On her 60th birthday, 16 October, Baroness Brinton asked the Minister, Lord Freud, what steps the government were taking to address unemployment amongst older women. The Baroness suggested that unemployment amongst older women was rocketing. The statistics given by the Minister, however, were encouraging. He said that the unemployment rate amongst women aged 5-64 was only 3.9%, the lowest unemployment rate for any age group – although other statistics suggest that women are losing their jobs at a faster rate than men. The high employment rate is welcome news: certainly it would not have been the case in our mothers’ generation that women were expecting to work long after their children had left home. In the 1940s the Civil Service and the LCC made women give up their jobs on marriage. Now, it seems that 75% of women work outside the home, but about half of them do so part-time. The problems of childcare and flexible working are well documented.
The House of Lords is a rather good example of older women “at work”. The average age of women members is 67 (men 70), and there are many office holders amongst them, including the Speaker. Lady Trumpington will be 90 on Tuesday, Baroness Warnock is 88, Baroness Boothroyd 83, Baroness Howe is 82, so is Baroness (Shirley) Williams, and Baroness Gardner is 85 – I hope they will forgive me for mentioning their ages, but I do so in order to point out that their contributions to the House are magnificent and they are on excellent form. So advanced age is no bar to contribution to debates and committees, although I do support a retirement age for peers, simply in order to reduce the numbers.
How unlike the BBC. I was reminded of the lack of older women in authoritative positions on screen (although there are plenty on the BBC executive) when watching the second Obama-Mitney debate. It was mediated by Candy Crowley, CNN’s chief political correspondent. She is a perfectly nice normal looking woman in her 60s, but you would never see her like in charge of an important debate on British TV.
Miriam O’Reilly and Harriet Harman complained about it earlier this year, and Mark Thompson agreed that there is reluctance to show older women, especially ordinary looking ones, on TV at all. So we are deprived of seeing much of Lady Bakewell, whose contributions to the Lords are so important; of Libby Purves, who seems to be mostly confined to radio
, as is Gillian Reynolds, and of Anna Ford
Instead of seeing these exceptional women delivering the news and talking about it, we see male reporters of no particularly pleasing appearance . . .
Time to follow the US lead.
Many ages of People need to be ‘praised’. Yes.
Alas! the noble baroness is one of those who believe(in), and promote,
“the higher paid your job
performing skills chosen by an Employer
in the Economic-Workplace,
the better your personal and Godly identity, and your private-profiteerings,
and your official “social-mobility”
[yes, the noble lady is but one of unfortunate billions of professional-people and ordinary-folk who have been tricked into conflating ‘vertical-economic-ladder-climbing-and-safeniche-securing’ with ‘social/neighbourly/humandevelopmental-progress and sustainworthiness’].
No.
————-
First become proficient and increasingly sustainworthy as a human-being,
conserving both Renewable-Lifeforms and Webs, and Non-Renewable Life-Lifesupports; in the 75% Lifeplace.
———
Let me suggest, absolutely non-profit-wise:
Read or simply dip-into some of the published and proven advances in human-development
such as
“Effort” (Laban & Lawrence 1948) page 45ff;
“Six Thinking Hats” (de Bono) Note the Blue;
“How To Win Every Argument”(Pirie)Note “Why”;
“Awareness Heals” (Shafarman) Note guidances.
————
That’s also now the only way anyone is going to maintain theirself both fit-for-Life (sustain-worthy)and fit-for-a-workplace (sustainably).
I agree and that is why I do not want to see Peers who are over a certain age driven out of the Lords. Baroness Shaprles is 89 and Baroness Knight of Collingtree is 85 and as you mention the wonderful Baroness Trumpington is 90 shortly. Old age brings wisdom and experience which should be highly valued.
It’s remarkable the number of times I’ve heard female politicians complaining about job losses as though women were somehow disproportionately represented in the figures. The last time I looked the m/f unemployment rates were ~1.5m/1m. As women are disproportionately employment in the public sector where job security is historically much greater those figures are unsurprising.
