An observation or two....

People's Parliament, Brighton. I'm in this - can you spot me? ;-)

I recently watched 'State of the Union' - essentially a two-hander (with a couple of short cameos) with Rosamund Pike and Chris O'Dowd dissecting their marriage in ten episodes, each lasting about ten minutes, all set in a trendy pub over the road from their therapist's house. So a film-length piece, in essence, although much better for being divided into these chunks, especially as it was so pithy. It was sharp, bittersweet and funny.
The only thing that bugged me - and it's a tiny thing, but I'm pedantic like that :-) - was in one episode he handed over a ten pound note for their drinks and received some coins in change. I THINK it was a tenner anyway, I rewound it to watch. Now, we imagine this drama to be set in London - it's either that or some other urban, expensive patch, what with the stripped pine, vases of single, tasteful flower on the tables and all. Are you telling me you'd have ANY change left from a tenner when buying a pint and a very large glass of wine?! I don't think so. You'd be looking at around £12 for that I reckon.
There, feel better for that now. How nice to be nit-picky on the page rather than in my head. Something else I did was go to the People's Parliament event in Brighton at the weekend. Some gammons got over-excited on Twitter, claiming there were only enough people to fit in a phone box attending. Maybe they've got access to the Tardis. There were about 120 there, I reckon. Admittedly the venue holds more, so there were empty seats, but it wasn't supposed to be a rally or demonstration - more a chance for citizens to ask questions of the 3 MPs (Lucas, Russell-Moyle, Kyle) and engage in debate. As it was, only a proportion of those who wanted to raise a point got the chance to do so. No surprises that Brexit took up most of the debate, much to Caroline's irritation. Others too, including mine, when the question we were asked to address was: 'How do communities come together after it?' rather than an endless back and forth about 'will of the people' and 'democracy' and 'who's right' and so on.
I did manage to raise a point about the need for smaller, third sector organisations, especially those that are peer-led, to have more support and funding in order to rebuild communities. I have seen many companies having to close recently because their funding has been completely stripped away by the CCG and given to large providers, who then scratch their heads on how they are going to implement peer support, missing the point that peer support comes from the bottom up.
From one David and Goliath incident to another. I noticed the NSPCC has started an initiative, calling for greater perinatal support. All well and good, you might think, especially for organisations such as Mothers Uncovered - I've been campaigning for this cause for years now. However, as the NSPCC's remit is about preventing cruelty to children, and the campaign is called 'Fight for a Fair Start', I'm wondering whose cause it's championing? Who is fighting exactly, given that the NSPCC might often be getting directly involved in families' lives to protect the child from abuse? I feel organisations that are predominantly about mothers' wellbeing should be leading this charge. But I'm the sidelined David in this scenario. No hope of Louis Theroux (who was promoting it) tweeting out this hashtag #letmumspeak or this link.
www.change.org/p/public-health-england-nhs-mothers-need-more-support-help-them-now?just_created=true

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