[mutual support monday] magnificent day

As we awake to the new working week, let's declare today magnificent Monday, mutual support Monday, when we concentrate all our mental energies on positivity and block all attempts to bring us down. Today is going to be a lovely day and we're going to do at least one nice thing in the middle of the rest of the mayhem.

[the blair agenda] the inexorable militarization of society

Chicken Yoghurt’s current toon

Chicken Yoghurt has a category under “pet peeves” called the evil of banality. This is a nice switcheroo of the quote about Eichmann. My last post is so banal it bores and will doubtless attract few readers today.

Yet it is so glaringly obvious for those who would see – this is the progressive militarization of society and is in accordance with [which is NOT the same as saying ‘directed by’] the hidden power which is not Blair [he’s just the puppet who does their will]. I’m more than aware that each blogger has his ranting topic [e.g. managerialism, erosion of rights etc.] and mine is the hidden power.

Every single move by the Blair government, from the quiet acceptance of judicial decisions favouring the perpetrator to the NHS Spine to the EU Beast [which they brazenly and openly state and Blair favours], every move of Bush and Cheney, the provocation of the Muslim world which let loose the crazies onto the west, thereby giving the Power the terrorist justification for draconian legislation, the erosion of all moral values, supplanted by the acquisitive instinct as paramount – all of it points to a momentum directed against the family and the individual human being.

All of you write about these things each day but don’t tackle the Power behind it. You have your reasons. As for me, I’ll keep writing until they shut me down or feel I’m sufficiently marginalized not to bother about [then they’ll pick me up later when my readership drops to 20 or so].

[big brother] of espionage and road pricing

Toll station requiring e-cards which they euphemistically label "e-z cards"

Gavin Ayling writes of Road Spying and clearly the issue hasn’t reached some people’s consciousness yet. Gavin writes: If you:

• care about civil liberties
• drive a car/motorcycle/van
• rely, ever, on anyone who does (plumber, carpenter, gardener, Royal Mail)
• ever break the speed limit

... which most people will do all of, then sign the Road Pricing Petition!

A commenter, Benvolio Foster, queries: How is this an issue of Civil Liberty?

Your current poster responds: Because, Benvolio, it's the coupling of road pricing PLUS tracking. It's the tracking they've slipped in there virtually unnoticed and that is a major issue of civil liberty. They could easily have a drop bin at turnpikes or a man on a window and true, he could note vehicle reg they're looking for but the plastic card e-system stinks. It is police state tactics.

The rule of thumb with absolutely anything the outgoing New Labour is doing is to look at the fine print and see which civil issue is coupled or tacked on at the end. Fortunately, there are a few eagle-eyed bloggers about who see these things and THAT is one of the prime reasons for blogging and blogsurfing.

[modern mother speaks out] to marry or to co-habit

Morag has just bent my mind on a topic I’ve been itching to get stats on – marriage versus cohabiting.

She asks: What does this topic have to do with politics?

I say: Everything! It’s symptomatic of the whole screwball way our society has gone.

She continues: So, however much we don’t like it, there are some home-truths we might need to face up to. Here are a few things we may want to think about:

• Unions where people are cohabiting are more likely to break up than marriages.

• Most such unions last less than 2 years before breaking up (or sometimes changing to marriage)

• Co-habitations with children are more likely to end

• 50% of women who have children in a cohabitating relationship will end up as lone-unmarried mothers

• Looking at children born in 1997 show that 70% of those born into households where their parents are married will spend their entire childhood with both their parents, whereas only 36 % of those children born into cohabiting households will have that experience. (*Civitas.org.uk goes into all this in more detail)

More than anything children crave stability. Also there are often very radical financial consequences which cause additional changes and far-reaching repercussions for a very young child to deal with. I have walked this path and continue to do so. Morag is just a parent trying to close the distance between what we read in the papers and what we live in our own lives.

There’s nothing really to add to this.

[breastfeeding] does it make children smarter

Are breastfed children smarter? Three Scottish scientists say the evidence points in both directions, making a definitive conclusion impossible. They found that breastfed children scored higher on measures of cognitive functioning than other kids. The key question is what accounts for the higher score?

Is it something intrinsic in mother's milk or in the profoundly physical and emotional act of breastfeeding itself? Are long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids in mother's milk important for the development of the central nervous system and intelligence or is it the intimate contact between a mother and her baby while breastfeeding that might affect the brain's development in ways still not understood?

Previous research has indicated that premature infants realise larger gains in mental functioning after being breastfed than full-term babies, suggesting that this form of nutrition might be particularly important for neurological development. Against that, "Children who were breastfed had mothers with higher IQ and with more education and who were older, less likely to be in poverty or to smoke and more likely to provide a more stimulating and supportive home environment," the reserchers wrote.

And for all mums, including those fighting for the right to breastfeed in public without being hassled, the truth remains: "It's almost always better to breastfeed, without exception, even though we don't know all the answers to all the questions we have about its impact," said Brenda Snyder, breastfeeding coordinator for the Illinois Department of Human Services.

Maybe we should just think about it one moment. Which would you rather feed on – a piece of rubber or something more natural and which would leave you feeling warmer and happier afterwards?

[royal family] glastonbury, roslyn and the grail

Prince William and friends

I was puzzling over the significance of Glastonbury for William and Roslyn Chapel for the Queen but now it’s a bit clearer.

Sothely glastenbury is the holyest erth of england. loseph Ab Arimathia, with his sone losefes, went into Fraunce to seynt Phylyp and he sent Joseph and his sone with others into Brytayne & at last they came to a place then called Inswytryn, nowe called glastonburye (Prose Life of Joseph [1516]; ed. Skeat, pp. 33-4.)

In the late twelfth century Joseph's name turns up in the French Grail romances when, in an early continuation of Chretien de Troyes' unfinished poem Perceval ou Le Conte du Graal, it is narrated that the nebulous object described by Chretien is none other than the very dish in which Joseph collected Christ's blood after the Crucifixion - the elusive Grail is seen in the continuation as a relic from the Crucifixion.

Shortly before 1200 Robert de Boron wrote a five-part sequence of poems concerning the complete history of the Grail and its travels from the Holy Land to Britain. Later, in Perlesvaus, it’s related that Joseph collected the Holy Blood at the time of the Crucifixion and was later imprisoned by the Jews for burying Jesus.

Miraculously escaping from prison Joseph travelled to Britain where he became the ancestor of an unbroken line of valiant knights. When Perlesvaus departed from this castle he took Joseph's body with him on the red-cross ship which carried him to the Other World.

Read on for some snippets about our royals and other goodies …