You know what gets me in all this jobs for the old girls banter is, why don’t you ask the people who have to listen to them if this is what they want to turn on to?
The selfishness toward those who pay the licence fee for a start. Do the people look forward to the older, menopausal woman of a morning, noon or night? Jamming the day with fake familiarity and pretend sexual connotation?
The only one I liked was Moira Stuart. She always looked nice and spoke so cleanly, she has a serious bent and didn’t soak up the air time with the ridiculous idea her cleavage was going to be a draw, or, her legs needed to be in our face as a prize. Why they ever got rid of her is an enigma.
And why must it once again be judged on what they have between their legs? They are either good at the job and deserving of it or not. Most of those chosen are not. They make you squirm. Just as some of the old boys do. They have them around far too long.
Radio is a little more acceptable when they have a good comforting voice. Why should the licence fee payer be stuck with a duff because they have to fill some idiotic quota set up by politically correct elitist clowns. And didn’t the Tories sell the voter on the idea they were above this kind of lunacy. It was all the Labour crew who were full of jobs for the friends who have no talent?
And follow the USA? Shall we take a look at what they have to offer in the female stakes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM1LguVFans&feature=related
And the one who is their best presenter ever. Barbara Walters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp5h_0puRCg
Then there is Connie Chung
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R19QmSnKANE&feature=related
All these women have had as many face lifts as the well known singer MJ. The lighting wasn’t enough to make them acceptable. But, it’s not their looks it’s the sound of their voice and the pop pop of machine gun speak.
And of course the wonnerful Ellen Degeneres.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on3JCwnwHbU
Enjoy!
Old age brings wisdom and experience which should be highly valued.
What is rather worse is the stranglehold that very old men presenters seem to exercise on the BBC production teams, so long after their sell-by dates that one wonders whether they have in reality been brought back from the morgue.
I am not thinking in particular of Savile either. Any number of them are well beyond their retirement dates and should give way
to provide work for men(or as the BD says, women), fifty or sixty years younger.
That said, lout news presenters who are merely there because their fathers or grandfathers were news producers before them,
should not be included.
There should be far, far more open competition for BBC jobs, and not be the very obviously closed, shops that they are at the moment.
yes that would be correct of the said minister who said not many out of a job ,but did you ask whot about those on lower wages they dont sign on because of the hassle they get rather relying on their partners wages to tide them over so those below a certain wage dont sign on they rather go without jeff3
Jeffrey Davies, has something here. What most people don’t take into account about the push of women to work outside their home and those at the top being forced onto boards, whether they are up to it or not, is, the push of women into the work force has doubled the amount of people requiring jobs.
So, when you have high numbers of people looking for work, what happens? Well, it lowers the wage level for entire nation. And that is how the wealthy have been able to quadruple their stash in the last thirty years.
It is a con people. Most of the jobs they claim have been made by this new bunch with their austerity tactics is, part time jobs on minimum wage, shelf filling, McDonalds grease cleaning and floor sweeping. By forcing those collecting unemployment into starvation to fill them. And that doesn’t lower the tax bill one iota. It is all done with mirrors. The game they are playing, and playing it hard, is to reduce the wage level to third world standard.
A man is no longer able to earn a living wage that will support a wife and family. And the reason for that is, they more than doubled the work force. Women forced to work when often they want to stay home with family, as that job is twenty four hours, and on top of that, massive immigration levels. Voila. Two birds with one stone.
The standard of living across the board has fallen dramatically since the seventies. It was designed to do just that. And the reason was, to make those at the top of the financial tree disproportionally able to soak up the profits like a blotter. Where did you think the money came from for them to get a larger slice of the pie? Productivity my rear end. The productivity of the Western world was outsourced to the places where they get slave labour to do it cheaper. India, China, Indonesia, etc..
What the people of this country should start doing, is, stop buying altogether. Everything made outside of Europe, where you know the pay levels are holding down the rest of our people, especially our young, should be ‘sanctioned’ never touched, passed over and if need be go without. That way, if they can’t sell the cheap stuff they bring in for us to pay through the nose for, they will be unable to continue to use this as a means to keep us in poverty.
