Latest news with #EmmaBeddington
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Lifestyle
- Yahoo
A woman's work is never done in a nice, quiet home office
Re Emma Beddington's article (Working from home? It's so much nicer if you're a man, 1 June), from day one of the Covid lockdown, my husband got the spare bedroom with the spare desk and two huge computer screens, whether he was doing technical work, meetings or just email. He would make a huge scene if he had to work on his laptop for just one hour. Meanwhile, I was stuck at the kitchen table with my mini laptop, including on days that I had to do technical work, big presentations or long meetings. Now he is retired and I work mostly at the office. On the rare days I work from home, I still work at the kitchen table, but he may let me work in his office for a couple of hours if I have to do some focused work. How nice of him! And I am an alleged feminist married to an alleged feminist and address supplied • I have the lovely office one and a half days a week and my hubby, soon to be at home five days a week, gets a bedroom downstairs with a garden view. They don't get their way all the time!Joanna LaidlerSleaford, Lincolnshire
The Guardian
6 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
A woman's work is never done in a nice, quiet home office
Re Emma Beddington's article (Working from home? It's so much nicer if you're a man, 1 June), from day one of the Covid lockdown, my husband got the spare bedroom with the spare desk and two huge computer screens, whether he was doing technical work, meetings or just email. He would make a huge scene if he had to work on his laptop for just one hour. Meanwhile, I was stuck at the kitchen table with my mini laptop, including on days that I had to do technical work, big presentations or long meetings. Now he is retired and I work mostly at the office. On the rare days I work from home, I still work at the kitchen table, but he may let me work in his office for a couple of hours if I have to do some focused work. How nice of him! And I am an alleged feminist married to an alleged feminist and address supplied I have the lovely office one and a half days a week and my hubby, soon to be at home five days a week, gets a bedroom downstairs with a garden view. They don't get their way all the time!Joanna LaidlerSleaford, Lincolnshire Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
The Guardian
28-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Norwegian community spirit and UK inequality
Emma Beddington's column on dugnadsånd invites readers to embrace the Norwegian tradition of community spirit because of the 'feelgood' effect one gets from volunteering, and as an antidote to the isolation many people experience as things around us become increasingly fragile (It's time to embrace Dugnadsånd – the Norwegian concept we all need right now, 23 March). She rightly points out that dugnadsånd is not to be equated with the 'outsourcing of the state's obligations' to charitable and voluntary entities, which is so common in the UK. However, she fails to recognise that in the UK, unlike in Norway, there are huge disparities across communities that will impact people's ability and willingness to do the kinds of activities dugnadsånd involves (as well as the scale of community intervention needed). Asking people who are already well off, and live in more privileged areas, to 'come together in the context of community projects' is one thing. Asking this of people who are facing the kinds of pressures that many are facing in the UK, is quite another. Dugnadsånd, moreover, is ad hoc and sporadic. There is little litter to pick in Norway's parks, no neighbours forgotten by state agencies in urgent need of help – this allows people to engage in these activities because 'it is a nice thing to do', but not because if they did not, no one else would. Dugnadsånd is about remembering that some of the work that is involved in sustaining communities (such as litter-picking or mowing large communal lawns) is hard; this helps build appreciation for those who do these activities on a daily basis, fostering the Norwegian ideal whereby 'everyone is equally important'. Notably, dugnadsånd is not about the pursuit of an individually felt 'good feeling'; it is about doing something for the common good, about having a sense of common duty and shared Vaghi and Julia HvitlockBergen, Norway Emma Beddington invokes the spirit of dugnadsånd, and cites recent examples of community activity. Though there is no exact equivalent of dugnadsånd in English, the idea is embodied in the idea of 'commoning' – a part of the 1217 Charter of the Forest, which Guy Standing, in The Politics of Time (2023), calls more radical in its implications than either the Communist Manifesto of 1848 or the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. The 'forest' in question was common land taken by the crown for use as royal hunting grounds. The charter reasserted the freedom of people to draw on the resources of the common good for the benefit of the community – a word he traces to the Greek koinoneo ('to share'). Any such work of sharing, from food banks to dementia support groups to U3A classes is 'commoning'. David Cameron may have coined the phrase 'big society' but it was a Tory government that repealed the