When is a Woman not a Woman....?

Sounds like the beginning of a really funny joke doesn't it?  Well it's not. It's not funny and it's certainly no joke. A few years back a talented young South African athlete by the name of Caster Semenya was dragged into fame in a really unpleasant way, instead of being praised and made famous around the world for her talent... running and my word can she run! She was dragged into the limelight because some saddo's at the IAAF decided that she possibly wasn't a female at all.

Now once upon a time knowing what sex you were was a very simple thing, if you had testicles and a penis ... simple, you're a man,  if you have ovaries, boobs and a vagina then you're a woman... it's a given!  Although granted there are some men who have the testicles, the penis and a set of impressive boobs as well  but they are still men. Yes?   Well apparently this is no longer the case.  Now it seems you can have the requisite bits and pieces that are indicative of your sex and yet still have some smart alec stand up and say "ooooh no you're not that because you have too many hormones."

What???? hormones?  When did hormones come into it?  When did all these other "tests" become essential to decide what sex we are?  I have polycystic ovaries and therefore I have too much testosterone in my blood and hair in places that men get hair... does that make me a man?  Well if it does I should be rich then cos I already am the first man to have a baby by about 18 years!

What has been even more irritating in this particular situation is not only did the IAAF keep Caster out of athletics for 8 months whilst they decided amongst them whether or not she was a woman but they only backed off when a court case loomed.  Good on you Caster for standing your ground say I.

The IAAF didn't in the end give in to common sense or science that Caster is a woman, no the real reason they found in her favour and finally let her compete again was because if they had been taken to court their testing policy would not only have been legally tested but it would also have opened the door to them being challenged by all the other athletes they still have hanging around in limbo.

Let's be clear here without science there would not even be a question of what makes a man a man and a woman a woman... if you have female sexual organs, you're a bird, enough said.

So I guess the punchline to the joke... When is a Woman not a Woman?   Has to be... When you're a woman good at something that men feel threatened by. 

Still not funny is it...

Time to Rant - Politicians

There are few things in this world that are guaranteed to get me riled up and ready to rant than career politicians. (ok that's a porky pie, there's plenty of things)  I don't mean Joe Bloggs, the man/or woman off the street who decides to stand up and be counted and represent their community... I mean the people who come from (in the main) quite privileged backgrounds, who trot off to University and study politics for years and then come straight out of university and go straight into their jobs of "Politician".

Why does this cause me to have a rant, I hear you ask.... well... think of it this way, if you are sick and you need someone to diagnose you, would you go to you MP's surgery to have them diagnose you?  Or would you take yourself off to your GP, someone who has had years of training in medicine, to work out what is wrong with you?  If your car is broken down, do you go and see your MP or do you go and see a mechanic?

Why then do we trust career politicians who have no had any experience of running companies, who have never worked in the NHS, who have no medical training or business training to run as big a company (and don't be fooled, the NHS IS a business) as the NHS? How... exactly.... are career politicians qualified to decide how money should be spent within the NHS, where is their business qualification?  Where is their medical experience and qualifications? What makes them think they know so much better how to run the NHS better than people who have been working in the field for their whole careers?

The latest comical plan by the Conservative Party to reorganise the NHS is just laughable, especially since the current structure of the NHS was initiated by the Tories in the Thatcher years. It's so easy for them to try and palm the blame off onto the last government but we're not all as stupid as the Tories think and some of us were around when they were last in power and remember what they did.  The Tories were the instigators of the endless league tables and beauracracy.  

If the Tories are serious about reorganising the NHS in a way that a) will work and b) is cost effective then really the Career Politicians need to get out of the equation altogether. Bring in people who actually know what they are doing. As much as they would like to blame the NHS's situation on "Management Overload"  They are wrong, management is essential within the NHS, it is a given that, thanks to the Tories, management is top heavy and could use some pruning, but without good management the NHS would fall to pieces, everyone has a role to play, doctors do the doctoring, nurses do the nursing and the management and admin do the boring paperwork and gruntwork that keeps the NHS ticking over.

What makes me so angry is this stupid assumption that reorganisation is the way forward... we're in a recession, wasting £1.5 billion on reorganisation is not only insane it's wasteful and insulting to us, the taxpayers.   People are worried about whether or not they are going to have a job tomorrow, whether or not their children will be able to go to university or even whether or not they will be able to eat and our Government thinks it's ok to throw around £1.5 billion on reorganisation of an institution that they reorganised the last time they were in power...

I guess it is really easy to sit in a protected ivory tower, where you know your job is safe for 5 years and chuck around sound bites and taxpayers money.