As you will no doubt be aware, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is currently mulling over the exact definition of a ‘woman’. As The Economist drily noted this week,

Finally, an answer looms for those who wonder what those 34m people in Britain who are not men might be.

The debate about the exact definitions of gender terms is distressingly toxic, and rarely seems to contain much compassion. It also often feels very current, as though it is a debate which could only exist now—which is, of course, nonsense.

We all know this is nonsense, as we all know that the role of women in society has transformed over the last century, and we all know that change always leads to conflict. Of course, there have been repeated, endless debates about the topic.

I learned this week about the case of Gwyneth Bebb vs The Law Society, heard 111 years ago next month. The similarity between the debate then and the debate now is striking.

Bebb wished to become a solicitor, but found herself prevented from doing so by the tradition that only men entered the legal profession. The Solicitors Act of 1843 referred only to a ‘person’ acting as an attorney or solicitor, setting no specific gender boundaries.

And so Bebb asked the Courts to rule on whether a ‘woman’ was a ‘person’—a very similar question to that being considered by the Supreme Court today.

Bizarrely to modern eyes, the Courts ruled that a ‘woman’ was not a ‘person’—not least because married women were unable to enter legal contracts of their own accord.

In the short term, and to Bebb specifically, this was devastating. She died from complications of childbirth aged 31, just a few years after the ruling. Yet, within a decade of the ruling, women were practising law—just as they had a few hundred years before.

I’ve no idea what the Supreme Court will conclude this time around, but I suspect the impact is likely to rhyme with history: society’s views will continue to change at an unprecedented pace, for better and for worse, and people arguing about the exact definitions of words will have little long-term impact.

I said a few years ago that I think Paris is at its best on crisp, sun-drenched winter days. I reflected this week that Newcastle is pretty good under those same conditions… and unlike during that trip to Paris, the ice on Newcastle’s pavements hasn’t swiped my feet from under me (yet).

In 2012, I visited the Tyne Pedestrian and Cyclist tunnels, about a year before they closed for refurbishment. The refurbishment did not go to plan, and the tunnels were closed for six years. I re-visited in 2020 to see how the almost-finished product looked.

I reflected on that visit that the fancy new lifts were not yet up and running. But this week, the better part of five years on, the lifts have finally opened to the public. The tunnels, which are free to access, have also returned to 24/7 opening.

The Tyne and Wear Metro used to have 90 Metrocars formed into 45 trains. The fleet is now well beyond its intended lifespan, and some of the trains have been harvested for parts to keep it running. A while ago, the service frequency was reduced so that only 28 trains are required at peak times.

Yesterday morning, a quarter of the 28 running trains broke down in service. A few weeks ago, there was an afternoon when only twenty trains were available.

Somehow, none of this feels surprising—it feels like yet another example of a public service that no longer works properly, another asset which once evoked civic pride but now feels like a bit of an embarrassment.

There are plans in place to fix things—new trains are coming, for one thing—but reputations lost are hard to regain. Regardless of how quickly it might happen on paper, I wonder how long it will be until the system feels reliable again?

This is a short French film by Coralie Fargeat, first released in 2014. I streamed it elsewhere, but it turns out that you can also now watch it on YouTube:

It is set in present-day Paris. Residents can choose to have a ‘chip’ implanted which allows users to see themselves and their fellow users with their ‘dream’ bodies, for twelve hours per day. It’s a commentary on how parts of our society are obsessed with physical appearance.

It won lots of awards, but I thought that didn’t say much beyond the obvious, that a person’s qualities are more than skin-deep. I saw Jennifer Haley’s one-act play The Nether at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London around the same time as this film was released. The play has a similar conceit, but leaned into exploring ethics in a much more interesting and memorable way: instead of focusing merely on romance, it used the theme of child abuse to raise deeply uncomfortable questions—though I suppose it was three times the length.

I’m not sure the film did much for me.

In his Dividing Lines newsletter last week, Tom Hamilton wrote about the absurd and offensive use of war metaphors in political debate.

Here’s Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride, perorating.

“This is a Budget of broken promises, and when the dust has finally settled and this lot have gone, as we step over the fallen—the former farmers, the pensioners, the one-time businesspeople, the poor and the vulnerable—there we will find the shattered remains of the working people of this country, betrayed by a party that lied to them, and they will never forget it.”

