You should all buy a…..Donkey Jacket.. Donkey jackets are nothing new, faaaaar from it, they originated in the late 19th Century as hard wearing worker jackets. It is regarded as the typical British manual workers jacket, and was also a favourite of Skin Heads. The leather patches on the shoulders were often brightly coloured depending on wether you worked at night.
The name Donkey jacket comes from the Oxford English Dictonary term ‘one with leather shoulders’ for obvious reasons.
Marx always made the point that work–labour–is good, it’s fulfilling, it has been a natural drive of humanity forever. What’s degrading about work today is the social relations that sustain it (wage labour and the extraction of surplus value). Labour itself is not degrading.
Turnout figures for GE2017 have been released and, while not as high as previously suggested, 58% turnout among 18-24s is still something to be celebrated.
The 58% Giveaway is our way of thanking young voters for going out on June 8th and making themselves heard.
So what can you win?
The overall winner will receive:
101 Ways to Win and Election, a brilliant book by two experienced Lib Dem campaign managers
Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box, an entertaining look at the answers to questions you maybe never knew you had about UK politics
More Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box, the sequel to Philip Cowley and Robert Ford’s successful first book
YVUK’s 15 Greatest Protest Songs on a limited edition vinyl-look CD, featuring Captain Ska, The Clash and more
This graphic, shared by @williamjordann, shows a significant disconnect between the intentions of young and old voters. We already knew that young voters overwhelmingly supported Remain in the Brexit referendum, and now a very similar trend is seen in the election results: the majority of young people voted for Labour.
We’re certainly not saying the hung parliament was entirely the result of increased youth turnout, but there’s no denying that we as an age group have suddenly moved up the priority lists of politicians everywhere. We mean something now. We’re an engaged group of voters with an almost universal political identity.
We’re a very big fish and, should Corbyn slip up, we’re seemingly ready to be caught.
Hold up, isn’t the Queen’s Speech just a Christmas thing?
This has been a common question today, so if you’ve been wondering the same thing, you weren’t alone! The Queen gives her Christmas speech every year (makes sense, right?) but to get full value for money on the royal family, she’s also brought out after each general election.
Makes sense. So what does she actually talk about?
The post-election Queen’s Speech is a quick summary of all the major policies the party-in-power hope to implement over their term. Not everything will make it in: the past two Tory manifestos pledged to repeal the ban on fox hunting, but the policy never featured in the speech.
When was it meant to happen?
The speech was originally scheduled for June 19th (next Monday). No date has been set yet for when we’ll end up hearing it.
Okay, but why has this one been delayed then?
Right, so this is where it gets a bit more complicated, mostly because at this point we move into the realm of speculation. Never a good thing for an article on politics, y’know?
Theresa May ran on a promise of strength and stability. She was hoping to get a huge majority for the Tories to (a) put Britain in a better negotiating position with the EU and (b) bolster her self-esteem. This didn’t go to plan: we now have a ‘hung parliament’.
All those policies the Tories could have put in the Queen’s Speech suddenly look doubtful to pass a vote in the House of Commons. Right now, senior Tories are going over and over their manifesto looking for the bits and pieces that stand a chance and coming to terms with the policies they’ll have to lose. This is one of the reason’s it’s going to take longer than usual to prepare the speech.
Didn’t the Tories make that deal with the DUP to avoid this sort of thing though?
The DUP agreement is a Confidence and Support deal rather than a full on coalition. What this means is that the 10 DUP MPs in the Commons keep their right to vote against Tory policies if they don’t agree with them.
A good example is triple-lock pensions. This is a promise by the government to increase state pensions each year in line with inflation or wage growth, or by 2.5% (whichever of the three is highest). The Tory manifesto pledged to do away with this, whereas the DUP strongly support keeping the protection. In a Commons vote, the Tories will face a real struggle to secure the majority vote needed to scrap the scheme.
It’s also likely that the delay is partly because of this deal: the DUP will be making some demands of the Tories in exchange for their support that the Tories just won’t be that willing to accept.
So what does this mean for the government then?
As of right now, Theresa May’s Tory party still hold the power. The delaying of the Queen’s Speech has made them look weaker to the public and has potentially put a dent in the timetable for Brexit negotiations (will we even have an official Prime Minister when they’re due to start in 9 days?).
