Nearly every discussion of the Greek fiasco is based on a morality play. Call it Naughty Greece versus Noble Europe. Those troublesome Greeks never belonged in the euro, runs this story. Once inside, they got themselves into a big fat mess – and now it’s up to Europe to sort it all out.
There’s just one problem with this story: like most morality tales, it shatters upon contact with hard reality.
Photograph: Matt Kenyon
If the government would care for an insight into what its “safety net” has become, it could do worse than looking at the case of Nick Gaskin.
Gaskin, who has primary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS), cannot walk, feed himself or talk but, last month, received a letter from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) informing him he should attend an interview about “the possibility” of getting a job.
Photograph: Gary Foulds
The government’s avowed intention in taking powers to force failing – and even coasting – maintained schools to become academies is to make sure that children do not spend a day longer than necessary in an inadequate school. No one could argue with that ambition. But with the education and adoption bill now in the Commons, the education secretary, Nicky Morgan, is putting her foot hard down on the accelerator despite question marks over whether the headlong rush to academy status is delivering the improvements she says she wants.
Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA
“Our problem is not that we ought to be less disgusted at what’s happening in China, but that we ought to be more disgusted by what’s going on in many farms here.”
When she was sexually assaulted on the tube, Ellie Cosgrave felt powerless - so she returned a year later to dance a protest to reclaim the space.
"Over the year that followed I became increasingly angry, until eventually it was all I could talk about. Every time I was shouted at in the street I wanted to shout back, I just wasn't sure how to. I decided to tell my story in a blogpost, but it didn't seem quite enough. I wanted to really take ownership of what happened to me, to express how I felt, and to take back the tube for myself and for all women who had been sexually assaulted on it.
So on International Women's Day I went back to the spot where my incident happened. I held a sign explaining what had happened to me, and I danced. I danced my protest, and it felt right. It was petrifying, exhilarating, and soothing all at once, and it was absolutely fitting."
"Dear Taliban leader, Thank you for your letter to Malala Yousafzai. You were big enough to admit that your comrades tried to kill a young girl, but I would advise against picking a fight with women" Read Mohammed Yanif's brilliant open letter in response to the Taliban letter to Malala.
Last May Icelanders voted to bring back into power the conservative parties that brought Iceland to the brink of bankruptcy in 2008. Apart from any other implications, this appears to have constituted a significant setback for Icelandic women. Currently, of nine cabinet ministers, only three are female. And gender stereotyping is alive and well. When it first took office, the government's economic affairs and trade committee was made up of nine men and not a single woman. Meanwhile, the welfare committee was made up of eight women and one man. A token woman was subsequently added to the former, and a second man to the latter, but only after a flurry of criticism forced the (male) coalition leaders to make the change.
Erika L Sànchez on the new Texas abortion laws http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/17/texas-abortion-bill-affect-latinas
Extract from Ben Pobjie on What your email sign-off really means (via guardian)
Now, I know that air travel is really just a portal to foreign climes: a privilege for people who can afford to go on holidays abroad, an efficient means of transport for those whose work enables them to travel, and maybe even, for some, a one-way ticket to a new and better life. I know this, everyone on the plane knows this, so why is the notion that air travel is the sexiest thing since records began still pushed on us by endless tedious advertising campaigns? Wouldn't Richard Branson do better to put down the women he insists on picking up for photo opportunities and spend his money on food that doesn't taste like a foot, instead? 'Sorry, Virgin - sex and air travel don't mix
- Laurie Penny, 'We need to talk about masculinity'
'Who is Bridezilla? Is she a marketing construct designed to sell dresses? It is possible. I know that women are self-hating enough to spend money to cultivate a stereotype that disparages them, because I have seen Vogue, and I have watched women sign up for pole-dancing lessons with my own amazed eyes. But perhaps women exercise control in wedding planning, because they have little to control elsewhere. (I will not bore the boob-honking lobby with the statistics on female employment, prevalence and seniority.) A wedding day is a tiny empire, it is true, but one in which a woman can exercise complete, if tiny, autonomy and this must be mocked – perhaps this is the egg that hatched Bridezilla?' - Tanya Gold
- Kira Cochrane, 'Men are victims as well as perpetrators of sex crime. So why aren't they talking?'
- Emer O'Toole, Anne Frank's diary isn't pornographic, it just reveals an uncomfortable truth'
'With the headlines about a five-year-old using a gun marketed as "My First Rifle" barely faded, the NRA invited attendees to "[s]hare the excitement with spectacular displays and fun-filled events for the entire family". The grade schoolers present shared the organization's attitude towards the products that have caused the deaths of more American children in two years than the very tragic US military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I like guns because guns are fun," said 9-year-old Kaykay Mace' - Top 10 things you missed at the National Rifle Association Convention
- Emily Shire, 'Can adult males be victims of sexual assault?'
- Jill Filipovic, 'The tragic irony of feminists trashing each other'
Glen Greenwald, 'Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's repeated requests for a lawyer were ignored'