So, women must realise this cry for so called equality, which if you really look at it, is not at all equal, the very reverse is the truth. And we should shun the con. At that point women will find their standard of living, eventually, will improve as not so much of the weight they are presently carrying will be on their shoulders. It will be shared more ‘equally.’
That is the real issue here not whether there are more women in radio and TV, for what I hear when I listen is, in fact, more female voices than male. If you doubt that is correct, get a pad when you listen or see what’s on and write down how many times it is a female voice rather than male. Take prime note of the news. And whilst you are at it, see how many of the voices and shows are made up of Americans pushing their life style your way. That will be an eye opener.
After the Today programme this morning there was an hour long farce on American immigration coming from a university in Texas. Where they claimed the audience wanted ‘more immigration’ and had their eye on an open door policy for the USA.
Now that is the biggest snow job I have yet heard. The American people are fiercely against more immigration. And anyone who has regular contact with people there will know it. It is all a way to reduce the pay levels of American citizens even further.
Slave labour is what they want.
Here is the intellectual argument.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRgUL4Xz68Y
But, that is the flim flam. On the ground it is considerable lowering of the living standards of our fellow countryman.
Hear the lines in this discussion that tells us, with immigration you cannot have a welfare state. That means, what we pay our taxes to the state for is no longer to take care of ourselves when the cards are down. It is now for the enhancement of the wealthy and those at the top.
This is never divulged to the general public. They lie about the reality of their policies. They don’t tell you that your taxes are no longer and insurance against destitution for you as a result of their policies put forward for us all to swallow. And yet, they want to force us to go on paying the treasury at the levels we have today.
This is why there has to be openness in our political society rather than the subjugation of the truth the people, who are paying to make this state function, are suffering.
When listening to this, remember, it was the American Indian who was the indigenous people of that land. Unlike here and Europe.
It seems Lord Bichard has employment for the lady’s of the house he wants to send them out to the stink and filth of the homes of the elderly incontinent, their floors strewn with the detritus of despair and loneliness.
These elderly are ‘healthy’ compared with what’s coming down the line, an epidemic of ill health and poverty not caused by life style choices but by women who think they are the equal of men and who should have all their opportunities in life.
Women belong in the home!
Where they are safe from a society of predatory men that would grope them and treat them as sexual objects. But what happens when these objects become pregnant. They go to work so that they can waste their money on things they don’t really need whilst the babies they carry in their womb are starving of the nutrition and vitamins that will prevent their unborn from developing diabetes and other dreadful diseases in later life.
These women will do nothing because they are too big to fail. They support a huge global industry that pampers and feeds their vanity. Huge sums feed into the supply side so that the NHS can treat the symptoms of illness rather than the cause.
Give your unborn child a break – return to the kitchen sink.
How the First Nine Months Shape the Rest of Your Life
Time Magazine: Annie Murphy Paul, Oct 4, 2010
http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/dept/mailman/ccceh/pdf-press/Time10-4-10.pdf
HoL: Select Committee on Public Service and Demographic Change
Public Service and Demographic Change, October 9, 2012
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/lords-committees/Demographicchange/ucPSD091012Ev2.pdf
ROTFWL, Senex, you almost hit it on the nail there.
Now for a little balance to your well put outburst.
Political moves, over the last thirty years in particular, have driven the weight or onus of responsibility onto the female in society. The encouragement of single family life, rather than lessening the burden on women, has forced them into a fierce struggle for that wonderful prize, emloyment. This is created by politics that suggest women who choose to raise their children themselves, as their fear of state nurseries, foreign nannies who lack the ability to call an ambulance in critical situations, let alone feed, dress and converse with the child, during the long hours parents are no longer home, is no longer considered enough status for said women. No, our feminists believe they must have brain stimulus. A homelife and children is demeaning for a mother. But of course, not demeaning for said nanny or ‘child minder.’ Funny that. It’s a ‘career’ if you are coping with other peoples children, but, a lowering of status if you care for your own. Please put me right if I’m wrong here.
