'She does not look like a career woman'
| DUSTED OFF The Magazine delves into the archives |
 |  Her main charm to me was that she does not look like a 'career woman'  The BBC's Joanne Symons notes her impression of Mrs Thatcher in 1957  |
The earliest known reference to Margaret Thatcher in the archive is from 1957, pre-dating her election as a member of parliament in 1959, and is a typed memo (see below) written by Joanne Symons, detailing a meeting between herself and Mrs Thatcher.
Sent to Joyce Pullen in the women's programme department it recommends the then barrister as someone suitable for broadcast.
"Mrs Thatcher is 30 ish I suspect tho' she could pass for much younger, very pretty and dresses most attractively. Very 'feminine'!" Symons reports.
She compliments the future prime minister's clear thinking and offers a conclusion that would be unthinkable to many now: "Her main charm to me was that she does not look like a 'career woman'!"
Symons' comments were evidently listened to, as some weeks after the memo, Mrs Thatcher appeared on Your Own Time, which the Radio Times billed as a "light-hearted programme for younger women".
She spoke in her capacity as a barrister in a discussion entitled It's a Woman's World.
Unfortunately this programme was not kept by the BBC, but visitors to the archive can explore clips of other key television and radio appearances which have survived.
The earliest is an edition of Any Questions? broadcast in 1960 in which Mrs Thatcher made a witty appearance as a panellist in her first year as an MP.
The broadcast took place long before the voice coaches went to work to lower the tone of her speaking voice.
Iron lady
"Excellent feminine voice. First class broadcasting manner," remarked a producer in production notes two years later in 1962 following another appearance by Mrs Thatcher.
Over the series of video, audio clips and documents, readers can follow her transformation into the "Iron Lady" who would eventually enter number 10.
Yet speaking in 1972, on the radio programme Women in Politics, she felt that was one door a female politician was many years away from breaking down. She said the prospect of a woman becoming prime minister was something she would never see in her lifetime.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
From wayward son to study aid
From wayward son to study aid
| By Stephen Dowling BBC News Magazine |
The rise of Britain's youth gang culture is a problem that has been keeping many criminologists and academics busy.
Few, however, have the same relationship with the issue as Suzella Palmer. Much of the research she has carried out into her PhD on black youth crime has come from the experiences of her 16-year-old son Zane, and is bolstered by her own life.
| FIND OUT MORE... Gangs, Guns and Families can be heard on the BBC iPlayerlink text here |
Zane has been excluded from secondary school and been stopped by the police - to feel safe on London streets he hung out with the local gang. Just last month he was intimidated by a group of youngsters who wanted to stab him. It's a pattern which could have easily led him to becoming another statistic amid Britain's sometimes violent youth culture.
Ms Palmer, in her late 30s, is a lecturer at Bedfordshire University. She is one of a handful of black female criminologists in the country. As a teenager, she too was involved in crime.
When Zane has a problem, Ms Palmer says, their relationship is more like that of a subject and a researcher than a mother and a son.
But, she says, that has turned out to be a positive thing. She has become more interested in the company he keeps - and that may have helped him make some decisions about who he hangs out with.
"I actually prefer not having that emotional attachment. We have a perfectly normal mother and son relationship, but when it turns to what's happening on the streets, that relationship changes," says Ms Palmer.
Seeking revenge
"Rather than say to him outright 'they're bad company', as an academic I understand some of the reasons why people hang round in gangs. I think it does work, he is able to talk to me."
| As a student I was reading the work of different researchers and criminologists... I don't think they quite understood." Suzella Palmer |
Zane has had some near scrapes. When he lived in London, he says he felt too scared to go to other areas - he would only go to internet cafes or Sainsbury's. Even going to college was a problem. Joining a gang was the only way to assure some degree of safety on the streets.
On New Year's Day Ms Palmer received a phone call at 4.30 in the morning from Zane. He told her he was safe, but that he had been threatened with a knife and had run away. Angry and humiliated, he was talking about getting revenge.
"It was good he was able to phone me after someone had tried to stab him. His ego and his pride were hurt, and I can understand he thought that might be a risk again. He almost felt that he had to stand up to and not be victimised.
"As a parent my instant reaction is 'don't retaliate, don't be stupid', but you can't react like that. We have to be in the moment.
