Our straight talking Lancashire lass takes a sideways look at the daily news.
Him indoors, Facebook, and rogue pigs
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Here’s an interesting question for you: should men get as much paternal leave as women to help care for their babies?
After screwing students over in the worst way possible, it seems that Nick Clegg is trying to score brownie points and get back into our political pants by proposing majorly generous paternity leave packages.
In a recent speech, Clegg outlined plans to encourage more men to take time off work to care for their children – a policy that stems from one of Labour’s reforms.
Needless to say many will welcome these proposals, but the business community fears that shared paternal leave would be an ‘obstacle to job creation’ – after all, we are smack bang in the middle of a nasty recession.
On the other hand, families with young children face increasing pressures: the staggering cost of childcare, working increasingly long hours and coping with the soaring cost of living.
A recent report from the think tank Demos shows that one in eight fathers work over 60 hours a week, and the number of working mums has trebled from one in six in 1951, to two out of every three in 2011. So maybe a little warm compassion will go a long way in these cold economic times?
In other news, I was mightily pleased to read that Colin Firth has received a Golden Globe Award for his portrayal of George VI in The King’s Speech. He has a real knack for period dramas. I remember watching the BBC adaptation of Pride & Prejudice with my mum and grandma – three generations drooling as Mr Darcy walked out of that big pond in nothing but his Regency underwear, codpiece and all. Truly beautiful stuff.
The other big winner of the Globes was David Fincher’s The Social Network that charts the phenomenal success of Facebook, which scooped four awards and was hailed as the ‘modern day Citizen Cane’.
Ah Facebook, the Web 2.0 thing that has wormed it’s way into every aspect of our lives. With over 500 million users, of whom 50% log on everyday, it’s actually quite scary. Collectively we spend over 700 billion minutes per month checking our profiles and being nosey.
But I do wonder whether this is a good thing. I have a healthy FB profile (or unhealthy FB habit, depending on which way you look at it). Everything, from an evening spent watching the world’s worst Michael Jackson tribute act and my dislike of Glee, to what I cooked for dinner is plonked online. Sad, I know.
The thing is, I’m ‘friends’ with most of my friends. So when I actually catch up them in reality, there is little to report because we’ve already read about what we’ve been doing on Facebook. The only things left to share are the darkest thoughts in the innermost recesses of our minds, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to go down that road.
So has Facebook killed the art of conversation? Probably not in my case, I can still talk for England.
And finally, if you like in Southampton and you see a couple of pot-bellied Vietnamese pigs on the rampage, don’t panic, but do call the RSPCA.
Officers believe the pigs escaped during a massive barmy between their owners. One can only begin to imagine the hell those pigs must have witnessed for them to scarper like that. Unless they started to smell bacon?
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Colin Firth looking as comfortable as ever there!