Boobs and bangs

[green_amber]

Reading an article in the Observer about how David Cameron apparently made a spech lambasting the awarding of Arts council grants to "one legged Lithuanian dance troupes", for which he has subsequently been pilloried. the article refers to the successful canoCo dance troupe which features a one legged amputee ballerina.

[Poll #1082735]

Weekend catch up..

PLeasantly worn out now after a game of badminton, a dash to the fabby art shop to buy indigo for Tuesday's assignment, and a late mooch round the common taking arty photos of reflections on the ornamental lake of russet trees in fading autumn sunshine. (Will post one in a min. )

Friday was the university fireworks - set to techno and chill out, a bit of a culture shock after the Edinburgh festival classical music fireworks concert I'm more used to!! and blagging lots of free Law school wine and burgers :))

Yesterday I made a meager contribution to nmg and ias's shed-razing solely by sledge-hammering one paving stone into smithereens - but very satisfying it was too - but compensated by bring stollen and chocolate spiders to follow Is's delightful autumny coq au vin for lunch. In the evening, Finnish Lodger (who had been placated by me actually doing some hoovering !) took me to a Body Shop party - like a tupperware party only with extra smelliness and random Scands and Estonians - which involved a free foot rub and was rather soothing. Now chilling with Sunday papers. The kind of weekend I need once in a while:)

And isn't the new KT Tunstall album lovely?

Comments

[sprezzatoura.livejournal.com]

I'm torn on Cameron's comment. Mostly I think it was just a stupid thing to say.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I'm torn too, hence the poll!

[sprezzatoura.livejournal.com]

I think it's just a bit too specific. If it had just been a case of stringing together random words to make an obscure minority group I don't think it would trouble me - unless of course it turned out that there was a disabled lesbians ukelele Bon Jovi covers band.

I am fascinated by the idea of a one-legged Ballerina. I assume she uses an artificial limb?

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I don't know - I was too - our ill spent childhood reading ballet books I think!
In the pic she is being lifted with only one leg apparent..

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

ps her name is Welly O'Brien!!

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

The old term was "Black one-eyed lesbians against the bomb", I think.

[sprezzatoura.livejournal.com]

Or, as they are known these days, one half of the participating audience of Jeremy Vine's Radio 2 phone in show.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Yes.. a really really stupid way of phrasing it because it's so redolent of that old school tory "All our taxes spent on one armed lesbian basket weavers" crap so it makes you realise he's really no different. Makes him look like an idiot and a right-wing idiot from the 80s at that. The sort of thing naive eighteen year old young tories said when I was at school and... funnily enough, probably the sort of thing he said when he was an eighteen year old young tory at schoo.

[sprezzatoura.livejournal.com]

Not that it took such a comment to alert us to this fact, merely remind us of it in a depressingly predictable way.

Ugh, I cannot stand him.

[steer.livejournal.com]

But in weaker moments you might think, ah, the tory party must have changed, repented of their evil ways and become kinder, gentler and so on... It's comments like this that really make you realise that they are instinctively mistrusting of anyone different to themselves.

[sprezzatoura.livejournal.com]

It's not even about the Tory party as such. The House of Commons is full of His Sort whatever colours they're wearing, though I will concede that most of them are probably Tories.

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

Cameron could've phrased it better. Rule 1 in politics these days is Never Offend Any Group By Naming Them. This, after all, is why everyone is treated as a criminal at airports these days ;)

If we are going to have an Arts Council then it is inevitable that some of its funding will go do projects that the vast majority of the population don't like. I consider the fact that a small portion of my taxes goes towards supporting aspects of the arts that I find risible or recondite part of the 'bill' for living in a civilised society.

(And I'm all for the Moron Tax lottery money from socioeconomic classes C2DE paying for the likes of the Royal Opera House or Royal Ballet. They'd only spend it on cigarettes, cider in plastic bottles, package holidays to Ibiza or QVC tat anyway.)

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

On one hand, it's the old GLC "black lesbian crippled knitting collectives" thing all over again, nobody actually means to belittle any of those groups.

On the other hand..... one of his party's just got a bollocking for praising "Good old Enoch". ;)

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

The late, unlamented columnist Jean Rook once described Enoch Powell as looking like "a cross between Charlton Heston and an alsatian dog. He's charming, but you feel that if you stroke his quiff he'd bite your hand off".

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Sledgehammer, not crowbar. If you'd shattered a heavy paving slab with a crowbar, I'd be a) terrified and b) demanding a new crowbar to replace the one that you'd just knackered.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

ps: I object to the way that your poll lumps Halloween and Guy Fawkes night together. As ane fule kno, only one is a garish American monstrosity, the other being a celebration of religious intolerance and capital punishment.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Hang, draw and quarter the Guy before burning - let's be traditional about these things.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I know I sound 103 but when did you last see a good ol fashioned Guy in a pram? Whereas trick or treating and fireworks are omnipresent..

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

When? A good 15 years ago, I think.

[sprezzatoura.livejournal.com]

There has been one in our local Sainsbury's for a month or so! And there was one on the Harrogate bonfire last night.

What I do not miss are children pestering people for "Penny* for the Guy"

*More likely a fiver, these days. Or perhaps an iPod.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Good god!! ye olde England is alive and well and living in Yorks!!

but then i could also live without kids asking for money for turning up and making a yobbish noise outside your door and perhaps having half heartedly painted their faces...

[nmg.livejournal.com]

The year I moved to Southampton (1997), there were kids from the Flowers estate just north of the university who used to try and shake down students walking home to halls along Burgess Road. Their calls of 'penny for the guy' rang a little false, because they didn't have a guy. Perhaps they were saving up for one?

[devilgate.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's traditional in Scotland to go out "guising" on Halloween. The main difference was (still is, I think) that as well as dressing up, you were expected to do a "turn": sing a song, tell a joke, or what have you.

I expect the Americans nicked it from us (and simplified it).

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Yes reember that *geriatric alert*. But it wasn't the Us thing of simply asking for money and throwing stones at the window if you didn't answer..

[perlmonger.livejournal.com]

I need a V for Vendetta icon.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

you gotta light a rocket or two, boys,
you gotta light a rocket or two!

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

Ah, the favourite working song of Israeli Air Force ground-attack pilots ;)