The Gap

I love that, as the weather kills off every other plant in the garden, a rose manages to bloom.
Somehow it has to be symbolic.

This year's Gender Gap Report has just been released.
The good news for Canada and the USA are that they have both gone up from last year, a whopping twelve places for my friends in Obama's USA. Five places for Canadian women. The gender gap in the UK has stayed the same, Britain is still in fifteenth place, nonetheless, still ahead of the USA in 19th position, and Canada at number 20. France, has shockingly plummeted to 46th from 18th position last year.

The National News this morning was all about a skating contest, 'Battle of the Blades', and the engagement of Katherine Middleton and Prince William. This news was so shocking that it rendered everyone incapable of using the English language. The newscaster came out with the word 'exuberation' and a delightful old lovey who is fluent in all Royals, told us that they would probably create a dukedom out of William, which has the kind of surreal quality one welcomes at this time of year.
He also told us that the name 'Kate' was a media invention and that she is always called Katherine by actual people. So the newscaster continued to refer to her as Kate.
Ignorance is bliss and bliss can be maintained by ignoring what people say to you.
Anyhoo, back in Britain, everyone seems delighted. Quite the item to lift the mood from gloomy to merely cynical.

I was pleased to see that an adoption advisor who had been dismissed from her post with Northampton County Council because she refused to place children with same sex couples on 'religious grounds' has been told to take a running jump. The courts weren't having any when she took the employer to a tribunal.

Some things, bigotry for example, really should be killed off by the frost.