Hello and welcome. This weeks entry coming from the patented Blogger scheduler because as those of you who have followed this blog and possibly may belong to 'Angels' know I do have a 'littles' side and that side of me is on a very much child-like vacation this week which being twenty-seventeen I can just come out and say that to you all.
There are couple of things I do want to talk a little about of which the first is I do welcome the consultation over the 2004 Gender Recognition Act and the noises coming from government making the process less intrusive because while that Act was a breakthrough at the time non the less it was still centred around a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, the sense in which you feel distress that your sex (aka your physical body) does not match your sense of Gender such as gender identity and gender role.
This was common associated with the process of transition -usually medical involving hormones and often surgery too to give you the legal identity of the gender you 'belonged' to and legal recourse during the process of transition in areas of civil and employment law.
I do feel moves that allow more for those who may not wish to go down the route (or perhaps cannot for variety of reasons) of medical transition should be able to get certification of being and wishing to be regarded in law as the gender they are with full legal rights.
The other thing is Periscope the Twitter app used by teens.
I don't wish to sound like a boring groan up but I do question the idea of allowing a thirteen year old the ability to in effect broadcast 'anything' online with no transmission delay and patently limited by nature moderation especially when coupled to GPS information on exactly where they are. It's practically impossible to monitor in real time every user and there is worrying evidence of it being for inappropriate sexual contact and grooming by pedophiles who know exactly where to find them.
Let's face it. Would any of us be allowed to run a radio or tv channel as a young teen with NO person to pull the plug if either we did something wrong or a person we were interviewing got out of hand? No, we wouldn't - we wouldn't be allowed unsupervised airspace so just what are doing allowing this???
One thing that's been in the news here are new regulations governing gender stereotyping in advertising be it in print, on tv or online which have brought many varied responses from people.
Most of us can agree some of of these stereotypes such as mom at home, dad at work or dad does things for himself, mom cooks and runs the house are out of date, do promote less co-operative ideas about how males and females can get on productively and so shouldn't be pushed to children still forming their own ideas.
There are still some situations though where certain scenes generally won't happen.
That whole necessary conversation between daughter and mom as they play would never be the same even if we had dad playing with dolls with her so should a ad like this from nineteen sixty-five be banned or totally degendered if someone came up with something similar?
Equally is there anything wrong in itself with an ad showing a boy engrossed repairing a bike with dad or an uncle where often there's more going on than fixing the bike, like fixing how to be the best boy and in time being the best adult male he can?
I'm totally for gender neutral play and fighting the tyranny of pink and blue but this kind of relating actual aids kids form relationships and make good connections with adults that help move them on in time toward maturity.
This week I'm doing an old school post rather like the last bunch were but as was always the case on Daytime Office Girl Crisis around one of other core topics, music and my collection.
Soul music is something I like being very much brought up on that from the nineteen sixties and seventies and this group from New York were one I've always been partial to.
As a overall compilation that one on the UK's Kent soul label is a s good as gets for sound quality but when I get deep into something I really mine catalogues especially when they are of such high quality.
This set of two albums originally issued in 1970 and 1972 respectively was re-issued in two-fer form in 2010 by Superbird, a division of Cherry Red records in the UK featuring the hit single "Everybody Plays The Fool".
Expansion Records who tackle more specialist soul reissues in the UK, released their 1975 and 1976 albums Rolling Down A Mountainside which was ten 10 R&B hit 45 in 1974 and Music Maximus albums on a two-fer
A number of soul albums on RCA's catalogue were issued in the nineteen seventies in discrete four channel (Quadraphonic) tape and CD4 records.
in 2016 the enterprising UK company Vocalion, were able to license both the stereo and quad mixes of the 1974 Euphrates River for a super audio cd (playable on regular cd equipment in stereo only) which includes their version of Summer Breeze covered also the Isley Bros. The album reached #8 on the R&B chart.
This regular 2 on 1 cd presents the 1975 album Shame on the World with the 1981 album I only have eyes for you with its minor hit Evening Of Love which was their last album for RCA Records.
This is being written in bits as I'm feeling very warm at the minute and to be honest there are couple of things I could of blogged about this week but I'm choosing one that's topical and I think worth mulling over.
As much as I dislike 'soundbites' there was one on Thursday I felt worth looking at and it's from a 'marmite' politician where President Trump of the States said "The future of Western civilization is at stake" before stating the following question: "The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive."
What he had in mind when it came to the threat was both political and religiously motivated terrorism and extremism that rejected liberal democratic values, such as free speech, free and fair elections, an independent justice system free from political and religious interference and the use of terrorism to bring those societies that support such principals within its orbit.
The is little denying groups such as Isis do explicitly reject what we call western values believing in a single World-wide Islamic state that is a Theocracy rather than a Democracy that operates to its interpretation of that religion and to which it alone runs justice to its own so-called Sharia Law standards.
The usual and mainly left-wing explanation of their terrorist inspired activities in the west is one of fighting the actions of Western Governments in conflicts that affect them such as in Syria and Iran and in recent past Iraq and Afghanistan by bring death and disruption to our streets. "If only we'd of left them alone" it is at least implied "we'd not of seen the recent incidents in London, Manchester and Paris".
I'm not a fan of such 'interventions' not least as they typical don't have a endplan in place but I do wonder if the aim isn't actually wider wanting to whatever means to transplant its ideology on our soil and us terror was a kind of warfare to remove political and legal obstacles at best giving them the upper hand when it comes to us looking after our own interests around the world?
There is a concern that once a parallel legal system is permitted even in a limited form, you erode the common stock of legal rights that are the birth right all living and born in our society. We may cherish our diversity but what of it when elements of it such as the rights of women and lgbtqi rights it may in effect be denied to groups within it?
Just how much of our moral, cultural and liberal democratic values as a society should we be be prepared actively to keep from people who either don't share them or even wish to take them away?
This kind of conundrum is the very thing a society like ours, liberal and diverse needs to think about so while I don't hold much with the man, maybe it'll start a debate where we do arrive at a consensus around these questions.
Happy Dominion/Canada Day folks! 150 years-way to go,eh?
Following on from last weeks 100% political post which was so old school when it comes to this blogs history, we have made some sort of progress with the Conservatives and the DUP agreeing to the supply agreement so it's likely the Queen's Speech will be carried and a number of actions in it supported although it should be recognized this is no formal coalition so expect a few bumps along the way.
Connected with that the UK Government has set out ideas around how it sees the protection of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU human rights to be protected and while there is more common ground than one might think, there are differences around if full EU Rights should remain the UK where it doesn't apply them for its own and who should be the final arbitrator in the case of a dispute, the UK Supreme Court or the European Court of Justice? They may need to be a halfway house.
Moving beyond that which as we addressed last year, for this blog to go forward I need to be able to talk about parts of my life that moved centre stage to it since the blog was started, I do take part in a Little's Chat night and we talked about children's television and in particular how the recent death of Brian Cant who narrated the Camberwick Green, Trumpton,and Chigley trilogy of cartoons set in Trumptonshire in the nineteen sixties (repeated into the nineteen-seventies) and also was a present on the Play away and Play school programs for young children left us.
These shows were a part of our childhood and many of us felt close to their stars.
Finally and something I hadn't spoken much of on this blog, I have been reading a lot around "Crossdreaming" as that applies to those of us who are transgendered, such as Felix Conrad's publications, the Transcend and Crossdreamers websites CrossDreamers .
I find much of what is said there speaks more to me than mainstream transgender narratives not least the thorny debates between those who see transsexuality as a totally separate thing and those of us who see it as a part of a wider continuum of gender identity and roles.
