Last week, just as the
Movember moustaches began to take root (really, you haven’t shaved all month? Ok…I like your
shadow moustache), a story came out in the news connecting the contraceptive pill to the rise in Western countries prostate cancer cases.
Newspapers and blogs reported that careless women had been taking their contraceptive pill and then
peeing. Peeing
everywhere. Contributing to a rise in the water’s oestrogen levels, water men drink. This in turn meant more men seemed to be developing prostate cancer. Well, you could you sci-fi it?
There are many factors that pop up in life demonstrating you’re growing up. Graduation, or your first job, perhaps. Your first 2 day hangover. Catching yourself bleating on about how children behaved in your day. For me it is watching musicians I loved grow into total, middle aged, politically incorrect buffoons.
I’m not sure I’m ready to discuss Morrissey. And besides, the recent un-Morrissey-esque (oh spellcheck, that IS a word) thing Morrissey did was to allow John Lewis to use The Smiths track ‘Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want’. Yes it is a dreadful cover blablabla, get over it, Morrissey’s got to keep himself in tofu.
No, this time it’s Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins fame.
Mabel Elliott
Finally leaving the list of unsung women is spy catcher Mabel Elliott, previously only cited as an unknown heroine. Mabel Elliott’s name and achievements have recently been uncovered in the Royal Society of Chemistry archives.
In 1915 Elliott found messages were being sent undercover by a German agent. Elliott gave evidence under the name Maud Phillips protect her identity. The need for a different name when dealing with such espionage contributed to Mabel Elliott’s continued anonymity and lack of recognition until the archive finding.
Fluent in German and Dutch, Elliott worked for the War Ministry in London as a censor of letters. It was Elliott who intercepted the letter sent to Holland that revealed a spy network. The letters detailed British shipping and troop movements and were written by the German spy, Anton Kuepferle. Kuepferle had based himself in Liverpool under the pretence he was an American citizen.
Many an evening in St Andrews was whiled away looking through my great granny’s Woman’s Weekly collection. I recall they used to have pages advertising salt and pepper wigs with names such as Rascal. My granny lived on a quiet housing estate, there wasn’t much going on, what can I say? You find your own entertainment.
Today Woman’s Weekly is 100 years old. The first issue was unleashed on an unsuspecting public on the 4th of November 1911 for 1d (one old penny). The magazine was the first to be written for the ordinary woman, not “women of Mayfair and the lady who lives in the castle”. This week IPC media reprinted this first issue in its entirety so we can see, over the past 100 years, how things have changed.
Photo: Emagine Art
So I am assuming we’ve all read Liz Jones’ article today in the Daily Mail, 'The craving for a baby that drives women to the ultimate deception', time has passed and you’re now able to close your mouths. Having toyed with the idea of a spoof article by Jiz Loans I realised that A) some things are too ridiculous to parody. And B) far better to try and use it for good, not as a warning to men that all women post 35 are baby crazy but that they will soon be able to take more responsibility regarding contraception.
Last month’s
Future Contraception Initiative conference has revealed we are on the brink of the male contraceptive and it is no longer just a hypothetical pill dismissed by women who insist men would forget to take it.
Orot pupils in their immodest uniform
School girls in Bet Shemesh ranging from the age of 6 to 12 from an Orthodox Jewish community are being harassed on their way to school by grown men from an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, Haredim. The men call the little girls sluts and whores and throw faeces as their mothers walk them to the school gates.
I heard a report about this on the eve of Yom Kippur on the Today programme (I realise I seem to shoehorn some kind of shout out to the BBC in every piece I do) which you can listen to
here but was unable to find any more coverage until today (proving my google skills aren’t up to much, the BBC [oh, HAI BBC] posted a
report on the 10th). Harriet Sherwood in the today’s Guardian has also broached the
subject.
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