I'm Lazy Jane. I live in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Time has flewn is an apt discription of my life thus far - I seem to be forever lost in thought, and consequently spend much of my time in vain trying to catch up.
"How did it get so late so soon?
It's night before it's afternoon.
December is here before it's June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?" - Dr. Suess
This is mostly a BBC Sherlock and Doctor Who blog (you have been warned). I also post food, politics and art. All aboard!
Over 175 years ago, a society hostess called Caroline Norton began campaigning for the rights of married women. Her husband had stopped her from seeing her children and had accused her of having an affair with the Prime Minister of the day.
New Database Allows Britons To See If Ancestors Owned Slaves
LONDON — A new database launched Wednesday lets Britons uncover uncomfortable information:whether their ancestors owned slaves.
Researchers at University College London spent three years compiling a searchable listing of thousands of people who received compensation for loss of their “possessions” when slave ownership was outlawed by Britain in 1833.
Some 46,000 people were paid a total of 20 million pounds – the equivalent of 40 percent of all annual government spending at the time – after the freeing of slaves in British colonies in the Caribbean, Mauritius, and southern Africa.
Their descendants include writers Graham Greene and George Orwell. Orwell’s real name wasEric Blair, and the trustees of his great-grandfather, Charles Blair, were paid 4,442 pounds for 218 slaves on a plantation in Jamaica.
Research associate Keith McClelland said the project would help show how the legacy of slavery still affects Britain.
He says 10 percent of wealthy 19th-century Britons were directly connected to the slave trade, and proceeds helped build railways, businesses, buildings, and art collections that still exist today.
“You are talking about a very important component of the British economy from the 17th century onwards,” McClelland said.
Britain’s Parliament abolished the slave trade in 1807, but slavery itself was not outlawed in its colonies until 26 years later. The United States followed in 1865 and Brazil in 1888.
In 2006, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed “deep sorrow” for Britain’s role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, though some felt that fell short of a full apology. The next year he said: “I have said we’re sorry and I say it again now.”
well, well, well, white folks
you know what this post was missing?
This is important. For a long time I assumed that because my family is poor, my ancestors must not have own slaves. Actually, I come from a long line of slaveholders, going back to at least the 1700s. My family may be poor now, but my ancestors LITERALLY profited from owning black people. Realizing that gave me a much deeper understanding of how directly I have benefited from slavery.
A recording of Princess Elizabeth - than aged 20, speaking at Empire Day celebrations in London in 1946.
As a history geek I find this fascinating. Things have changed, yet somehow stayed the same.
Milkman during the Blitz, 1940
WEDNESDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2012Any two people in the UK should be able to marry. The proposal is a modest one. Why then does it provoke such opposition from those like Lord Carey, who knows from his own experience “how wonderful marriage can be” and yet argues against gay citizens enjoying an equivalent marital bliss.
He thinks that samegender marriages would “undermine the institution” and weaken it “fatally”. Does that mean that Lady Carey and he would have been less happy together if I, married to my husband, had been living next door?
Marriage has been a beneficial institution of long standing, worldwide. It has, though, been open to regrettable interpretation – child brides, brides promising to obey, polygamy, arranged marriages, the ban on mixed-race unions. Laws were changed and what is good about marriage has survived. It continues to thrive in South Africa, where same-gender marriage is protected by the constitution. Would it not be just the same in the UK?
As an antidote to those heterosexuals who have brought marriage into disrepute and whom Lord Carey condemns, why doesn’t he now welcome gay couples who want to accept its challenges? Not all gay people will choose to marry, of course. I bet Sir Elton and David, their son in hand, would be amongst the first. But why not celebrate those who want to marry and bring up a family? Why not change the law so more can do so?
Lord Carey grants us our civil partnerships but no more. What’s wrong with us? Should we not aspire to domestic happiness? Why can’t our relationships be recognised on a par with everyone else’s? Lord Carey does not “begrudge rights and benefits to homosexual couples” yet he says that the idea of equality between gay and straight people is “the mantra of the equalities industry”.
As one of the co-founders of Stone-wall I am familiar with such hints of homophobia. Stonewall has indeed pressured successive governments but Lord Carey has misunderstood our argument for equality, when he defines it as “being equal means being the same”. On his more generous days, I’m sure Lord Carey would accept that all human beings are the same in being God’s children.
A gay atheist shouldn’t delve into theology. Same or not, all I want is to be treated equally under the law.
Lord Carey admits that marriage does not belong to the Church (indeed pre-dates it), yet it’s as if somehow he owned marriage, that his definition was the only legally permissable one. But he surely goes way too far in opposing same-gender marriage because “it will encourage religious discrimination”. He unconvincingly cites the fining of a Christian couple who would not shelter a gay couple in their bed-and-breakfast. “No queers welcome” has a nasty ring to it.
Dr Carey’s trump card is a leftover from slavery, capital punishment, votes for women: “I do not believe the British public wants any of this.” A Prime Minister on this issue should lead and not follow any supposed public opinion to the contrary. Anyway the British have accepted civil partnerships and may well support a humane and clear-sighted view of society, embracing anyone who wants to get married, for their own benefit and indeed for the nation’s, regardless of race, belief or gender.
By Ian McKellen
(Source: fuckyeahsirianmckellen)
It looks more Asia than Britain to me. Besides the whole EXTERMINAAATE thing…
That’s at Waterloo tube station I think. Opposite McD’s.
(Source: eyepatchesandpipes)
Now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony
Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?British and German troops celebrate Christmas during the 1914 ceasefire.
