Pink Ashes

God bless the Prince of Wales.
Seriously, that came out of nowhere.

This, however, didn't.
One of my fave blogs, The F-Word, pointed me firmly in the direction of a post on a science blog that questions whether girls really like pink. And it's something I question myself. In some ways, I want it to be a non-issue, we have taken the step from wanting girls to be allowed to do 'boy stuff' as well if they want to, to saying, well, actually, we should value 'girlie' things as much as we value boy stuff, so if girls want to be fluffy and wear pink, we shouldn't think that's bad, we should realise it's as good as wearing blue.
But this is interesting, because she does make some valid points about how girls are simply swamped in pinkness from the get-go and are made to associate it with their femininity, and I can't pretend that it doesn't bug me when the 'ladies' version of anything, laptop, razor, mobile phone, mini-Cooper are always pink.
On t'other hand, I am sitting here typing this wearing pink.

And on the subject of pink...or rather, not pink at all, but sexist language again, which in my books is blue, I was reminded by a post on Sleepy's blog of how language determines how we think.
In Britain, until we suddenly were kicked in the breeches and were made to see how racist we were, everyone always used to refer to the corner shop as 'the Paki shop'.
In fact, long after we got with the programme, many kids of the more socio-economic D-E class, would refer to all Asians, and sometimes, the darker-skinned Italians, as Pakis.
And of course, the whole of Pakistan, without exception, is Muslim, ergo.....

In March of this year, the EU issued a booklet to member states, advising them that they should be using gender-neutral language, that for manning, they should be using staffing, for chairman, chairperson etc., all standard stuff.
But they also reminded people, that using titles such as Miss and Mrs. was discriminatory towards women and that what they should use is.......people's names! Yes, imagine that!
Three (male) Tory MEPs were furious, they demanded that the EU should not only withdraw the leaflet, but apologise for it.
Wankers.
Of course, it made them look like wankers too. And out-of-date even for wankers.

England won the Ashes. I forgot to mention that.
No, no, stay with me on this.
And of course, that's good, particularly because......
To put the English team off their stroke, in the middle of the play against Australia, the Aussies produced some kind of publication that dished the dirt on every man* in the English team.
Not really cricket what?
But England still won.
AND... a spokesperson for the English team afterwards pointed out that naturally the English had similar information on every man* in the Australian team, but that they'd of course, never publish it, because.... it wouldn't be cricket.

*When I was at school, one of our PE teachers who came for a term, had played for the English women's team, and English women's cricket continues to outplay every other country, so we got to play cricket for a term, but mostly, I have to confess, cricket to me means drinking Pimms whilst the sun gently sets to the sound of leather on willow, and I mean that in the real sense, not just the advertising sense.
And yes, I also guess that most of the countries England plays cricket against, involves women with rather restrictive dress codes, but c'mon, Australia, I mean, those women are FORMIDABLE!!!