Campaigners celebrate victory in battle for women’s right to vote, 100 years on

It is hard to believe there was a time when women were not allowed to vote in political elections, but we were reminded of this last week when campaigners celebrated the 100th anniversary of winning such a right in Britain.

It was February 6, 1918, when the Representation of the People Act extended voting rights to women who were aged above 30 and owned property.

Subsequent legislation extended voting to all females and allowed women to stand for Parliament.

Britain was far behind its colonies, New Zealand and Australia, in emancipating women, however.

New Zealand extended the franchise in 1893, the first country to do so, and Australia followed in 1902. The United States was 12th in 1920.

ACTIVISTS
Today women are represented in most parliaments round the world, making up 61 per cent of MPs in Rwanda, 37 per cent in Tanzania, 34 per cent in Uganda, 32 per cent in Britain and 21 per cent in Kenya.

Britain has a female prime minister in Teresa May and many countries boast women heads of state or government, following on from such pioneers as Mrs Bandaranaike of Ceylon/Sri Lanka, Indira Gandhi of India and Golda Meir of Israel.

Last week, Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson joined with descendants of the “suffragettes”, campaigners for women’s suffrage, in calling for the government to pardon women who were jailed while fighting for a change in the law.

TRAFALGAR SQUARE
Records show that more than 1,300 suffragettes were arrested and many jailed.

Emily Davison was sentenced to six months for placing a “dangerous substance likely to injure” in a post office letter box outside Parliament.

It was the same Emily Davison who ran onto the course at the Epsom Derby on June 4, 1913, and was trampled to death by the king’s horse, Anmer.

Analysis of film of the incident suggests she was trying to tie a scarf to the horse’s bridle.

The 1918 women’s victory was marked in London’s Trafalgar Square with an exhibition of life-size images of the leading suffragettes, and BBC Radio’s early-morning Today programme used an all-female presenter line-up and invited only women contributors to the microphone.

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Mention the Oval Tube station in south London and most men will tell you that is where sports fans get off to watch Surrey County Cricket Club in action.

True, but it has also gained fame for the messages it carries every day on the station noticeboard, aphorisms such as “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”, “Kindness is the language that the deaf can hear and the blind can see”.

Fourteen years ago, customer service manager Anthony Gentles began putting up quotes from the Chinese Taoist text, Tao Te Ching, to perk up the “blank faces” of commuters heading for their office jobs.

It worked. Passengers began chatting to staff.

Some would thank Mr Gentles for the messages while others made special trips to the station.

Eventually, Mr Gentles passed the baton to his colleague Glen Sutherland, who says he has written more than 3,000 thoughts, from a variety of sources.

He also looks after the station’s Twitter account, which now has more than 20,000 followers from around the world.

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Rather than sneeze and spray saliva droplets into the air, some considerate people stifle the sneeze by clamping the nose and mouth shut.

Don’t do it. Doctors say you can cause yourself serious physical damage.

A man in Leicester ruptured his throat while trying to stop a high-force sneeze.

With nowhere to escape, the pressure ripped through the soft tissue.

With the flu season in full swing, medical experts are telling Brits the thing to do is to sneeze or cough into a tissue, then bin the tissue and wash your hands.

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If you savour great sporting moments (and want to experience a spot of national pride), check out Kenyan Victor Wanyama’s equalising goal for Tottenham Hotspur against Liverpool at Anfield last Sunday. A cracker!
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A woman telephoned 999 for advice on storing a cracked egg in her fridge; another caller complained he had toothache and a third wanted somebody to make his breakfast.

The East Midlands Ambulance Service said these were three of a small number of inappropriate calls received in the last six months.

In all, the service received some 60,000 emergency 999 calls.

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To start the theatre show, a ventriloquist puts his dummy on his knee and starts telling a series of dumb blonde jokes.

With that, a lady in the audience, blonde, of course, jumps to her feet and launches an angry tirade:

“How dare you characterise women by the colour of their hair! Blonde women can be extremely smart. I personally have never met a dumb blonde.”

Sheepishly, the ventriloquist begins to apologise, but she interrupts, “Shut up, you, I’m talking to the little idiot on your knee.”

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