"He felt comfortable enough to say 'I want to retaliate'. But he knew we would have that conversation were I would say 'if you do retaliate, what are the consequences?' He was able to be rational."
She says the experience has taught her that young people need to have an authority figure they can talk to without being judged - the opinions of their peers are only likely to encourage them to do something rash. "It's about their friends living this as well."
Life transformation
Ms Palmer's own life story shows she is not approaching the reasons for youth crime with the detached air of an academic.
 Forensics examine a crime scene near the estate where Suzella Palmer grew up |
She was raised on a housing estate in north-west London, but left school at 14 after her parents had died. She had no qualifications, and fell into petty crime, which then started turning into more serious offences such as assaulting a police officer and carrying a knife.
She had Zane at the age of 22 and has a daughter now aged 12. She started her degree in 1999, after finding herself in a damp one-bedroom flat in London with an abusive partner, and Zane ill with asthma. Ms Palmer packed up and moved to Luton after being accepted for a criminology course, and graduated with a first class degree and the highest marks in her year.
"I've got a unique insight," she says. "That's one of the reasons I decided to do criminology, coming from the environment I come from, and coming from crime myself. As a student I was reading the work of different researchers and criminologists writing about something I don't think they quite understood."
The risks are different compared with when she grew up, she says, and parents and guardians need to understand that.
If Zane gets into trouble with a gang, "it's not that he could end up with a beating. He could end up dead or kill someone".
Too much research, she says, was from "basing theories on assumptions" and race was playing a big part of it. "There was this misrepresentation, this assumption of what black people were like and were not like."
She says: "I'm not sure I've got all the answers, but I've found a way of working with my son that is helping us."
Decision time
Decision time
Standing at a personal or professional crossroads, do you try to think rationally or go by gut feeling. It might be time to start thinking about the way you think, writes Jonah Lehrer.
Ever since Plato, humans have thought of ourselves as rational creatures.
When we make a decision, we are supposed to consciously analyse the alternatives and carefully weigh the pros and cons. This simple idea underlies the philosophy of Plato and Descartes, forms the foundation of modern economics and drove decades of research in cognitive science.
| Elliot endlessly deliberated over irrelevant details, like whether to use a blue or black pen, or what radio station to listen to, or where to park his car |
Over time, our rationality came to define us. It was, simply put, what made us human.
There's only one problem with this assumption of rationality - it's wrong. It's not how our minds actually work. For the first time in human history, we can look inside our brain and see how we think.
It turns out that we weren't engineered to be rational or logical or even particularly deliberate. Instead, our mind holds a messy network of different areas, many of which are involved with the production of emotion.
Whenever we make a decision, the brain is awash in feeling, driven by its inexplicable passions. Even when we try to be reasonable and restrained, these emotional impulses secretly influence our judgement.
Pathological indecision
Some of the first evidence for this theory came from the work of the neurologist Antonio Damasio. In the early 1980s, Damasio began studying a patient named Eliot who, after a brain tumour, lost the ability to experience any emotion at all.
At the time, scientists assumed that our emotions were irrational. A person without any emotions - in other words someone like Elliot - should make better decisions.
 If you think too much about buying something you may buy a lemon |
But that isn't what happened to Eliot. Instead, his tumour left him with a devastating disorder - he was pathologically indecisive. Routine tasks that should have taken ten minutes now required several hours.
Elliot endlessly deliberated over irrelevant details, like whether to use a blue or black pen, or what radio station to listen to, or where to park his car.
When choosing where to eat lunch, Elliot would carefully consider the restaurant's menu, seating plan, and lighting scheme. He would then drive to each restaurant to see how busy it was.
But all this analysis was for naught. Elliot still didn't know what to do. Pure reason is a disease.
And yet, this doesn't mean that we should always trust our emotions. Although our gut feelings can often be astonishingly wise, they can also lead us to make a consistent set of decision-making mistakes.
Emotional flaws
When we eat too much food, or spend too much money on our credit card, or make bad investment decisions, it's probably because we're listening to our emotional brain, when we should really be thinking rationally.
When our emotions get out of control - and there are certain things that reliably make this happen - the result can be just as devastating as having no emotions at all.
| You can't avoid loss aversion unless you know that the mind treats losses differently than gains |
In recent years, psychologists and neuroscientists have identified a long list of these emotional flaws that regularly lead us astray.
