How difficult is it to know how to treat people with respect? #MeToo

I am angry. I'm writing this hoping it will make me feel less angry.

I realised last night that the anger has been growing - ever since the Weinstein story broke - and the last straw was this:

Disgraced former defence secretary Michael Fallon telling a female BBC reporter that sexual harassment was “acceptable” 10 or 15 years ago.

No, it wasn’t. It was never acceptable. Why is that even something that needs to be said?

Sugar and spice and all things nice… thoughts on No More Boys and Girls

Gender-neutral 1960s Christmas present.

So I’m watching No More Boys And Girls on the BBC, a heartwarming story about how a teacher and a doctor help children to develop beyond the gender stereotypes that our culture tries to limit them to.
 
And I can’t understand why someone would disagree with this.

Record Store Day, and the fetishisation of vinyl

Husband's guitar, my Gene Vincent LP

It’s Record Store Day today. “What’s Record Store Day” asked Husband when I mentioned it.

My first answer was “Where have you been for the last ten years?” My second answer was: “It used to be about people who liked music but now it’s about people who like money.”

The Reunion: Women of Punk

I don’t listen to Radio 4 that often because I’m not that posh, but I was quite excited to find out about a programme called Women of Punk last week. It was part of a series called The Reunion which “reunites a group of people intimately involved in a moment of modern history”.

Social media, real life and giving up Facebook for Lent

It’s nearly Easter and soon I will be able to go back on Facebook. I’m not sure if I’ll bother.

Never mind the Bagpuss, here’s the Pingwings

Some time in the 1990s when I bought my first Windows computer, it came with a Pingu screensaver and game, which I thought was pretty cool. Everyone knows about Pingu but I sometimes wonder if I am the only person who remembers the Pingwings. Sometimes I think I imagined them, but no, they did exist, and at least one other person remembers them too.

Book review: The Lost Women of Rock Music

I sometimes find myself having to explain punk rock to women my own age who weren’t part of it. On one occasion, someone said to me: why did you like punk, wasn’t it very male and aggressive?

On the contrary, I said, punk was great for women because lots of women were making music where they had not had the chance before. I’ve always believed in this line and until recently it never crossed my mind that after punk this didn’t really carry on.

Expert Women – the answer to Middle-Aged White Bloke Night?

The good news. The BBC is advertising for women to join a pool of experts available for interview on their specialist subject. They are putting on  a free “media familiarisation day” for women experts interested in appearing on television, radio and online as contributors or presenters.

The bad news. They’ve got a whole list of things they want experts in, but “music” isn’t one. “Women in music” is.

Fuller working lives – thank you, but I’ve already had one

Today the government has announced a new strategy under the title Fuller Working Lives for getting older people back into the workplace. “Calling on employers to boost the number of older workers and ensure they are not writing people off once they reach a certain age,” they say. That’s nice of them because everyone my age knows what it’s like to get knocked back when looking for work.

So what is the government actually  going to do to help us?