#older I swear to you, old age is like a stealth weapon. It just creeps up on you unawares. I turned fifty a month ago and can feel the twinges of age kicking in already.
I notice now that I am moisturising twice a day and hiding my neck as much as I can. Not that it is a lined neck or anythng, it is more or less the paranoia of my newly found self-scrutiny that makes me do this.
I hate the sight of my own grey hair and will be continually dyeing it to the day I kick the bucket. Go grey,no way. I do not intend to be one of those women who does not mind ageing gracefully. Hell no! I have the most moisturised face outside of a movie star. I still wear Doc Martens and I can just about still get into my black bootcut jeans.
It might be pointlessly fighting the inevitable but it makes me feel good.
I do find that the one advantage of older age is that you care less and less what people think. Since I turned 50, I have decided to redo two manuscripts and gotten a short story printed and auiitioned for Vikings. So it would seem there is life in me yet. I look to role models like Judi Dench and Helen Mirren who are still out there doing there thing. I hope I am still working when I get to their age. They are both awesome.
I do find though that losing weight is harder now. It took me nearly two years to lose 1 and a half stone. It crawled off me, gramme by gramme. I have never downed so much yoghurt and salad in my life.
Next time I hear some skinny twentysomething moaning about how their life is tough, I will tell them it stays tough and not only that, everything starts to go south over forty.
That ought to cheer them up.
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#music I got ripped off a long time ago in the music industry. I think I have moved on from it and then I have my days when I know I have not.
So , on one of those days, I decided to write it as a work of fiction. That is the thing about fiction. I literally can put anything I like in there and it can stay.
Now here is the thing. If the band recognises themselves, which they will, there is literally nothing they can do about it because they have previously gone on record as stating that they do not know me. This is fine by me.
On the night they ripped me off, I realised they had become a four-headed monster. Their manager did not even bother to introduce himself to me until 8 years after the event.
But time catches up with us all. They are not what they once were. Their last three albums tanked, a fact that filled me with no end of joy. Have you figured out who they are yet?
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#GeorgeHook
How is it George Hook still has a job? He actually insinuated that victims need to shoulder some of the responsibility for being on the receiving end of sexual assaults. So now George, I am a bit confused here. Does this mean that you think rapists can then go into into court and say things like ' your Honour,she had the drink taken so it was all all her own fault'.
I never thought you were the most enlightened of men but if you are going to be a monumentally stupid dinosaur of a man, can you go and do it somewhere else and stop being a total idiot in public at least?
You maintain victims need to take responsibility. Well George, right now you are the one who needs to do more than issue a craven apology. You need to get out of Newstalk altogether. You have already cost them a sponsor. I really can't think of anyone in Ireland who wants to hear another word out of your misogynistic mouth. Do the decent thing and quit.
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#music I have a song on Reverbnation called 'All leave is cancelled'. The idea for the song came to me many years ago when I heard about the cancelled leave letters that soldiers have to write home when they are about to go to war.
I imagined one of them writing to another soldier in the trenches across no-man's land, telling him he did not like this at all. It is a one-sided letter but I imagine the soldier on the receiving side might have been thinking the same thing.
Now I cannot sing really but I recorded a version of it to protect the copyright and uploaded it on here. Eventually it got some hits and got to no 1 in my local section which is Dublin. This is nice to say the least. Some people have told me it is a brilliant song and I am flattered by this.
So I logged on today to discover that it has gone to number one nationally on Reverbnation. This is a bit of a shock to tell you the truth. I know it has been having a lot more attention of late due to the fact that my Twitter followers had jumped from 149 to over 900 but I had no idea it was going to get to number 1. It is a bit of a shock to tell you the truth. I wish the person who uploaded it with me and laughed himself silly when he heard me sing could know this but he has gotten out of touch. Ah well. I am delighted all the same.
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#BacktoSchool
So here we have it. The moment that many have been dreading. The school books are being bought and the shiny new uniform is hanging in the wardrobe.
The nights have been getting shorter for a while now and the holidays will be over in a week.
