Womanifesto

First things first. Newspaper journalists are writing about the breakfasts they have at the early morning press conferences. (Apparently the Tory manifesto provided chocolate croissants, brioche, bacon and sausage sandwiches.) Just for the record, I had porridge and a crumpet this morning while the children fought over who had the most red bits in their cereal bowls.

Moving on. According to the Daily Telegraph, Cameron reached out to women voters with his manifesto yesterday. Female shadow ministers made speeches before him to prove how highly he rates women, and he focused on making Britain one of the most "family friendly" countries in the world. What's not to like about "family" and "friendly"? A family friendly country sounds great. Perhaps he could start with cafes and build up? "Every cafe to have wax crayons and paper for young customers", for instance. "Cafes to ban sniffy customers who stare accusingly at mortified mums trying to mop up juice spills and hush up noisy children."

There's a problem with Cameron's offer of a DIY revolution and women are going to spot it. The manifesto talks of:
*the redistribution of power to individuals, families and local communities.
*higher levels of personal and civic responsibility
*a society where people come together to solve problems and improve life for themselves and their communities
Parents will be enabled to start new schools and communities empowered to take over parks and libraries under threat.

Am I the only woman out there whose heart sank when I read "Our ambition is for every adult in the country to be a member of an active neighbourhood group"? Was it just me who heard the threat implicit in the pledge "We will stimulate the creation and development of neighbourhood groups, which can take action to improve their local area." There's even a spending pledge to fund the training of "independent community organisers" to help get these groups off the ground. And of course a "Big Society Day" to celebrate their work. (I am so looking forward to that one.)

The manifesto goes on: "Building the Big Society means encouraging the concept of public-spirited service - the idea that everyone should play a part in making their communities stronger."

And as final evidence that these manifestos aren't written by wives and mothers, but crafted by policy wonks who don't get out enough along with politicos in the business for life who only ever talk to other politicos in it for life, the assurance that a Tory government will "use the latest insights from behavioural economics to encourage people to make volunteering and community participation something they do on a regular basis."
What?
I repeat. What?
You read a couple of hardback books of socio-economic psycho-babble and make a wish and the world changes and everyone in it. Yep. Like that's going to happen. If women are as important as they are supposed to be in this election, and this (along with SamCam looking bumpy and radiant) is all the Conservatives have in their armoury to appeal to them, then watch that electoral lead narrow, chaps.

I like the fact Cameron is an enthusiast and an optimist and believes he can change the world. I do. But the fact is talk to me about taking on anything else and I'm going to start screaming.

Women with families (friendly or otherwise) are operating at full stretch. If they are working as well, then they probably feel on a pretty regular basis that their lives are coming apart at the seams. They can hardly find time for the PTA, let alone become "a member of an active neighbourhood group." Oh good, something else to feel guilty about. Now you have to dodge the neighbourhood group chairman as well as the chairman of the PTA (and I speak as a former chairman of the PTA). Women will be hiding in the car boot from these people. They will tremble every time there is a knock at the back door. OK, there are indeed times we organise a petition to save a park or a playground, we fight some or other petty bureaucracy, and we bake three dozen currant buns for the cake sale at two o'clock in the morning because it's the only time we have. We'll do what we can when we have to. We already try our best. We already do our best. But please David, enough's enough. We can only do so much.

The Modern Father

I watched a couple of venerable journos pontificate over the papers about Tory leader, David Cameron's interview on ITV during which - stop press - he became "emotional" discussing the death of his son, six-year-old Ivan. It's been slightly over a year since Ivan died. Not long. No time at all really. The pain within touching distance.Cameron told the interviewer "the loss is very tough and it takes a very long time to even start to get over it. It's a sort of journey between understanding what you're missing, what you've lost and being grateful for what you had. It just takes a very long time."
There were raised eyebrows among the country's world-weary. Oh so world-weary. Could it be that Cameron was seeking to electorally profit from the death of his son? "How distasteful", they muttered among themselves. After all, they'd seen it all before.

In February during another ITV interview, this time with Piers Morgan, Gordon Brown spoke of the death of daughter Jennifer, born prematurely weighing just 2lb 4oz, dying in 2002 at just 10 days.
“She would be 9 this year and you know, you think all the time of the first steps, and the first words and the first time you go to school and it’s just not been there… this is the happiest time of your life and then suddenly it becomes the most grief stricken time of your life. It was such a pendulum swing. I couldn’t listen to music, I really wasn’t much interested in anything for a while because you had to come to terms with something that, you know... you’d expect it would work out so completely differently.”
One commentator came to the verdict "He might have steered the country on to the rocks but last night we were invited to vote for him because, I'm sorry to say, he and his wife suffered the intense sorrow of losing their first child. That sounds harsh but this excruciating TV appearance left one no alternative conclusion."
Another opined: "Was it a cynical U-turn by a man who once decried personalised politics and Blairish exploitation of family? Yes shouted an army of cynical pundits and bloggers."

My child (stillborn at term) would be 10 if I hadn't lost him. Lost him like a sock or glove or pair of spectacles for reading. Just like that. But worse. And what these pundits don't understand is Brown and Cameron don't have a choice to talk or not to talk, to weep or not to weep, because the life and death of their children runs right through them. Tragedy defines them more than any manifesto ever could. Whatever power each man holds or chases, he would abandon it all, without hesitation, for just one more day with his lost child. He would sell his own soul for his lovely political wife never to have had her heart broken up into ugly pieces that no policy or strategic thinking - however clever and well-meaning - could ever mend. These party leaders may day-dream of glory, but at night they dream of sons and daughters they can no longer hold. They are not wrong to talk about it, they are right. Unspoken griefs twist and turn and do not grow smaller for darkness and a lack of air. They speak their children's names and they tell of their sorrows because to do otherwise would be to deny those children, it would be to say those children came and went, and that coming and that going did not matter in the scheme of things. Honesty in politicians - isn't that a good thing?