Do shut up, Jeremy Hunt

 Jeremy Hunt wants to halve abortion limit times to 12 weeks. 

In a way, it's almost comforting to know that two major players in the government have such an open disregard for women's right. The fact that they were respectively the Women's and Health Minister really says all you need to know.

A baby born at 22 weeks has a 1% chance of survival from the onset of labour. 1%. The Department of Health's own figures state that 91% of abortions happen under 13 weeks. Just stop for a moment, and look at those statistics properly. Women are not going around having abortions at 22 weeks willy-nilly. They are for reasons. One woman's reason to abort a foetus might not be yours, or mine, but I personally think that jeopardising the physical and mental health of a women who already lives outweigh other concerns.

Abortion should be safe, legal and above all rare. If Mr Hunt and Ms Miller are so concerned about the rights of unborn children, they should start looking at improving sex education in school. They should also start doing something about making sure that children aren't born into poverty, and go through life with a good education and better opportunities. As they are both members of a government that seems to be cheerfully pushing more children into poverty, they should really look at their priorities.

This isn't Nadine bloody Dorries, going around ranting about the unborn children and the evil nurses who deliberately kill them. She's a fringe player, with very little impact on what really happens. These two are from the government, with portfolios to deliberately care for women's health. That's why this is so enraging, and so frustrating to hear.

Beep beep

So, car insurance.

I am no longer a Young Person according to official statistics. The other day I had to fill in a form and it was with great melancholy I ticked the '25-34' box. As such, today's news stories about the car insurance industry technically don't affect me, as I am theoretically skipping into the world of 25+ married person car insurance. In theory I am stability itself.

So why, exactly, my premiums have gone up is a puzzle.

Cars are essential in today's world. I wish they weren't. I would love to get rid of my car and not have it as a necessity. Unfortunately, this would involve living in an area with decent public transport links, or indeed not working in the countryside. Both of these things are facts in my life, so I pootle on with my car. Mr DG cannot drive, so it's very definitely my car and my bills for petrol, for insurance, for car tax, and for repairs. Weirdly, I found these things slightly easier to afford when I was a student. All of the above bills have shot up exponentially in the seven years since I passed my test.

I have had very few jobs where didn't need my car to get too and from work, starting from pretty much as soon as I passed my test, which I passed about a month before my eighteenth birthday. I have a feeling that every 'group' of friends needs at least one person with a car, which has pretty much consistently been me. It makes finding work easier, it gives you a bigger list of places to live. I would feel a bit lost without my car, now.

I worry about people who have to jump straight into the new world of driving, and how they'll cope with the bills as they rise steadily. I can still afford to keep my car going, although that said my fan belt sounds like it's on the fritz and if it goes before the end of the month I'm going to have to sacrifice a pair of tights and make do. Hell, I can't afford to not keep my car going – there's no way to get to my work by public transport, and the walk would take about six hours on a good day.

I don't know if there's a point to this post, per se, other than to ponder if car insurance firms don't put out daft ideas like 'Make new drivers only drive during the day!' (so sucks to be 20 and work night shifts, then) to try and distract the rest of us from the fact that it's getting more difficult by the year to still run a car. I'm no Jeremy Clarkson, bleating on about my civil rights to drive cars at whatever speed I wish. I'm thoroughly aware of the environmental impact of cars, which if I walk and take public transport everywhere I can. But in this country, if you live outside a major city, a car is a grim necessity.

I wonder.

Feeling slightly left behind (this time, avoiding libel!)

I had a very weird experience in work the other day. We have Radio 1 on in work, despite all being way too old for the demographic. (I want Radio 6, other staff want Radio 5, some losers want Magic, weirdly on that list Radio 1 is the middle ground. We all like Scott Mills.) Anyway, it chirps along in the background, excluding occasionally howling abuse at Fern Cotton. No one really listens to it, but it keeps the office from weird silence.

No, really, I'm going somewhere with this.

Anyway, the radio was chirping away, and I was vaguely aware of Fern Cotton and another female presenter talking cheerfully about a hot new boyband, and how the lead singer was the only one worth looking at. Christina, my desk buddy, suddenly gave a shriek.

“Disorientated Graduate! That bloke they're talking about! You went to school with him!”

[n.b. Christina went to a different high school, but in the same small town – the crossover of people known is fairly high.]

Anyway, I listened properly and gave out a small shriek myself. “OH MY GOD, I DID!”

He's the closest thing from my school year that constitutes a celebrity, obviously excluding my upcoming fame as a writer. He was on a popular talent show, albeit without getting through to the live shows or having too much TV time, and dated a famous female singer for quite a long time. Then they broke up, and an ex-colleague of mine, who lives opposite the chap in question's parents, informed me she broke up with him because he 'didn't earn enough money, and she wanted a man to earn more money than she did'. I am, as such, failing to name any of the people involved so I'm not sued for libel. (DISCLAIMER: I would also like to point in that I have no idea if the aforementioned story is true, and is probably just slightly malicious gossip. Amusing, though.)

Anyway, I did some googling and was highly amused to see that the chap in question is in fact the lead singer of an up and coming boyband of whom even I've heard of, although he's got a lot of fake tan and a bit of a perm involved.