I can remember going back to school after the Summer holidays with a mixture of fear and,oddly,relief. I didn't have a happy home life due to my mother being out of her gourd so I would find pretty much any excuse to be outdoors. Towards the end of every Summer I would be running out of excuses to be honest and then the Holidays would be over. The uniform would be purchased. I would be seeing old friends again and this I liked. Of course, along with the old friends, came the old foes.
It is amazing the things you fall out over when you are a teenager. It could be two girls wearing the same shoes or liking the same fella. It did not matter, a line was drawn and a minor war was declared. Some of these tiny things could escalate into all out war and sides would be taken.
I recall some of the girls in 3c did not like me because I had what they deemed to be a 'posh' accent. I had to go to that class for Irish but the teacher took pity on me when she saw the abuse I was getting, put an A on a test paper for me and I was promptly whisked back to the B class. I have forgotten her name but not the nice thing she did for me.
School can be a bit of a minefield all right and it is horrible to have to go through your social growing pains in the presence of so many witnesses but such is life. I don't know if they are the best days of your life as some people make out though. I never felt as if I fitted into a classroom environment to be honest but then again I am one of life's late bloomers.
I guess back then it was just not my time to shine.
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#revenge A long long time ago I had to leave home in a hurry. I was trying to save what was left of my sanity. I was doing a course at the time and some girls I knew on the course had a spare bedroom. They hummed and haad, pretending to drag their feet about me moving in. They were the two most popular girls on the course and everyone thought I was really blessed to be moving in with them. Well, it was not quite a blessing. They both turned out to be two snipey bitches in the end. One of them got together with a guy who was in a long-term relationship and made sure he was never alone with his ex again. The other one was engaged but you would not have thought it by the men she brought home. They laughed at me for not being as loose as them but then again I did not want to be them. There were other things besides that. Food would go missing and I was being told that they were bitching about me behind my back on the course. Then one day they both announced they were off to stay with their boyfriends for the weekend. The weekend passed. Then the week. I asked them when they were coming back as the rent was due. It took another girl in the course to break it to me that they were not coming back as they were rent-free in their fellas houses. I had to break it to the landlord that I did not have the rent. I found a place quickly enough as it was a faster cheaper thing to get a new place in those days. I vowed one day I would get them back for it and I did. I was in the city centre a few years later and there was one of them. She was still with the guy whose relationship she had broken up. They had a child. Now she was unaware that an ex of mine had told me that he had written to me and I was aware someone else had opened the letter. She had disresprected my privacy and left me to pay the rent. She was going to pay. So I started talking to her boyfriend with her standing there grinning. I told him about me being left to pay the rent but it did not seem to move him in any way. Then I told him about her reading my mail. He went quiet. Very quiet.She stood their grinning. She told him it had only been my mail and sure I was 'nobody important'. He asked her if she had ever read his mail. She hung herself with her reply; 'Only the mail from your Mam'. He stood their stone-faced and she did not see the danger. They walked off. I knew I had done damage but it was to be two more years before I found out what it was. I bumped into the other flatmate and she told me that I was a prize bitch and it was all my fault he was gone. It turned out he had been quiet for a few days and then he told her he was going to see his family in Dublin. He got on the train. Normally when he went anywhere he rang her immediately. Four days passed and she realised he was not coming back. She was devastated but karma does happen to us all. Of course I was not a totally hard-hearted bitch. I told the second flatmate to get the Guards to find him. At this point he had been gone two years. I knew even if he was found, he was not coming home. The 2nd flatmate roared at me that the child was fatherless and it was all down to me mentioning the opened mail. I pointed out that I never made her open the mail in the first place. I remembered the way he had looked back at me over his shoulder as they walked away after the mail conversation. She might not have seen the look but I did. He was thinking. She was not good with men who could think for themselves. I do wonder though if they ever did swallow their pride and get the Guards to find him.
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#RoseofTralee
So it's that time of year again when Tralee is heaving with women competing for a crown. I know this competition means a lot to the economy but I have always found it to be a total and utter cringefest. I know that there are girls coming in from all over the world and they waffle on about what an 'honour' it is but really, I think for some of them, its a free holiday with a beauty competition thrown in. I can't be the only one who is thinking that now can I?
It strikes me as the sort of competition that is strictly aimed at middle-class Ireland. I wonder now has anyone on the dole ever been in this competition? Can you imagine Daithi O Se having to interview an unemployed Rose?
