In the News
Most nights, I watch the news on television for the day's big stories. But what I find much more interesting is reading the smaller news stories online. Often they're quirky, amusing, touching or downright bizarre. Here's my pick of smaller stories in the news at the moment.
Man is 10 Months Pregnant
Thomas Beatie is 34 and lives in Oregon. He's been legally male for the last ten years, but reproductively he's still female. So because his wife is unable to have a child (she had a hysterectomy), he's going to have it instead. It's not a popular decision with doctors, although medically it's going fine and is a normal pregnancy. But it's raising a lot of moral issues and people seem quite set against the idea.
I'm not sure. It's probably because of the way our society views gender roles, but I find it a very strange idea to reconcile someone wanting to be a mother, but also be male. It's going to be hard for them, not just the parents but also the child, because we've got a pretty fixed idea about how the family "should" be. On the other hand, if there are no medical reasons why Thomas Beatie shouldn't give birth, if there are no legal reasons why he can't be the mother for a child, and if it's what he and his wife want to do, then why should anyone else get involved? I think it's much more important that people protest against and intervene in cases where children are being abused, neglected or hurt. When the only thing wrong is that the child is born to someone who looks male, then there's not much to worry about.
New Coinage Introduced
British legal tender has been redesigned. The front of the coin, with the Queen's face on them, will stay the same, but the back has been designed by the winner of a national competition. That's never a good recommendation for anything, really!
This isn't an amusing story so much as a saddening one. The new coins, to my eye, are ugly and rather pointless. Perhaps I'm just not a big fan of arbitary change but I was fond of the old designs and I don't like the new ones. It looks like the sort of fake money that's put in children's toy shops: deliberately unrealistic and intended to be played with, not spent. Apparently they're less shiny, which is a big blow. The whole point of new coins is that they're shiny. That's why people like to get newly minted coins; that and the fact that they're probably only been through a few hundred people's hands rather than a few million.
Anyway, the designs look quite a lot like a football strip and the designer (ironically from Wales) has forgotten to include a Welsh symbol. Maybe he forgot? Really it's because he used the Royal Arms as his inspiration, and they don't represent Wales because they haven't been changed much since Queen Victoria's era. I hadn't actually realised that the old 2p coin design was based on the symbol of the Welsh Kings, but apparently so. You learn something every day.
Having said all that, I somehow don't think it's going to discourage me from using money. After a couple of years using the new coins I'm sure everyone will have forgotten that there were ever any different designs, and the good thing about changing the design on something as widely used as money is that you're very unlikely to have people boycotting it. Perhaps next time, though, they should consult us first? I can't help thinking that the reason the designs were kept secret until they became legal tender was that the Royal Mint knew there would be public outcry. I'm not in the "We want Britannia!" camp because to be honest I never even knew that's who she was, but I think she's a lot more stylish than some dancing lions and half a harp. Also, where are the numbers? I will never, ever be able to find the right coins by touch. Alas, alack, it's a bad day for British money (but a good day for those of us who like to moan about things).