Consider a mistake known as loss aversion, which was first identified by the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.
The psychologists noticed that, when people were offered a gamble on the toss of a coin in which they might lose $20, they demanded an average payoff of at least $40 if they won.
The pain of a loss was approximately twice as potent as the pleasure generated by a gain. Furthermore, our decisions seemed to be determined by these feelings. As Kahneman and Tversky put it: "In human decision-making, losses loom larger than gains."
Loss aversion is now recognised as an important mental bias, with widespread implications. Our desire to avoid anything that smacks of a loss often shapes our behaviour, leading us to do foolish things.
Losing shares
Look, for example, at the stock market. When investors evaluate their stock portfolio, studies show that they are most likely to sell stocks that have increased in value.
Unfortunately, this means that they end up holding on to their depreciating stocks. Over the long term, this strategy is exceedingly foolish, since it ultimately leads to a portfolio composed entirely of shares that are losing money. (A study by Terrance Odean, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, found that the stocks investors sold outperformed the stocks they didn't sell by 3.4%).
 The mind is like a Swiss Army Knife, full of mental tools |
Even professional money managers are vulnerable to this bias, and tend to hold losing stocks twice as long as winning stocks. Why do investors do this? Because they are afraid to take a loss - it feels bad - and selling shares that have decreased in value makes the loss tangible.
We try to postpone the pain for as long as possible. The end result is more losses.
So how should we make a decision? The key is something called metacognition, or thinking about thinking.
Because the mind is like a Swiss Army knife - it's stuffed full of different mental tools, each of which is well-suited to a specific situation - it's essential that we learn how to adjust our thought process to the task at hand.
It doesn't matter if we're choosing between mutual funds or political candidates. We might be playing poker or football. The best way to make sure that you are using your brain properly is to study your brain at work.
Why is thinking about thinking so important? First, it helps us avoid stupid errors. You can't avoid loss aversion unless you know that the mind treats losses differently than gains. And you'll probably think too much about buying a house unless you know that such a strategy will lead you to buy the property.
The mind is full of flaws, but we can outsmart them. There is no secret recipe for decision-making. But learning about how we think can help us think better.
Jonah Lehrer is the author of The Decisive Moment: How the Brain Makes Up Its Mind.
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Monday, February 23, 2009
Kissing cousins
Kissing cousins
 It's hard to remember who's who today, but it was even tougher for the Victorians |
My elder sister rings and asks if I've heard the sad news about Cousin Gerald. It doesn't take me a moment to realise that this is a test. Over the years my sister has become the custodian of our family's history. She not only knows the names and ages and addresses and personal predilections of aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews and first, second and third cousins, but also jumps at any chance to display her superior genealogical knowledge.
"Cousin Gerald," I say, desperately trying to picture our family tree and locate a branch named Gerald. "You know," says my sister. "Harold's eldest. The one who went off with Grace after Uncle Ron died. He's your first cousin."
| FIND OUT MORE  Hear Laurie Taylor's Thinking Allowed on Radio 4 at 1600 on Wednesdays or 0030 on Mondays |
The only name I can grab hold of in this litany is Harold. Uncle Harold, Dad's brother. The one who my mother didn't care for because he smoked a smelly pipe and always stood with his large bottom towards the fire so no-one could ever catch a glimpse of the warm flames.
"Ah, Harold's eldest," I say with just enough assurance to suggest that he is rarely from my thoughts.
"Yes, Cousin Gerald. He's had a bad skiing accident in Canada." "Really," I say. "And will he be well enough to get back home?" "He is home," retorts my sister. "Cousin Gerald lives in Canada with Grace. He's lived there for nearly twenty years."
I mumble something about confusing him with another cousin but my sister isn't listening. She has more urgent matters to address. "Now," she tells me, "you may not remember Cousin Gerald but he was always very fond of you. And so it would be very nice if you were the one to ring Michael and give him the sad news."
| I can only be grateful, I suppose, that my family is not even more complex |
"Michael?"
"What is the matter with you today? Michael is Gerald's son. The one doing metallurgy at Leeds. Your first cousin once removed. But when you ring Michael - yes I'll give you the number again - when you ring Michael, whatever you say, don't ask him to pass on the news to Simon because as you'll remember he hasn't spoken to Simon ever since he dumped Alexandra and went off with his so-called researcher."