Daithi ;So what are you doing with your day?
Jobless Rose; Well, I roll out of bed around noon and get the lunch going. Sure then it's nearly time for the afternoon Show. Wouldn't wanna miss dat.'
It would amount to anarchy for a Rose to not have the heat-seeking ambition of a Trump.
These are women who want the free travel for one year but they just did not have the bottle to go on Love Island and they Googled until they found a reality show where they could keep their clothes on.
I do think it might be time to get rid of it and I am not alone in thinking this. But, like an ageing film star, it will creak on and on until it simply quietly dies.
In the meantime we have to tolerate Betty from Brooklyn attempting to play an Irish air on her flute.
Enough already!
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#Sinead O Connor I see Sinead O Connor has posted a video online. I watched it and she is not in a good way. This is the latest howl in the long cry for help that has been her life.
She has a lot to be sad about, having lost custody of her youngest child and having to sell her home to settle a tax bill. She has previously been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a diagnosis she is inclined to disagree with.
I really do think it might be a good idea for her to come home to Ireland again. Being depressed and far from home cannot be good for her right now. At least if she comes to Dublin she will be in familiar surroundings and not, as she put it, in the a**e end of Jersey in a Travellodge.
I hope she takes some steps towards getting well. Mental illness happens to 1 in 10 Irish people and can afflict anyone from all walks of life.
Nobody is capable of going through life without experiencing trauma of some kind and sometimes the medicated road is the best one to take.
Even if Miss O Connor does not agree with the diagnosis of bipolar, she would still benefit greatly from the meds. i say this with the kindest of hearts and am speaking as someone who has ceased communicating with a female relative who would not take her meds. The medication exists for a reason and the reason is to help.
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#KevinMyers This guy is just the never-ending gift that keeps on giving. He is so weighed down by the sound of his own self-importance it is a miracle he can walk without a cane.
So far in his attempts at journalism, he has attacked single parents, Jews and maintained that women have not earned equal pay.
Is he aware that feminism passed this way many decades ago and the rule whereby a man could give a woman less money is in fact reduntant? Of course he is not alone in his dullard way of thinking. There are still dinosaurs in business in Ireland who would seek to pay women less. Thankfully, they are dying out.
A woman is entitled to the same money because she is a human being with the same earning rights and power as a man. I did not like Myers inference that Vanessa feltz and Claudia Winkleman got their decent pay-packets because they are Jewish and know how to haggle. Both those women have been in showbusiness for a long, long time and deserve every penny they make.
It will be interesting to see where Dinosaur Myers ends up after this. Hopefully he will be down the dole office signing on.
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#GenderPayGap. It is such a depressing thing to hear about these vile pay gaps. It is morally wrong to give someone less for their time and labour because they have a womb. What is even more depressing is the fact that this is still an issue.
I can remember many years ago being in a job and getting my pay packet. A man working there asked how much I had gotten so I looked at my payslip. I did'nt know why he asked or why I told him. Maybe he just like stirring things up.There's one in every workplace.
When I told him the amount he said 'Ah sure that's to be expected'.' I asked what he meant and he told me I was making less than the men who had been taken on at the same time. I was a bit put out and asked to see the manager. I had to wait 20 minutes outside his office before I was let in to see him. I told him what had happened and that I presumed it was an oversight. He said not it was not, that men needed more to live on. He pointed out that some of them had families. I pointed out that three of the lads who had been taken on at the same time as me were single and had nobody else relying on them therefore we should have been on the same wage. He said that this was the 'way of the world'. I was young and indignant and stomped out of the office and back to my place on the assembly line. I had the distinct feeling I would not last long there and I was right. I lasted two weeks and then they let me go using the classic excuse of ' we hired too many new people'. I had made what they viewed as the mistake of wanting to be paid the same money for the same hours of work as the men.
And now, here we are, all these years later and the Internet is screaming about the Gender Pay Gap.
Why do we , as women, have to keep fighting the battles we thought had been won already?
It's like feminism never happened.
