Women's Views on News |
| KFC ad sparks sexism backlash on Twitter Posted: 25 Feb 2014 08:48 AM PST KFC are coming under social media fire for their latest 'Triple Xtra' burger advert. Not only is the ad depressingly unoriginal, but it also relies on a combination of nagging girlfriend cliché and a cringe-inducing slogan ('IT'S MAN TIME!!!'). The sexist ad is causing some would-be customers to lose their appetite for the burger that KFC describe as 'manlier than a biker's beard'.
This isn't the first time that the fast food chain have chickened out and relied on tired gender stereotypes to sell their products. In 2012 KFC were criticised for a TV ad based on their vision of the 'typical' day in a 'typical' woman's life, and in 2010 they were embroiled in a sexism row after using clothes with logos emblazoned on the backsides of female college students. To let KFC know that you, too, are unhappy about the ad, either join tweet them at @kfc, write on their wall, or contact their complaints department.  |
| Posted: 25 Feb 2014 04:10 AM PST
A British woman is running, cycling and hitching lifts on container ships to get to the world’s most isolated island 100 years after another inspirational explorer made the same trip. Runner Susie Stephen is retracing the route anthropologist Katherine Routledge took in 1914 to Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean, an island now most widely known for being the home of giant statues. Stephen decided to make the trip, which will take her across two oceans and the Andes Mountains, after discovering that Routledge, like her, hailed from Darlington. She set off on the first leg of her ‘Running After Routledge’ adventure on 14 February. She aims to run the 330 miles from Darlington to Southampton in 13 days, cross the Atlantic to Buenos Aires on a container vessel and then cycle across the Andes to Chile. From there, will she jump on a supply boat which will take her to Rapa Nui, on Easter Island, and once there will take part in the Rapa Nui Marathon on 1 June. You can follow her on Twitter or facebook or her blog. She has been a distance runner since she was 11, and is now an experienced trail and marathon runner. As a youngster she ran for Darlington Harriers, went to the USA to run for Northern Arizona University, took up running international cross country races in Europe, and she represented Newcastle University, before spending a few years concentrating on areas of life outside of running. She got back into running in 2008, making her debut at The London Marathon with a time of 3:03. Katherine Routledge was one of the first female graduates of Oxford University and the first woman archaeologist to work in Polynesia. From 1913 to 1915, Katherine and her husband, Australian adventurer William Scoresby Routledge, led the Mana Expedition to Easter Island, where Katherine conducted the first ever excavations of the island’s world-famous stone statues. She collected vast quantities of new information, and through interviews with dozens of elderly men and women, she was able to save a history of the island, whose population was struggling back from the brink of extinction. The general consensus is that without Katherine’s extraordinary efforts, Easter Island’s traditional beliefs and customs would have been forever lost. As she travels Stephen will be documenting the environmental changes that have occurred since the 1914 Mana Expedition, by comparing notes on what she sees around her en route with the book 'The Mystery of Easter Island' Katherine Routledge wrote. Another of the elements of this 2014 trip is to highlight the increasing difficulty of supplying fresh and clean drinking water to ever-growing human populations. She is hoping to raise sufficient funds to finance a BioMAX unit for Rapa Nui. The increasing population of Rapa Nui has put pressure on the delivery of fresh water for the people living there, and a BioMAX unit can alleviate that. To donate to the cause, please click here.  |
| Posted: 25 Feb 2014 01:09 AM PST
By Sue Marsh. In 2013 a Resistance to the War on Welfare (WOW) petition was signed by over 104,000 people and secured a debate in the main chamber at the House of Commons, which is scheduled for 27 February 2014. The WOW Petition calls for a Cumulative Impact Assessment (CIA) of all cuts and changes affecting sick and disabled people, their families and carers and an immediate end to the Work Capability Assessment, as voted for by the British Medical Association (BMA). Many of you will have written to your MP already asking them to attend the #WOWPetition debate on 27 February. Sadly, that means that by now, some of you will have received standardised replies from coalition MPs, lazily parroting DWP soundbites and half-truths. Disheartening though it always seems, it’s always worth following up a “thanks, but no thanks” reply in the hope that you can persuade him or her to change their mind. If nothing else, it might start a dialogue you can build on in the future. Below is my impassioned reply to one such letter. Obviously you can’t just cut and paste it to your own MP, but I hoped it might be helpful to use as a guide. “A Dr Simon Duffy from the Centre for Welfare Reform has just a few days ago released the most comprehensive cumulative impact assessment (CIA) of all the welfare changes so affecting sick and disabled people to date. You can read it here. Perhaps it won’t be perfect, but if you actually read the DWP’s own equality impact assessments , I think you would have no choice but to agree that they are inadequate and incomplete. For instance, they all claim that there will be no impact on health or social justice, but even if just 10 per cent of what Dr Duffy concludes is correct, this clearly isn’t the case. As ever though in politics, we’re arguing on a pinhead over whether or not a cumulative impact assessment is feasible. Meanwhile the real issues are hidden somewhere amongst deep, dark paper trails. I would have given anything to be an MP, but sadly, I just got too sick. I envy that you’ve been elected to parliament by an electorate of your peers. An honour just 650 people can claim. I know that I’m not the only one of your constituents to write to you about this issue and I know that desperate pleas due to benefit changes for sick and disabled people make up an ever increasing part of your mailbag and surgeries. I recognise the now familiar DWP soundbites in your reply wearily, and they sadden me. I can’t believe that anyone who reads the welfare reform impact assessments from the DWP in full could stand by these policies. However, no one should, in good conscience, refuse to contemplate that Dr Duffy’s findings might be a good proximation of what’s unfolding. All I, or any constituent asks, is that you represent me and attend the debate with an open mind. The dignity and well being of some 7000 of your sick or disabled constituents may be at stake. To ask that you judge the issue on merit and hear what opposition politicians you may hate have to say, with an open mind is a small thing to ask. I ask you to reconsider and hope very much to see you there on the 27th.” The debate will be under a single line whip, which means that MP's can choose to either attend or vote. So much for the status of an e-petition! Therefore it is up to us to convince our MPs to attend and here are some suggestions as to how to do this. Before 27 February 2014 1. Write to your local MP (you can find the details by using this Write to your MP tool) and there are a couple of suggested template letters here (outline) and here (detailed); 2. Or if you'd prefer to e-mail your MP, there is an automated tool to help you compile and send it here. WOW supporters – and allies – are planning to lobby MPs in the Central Lobby from 10-30am until the #WOWdebate. However, you are only allowed to lobby your own MP, so before making the effort to get to the Houses of Parliament on 27 February, please check with your MP that they will be available by using this automated tool that will send an e-mail informing them that you wish to lobby them in the Central Lobby on 27 February and requesting that they make themselves available, as well as asking them to attend the debate and vote on the motion. Please only ask your MP to make themselves available to be lobbied if you are planning to attend the #WOWdebate. There will also be a vigil outside the House of Commons next to Old Palace Yard, from 10.30am onward. If you do not plan to lobby your MP you can still support #WOWdebate by joining the vigil. For more information, click here. A version of this post first appeared on Sue Marsh's blog ‘Diary of a Benefit Scrounger'. Sue has a rare form of Crohn’s Disease: she has had many operations to remove strictures (narrowings in my bowel that grow like tumours), suffers daily pain, often vomiting, malnourished and weak; takes mega-strong medications every day including chemo-style immuno-suppressants, opiates and anti-sickness injections.  |
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