No, they must have a ‘career’ or they are slighted by societies cry for women to have maximum income and b*****r the kids. Let them roam in an unruly and uncaring fashion through the towns and cities, akin to the Brazialian ferral kids left to supply child fanciers with easy access.
Most of these ladies who are forced into the labour market would love to be tied to the kitchen sink as our splendid poster, Senex, tells us it is. What a relief that would be. Rather than rushing to make breakfast, dress, put in a buggy and pull another along at a rate an Olympian would meet, in order to get the right bus on time, she may be able to have breakfast herself. Now there’s a novel idea, a treat not remembered in many a year.
Then that thrill after spending the day worrying sick about the children, who cry silently at departure, and thinking maybe they are being molested, stuck in a corner or pushed aside as a nuisance, by some half wit, who has little or no interest at all in them, you finally are able to see they are in tact. As you rush home and find the dwelling house in complete chaos the way you left it some thriteen hours ago. And after having made a cooked, not bought fast food GM product, and the overseeing of bathing routine, bedtime story and laundry attendance, you begin the real days work. It’s called house cleaning, piles of laundry, getting tomorrows groceries, and making every effort to keep up with GP visits the latest stories on food contamination and whatever else crops up. At about midnight you can then run a bath for yourself in order to rid the skin of the days filth. You then idle the time away as you imagine how nice it would be to have a cleaning lady and an in house nanny whom you may be able to trust to do all you have to do, on an office girls held down wage.
This office administration job now being the social high life of your world. Not any longer the kitchen sink for you, you have the improved status of the office ‘yummy mummy’ who cannot take time to go to the pub with the boys, as that kitchen sink we long to get away from, looms large as we wish we were tied to it rather than the leering joker in the top office who wants inside your shorts.
Oh, yes, what a wonderful new life we women have bought ourselves. The husband we dreamed of, who was down to earth and devoted, has p****d off to greener grass with the junior model who wears a thong which makes him unable to beat that thing, as he claimes he is madly in love at last.
Hs child support payments being secondary to his nights out and her need for spray tan to keep him errect.
I could go on Senex, but, it is wearing. So, I will leave you to mull over the rest of it.
And it is all done in the name of, equality. And of course, a cheaper work force.
Along with a doubling of the work force by pushing women into a career they must have outside the home, we have mass immigration and that little spoken of thing, laying off from jobs as a result of techonology and outsourcing. All designed to lower the cost of production and move the new found funds straight into the profit based Caymen Islands where they need it more than us plebs.
How wonderful these feminists have been for the life of the woman. She no longer has to stay tied to that dreaded kitchen sink and those whining children. She can make it alone, have it all, and stay dumb to the regret every minute of her dream for that easier life.
Those were the awful days. When nothing more than idiocy was needed of us and where we used to feel so in need of the ‘career.’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8kJzBJrOkU&feature=related
or simple dinner time banter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3Pwl8jTLK8&feature=related
Political moves, over the last thirty years in particular, have driven the weight or onus of responsibility onto the female in society.
=============
Really? Get knocked up.
1. The state will hand over tens of thousands in benefits. No responsibility
2. If the state can, it will go for the father. OK, it takes two, but shouldn’t you take responsibility for your own reproduction?
3. Retirement. Hmm, retire at 60. Screw the men, they have to work until 65 to get paid.
4. Retirement B. Hmmm, we live longer so we have to have higher retirement payouts. We want more money paid out for less paid in.
5. Jobs. We want 15 years off for children, but when we go back to work, we have to have that board level job even though there are more qualified men.
…
Think its bonkers, swap women for men in the above and ask yourself if you would be happy with that sort of discrimination.
@Blagger:
Now there’s a naughty boy. You may frequent knocking shops, I don’t know they exist.
A: You are talking out of your backside. Are you getting any of these benefits? Directly or indirectly through the women you know? For you seem to have an awuful lot of knowledge of them. Funny how single women with children are top of the league in the poverty stakes isn’t it? With all that benefit going their way you would think they could stash it away in the tax havens of the world, wouldn’t you?