There’s rumour that Corbyn is poised to take full advantage of this perceived instability. Labour are supposedly planning to try and block each and every policy the Tories try to include in their Queen’s Speech. If a speech cannot be agreed upon, then there’s a series of steps that could be followed to give Corbyn a chance to form his own minority government.
That’s only a very remote possibility though!
tl;dr The Conservative Party have delayed the Queen’s Speech as they struggle to edit their manifesto to a more centrist position.
If it sounds like a twisted children’s game, we promise it was only half intentional.
After every general election, the first fun game (after ‘who the heck will the minority government team up with?’) is the building of the cabinet. The Conservative party have decided to set themselves up as the minority government in a ‘confidence and support’ scheme with the DUP, meaning they get first shot at playing the game.
Don’t forget - they haven’t passed the Queen’s speech test yet, so this might not be the government we finish with. There’s talk of Corbyn (backed by almost every non-blue MP) making a bid for power and completely obliterating the Queen’s speech talks. It’s unlikely, but an interesting potential plot twist nonetheless.
So back to The Game.
How does a prospective Prime Minister choose her cabinet? Some, like Amber Rudd and Philip Hammond, are pretty obvious choices. They already held their seats before the snap-election and were very loudly on May’s side even after the polls had closed on a slightly-darker-than-expected day for the Conservative party. Any name not in bold falls into this category.
Then we get to the four newcomers, the ladies and gentlemen getting promoted or demoted in the aftermath of GE17. These are the boldednames in our list (taken lovingly from the BBC live updates page, accurate as of 10pm on June 11th).
First we have Damian Green. Let’s think of him as Theresa May’s best mate. Admittedly, with the Tory performance in a snap election they probably shouldn’t have lost, he maybe doesn’t have so much competition for that role as in April. The fact remains that Damian Green, 61 years old and Oxford educated (like 15% of the 650 MPs elected on Thursday) is now officially Theresa’s righthand man in Parliament.
Green retained his seat in Ashford, Kent, with a 29% majority. He has previously voted against a ban on fox hunting. Generally speaking, he votes along party lines (no rebellion from this staunch Tory man). His most recent role in government was as the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (the benefits department) from July 2016, so a definite promotion this time.
What about the new Justice Secretary, David Lidington? Bucking the political trend, Lidington is not an alumni of Oxford University… he attended Cambridge, earning a PhD in Elizabethan history. This is another man promoted after the 2017 election: his previous role was as Leader of the House of Commons. Perhaps most notably, this CBE honoured 60 year old once claimed over £115,000 in expenses in one year. This included £1,300 claimed for toiletries like toothpaste and vitamin supplements.
The man replacing him in Work and Pensions is David Gauke, the MP for South West Hertfordshire. This is another for the expenses scandal files: Gauke once claimed over £10,000 in expenses for a second flat in London, despite his commute to the city being under an hour by car. A law graduate of Oxford University, all of Gauke’s previous roles in government have been within the Treasury department.
‘What about the women?!’ we hear you ask. There are over 200 female MPs in Parliament now - surely one of them must have been promoted to the top table? Welcome, Liz Truss. Having attended a comprehensive school - and then Oxford University - Truss has been moved from Justice Secretary to Chief Secretary to the Treasury. This is the second most senior position within the Treasury, so a big move for the first woman ever to hold the Justice position.
One name that was only announced afterwe took this screenshot was Michael Gove, the new Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. In a shrewd move by Theresa May to block off a leadership challenge from Gove, he has been brought back into government (albeit to the role nobody ever asks for). Michael Gove, while Education Secretary, once faced a vote of no confidence in his policies from all major teaching unions.
So that’s the cabinet as it stands. It’s a who’s-who of Oxford alumni, a Dulux wall chart for a house themed on Whipped Cream Gone Off. Alternatively, it’s a collection of qualified, competent, devout Tory MPs who are now less likely to stab May in the back to try and steal her position as head of the party.
We’ll leave it to you to decide your view on the matter…
Before we name our roles, let’s be frank: everyone working with YVUK is a volunteer. Everyone. We’re a tiny outfit with one inglorious aim: to help young voters understand the murky world of British politics.