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suzy bevan / Blog
Old Age is not for Cissies
#older I swear to you, old age is like a stealth weapon. It just creeps up on you unawares. I turned fifty a month ago and can feel the twinges of age kicking in already. I notice now that I am moisturising twice a day and hiding my neck as much as I can. Not that it is a lined neck or anythng, it is more or less the paranoia of my newly found self-scrutiny that makes me do this. I hate the sight of my own grey hair and will be continually dyeing it to the day I kick the bucket. Go grey,no way. I do not intend to be one of those women who does not mind ageing gracefully. Hell no! I have the most moisturised face outside of a movie star. I still wear Doc Martens and I can just about still get into my black bootcut jeans. It might be pointlessly fighting the inevitable but it makes me feel good. I do find that the one advantage of older age is that you care less and less what people think. Since I turned 50, I have decided to redo two manuscripts and gotten a short story printed and auiitioned for Vikings. So it would seem there is life in me yet. I look to role models like Judi Dench and Helen Mirren who are still out there doing there thing. I hope I am still working when I get to their age. They are both awesome. I do find though that losing weight is harder now. It took me nearly two years to lose 1 and a half stone. It crawled off me, gramme by gramme. I have never downed so much yoghurt and salad in my life. Next time I hear some skinny twentysomething moaning about how their life is tough, I will tell them it stays tough and not only that, everything starts to go south over forty. That ought to cheer them up.
Reply
So I keep plugging away.
#music I got ripped off a long time ago in the music industry. I think I have moved on from it and then I have my days when I know I have not. So , on one of those days, I decided to write it as a work of fiction. That is the thing about fiction. I literally can put anything I like in there and it can stay. Now here is the thing. If the band recognises themselves, which they will, there is literally nothing they can do about it because they have previously gone on record as stating that they do not know me. This is fine by me. On the night they ripped me off, I realised they had become a four-headed monster. Their manager did not even bother to introduce himself to me until 8 years after the event. But time catches up with us all. They are not what they once were. Their last three albums tanked, a fact that filled me with no end of joy. Have you figured out who they are yet?
Reply
Yes, George Hook actually said that on the radio.
#GeorgeHook How is it George Hook still has a job? He actually insinuated that victims need to shoulder some of the responsibility for being on the receiving end of sexual assaults. So now George, I am a bit confused here. Does this mean that you think rapists can then go into into court and say things like ' your Honour,she had the drink taken so it was all all her own fault'. I never thought you were the most enlightened of men but if you are going to be a monumentally stupid dinosaur of a man, can you go and do it somewhere else and stop being a total idiot in public at least? You maintain victims need to take responsibility. Well George, right now you are the one who needs to do more than issue a craven apology. You need to get out of Newstalk altogether. You have already cost them a sponsor. I really can't think of anyone in Ireland who wants to hear another word out of your misogynistic mouth. Do the decent thing and quit.
Reply
Did my song 'All Leave is Cancelled' actually get to no 1?
#music I have a song on Reverbnation called 'All leave is cancelled'. The idea for the song came to me many years ago when I heard about the cancelled leave letters that soldiers have to write home when they are about to go to war. I imagined one of them writing to another soldier in the trenches across no-man's land, telling him he did not like this at all. It is a one-sided letter but I imagine the soldier on the receiving side might have been thinking the same thing. Now I cannot sing really but I recorded a version of it to protect the copyright and uploaded it on here. Eventually it got some hits and got to no 1 in my local section which is Dublin. This is nice to say the least. Some people have told me it is a brilliant song and I am flattered by this. So I logged on today to discover that it has gone to number one nationally on Reverbnation. This is a bit of a shock to tell you the truth. I know it has been having a lot more attention of late due to the fact that my Twitter followers had jumped from 149 to over 900 but I had no idea it was going to get to number 1. It is a bit of a shock to tell you the truth. I wish the person who uploaded it with me and laughed himself silly when he heard me sing could know this but he has gotten out of touch. Ah well. I am delighted all the same.
