Welfare Reform
In a bulletin on The Gender Impact of Welfare Reform concern is expressed over what is seen as a disproportionate impact on women as many benefit recipients are female (for example child benefit is often payable to the mother).
Read moreFathers Day!
COME JOIN US for an informal celebration of Fathers Day 12-2pm on Monday the 17th JUNE 2013
Read moreSeeing Dad
Sometimes I unexpectedly see My long-dead Father When I am fiddling.
Read more'And he being dead, yet speaketh.' A Father's Day Piece.
Each time I close, Each time I open The curtains, I see your picture On top of the piano.
Read moreVisiting Dad.
Bright sun dances off The Black marble And the shallow valleys Of the gold engraving.
Read moreFather & Son. Easter Piece.
He looks With round face and clear Dark eyes, Smiling with a gummy grin.
Read more'And I Won't Turn Out Like My Dad' said The Proclaimers.
Take 70 p 3s and p 4s. Dress them up like teenagers. Pack them into a big dark hot and sweaty space. Continually shine bright coloured, flashy lights in their little faces. Shout indecipherable messages at them through a horrendously loud and fuzzy P.A system like a North Korean Dictator.
Read moreLet Your Child Have You For A Day.
In the midst of a recent conversation at a parenting event I was attending I heard the phrase, "Sometimes I feel like I am just a taxi for my children!" It was said with a humorous grumpiness. How many of us have thought and felt the same, especially when you get the feeling that you are living your whole week at the local Leisure Centre and your children's times for their various classes are all higgledy piggledy and a logistical nightmare.
Read moreHow Fragile We Are.
I grew up in small town, rural Ireland in the Sixties. Television was relatively new and I recall only black and white in our home. Then colour came into our home and a bizarre and rather psychedelic show from America called ‘The Monkees.’ Davy Jones and Mike Naismith (whose mother, I once heard, had invented Tippex but since that might have only been a rumour, maybe I had better Tippex it out?)
Read moreLove Actually.
It's Valentine's day. Hype? A bumper season for florists? There are articles every where about love, from The Guardian Family Section on Saturday where we read about 5 couples who fell in love at first sight and seemed to buck the trend, 'Marry in haste, repent at leisure,' to 'Sense' the RBS Magazine which has emblazoned on the front, 'The Love Issue - The Chemistry of Falling in Love.'
Read more