At the moment, we operate from two laptops in the home counties in the hours we can spare when we’re not at our day jobs or handling the responsibilities of life.
So these roles won’t offer any compensation beyond the satisfaction of building something hopefully momentous. In the last 3 weeks of the election, we reached over 10,000 people on Twitter and currently average 60-100 interactions per post on Tumblr. This all in our first month of operation.
If you’re even the slightest bit interested in any of the roles mentioned here, or if you think you can contribute in some other way, please email [email protected] for more details. You can also leave a message in our Ask Box here.
Today, two big amendments were put to a vote in the House of Commons.
First was a proposal led by Labour’s Stella Creasy to allow women from Northern Ireland to get free abortions in England. Currently, abortions in Northern Ireland are banned unless in extreme circumstances of poor health, and the women who travel to England for the procedures have to pay around £900. It passed the house and will now come into law.
The amendment - which was backed by more than 50 MPs from across the major parties - means Northern Irish women will now have their abortions in England covered by the NHS. Fairly reasonable, when you consider most of these women pay the taxes that fund the service. It is estimated the amendment will cost approximately £1 million per year.
Second was a Brexit-based amendment led by Labour’s Chuka Umunna. This amendment suggested the UK stay in the single market, which guarantees free movement of goods, services, money and labour within the EU. Jeremy Corbyn called on all Labour MP’s to abstain from the vote and threatened they would be sacked from any ministerial roles if they rebelled. So far we are aware of 3 Labour frontbenchers who have been sacked from their roles for not abstaining.
While parties such as Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats showed unanimous support for the amendment, it was easily defeated due to Labour abstentions.
Then all that remained was the vote on the final Queen’s Speech, the last piece of the puzzle to make Theresa May the undisputed Prime Minster of the United Kingdom. With the support of the DUP’s 10 MPs, the Queen’s Speech passed.
tl;dr Good news for women, bad news for business, great news for Theresa May
It’s been the big will-they-won’t-they romance of the summer so far, but Theresa May has finallysnagged her woman. Something the DUP probably wouldn’t approve of in any other circumstances…
Yes,the Tories have reached a deal with the DUP, ending over two weeks of talks.
Firstly, the good news: it is nota coalition. In the UK, coalitions have been very rare - the 2010 Lib-Con coalition was the first for 70 years - but usually they involve the smaller party being allowed to nominate ministers and propose their own bills.
This is not that.
The DUP have entered into a confidence and supply deal with the Tories. In return for £1bn extra funding for Northern Ireland, the DUP have agreed to support the Tories in votes of confidence and in budgetary matters. It is likely the 8 DUP MPs will be allowed to vote with their conscience when other policy issues are debated.
In return, the DUP are allowed a little influence over some Tory policy - the Conservatives have already agreed not to scrap Triple Lock Pensions and to find an alternative to means testing winter fuel tax.
So is there bad news? If you’re a Labour voter, yes. If you’re LGBT, you might think so. If you don’t like seeing a woman embroiled in financial scandal being bought for £1bn, almost certainly. And we’ve yet to see how the Tories will defend their neutrality clause in the Good Friday Agreement…
In the end, it’s what the deal symbolises which is concerning. The Tories have clung to power by spending £1bn of tax payer money that, just a few months ago, wasn’t available for education, the health service or social housing.
For more information on the DUP from out NI reporter, check out our article: Who Are the DUP?
tl;dr Theresa May has finally pulled Arlene Foster, but it’s not a formal arrangement
Spain is discussing whether a law granting up to 3 days a month of paid leave due to very painful menstruations would be okay or not, and the sexist - misogynistic even - comments that we’ve heard are making us sick.
It’s even worse when it’s other women who make them.
Don’t forget the endless debate on whether a 16 year old can make medical decisions about their body, because the new abortion law will allow over 16s to have one without informing their parents, as is the rule with every other medical decision.
True! And also the Spanish government will include in that law project that femenine hygiene products are VAT free from now on (right now we pay a 10% VAT for them).