Reply
Its that time of year again
#BacktoSchool So here we have it. The moment that many have been dreading. The school books are being bought and the shiny new uniform is hanging in the wardrobe. The nights have been getting shorter for a while now and the holidays will be over in a week. I can remember going back to school after the Summer holidays with a mixture of fear and,oddly,relief. I didn't have a happy home life due to my mother being out of her gourd so I would find pretty much any excuse to be outdoors. Towards the end of every Summer I would be running out of excuses to be honest and then the Holidays would be over. The uniform would be purchased. I would be seeing old friends again and this I liked. Of course, along with the old friends, came the old foes. It is amazing the things you fall out over when you are a teenager. It could be two girls wearing the same shoes or liking the same fella. It did not matter, a line was drawn and a minor war was declared. Some of these tiny things could escalate into all out war and sides would be taken. I recall some of the girls in 3c did not like me because I had what they deemed to be a 'posh' accent. I had to go to that class for Irish but the teacher took pity on me when she saw the abuse I was getting, put an A on a test paper for me and I was promptly whisked back to the B class. I have forgotten her name but not the nice thing she did for me. School can be a bit of a minefield all right and it is horrible to have to go through your social growing pains in the presence of so many witnesses but such is life. I don't know if they are the best days of your life as some people make out though. I never felt as if I fitted into a classroom environment to be honest but then again I am one of life's late bloomers. I guess back then it was just not my time to shine.
Reply
Revenge is a dish best tasted artic
#revenge A long long time ago I had to leave home in a hurry. I was trying to save what was left of my sanity. I was doing a course at the time and some girls I knew on the course had a spare bedroom. They hummed and haad, pretending to drag their feet about me moving in. They were the two most popular girls on the course and everyone thought I was really blessed to be moving in with them. Well, it was not quite a blessing. They both turned out to be two snipey bitches in the end. One of them got together with a guy who was in a long-term relationship and made sure he was never alone with his ex again. The other one was engaged but you would not have thought it by the men she brought home. They laughed at me for not being as loose as them but then again I did not want to be them. There were other things besides that. Food would go missing and I was being told that they were bitching about me behind my back on the course. Then one day they both announced they were off to stay with their boyfriends for the weekend. The weekend passed. Then the week. I asked them when they were coming back as the rent was due. It took another girl in the course to break it to me that they were not coming back as they were rent-free in their fellas houses. I had to break it to the landlord that I did not have the rent. I found a place quickly enough as it was a faster cheaper thing to get a new place in those days. I vowed one day I would get them back for it and I did. I was in the city centre a few years later and there was one of them. She was still with the guy whose relationship she had broken up. They had a child. Now she was unaware that an ex of mine had told me that he had written to me and I was aware someone else had opened the letter. She had disresprected my privacy and left me to pay the rent. She was going to pay. So I started talking to her boyfriend with her standing there grinning. I told him about me being left to pay the rent but it did not seem to move him in any way. Then I told him about her reading my mail. He went quiet. Very quiet.She stood their grinning. She told him it had only been my mail and sure I was 'nobody important'. He asked her if she had ever read his mail. She hung herself with her reply; 'Only the mail from your Mam'. He stood their stone-faced and she did not see the danger. They walked off. I knew I had done damage but it was to be two more years before I found out what it was. I bumped into the other flatmate and she told me that I was a prize bitch and it was all my fault he was gone. It turned out he had been quiet for a few days and then he told her he was going to see his family in Dublin. He got on the train. Normally when he went anywhere he rang her immediately. Four days passed and she realised he was not coming back. She was devastated but karma does happen to us all. Of course I was not a totally hard-hearted bitch. I told the second flatmate to get the Guards to find him. At this point he had been gone two years. I knew even if he was found, he was not coming home. The 2nd flatmate roared at me that the child was fatherless and it was all down to me mentioning the opened mail. I pointed out that I never made her open the mail in the first place. I remembered the way he had looked back at me over his shoulder as they walked away after the mail conversation. She might not have seen the look but I did. He was thinking. She was not good with men who could think for themselves. I do wonder though if they ever did swallow their pride and get the Guards to find him.
