International Women's Day

 International Women's Day.

Now where on earth would we be without women? Women, of course are renowned for their multi tasking, their undoubted versatility, their down to earth practicality, their stunning logic, their maternal instinct when babies are born and nurturing becomes second nature. Women can spin plates simultaneously, adapting and adjusting, organising, making plans for the future and then just getting on with the business in hand without any objections.

But then history tells us that they also produce some of our finest Prime Ministers, our most respected humanitarians, excellent nurses, kind, generous individuals who left an unforgettable legacy on society. When Florence Nightingale provided a warm, caring and sympathetic heart to the wounded soldiers of wartime England, it was widely felt that women had asserted their authority, well and truly arrived. But Nightingale was one of the leaders, pioneers, a woman who loved and cared unconditionally. 

There was Indira Gandhi, formidable prime minister of India from many moons ago, Golda Meir, the Israeli Prime Minister, who was there at the start of Israel's great Independence era, a strong, forthright, positive, ruthless, uncompromising world stateswoman, a woman of clear thinking, radical ideas, controversial statements, no nonsense theories, an almost incessant smoker but revered in a way that few women had been up until that point. 

And then in 1979 the United Kingdom welcomed its first woman into 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister. She was a feisty intellectual, a professional chemist, smooth talking but direct, pragmatic, forceful, outspoken and attracting both huge respect and notoriety in huge measures. When confronted by the might of the mining industry during the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher gave as good as she got, attacking Arthur Scargill's militant colliery workers and miners, breaking down political barriers by threatening and then destroying their resistance. 

The memorable sight of Thatcher striding across barren wasteland where once there were prosperous pitheads and coal faces will never be forgotten by the enraged working classes. Thatcher hated Scargill and his hard working, gritty miners who had left school at the age of 14 and known no other employment. But Thatcher was deliberately disruptive according to some, perhaps dangerously divisive and just a pain in the neck. She was single handedly responsible for the three million unemployed who had now found themselves lost and bereft, out of work, no money in their pockets to pay bills and look after their families. However, that may have been questionable to those who thought she was superb. 

Nowadays women occupy some of the highly prestigious roles in modern times. In the old days women were, and still are, accomplished legal secretaries, acknowledged PA's,  human resources administrators of  the highest calibre, eminent high court judges, prominent lawyers of some repute and women of strength, character and resilience. Women strike with vehement intentions, protesting for their rights with bold placards across the world. Women rightly complain about gender inequalities, feelings of injustice and persecution in a man's world.

The truth is that feminism is still a movement that has to be taken seriously. Women are fervent campaigners on behalf of worthy causes because they believe, quite firmly, that they're right. And who could possibly disagree with them? Emily Pankhurst, leader of the Suffragette movement, was steadfast and loyal on behalf of feminism and would never be silenced. Emily Davison, who bravely threw herself under the Kings horse in the Epsom Derby way back when, is still regarded as an iconic figure by millions of women. 

Then, there are today's artists such as Tracy Emin who threw back the frontiers of her profession when she presented us with the famous unmade bed and displayed it in an art gallery for all to see. Germaine Greer joyously advocated women as powerful and influential, raging against alleged sexism and women's subordination and oppression, while men threatened to take away what must have seemed their waning influence. 

Who could ever forget the perception of women in the world of music? Ella Fitzgerald was the dominant and mighty voice of jazz, a woman whose magnificent and gifted voice travelled the globe and made a lasting impression on her fans and admirers. Billy Holliday was the heartbreak and bittersweet voice of the 1950s, crying and sobbing into a microphone as if she'd been rejected in love yet again when we knew she hadn't. 

And then there were the likes of Barbara Castle and Shirley Williams, hard, indomitable spirits who knew theirs was the right opinion and none could contradict them. Female politicians will always model themselves against the inimitable Margaret Thatcher but then again who could ever deny them their moment in the sun?

Women in sport have never had it so good to quote an old Tory Prime Minister. Football enjoys a phenomenal global popularity and the Women's Super League in England is a flourishing force with the national team defying all expectations at times. Women's cricket has yet to emerge as a recognisable entity but does seem to making genuine progress at both club and international level while women's rugby is slowly developing and may take a while to make a dramatic breakthrough. 

So it is that we mark International Women's Day. They will be flying their flags, marching impressively down high streets and traditional West End of London landmarks. My mum and grandma will always be important members of my own family because they fought and overcame the horrors of the Holocaust. They provided me with the opportunity to express my gratitude for them here and now. Members of my family of course on the distaff side, will always be guiding lights on my life. So wherever you are in the world Happy International Women's Day. This is your day. 

Donald Trump and that argument

 Donald Trump and that argument.

So there we were minding our business on the first weekend of March when, suddenly, it all kicked off. You've never seen anything like it. It was almost as if somebody had set light to one of the biggest fireworks parties in the world. There were rockets, ferris wheels, sparklers, catherine wheels and things that blow up and soar into the night air and, under normal circumstances, this would have been a spectacular sight but on Friday morning in downtown Washington, it must have felt as if all the grenades had exploded at once. 