Genealogy, Labour and Land: The Settlement of the Mýramenn in Egils saga
Santiago Barreiro
Network & Neighbours, vol. 3, n. 1 (2015)
This study analyses the way in which the thirteenth-century Egils saga Skallagrímssonar presented the migration to Iceland of Egill’s father Grímr and grandfather Úlfr, and the creation of a settlement in the area of Borgarfjǫrðr in Western Iceland during the tenth…
Had a great time yesterday playing some tunes for all the folks who’d been out door knocking for our local Labour Party candidates in Wall Heath, Kingswinford, and Wordsley. I also got to meet @jeremy_corbynmp which was pretty cool. Cheers to Pete Lowe for inviting me and for doing an excellent job as a guitar stand while I had my photo taken. . . . #votelabour #jeremycorbyn #labour #gig #protest #singer
I have always been a socialist, and have almost always voted Labour ( the exceptions being voting tactically in an area Labour could not win, and in some local elections ), but I only became a Labour party member to support your candidacy. I, along with so many others, saw you as someone who would return Labour to its correct place, to fight for a fairer society and for the majority of British people who have not been represented in politics in recent decades, and in your promise to return to being a party led by the will of its members.
And you have fought for these things. You have shown Labour to be a strong, radical, socialist alternative. You have withstood attacks from the right wing of your own party and the constant denigration by the British media, and I have been proud to be one of your supporters. However, your recent comment on Brexit is not only a failure of your party membership, but a betrayal of us.
The vast majority of the Labour membership - 86% of us - are in favour of a referendum on details of the withdrawal agreement and that one of the options should be to remain in the EU. Many have been pinning our hopes to end this self immolation on Labour, so to be told by the leader that Brexit would still go ahead under a Labour victory in a snap general election is the most shocking betrayal.
Mr Corbyn, one of your greatest features is the strength of your convictions, and I understand that the history of the British left has not alway been easy with the EU - seeing it, not always wrongly, as a neo-liberal capitalist mission. This has been, and is, one aspect of the whole, but it is at tension with others; human rights, social progress, regulation of the excesses of corporate power. The EU comprises the most progressive nations on the planet as members - Sweden, Finland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany - or close associates, such as Norway. All these countries and more are far to the left of where the UK has been for decades, and should be models we emulate, so to pretend the club of which they are members and, indeed, run is some capitalist conspiracy is ludicrous. The EU is project is an active entity, shaped by and shaping the members and a socialist-lead UK should be part of that.
There is the argument that Labour represents many areas that voted Leave, so is beholden to its constituents. On the face of it this is a sound argument - we are an representative democracy whose politicians are elected to conduct the will of the people. However, leaders must also lead. It is often a fine balance - to serve but also educate and inform. In this instance, this is nothing but an excuse and rank cowardice. It is clear that, not only were the British people misled and lied to, but that there is no possible outcome of leaving the EU that does not render vast swathes of the country much, much worse off - and those working-class, under-privileged, poor communities that so often voted leave will be and are being hit hardest of all. It is the duty of those who represent these communities - as so many of the Labour MPs are doing - to talk honestly to their electors about the position in which we find ourselves and what the immediate decisions for our future, and that of our children and grandchildren.
Brexit is the most immediate threat to this country’s well being and prosperity. Mr Corbyn, as leader of the opposition, as leader of the party that should represent those most at risk, you should about face on your attitude. For the members of your party and for the good of your country, you should - you MUST - state that you will fight Brexit until there is no other choice. How can 86% of your own party support you otherwise?
You know I was originally planning on freebirthing, not because of the cost associated with homebirth or because I was reckless but because I fully trust my body and didn’t feel like I could put enough trust into someone else to listen to what I actually wanted or that I could find someone who believed in me and my capability.
A traumatic birth in a hospital with staff who disregard your concerns or wishes, do things without your consent, create latrogenic emergencies and bully you into doing things you don’t want to do. It’s why most people Freebirth that and they want the most primal experience possible.
However by absolute fate I was sent the most amazing mother centred and hands off midwife possible. The exact person I had hoped for all along but never thought I could find Someone who normally books out quite easily just happened to have a spot at nearly 22 weeks pregnant. I will admit I was still scared to trust her at first due to past experiences but she quickly showed how much she believed in me and my capabilities. For the first time in any of my pregnancies I had someone who listened to what i wanted during my pregnancies/ birth, took a single No as an answer and held space for the past experiences. I never thought I’d be excited to have a midwife appointment each week just so we could sit on the couch and talk about anything I needed, it’s not just someone who looks after you, you create a friend and someone that I cannot wait to walk by again.
