Thursday 31 March 2016

All kinds of crazy.

Donald Trump, would-be USA presidential candidate believes that women who have illegal abortions should be punished. 

Stephen Crabb, Secretary of State for Works and Pensions is said to believe that homosexuality is a disease which can be cured. 

There is a priest - or maybe a bishop, I don't remember now - in Spain who has stated that most domestic violence is caused by women. They don't obey their husbands and therefore provoke a violent reaction. 

Well, that all makes sense doesn't it? These people have influence, or at least would like to have influence, on what goes on in the lives of ordinary people. 

Here's a link to an article about a place somewhere along the fence between the USA and Mexico, where families who are divided by that barrier can meet once a month and see each other, maybe pass items through the fencing, but cannot hug.  It's called Friendship Park. 

It's scary how long that barrier has been there and how it has changed. It's worrying that presidents who promise to get rid of it long ago failed to do so. It's very frightening to think that Donald Trump would like to make it even stronger and more impenetrable. Goodbye, Friendship Park. 

Mind you, he has said today that he would not rule out using nuclear weapons against Europe. Goodbye, special relationship. So he can contemplate such a possibility but other countries are to be prevented from developing nuclear capabilities. Hmmm! 

That's enough of that! Here's a possibly more frivolous bit of outrage and indignation: 

Marks and Spencer, that eminently sensible store, has been criticised by the fashion mogul Pierre Bergé and by France's women's rights minister for including a burkini in their range of swimwear. 

A burkini is an outfit that women can wear to go swimming which covers their arms and legs and has a hood so that their hair can also be hidden from view. Now, I don't want to purchase such a thing but then I don't want to purchase a bikini either. However, so long as nobody forces me to wear either of these I have no objection to their being on sale? And why shouldn't Marks and Spencer, and other clothing stores as well, cater for all tastes and a range of cultures? 

It would seem that it's OK for fashion to make lots of money selling all sorts of ridiculous items - pre-ripped jeans, for example - but only of they conform to certain norms. 

And, while I am getting all worked up about prejudice and discrimination and nonsense, here's a link to a few tales of men and women working in education and being treated differently when their modelling jobs on the side are discovered. 

The world is a crazy and increasingly unfair place. 

Oh, and here's a cartoon about the right to wear guns at the Republican Convention in the USA. 

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