So I remain puzzled as to why those who wish to raise money for charity do so by undertaking completely pointless activities, such as running, swimming or trekking long distances overseas.  I cannot see why we should give money to charity so that they can do something they want to do anyway, which is of no benefit to anyone else.  I prefer to donate direct to the charity, if asked by a friend, and not link my donation to the activity they are undertaking, especially if it is risky to health. I have sometimes suggested that they might prefer to do something useful, like chores for elderly neighbours, if they want sponsorship, (remember bob a job?) but they prefer doing what they enjoy. 

Contrast with that the current nomination list for the annual Dods Parliamentary Charity Champion Award – http://www.charitychampionawards.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=30&Itemid=16.  The nominees have actually undertaken an activity for their favoured charity.  The runners and the activists equally have hearts of gold and the best intentions, but how much more sensible to act to make a difference to your chosen charity or your community.

I was prompted to write this after reading this morning that President Obama has voiced disapproval of US golf clubs which restrict membership to men.  He is of course right because a golf club is not just about playing golf, but about business, networking and prestige.  We have an issue in this country about the Pall Mall clubs. There are a few that are for one sex only, which is fine as long as they are purely social.  But take as an example of one that was not, the Oxford & Cambridge Club.  At a time when the two universities were going completely co-ed, and striving to give the message that women students were treated equally with men, the O&C Club in the 1990s resolutely stuck to a men only policy, and women associate members, whether Oxbridge graduates or female relatives of members, were relegated to the basement and told to stay there.  The protest against this policy culminated in the resignation from the club of both vice-chancellors and nearly every head of the colleges in both universities, but it took from start to finish several years to get the club to change its rules.  If its essence was graduation from Oxford and Cambridge, and those two universities treated men and women the same, then the club could do no less.

The outstanding  issue of lack of balance is women on the boards of companies.  Only 14% of places on the FTSE boards are held by women.  Headhunters, often themselves women, advise that unless one has extensive experience in business, one cannot aspire to a non-exec position.  Women’s roles, which they hold in great numbers,  in running public organisations, hospitals etc. with budgets of billions, count for nothing in the competition.  Not that one would want to do it, but the female perspective in business would improve its success, I venture.

This is what I found at a well known store.  A medium Cornish pasty, 671 calories, 63 carbs, 37g fat, 3.2g salt.  Cost £3.40.  At nearby Macdonalds, they gave me their printed list of nutrition breakdown facts.  For roughly the same price you could get 2 hamburgers, with fewer calories, fat and salt.  There is considerable criticism of hamburgers for being unhealthy, so why this sudden rush to defend the price of pasties?  Perhaps if the government had presented the price rise as similar to the extra tax on cigarettes, to deter unhealthy practices, it might have been more acceptable.

My own comments were largely about Poland, the only major European and postcommunist country which has no legislation to deal with the property seized by the Nazis and the Communists.  TheAustrian compensation scheme is regarded as best practice in this field - http://en.nationalfonds.org. 

This is what Lord Janner planned to say:

“My Lords, in July 2009, I brought into the Lords, a bill for the Restoration of Looted Art, and it was supported from all sides of the House – and I thank the Honourable Lady – my dear friend, Baroness Deech – for bringing this vital question to the Lords, this evening.

 I wish to declare my sad interest. My entire family, who had remained in Latvia and in Lithuania, were all murdered by the Nazis, and they had all their possessions stolen by their killers. So – sadly – I understand, very well, the need for survivors and their descendants to be able to reclaim at least some of what they had lost and had stolen from them.

 In 2009, as Chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust, I joined our previous Government’s delegation at the Holocaust Era Assets Conference in Prague, for the signing of the Terezin Declaration. It was attended by 47 nations. It was a conference that underlined the urgent need for a restitution of a range of assets, for families of victims of the Holocaust – a process which began with the Nazi Gold Conference, here in London, in 1997, hosted by Robin Cook, who was then our Shadow Foreign Minister.

Now – three years later – we must ensure that this vital testimony is being compiled and fulfilled.  Sadly, we recognise that there is a rise in Anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in too many parts of Europe. The Terezin Declaration spoke of the moral duty of all Nations. Lord Howarth, on 8^th of May 2000, addressed the House of Lords, and said;

“The Government are determined to set an example of how a civilised society should conduct itself in making possible redress for historic wrongs committed during the Nazi era…”—[ Official Report, 8 May 2000; Vol. 349, c. 491.]