I’m so happy I got the dream birth I had wanted, couldn’t ask for a better birth
Fibre crafts are very labour-intensive. This is why crocheted/hand-knitted items by indie designers are priced the way they are: you’re notjust paying forthe materials. You’re also paying for the hours that were needed to design and make the item. Even if the designer were to price those hours at minimum wage, they still add up.
Fast fashion strives to manufacture items as cheaply as possible. A lot of different things make up the final priceyou pay at a shop, such as design, materials, shipping, packaging, marketing,… Labouris only a fraction of that price, and garment workers rarely get paid a living wage as to keep the prices down.
Take this seven part TikTok breakdown of a crocheted Target bikini top by Drea’s Hook, for example. After replicating part of the top, she estimates it would take about 3 hours to crochet the full item by hand (and it was crocheted by hand). That doesn’t even account for the materials, the labour needed to sew the lining and the tag, the design, shipping, stock photos,… Yet it only costs $22. If the person who crocheted the top was paidat all, it can hardly have been more than a few cents.
Stolen designs:
On top of labour exploitation, there’s been multiple scandals regarding fast fashion brands stealing designs by independent crochet artists such as Knots & VibesorLoupystudio, among others.
Design theft not only profits off the work done by the original designer withoutany form of compensation in return, it also devaluesthe work needed to make an item.
Theaverage person doesn’t know how much work goes into making clothes. When fast fashion brands knock off original designs and sell them for a fraction of the price, it propagates the idea that the original item was priced unfairly. After all, why would someone charge €250 for a sweater when you can buy a similar one for €15 at H&M? This way, the industrykeeps getting away with exploitingits workers while indie designers struggle to get by.
Caneveryoneafford to pay that €250? No, of course not. Even that €15 sweater can be a big financial hit if you’re on a budget, and we all need clothes to keep us warm in winter. But practical issues aside, I think we can all agree that everyone deserves fair compensation for their work.
Conclusion:
People often assumetheir clothes have been made by machines. This is a logical assumption given the average fast fashion price tag, but unfortunately it’s a wrongone.
Sure, we’ve got sewing and knitting machines and all other kinds of mechanical helps, but someone still has to work those machines. When an item has to be made by hand, like crochet, it will take longer. If the price tag doesn’t reflect this extra labour, then neither will the worker’s wage.
This blog will never shame anyone for buying fast fashion. Even if you’re aware of the problems within the industry, there’s plenty of valid reasons why quitting just isn’t an option for most of us. We’re stuck in a broken system that we cannot change overnight, and not everyone has access to alternatives.
That doesn’t mean we can’t chip away at it.Educating yourself about these issues is a big first step. It makes us more conscious about the clothes we wear and the labour and resources that went into making them, which in turn motivates us to take action. If more people were aware of these problems, the industry would be much less likely to get away with them.
International Workers’ Day: ‘The Great Upheaval’ to the ‘Triumph of Labour’
Thefirst of May has long been a day of celebration – whether of the arrival of spring or of religious festivities – and, since 1886 at least, been known as International Workers’ Day.
Here are some images to give an abridged history of how this day became a rallying cry for political solidarity among the world’s workers:
The top illustration (from Melbourne) summed up the demands of workers’ strikes during some historians have called the great upheaval, a period towards the end of the 19th century when radical groups including socialists, union organizers, and anarchists became increasingly vocal and demonstrative with their calls for better conditions and terms for workers. Chicago, among other cities, was a maelstrom of these forces clashing with police, politicians, and bosses.
On May 1, 1886, after months of deadly confrontations and years of simmering conflict, a group of unionized furniture workers urged other union members across the city in a walk-out:what they got was a march of roughly 100,00 workers and others in solidarity (estimates of the number differ widely, some saying close to half a million at the day’s peak).Across the country at the same time, workers’ strikes and marches were occurring too, particularly around strong radical populations as in New York, thus marking the first multi-city mass march in American history.