"Simon dumped Alexandra?"
"I just said that. So you'll do that little thing for the family?"
"Yes," I said. But I lied. I still haven't quite found the time or energy to ring my first cousin once removed and tell him that his father, or my first cousin, has had a skiing accident in Canada and that he's the first one of the family to know because of course. I haven't mentioned a word about it to my other first cousin once removed, Simon.
I can only be grateful, I suppose, that my family is not even more complex. Imagine trying to cope with some of those upper middle class Victorian families - families like Charles Darwin's - where marriages to your own cousins were positively encouraged.
If I can't even manage Harold and Gerald and Michael and Simon, how would I ever cope with the product of such cousin marriages - or, heaven help me, cross cousin marriages - in which a mother's brother's daughter could at the same time be a father's sister's daughter?
It all rather reminds me of that old musical hall song. How did it go? "If your father was your mother would your sister be your brother. Remember dad on mother's day."
A selection of your comments appears below.
Oh it will converge again. I have just found out that my cousins twice removed from my mother's side are my cousins four times removed on my father's side.Elaine
I'm with Laurie Taylor's sister here - how can anyone not know their first cousins? I have more than my fair share of cousins - there are 19 of us descended from eight siblings - I knew all my Aunts and Uncles and I know all my cousins. I can even keep track of some (but not all!) of their offspring.Diana Brown, Huntingdon, UK
I know the feeling. It's worse when it's a conversation over the telephone and you can't write the relationships down. But even when you can, the person telling you who is who never gives it in a logical way. Worse is when someone has divorced and remarried and half-relationships come into it. The practice of married women calling themselves Ms (with their fathers' surnames ironically) is going to make it very hard for genealogists in the future. Sadly, funerals are the best times to gather family information, but then it's often too late.Brian Stephens, Penarth
As my father comes from a family of seven, his side of the family is rather large. I also lose track of my cousins, there spouses and children, which now must be approaching 90. Although we still live fairly close, the only time we ever seem to meet is weddings and funerals. My mother on the other hand seems to the names and whereabouts of almost all of them all perfectly well, I can't seem to understand why when she mentions a name, I have no idea who she is talking about.Jools, West Sussex
After a bit of research I found out that my great-great-grandparents were cousins... may explain why their daughter (my great-grandmother) had six fingers. I always knew my family was a bit odd!Jennie F, Leeds, UK
'Ave You Got A Male Assistant Please Miss?
'Ave You Got A Male Assistant Please Miss?
'Ave You Got A Male Assistant Please Miss? (1973) - courtesy of the BFI
| STOP LOOK LISTEN The Magazine's sex education film festival |
This film marks a major step forward for the British sex education film.
Coming out the year after Alex Comfort's famous manual The Joy of Sex, beards are the order of the day.
| STOP LOOK LISTEN  The Magazine's sex ed film festivalFive excerpts from films from the BFI's DVD The Joy of Sex Education - one a day for a week. The films so far: |
The protagonist, who heads out on a quest to buy condoms, has plenty of head and face hair, but the chemist he meets has a truly extraordinary level of hirsuteness. This guy makes Jerry Garcia look shorn.
Compared with other films of the era, this effort tries vigorously to be forward-looking.
The central message is an encouragement to buy condoms accompanied by a reminder about the number of abortions that happen every year.
"This is an unreservedly hairy promotion of the prophylactic in avoiding unwanted pregnancies," says James Piers Taylor, curator (non-fiction) at the BFI National Archive.
"A wave of period details situate the film in both time and milieu. The culture of its audience, 1970s students, is evoked and displayed via a mattress on the floor, an ethnic rug, the kilim bedspread, homebrew jars, denim clothes and by hair."
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Quiz of the week's news
Quiz of the week's news
Info
It's the Magazine's 7 days 7 questions weekly quiz - a chance to find out how much news from the past week you've read, heard and watched... and how much has stayed lodged in the old grey matter.
1.) Multiple Choice Question
It's been a week of blue language. Who apologised for swearing by calling it "inappropriate"?
- Peter Mandelson
- Duffy
- Katy Perry
- A head teacher
2.) Multiple Choice Question
Victoria Beckham unveiled her second collection of frocks this week. Which of these designs is hers?
