Nationwide, Gender Fluidity

                                         Nationwide

Landscape with Houses, J. Anton 
Photo Credit: Atkinson Art Gallery Collection [CC BY-NC-SA]

A century ago the predecessor to today’s Nationwide building society was instrumental in building Letchworth, the first of Britain’s garden cities. Now the mutual society is going back to the future and is to start building homes again for the first time in a hundred years, in a revolutionary not-for-profit venture challenging the major housebuilders’ grip on the property market.

The society is starting small. The project, called Oakfield, close to Nationwide’s headquarters in Swindon, Wiltshire, is for 239 homes. It is aiming to build better – and bigger – homes as it has to cover just its costs, not squeeze out the 20% - plus margins that the big housebuilders usually expect.

“Profit is not our driving factor. The value in this project will be in replicating it across the country. The lovely thing about this is that we’re just trying to do the right thing, not just follow what developers have done before,” says Nick Spittal, general manager.

…About 30% of the development will be affordable housing – a much higher percentage than typical new-build-estates – with rental and shared-ownership options through a housing association.

(The Guardian, 2019)

Good luck to you the Nationwide. Let's hope this initial build is just the beginning of your stated aim that profit is not the driving factor in this project.

Fashion

  

A Dream Princess, Elizabeth Adela Stanhope Forbes (1859-1912)

Photo Credit: Royal Institution of Cornwall [CC BY-NC]

By [women] wearing trousers you’re making a statement about gender fluidity that you do not want to be objectified. But floaty dresses, especially the fantasy ones provided they aren’t overtly sexualised, give an equally powerful statement of “I can dress like this but it doesn’t give you a right to touch me.”

(Carolyn Mair, fashion psychologist.)

                     So now I know.






*Models at the London Fashion Week took to the catwalk wearing heavy black boots draped over their heads.

           Will this make the high street? No. Black’s not “on trend". 

*One of Private Eye’s entries for the 2019 Paul Foot awards for investigative and campaigning journalism was Sarah O’Connor of the Financial Times.

Sarah O’Connor’s feature for the FT magazine showed how the “fast fashion” boom is driving the growth of garment sweatshops across the Midlands. Workers often earning less than £5 an hour were found making clothes for leading high-street and online brands, often in cramped, dangerous and unregulated factories. O’Connor later testified to parliament about her work.

(Private Eye, No 1497)