B) Well if men don’t want to impregnate they can take responsibilty for the reckless females they enjoy can’t they. Vasectomy, the male pill, double condoms. You know, take their breeding apparatus and block its ability, or, better still, stay away from pussy riot. That way they cannot be hounded for their money to feed the children can they?
C) When you have given birth to a few kids and feel the sag perhaps you will fully comprehend the weakness of the gentler sex. Until then try not to be so bitter. Your resentment toward this gender is quite unerving.
D)I dissagree with ‘positive discrmination’ as there is nothing positive about it. Although women who give up their ‘career’ to stay home with family deserve early retirment and many other perks women may enjoy because the onus of responsibility that falls on them as the bearer of the future generation. I agree if you want children and a family, you have to sacrifice your daily grind for it, or, end up with something you didn’t put into your business plan. No family at all. However, although personally I would not want a house husband kind of male, many women enjoy men with this leaning. That could be the answer for some like yourself. That way you could stay home and realise all these perks we women get that you have to pay for.
I appreciate the role men play in the support of the women and children in their lives. I know it is a grind. But, like us, Blagger, when they settle for family life, they too have to make sacrifices. And how heavenly it is when they do it with the kind of intensity you are showing here against it. A man is indeed a necessity and a joy. Never let me lead you to believe I feel otherwise.
I adore their heartfelt desire to care for and make happy the women in their lives. I would never want to side step that sense of duty they have.
Dear Baroness,
Life has no age and being free to work at any age in one’s life is a blessing for it shows that the elderly people are motivated to contribute in the destiny of the United Kingdom. It is highly intelligent for experienced people to bring their working experience to the new generation. As one says, show must go on and life is for once only. So let living life go on living.
God bless the United Kingdom. God save the Queen.and the Lords.
Nazma FOURRE
Maude detail is relevant but the big picture is even more so.
The committee has to consider demographic change going forward in time 50, 75 or even a hundred years. The committee is also frustrated by the lack of progress, all they see is the seating being rearranged. They also want to see prevention take a higher profile.
To reveal a truth we must go backwards in time 50, 75, 100 years or more and consider war and women’s emancipation. After the Great War women see a political opportunity and one that men cannot deny them. So they get the vote. When this same war continues in 1939 it all happens again this time the agenda is to seek greater equality in the workplace and life in general. The struggle continues.
Then we come to the big picture concerning Mr Savile. What the Prime Minister should be saying is that Mr Savile’s indiscretions must be weighed against the greater good that was served by his brand both to charities and the needy but he cannot say this.
The reason he cannot say this is because he needs women’s votes. So we might ask the same question of our work experience Chancellor. He is not so much concerned with votes as acquiring the taxes that women pay in their various employments. So what is to be done? Women are both a clear and present danger to themselves and society or so it would seem.
All the elderly members in the house won a lottery the biggest jackpot of their lives.
Whilst they were in their mother’s womb their mothers were doing something right and it has paid dividends.
One could make a strong case that the epidemic of ill health and social care that now has to be funded is the direct result of political change a century ago. God forbid that any women should see her child grow and receive an early death because of illness. But these are issues that belong to women alone and if women will not change their views then men must facilitate political change for them.
How these changes unfold is uncertain but unfold they must. Women as a gender have a duty of care to ensure that their unborn child in later life is blessed with many things but above all good health in longevity. There is no need anymore for a lottery, but women must give way politically to the evidence that is building.
greater equality in the workplace and life in general.
=========
Define equality.
wimmen want it to mean equal numbers, which given the question of less experience if you have time off – means discrimination. Or if its equal numbers but fewer women in that sector, then they invariably mean that its more at the top, out of proportion to the participation.
That’s different from no discrimination on the basis of sex for comparable skills or experience which is the no discrimination test that should be applied.
Define equality.
heh! Heh! I think there is a wiki article defining both the mathematical and political distinctions of the term. There must also be a good many learnéd doctorates on just that.
It is surprising how the notion has evolved since the French revolution; where would Women’s rights be without it, or Eric Blair/George Orwell
and Animal Farm?