Breast may be best but, please, not in public
EMILY SLOUGH was out with her eight-month-old baby Matilda in her home town of Rugeley, Staffordshire, when the child became hungry so she sat on the steps of a pub and proceeded to breastfeed.
Unbeknown to her however someone took a picture of this and posted it on Facebook with the caption, “I know the sun is out n all that but there’s no need to let your kid feast on your nipple in town!!! Tramp.”
It’s a great pity that the Facebook poster saw fit to add a gratuitous and nasty insult at the end of it because in all other respects he or she is absolutely right. Breastfeeding may be a warm and wonderful way of bonding with your little one and providing nurture to make it healthy and strong but it should be done in private, not out on the street.
Breastfeeding fanatics say that it’s totally “natural” and should thus be acceptable anywhere: well so is going to the loo or having sex and yet it is generally accepted that both those activities should be kept from the public.
Some of us feel a little nauseated by the spectacle. Why should this be inflicted on us? But as happens so often these days the offender, Emily, has taken it upon herself to get in high dudgeon and is now (heaven help us all) going to stage a mass breastfeeding event.
No doubt she thinks she’s making a stand for womanhood. In fact exactly the opposite is true. If a group of men arranged a public exhibition of their own natural functions it would rightly provoke an outcry and yet because these are breastfeeding women and as such seen as exempt from criticism no one will dare to utter a word.
In public, that is. In private a lot of people, men as well as women, will be absolutely disgusted and very much less inclined to make allowances for mothers of small children than they would have been otherwise.
Emily, meanwhile, has even seen fit to claim that that Facebook post could put off women breastfeeding altogether. What a load of old rot.
Don't Crow over a man's death
Four years ago, almost to the day, a close friend collapsed at work with a brain haemorrhage and was dead by the time he arrived at hospital. He was 48.
The shock and grief I felt still resounds, for his family it is infinitely worse.
So although I personally oppose just about everything he stood for I will not be rushing to social media to demonise Bob Crow.
The man had a partner and children. For goodness sake, have a heart.
Churchill's cat demand is typical of Britons' love of animals
One of the best things about being British is our eminently sensible attitude to the animal kingdom, namely besotted adoration.
And so a big welcome to Jock VI, a handsome boy who has become the latest ginger tom to move to Sir Winston Churchill’s former home, Chartwell.
The great man was given a feline named Jock on his 88th birthday and when he bequeathed the home to the National Trust insisted a marmalade cat must always live there.
Can you imagine any European politico doing likewise? Truly, it makes you proud to be a Brit.
Li-Lo reveals her number
Oh Lindsay, what have you done? Miss Lohan has allowed to become public that all important number every woman knows they should never reveal – ladies, you know what I’m talking about.
The total turns out to be 36, which seems relatively low given that Lindsay is a bad girl in La La Land, until you look closer and see that it refers only to her celebrity conquests, not civilians.
For the record Lindsay is 27. An interesting future awaits.