The Haymarket Sq. Rally [image 2]: a few days later, after several days of growing unrest and demonstrations at which multiple protestors were killed in police encounters, a rally for a largely German-ethnic workers’ group gathered to hear several militant anarchists, including newspaper man and upholsterer August Spies, who was speaking when everything went incendiary.
A bomb went off just in front of several mounted policemen who had arrived to jeer and instruct the disassembly of the rally – the frontmost officer was killed. From there, all hell broke loose: policemen fired on and swung batons at the crowd – and whether they fired twice or just the first time in the chaos was a matter for the trial afterwards – while reports differed on whether anyone in the crowd fired in return or, as Spies insisted, they were unarmed[x]. In the end, officially two workers were killed, though the number of casualties who were able to escape the Square but who may have died from their wounds without seeking official medical attention is impossible to know. A further five policemen died from their injuries, though one police officer anonymously told The Chicago Tribute that much damage was done by police firing on each other in the dark, chaos, and sudden smoke.
The Haymarket Martyrs [image 4: ‘The Anarchists of Chicago’, by Walter Crane] Following the rally, the mayor arrested seven known militant radicals, including Spies, Adolph Fincher/Fischer, George Engel, Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe, Albert Parsons, Louis Lingg, and Michael Schwab (many of whom worked for Arbeiter-Zeitung, the dual English and German radical newspaper), and sent them to trial.
in the end, the jury – who all testified before the trial began with some degree of prejudice against the defendants (who were tried in a group rather than individually) – convicted the 7 men of the bombing and resultant policeman’s death. Two had sentences commuted (and seeing his appeals fail, Lingg had killed himself rather than be executed), but on 11 November 1887, Spies, Parsons, Engel, and Fischer were hanged. Their deaths became seen by radicals and aggrieved workers worldwide as martyrdoms to the cause; in 1893, the then-Governor declared that the 1887 trial had been a shameful miscarriage of justice, and released and pardoned the men still in jail.
Since the 1886 May Day marches, strikes, and subsequent struggles, workers have continued to use the holiday to highlight the ongoing plight of working people across the globe. Famously, the Soviet revolution in Russia made May Day an official worker’s holiday, which led, over the course of the USSR’s history (and later also, Maoist Chinese), to a deep irony of the propagandistic and increasingly sunny imagery of Soviet or Communist posters for May Day in contrast to the actual conditions of the proletariat in those countries. [Image 7, for example, shows some Soviet stamps from 1989 celebrating May Day; beside that, image 8 reads, "Ot mraka k svetu, ot bitvy k knige, ot goria k schast’iu[From darkness into light; from Battle to Books; from Misery to happiness]”, a poster by Nikolai Kogut (Moscow, 1921). Image 6, on the other hand, shows a poster using the familiar imagery of the female worker, barefoot and in nondescript dress, waving a red flag – here to celebrate the German institution of International Women’s Day, 8 March 1914.]
Lastly, image 9 is the high-def panorama illustration of Walter Crane’s 1891 “The Triumph of Labour” [via Morna O’Neill]. As O’Neill describes,
“Crane created his most famous commemoration of the socialist May Day celebration, The Triumph of Labour, in 1891 (Fig. 5). It would become the definitive image of English socialism. Borrowing slogans and emblems (such as the Phrygian bonnet) from the French RevolutionandEnglish trade unionism, the cartoon celebrates the unity of industrial, agricultural, and artistic labour rendered as the happy progression of liberated workers through a setting of natural bounty. The cartoon brims with decorative emblems (from the cornucopia of Lady Bountiful to the banner carried aloft by the labourers) executed in Crane’s rich linear style. It does not have recourse to the modern idiom of the newspaper or the usual political-cartoon arsenal of satire, parody, and caricature. Rather, it is a revolutionary expression of the ideal future through what Crane termed “succinct, emphatic, or heraldic expression in rich, beautiful, and symbolic form” to embody “social ideals” (Crane, “Art and Character” 114). These decorative forms embody political ideals: The Triumph of Labour is an emblematic rendering of the future promised by the hope of socialism and the central place of art in articulating and realizing that future. Rich with allusions, dense in imagery,The Triumph of Labour is a compendium of Crane’s artistic practice. At the far left, signalling his faith in the intertwined nature of art and labour, he portrays himself holding aloft a palette and riding beside an architect in a wagon bearing the standard “Wage Workers of all Countries Unite.”According to G. K. Chesterton, writing in 1912, socialists recognize each other “on the fact that a man of their sort will have … Walter Crane’s ‘Triumph of Labour’ hanging in the hall” (142). For Crane, all art—whether painting, design, decorative object, or political cartoon—constituted a better, more beautiful world that implicitly and, at times, presciently condemns the current one. Crane’s art expressed the revolutionary power of creativity and beauty, and gave voice to his hope for a better world.” [x]
To those curious about my pregnancy I had my beautiful baby on the 25th of January and we couldn’t be happier!
