelink about gaming the social security system.
But in November 2012 in its program Single Parents, ACA declaimed:
They’re the drastic welfare cuts that are set to take hundreds of millions of dollars from single mums across the country. Now these mothers fight for a fair go.
And in December in Single Mums, ACA told viewers that “for more than 100,00 single mums New Year’s day won’t be a time for celebration.. They’ll have their welfare payments slashed.”
Samantha Seymour, a 44-year-old mother of eight-year-old twins, with a degree (and until recently a good part-time job) was one of the mothers featured and she bore no resemblance to what she calls “the Coke-drinking stereotype”. As organiser of the nationwide sole parent rallies held on February 5, she said, “The media portrayed us in a good light.”
Today Tonight underwent a similar conversion from its 2011 outings, Faring Well On Welfare and Centrelink’s Singles Dobbed In (about sole parents with alleged secret partners), to the more sympathetic – if misnamed – Baby Bonus Busted. It highlighted the plight of three “intelligent” single parents as the program called them, who would be affected by the “severe government cutbacks”.
It would be wrong to call this a new dawn; plenty of the comments left on the programs’ websites revealed the usual hatred and prejudices. (Much was made of one sole mother’s manicured nails.) And it is possible loathing for the Government even exceeds loathing for sole parents, making any initiative a target for the Labor haters.
But Terese Edwards, chief executive officer of the National Council of Single Mothers and Their Children, with more than a decade in social welfare campaigning, was so struck by the more sympathetic community attitude that emerged over the summer that she emailed Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Bill Shorten warning of what she called “a noticeable change in the terrain”. This included more “more sympathetic and positive messaging from the media…” and “more expansive media interest”.
Baba Yaga’s House | The Sunday Edition with Michael Enright | CBC Radio.
(David Gutnick / CB)
Thérèse Clerc has a moon face, bright eyes and 14 grandchildren. She makes a mean veal stew. And at 85, she’s one of the most stubborn feminists in all of France. After spending decades fighting for the right to run her own life, she’s determined to hold onto it.
When Thérèse was in her mid-60s, she started to think hard about getting old, about how and where she wanted to live, and with whom. She visited state-run seniors’ residences, poked around cafeterias and chatted with women in their rooms.
What she found enraged her. No one was going to tell her what to eat and when to turn the television off. Thérèse spoke to her friends, and a tightly knit group of aging feminists had suddenly found a new cause.
The women began lobbying French politicians to fund an experiment: a women’s-only seniors’ home that the women would run themselves.
Well … it took thirteen years. But this week their dream will become reality.
Nineteen women in their sixties, seventies and eighties are beginning to move into a newly-constructed six story home – in the Paris suburb of Montreuil .
Baba Yaga’s House was produced by David Gutnick.
Cover of: Histoire véritable
Histoire véritable
by Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat baron de 6 editions (1 ebook) – first published in 1902
A Comprehensive Collection of Eyes from the internet
Forty-something (late forty-something) from Sydney, Australia.
The modest successor to the "Floating Life" blogs
Urban wildlife photography
from the ELDERWOMAN in the WORKERS' COTTAGE. THIS WAY HOME .
Places, People, Feelings...
here's looking at you, babe. the second myriad
The Diary of a Retiree
live in the moments that matter
Andrikken
Encyclopedia Miscellaneous - 'quality' blogging since August 2011
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