abuse and exploitation

3rd August
Well of course they had to pat the WI on its collective head and say that it was sweet of it to care and ho! ho! you are dear innocents in a world you have no idea about. The WI Guide to Brothels on Channel 4 chose to go along this route and I think the two ladies from Hampshire Federation rather played them at their own game--TV production not prostitution, I hasten to add.If you want to present a resolution which will tackle violence against women where prostitutes are at the mercy of some of the worst perpetrators of violent abuse, then you must get the attention of thousands to support you and what better way than through the home TV set? The aim is to license brothels, not to ban them, and to afford these women some form of protection. This is what the police wish too. Think of the employment opportunities for the bureaucrats of Health and Safety, Hygiene Inspectors and their ilk!
It was a very informative programme and amusing in the same way as the WI Alternative Calendar was amusing because of the juxtaposition of the WI's image and the shady world of nudity and sex. But you had to admire the bravery of those two to even think of doing what they did. Could you have talked to some of those people, gone into those places?
4th August
Almost a full house for the local WI Book Group this afternoon. We have been reading several books over the summer but Joseph O'Connor's Star of the Sea was the "official" choice this month. We agreed that it wasn't a book we would have taken off the library shelf if we had been left to our own devises. However it was much enjoyed and admired as a novel which described the horrific conditions in which the people of Scotland and Ireland dispossessed by either the clearances or the potato famine travelled to a new life in America.
I had been reading Two Caravans by Marina Lwycka (the Tractors in Ukrainian woman) which was another depressing and horrifing story, even more disturbing as it was set in modern day Britain. Talk about violence to women and rampant abuse of the immigrants coming to our shores and it is not much better than on board the Star of the Sea hundreds of years ago.It was funny too but I felt ashamed that I had almost forgotten about the cocklepickers drowned on Morecombe Sands and the exploited flowerpickers in Cornwall.Mind the flowerpickers were helped by the Cornwall WIs but we know of youngsters working for next to nothing in hotels and restaurants in London, fleeced by unscrupulous agents but travelling up from the respectable Home Counties.
7th August
The local WI had planned a summer outing to Waterperry Gardens and then tea with an Oxfordshire WI but the numbers dwindled and dwindled until we had to cancel the tea which was very embarrassing. In the end only ten of us went as even more baulked when they saw the morning weather but they need not have worried because we had no rain at all while there. The gardens are well worth seeing and the items for sale are interesting but rather expensive to buy--well, the things I was eye-ing were! There were few people there because of the weather forecast so we enjoyed a leisurely walk round and on the way home stopped for a lovely cream tea at one of our own Bucks villages' post office plus shop plus cafe. Who wants to think about cholesterol levels at a time like that!