Autumn at the Bakery - can anyone find any publicity for the fact women are paying for the bulk of the public sector cuts?

me and Mad Men on my wall big style

Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness be damned, this is the Autumn of our miserable anxiety ridden discontent, made bearable by Mad Men Season 4, A History of the World in 100 Objects (though it does feel as though we have had more than 100), my mum's lemon drizzle cake turned into buns and yellling abuse at radio 4 every time someone intones solemnly that we are all in this together. No we bloody well aren't. Arms dealers, apparently, are the new nurses, the profession we should admire for their selfless devotion to the human race and to whom we should give all our money, yay, e'een unto the very last penny in the small child's piggy bank. They aren't in it with us, whatever 'it' is.

Updates on bakery business 1: the Fawcett Society’s legal challenge to the Coalition Government’s failure to obey the law on gender equality has not exactly been all over the press, TV, radio or blogosphere. In fact, their own website is startlingly lacking in recent information. Yet Osborne appears to be happy to ignore the rule of law and we, the public, remain braced to experience the full force of bankers’ revenge without supporting the sole legal challenge to the cuts we know will be unfair, cruel and, well, how can I say this politely, illegal. Various research papers have identified the unfairness of making poor women pay for rich (mostly, but not entirely) male bankers’ frivolity, but this isn’t making enough press yet.


The ConDems are making a great deal of "fairness" and how "we are all in this together". But, despite the fact that women make up the majority of the low paid workers and are still far from on equal pay with men, we are asked to shoulder the majority of the burdeen of the public sector cuts, as workers and service users. And some nice governmental advisors have started saying that the Equalities Act was a mistake...


Anyway, despite this crucially important aspect of the public spending cuts (there are many others) we are hearing very little, nay, practically nothing, about it. The only people I have heard mention it in public are union leaders - the left wing blogs and the Labour Party aren't exactly trumpeting it either (and I say that with love and regret).


So pass it on. Post it on your facebook status, send this blog to others, make a donation to the Fawcett Society, write to your MP or councillor, write to the newspaper. Do something!

Any bakery readers who remain at the hand wringing stage about the impending doom, or who are teetering on the brink of the sleepless with worry stage, try writing a letter to your MP, particularly if she or he is a Lib Dem or Tory. Let them know what you think. Whatever happens, at least they can’t say they weren’t told and at least you won’t feel that you stood by and did nothing. But honestly, writing letters does have an effect. If you don’t believe me, ask Troy Davis’ sister (see previous blog), or any prisoner freed from prison or granted reprieve from the death penalty after pressure from letter writing by Amnesty supporters.


Or – bakery past blast – consider that about twenty years ago, the Secretary of State for Benefits (he wasn’t called that exactly, but you know what I mean) did a complete turnaround on allowing parents who had been abused or whose children had been abused by their ex-partner to refuse to agree to a child support agency claim for maintenance, if they feared harm or distress would result to their child or to them as a result. It cost public money (which we were told was impossible to convince a Tory government about) and it wasn’t perfect, but thousands of women and children have benefitted from this tiny but significant clause in the Child Support Act 1991 known as the good cause clause. At Women’s Aid back then we hopeless idealists naively thought writing letters to MPs would make a difference. You know, it did.