centuries-old charter in 1971. Beddington is quite right that it is high time for us to flex our common collective muscles. Austen LynchGarstang, Lancashire Emma Beddington says 'over to you, Norway' when discussing dugnadsånd and its definition as a 'collective willingness of people to come together in the context of community projects – emphasising cooperation and selflessness'. We already have that here in practical terms in the shape of the co-operative movement and politically the Co-operative party. Maybe their time has truly come?Andrew KyleEaling, London It's a funny old thing when you offer to listen to children read at the local primary school, to be told after a month that nothing has been actioned and it will probably be after Easter, even though I have been told there is a definite need now. Then 30 minutes later I read Emma Beddington suggesting dugnadsånd. As hard to do as it is to say. Name and address supplied
The Guardian
10-03-2025
- The Guardian
My phone knows what I want before I do. That should be worrying – but it's oddly comforting
I awoke recently to one of those galleries of photographic memories curated for me by my phone. This one featured my best friend, M: admiring a dosa, stroking her cat, holding a pair of Parisian melons and lying in my garden. It made me smile and when I told her, she said her phone had had the same idea. 'It keeps trying to get me to put you as wallpaper,' she messaged, showing me its suggestions. Like pushy parents, it was as if our phones had got together and decided it was time we had a playdate. The worst of it is they are right: I really miss her. It reminded me of all the other ways my phone parents me. When I get out of choir practice, it volunteers, unprompted, that it will take 12 minutes to get home by my usual route. It helpfully offers to count down a minute when I am at the gym and want to time my rests between weights sets. When I get into the car on Saturday afternoons, it always shows me the way to the supermarket. At bedtime, it offers a shortcut to TikTok because it knows watching cats confused by Ramadan and RuPaul explaining how to parallel park soothes me. It should feel intrusive to be known so intimately by your phone – all that personal data harvested in the service of surveillance capitalism – but I find it obscurely comforting. I may be adrift in unforgiving adult life, but at least a handful of faceless, ideologically dubious corporations have my back – and will even dole out a little dopamine as a treat. With the addition of some apps, it's possible to outsource all your self-care needs to your phone – mood, food, movement, menstrual cycle and more. Your phone can prompt you to text your auntie on her birthday, suggest a nice walk when you are down, nag you to drink more water or even to pee. It is, basically, your mum. You find that bleak, even frightening? Shh, there, there. It's nothing a cuddle from your nice, warm, all-knowing rectangle won't fix. Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
The Guardian
24-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
How do I know young women are not OK? Their devastation over a doomed anglerfish
Here's an unexpected addition to our 2025 bingo card: young women across the internet have been devastated by the demise of a nightmarish fanged fish. A black seadevil anglerfish (unflatteringly described by one marine biologist as 'pretty much evolved to be a giant head'), usually a deep-sea dweller, was recently caught on camera swimming close to the surface by a shark research group near Tenerife. Sadly, apparently sick or injured, it died. This, however, was only the start of the anglerfish's journey in the hearts and TikToks of young women. The fish's story has triggered an outpouring of emotion. The narrative they have adopted is that the tiny anglerfish, who lived her life in darkness, wanted to feel the 'sun on her face', so swam alone through the vast ocean to do that before expiring. There have been tattoos, poetry and oceans of tears. 'If you have a girlfriend right now, do yourself a favour and go ask her how she's feeling about the anglerfish,' wrote one TikTok user. 'There is a 98% chance she has already bawled her eyes out about it.' What catharsis is this creature providing? Yes, she was small and female, but males are even smaller – a tenth of the size. I wonder whether anglerfish parasitism (the teeny males are absorbed into females' bodies, serving solely to provide sperm as needed) might appeal at a time when women's reproductive autonomy is existentially threatened, but not only is that a massive stretch, but this particular species is non-parasitic. So that leaves me with lots of young, especially American, women really not being OK right now. A doomed creature swimming through a hostile environment evoking big feelings? Understandable. I'm almost certainly reading too much into it. Weepy animal stories are irresistible to me, even if the animal isn't – I hope the anglerfish would have forgiven me for saying – conventionally cute. It's nice to see a bit more fellow feeling for fish, anyway: the recent revelation that bream can distinguish between individuals based on their wetsuits just confirms that fish are complex, cool, clever and fascinating. Unlike certain politicians. Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
