A ramble about art, shops, same sex marriage local politics

My attempts to paint Whistler’s mother, she is the one who has just let go of the young James Abbott McNeill’s pram, are still not going well.

  

I did also take some photographs during my day off yesterday, see http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/laptop412/id14.htm

It was a shame to see the shop Time and Space has closed.

I guess like the others who didn’t attend the council meeting yesterday, I have tried to make some sense of it, on the one hand I received the ordinary press releases from the council, while on the other various reports are appearing on other blogs.

This is Thanet Life http://birchington.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/dark-and-unhappy-place.html it’s not far off two hysterical women have entered the chamber and want to stand as councillors. 

As far as I can make out there is some variance between the view on same sex marriage held by the national government and that held by some of our councillors.

I guess living in a first world country I have always expected it to be leading the way on equality issues and am frankly a bit nonplussed at the antics of these councillors. Obviously I can understand individuals of religious conviction who at some personal level view, see say women or homosexuals as inferior, and unsuitable to hold certain offices, but to bring this sort of prejudice forward as representative of their constituents is just frankly embarrassing.   

One wonders if one followed this through to a logical conclusion and the council were to debate other equal rites assumed in this country whether we would have councillors who would abstain or vote against them. I wonder where the line would be drawn, do we have councillors opposed or ambivalent to women voting, opposed to or ambivalent abolition of slavery, are there those who view homosexuality as a disease that needs curing or a crime requiring punishment?

The alternative to having equal marriage and we are talking here only about civil marriages, (the legislation proposed makes it illegal for religious organisations to be licensed for same sex marriages,) would be to have legal documentation that said civil partner or husband/wife on it. In other words we would have documentation, insurance forms, wills, employment documentation that specifically stated that people were homosexual or heterosexual.

I wonder how many of these individuals would want to live in a country where equality and human rights were behind ours and exactly how far historically they would wish to take this.

Considering that some people who enter politics of all parties have quite strong feelings about equality, I would think if the Conservative group continue along these lines there is a reasonable possibility that some of their number may cross the floor, the only thing I am really uncertain about is where they would cross to, because on this issue the only group that seem to be at odds with Conservative party policy is the Conservative group. Perhaps they will form the Conservative group, this rather begs the question, what would the existing Conservative group call themselves?    

I will ramble on as time affords.