NEW STATESMAN - INTERESTING READ ON SUBJECTS WHICH MAINSTREAM MEDIA PAINT OVER

Just read a piece in the New Statesman.  I don't usually get it, but picked up a copy before boarding a plane, and found so many of the articles well written, interesting, relevant and on the money.  There was one about a review of a book on how the world is built for men  - Invisible Woman, Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed by Men.(Caroline Perez Chatto &Windus)  Did you know for example, there is still no seat belt which has been designed for a pregnant woman, and that most medicines are only tested on men, despite women often having a completely different reaction. She gave one example of one of her friends dying of a heart attack within a few hours of visiting a GP having been prescribed drugs which lower the blood pressure in men but increase it in women. But women hadn't been tested. There are loads of anecdotes like that.  But the last sentence made me realise how much like Handmaid's Tale we are already.

'As women, we are so used to contorting ourselves to fit into men-shaped spaces, we've learned to ignore how often it hurts.' 

I would add to that. We have been taught by our religions and by our law and our education, that this 'hurt' is love. No wonder we are confused.
 
 Another article is about the author James Kelman, a Booker Prize winner and very anti establishment (which I am too, not because I am anti-establishment per se - just establishment that I learn about). I am sure there are good establishments out there, just that I have never come across one.  He talks about Brexit - as one does.  But his words are so on point, I thought I would quote him.

"So much of British life is based on hierarchy, and that includes things that are essentially existentialist, such as art. It is out of touch with the realities of life. It is divorced from what it means to survive as a human being. British culture doesn't involve itself in the lives of human being, because if it did it would have to admit to hierarchy.

 Brexit is a coup for the establishment.The ruling elite and their diverse loyal orders have sought to exit the EU for years. The free movement of capital and the right to profit are the sole motivation. Laws and statutes that protect the individual hinder the accumulation of wealth (although the elite have always historically found a way round it, as they did in the past, many of them making the laws so they know how to circumnavigate them).  Departments of Human Resources funded by global interest will suffice for what remains of democratic control.   And the last thing Human Resources is interested in is the rights of their employees or the individual.