Believe it or not – your mileage may vary on this, but I found this astonishing – Stride was actually wearing a poppy as he used this metaphor. Paying tribute to our war dead while saying that pensioners losing their winter fuel allowance are basically in the same category as the boys who got machine-gunned at the Somme. I realise that while it is crass it is not intentionally crass, but it is not obvious to me that this is less disrespectful than defacing a war memorial.

As Tom says, ‘it shouldn’t be too much to ask people who use words for a living to think about the meaning of words.’

But politicians aren’t alone in this. If there’s one word that’s likely to elicit an eye-roll in my office at the moment it’s ‘frontline’, which has not only lost it’s war-based metaphorical meaning, but has seemingly lost all meaning altogether.

I’ve never previously considered that for people who are into the Christian traditions of Christmas, there’s a conflict at this time of year. You neither approve of decorations before the start of Advent nor approve of representations of the birth of Jesus being omitted.

So when retailers stick up their decorations early, which principle do you sacrifice first? The Metrocentre chose the former (along with a very feminine representation of Gabriel and a Mary who looks older than you’d imagine). I’d probably have made the same decision.

I find it difficult to look at a nativity scene these days without thinking ‘where was the poor kid’s mother?’

Earlier this week, John Prescott sadly died. Here’s the headline on the Sky News article reporting his death:

Former Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott dies aged 86

Long-term readers may think that I’m going to rant about the use of the present tense “dies” rather than the past tense “has died”—this is a persistent and widespread bugbear—but I was more intrigued by the use of the word “Labour” in that headline.

He was—as anyone would be—”deputy prime minister” for the whole country, not just for Labour. It felt an odd, somewhat tribal, somewhat divisive qualification to make, and it didn’t feel familiar.

I suspected that, previously, the headlines have just reported the office of state, not the party affiliation. It seems like this might represent further tribalisation of our politics. But I chose to suspend my disappointment for a bit while I checked my facts.

This is a tricky thing to do: there have only been eight formally appointed deputy prime ministers in the UK, two of whom were Dominic Raab, and all of which—barring John Prescott—are still alive. Sky News has never had to report the death of a former deputy prime minister before.

Reporting on the death of a former prime minister feels qualitatively different from the death of a former deputy, so that doesn’t seem like a fair comparison. But what about holders of the other great offices of state?

The most recent former chancellor to die was, of course, Alastair Darling, late last year. The Sky News headline:

Alistair Darling: Former Labour chancellor dies aged 70

The most recent former home secretary to die was Lord Waddington, in 2017. The Sky News headline:

Former Conservative home secretary Lord Waddington dies aged 87

The most recent former foreign secretary to die was Robin Cook, in 2005, which is further back than the Sky News website archive stretches… but from the examples above, I think we can safely conclude that this isn’t a new practice after all. Sky News has been headlining the party affiliation of dead politicians for years. For what it’s worth, this doesn’t seem to apply to prime ministers (“Margaret Thatcher dies at 87 after stroke”).

So why did it feel unusual? I suspect it is because the BBC doesn’t do it. Their headlines for each of these stories:

Former deputy PM Lord Prescott dies aged 86

Former Chancellor Alistair Darling dies aged 70

Former Home Secretary Lord Waddington dies at age of 87

Former minister Robin Cook dies

Just because the BBC does something doesn’t mean it’s right—in fact, the BBC News house style often riles me. It’s curious that it often nonetheless sets expectations.

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.

If you’re not already scintillated enough, walk exactly 1km east along Redcar seafront from Sinterlation and you’ll happen upon Lifelines, another 2013 Ian Randall sculpture celebrating local heritage. It symbolises fishing boats being pulled back to shore.

The two make a nice, inoffensive pair.

Installed on Redcar seafront in 2013, this is Sinterlation, a sculpture which references the town’s fishing history (the boats which form the bottom of the columns) and its historic steelmaking (the chains). The non-standard spelling references sinter, a mixture of iron ore, limestone and coke which is used to feed a blast furnace.

It’s a perfectly nice, if forgettable, bit of civic sculpture which brightens up the place, but I’m not moved to any strong feelings.