Home I’m Darling: a parable on choice

We went earlier this week to see Home I'm Darling, Laura Wade's sparky play about a woman who 'chooses' to stay home and recreate the role of a 1950s housewife - spot-free kitchen, husband-slippering and all.  It's a really original idea:  the recreation is Judy's own, and it mixes commitment to authenticity (clunky frig, relentlessly bright decor) with streaks of contemporary living.  So once husband Johnny is seen out of the door and off to his pedestrian estate agent job, sandwiches in briefcase,  Judy opens the kitchen drawer and pulls out - a laptop.  We are regularly tipped into uncertainty whether hers is a genuine if eccentric lifestyle choice or a delusional…
Read More

Enlightenment

I've just finished Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now.  It's a thoroughly bracing read - bracing in the sense that you sometimes feel that you're having buckets of cold water thrown over you, but also that you emerge as, well, a more enlightened person:  inevitably better informed but also better equipped to defend the values of inquiry, evidence and rationality that are so often missing in today's discussions (cf Brexit passim). Pinker's basic approach on any given issue is to beat you about the head with data, but to do it in such an accessible and stylishly written way that it's mostly a pleasure as well as a lesson.  He covers an implausibly wide…
Read More

GPG reporting

We're into Year 2 of mandatory reporting on Gender Pay Gaps, and there is a certain frisson of excitement around what progress has or has not been made since the first results were published last year.  Three data points are of course much better than two, so next year might be the first one to give us a true sense of trajectory, but there will be a lot of interest to see how far companies have moved.  And in what direction - it's not at all certain that they will all see a narrowing of the gap. I attended one meeting, organised jointly by London Business School and King's College…
Read More

Home I’m Darling: a parable on choice

We went earlier this week to see Home I'm Darling, Laura Wade's sparky play about a woman who 'chooses' to stay home and recreate the role of a 1950s housewife - spot-free kitchen, husband-slippering and all.  It's a really original idea:  the recreation is Judy's own, and it mixes commitment to authenticity (clunky frig, relentlessly bright decor) with streaks of contemporary living.  So once husband Johnny is seen out of the door and off to his pedestrian estate agent job, sandwiches in briefcase,  Judy opens the kitchen drawer and pulls out - a laptop.  We are regularly tipped into uncertainty whether hers is a genuine if eccentric lifestyle choice or a delusional…
Read More

Enlightenment

I've just finished Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now.  It's a thoroughly bracing read - bracing in the sense that you sometimes feel that you're having buckets of cold water thrown over you, but also that you emerge as, well, a more enlightened person:  inevitably better informed but also better equipped to defend the values of inquiry, evidence and rationality that are so often missing in today's discussions (cf Brexit passim). Pinker's basic approach on any given issue is to beat you about the head with data, but to do it in such an accessible and stylishly written way that it's mostly a pleasure as well as a lesson.  He covers an implausibly wide…
Read More

GPG reporting

We're into Year 2 of mandatory reporting on Gender Pay Gaps, and there is a certain frisson of excitement around what progress has or has not been made since the first results were published last year.  Three data points are of course much better than two, so next year might be the first one to give us a true sense of trajectory, but there will be a lot of interest to see how far companies have moved.  And in what direction - it's not at all certain that they will all see a narrowing of the gap. I attended one meeting, organised jointly by London Business School and King's College…
Read More

Home I’m Darling: a parable on choice

We went earlier this week to see Home I'm Darling, Laura Wade's sparky play about a woman who 'chooses' to stay home and recreate the role of a 1950s housewife - spot-free kitchen, husband-slippering and all.  It's a really original idea:  the recreation is Judy's own, and it mixes commitment to authenticity (clunky frig, relentlessly bright decor) with streaks of contemporary living.  So once husband Johnny is seen out of the door and off to his pedestrian estate agent job, sandwiches in briefcase,  Judy opens the kitchen drawer and pulls out - a laptop.  We are regularly tipped into uncertainty whether hers is a genuine if eccentric lifestyle choice or a delusional…
Read More

Enlightenment

I've just finished Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now.  It's a thoroughly bracing read - bracing in the sense that you sometimes feel that you're having buckets of cold water thrown over you, but also that you emerge as, well, a more enlightened person:  inevitably better informed but also better equipped to defend the values of inquiry, evidence and rationality that are so often missing in today's discussions (cf Brexit passim). Pinker's basic approach on any given issue is to beat you about the head with data, but to do it in such an accessible and stylishly written way that it's mostly a pleasure as well as a lesson.  He covers an implausibly wide…
Read More

GPG reporting

We're into Year 2 of mandatory reporting on Gender Pay Gaps, and there is a certain frisson of excitement around what progress has or has not been made since the first results were published last year.  Three data points are of course much better than two, so next year might be the first one to give us a true sense of trajectory, but there will be a lot of interest to see how far companies have moved.  And in what direction - it's not at all certain that they will all see a narrowing of the gap. I attended one meeting, organised jointly by London Business School and King's College…
Read More