Huddled together in the Oval Office in the White House, the President of the United States of America Donald Trump delivered his most lethal and most ferocious metaphorical punch at the President of Ukraine Volodymyr  Zelensky who used to be a comedian in another incarnation. But at no point during a violently combustible Press conference, was there anything remotely funny or hilarious about the verbal boxing match that was the hostile showdown between Trump and Zelensky. 

There have probably been moments in political history when two men have almost come to blows over a tragic and lengthy war. But there are now thousands of innocent civilians who have been brutally killed, murdered and shot down in cold blood over that old chestnut of territorial domination. Fists have been raised and they even assassinated a former American president for just mixing in the wrong social company. But this latest ugly development in the continuing war of words between both America, Russia and the Ukraine is a symptom of a world that is both fractured, fractious, troubled and never at peace. 

On Friday evening, the world's Press, hungry cameramen and women, photographers, radio and TV microphones assembled for one of the most horrendous bust ups ever seen by two powerful and, in hindsight, two thoroughly incensed men who would willingly have put on gloves if they thought it would sort out this unseemly and unsavoury mess. 

The irony, of course, is that both Zelensky and Trump were sitting next to each other, in what turned out faux harmony, all of the pent up frustration of the last three years erupting in front of the rest of the world like some deliberate act of sabotage. In fact so staged and premeditated was the whole Friday charade, that Trump had the gall and chutzpah to declare that this had been great TV. And so it had been but probably for the wrong reasons. 

And yet it had all started so promisingly. Both Zelensky and Trump exchanged pleasant jovialities, Trump perhaps sarcastically congratulating Zelensky for dressing up smartly for the occasion. Then we went through the formalities of a peace agreement being reached and how we were all ready to celebrate a permanent ceasefire. The important documents were about to be signed, confirming that both President Putin and Zelensky had finally recognised that enough death and destruction had been inflicted on the people of both Russia and the Ukraine. So far so good. 

But then as the questions were fired from the Fourth Estate and journalists had exhausted their battery of questions, the air became poisonous. An American gentleman from the Press piped up with perhaps the most crass inquiry ever heard at a gathering such as this. Why, he asked, wasn't President Zelensky wearing a suit and, more to the point, did he even own a suit because the good people of America were anxious to know why and had a right to be informed?

You could almost see the dark clouds hovering over a crowded and tense room of politicians and journalists. A Polish broadcaster thought the time was right to ask Trump whether military action would intensify to such an extent that eventually Poland would be dragged into conflict. Now it was that the volcanic atmosphere would simmer and boil threateningly before just steaming over. Things would spiral dramatically out of control. 

Vice President Vance, conveniently situated on a chaise longue from a middle class living room in California, joined in with the bun fight. Landing savage hooks and jabs into Zelensky's head metaphorically once again, Vance seriously wondered whether Zelensky would ever thank his so called American allies for busting a gut in the relentless quest for peace. For everything that Vance and his colleagues had done to save Ukraine from complete annihilation, the least Ukraine could do was show their gratitude. 

At this point, the American president with the ridiculously long red tie, bristling orange hair and a navy suit that Robert Redford once wore in one of his films, started raising his voice. Before long, Donald Trump simply went berserk. So angry, inflamed and impassioned did Trump become that it wasn't long that his fingers and hands were in full confrontational mode. The body language became tiresomely familiar and there was the old fashioned routine of gesturing, gesticulating, stretching his hands to make a pertinent point and then glancing around the room with those sinister glares.

Trump just kept going on and on about the deals he was famous for doing, the non existent wars he'd stopped and then perhaps the most outrageous comment. In the middle of another raucous rant about the Ukranian insistence on continuing the war, Trump became convinced that Zelensky was quite happy to gamble with millions of lives with a Third World War repeatedly.

Shortly, after another heated exchange of facts and the obvious statements, both men looked as if they were just eye balling each other contemptuously. Trump looked just fed up with the whole occasion before claiming once again that Zelensky just wasn't co-operating and that wasn't a nice thing. He then resorted to that celebrated vocabulary where the whole act of being disrespectful to America and the world, was driving him around the bend. 

And after what seemed an eternity, Trump just engaged with his audience with one of those looks that suggested that butter hadn't melted in his mouth. He kept looking for approval and rapturous applause but didn't get it. The President of the United States had just concluded one of the most astonishing and memorable political Press conferences ever heard or seen. 

It could be said that we'd just witnessed the gaudiest, cheapest and sleaziest political scenes but then we must have known this to be the case. Donald Trump had behaved with all the politeness and decorum of one of those individuals at Speakers Corner at Hyde Park who do nothing but shout, expostulate, holler at the the top of their voices, spouting seeming nonsense, insulting invective and contempt for everybody. 

But of course Trump had the vested interests of peace and pacifism at heart, a buccaneering hero who should win the Nobel Peace Prize and be widely acclaimed for being the perfect gentleman. Sadly, we turned our eyes away from last Friday night in shock and horror, bafflement and confusion, hardly believing the evidence of our eyes. It was truly terrifying TV and certainly not one of Trump's finest hours. We may hope and pray that we never ever see its like ever again.