So, I now ask our Government, to continue to show our determination and to instruct countries of their responsibility to ensure that survivors, families and all those victimised will receive, what is rightfully theirs.

 This urgent issue must be discussed and followed up – as the brutality of the Holocaust ended in 1945, some 67 years ago. Over the past 15 years, representatives from these countries have met together to discuss Holocaust Assets. And even then, only a part of the confiscated property has been recovered, or, compensated.

 Justice has no deadline – and we must thrive to promise that all the nations who signed the Terezin Declaration, in 2009, are ethically bound to return the stolen or lost property, to those individuals and families, who suffered from the Holocaust.

 We must all join together in these efforts to seek restitution.”

In reply the Minister said that the UK would indeed do all it could at the next Terezin Declaration follow up conference later this year.

And, incredibly,  Lord Pearson’s amendment to ensure that students from all parts of the UK are treated equally by Scottish universities in relation to fees was lost.

First the snobbery.  We do indeed all take it for granted that on Sunday the electricity is on, the water  and gas flow, and that emergency services, such as police and ambulances will be there to assist us if necessary.  We want to go to the cinema, restaurants, the park, concerts, the pub, the gym and the garage as on every other day.   So what is the problem about shopping? It seems to centre on a view of the family as gathered together all day Sunday after church, and workers having a day of rest.  Whether one likes it or not, churchgoing is less than universal, and families can gather, if they wish to, on any day of the week that suits them.  Workers may take a different day off.  In fact, it seems from my observations, that families are often together enjoying a day out shopping on Sunday, the only day when they can go together to choose a major item.

The sexism in this is that objections to longer Sunday opening hours appear to come in the most from men.  They are quite happy to have the pub, sport and the garage on Sunday as usual, but I suppose don’t want their wives out when they might be required at home to make lunch.  Cooking, visiting relatives, laundry and childcare are all taken for granted on Sundays.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all women downed tools at home on Sunday on the ground that it was a day of rest?  What working women want is a day when they can catch up with the shopping and other tasks impossible to perform during the working week – shopping number one, preferably with another family member; and if only hairdressers and dry cleaners and post offices were open too, one might manage a more stressfree week in general.  Here’s to the success of the longer Sunday opening hours!

One of the most interesting and controversial recommendations of the Report was that the way the BBC handles complaints from its audience should be clarified, speeded up and more objective.  Some thought that all complaints should ultimately be settled by OFCOM, others that the last word should lie with an external Ombudsman (most public services and industries today have an Ombudsman to give an impartial ruling on complaints). The BBC response to this recommendation was unenthusiastic, but it is now moving towards a review of complaints handling.

The Select Committee on Communications was set up by the House in 2006 and its establishment was, to quote Lord Fowler, “a triumphant piece of good judgment by the House, for we are now living through the most tumultuous period in media history in modern memory.” Now and in the next few years we are all involved with the issues of phone hacking, the Leveson Inquiry, injunctions, digital technology, social media, broadband, plurality of media ownership, the freedom of journalists to report in war zones (remembering the terrible death of Marie Colvin in Syria), a big new Communications Bill and the renewal of the BBC Charter.  Never was it more important to have a Lords Committee examining these matters and questioning the government about them.  Yet rumours abound that the Communications Committee is to be wound up and replaced by a series of ad hoc committees looking at media issues.  This would be a failure of responsibility and a diminution of democracy.  Ad hoc committees would be too much under government control, for the ministers would choose the topics, whereas the Select Committee chooses its own subjects for survey.  They would also lose the continuity, collective memory and expertise of the staff and the Committee members.  Nor would such a move save money.  It should be recalled that Select Committees  belong to the House, not to the Government.  I can think of no innocent reason for wanting to disband the Committee, and there will be a terrific fight if anyone tries to.

I feel ashamed of our national spending priorities.  £81m on the ceremonies is very nearly the amount that the government was trying to save in benefits today; and frequently I read of expensive new cancer treatment drugs that we cannot afford.  Everyone has their shopping list. To put Olympics spending ahead of housing and health is perverse.  Bread and circuses.