Reply
The Annual Lovely Girl Competition is upon us again
#RoseofTralee So it's that time of year again when Tralee is heaving with women competing for a crown. I know this competition means a lot to the economy but I have always found it to be a total and utter cringefest. I know that there are girls coming in from all over the world and they waffle on about what an 'honour' it is but really, I think for some of them, its a free holiday with a beauty competition thrown in. I can't be the only one who is thinking that now can I? It strikes me as the sort of competition that is strictly aimed at middle-class Ireland. I wonder now has anyone on the dole ever been in this competition? Can you imagine Daithi O Se having to interview an unemployed Rose? Daithi ;So what are you doing with your day? Jobless Rose; Well, I roll out of bed around noon and get the lunch going. Sure then it's nearly time for the afternoon Show. Wouldn't wanna miss dat.' It would amount to anarchy for a Rose to not have the heat-seeking ambition of a Trump. These are women who want the free travel for one year but they just did not have the bottle to go on Love Island and they Googled until they found a reality show where they could keep their clothes on. I do think it might be time to get rid of it and I am not alone in thinking this. But, like an ageing film star, it will creak on and on until it simply quietly dies. In the meantime we have to tolerate Betty from Brooklyn attempting to play an Irish air on her flute. Enough already!
Reply
Sinead O Connor
#Sinead O Connor I see Sinead O Connor has posted a video online. I watched it and she is not in a good way. This is the latest howl in the long cry for help that has been her life. She has a lot to be sad about, having lost custody of her youngest child and having to sell her home to settle a tax bill. She has previously been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a diagnosis she is inclined to disagree with. I really do think it might be a good idea for her to come home to Ireland again. Being depressed and far from home cannot be good for her right now. At least if she comes to Dublin she will be in familiar surroundings and not, as she put it, in the a**e end of Jersey in a Travellodge. I hope she takes some steps towards getting well. Mental illness happens to 1 in 10 Irish people and can afflict anyone from all walks of life. Nobody is capable of going through life without experiencing trauma of some kind and sometimes the medicated road is the best one to take. Even if Miss O Connor does not agree with the diagnosis of bipolar, she would still benefit greatly from the meds. i say this with the kindest of hearts and am speaking as someone who has ceased communicating with a female relative who would not take her meds. The medication exists for a reason and the reason is to help.
Reply
#kevinMyers
#KevinMyers This guy is just the never-ending gift that keeps on giving. He is so weighed down by the sound of his own self-importance it is a miracle he can walk without a cane. So far in his attempts at journalism, he has attacked single parents, Jews and maintained that women have not earned equal pay. Is he aware that feminism passed this way many decades ago and the rule whereby a man could give a woman less money is in fact reduntant? Of course he is not alone in his dullard way of thinking. There are still dinosaurs in business in Ireland who would seek to pay women less. Thankfully, they are dying out. A woman is entitled to the same money because she is a human being with the same earning rights and power as a man. I did not like Myers inference that Vanessa feltz and Claudia Winkleman got their decent pay-packets because they are Jewish and know how to haggle. Both those women have been in showbusiness for a long, long time and deserve every penny they make. It will be interesting to see where Dinosaur Myers ends up after this. Hopefully he will be down the dole office signing on.
Reply
GenderPay Gap not surprising, just depressing.
#GenderPayGap. It is such a depressing thing to hear about these vile pay gaps. It is morally wrong to give someone less for their time and labour because they have a womb. What is even more depressing is the fact that this is still an issue. I can remember many years ago being in a job and getting my pay packet. A man working there asked how much I had gotten so I looked at my payslip. I did'nt know why he asked or why I told him. Maybe he just like stirring things up.There's one in every workplace. When I told him the amount he said 'Ah sure that's to be expected'.' I asked what he meant and he told me I was making less than the men who had been taken on at the same time. I was a bit put out and asked to see the manager. I had to wait 20 minutes outside his office before I was let in to see him. I told him what had happened and that I presumed it was an oversight. He said not it was not, that men needed more to live on. He pointed out that some of them had families. I pointed out that three of the lads who had been taken on at the same time as me were single and had nobody else relying on them therefore we should have been on the same wage. He said that this was the 'way of the world'. I was young and indignant and stomped out of the office and back to my place on the assembly line. I had the distinct feeling I would not last long there and I was right. I lasted two weeks and then they let me go using the classic excuse of ' we hired too many new people'. I had made what they viewed as the mistake of wanting to be paid the same money for the same hours of work as the men. And now, here we are, all these years later and the Internet is screaming about the Gender Pay Gap. Why do we , as women, have to keep fighting the battles we thought had been won already? It's like feminism never happened.
Reply