Then I felt a bit depressed, and a little bit old as well. Or possibly that I'm getting left behind, a little bit, mostly because one of my dearest friends just had a baby and has now made a lovely little family. One of my fondest (and fuzziest) memories of aforementioned friend is in our first year at university when we got legless at a Rocky Horror themed night at the union, and I think we're still on the Union website in our underwear, convinced we look sexy. Now she's a mother, and a radiant one at that. And someone I still remember singing in the Year 3 Christmas play has a song on Radio 1.

I am aware that I'm pretty awesome, honestly. I'm doing well in my life, and at a party this weekend a group of us celebrated the genuine leaps ahead we've made in the last twelve months in our lives. One of the problems of being a graduate – and perhaps, simply being this age – is that occasionally I'm blown away by the achievements on my peers, and I feel a little behind. I know I'm not, and goodness knows I don't want to be a pop star or indeed a mother; still, it's a strange feeling.

Guide to Freshers Week?

It's Freshers Week across the country for many students, or alternatively it's about to start. I've been reading the various 'Guide to Freshers Week' in papers with a sense of arch irony, wondering if many of the articles are in fact writing for graduates who chortle at the stereotypes and remember their own Freshers Week fondly. After all, no student is reading the paper, right?

It was at about this point I remembered my first day at university. I moved into university owned housing, a self-catering house for six girls, and on the first day three of us sort of awkwardly banded together and desperately tried to make tea for the others. We all had biscuits, too. I felt very cunning, because I'd read the UCAS guide to making friends and it was very emphatic that making tea was a great way to make friends. The only downside is that Frances managed to make a round of tea, first.

About a week later, more comfortable in each other's presence and with a few vodkas in us, Frances mentioned that she didn't actually like tea. She'd only made it and drank it because that was what she'd read in the UCAS guide. I gasped. So did Sandra. Turned out we'd all tried the same cunning trick.

(True story: Frances really doesn't like tea. I've seen her drink it once since, when she was desperately trying to work out what her pregnancy cravings were. Turns out that it wasn't tea, but she felt it was a fair guess.)

My own Freshers Week was an awfully long time ago, but I do know that Freshers Week is a lot more fun when you're not a Fresher. Still, it's the start of a great time. Plus, in what feels like an eternity away, you'll be sat on the internet and reading Freshers Week guides and feeling horribly nostalgic, particularly as you have to be up early for work tomorrow. Alas.

Labels

One of the main problems of being a graduate type is that when you graduate and don't fall into your dream job (or indeed any job at all), it leads to a strangely existential crisis. You see, for years and years you were just 'a student'. Okay, not just a student, but the studying was essential to your understanding on yourself. Student discount, student politics, student feminism, student geek, student historian. They come with their own assumptions and values, which can often be negative but have positive connotations for the student themselves. My sister thinks students are lazy scum, but I rather like students.

So the crisis when you leave university and lose the label is something of a traumatic thing. Having been defined for so long by your full-time life, it's horrible having to be 'Second Accounts Assistant' or 'Retail Assistant' because quite simply it's not as snappy a title. Even those in their dream jobs are generally struggling a little, as many titles don't trip off the tongue. And 'job seeker' just doesn't sound good, even if it's not a negative thing in itself.

Tackling it is difficult. I take the self-deprecation route, myself, and go for 'Office Monkey' or 'Admin Bitch' depending on my mood. Or I lie at parties, which is morally wrong but I like to see what I can get away with. It was a moment of some distress when I got married and filled in a census in a twelve-month period and realised that I would, historically speaking, forever be tarred as 'Administration Clerk' for the rest of my life. Hell, I put down 'clerk' instead of 'assistant' just to sound a bit more historical. I wanted to put astronaut, but the council office were pretty insistent that was illegal. I wonder if on <i>Who Do You Think You Are 2150</i> some descendent will look at me and just think I was boring based on the records. I hope not.

My trick, these days, is to look at the other things in my life, and create a series of labels that aren't based around my job. Yes, I'm an office monkey, and that is a big part of my life. I'm also a writer. I'm a feminist. I'm a geek. I'm lots of things that are separate to me as a worker, and it's with that I keep my happiness and my sanity.

- -

Another label I can take on for the next fortnight is 'traveller'. Having managed to get my laptop back, I'm on the road as of Friday, finally getting to go on honeymoon. As I only have a year left to be classed as a 'young person' (another label!) according to Interrail standards, I'm off around Europe for two weeks with Mr DG and probably too much beer. As such, this is another hiatus announcement, but things should settle down when I'm back. Probably.

Computer issues

My beloved laptop has developed a perplexing issue of not charging and as such it's soon to be taken to be repaired for hopefully a very small amount of money. My computer time is therefore limited to whenever Mr DG isn't using his, which isn't very often and also he has a Mac which I hate using.

In short, this is a minor hiatus but I will be back shortly. Honest! (And then going away for two weeks in September, but that's by the by.)

A-Level results day

Good grief, it's A-Level results day tomorrow. How the time flies. It's been EIGHT YEARS since I did that. Best of luck with that to anyone reading to whom the luck still applies.

To all graduates currently feeling very, very old - man, I feel your pain.