On January the 24th I was taken into the hospital to be induced as they were concerned about something called Shoulder dystocia which is basically where the babys shoulders get stuck on their way out.
I went in at 12 in the afternoon and after two hours of tests and waiting they finally induced me using a newer method of induction. (painful. I bled.)
This method has to be left in for 12 hrs meaning at 2am they once again violated my cervix
After a full 12 hrs of inducing, they made me wait a further 2 hours while listening to my baby.
Keep in mind that I wasn’t allowed anyone in there with me. Even my partner was only allowed a two hour.
By 4am I was told that I’d be able to get my waters popped later that day but I was in so much pain by 8 I barely even registered my waters had gone on there own at 8.30am.
They wouldn’t give me any painkillers until I was in deliver suite which didn’t happen until I was 5cm dilated at 5.15pm.
By this point I was in so much pain I just wanted it to be over my contractions were practically every few seconds and they were only getting worse.
After getting up there I had 30 minutes with gas and air and finally my fiancé got to the hospital at 6pm. Now I’m screaming at midwife telling her I think I need to push but she keeps saying I can’t I’m only 5 cm.
However when she checked me again I was 9cm so I had to start pushing soon…
After thinking I was gonna die with no painkillers and screaming at my fiancé that I couldn’t do it anymore…
At 8.53pm my baby boy was born at 8lbs 5oz
We have been home for 3 weeks now we’ve had our ups and downs but I wouldn’t change them for anything.
Yes he screams for me constantly and most days I’m running on 3-4 hours and a lot of coffee but he is also the most beautiful amazing little human I’ve ever seen and I can’t believe I created him!
I’ve never loved anyone or anything as much as I love him…thank you baby boy for being born into my waiting arms.
this may be an Unpopular Opinion (even on tumblr) but like the 8-hour workday is just Too Gotdamn Long
like even sitting in an office for eight hours a day isn’t particularly pleasant (or healthy, as we are beginning to see) but when we’re talking about doing *actual work* for that same amount time it gets pretty fucking brutal
doing literally *anything* (even leisure activities) for eight hours straight tends to be less than enjoyable but when we’re talking about things like construction, landscaping, factory work, and hell, even foodservice and retail, eight hours is a fucking ETERNITY
i might just be a lazy weak-willed bitch but honestly i think i’m not entirely wrong
this was being worked towards by leftist labor unions way back in the day after the time of FDRs new deal. people in the 40s and 50s were already starting to realize that we no longer actually needed an 8 hour work day or even a 5 day work week.
even with the comparatively primitive factory tech of the time we were already creating a huge amount of excess production back then and companies were making massive amounts of profit. So it already stood to reason that companies should either let their employees work less and thus each employee could work a shorter shift without lowering the yearly compensation of each employee, or in cases where businesses provide an active service they would shorten the shift but hire more people to cover the necessary operating time. but of course that would mean less money for people at the top so companies fought back hard and we ended up with nixon’s bullshit and so on and now its considered the norm for us to spend the vast majority of our lives doing work that really just amounts to waste.
The IWW realised this and were fighting for it all the way back in the 1930s. This is a take with a lot of historical and theoretical grounding, OP, so you’re standing in good stead.
I’d also like to add it’s also been studied and scientifically proven that after 6 hours, we have an extremely noticeable drop in productivity. Sweden saw nothing but benefits from a 6-hour work day, including worker productivity, happiness, and half the amount of sick-leave used when applied to nurses.
