Mature Content?

This is a slightly longer version of a post I've just published on the other blog.

There's an aisle at the supermarket that has a sign above it that reads "ADULT CEREALS".  Every time I see it, I snigger inwardly at the thought of sexually explicit cornflakes. (Pornflakes.  You're welcome.) It's not big, and it's not clever: I know that. But all these years living in south Manchester have taught me to grab whatever slivers of humour one can from life. Anyway... A friend's FB feed this morning pointed me in the direction of this: a page on Boredpanda showing some of the best entries to the 2016 Birth Photography competition. (Yeah: I know. I had no idea, either.)

I guess that birth photography is a bit of niche field.  The picture that one "Best in Category: Labour" - which you can see here - is, for my money, a brilliant image.  Some of the compositions are astonishingly good - but then, come to think of it, childbirth isn't exactly a surprise, so I suppose that if you're going to invite someone to photograph it, they're going to have plenty of time to make sure that the lighting is right.

A second thought that the pictures raise is this: no matter how much people bang on about the miracle of birth... well, nope.  Look at the labour picture again. I can't begin to express how glad I am that that's never going to happen to me; and I'm even more convinced than I was that I wouldn't want to play any part in inflicting that on another person.  (I think that there's all kinds of reasons why I have a duty not to reproduce, from overpopulation to the fact that I don't think it'd be desirable for a migrainous thicko like me to beget another generation of migrainous thickos; but not abetting that kind of agony in another human being is also on the list.  Fortunately, since it's unlikely that anyone would want a migrainous thicko to play any part in siring her child in the first place, this is not a problem I'm likely ever to encounter in practice.)

But my overriding response is something in the realm of astonishment that some of the pictures are blanked out as having "mature content".

I mean... really?

Looking at the Stats

I've been really remiss at posting since the beginning of the year, here and on the other blog.

But I've just looked at the stats, and it appears that I've been getting one hit a day here consistently.  Whoever you are... Awwwww.  Bless your soul.

On Voting with a Heavy Heart

Well, I'm going to vote to stay in, obviously.

I don't vote often; I have a rather tortured relationship with democracy because whether or not I approve of a person or policy has very little to do with the qualities of that person or policy, and I think that it'd be better overall if people like me just shut the hell up and left the task of running stuff to those with an education and expertise.  I voted in the last general election simply to add to the weight of votes against UKIP, rather than out of any positive choice.  All the same, I shall put my scepticism about plebiscites and elections to one side in June, and I shall vote for the UK to stay in the EU.  But I shall do so with a heavy heart.  Why so?  Because the terms on which the referendum is to be held are so dispiriting.

The syntactically-clunky wording of the referendum will be

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?

This was at the behest of the Electoral Commission; the European Union Referendum Act (2015) has  a couple of formulations of the ballot.  Technically, neither wording has anything much to do with what David Cameron has just negotiated; but for him to ditch that negotiation would be such an act of brass neck that it's fair to say that the bindingness of the referendum will be tied to the agreement reached on the 19th: should anyone try to depart from that agreement, there'd be significant pressure to overturn the referendum result.  (I predict that that'll be UKIP's strategy whatever happens: insist that the deal is not being enforced properly by those dastardly Europeans, therefore they're acting in bad faith, therefore leave.  The result will make no difference at all to the likes of Farage.)  To all intents and purposes it's a referendum on an agreement that noone will read, and that the Leave side would reject no matter what it said unless it said "leave now".  But the agreement is central; and this is the problem.