- Green off-the-shoulder
- Satin cumberbund
- Large gingham, side buttoned
3.) Multiple Choice Question
"They turn up mid-morning on Monday and leave mid-morning on Thursday." Who?
- Wealthy bankers denied discretionary bonuses
- Flighty fashionistas at New York Fashion Week
- Jacqui Smith's armed security escort
4.) Multiple Choice Question
Somewhere under the Atlantic ocean two nuclear submarines - one British and one French - collided in early February, though news of the accident only emerged this week. Can you spot which sub is which
- 1 is British, 2 is French
- 1 is French, 2 is British
5.) Multiple Choice Question
£18,979 equals what?
- The price of TWO Kia Magentis saloons (normally £16,675 each)
- The average salary of an RBS frontline staff member
- Britain's record public debt divided by the total population
6.) Missing Word Question
* 'can delay' memory loss
- Broccoli
- Exercise
- Knitting
7.) Multiple Choice Question
A few people were thought to be missing this week. Who thanked all those concerned when "found"?
- Lady GaGa
- Allen Stanford
- Gerry Rafferty
Answers
- Head teacher Alison Evans apologised after her primary schoolchildren swore in a lesson about bullying. Mandelson regretted the language he directed against Starbucks tycoon Howard Schultz. Duffy and Perry swore at the Brits.
- It's the black, satin-midriff number. Beckham described one of her dresses as "very Mad Max" before being corrected by an aide to say "Mad Men". The green dress is by Roland Mouret, whom Beckham's style was said to imitate, and the check number is worn by Peggy from the TV series Mad Men.
- It's the Home Secretary's armed police escort. Two near neighbours of Ms Smith observed the police comings and goings in a complaint about Ms Smith claiming her sister's London home as her main residence.
- It's the first option - 1 is the British nuclear sub HMS Vanguard, 2 is its French counterpart Le Triomphant. Vanguard was said to have incurred "only scrapes".
- It's the RBS salary. The bank's bosses agreed to slash bonus awards but not to frontline staff members. Plummeting car prices have led to what the AA calls a "sale of the century" with one survey finding a two-for-one deal on the Kia. The UK's debt totalled as much as £2.2tn according to one estimation.
- It's knitting.
- Singer Gerry Rafferty thanked his fans for being so concerned, as he announced from his home in Tuscany that rumours he had disappeared and in ill-health were untrue. Stanford was found in Virginia by FBI agents. Lady GaGa pulled out of a gig in Germany to perform at the Brits in London.
Your Score
0 - 3 : Utterly lost
4 - 5 : Getting there
6 - 7 : Holy grail
For a complete archive of past quizzes and our weekly news quiz, 7 days 7 questions, visit the Magazine page and scroll down. You can also do this quiz on your mobile device.
Friday, February 20, 2009
The rush hour-and-a-half
The rush hour-and-a-half
| By Sheila Cook |
Do you travel for roughly the same amount of time each day? And is it, on average, one to one-and-a-half hours? If it is, your behaviour is in line with your innate "travel-time budget". That's the name given to the observation that human beings down the ages and across different countries and cultures seem to travel for a surprisingly fixed amount of time.
| FIND OUT MORE... Analysis: Rolling Stones is on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday, 19 February at 2000 GMT Or listen to it later on the BBC iPlayer |
It doesn't matter how we travel - whether it's on foot, by car or plane, the amount of time we spend getting from one place to another remains constant. So if travelling is a deep-rooted human characteristic and we have always done it, will we carry on?
An Israeli, Yacob Zahavi, first came up with the idea of the "travel-time budget" in the 1970s. He found that as societies develop economically, people stick to their subconscious travel-time budget but shift from low speed to higher speed means of transport, thereby covering ever greater distances within the same amount of time.
What may have been just an interesting observation about global economic progress 30 years ago becomes a pressing issue today for policy makers trying to influence our travelling habits in the face of the threat of global warming.
The crux of the concern is this - as the world develops and populations grow, the 60 to 90-minute return commute will become ever more of a drag on the world's scarce resources as people switch from walking to the car, bus or train.
Energy gobbled up
There is going to be an explosion in the total number of kilometres travelled, according to Dr Andreas Schafer, who has studied travel behaviour worldwide.
 The commute in many developing countries is long, and on foot |
"At the moment the world population travels about some 30 trillion passenger kilometres