This is a refreshed version of a very old website. I’ll be using it for day to day blogging on a range of topics.
It includes an archive of a Saturday column I wrote from 2003 – 2008 for the Brighton Argus, a newspaper based in Brighton and published throughout Sussex. I explored a range of topics within those weekly columns with the intention of encouraging debate. It was a bit of a rant, but a good way of getting rid of my temper. Looking back, I agree with most of what I wrote then, but definitely not all of it.
I used to say that I didn’t write for graduates or the Guardian-readers who dominate public life in this city, but for the people, usually women, working behind the counter at the Co-op and Forfars. Forfars has closed down, but the women remain, working the paid hours they can, holding their families together, caring for children and grandchildren, safeguarding elders. Their jobs have been decimated, as have their pensions. Most of their work is carried out without charge and taken for granted by the people around them, from the politicians who govern them to the well-heeled students they serve. Nonetheless, they are heroes and everything I write is for them.
Jean Calder