For the death of the King, who was very well liked, also signified the end of the second world war period, with which he and the late Queen Mother were forever to be associated.  There were still bombed out houses in our part of the world, and ration books, but the Elizabethan age was about to dawn, and we knew it.  The early fifties were marked not only by a change of monarch (and how hard it was to get used to singing God Save the Queen in place of the King!) but by a new sense of modernity and the opening up of opportunities.  The queues for food seemed to diminish, houses were patched up, clothes became more colourful, and cars and TV began to appear (though not for us, and it really didn’t matter). The legacy of the Festival of Britain, just a year earlier, was a fantastic cultural life in London. It was all free: the British Museum, the art galleries, and the wonderful local library, where it was so exciting finally to be allowed to borrow books from the adult section, having worked one’s way through the children’s section. I travelled in the underground and on the buses frequently on my own at age 10 or so, and never experienced any difficulty.  The new welfare state was at its best: our eyes, hearing and teeth were checked at school, and we were well taken care of physically as well as intellectually.  My primary school knew that the 11+ was the route out and up, and so it proved.  

A holiday at Folkestone or on the Isle of Wight was all that one could possibly want, although I was fortunate in that my parents took me to the continent of Europe, by ferry, at an early age.  This helped me educationally, especially as it made me less self conscious when it came to speaking French than some other children who had never left England.    We gathered round the big wooden radio to listen to the Home Service and the Light Programme  - children’s hour, good plays, great comedy, Educating Archie, Music and Movement at school, 20 Questions, Jennings, Top of the Form - it all opened my eyes to the world beyond home.  I had a set of Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia and I read The Children’s Newspaper, Girl comic, and Little Lulu comic, sent by a friend in the USA; my mother and I read Great Expectations as we sat by the coal fire. I had pen pals whom I never met, and went to Saturday morning children’s cinema and played hopscotch in the street.

We were all monarchists too: there was no reason not to be. I collected pictures of the young Princesses for my scrapbook and noted the new head on the stamps in my stamp album. The only unpleasantness I recall were the smogs caused by pollution, and having to walk to school unable to see more than a yard ahead.  Life was hard for the adults, especially the women, but to be a child in London when the Queen came to the throne was a privilege indeed. And how I have enjoyed writing this!

There have been conflicting stories in the press this week about how and whether the government intends to change the law in order to ensure that both parents see more of their children after divorce.  Some reports said that there would be introduced a legal presumption of equally shared parenting; others that it would not go this far but that there would be encouragement of equal access, or visitation rights.

In the Family Justice Review 2011 the proposal that England adopt the shared parenting law as applied in Australia was rejected, because reports from Australia indicate that judges found it difficult to apply and divorce cases there were dominated by decisions about how much time each parent would be entitled to see the child. The Review concluded that the courts here should continue to apply the principle of the paramountcy of the welfare of the child.  It is often reported that 40% of children lose all contact with their fathers after divorce.  Lobby groups for separated and divorced fathers blame this on the law; other studies indicate that even where fathers are granted legal access, they simply fail to show up when the children are expecting a visit.  As the divorced fathers make a new relationship with another woman, who may have her own children, they distance themselves from their children of the earlier relationship. Wherever the blame lies, there is no doubt that children suffer from the loss of a father after divorce, and that over 100,000 children fall into this category every year. There are probably more because this takes no account of children affected by the breakup of parents who are not married but cohabiting or were always single.

This relates to my post Against my Will, where I repeated my objections to attempts to make the law of marriage apply to cohabitants who do not want to or cannot marry.  I heard recently of the growth of a new practice by men, nicknamed the “Hugh Grant” syndrome.  That is, they take care not to marry or live with the mother of their child, or girlfriend, because they fear that once married or cohabiting, their assets are vulnerable to the law and that a split will expose half of their property and income to transfer to the woman.  (It could be the other way round where the woman is wealthier than the man.) They see maintenance law as unfair and so uncertain that its application by lawyers will in itself cost thousands of pounds.  Maintenance law has become a field where women with well-off husbands seek someone to fund the litigation in return for a cut of the proceeds. This is a really bad result for the children involved.  The solution is not to apply the existing unfair and uncertain marriage law to cohabitants, but to simplify the existing law and make it fair to men and women in a society where women can and do earn a living and where, sadly, relationship breakdown is all too common and unsurprising.