raam thakrar

Two examples came up this weekend of gender bias.

A friend was telling me about a manny, a male nanny. That the nanny was gay wasn’t the issue of note, rather that he was a guy. Why is this one of the few area of prejudice amongst otherwise liberal people? A small and totally unscientific sample of people that I thought to ask about this suggested that a male nanny would absolute not be permitted in their home, and that in fact a male nursery teacher would be treated cautiously. Nobody could really say way (speculations ranging from Jimmy Saville type cases in the press influencing our thinking to “it’s my family and I can’t ever be too careful”).

On the other hand, on the train this morning there was a man reading the Daily Star in a packed carriage. And it struck me as completely inappropriate that there was a photo of girl without any clothes in the newspaper (i.e. p3). How have we got to a stage where this is normal? This objectification isn’t normal – if we were to set up a new newspaper that had this on it, there would be outrage. So how has this become acceptable? And such a normal purchase for so many people.

Not sure if this is me thinking a little more about my role as a responsible father to a girl, or just something that I started to think about. Both probably.

So of course, you can’t judge.

But how on earth, as an apparently civilised society, did we allow water-boarding as a form of interrogation.
I assume that many of us are ashamed by this. But most of us also just seem to forget about it. Myself included.

This is a hard one for me. Clearly in their line of work, many put themselves in much closer contact with criminals than most of the rest of us. And that’s something highly admirable. And yes, some of them do get hurt and killed.

But I find it really hard to believe that the punishment for injuring or killing a policeman should be severe than for the same crime against a non-policeman. People are people are people.

I think that it’s all to do with my core issue – what actually is punishment for? To vent our own anger, our own sadness. To help rehabilitate, as we have a core belief that people can all be good and “behave” well. Deterrence. To remove the trouble from the street.

Most of the debate tends to centre around the “vent”, with little thought to what actually is the end goal. And this is no exception.

Watching a documentary on TV about mining in Zambia, and it targeted Glencore for making a huge profit and not paying much tax in Zambia (where their raw material copper comes from). Google’s the same, of course. And Starbucks, and so many others.

It’s complicated. What is the proper amount of tax to pay? In this international business climate, where money can be transferred to quickly and easily combined with the open economy means that money moves quickly. And profits are declared in countries with the lowest tax regimes – which is, for the shareholders of the business, the right thing to do.

But something’s up. We can’t keep at this race to the bottom of lower and lower tax, and particularly in a world where the most deserving countries (i.e. the ones where the value is “created”) reap so little of the benefit.

It’s not a moral duty for a single company. However, it’s hard to see how it’s not one of the most pressing issues to fix in our global economy.

I thought that this was lovely, a very intriguing question to ask someone that you don’t really know to get a really good insight into them.

“Someone gets a text message from you, and for whatever reason they’re not sure it’s actually you. They’re worried that someone may have stolen your phone. What could they ask to make sure it’s really you?”

Hmm, I’ve now been thinking about it for a while and haven’t yet come out with my answer. But it’s a cool question for sure….

Reading the newspaper almost always reminds me of what I find painful and distasteful in this world. Today it was the fact that the prison camps in Guantanamo Bay are still alive and well, filled with apparently innocent, crime free people.

And also about the hierarchy of death, where certain deaths are more noteworthy than others. Where the daily deaths (at time of writing) in Iraq are less noteworthy than the deaths in Boston at the hands of domestic bombers.

Apparently it was first noted in Northern Ireland, where deaths of British were given more prominence than anyone else.

Why? Anything from cultural similarities to newspaper editors to geographic proximity.
But then you get to the subject of why the deaths of young black men die with little media coverage, and it quickly becomes deeply uncomfortable.

A very interesting piece on how having strangers ask deep and personal questions between couples that hadn’t previously met can create real intimacy. And more accurately, love.

It sounds kind of obvious – but very interesting. Vulnerability and security, and a little more planning.

More thoughts to come.

But short answer for now: it’s all about the experiences, not about the possessions. And in particular, finding a way to ensure that you remember those experiences for as long as possible.

HT to my friend Niki, a lovely video about making the most of each little thing. Cheesy, of course.

It led me to a woman called Gretchen Rubin (so obviously born to be a shrink from NYC), and her lovely comment that one of the secrets of adulthood is that People Do Best What Comes Naturally. Yeah, of course. But lovely to think about.

A very good post on Rules to Live By that I saw today. Guiding principles, personal commandments.

I like this. A lot. Not thought about this for me, but it’s provoked a lot of thought. Most of it is pretty similar, but for me it’s missing stuff around family, friends, relationships, around my moral compass, and my role in the bigger picture. Hmm, maybe.