Original Thinkers of Our Times
May. 27th, 2004 09:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liadnanThe Today programme this morning had several slots on various aspects of the obesity report put out yesterday, the very last item being Norman Tebbit and Boris Johnston, not that I could quite understand why (I was in the whosershower when they started).
According to Uncle Norm, the rise in obesity is due to this government "doing everything it can to encourage buggery".
Que? Something about destruction of the family it seems.
Cue Humphries effectively telling him to shut up and Boris coming out with some polite variant on "what a load of rubbish". Oh, and then he started banging on about how it used to be possible to bring up families on one income so the woman (obvs) could stay at home, but mercifully the beeps came. Honestly, why do we give these loonies airtime? And why does anyone care? Same goes for Princess Michael of Kent. Why does anyone care? One can usually get even fairly devout royalists to admit that she's particularly stupid, ignorant, arrogant and unpleasant so why the surprise? The only question is why Her Lizzyness allows a relatively third-rate royal who by all accounts she personally dislikes; with a cloud over her re use of grace and favour apartments and a habit worst than Philip's of opening her mouth before engaging what it pleases her to call a brain; to do these junkets at all.
Heigh ho. Been fairly busy, went to see Almodovar's Bad Education with Anna-who-lives-upstairs Tuesday (worth seeing, full of Almodovar's usual things, perhaps not his best though) and dinner with the lovely Frankie last night.
Was coming out of the Winding-Up court yesterday morning in full get-up and a very cute member of a party of American tourists/exchange lawyers/whatever who were wandering through the costume exhibition evidently thought I looked great. Remind me to see if I can change my vote in the internal survey on court dress to keeping wig and gown... (though it would be better if we came out of mourning for Queen Anne (? I think) and went back to red robes).
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 02:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 02:29 am (UTC)PS If I were them, I'd change the name to the PitCairn Island. Embedded capitals are the way forward.
PPS Or just 'The Colonies', if only because it sounds like a holiday home that way.
PPPS Can you imagine if the government really did do everything it could to encourage buggery? Blimey.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 03:22 am (UTC)Utopia!
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Date: 2004-05-27 04:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 05:24 am (UTC)Nice pun, by the way.
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Date: 2004-05-27 05:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 06:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 07:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 02:22 am (UTC)And as for Princess Michael of Kent, I'd imagine she falls neatly into the very small yet funky ven diagram space for both 'people who are royal' and 'people who will come on Today'. Remember, in broadcasting people being stupid is a Very Good Thing. Because with any luck it provokes a reaction.
Anyway, you have to come to my party on June 19th! You don't have to sing though. But you can if you want.
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Date: 2004-05-27 02:28 am (UTC)Am coming to your party of course.
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Date: 2004-05-27 02:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 03:00 am (UTC)Well, so it did (and not just for middle-class people, either - my grandfather, a bricklayer, promised my grandmother when they got married that she would never have to work again, and she never did). It's not clear to me whether that was because people accepted a lower standard of living, though, or whether average/median earnings really haven't kept pace with inflation. Certainly my grandparents managed to have a second home, hobbies and, latterly, an annual holiday abroad, so their standard of living wasn't at all bad. I think it should be possible for more people to have a one-earner household and still have a decent standard of living, and I do worry that an increasing prevalence of double-income nuclear families may be having a deflationary effect on wages and therefore making the choice to be a single-income family more difficult. I don't have the economic data or training to know if my worry is borne out by the facts, though.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 03:48 am (UTC)I'm not complaining or harking back to simpler times, just saving money at the moment and realising how much of what I spend is actually unnecessary.
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Date: 2004-05-27 06:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 07:26 am (UTC)And see http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/002730.html for an example of a similar problem.
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Date: 2004-05-28 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 03:05 am (UTC)Help! Get me out of this mad headspace! I don't *want* to understand what he meant!
no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 03:16 am (UTC)(I think he really meant homosexuality---> collapse of traditional society--->collapse of family life---> people eat crap.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 03:26 am (UTC)homosexuality --> men without women to cook them dinner --> men eat crap --> men get fat
There's also:
homosexuality --> women without men to marry (cos they're all shacked up with other men) --> women going out to work --> women not having time to cook their own dinners --> women get fat
no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 04:35 am (UTC)Is this you or you channelling Tebbit?
Besides everyone knows:
marriage --> men and women get fat
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Date: 2004-05-27 04:38 am (UTC)Oh, come on.
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Date: 2004-05-27 04:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 04:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 05:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 05:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 05:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 05:14 am (UTC)Arguments with you often seem to leave me looking in perplexity at the metaphorical roadmap, but it's more traditional to blame you for everything than it is Fionna, whether or not you were actually involved. You know this.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 05:12 am (UTC)And only then the buggery.
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Date: 2004-05-27 05:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 05:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 05:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-27 03:30 pm (UTC)